Schechter Letter

Europe first began to emerge from a fragmented state that followed the Visigoth conquest of Rome in 410 AD, when, in the eighth century, Charlemagne (742 – 814 AD) attempted to reunite parts of Europe under his control. As with Spain, Southern France at the time had been under threat of Muslim invaders. After the Umayyad conquest of the Iberian heartland of the Visigothic Kingdom, the Muslims had crossed the Pyrenees and gradually took control of Septimania, starting in 719, with the conquest of Narbonne, through 725 when Carcassonne and Nîmes were secured. From the stronghold of Narbonne, they tried to conquer Aquitaine but suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Toulouse in 721. For a period of about 780 years, the Reconquista aimed to recapture the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims, between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of Granada, to the expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492.

According to the “Schechter Letter” discovered in the Cairo Geniza by Solomon Schechter, Hasdai ibn Shaprut (c. 915 – c. 970), a Jewish scholar who was appointed physician to Abdur Rahman III, the Muslim Caliph of Cordoba, Spain, was anxious to know of the existence of the “Ten Lost Tribes” and made contact with Joseph, the King of the Khazars. The report of the existence of the Khazar state was confirmed by envoys from Khorassan, and their statements were corroborated by the ambassadors from Byzantium. However, the Byzantines prevented Hasdai’s first emissary to the Khazars by way of Constantinople.

Hasdai then decided to send his message by way of Jerusalem, Nisibis, Armenia, and Bardaa, but the envoys of King Boleslav I of Bohemia (c. 915 – 967 or 972), who had then just arrived in Cordova, and among whom were two Jews, Saul and Joseph. They offered to send the letter to Jews living in “Hungarin” (Hungary), who, in their turn, would transmit it to “Russ” (Russia), and then through “Bulgar” (probably the country of the Bulgarians on the Kuban) to its destination (Itel, the capital of Khazaria). In his letter, Hasdai refers to the narrative of Eldad ha-Dani, who thought he had discovered the Lost Ten Tribes, and inquires whether the Khazars know anything concerning “the end of the miracles” (the coming of the Messiah).[1]

Boleslav I of Bohemia was the ancestor of a woman of mysterious heritage, sometimes known as Agatha of Bulgaria, who became the wife of the heir to the throne of England, Edward the Exile (before 1030 – after 1070). Agatha represented the intermarriage of a member of a family of purported Jewish heritage from the line of the ancient King David, known as the Guilhemids of Southern France, along with families of Eastern Europe descended from the Khazars, and the Spanish nobility. Their descendants would form the nexus of the various families that led to the Princes’ Crusade, a part of the First Crusade, whose descendants would continue to dominate European history for centuries.

These families would comprise the members of the purported lineage of the “Holy Grail.” In truth, the legends of the Holy Grail were Kabbalistic mysteries, that appeared suddenly in the last half of the thirteenth century, coinciding with the return of the crusaders from their successful conquest of Jerusalem, marking the sudden reappearance of Gnostic ideas that had all but disappeared since the first centuries AD. The Merkabah and Sepher Yetzirah teachings had spread throughout the Jewish communities of Italy and southern France by the late ninth century, which served as an intermediate link between the Middle East and the later development of the Kabbalah in Germany and Septimania in Southern France.

Sepharad 

In the Schechter Letter, Hasdai ibn Shaprut wrote to the Khazar king explaining, “The name of our land in which we dwell is called in the sacred tongue, Sepharad, but in the language of the Arabs, the indwellers of the land, al-Andalus, the name of the capital of the kingdom, Cordoba.” According to numerous Kabbalist historians, the Jewish population of the area of modern-day Spain (formerly a collection of kingdoms which included Castile, Aragon, and Catalonia) dates back to as far back as the Babylonian Captivity. In fact, Jews may have accompanied Phoenician merchants who would have brought them to Tarshish, mentioned in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, I Kings, Jonah and Romans, with a locale in southern Spain.[2] A Phoenician signet ring was found at Cadiz, dating from the eighth to the seventh century BC, the inscription being interpreted by some scholars to be “paleo-hebraic.”[3]

Spanish Jew, Moses de León (ca. 1250 – 1305), the reputed author of the Zohar, the most important Kabbalistic book, mentions a tradition that the vast majority of the Jewish exiles driven away from Israel during the Babylonian captivity refused to return, for they expected that the Second Temple would be destroyed like the first.[4] In yet another tradition, passed down later by Moses ben Machir in the sixteenth century, also mentions the account that Jews have lived in Spain since the destruction of the First Temple, who are the people of Tulaytulah (Toledo).[5]

