It's crazy to think that the community that lasted for a better part of a millennium, and just got a new reassurance of relatively secure and seemingly bright future, could be gone in a matter of days. The triumphant Ottoman music at the end was a nice touch.
i just hope nothing like this ever happen to another thriving jewish community abroad that has been declining recently due to antisemitism and a few months ago got sliver of hope things will get better. please
It's a lesson for us all. Just because something has been going along for many many years, even centuries, doesn't mean it can't be abruptly destroyed. It takes years, decades, sometimes even longer, to establish institutions. They can be destroyed in a blink of an eye. Most people don't think about it - they take the existence of institutions for granted, sometimes dependent on institutions and systems that they do not even know/understand. Populists and demagogues are skilled in making unthinking populations hate the institutions on which they depend...
My critique answers this: Very good video. 1 criticism by omission: You didn't mention the blood libels that run in the Spanish villages and parishes. The populace and low clergy believed all that crap. The monarchs couldn't stop the populace and protect the Jewish everywhere, that was an impossible task. Many of the main assistants and direct scribes, secretary, etc, were Jewish. But Isabel wanted to protect the Jewish from the wrath of ignorant people. If she could not, then the next best thing was expulsing them (also doing business with this, for sure, and calming down those who wanted a country with more homogeneous beliefs). This is said and written by Luis Suárez, serious historian and member of the Royal Academy of History in Spain, in his book Isabel I, Reina. A work that is imprescindible to take into this account. Thanks.
Jews were thriving in Bosnia and Sarajevo until the Holocaust happened. In fact, one of our greatest historical trasured - the Sarajevo Hagada is from those Jews that fled from Spain and setled in Bosnia under Ottoman rule. Thank you for spreading the historical truth about the relationship between Jews and Muslims, which is especialy important in this age, when those realationships are at the lowest point in history.
Germany made Joos rich beyond belief, in fact Hitler signed the transfer agreement, an elaborate scheme to tranfer money to Palestine, mainly the rich class. Hitler financed Israel
If that is true then why did all the Jews in America (Congress) sat quietly while the Serbs were bombing the national Museum in Sarajevo in which allegedly your Haggadah was being kept? How come? Why did they allow that?
I just went back and rewatched some of your first few videos from this series. I certainly enjoyed those, but these newer videos are just soooo good. Keep up the great work.
I love the “plot twist” in the end. Another nice video from this channel. Learning a lot about Jewish History and its implication to the world at large. Kudos to you sir and stay safe 😄
It's a very popular way to for Israelis to get an EU passport. Unfortunately, my Sephardic ancestors traveled too far afield (Moldova) to hold onto their Spanish names and qualify.
Setting a standard for proving descent from 500 years ago had to be tricky. By contrast, Germany and Austria restoring citizenships revoked by the Nuremberg Decrees was very straightforward. It’s only 2-3 generations back, and documentation should be readily accessible.
@@SamAronow for many years I thought my Moldovan and Romanian Jewish ancestors were Sephardi, until I learned they were actually Romaniote Jews from Greece
@@matthewbrotman2907 Not really. If you had a sephardic name, practised the sephardic branch of the jewish religion, either as an observer or as as an active practisioner, spoke Ladino, and/or practised sephardic culture and traditions, then it shouldn't be too difficult. I mean, the whole point is that ethnic sephardis should be allowed to get citizenship, if someone has only a little bit of sephardic ancestry but doesn't identefy as ethnically sephardy, I don't think they should get to get have Spanish citizenship so easily.
My great grandmother and grandmother on my mom’s side were Jewish and fluent in Turkish and a strange Spanish-like dialect as it was always told to me. I assumed this was more of my mom’s usual complete lack of knowledge when it comes to geography and just mixing up things. Thanks for unintentionally teaching me a part of my family history that I might not have learned about otherwise.
The Alhambra Decree had a great impact in the history of Brazil. After the expulsion from Span a lot of Jews went to Portugal. The arrived in Portugal in the moment of maritime expansion. It is estimated that during 16 and 17th century nearly 1/3 of all the people Portugal sent to colonize Brazil were Jews. Today it is estimated that in Brazil there are 40 millions of decedents of those Jews who were expulsed from Spain.
@João Ribeiro After their "convertion" they were knows as Cristãos Novos(new Christians). Those conversos were seen for a long time as second class Christians.
I am descended from one of them. My family kept his family name for generations until its origin faded from memory, but by complete coincidence, I was born with it
im certainly interested, im a Sephardic jew from those that didn't go to the ottoman empire, but that instead came to the american continent and founded cities like Monterrey en Mexico, and im interested in learning that.
This is absolutely a fantastic resource. As an IB teacher covering the fall of Granada and the edict of expulsion this is a great summary of the demographic changes within Iberia and the treatment of the Spanish Jews. Thank you!
Great video as always. I'm guessing that in one of the next proper videos (not a recap) Sultan Suleyman will conquer Palestine and the golden age of Safed, Rabbi Yosef Karo and the Ariza''l will begin.
Clarification/Reiteration: The Spanish Inquisition is a total violation of most of the world's modern values system, and for good reason, but I wanted to challenge the way in which it has historically been conflated with the Alhambra Decree and thus has taken up a disproportionate amount of popular historical memory. If you really want to see something more akin to that, just wait and see what ended up happening in Portugal.
As a Puerto Rican 🇨🇺 I'm bewildered to the fact I might be more Jewish than I ever thought about. I can't wait to find out more about my past. Thanks Sam for all your hard work and praying for your safety as Israel is dealing with the Palestinian conflict and the pandemic. Interesting note about myself, my father second name is Bonano which I found is Sicilian. LOL I'm a Siciliano that speaks Espanol. 😏
@@micahistory That WILL change when the Messianic Age starts and for the way this world is behaving it seems we are closer to that point than ever. Shalom. 😏😁
In 1486 my (multiple times) ancestor Moshe ben Levy Ben Gabay married Solvella in Tudela, Navarre by a with a ketubah. A little over a decade later he had to convert into Catholicism, and his grandson migrated to New Spain. Three generations later, the granddaughter of that immigrant married a descendant of the Ha-Levi family. We have remained in what today is Mexico for over 4 centuries.
Listening to my history like this always fills me with emotion. It’s more than reading it in books, you bring this story to life in a way that never fails to make me sob at the bad times and and smile at the (increasingly rare) good.
A great and informative video. As a teenager I studied in Spain, there was a small portion of history lessons that mentioned the Jewish presence on the Iberian peninsula.
Abravanel was the most important Jewish Rabi by this time. 432 years later one of his descendants has come to Brazil running away from Otoman empire in total poverty. One of his sons, Senor Abravanel has become one of the wealthiest man of Brazil.
Speaking of Ottoman Jewry, a series on the Sephardim of the Balkans would be cool. I do particularly want to see stuff about the community in Sarajevo, which includes a few of my parents’ friends & other people I know but obviously the larger communities like in Thessaloniki would probably make more sense to focus on. The Jewish experience in the major late Ottoman & post Ottoman Balkan conflicts like the many revolts, the 2 Balkan wars, & WWI would be interesting. The Jewish suffering in WWII which includes all areas under Axis occupation and influence, including the homes of these communities, is obviously something I don’t need to suggest because no self respecting series on Jewish history that gets to that era would avoid that topic
European Christians must have viewed Judaism as a direct challenge to their doctrine. Jesus was born Jewish...Paul...James...etc. They must have wondered why Jews did not believe in Jesus if Christianity had come from them? Christianity is a Middle Eastern religion with a Middle Eastern Jesus who is somehow illustrated as European. Islam on the other hand came through Mohammed, Arab, Middle Eastern etc. The message comes directly from their own brethren, it's homegrown. So no hang-ups about Judaism.
Hello Sam. Since you have finally reached the point where Sephardic Jews would dominate the Jewish communities outside of Europe, I thought that you might be interested in the evolution of the cursive Hebrew Sephardic handwriting outside of Iberia, the same handwriting that was used to write Judeo-Arabic, Ladino and other Jewish languages. If you don't already have sources about it and you're interested in the subject, I found a thorough thesis work by Dr. Yael Baruch about it and I would love to share it with you. שבת שלום
2:55 Antipope Benedict XIII (known as "Papa Luna" in Spain) ended his days holed up in Peñiscola, a castle built on the hill of a small peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean sea up the coast from Valencia. It is these days a popular sea side resort but worth a visit for those interested in this era of history.
