On 30 December 1066 a mob in Granada, then the seat of the Zirid Taifa kingdom, stormed the royal palace, killed and crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela, and massacred much of the city's Jewish community. Joseph, son of the celebrated poet and statesman Samuel ibn Naghrila, had inherited his father's position at court and provoked resentment among sections of the Muslim populace and clergy who accused him of overreaching influence and, in some accounts, of a plot against the king; the violence that followed his killing spread beyond him to the wider Jewish community he was blamed for representing.
Facts
Disputed
Death TollThe traditional figure, transmitted through medieval Jewish chroniclers drawing on the same Granadan crisis the Tibyan itself narrates, is usually given as more than 1,500 families; converted loosely to individuals this is the low bound this atlas records, honestly labeled as traditional rather than independently verified by modern demographic method. Death TollThe same chronicle tradition's figure rendered directly in persons rather than families, more than 4,000, is the number most commonly repeated in modern reference works. Bernard Lewis's own scholarly treatment describes the massacre as a rare, not typical, episode in the history of Jews under Islamic rule without independently re-verifying the medieval casualty count. Status
Official RecognitionNot formally recognized by any body 2 No modern state or international body makes recognition determinations for an eleventh-century mob killing; it is documented and named by historians of medieval Iberia and of Jews under Islamic rule. Recognition BasisDocumented in the near-contemporary Tibyan memoir of Abd Allah ibn Buluggin and treated in modern scholarship (Lewis 1987); commemorated in Jewish historical memory as one of the few large-scale anti-Jewish massacres under medieval Islamic rule rather than recognized by any modern legal body. 2 The Event
When It Happened Victim GroupThe Jewish community of Granada, in the Zirid Taifa of Granada 1 Perpetrator RegimeA Muslim mob of the city of Granada, not a state or organized authority; the Zirid crown itself did not order the killing and its own vizier was among the first victims 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Samuel directly: "Joseph, son of the celebrated poet and statesman Samuel ibn Naghrila, had inherited his father's position at court and provoked resentment among sections of the Muslim populace and clergy who..."
Persecuted Group
Sources
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