Don Isaac Abrabanel (1437 – 1508), a prominent Jewish Kabbalist in Spain in the fifteenth century, wrote that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by a Greek named Phiros, a confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. Phiros became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, who also ruled over a kingdom in Spain. Heracles later renounced his throne because of his preference for his native Greece, and left his kingdom to Espan, after whom the country is named España. The Jewish exiles transported there by Phiros were descended by lineage from Judah, Benjamin, Shimon and Levi, and were, according to Abrabanel, settled in two districts in southern Spain: one was Andalusia, in the city of Lucena—a city so-called by the Jewish exiles that had come there—the second, in the country around Tulaytulah (Toledo).[6] Abrabanel says that the name Tulaytulah was given to the city by its first Jewish inhabitants, and infers that the name came from the Hebrew word for wandering.[7]

Abrabanel also writes that he found written in the ancient annals of Spanish history, collected by the kings of Spain, that the 50,000 Jewish households then residing in the cities throughout Spain were the descendants of Jews sent to Spain by Titus.[8] Hispania came under Roman control with the fall of Carthage after the Second Punic War (218 – 201 BC). The earliest Jewish arrivals may have been joined by those who had been enslaved by the Romans under Vespasian and Titus, and dispersed west during the period of the Jewish-Roman War, and especially after the defeat of Judea and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. Josephus writes in his Antiquities: “ …there are but two tribes in Asia (Turkey) and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now and are an immense multitude.”[9] Professor Graetz estimated the numbers of those carried off to Spain at 80,000.[10]

The earliest mention of Spain is allegedly found in Obadiah 1:20 “And the exiles of this host of the sons of Israel who are among the Canaanites as far as Sarfat, and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad, will possess the cities of the south.” According to Rabbi David Kimchi (1160 – 1235), who was born in Narbonne, France, in his commentary on Obadiah, the names Sarfat and Sepharad refer to the Jewish captives expelled during the war with Titus, and are identified with France and Spain, respectively. Kimhi was very much influenced by both the renowned Kabbalist Abraham Ibn Ezra and Maimonides. Works of the Kimhi family were underwritten by the famous Ibn Yahya family of Lisbon.[11]

Abraham ben David (c. 1125 – 1198), a Rabbi from Provence, wrote in 1161: “A tradition exists with the [Jewish] community of Granada that they are from the inhabitants of Jerusalem, of the descendants of Judah and Benjamin, rather than from the villages, the towns in the outlying districts [of Palestine].”[12] Abraham ben David is regarded as a father of Kabbalah. He was the father of Isaac the Blind, a Neoplatonist and important Jewish mystical thinker, the purported author of the Sepher ha Bahir, the first work of the Medieval Kabbalah. As well, ben David wrote that the ancestors of his maternal grandfather’s family came to Spain when Titus conquered Jerusalem, his officer who was appointed over Hispania, requested that he send to him captives made-up of the nobles of Jerusalem, where they were settled in Mérida.[13] 

While there is limited material and literary evidence for Jewish contact with Spain from a very early period, more definitive and substantial evidence appears in the third century AD, which point to a well-established community. Among the early references are several decrees of the Council of Elvira, held at Elvira in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica, now Granada in southern Spain, convened by the Catholic Church in the early fourth century, which addressed proper Christian behavior with regard to the Jews of Spain, notably forbidding marriage between Jews and Christians.

Barbarian invasions brought most of the Iberian Peninsula under Visigothic rule by the early fourth century. Following the conversion of the Visigothic royal family from Arianism to Catholicism in 587, the Visigoths adopted an aggressive policy towards the Jews. The Third Council of Toledo moved in 589 to forcibly baptize the children of mixed marriages between Jews and Christians. Under the rein of Toledo III, in addition, Jews were barred from holding public office. The situation got progressively worse and, in 613 CE, the Jews were ordered to convert to Christianity or face expulsion. Though many Jews chose to leave rather than convert, a large number of them still practiced Judaism in secret, a tradition that survived for centuries. In 633, the Fourth Council of Toledo, convened to address the problem of crypto-Judaism. The Council decided that if a professed Christian was determined to be a practicing Jew, his or her children were to be taken away and raised in monasteries or trusted Christian households.[14]