@@SamAronow Who decided we're in these ages (or rather what group), I can't find info online. And its funny its called the last ones being its become so obvious we'll not be the last ones, if we can survive the Shoah and attacks on Israel.
Great video!! I hope you also make a video on the inquisition and forced conversion of Jews in Portugal. And also on their arrival to the Americas the Anusim.
The Alhambra Decree had a huge impact in the history of Brazil. In 16th and 17th century nearly 1/3 of all the people Portugal sent to colonize Brazil were Jews. During those centuries each great city of Spanish America had a tribunal from inquisition. Brazil did not had it at the beginning because of the presence of Jewish entrepreneurs was very important at the beginning of colonization.
It is ironical but today one of the most wealthiest men of Brazil is a descendant of Isacc Abravanel. His name is Senor Abravanel, his family arrived in Brazil in 1924 completely poor and he was abke to get rich.
@@pedroledoux9779 I am not sure if Silvio Santos is a direct descendent of Rabi Don Itzchak Abarbanel zt"l. They are surely from the same family, but I doubt a direct descendence, because Silvio Santos' family is from Turkey, and the Rabbi stayed and died in Venice.
@@davidcohenboffa1666 Silvio Santos is one of the very few Jews in Brazil recognized by the Jewish community as belonging to King David lineage. In Brazil among the Jews there are only 2 families who belongs to David lineage. Silvio also told in TV that he is a descendant of Isaac Abravanel when he talked about his family.
I would really love if someday you get the time to explain what happened in Portugal at the time with more detail. I know some very sad and absurd parts of the story (involving a false miracle that was no more than an optical illusion, and people getting mad for having their fantasies proven false), but it would be great to know anymore details. I have only shown my appreciation for the series so far by liking all videos I've seen (from the beginning up until this one), but this is a good opportunity to say I am really loving it. Thank you very much for your work!
@Sam Aronow, I was just watching that same video when I received notification of this answer! Thank you for the answer. The next 2 videos (or the 2 before the one you mention) also go into more detail about what happened in Portugal, which I could have guessed. I was my enthusiasm for the series that made write that suggestion without checking it first. Sorry for that. And while some details about the pogrom of 1506 in Lisbon are vivid, ironic and telling, I do believe your choice in the way to present events was actually better. Together with Historia Civilis, this seems to be my favorite History channel on youtube. Thank you very much for your work.
As a spaniard, I consider this as one of the darkest events in our history. See, in history class the only thing we study about sephardic jews is the expusion of 1492, resumed in less than one paragraph in the textbook. Considering the fact that there once lived here one of the largest and more influential community in the whole western world i think it would be interesting to learn more about the sephardic jew's history, as it's part of the jewish people history, and also part of spain's history.
Necessary mention to the blood libels that run in the Spanish villages and parishes. The populace and low clergy believed all that crap. The monarchs couldn't stop the populace and protect the Jewish everywhere, that was an impossible task. Many of the main assistants and direct scribes, secretary, etc, were Jewish. But Isabel wanted to protect the Jewish from the wrath of ignorant people. If she could not, then the next best thing was expulsing them (also doing business with this, for sure, and calming down those who wanted a country with more homogeneous beliefs). This is said and written by Luis Suárez, serious historian and member of the Royal Academy of History in Spain, in his book Isabel I, Reina. A work that is imprescindible to take into this account. Thanks.
Hey thanks for the, as always, super informative and captivating work! Would really be interested in seeing one about the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal and those who fled there in 1496 and the ensuing horrific years, as well as Cryptojudaism in Portugal which is super interesting. I must say it always also makes me angry to learn about those events. Important knowledge, and interesting to see how both Portugal and Spain issued (different) "laws of return" for sephardic jews in the last years.
Very good video. 1 criticism by omission: You didn't mention the blood libels that run in the Spanish villages and parishes. The populace and low clergy believed all that crap. The monarchs couldn't stop the populace and protect the Jewish everywhere, that was an impossible task. Many of the main assistants and direct scribes, secretary, etc, were Jewish. But Isabel wanted to protect the Jewish from the wrath of ignorant people. If she could not, then the next best thing was expulsing them (also doing business with this, for sure, and calming down those who wanted a country with more homogeneous beliefs). This is said and written by Luis Suárez, serious historian and member of the Royal Academy of History in Spain, in his book Isabel I, Reina. A work that is imprescindible to take into this account. Thanks.
Never saw a number put in how many conversos there were. Now I get why there are so many Latinx who still have some seemingly random family tradition to light candles in the closet Friday night. 100,000 begets a lot of descendants.
I actually got a little confused with the numbers- 200,000 is the number of conversos in the Spanish Realms *and* Portugal, the latter of which forced almost all the Jewish refugees who fled there to submit to baptism. That they did not have the option to flee while those in Spain did made a huge difference in how the rest of the Jewish community perceived them- and how many of them ultimately returned to Judaism over the following centuries.
Many Iberia Jews likely also converted to Christianity in the Late Roman Empire in the rise of Christianity, many more Jews were later converted by the Visigoths, and there was conversion to Christianity throughout the Christian rule of the Iberian Peninsula. Also Conversos were represented heavily in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. all together it amounts to a lot of descendants
Our people have a fascinating history! Many Sefardi also arrived in Jamaica at the time of Columbus. The oldest congregation in the Western Hemisphere is there in Kingston. The synagogue openly livestreams their Friday night/Saturday morning shabbat services on YT at "UCI Jamaica" from Sha'are Shalom Synagogue. Though not always the case, often the -ez and -es suffix (meaning Israelite) for Iberian surnames denotes Sefardi descent. Perez being one of the more popular Sefardi surnames. Mexico has a huge population of Sefardi descendants as well. I was very surprised to meet many Mexijews when travelling there. Though the population was initially our Sefardi people since the time of Columbus, many Ashkenazi arrived in the 20th Century. Cleaning the home and lighting candles at sunset on Friday has always been a tradition of our people. And for Catholics who grew up seeing this tradition performed in their home probably don't realise that their families are converso descendants of the Sefardi and that this tradition had been passed down for many generations. It was never a sabbath tradition of their church, as many families lit the shabbat candles in secret.
I myself am hispanic and I love how it’s only white liberals and westernized hispanics who use that idiotic term “latinx”, it’s not spanish, its not english, it’s a made up word to make a few white snowflakes who have “white guilt” syndrome feel better about themselves, the majority of hispanics view people who use that term as morons😂😂
Some things missed, what about Navarre? Everyone remembers Portugal, but it is theorized almost as many went to Navarre, some say it was an escape route, others say they stayed and converted and were hid by the basques. Also, not all the exiles spoke Ladino, many spoke Judeo-Galician, Judeo-Aragonese and so on.
I was watching a video where the creator went through time showing older and older forms of english and answering the question how far back in time could we go and still understand others. I was wondering, how far back in time could we go and communicate - even poorly- with local Jews?
Classical Hebrew pronunciation wouldn’t be that hard to understand, but you’re assuming that medieval Jews would have been conversational in Hebrew in the first place. Even most of the minority who were fluent I don’t think would have been conversational. And classical verb structure is quite different as well. That said, classical Hebrew would still be much more similar to modern Hebrew than you’d expect after 2,000 years. Somewhere between Icelandic/Old Norse and Italian/Latin in terms of mutual intelligibility.
Great video as always! Loving the population charts and numbers. I am interested to know if there is any documentation of Jews using Maimonides's position on forced conversion to justify their conversion for personal benefit. Certainly it is not something Maimonides himself would have supported.
Speaking of the Isabel and Fernando's hypocrisy for establishing the Inquisición & expellimg Jews, meanwhile they had Jewish people on their service, they were some Jewish physicians whose knowledge and services helped the Catholic Monarch's family. For example, Fernando's father, Juan II de Aragón was completely blind several years because he was an old man and suffered catarats, but in 1468 a Jewish Catalan surgeon named Cresques Aviatar operated the King, the surgery was very successful and Juan could see again. Moreover, the Jewish converso Aragonese physician Lorenzo Badoz was Isabel's ginecologist, who helped Isabel with her pregnancies, her fertility problems and giving birth to her children (Isabel got into 6 pregnancies, in which of 7 children, 5 reached adulthood, the other two were stillborn, and her last kid was Catherine of Aragon, born in 1485)
You didn't mention the blood libels that run in the Spanish villages and parishes. The populace and low clergy believed all that crap. The monarchs couldn't stop the populace and protect the Jewish everywhere, that was an impossible task. Many of the main assistants and direct scribes, secretary, etc, were Jewish. But Isabel wanted to protect the Jewish from the wrath of ignorant people. If she could not, then the next best thing was expulsing them (also doing business with this, for sure, and calming down those who wanted a country with more homogeneous beliefs). This is said and written by Luis Suárez, serious historian and member of the Royal Academy of History in Spain, in his book Isabel I, Reina. A work that is imprescindible to take into this account. Thanks.
