Barcelona ברצלונה
The city of Nachmanides and the Rashba, where in 1263 the disputation was held before the king and in 1391 a massacre ended the community.
Jews are known in Barcelona from the ninth century; in the tenth the community already has its cemetery on Montjuic, and the hill's very name is the Jews' hill. The quarter stood by the cathedral and the royal palace. From here came Rabbi Judah ben Barzillai with his Sefer HaIttim, Rabbi Abraham bar Chiya, and in the thirteenth century Nachmanides, the Rashba and his pupil Rabbi Aaron HaLevi: three generations on which the halakhah of Spain stands.
In 1263, in the palace of King James, before the court and a crowd of priests, Nachmanides answered the convert Pablo Christiani in the Disputation of Barcelona, which stands as an event of its own.
On 5 August 1391 a mob broke into the quarter: some three hundred people were killed in the New Castle, the rest were baptised or fled. The community did not recover, and on 26 December 1424 King Alfonso granted the city a privilege: no Jewish community was ever to exist in Barcelona again. So it remained until modern times.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Scholarship
- The Jewish Encyclopedia, article on the town — the course of the community's history and its scholars
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years, the numbers and the circumstances
Basis: documents and evidence.