With the victory of Tariq ibn Ziyad, the commander who initiated the Muslim conquest of Visigothic Hispania in 711–718, the lives of the Sephardim changed dramatically. For the most part, the invasion of the Moors was welcomed by the Jews of Iberia. Following initial Arab-Berber victories, and especially with the establishment of Umayyad rule by Abdur Rahman I (731 – 788) in 755, the native Jewish community was joined by Jews from the rest of Europe, as well as from Arab territories, from Morocco to Babylon.[15] Under Muslim rule, Spain flourished, and Jews and Christians were granted the protected status of dhimmi. Though this still did not afford them equal rights with Muslims, during this “Golden Age” of Spain, Jews rose to great prominence in society, business, and government. The conditions in Spain improved so much under Muslim rule that Jews from all across Europe came to live in Spain during this Jewish renaissance. Sepharad, as it was called, became the center of the Jewish world and “the greatest flourishing of Jewish culture since Biblical times dates from the 10th and 11th centuries.”[16]

Numerous classical works of ancient philosophers and scientists that had been translated into Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age, a period of cultural, economic and scientific flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the eighth century to the fourteenth century, were well known in Al-Andalus. The Neoplatonism school, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, Ptolemy, etc., were well known in Moorish Spain, as well as the works of ancient philosophers and scientists from Persia, India, and China.[17] These enabled Arabic-speaking populations at the time to learn about many ancient classical disciplines that were generally inaccessible to the Christian parts of western Europe, and Arabic-speaking scientists in the eastern Muslim lands such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna, c. 980 – 1037 AD), al-Kindi (Alkindus, c. 801 – 873 AD), al-Razi (Rhazes, 854 – 925 AD), and others, had added significant works to that ancient body of thought. Some of the Arabic literature was also translated into Latin, Hebrew, and Ladino, such as that of Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, Muslim sociologist-historian Ibn Khaldun, Carthage citizen Constantine the African, or the Persian Al-Khwarizmi.[18]

The first period of exceptional prosperity took place under the reign of Abdur Rahman III, the first independent Caliph of Córdoba. Abdur Rahman III’s support for Arabic scholasticism had made Iberia the center of Arabic philological research. It was within this context of cultural patronage that interest in Hebrew studies developed and flourished. The inauguration of the Golden Age is closely identified with the career of his Jewish councilor, Hasdai ibn Shaprut. Originally a court physician, Shaprut’s official duties went on to include the supervision of customs and foreign trade. It was in his capacity as dignitary that he corresponded with the kingdom of the Khazars. With Hasdai as its leading patron, Córdoba became the “Mecca of Jewish scholars who could be assured of a hospitable welcome from Jewish courtiers and men of means.”[19] In addition to being a poet himself, Hasdai encouraged and supported the work of other Sephardic writers. Subjects covered the spectrum, encompassing religion, nature, music, and politics.

Sura and Pumbetita 

Hasdai was a supporter of the famous yeshiva of Sura and that of Pumbedita, near Baghdad. Baghdad, with its Jewish population of approximately 40,000, was the focal point of the world-wide Jewish community of the Middle Ages. They were ruled by an “Exilarch,” referring to the leaders of the Jewish community who held an office traditionally assigned to a hereditary family tracing their lineage to King David through the Persian and Muslim Empires until the eleventh century AD. The Exilarch was depicted as Nasi, a Hebrew title meaning “prince” in Biblical Hebrew.[20] During the Second Temple period, the Nasi was the highest-ranking member and president of the Sanhedrin. Some had considerable power, similar to that of the Exilarch, especially the nesi’im of Israel, Syria, and Egypt.

Sura was a major center of Torah scholarship and home of an important yeshiva, which, together with the yeshivas in Pumbedita and Nehardea, gave rise to the Babylonian Talmud. Sura was founded by Abba Arika (175 – 247 AD), known as Rav, a disciple of Judah ha-Nasi (c. 135 to 217 AD), head of the Sanhedrin, chief redactor and editor of the Mishnah, and a key leader of the Jewish community during the Roman occupation of Judea. Hasdai corresponded with Dosa, the son of Saadia ben Joseph (882/892 – 942), a Gaon of the tenth century and head of the rabbinical academy at Sura, who was the first major Jewish philosopher of the Muslim period. Gaon produced a translation of the Bible into Arabic, and his Arabic commentaries made the rabbinic understanding of the Bible readily available. His poetic works stimulated the revival of Hebrew poetry. More importantly, through his commentary on the Sepher Yetzirah, and his philosophical treatise Beliefs and Opinions, Saadia legitimized for Judaism the synthesis of the Bible with Greek philosophy.