Forgive my ignorance and I apologize if this question sounds stupid but why was it that more than a third of Jews stuck around Europe when they could have migrated to other areas outside of Christian control where they would have been much more tolerated? Was there something about Europe (besides being home) that justified the risk of living in such a hostile and volatile environment? Was migration difficult back then? Fantastic episode btw!
Well, as I've covered in previous videos, and will cover in future ones, persecution was not exclusive to Christian domination. The Almohads had driven the Jews *into* the Christian north by demanding conversion or death; and during the events of this video, many of the same persecutions that had led to the Spanish events were taking place under Mamluk rule in Egypt and Greater Syria. Likewise, there was nothing like these kinds of persecutions going on in Christian Poland. Transport, especially for passengers, was relatively rare and expensive compared to today, and nobody knew how these events would shake out any more than we can plan for the outcomes of events today.
@@SamAronow could you cover more about what was going on in the Muslim world? This part of history is alot less known, like the Jewish king dhu nuwas or pogroms like events in the middle East, or the persian the Muslim equivalent of the inquisition, and the creation of the Anusim of mashhad ( אנוסי משהד )
Make a video please on the Bosnian jews and the Sarajevo Hagadah. It survived the world war and is arguably thr only muslim country outside of Azerbaijan to have good relations historicly with the Jewish people
I'm curious where you get your demographic stats on jewish population throughout history? Was it compiled by rabbinic scholars or are the stats estimated?
Muslims saved 200,000 Jews from Spain; eventually, perhaps the majority of the converted Jews also escaped tp Muslim lands. Thus, at least a quarter of world Jewry was saved. The Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula began to save the Jews too. Musa bin Nusayr sent Tariq bin Ziyad to Spain because a Jewish delegation from Spain came to Morocco seeking help from the Muslim arab armies there.
Understanding the social environment and the fact the Jews couldn't be protected by the Queen (as she wanted) is important in this matter. Worth mentioning the blood libels that run in the Spanish villages and parishes. The populace and low clergy believed all that crap. The monarchs couldn't stop the populace and protect the Jewish everywhere, that was an impossible task. Many of the main assistants and direct scribes, secretary, etc, were Jewish. But Isabel wanted to protect the Jewish from the wrath of ignorant people. If she could not, then the next best thing was expulsing them (also doing business with this, for sure, and calming down those who wanted a country with more homogeneous beliefs). This is said and written by Luis Suárez, serious historian and member of the Royal Academy of History in Spain, in his book Isabel I, Reina. A work that is imprescindible to take into this account. Thanks.
13:35 this is an outstandingly ingenious move. By moving it to Tish'a b'Av he basically tattooed that day as not only a deeply negative event, but as a *collectively remembered* deeply negative event from that point to eternity. Tish'a b'Av is quite a big deal for practicing Jews, and the association of the Alhambra decree made sure that the Jews will not forget it. Just so you get the impact, we had the largest empire in Europe brutally slaughtering roughly 99% of its Jewish population just a century earlier during a pandemic and it's not remotely as remembered today as the Alhambra decree among most Jews. This man made sure this event would be remembered as a dark day for the rest of time, even today almost exactly 530 years later, and all it took was a bribe of 30,000 ducats.
Maimonides didn't speak out against the tradition of death before conversion. The quote you give just says you receive no punishment. the lines right before your quote say this "And whosoever, concerning whom it is said that he shall die and not transgress, did transgress and did not die, blasphemed the Name of God, and if he did this in the presence of ten Israelites, he blasphemed the Name of God in the presence of many, violated the mandatory commandment of the sanctification of God, and transgressed the prohibitive commandment of blasphemy."
which is, basically a whole massive can of worms. idk, three popes fighting each other diplomatically by denouncing each other like anti-popes, it's a whole nother story.
Bayezid and the Catholic Monarchs are all on my list of best rulers ever and of people I admire. Excellent video, I wish the Ladino language could be revived and that more Sephardic jews returned to Spain.
@@leanderbarreto6523 I agree and disagree at the same time. First of all, Ladino is still spoken so it fits your argument. Second of all, I agree it's more useful to save endangered languages than to save others that went extinct thousands of years ago and whose ethnic group it belonged to doesn't exist anymore. However, an extinct language whose ethnic group still exists, and especially if it has gone extinct recently, is very much worth being revived.
I honestly didn't understand the significance of the Alhambra decree as a jew. It is one of the things covered in jewish history very early on so it must be important, but in a long list of constant expulsions and massacres I always thought "what makes spain's important?" and though the answer wasn't particularly relevant to this one episode, I think I get it now. It's because there used to be a jewish golden age in Iberia in the preceding centuries, and it showed jews werent safe anywhere. It's sad that I didn't know that. Not knowing the pretext to an evil of mankind can easily deprive the emotional weight of that evil when it's presented in a sea of other evils. I'm reform Judaism, by the way.
A great description of the Spanish Inquisition, in Spain. Their colonies did not fare so well. Also the public processions to execution, as theatre for close to 200 years, is enough to cement the reputation.
I really enjoy your videos, and this was no exception! However, I would take the whole story of the Bayezid sending the Ottoman fleet to rescue the Jews of Iberia with a large grain of salt. Joseph Hacker, for one, points out that there is actually no documentary evidence to support claims about the explicit policies and attitudes of Bayezid and his successors regarding the Iberian Jews. Also, Minna Rozen, citing Rozanes' earlier work, points out that there may have been only 7,000 to 8,000 Jews who arrived in the Ottoman Empire between 1492 and 1497, and even among those, many didn't come directly from Iberia. As Rozen writes, "Hardly anyone reached the shores of the Golden Horn with his nuclear family intact". The total number of Iberian Jews who eventually made it to the Ottoman Empire was much greater, but it seems best to characterize Iberian Jewish migration to Ottoman lands as a process drawn out over several decades. Events in Portugal (1497 expulsion, 1506 massacre, 1536 establishment of inquisition) as well as in southern Italy and North Africa were likely as impactful or even more impactful on pushing the scattered Sephardim towards the Eastern Mediterranean than 1492 itself. Then there's the question of whether Bayezid even said what he supposedly said about Ferdinand and his lack of wisdom (see, for instance, Marc David Baer's deconstructions of these romanticized versions of Ottoman Jewish history). Also, just a detail, but although Izmir/Smyrna was a hugely important Jewish community, that didn't happen until the early 17th century (it was not among the initial centers of Ottoman Sephardic life in the years following 1492).
Europe-based Jews needed another Bayezid before WWII. That era was an opportunity for Spain to make amends for the expulsion of 1492 but they had Franco the fascist in charge.
There were Jewish citizenship laws passed in Republican Spain; I don’t know if they survived under Franco; but they would not have applied to most of Europe’s Jews at the time, and those to whom it did were either too far away like in Greece or largely out of harm’s way in Vichy-controlled North Africa. Meanwhile, the British closed Palestine off to Jewish immigration just in time for the war, Canada’s government did the same, and the US blocked refugees (and my family, who were already all in the US, never forgot it).
Franco wasn't friendly to Jewish influence, but his regime helped many thousands of Jews and they weren't delivered to nazis. Also Franco for the most part was not fascist, he took advantage of the mild fascist party Falange and used it for its own purposes diluting that ideology. Revise JJ Linz works on the differences between authoritarianism and totalitarianism...
Dwarfing Ottoman empire? I don't know what sources you're reading but if you look at a map, your eyes will show you who's empire dwarfs who's. The Ottoman Sultan was the richest man in the world at the time. The Eastern Mediterranean was totally dominated by the Ottomans and was the main reason Columbus HAD to sail west trying to get to the east. So, the Hispanic empire was not laughing, Beyazid was :)
Spain: *Kicks out their own Jews, which constituted quite a lot of their upper middle class, and also somewhat part of their own government* Ottoman Empire: "HAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAH! You *FUCKING* idiot!"
