Golden age and expulsion: the Jews of Spain
After centuries of flourishing in Muslim and Christian Spain, Jews face massacres, forced conversion and the Inquisition, and in 1492 are ordered to convert or leave.
- The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience — Jane S. Gerber, Free Press (1992)
- The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BCE–1492 CE — Simon Schama, Bodley Head (2013)
- Belonging: The Story of the Jews, 1492–1900 — Simon Schama, Bodley Head (2017)
- Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History — Robert M. Seltzer, Macmillan (1980)
Jews lived in Iberia, which they called Sepharad, from Roman times. Under Muslim rule from the eighth century, and especially in tenth- and eleventh-century al-Andalus, a Jewish “golden age” produced poets such as Judah Halevi and statesmen-scholars such as Samuel ibn Naghrela, writing in Hebrew and Arabic. It was never a paradise: the fanatical Almohads drove out the young Maimonides and his family in the twelfth century. In the Christian kingdoms that gradually conquered the peninsula, Jews served as courtiers, doctors and tax collectors while facing rising hostility.
- The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience — Jane S. Gerber, Free Press (1992)
- The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BCE–1492 CE — Simon Schama, Bodley Head (2013)
In 1391, riots that began in Seville killed thousands of Jews across Castile and Aragon and led to mass conversions. The converts and their descendants, called conversos (and by enemies marranos, “swine”), were suspected of secretly practising Judaism, and in 1478 the Spanish Inquisition was set up largely to hunt them.
- The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience — Jane S. Gerber, Free Press (1992)
- Belonging: The Story of the Jews, 1492–1900 — Simon Schama, Bodley Head (2017)
On 31 March 1492, months after the fall of Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered all Jews to convert or leave within four months. Estimates of how many left vary widely, from about 40,000 to 200,000 or more; many others converted. Many exiles went to Portugal, where all Jews were forcibly converted in 1497. Others found refuge in the Ottoman Empire, whose sultan Bayezid II welcomed them, and in North Africa and Italy, and later converso families rebuilt Jewish life in Amsterdam and beyond. Salonica (Thessaloniki) became a majority-Jewish city for centuries.
- The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience — Jane S. Gerber, Free Press (1992)
- Belonging: The Story of the Jews, 1492–1900 — Simon Schama, Bodley Head (2017)
- Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History — Robert M. Seltzer, Macmillan (1980)
Why it matters today
The Sephardim, "Spanish" Jews, carried their language, Ladino, their songs, recipes and even the keys to their old houses across the Mediterranean and beyond. 1492 became a symbol of how a golden age can end, and why many Jews are wary of assuming that acceptance is permanent. In 2015 Spain and Portugal offered citizenship to descendants of the expelled.