The eighth-century Persian Jewish astrologer Mashallah ibn Athari (c.740 – 815 CE), whose work was influenced by Hermes Trismegistus, participated in the founding of Baghdad for Caliph al-Mansur in 762, by working with a group of astrologers led by Naubakht the Persian to pick the propitious astrological date for the founding of the city. Originally Zoroastrians, Nobakht and his sons converted to Islam and were employed as Pahlavi translators of the Abbasid court.[21] Naubakht’s family helped to design the city, giving it a circular shape, emulating the heavens.[22] Mashallah’s treatise on the astrolabe, which is the first known of its kind, was a source of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe (1391).

Baghdad was therefore also the center of Kabbalistic science. From the early tenth century until the early thirteenth, Jewish philosophers living in Muslim lands produced a wide range of philosophical literature in Arabic. A mystical wave is said to have swept Judaism during the period and stimulated a broad literature of Merkabah and related texts. These circles produced a rich literature that, in addition to contemplation of the Chariot, included techniques which continued the tradition of earlier magical papyri. Many formulae are preserved from the period by Jewish Masters of the Name, often for non-Jewish customers.[23]

Carolingians

Saadia Gaon was a formative influence on the Jewish movement of the Ashkenazi Hasidim of Germany, who were the conduit for Eastern mystical ideas which eventually evolved in Southern France as the Kabbalah during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Kabbalists of Germany and Southern France shared a claim of Davidic descent through the Kalonymus, from a prominent Jewish family in Lucca in Italy. The Merkabah and Sefer Yetzirah teachings had spread throughout the Jewish communities of Italy and southern France by the late ninth century, which served as an intermediate link between the Middle East and the later development of the Kabbalah in Germany and Septimania in Southern France.

In the sixth century AD, Jews were documented in Marseilles, Arles, Uzès, Narbonne, Clermont-Ferrand, Orléans, Paris, and Bordeaux, places that were generally centers of Roman administration, and located on the great commercial trade routes. The Jews worked principally as merchants, as they were prohibited from owning land, and also served as tax-collectors, sailors, and physicians.[24] In 629 AD, King Dagobert I (c. 603 – 639 AD), proposed the expulsion of all Jews who would not accept Christianity. Dagobert I was the last king of the Merovingian dynasty to wield any real royal power. The founder of the Merovingian dynasty and forefather of Carolingians was Francus, a mythological figure of Merovingian scholars, described as a descendant of the Trojans, emulating the illustrious pedigree that was used by Virgil in his Aeneid, which had the Julio-Claudian dynasty founded by Iulus, or Julus, also known as Ascanius, the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas, identified with Askhenaz of the Bible as one of the descendants of Noah. In Book of Ezekiel 38:6, Ashkenaz’ father Gomer is mentioned as the ally of Gog, the chief of the land of Magog. In rabbinic literature, the kingdom of Ashkenaz was first associated with the Scythian region, then later with the Slavic territories, and from the eleventh century onwards, with Germany and northern Europe.

The seventh century, the Chronicle of Fredegar contains the oldest mention of a medieval legend thus linking the Franks to the Trojans. The Liber Historiae Francorum, attributed to Nennius, a Welsh monk of the ninth century, described how 12,000 Trojans, led by Priam and Antenor, sailed from Troy to the River Don in Russia—homeland of the Scythians—and on to Pannonia, a Roman provicen on the River Danube, covering parts of modern-day Hungary, Austria and the norther Balkans. There they founded a city called Sicambria, providing the name for the Sicambrians, from whom the Merovigians traced their descent. Gregory of Tours (c. 538 – 594) documents in his History of the Franks that when Clovis, (c. 466 – 511 AD), the first king of the Franks, was baptised, he was referred to as a Sicamber with the words “Mitis depone colla, Sicamber, adora quod incendisti, incendi quod adorasti.” The seventh-century Chronicle of Fredegar reveals additionally that the Franks believed the Sicambri to be a tribe of Scythian or Cimmerian descent, who had changed their name to Franks in honor of their chieftain Franco in 11 BC.

