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HIST 234
This is a very interesting assignment.

coconut jelly

Samuel ibn Naghrillah[1] (Hebrew: שמואל הלוי בן יוסף הנגיד‎, Sh'muel HaLevi ben Yosef HaNagid; Arabic: أبو إسحاق إسماعيل بن النغريلة‎ Abu Iṣḥāq Ismā‘īl bin an-Naghrīlah), also known as Samuel HaNagid (Hebrew: שמואל הנגיד‎, Shmuel HaNagid, lit. Samuel the Prince) (born 993; died after 1056), was a Talmudic scholar, grammarian, philologist, soldier, politician, patron of the arts, and an influential medieval Hebrew poet who lived in Iberia at the time of the Moorish rule. As a great contributor to many aspects of history, such as the lives of Jews, the arts, as well as the court of Granada, he is an important figure in the study of Muslim-Jewish relations. He was an elite of Jews as well as Arabs, and perhaps the most influential Jew, politically, in Muslim Spain. [2]

Samuel ibn Naghrillah was an Andalusian Jew born in Mérida in 993. He studied Jewish law with Hanokh ben Moses and became a Talmudic scholar fluent in both Hebrew and Arabic. [3] He started his life as a shopkeeper and merchant. [4] However, civil war broke out in 1009 and Berbers took the city in 1013, forcing him to flee from Córdoba to Granada. In, Málaga he started a spice shop. His relations with the Granada royal court, and his eventual promotion to the position of vizier, happened in a coincidental manner. The spice shop he set up was near the palace of King Habbus of Granada. The vizier, at the time, Abu al-Kasim ibn al-Arif, met Samuel ibn Naghrillah when his maid servant began to ask Naghrillah to write letters for her. Eventually Naghrillah was given the job of a tax collector, then a secretary, and finally an assistant vizier of state to the Berber king Habbus al-Muzaffar.[3]

When Habbus died in 1038, Samuel ibn Naghrillah made certain that King Habbus’ second son, Badis, succeeded him, not his first born, Bulukkin. The reason behind this act was that Badis was more favored by the people, as well as the Jews, compared to Bulukkin.[4] In return for his support, Badis made Samuel ibn Naghrillah his vizier and top general.[3] Some sources say that he held office as a viziership of state for over three decades until his death in 1056.Because Jews were not permitted to hold public office in Islamic nations as an agreement made in the Pact of Umar, that Samuel Nagid, a Jew, should hold such a high public office was rare. [2] His unique position as the viziership, made him the highest ranking Jewish courtier in all of Spain. Recognizing this, in the year of 1027, he took on the title of nagid, or Prince, which was probably given to him by Hay Gaon. [2] The peculiar fact regarding his position as the top general in the Granada army was that he was a Jew. That a Jew would command the Muslim army, having them under his authority, was an astonishing feat. When he defeated the allied armies of Seville, Malaga and the Berbers in 1047 at Ronda, he wrote in his Hebrew poem of gratitude for his deliverance: "A redemption which was like the mother of my other redemptions and they became to it as daughters."

As a Jew, he actively sought to spread Jewish culture and values. By 1038, the Nagid had already been the leader of Spanish Jewry. He promoted the benefits of the Jewish people, through buying numerous copies of the Holy Scriptures, the Mishnah, and the Talmud. He also promoted the study of the Talmud by giving, what is equivalent to today’s term scholarships, to those who wanted to study the Torah for a living. [4] He also compiled a manual of Jewish law making the Spanish Jewry independent of the Genim in Babylon. [3] He died in 1056 of natural causes. [5] He was an example of the "courtier rabbi," which is a man who held a prominent position in both the Muslim and Jewish communities of his day. Samuel ibn Naghrillah had a son named Joseph ibn Naghrela (or Joseph ibn Naghrillah)(1035-1066), who was able to inherit the job of vizier of Granda before he turned twenty-one. [3] Many Muslim Arabs, who were envious of his position, accused Joseph of using his office to benefit his Jewish friends. Joseph ibn Naghrela was assassinated in a mob uprising against him on December 30, 1066. The mobs proceeded to crucify his body upon the city's main gate. The following morning on December 31, 1066, the massacre of Granada's Jews was launched and a mob went on a rampage in Granada, killing Jewish inhabitants. The Jewish community was later reestablished later on but was destroyed again in 1090 by the Almoravids. [2] Kfar HaNagid, a moshav in modern Israel was named after him.

Work

 * An Arabic treatise on biblical Hebrew grammar.