14:42 what do you mean reconquista failed? It's the most successful crusade... For almost two centuries Spain was a global power and was seen as the champion of christendom in Europe
Must have been tiring to pack up and move to a new country every 100 years or so as some new king decided Jews were unacceptable and had to go, one way or another
This is rife with historical inaccuracies. Off the top of my head, here are two: the king and queen were Ferdinand and Isabella, not Fernando and Isabel. Second, while non Christians were technically supposed to be immune to the inquisition, Jews were typically accused of having converted and turned back to Judaism, even if they’d never converted. That’s how they got around that rule and included the Jews anyway. Documents released by the church in 1998 confirm this fact. ETA: Ferdinand, Isabella and Torquemada were all Jews by maternal lineage, no more than three generations removed from a practicing Jew.
uh...? buddy you do realize fernando and isabel is the spanish way to say it, right? also a 2020 study disproved that torquemada came from jewish lineage.
Their name was Fernando and Isabel. In Spanish. Also only Fernando had Jewish ancestry by the familly of the Admiral of Castile, concretely Juana Enriquez. Reread your info about it.
I know this is a series on Jewish history, so presenting the Jewish perspective on the ottomans makes sense but I have to bring up that, for all the modern praise of relative religious freedom and it’s excellent treatment of Jews, for the majority of people in the Balkans, who were Christian, Ottoman rule represented the complete loss of their freedom. Again, people like to emphasize that Christians were allowed to continue to live there, but the cost was enormous. Your firstborn son to be taken from you by the army and raised to be an elite and very notably Muslim soldier, detached from his native culture, especially in a time when religion was so personally important to people. Just because it was only applied to a portion of non muslims, doesn’t negate the fact that the devshirme system was one of forced conversion. Also the idea of a dhimmi contract is kind of bullshit in this case. The Christians & Jews are not agreeing to pay taxes to a Muslim ruling class for the right to live on their land, a foreign state is coming to their land, taking it, and forcing them into this “contract”. It’s not just additional tax, it’s being a second class citizen, being a lesser person in your own homeland. Something Christian powers did all the time of course, most states in the past were horrible and Christian ones are well known for their intolerance towards minorities, it’s just something that is often ignored in the context of Muslim powers in modern historiography. Don’t get me wrong, the Ottomans weren’t the devil, they certainly are a military power worthy of respect and made great contributions to science and art, they were certainly lovely towards Jews in comparison to the rest of the world. They just sometimes get depicted as too wholesome and angelic in a well intentioned attempt to show people in the west the many good sides of the Islamic world throughout history. I get that there is a need to show certain people that muslims aren’t monsters, and as I already said, in the Jewish perspective that this series focuses on, the Ottomans were saviours, I just bring this up here to an audience which seems to me smart enough to not misunderstand my point as a black and white “Turk bad” or “Muslim bad” statement because I’ve seen the romanticization of historic Muslim powers in other places. The other funny thing to me is that the focus on the good aspects of the Muslim world seems to end in the 1800s, which really just creates a narrative where Muslim countries and their people used to be pure good but then became pure evil, both of which are obviously idiotic ideas
The difficult thing is that, if you present all sides to something, you're effectively trying to summarize the entire history of the known world. And moreover, the narrative threads become fundamentally broken, because narrative relies on sharing a specific perspective or it risks incoherence. It is not impossible to do, but it is very difficult. A huge part of teaching history is about ignoring massive amounts of information in favor of a specific throughline explaining the experience of a specific group. In the American mainstream, that tends to be Greece, Rome, England, and America... because that is the lineage that America claims. A lot of what videos like Sam's do is provide different lenses that aren't otherwise easily available to that mainstream. It relies a lot on personal expertise and non-exhaustive research. The advantage is that it provides alternative narratives at all, which for the discerning student, can be a thread woven into their overall knowledge. And Sam has made his biases pretty clear, I think, which helps the individual viewer figure out how they'd prefer to weave that thread into their own understanding and also set it against any other sources they might have. Never rely on only one perspective to understand a thing.
The jizya is not a special tax only imposed on the non Muslims. You and a lot of people completely forget the zakat, a sort of tax imposed on all Muslims till today that even sometimes is more than the jizya. And in islamic law, as said by the quran and hadith, High taxes on anyone is forbidden.
@@victorien3704 Zakat and jizya are very different: the first is charity, the second is protection money. Some Islamic rules would even try to prevent mass conversion so not to lose jizya revenue.
I see your point but you miss a key detail. Fact is Muslim Spain looked after their religion minorities as did the Ottomans. Yes, devsirme was a tax of Christian first born's but Jews were not allowed in devsirme. Some Christian families enlisted all their boys into the army as it could lead to promotions all the way to Grand Vezir. I take your point about romanticizing history but as yourself would you rather be a religious minority in Catholic Spain, or Ottoman eastern Mediterranean? The fact that the expulsions and mass executions began after the reconquista should tell you something about where the people at the time would rather be. Most would rather pay a tax or enlist their first born in the army than have their whole bloodline executed. Feel free to argue otherwise
Spain became super wealthy Global Superpower after 1492. Spain help defeat the Ottomans in Vienna 1529 and vaporized them at Lepanto 1571. In 1534, Ottomans bled 6 to 1 against the Spanish Tercios casualties at Castelnovo. Ottomans were a Second Tier tiny Empire compared to Spain.
@@HalalHistory The French were the Ottoman's #1 amigo in Europe. But for Spanish blood and gold sacrifice, Italy today would be a Muslim Bosnia / Albania.
It's crazy to think that the community that lasted for a better part of a millennium, and just got a new reassurance of relatively secure and seemingly bright future, could be gone in a matter of days.
The triumphant Ottoman music at the end was a nice touch.
i just hope nothing like this ever happen to another thriving jewish community abroad that has been declining recently due to antisemitism and a few months ago got sliver of hope things will get better. please
@Itay ELDAD no matter what time it is jews always say "recent antisemitism"
It's a lesson for us all. Just because something has been going along for many many years, even centuries, doesn't mean it can't be abruptly destroyed.
It takes years, decades, sometimes even longer, to establish institutions. They can be destroyed in a blink of an eye.
Most people don't think about it - they take the existence of institutions for granted, sometimes dependent on institutions and systems that they do not even know/understand. Populists and demagogues are skilled in making unthinking populations hate the institutions on which they depend...
My critique answers this:
Very good video. 1 criticism by omission:
You didn't mention the blood libels that run in the Spanish villages and parishes. The populace and low clergy believed all that crap.
The monarchs couldn't stop the populace and protect the Jewish everywhere, that was an impossible task. Many of the main assistants and direct scribes, secretary, etc, were Jewish.
But Isabel wanted to protect the Jewish from the wrath of ignorant people. If she could not, then the next best thing was expulsing them (also doing business with this, for sure, and calming down those who wanted a country with more homogeneous beliefs).
This is said and written by Luis Suárez, serious historian and member of the Royal Academy of History in Spain, in his book Isabel I, Reina. A work that is imprescindible to take into this account.
Thanks.
I love how Bayezid said “Fernando, you’re an idiot”
Who is idiot... Sephardic Jews destroyed Ottoman on 1908 by II.constitutional coup!
Jews were thriving in Bosnia and Sarajevo until the Holocaust happened. In fact, one of our greatest historical trasured - the Sarajevo Hagada is from those Jews that fled from Spain and setled in Bosnia under Ottoman rule.
Thank you for spreading the historical truth about the relationship between Jews and Muslims, which is especialy important in this age, when those realationships are at the lowest point in history.
What? That Ottamon Islamic rulers decided to use Jews for their benefit as Christian rulers had for the same reason?
The jews let the muslims in to slaughter everyone dude
Germany made Joos rich beyond belief, in fact Hitler signed the transfer agreement, an elaborate scheme to tranfer money to Palestine, mainly the rich class. Hitler financed Israel
Until the holocaust when the Bosnian Muslims helped nazis exterminate the last remains of Jewish life in the balkans 😢
If that is true then why did all the Jews in America (Congress) sat quietly while the Serbs were bombing the national Museum in Sarajevo in which allegedly your Haggadah was being kept? How come? Why did they allow that?
I just went back and rewatched some of your first few videos from this series. I certainly enjoyed those, but these newer videos are just soooo good. Keep up the great work.
I love the “plot twist” in the end. Another nice video from this channel. Learning a lot about Jewish History and its implication to the world at large. Kudos to you sir and stay safe 😄
Fun fact: Spain and Portugal have actually offered citizenship many times in the last few decades to sephardic jews that want it.
It's a very popular way to for Israelis to get an EU passport. Unfortunately, my Sephardic ancestors traveled too far afield (Moldova) to hold onto their Spanish names and qualify.
Setting a standard for proving descent from 500 years ago had to be tricky.
By contrast, Germany and Austria restoring citizenships revoked by the Nuremberg Decrees was very straightforward. It’s only 2-3 generations back, and documentation should be readily accessible.