In 751 AD, the Merovingian dynasty which had ruled the Germanic Franks was overthrown with the consent of the Papacy and the aristocracy, and Pepin the Short (c. 714 – 768 AD), was crowned King of the Franks. The Carolingians kings were further descended from the Mithraic bloodline, from the intermarriage of the House of Herod, the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the House of Commagene, and priest-kings of Emesa. This bloodline had bifurcated into two important directions, diverging into an imperial line that eventually produced Constantine, and a second which included the Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus. The two branches were finally reunited in St. Arnulf, Bishop of Metz (c. 582 – 640 AD), the great-grandfather of the founder of the Carolingian dynasty, Charles Martel (c. 688 – 741 AD), the father of Pepin the Short, and one of the most heroic figures in French history.[25]

No mention of the Jews was found between the reign of Dagobert I and that of Pepin the Short. But in Southern France, then known as Septimania, the Jews continued to prosper. The seven cities of the territory included Béziers, Elne, Agde, Narbonne, Lodève, Maguelone, and Nîmes. From the seventh century dates the earliest known Jewish inscription relating to France, that of Narbonne. The Jews of Narbonne, chiefly merchants, who were popular among the people, often rebelled against the Visigothic kings.[26] It is only in the time of Wamba (c. 643 – 687/688 AD) and Julian of Toledo (642 – 690 AD), however, that a large Jewish population becomes evident in Septimania. Julian, who was born to parents of Jewish descent in Toledo, but was raised Christian, referred to it as a “brothel of blaspheming Jews.”[27]

Septimania had become an autonomous Moorish principality with its own capital at Narbonne, and paying only nominal allegiance to the Amir of Cordova. From Narbonne, the Moors of Septimania began to strike northward, capturing cities as deep into Frankish territory as Lyons. Though, by 738 AD, Charles Martel had driven the Moors back, laying siege to city. Narbonne, defended by both Moors and Jews, however, proved impregnable. Charles Martel died in 741 AD, and was succeeded by his son, Pepin the Short. Narbonne, however continued to resist, withstanding a seven-year long siege by Pepin’s forces. The problem was resolved by a pact with the city’s Jewish population, according to which Pepin would receive Jewish aid against the Moors, and Jewish endorsement for his claim to a biblical succession. In return Pepin would grant the Jews of Septimania a principality and a king of their own.

According to Dr. Arthur Zuckerman, author of A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France, 768-900, in 759 AD the Jewish population of Narbonne turned suddenly on the city’s Muslim defenders, slaughtered them, and opened the gates of the fortress to the besieging Franks. Shortly thereafter, the Jews acknowledged Pepin as their nominal overlord and validated his claim to an apparently legitimate biblical succession. Pepin, in the meantime, kept his promise, and in 768 AD a Jewish principality was created in Septimania, that paid nominal allegiance to Pepin, but was essentially independent. A ruler was officially installed as the Son of David and King of the Jews. Professor Zuckerman states that he was recognized by both Pepin and the caliph of Baghdad as “the seed of the royal house of David.” At the height of his power, he included as part of his dominion, northeastern Spain, the Pyrenees, along with the region of Septimania.

Holy Roman Empire

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the papacy was subject to the political influence of the rulers of the surrounding Italian Peninsula. Beginning in 535 AD, under Emperor Justinian I, the Byzantine Empire launched the Gothic War, resulting in the reconquest of Italy and City of Rome, inaugurating the Byzantine Papacy (537–752). Then in 568 AD, the Lombards entered the peninsula, establishing their own Italian kingdom, and over the next two centuries would conquer most of the Italian territory recently regained by Byzantium. By the seventh century AD, Byzantine authority was largely limited to a portion of land running from Ravenna, where the emperor’s representative, or Exarch, was located, to Rome and south to Naples, plus coastal exclaves.

Pope Gregory I (590 – 604 AD) and his successors were largely dominated by the exarch of Ravenna. These humiliations, the weakening of the Byzantine Empire in the face of the Muslim conquests, and the inability of the emperor to protect the papal estates against the Lombards, made Pope Stephen II turn from Emperor Constantine V, and appealed to the Franks to protect his lands. Stephen II anointed Pepin at the abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, together with his two young sons Charles and Carloman. Pepin led an army into Italy in 754 and 756 AD. After defeating the Lombards, and taking control of northern Italy, he a gift the pope, called the Donation of Pepin, of the properties formerly constituting the Exarchate of Ravenna, which provided a legal basis for the creation of the Papal States.

