Granada Andalucia Spain

One of the earliest Christian councils, the Council of Elvira, probably held near or in the present city of Granada in 305 or 306, decrees that all priests and bishops, married or not, should abstain from sexual relations; it also forbids Christians from intermarriage and social interaction with Jews.

The imperial force in Spain, after intervening in the quarrel among the Visigothic rulers in 552, overstays the invitation extended them, seizing the opportunity to occupy on a more permanent basis certain towns in the Iberian Peninsula’s southeastern corner, which retains its old Roman name of Hispania Baetica.

Justinian hopes to use these as a spearhead to his envisaged "Reconquest" of the Roman far west.

Imperial forces under Liberius seize Granada and occupy the old province of Baetica.

…Granada, …

…Granada and …

…the Damascus jund is established in Elvira (Granada), …

…Elvira, while …

Other Muladi revolts have occurred throughout Al-Andalus.

In the Elvira region, for instance, discord had sprung up between the Muladi and Moors, the latter being led by Sawar ibn Hamdub, and the poet, Sa'ad ibn Judi, both of whom fluctuate between insurrection against the caliph and submission to him.

Ibn al-Samh describes the equatorium, an instrument designed to give a graphic solution to the Ptolemaic equations for finding planetary positions, as a circular brass or paper disk with a rotatable “volvelle” (a movable circle with pointers) and a circle of degree marks.

The earliest known was probably made around 1015.

Some equatoriums are intended for locating one planet only, whereas others have several volvelles, each of which is designed for a different planet.

Granada, located on the Genil River, a tributary of the Guadalquivir, in a small but intensively cultivated plain, first rises to prominence in 1031 when a local Muslim dynasty, the Banu Ziri, or Zirids, make the city the seat of the kingdom they form after the Umayyad collapse.

Joseph ibn Naghrela, son of Samuel ibn Naghrela, had served as vizier to Badis, ruler of the Spanish Berbers, having succeeded to his father's position of vizier of Granada before he turned twenty-one.

Joseph had attempted to ease the conflict between Arabs and Berbers and thus to prevent excesses against the local Arabs.

Many Muslims, envious of his position and unhappy with Joseph's excesses, accuse Joseph of using his office to benefit Jewish friends.

His enemies include Abu Ishak, Berber advisor to the prince, who accuses him of trying to cede the city to a neighboring prince.

In 1066, Badis orders Joseph killed and crucified.

The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia claims that "More than 1,500 Jewish families, numbering 4,000 persons, fell in one day."

However, the 1971 edition does not give precise casualty figures.

Joseph's wife flees to Lucena with her son Azariah, where she is supported by the community.

Azariah will die in early youth.

According to historian Bernard Lewis, 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: "Diatribes 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.

Walter Laqueur 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."

Spivakovsky questions the death rate, suspecting it to be an example of "the usual hyperbole in numerical estimates, with which history abounds".