@@SamAronow for many years I thought my Moldovan and Romanian Jewish ancestors were Sephardi, until I learned they were actually Romaniote Jews from Greece
Did they perchance live in Bălți?
@@matthewbrotman2907 Not really. If you had a sephardic name, practised the sephardic branch of the jewish religion, either as an observer or as as an active practisioner, spoke Ladino, and/or practised sephardic culture and traditions, then it shouldn't be too difficult. I mean, the whole point is that ethnic sephardis should be allowed to get citizenship, if someone has only a little bit of sephardic ancestry but doesn't identefy as ethnically sephardy, I don't think they should get to get have Spanish citizenship so easily.
I am moved to say a prayer for the sultan Bayezid the second. God bless him !
My great grandmother and grandmother on my mom’s side were Jewish and fluent in Turkish and a strange Spanish-like dialect as it was always told to me. I assumed this was more of my mom’s usual complete lack of knowledge when it comes to geography and just mixing up things. Thanks for unintentionally teaching me a part of my family history that I might not have learned about otherwise.
The Sephardic Studies department at the University of Washington celebrates Ladino Day every December. It's so fun and interesting!
Welcome back Sam ♥
Hope you're doing well
The Alhambra Decree had a great impact in the history of Brazil.
After the expulsion from Span a lot of Jews went to Portugal. The arrived in Portugal in the moment of maritime expansion. It is estimated that during 16 and 17th century nearly 1/3 of all the people Portugal sent to colonize Brazil were Jews. Today it is estimated that in Brazil there are 40 millions of decedents of those Jews who were expulsed from Spain.
@João Ribeiro After their "convertion" they were knows as Cristãos Novos(new Christians).
Those conversos were seen for a long time as second class Christians.
I am descended from one of them. My family kept his family name for generations until its origin faded from memory, but by complete coincidence, I was born with it
im certainly interested, im a Sephardic jew from those that didn't go to the ottoman empire, but that instead came to the american continent and founded cities like Monterrey en Mexico, and im interested in learning that.
I am always impressed and amazed at the detail that goes into your maps. Any chance you have a gallery of all of them? They're such eye candy!
This is absolutely a fantastic resource. As an IB teacher covering the fall of Granada and the edict of expulsion this is a great summary of the demographic changes within Iberia and the treatment of the Spanish Jews. Thank you!
Great video, as always! I'm especially excited to see your upcoming videos about the Sephardi communities which grew after the expulsion.
Great video as always. I'm guessing that in one of the next proper videos (not a recap) Sultan Suleyman will conquer Palestine and the golden age of Safed, Rabbi Yosef Karo and the Ariza''l will begin.
Just finished binging your whole series. It’s become a part of my routine the past week and now I’m sad! Im looking forward to more!
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition (to be not as anti-Semitic as we were taught)!
@João Ribeiro it was a Monty Python's Flying Circus reference, LOL
Still very anti non Catholic though
@@shadowbadgercat oh hell yeah
Clarification/Reiteration: The Spanish Inquisition is a total violation of most of the world's modern values system, and for good reason, but I wanted to challenge the way in which it has historically been conflated with the Alhambra Decree and thus has taken up a disproportionate amount of popular historical memory. If you really want to see something more akin to that, just wait and see what ended up happening in Portugal.
God damn it Spain I thought we had something
As a Puerto Rican 🇨🇺 I'm bewildered to the fact I might be more Jewish than I ever thought about. I can't wait to find out more about my past. Thanks Sam for all your hard work and praying for your safety as Israel is dealing with the Palestinian conflict and the pandemic. Interesting note about myself, my father second name is Bonano which I found is Sicilian. LOL I'm a Siciliano that speaks Espanol. 😏
@@micahistory That WILL change when the Messianic Age starts and for the way this world is behaving it seems we are closer to that point than ever. Shalom. 😏😁
Thanks!
Greetings from an American teaching English in Istanbul, Turkey. Subscribed!!
In 1486 my (multiple times) ancestor Moshe ben Levy Ben Gabay married Solvella in Tudela, Navarre by a with a ketubah. A little over a decade later he had to convert into Catholicism, and his grandson migrated to New Spain.
Three generations later, the granddaughter of that immigrant married a descendant of the Ha-Levi family.
We have remained in what today is Mexico for over 4 centuries.
Listening to my history like this always fills me with emotion. It’s more than reading it in books, you bring this story to life in a way that never fails to make me sob at the bad times and and smile at the (increasingly rare) good.
A great and informative video. As a teenager I studied in Spain, there was a small portion of history lessons that mentioned the Jewish presence on the Iberian peninsula.
Abravanel was the most important Jewish Rabi by this time.
432 years later one of his descendants has come to Brazil running away from Otoman empire in total poverty. One of his sons, Senor Abravanel has become one of the wealthiest man of Brazil.
I have been looking for a channel like this for a long time, amazing content 👏
Great video! I don't know if you have already made one before but it would be nice to see the origins of ghettoes and particularly the one in Venice.
I didn't expect this video...
Just like nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition.
7:45 wow that was... unexpected
Speaking of Ottoman Jewry, a series on the Sephardim of the Balkans would be cool. I do particularly want to see stuff about the community in Sarajevo, which includes a few of my parents’ friends & other people I know but obviously the larger communities like in Thessaloniki would probably make more sense to focus on.
The Jewish experience in the major late Ottoman & post Ottoman Balkan conflicts like the many revolts, the 2 Balkan wars, & WWI would be interesting. The Jewish suffering in WWII which includes all areas under Axis occupation and influence, including the homes of these communities, is obviously something I don’t need to suggest because no self respecting series on Jewish history that gets to that era would avoid that topic
European Christians must have viewed Judaism as a direct challenge to their doctrine.
Jesus was born Jewish...Paul...James...etc.
They must have wondered why Jews did not believe in Jesus if Christianity had come from them? Christianity is a Middle Eastern religion with a Middle Eastern Jesus who is somehow illustrated as European.
Islam on the other hand came through Mohammed, Arab, Middle Eastern etc. The message comes directly from their own brethren, it's homegrown. So no hang-ups about Judaism.
7:36 “Let’s face it-you can’t Torquemada anything!”
I knew Don Isaac was wealthy and powerful. I knew he was my ancestor. I did not know he was also a mensch.
Thank you Sam!
Hello Sam. Since you have finally reached the point where Sephardic Jews would dominate the Jewish communities outside of Europe, I thought that you might be interested in the evolution of the cursive Hebrew Sephardic handwriting outside of Iberia, the same handwriting that was used to write Judeo-Arabic, Ladino and other Jewish languages.
If you don't already have sources about it and you're interested in the subject, I found a thorough thesis work by Dr. Yael Baruch about it and I would love to share it with you.
שבת שלום
2:55 Antipope Benedict XIII (known as "Papa Luna" in Spain) ended his days holed up in Peñiscola, a castle built on the hill of a small peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean sea up the coast from Valencia. It is these days a popular sea side resort but worth a visit for those interested in this era of history.
eh? wait i don't know who benedict the thirteenth is.
Its kinda weird we're still in the period of the Achronim. I wonder if we'll get a cool new title soon
Probably, retroactive to the 1940s. HaHozrim? HaHadashim?
@@SamAronow Who decided we're in these ages (or rather what group), I can't find info online.
And its funny its called the last ones being its become so obvious we'll not be the last ones, if we can survive the Shoah and attacks on Israel.
@@theklorg305 Well, the term also means "current" or "latest;" it doesn't perfectly translate.
@@SamAronow Ok (though we're still doing pretty good living forever by my calculation lol). Why'd you choose to use that one as your translation?
Great video!! I hope you also make a video on the inquisition and forced conversion of Jews in Portugal. And also on their arrival to the Americas the Anusim.
The Alhambra Decree had a huge impact in the history of Brazil. In 16th and 17th century nearly 1/3 of all the people Portugal sent to colonize Brazil were Jews.
During those centuries each great city of Spanish America had a tribunal from inquisition. Brazil did not had it at the beginning because of the presence of Jewish entrepreneurs was very important at the beginning of colonization.
It is ironical but today one of the most wealthiest men of Brazil is a descendant of Isacc Abravanel. His name is Senor Abravanel, his family arrived in Brazil in 1924 completely poor and he was abke to get rich.
@@pedroledoux9779 I am not sure if Silvio Santos is a direct descendent of Rabi Don Itzchak Abarbanel zt"l. They are surely from the same family, but I doubt a direct descendence, because Silvio Santos' family is from Turkey, and the Rabbi stayed and died in Venice.
