1066 Granada massacre

Particularly instructive in this respect is an ancient anti-Semitic poem of Abu Ishaq, written in Granada in 1066.

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On December 30, 1066 (9 Tevet

Tevet

Tebet is the fourth month of the civil year and the tenth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. It follows Kislew and precedes Shebat....
 4827), a Muslim

Muslim

:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits "....
 mob stormed the royal palace in Granada

Granada

Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada , in the autonomous communities of Spain of Andalusia, Spain....
, which was at that time in al-Andalus

Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to the parts of the Iberian Peninsula governed by Arab Muslims, at various times in the period between 711 and 1492....
, assassinated Jew

Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish vizier

Vizier

A Vizier , is a term for a high-ranking political advisor or minister, often to a Muslim monarch such as a Caliph, or Sultan. It sometimes refers to ministers and advisors of the Persian Empire's Shahs....
 Joseph ibn Naghrela

Joseph ibn Naghrela

Joseph ibn Naghrela or Joseph ha-Nagid was a vizier to the Berber people king Badis al-Muzaffar of Granada, during the Moors rule of Andalusia, and the leader of the Jewish community there....
 and massacred most of the Jewish population of the city. According to Richard Gottheil

Richard James Horatio Gottheil

Richard James Horatio Gottheil was an United States Semitic scholar and Zionist. He was born in Manchester, England, but moved to the United States at age 11 when his father, Gustav Gottheil, accepted a position as the assistant Rabbi of the largest Reform Temple in New York, Temple Emanu-El....
 and Meyer Kayserling

Meyer Kayserling

Meyer Kayserling was a German rabbi and historian....
: "More than 1,500 Jewish families, numbering 4,000 persons, fell in one day."

According to Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis is a British-American historian, Orientalist, and pundit . He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University....
, the massacre is "usually ascribed to a reaction among the Muslim population against a powerful and ostentatious Jewish vizier."

Lewis writes:

Particularly instructive in this respect is an ancient anti-Semitic poem of Abu Ishaq, written in Granada in 1066. This poem, which is said to be instrumental in provoking the anti-Jewish outbreak of that year, contains these specific lines:

Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them, the breach of faith would be to let them carry on.

They have violated our covenant with them, so how can you be held guilty against the violators?

How can they have any pact when we are obscure and they are prominent?

Now we are humble, beside them, as if we were wrong and they were right!

Lewis continues: "Diatribe

Diatribe

Diatribe is the name of a weekly column by Greek-Australian journalist, poet and lawyer Dean Kalimniou appearing in the Melbourne Greek language newspaper Neos Kosmos since 2001....
s such as Abu Ishaq's and massacres such as that in Granada in 1066 are of rare occurrence in Islamic history."

The episode has been characterized as a pogrom

Pogrom

A pogrom is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious, or other, and characterized by the killing and destruction of their homes, businesses, and religious centers....
. Walter Laqueur

Walter Laqueur

Walter Zeev Laqueur is an United States historian and political commentator.He was born in Breslau, Germany , to a Jewish family. In 1938 Laqueur left Germany for the British Mandate of Palestine....
 writes, "Jews could not as a rule attain public office (as usual there were exceptions), and there were occasional pogroms, such as in Granada in 1066."

See Also

• Joseph ibn Naghrela
  Joseph ibn Naghrela
  
  Joseph ibn Naghrela or Joseph ha-Nagid was a vizier to the Berber people king Badis al-Muzaffar of Granada, during the Moors rule of Andalusia, and the leader of the Jewish community there....
  
• Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain
• Islam and antisemitism

Further reading

• by Richard Gottheil, Meyer Kayserling, Jewish Encyclopedia
  Jewish Encyclopedia
  
  The Jewish Encyclopedia was an encyclopedia originally published between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901....
  . 1906 ed.