The son of Pepin the Short, Charles, later known as Charlemagne, assumed the throne and took advantage of his brother’s death in 771 AD to unite the Carolingian territories, to which he added many conquests, notably Saxony, Aquitaine, and Septimania, inaugurating the Holy Roman Empire. The Empire was considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be the only legal successor of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. From the time of Constantine, the Roman emperors had, with very few exceptions, taken on a role as promoters and defenders of Christianity. Emperors considered themselves responsible to the gods for the spiritual health of their subjects, and after Constantine they had a duty to help the Catholic Church to defend orthodoxy. The emperor's role was to enforce doctrine, root out heresy, and uphold ecclesiastical unity.[28]

In Western Europe, the title of Emperor became defunct after the death of Julius Nepos in 480 AD, although the rulers of the barbarian kingdoms continued to recognize the authority of the Eastern Emperor at least nominally well into the sixth century. In 726 AD, a political rupture was set in motion by the iconoclasm of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, in what Pope Gregory II saw as the latest in a series of imperial heresies. In 797, the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VI (771 – before 805 AD) was removed from the throne by his mother Irene who declared herself Empress. The Papacy viewed the imperial throne as vacant since a woman was not permitted to rule the empire. For this reason, Charlemagne, the King of the Franks and King of Italy, was crowned Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) by Pope Leo III, as the successor of Constantine VI, establishing the precedent that, in Western Europe, no man would be emperor without being crowned by a pope.[29] Charlemagne adopted the formula Renovatio imperii Romanorum (“renewal of the Roman Empire”). In 802 AD, Irene was overthrown and exiled by Nikephoros I and henceforth there were two Roman Emperors.

Charlemagne eventually incorporated the territories of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, the Low Countries and beyond, linking the Frankish kingdom with Papal lands. Following the intense conflict between the Carolingians and the Umayyads of Al-Andalus, marked by the Battle of Tours in 732 AD, an alliance with the Abbasid rulers of Baghdad was attempted and partially formed during the eighth to ninth century through a series of embassies, rapprochements and combined military operations between the Carolingian Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate and pro-Abbasid rulers in Al-Andalus.

A Frankish embassy went to Baghdad in 765 AD, which returned to Europe after three years with numerous presents, and an Abbasid embassy from Al-Mansur visited France in 768 AD. Three embassies were sent by Charlemagne to Harun al-Rashid’s court and the latter sent at least two embassies to Charlemagne. Harun al-Rashid is reported to have sent numerous presents to Charlemagne, such as aromatics, fabrics, a clock, a chessboard, and an elephant named Abu ‘Abbas.[30] The 797 AD embassy, the first one from Charlemagne, was composed of three men, the Jew Isaac (Isaac Judaeus, probably as interpreter), Lantfrid and Sigimud, and Harun al-Rashid was described as “Aaron, king of the Persians.”[31]

Charlemagne had several sons, but only one survived him, Louis the Pious (778 – 840 AD), who followed his father as the ruler of a united empire. When Louis died in 840, his three sons, after a brief civil war, made an agreement in 843 AD, the Treaty of Verdun, which divided the empire in three. Louis’ eldest surviving son Lothair I (795 – 855 AD) became Emperor in name, but de facto only the ruler of the Middle Frankish Kingdom, or Middle Francia. His three sons in turn divided this kingdom between them into Lotharingia, centered on Lorraine, Burgundy, and Italy Lombardy. Louis's second son, Louis the German (c. 806/810 – 876 AD), became King of East Francia, which formed the kernel of the later Holy Roman Empire by way of the Kingdom of Germany enlarged with some additional territories from Lothair’s Middle Francia. much of these territories eventually evolved into modern Austria, Switzerland and Germany. His third son Charles the Bald (823 – 877 AD) became King of West Francia, which is most of today's southern and western France, and the foundation for the later France under the House of Capet.