@@davidcohenboffa1666 Silvio Santos is one of the very few Jews in Brazil recognized by the Jewish community as belonging to King David lineage. In Brazil among the Jews there are only 2 families who belongs to David lineage.
Silvio also told in TV that he is a descendant of Isaac Abravanel when he talked about his family.
From sans Pope to 2 Popes! Then 1 Pope again...
And from 1409-1414, there were three. You can see that for just a moment at 4:53.
@@SamAronow o ya. Those crazy cardinals. And one day 4 Popes? A man can dream.
Pope and anti-pope. If they ever met, both would explode.
@@sdelmonte true
@@sdelmonte HAH! love that physics reference :D
I would really love if someday you get the time to explain what happened in Portugal at the time with more detail. I know some very sad and absurd parts of the story (involving a false miracle that was no more than an optical illusion, and people getting mad for having their fantasies proven false), but it would be great to know anymore details.
I have only shown my appreciation for the series so far by liking all videos I've seen (from the beginning up until this one), but this is a good opportunity to say I am really loving it. Thank you very much for your work!
th-cam.com/video/PYX1aYwjxAg/w-d-xo.html
@Sam Aronow, I was just watching that same video when I received notification of this answer! Thank you for the answer.
The next 2 videos (or the 2 before the one you mention) also go into more detail about what happened in Portugal, which I could have guessed. I was my enthusiasm for the series that made write that suggestion without checking it first. Sorry for that.
And while some details about the pogrom of 1506 in Lisbon are vivid, ironic and telling, I do believe your choice in the way to present events was actually better.
Together with Historia Civilis, this seems to be my favorite History channel on youtube. Thank you very much for your work.
I will, now and forever, believe there was a band playing "Ceddin Deden" on those ships in the morning of 3rd of August!
Excellent presentation!
Excellent thank you
So are we just going to ignore that the illustration of Queen Isabel looks like Lois from Family Guy?
Funny how Lois was Jewish in that show
As a spaniard, I consider this as one of the darkest events in our history. See, in history class the only thing we study about sephardic jews is the expusion of 1492, resumed in less than one paragraph in the textbook. Considering the fact that there once lived here one of the largest and more influential community in the whole western world i think it would be interesting to learn more about the sephardic jew's history, as it's part of the jewish people history, and also part of spain's history.
Necessary mention to the blood libels that run in the Spanish villages and parishes. The populace and low clergy believed all that crap.
The monarchs couldn't stop the populace and protect the Jewish everywhere, that was an impossible task. Many of the main assistants and direct scribes, secretary, etc, were Jewish.
But Isabel wanted to protect the Jewish from the wrath of ignorant people. If she could not, then the next best thing was expulsing them (also doing business with this, for sure, and calming down those who wanted a country with more homogeneous beliefs).
This is said and written by Luis Suárez, serious historian and member of the Royal Academy of History in Spain, in his book Isabel I, Reina. A work that is imprescindible to take into this account.
Thanks.
The ceddin deden did give me goosebumps lol
last time I was this early konstantiniyye was still constantinople
Hey thanks for the, as always, super informative and captivating work! Would really be interested in seeing one about the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal and those who fled there in 1496 and the ensuing horrific years, as well as Cryptojudaism in Portugal which is super interesting. I must say it always also makes me angry to learn about those events. Important knowledge, and interesting to see how both Portugal and Spain issued (different) "laws of return" for sephardic jews in the last years.
Very good video. 1 criticism by omission:
You didn't mention the blood libels that run in the Spanish villages and parishes. The populace and low clergy believed all that crap.
The monarchs couldn't stop the populace and protect the Jewish everywhere, that was an impossible task. Many of the main assistants and direct scribes, secretary, etc, were Jewish.
But Isabel wanted to protect the Jewish from the wrath of ignorant people. If she could not, then the next best thing was expulsing them (also doing business with this, for sure, and calming down those who wanted a country with more homogeneous beliefs).
This is said and written by Luis Suárez, serious historian and member of the Royal Academy of History in Spain, in his book Isabel I, Reina. A work that is imprescindible to take into this account.
Thanks.
It's sad how easy it is to get people to do horrible shit to each other, under the right circumstances.
Great video! Something interesting about Torquemada is that he was a descendant of Jewish conversos
Never saw a number put in how many conversos there were. Now I get why there are so many Latinx who still have some seemingly random family tradition to light candles in the closet Friday night. 100,000 begets a lot of descendants.
I actually got a little confused with the numbers- 200,000 is the number of conversos in the Spanish Realms *and* Portugal, the latter of which forced almost all the Jewish refugees who fled there to submit to baptism. That they did not have the option to flee while those in Spain did made a huge difference in how the rest of the Jewish community perceived them- and how many of them ultimately returned to Judaism over the following centuries.
Many Iberia Jews likely also converted to Christianity in the Late Roman Empire in the rise of Christianity, many more Jews were later converted by the Visigoths, and there was conversion to Christianity throughout the Christian rule of the Iberian Peninsula. Also Conversos were represented heavily in the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
all together it amounts to a lot of descendants
Our people have a fascinating history! Many Sefardi also arrived in Jamaica at the time of Columbus. The oldest congregation in the Western Hemisphere is there in Kingston. The synagogue openly livestreams their Friday night/Saturday morning shabbat services on YT at "UCI Jamaica" from Sha'are Shalom Synagogue. Though not always the case, often the -ez and -es suffix (meaning Israelite) for Iberian surnames denotes Sefardi descent. Perez being one of the more popular Sefardi surnames. Mexico has a huge population of Sefardi descendants as well. I was very surprised to meet many Mexijews when travelling there. Though the population was initially our Sefardi people since the time of Columbus, many Ashkenazi arrived in the 20th Century. Cleaning the home and lighting candles at sunset on Friday has always been a tradition of our people. And for Catholics who grew up seeing this tradition performed in their home probably don't realise that their families are converso descendants of the Sefardi and that this tradition had been passed down for many generations. It was never a sabbath tradition of their church, as many families lit the shabbat candles in secret.
I myself am hispanic and I love how it’s only white liberals and westernized hispanics who use that idiotic term “latinx”, it’s not spanish, its not english, it’s a made up word to make a few white snowflakes who have “white guilt” syndrome feel better about themselves, the majority of hispanics view people who use that term as morons😂😂
@João Ribeiro exactly
I love this!
Wow. I found this video to be actually Epic. not epic as in cool but like... awe inspiring how important these events were and wow what a story
Some things missed, what about Navarre? Everyone remembers Portugal, but it is theorized almost as many went to Navarre, some say it was an escape route, others say they stayed and converted and were hid by the basques. Also, not all the exiles spoke Ladino, many spoke Judeo-Galician, Judeo-Aragonese and so on.
I would like you to cover Jews in India we have a garden dedicated to Garcia de orta in Goa,he came here to avoid the Inquisition
I would to, I know he had a Jews in India episode before too.
Have a look through his content he has some.
I was watching a video where the creator went through time showing older and older forms of english and answering the question how far back in time could we go and still understand others. I was wondering, how far back in time could we go and communicate - even poorly- with local Jews?
Classical Hebrew pronunciation wouldn’t be that hard to understand, but you’re assuming that medieval Jews would have been conversational in Hebrew in the first place. Even most of the minority who were fluent I don’t think would have been conversational. And classical verb structure is quite different as well. That said, classical Hebrew would still be much more similar to modern Hebrew than you’d expect after 2,000 years. Somewhere between Icelandic/Old Norse and Italian/Latin in terms of mutual intelligibility.
Fascinating!
Great video as always! Loving the population charts and numbers.
I am interested to know if there is any documentation of Jews using Maimonides's position on forced conversion to justify their conversion for personal benefit. Certainly it is not something Maimonides himself would have supported.
I was more implying that that was the *inquisitors'* thought process rather than that of the conversos themselves.
Speaking of the Isabel and Fernando's hypocrisy for establishing the Inquisición & expellimg Jews, meanwhile they had Jewish people on their service, they were some Jewish physicians whose knowledge and services helped the Catholic Monarch's family.
For example, Fernando's father, Juan II de Aragón was completely blind several years because he was an old man and suffered catarats, but in 1468 a Jewish Catalan surgeon named Cresques Aviatar operated the King, the surgery was very successful and Juan could see again.