Rabbi Makhir

Italian Jewish tradition tells of one Merkabah mystic, namely Abu Aharon, the son of Rabbi Samuel ha-Nasi of Baghdad, emigrated from Baghdad in the mid-ninth century AD, and performed wonders through the power of the Sacred Names during the years he lived in Italy. Abu Aharon was known as “master of all secret mysteries.”[32] The later tradition of the Ashkenazi Hasidim of Germany maintained that these new mysteries were learned from Abu Aharon about the year 870 by Rabbi Moses ben Kalonymus, of Lucca in Italy.[33] Traces of the Kalonymus family in Italy may be found as early as the second half of the eighth century. Afterward, Rabbi Moses and his sons migrated to Germany where he laid the foundations of the mystical tradition of the Ashkenazi Hasidim.[34] Some texts explicitly named Charlemagne as the king responsible for the family’s move to the Rhine cities in Germany.[35] It is now accepted that the king must have been Charles the Bald (823 – 877 AD), the grandson of Charlemagne, who lived in the second half of the ninth century.[36]

According to Eleazar of Worms, Abu Aaron’s father, Rabbi Samuel, the Nasi of Babylon, “had left Babylon because of a certain incident and he was therefore required to travel all over the world (as a penance).”[37] The story parallels an account by Abraham ibn Daud in his Sefer ha-Kabbalah, written about 1161 AD, that Charlemagne had appointed Makhir, a Babylonian-Jewish scholar, perhaps the Exilarch of the Jews of Babylon, at the end of the eighth century as ruler of a Jewish principality in Narbonne in Southern France.

In addition, ibn Daud also reported the story known in Jewish history as that of The Four Captives, to explain the emergence of Jewish centers of learning outside of Baghdad. The context of Ibn Daud’s story is that, prior to the tenth century, Jewish religious leadership was concentrated in the hands of the Geonim, the rabbinical leaders of Babylonia. Shortly afterwards, their influence was drastically diminished, as independent centers of Jewish scholarship began to arise in different localities in Europe and North Africa.

Members of Kalonymus family brought Talmudic studies to Mainz, Germany, where the yeshiva became a center of studies under the direction of Gershom ben Judah (c. 960 – 1028 AD), known as “the Light of the Exile.”[38] Gershom had moved from Narbonne, where he was born, with his brother Makhira to Mainz and married Bonna bat Kalonymus. Gershom was soon acknowledged as the leading Torah scholar of France, Germany and Italy. Gershom’s disciples and followers perpetuated his exegetical work in the Talmudic academies of Mainz and Worms, ultimately spreading into France.

According to ibn Daud, sometime around 960 AD, four rabbis from Sura, who were on their way from the port of Bari, Italy, to attend rabbinic convention of the Babylonian academies, were taken captive by the notorious pirate Ibn Rumahis. The sages, who did not reveal their identities, were subsequently sold or ransomed in various ports: Alexandria, Tunisia, Cordoba and an unidentified locality. In each locale, the four scholars became the founder of an illustrious rabbinic academy. One of the four Sura scholars, Moses ben Hanoch, benefiting from the patronage of Hasdai ibn Shaprut, became the Cordoba’s rabbi and dayyan.[39] Together with ibn Shaprut, ben Hanoch founded the Talmudic school in Cordova. As the role and importance of Sura academy grew weaker, Hasdai purchased part of its library and had it transferred to Cordoba. The influence of the Cordova school was felt in Spain for another 350 years.[40] Heinrich Graetz posited that the fourth captive was Rabbi Natan ben Yitzchak HaBavli, a Babylonian Jewish historian of the tenth century, who settled, and was presumably sold, to the Jewish community in Narbonne.[41]

[1] Herman Rosenthal. “Chazars.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[2] Isidore Singer & M. Seligsohn “Tarshish” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[3] W. P. Bowers. “Jewish Communities in Spain in the Time of Paul the Apostle" Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. 26 Part 2 (October 1975), p. 396

[4] Moses de León. Ha-Nefesh Ha-Ḥakhamah (Basel 1608).

[5] Moses ben Machir. Seder Ha-Yom (Venice 1605), p. 15a.

[6] Abarbanel’s Commentary on the First Prophets (Pirush Al Nevi'im Rishonim), end of II Kings (Jerusalem 1955), pp. 680-681.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Josephus. Antiquities, xi. v. 2.

[10] H. Graetz. History of the Jews, Vol. III (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1894), p. 42.

[11] Eric Lawee. Isaac Abarbanel’s stance toward tradition: defense, dissent, and dialogue (New York: SUNY Press, 2001), p. 30.

[12] Seder Hakabbalah Laharavad (Jerusalem 1971), p. 51.

[13] Seder Olam Rabba/ Seder Olam Zuta/ Seder HaKabbalah le'Ravad (Jerusalem 1971), pp. 43–44.

[14] Yom Tov Assis. The Jews of Spain: From Settlement to Expulsion (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1988), p. 10.

[15] Assis. The Jews of Spain, p. 12; Nahum M. Sarna. “Hebrew and Bible Studies in Medieval Spain,” in Sephardi Heritage, Vol. 1 ed. R. D. Barnett (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1971), p. 324).

[16] Daniel Eisenberg (2008). “La actitud de Cervantes ante sus antepasados judaicos.” Cervantes y las religiones (Universidad de Navarra, Iberoamericana, Vervuert, 2005), pp. 55.

[17] Dmitri Gutas. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasaid Society (Routledge, 1998).

[18] M.-T. d’Alverny. Translations and Translators (Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 429–30, 451–2.

[19] Nahum M. Sarna. “Hebrew and Bible Studies in Medieval Spain,” in Sephardi Heritage, Vol. 1 ed. R. D. Barnett (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1971), p. 327.

[20] Geoffrey Herman. A Prince Without a Kingdom: The Exilarch in the Sasanian Era (Mohr Siebeck, 2012), p. 211.

[21] Richard Nelson Frye. The Golden Age of Persia (Phoenix Publishing, 2000), p. 163.

[22] Pablo Ianiszewski. “Astrology & Urbanism: the magical foundation of Baghdad.” International Society of Classical Astrologers (March 13, 2017). Retrieved from sicalastrologers.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/astrology-urbanism-the-magical-foundation-of-baghdad/

[23] Scholem. Kabbalah, p. 30

[24] Joseph Jacobs, Israel Lévi & Isaac Broydé. “France.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[25] James Allen Dow. “Arnold (Saint Arnulf) des FRANCS RIPUAIRES”. Retrieved from https://fabpedigree.com/s056/f871810.htm]; By way of Rusticus (Saint; Bishop) of LYONS, and Tetradius of APAMAEA (Proconsul) of TREVES.

[26] F. J. Elizabeth Boddens Hosang (2018). “Jews in 6th and 7th century legal texts from Spain and Gaul: A few observations.” Religion Compass. 12 (12): e12290.

[27] E. A. Thompson. The Goths in Spain. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 228.

[28] Jeffrey Richards. The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages 476–752 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 14–15.

[29] James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce. The Holy Roman Empire (1864), pp 62–64.

[30] Gene W. Heck. When worlds collide: exploring the ideological and political foundations of the clash of civilizations (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), p. 172.

[31] Moshe Gil & Ethel Broido. A History of Palestine, 634-1099 (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 286.

[32] Eleazar of Worms. Secrets of the Prayers; cited in Jacobus G. Swart. The Book of Self Creation (Sangreal Sodality Press, 2009), p. 22.

[33] Louis Ginzberg. “Aaron ben Samuel ha-Nasi (called also Abu Aaron ben Samuel ha-Nasi of Babylonia).” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[34] Scholem. Kabbalah, p. 33.

[35] R. Eleazar of Worms. Sodot ha-Tefillah.

[36] Kalonymus.” Jewish Virtual Library (n.d).

[37] R. Eleazar of Worms. Sodot ha-Tefillah (“Secrets of the Prayers”), Paris: Biblioteque National, Heb. MS 772, f. 60.

[38] Samuel Leiter, Glenda M. Abramson, et al.. “Hebrew literature.” Encyclopædia Britannica. (April 08, 2014).

[39] M.J. Cano, “Hanoch ben Moses”, in: Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Consulted online on 02 July 2019. First published online: 2010

[40] Retrieved from http://www.jewishhistory.org.il/history.php?daterange=1&range_start_year=69&range_start_month=11&range_start_day=22&range_end_year=2014&range_end_month=11&range_end_day=22&daterange.x=11&daterange.y=10&daterange=daterange

[41] Heinrich Gratz. Geschichte der Juden. pp. 3d ed., v. 288, 469–471.

Volume One

Introduction

1. Babylon

2. Ancient Greece

3. The Hellenistic Age

4. The Book of Revelation

5. Gog and Magog

6. Eastern Mystics

7. Septimania

8. Princes' Crusade

9. The Reconquista

10. Ashkenazi Hasidim

11. The Holy Grail

12. Camelot

13. Perceval

14. The Champagne Fairs

15. Baphomet

16. The Order of Santiago

17. War of the Roses

18. The Age of Discovery

19. Renaissance & Reformation

20. Kings of Jerusalem

21. The Mason Word

22. The Order of the Dragon