Moreover, the Jewish converso Aragonese physician Lorenzo Badoz was Isabel's ginecologist, who helped Isabel with her pregnancies, her fertility problems and giving birth to her children (Isabel got into 6 pregnancies, in which of 7 children, 5 reached adulthood, the other two were stillborn, and her last kid was Catherine of Aragon, born in 1485)
You didn't mention the blood libels that run in the Spanish villages and parishes. The populace and low clergy believed all that crap.
The monarchs couldn't stop the populace and protect the Jewish everywhere, that was an impossible task. Many of the main assistants and direct scribes, secretary, etc, were Jewish.
But Isabel wanted to protect the Jewish from the wrath of ignorant people. If she could not, then the next best thing was expulsing them (also doing business with this, for sure, and calming down those who wanted a country with more homogeneous beliefs).
This is said and written by Luis Suárez, serious historian and member of the Royal Academy of History in Spain, in his book Isabel I, Reina. A work that is imprescindible to take into this account.
Thanks.
Forgive my ignorance and I apologize if this question sounds stupid but why was it that more than a third of Jews stuck around Europe when they could have migrated to other areas outside of Christian control where they would have been much more tolerated? Was there something about Europe (besides being home) that justified the risk of living in such a hostile and volatile environment? Was migration difficult back then? Fantastic episode btw!
Well, as I've covered in previous videos, and will cover in future ones, persecution was not exclusive to Christian domination. The Almohads had driven the Jews *into* the Christian north by demanding conversion or death; and during the events of this video, many of the same persecutions that had led to the Spanish events were taking place under Mamluk rule in Egypt and Greater Syria. Likewise, there was nothing like these kinds of persecutions going on in Christian Poland.
Transport, especially for passengers, was relatively rare and expensive compared to today, and nobody knew how these events would shake out any more than we can plan for the outcomes of events today.
@@SamAronow could you cover more about what was going on in the Muslim world? This part of history is alot less known, like the Jewish king dhu nuwas or pogroms like events in the middle East, or the persian the Muslim equivalent of the inquisition, and the creation of the Anusim of mashhad ( אנוסי משהד )
@@SamAronow Thank you for such a concise answer! I appreciate it.
Trivia: Issac Abarbanel is an ancestor of Senor Abravanel, founder of Brazil's second most successful TV channel.
In Arabic, Akhar means last. Hebrew and Arabic are sister languages.
Make a video please on the Bosnian jews and the Sarajevo Hagadah. It survived the world war and is arguably thr only muslim country outside of Azerbaijan to have good relations historicly with the Jewish people
oh just wait a minute. it'll come soon buddy. we've just came out of ww1 and entering interwar. it'll take sam aronow some more vids to get to ww2.
I'm curious where you get your demographic stats on jewish population throughout history? Was it compiled by rabbinic scholars or are the stats estimated?
Muslims saved 200,000 Jews from Spain; eventually, perhaps the majority of the converted Jews also escaped tp Muslim lands. Thus, at least a quarter of world Jewry was saved. The Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula began to save the Jews too. Musa bin Nusayr sent Tariq bin Ziyad to Spain because a Jewish delegation from Spain came to Morocco seeking help from the Muslim arab armies there.
Thanks the information is so much to.me
12:23..they altered the deal..pray they don't alter it any further....oh wait...
Understanding the social environment and the fact the Jews couldn't be protected by the Queen (as she wanted) is important in this matter.
Worth mentioning the blood libels that run in the Spanish villages and parishes. The populace and low clergy believed all that crap.
The monarchs couldn't stop the populace and protect the Jewish everywhere, that was an impossible task. Many of the main assistants and direct scribes, secretary, etc, were Jewish.
But Isabel wanted to protect the Jewish from the wrath of ignorant people. If she could not, then the next best thing was expulsing them (also doing business with this, for sure, and calming down those who wanted a country with more homogeneous beliefs).
This is said and written by Luis Suárez, serious historian and member of the Royal Academy of History in Spain, in his book Isabel I, Reina. A work that is imprescindible to take into this account.
Thanks.
I can't wait until you arrive at the Dutch Golden age in the 17th century, that was really started by Sephardic refugees! Great video
I stayed at an AirBnB in Alhambra and found it pretty convenient. Highly recommended if traveling to LA last minute. Great vid!
Why the thumbnail look like taht girl from family guy ?
Louis ?
13:39 Shit, I didn't know that.
13:35 this is an outstandingly ingenious move. By moving it to Tish'a b'Av he basically tattooed that day as not only a deeply negative event, but as a *collectively remembered* deeply negative event from that point to eternity. Tish'a b'Av is quite a big deal for practicing Jews, and the association of the Alhambra decree made sure that the Jews will not forget it. Just so you get the impact, we had the largest empire in Europe brutally slaughtering roughly 99% of its Jewish population just a century earlier during a pandemic and it's not remotely as remembered today as the Alhambra decree among most Jews.
This man made sure this event would be remembered as a dark day for the rest of time, even today almost exactly 530 years later, and all it took was a bribe of 30,000 ducats.
Maimonides didn't speak out against the tradition of death before conversion. The quote you give just says you receive no punishment. the lines right before your quote say this "And whosoever, concerning whom it is said that he shall die and not transgress, did transgress and did not die, blasphemed the Name of God, and if he did this in the presence of ten Israelites, he blasphemed the Name of God in the presence of many, violated the mandatory commandment of the sanctification of God, and transgressed the prohibitive commandment of blasphemy."
Fun Fact Torquemada was also from a Jewish Convert family
a study in 2020 disproved this.
At 4:53, there are three colors on the map, while earlier there were only two. Who's the third color, and why?
There were briefly 3 claimants to the Papacy
which is, basically a whole massive can of worms. idk, three popes fighting each other diplomatically by denouncing each other like anti-popes, it's a whole nother story.
My family the Escalante’s where one of the first in the new world to be killed by the inquisition so it is a big deal
Bayezid and the Catholic Monarchs are all on my list of best rulers ever and of people I admire.
Excellent video, I wish the Ladino language could be revived and that more Sephardic jews returned to Spain.
Languages die all the time it's wiser to save those at risk of extinction than to revive what was lost
@@leanderbarreto6523 I agree and disagree at the same time. First of all, Ladino is still spoken so it fits your argument. Second of all, I agree it's more useful to save endangered languages than to save others that went extinct thousands of years ago and whose ethnic group it belonged to doesn't exist anymore. However, an extinct language whose ethnic group still exists, and especially if it has gone extinct recently, is very much worth being revived.
Oh no! My birthday is August 3
Why not also mention that the muslims were also expelled?:D
That actually happened a bit later. I’ll cover that in the recap video.
@@SamAronow ah so it technically wasnt the same event
What the name of the Turkish song in the end?
@İshak Pastırmacıyannisoğlu great thanks very much
Where do you get your maps from?
omniatlas. :D
I honestly didn't understand the significance of the Alhambra decree as a jew. It is one of the things covered in jewish history very early on so it must be important, but in a long list of constant expulsions and massacres I always thought "what makes spain's important?" and though the answer wasn't particularly relevant to this one episode, I think I get it now. It's because there used to be a jewish golden age in Iberia in the preceding centuries, and it showed jews werent safe anywhere. It's sad that I didn't know that. Not knowing the pretext to an evil of mankind can easily deprive the emotional weight of that evil when it's presented in a sea of other evils. I'm reform Judaism, by the way.
The benefit of being hard working and good at math yup
A great description of the Spanish Inquisition, in Spain. Their colonies did not fare so well. Also the public processions to execution, as theatre for close to 200 years, is enough to cement the reputation.
I really enjoy your videos, and this was no exception! However, I would take the whole story of the Bayezid sending the Ottoman fleet to rescue the Jews of Iberia with a large grain of salt. Joseph Hacker, for one, points out that there is actually no documentary evidence to support claims about the explicit policies and attitudes of Bayezid and his successors regarding the Iberian Jews. Also, Minna Rozen, citing Rozanes' earlier work, points out that there may have been only 7,000 to 8,000 Jews who arrived in the Ottoman Empire between 1492 and 1497, and even among those, many didn't come directly from Iberia. As Rozen writes, "Hardly anyone reached the shores of the Golden Horn with his nuclear family intact". The total number of Iberian Jews who eventually made it to the Ottoman Empire was much greater, but it seems best to characterize Iberian Jewish migration to Ottoman lands as a process drawn out over several decades. Events in Portugal (1497 expulsion, 1506 massacre, 1536 establishment of inquisition) as well as in southern Italy and North Africa were likely as impactful or even more impactful on pushing the scattered Sephardim towards the Eastern Mediterranean than 1492 itself. Then there's the question of whether Bayezid even said what he supposedly said about Ferdinand and his lack of wisdom (see, for instance, Marc David Baer's deconstructions of these romanticized versions of Ottoman Jewish history). Also, just a detail, but although Izmir/Smyrna was a hugely important Jewish community, that didn't happen until the early 17th century (it was not among the initial centers of Ottoman Sephardic life in the years following 1492).
Beltraneja did not have a more valid claim to the Castillian throne
bayezid the based
*ceddin deden intensifies*
Europe-based Jews needed another Bayezid before WWII. That era was an opportunity for Spain to make amends for the expulsion of 1492 but they had Franco the fascist in charge.
There were Jewish citizenship laws passed in Republican Spain; I don’t know if they survived under Franco; but they would not have applied to most of Europe’s Jews at the time, and those to whom it did were either too far away like in Greece or largely out of harm’s way in Vichy-controlled North Africa.
Meanwhile, the British closed Palestine off to Jewish immigration just in time for the war, Canada’s government did the same, and the US blocked refugees (and my family, who were already all in the US, never forgot it).
Franco wasn't friendly to Jewish influence, but his regime helped many thousands of Jews and they weren't delivered to nazis. Also Franco for the most part was not fascist, he took advantage of the mild fascist party Falange and used it for its own purposes diluting that ideology. Revise JJ Linz works on the differences between authoritarianism and totalitarianism...
Ottoman ruler: "you have impoverished your kingdom!"
Hispanic empire: *laughs in global silver currency and global empire dwarfing ottomans*
Dwarfing Ottoman empire? I don't know what sources you're reading but if you look at a map, your eyes will show you who's empire dwarfs who's. The Ottoman Sultan was the richest man in the world at the time. The Eastern Mediterranean was totally dominated by the Ottomans and was the main reason Columbus HAD to sail west trying to get to the east. So, the Hispanic empire was not laughing, Beyazid was :)
Spain: *Kicks out their own Jews, which constituted quite a lot of their upper middle class, and also somewhat part of their own government*
Ottoman Empire: "HAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAH! You *FUCKING* idiot!"
Not dwarfing, even if it sounds nice. But no.
@@naps_878Spain became golden age during 1492 and had a big empire
@@talzzz1546theres that, which basically replaced jews as the source of income
14:42 what do you mean reconquista failed? It's the most successful crusade... For almost two centuries Spain was a global power and was seen as the champion of christendom in Europe
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garcia_de_Orta
5:53 wasn't she illegitimate?
Probably, but it wasn’t certain; they didn’t even have blood tests back then.
Must have been tiring to pack up and move to a new country every 100 years or so as some new king decided Jews were unacceptable and had to go, one way or another
This is rife with historical inaccuracies. Off the top of my head, here are two: the king and queen were Ferdinand and Isabella, not Fernando and Isabel. Second, while non Christians were technically supposed to be immune to the inquisition, Jews were typically accused of having converted and turned back to Judaism, even if they’d never converted. That’s how they got around that rule and included the Jews anyway. Documents released by the church in 1998 confirm this fact.
ETA: Ferdinand, Isabella and Torquemada were all Jews by maternal lineage, no more than three generations removed from a practicing Jew.
uh...?
buddy you do realize fernando and isabel is the spanish way to say it, right?
also a 2020 study disproved that torquemada came from jewish lineage.
Their name was Fernando and Isabel. In Spanish. Also only Fernando had Jewish ancestry by the familly of the Admiral of Castile, concretely Juana Enriquez. Reread your info about it.
Over 500 years, a 100,000 yahood would mean at least 5 million today considering the disproportionate increase in population.
Granada was a Jewish kingdom and Moor
Granada it’s spanish🇪🇸 and people there eat pork ❤
@@yasminmacia5045u are what you eat
I never expected you to say the Spanish Inquisition wasn't that bad.
A real downer…
I know this is a series on Jewish history, so presenting the Jewish perspective on the ottomans makes sense but I have to bring up that, for all the modern praise of relative religious freedom and it’s excellent treatment of Jews, for the majority of people in the Balkans, who were Christian, Ottoman rule represented the complete loss of their freedom.
Again, people like to emphasize that Christians were allowed to continue to live there, but the cost was enormous. Your firstborn son to be taken from you by the army and raised to be an elite and very notably Muslim soldier, detached from his native culture, especially in a time when religion was so personally important to people. Just because it was only applied to a portion of non muslims, doesn’t negate the fact that the devshirme system was one of forced conversion.
Also the idea of a dhimmi contract is kind of bullshit in this case. The Christians & Jews are not agreeing to pay taxes to a Muslim ruling class for the right to live on their land, a foreign state is coming to their land, taking it, and forcing them into this “contract”. It’s not just additional tax, it’s being a second class citizen, being a lesser person in your own homeland. Something Christian powers did all the time of course, most states in the past were horrible and Christian ones are well known for their intolerance towards minorities, it’s just something that is often ignored in the context of Muslim powers in modern historiography.
Don’t get me wrong, the Ottomans weren’t the devil, they certainly are a military power worthy of respect and made great contributions to science and art, they were certainly lovely towards Jews in comparison to the rest of the world. They just sometimes get depicted as too wholesome and angelic in a well intentioned attempt to show people in the west the many good sides of the Islamic world throughout history. I get that there is a need to show certain people that muslims aren’t monsters, and as I already said, in the Jewish perspective that this series focuses on, the Ottomans were saviours, I just bring this up here to an audience which seems to me smart enough to not misunderstand my point as a black and white “Turk bad” or “Muslim bad” statement because I’ve seen the romanticization of historic Muslim powers in other places.
The other funny thing to me is that the focus on the good aspects of the Muslim world seems to end in the 1800s, which really just creates a narrative where Muslim countries and their people used to be pure good but then became pure evil, both of which are obviously idiotic ideas
The difficult thing is that, if you present all sides to something, you're effectively trying to summarize the entire history of the known world. And moreover, the narrative threads become fundamentally broken, because narrative relies on sharing a specific perspective or it risks incoherence. It is not impossible to do, but it is very difficult. A huge part of teaching history is about ignoring massive amounts of information in favor of a specific throughline explaining the experience of a specific group. In the American mainstream, that tends to be Greece, Rome, England, and America... because that is the lineage that America claims. A lot of what videos like Sam's do is provide different lenses that aren't otherwise easily available to that mainstream. It relies a lot on personal expertise and non-exhaustive research. The advantage is that it provides alternative narratives at all, which for the discerning student, can be a thread woven into their overall knowledge.
And Sam has made his biases pretty clear, I think, which helps the individual viewer figure out how they'd prefer to weave that thread into their own understanding and also set it against any other sources they might have. Never rely on only one perspective to understand a thing.
The jizya is not a special tax only imposed on the non Muslims. You and a lot of people completely forget the zakat, a sort of tax imposed on all Muslims till today that even sometimes is more than the jizya.
And in islamic law, as said by the quran and hadith, High taxes on anyone is forbidden.
@@victorien3704
Zakat and jizya are very different: the first is charity, the second is protection money.
Some Islamic rules would even try to prevent mass conversion so not to lose jizya revenue.
@@victorien3704I would certainly call the Devshirme a “high tax”.
I see your point but you miss a key detail. Fact is Muslim Spain looked after their religion minorities as did the Ottomans. Yes, devsirme was a tax of Christian first born's but Jews were not allowed in devsirme. Some Christian families enlisted all their boys into the army as it could lead to promotions all the way to Grand Vezir.
I take your point about romanticizing history but as yourself would you rather be a religious minority in Catholic Spain, or Ottoman eastern Mediterranean? The fact that the expulsions and mass executions began after the reconquista should tell you something about where the people at the time would rather be.
Most would rather pay a tax or enlist their first born in the army than have their whole bloodline executed.
Feel free to argue otherwise
Spain became super wealthy Global Superpower after 1492. Spain help defeat the Ottomans in Vienna 1529 and vaporized them at Lepanto 1571. In 1534, Ottomans bled 6 to 1 against the Spanish Tercios casualties at Castelnovo.
Ottomans were a Second Tier tiny Empire compared to Spain.
Even with the whole of Europe against the Ottomans, they could not kick them out
@@HalalHistory
The French were the Ottoman's #1 amigo in Europe. But for Spanish blood and gold sacrifice, Italy today would be a Muslim Bosnia / Albania.
@@vcab6875 eh, no no no. france was against the ottoman empire during the napoleonic war.
@@naps_878not in the 16th and 17 century. They were allies.
First