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Before the catastrophe of 1391 and the expulsion of 1492, the Iberian peninsula was the most fertile soil for Jewish life in the medieval world. The word "Sepharad" appears once in the Hebrew Bible (Obadiah 1:20) and was later identified with Spain. From Roman Hispania through Visigothic terror, the 711 Muslim conquest, the Cordoba caliphate, and the Reconquista, the Sephardim built a civilization where Hebrew, Arabic, and Romance languages braided into poetry, philosophy, and science. This lesson covers the seven centuries that made "Sepharad" a name with weight.
Cultural note, When Sephardim today say "Sepharad," they mean more than a place. They mean a lost civilization where a Jew could be vizier of a Muslim caliph (Hasdai Ibn Shaprut), commander of an army (Shmuel HaNagid), and the greatest legal mind of the age (Maimonides). Al-Andalus was not paradise, there were pogroms, including Granada 1066, but compared to what came before (Visigothic enslavement) and after (Inquisition), the convivencia under Muslim rule was a peak of Jewish achievement that shaped Hebrew language, philosophy, and liturgy for a thousand years.
Biblical Sepharad & Roman Hispania
Visigothic Persecution Era
711 Muslim Conquest & Al-Andalus
Golden Age Scholars (Maimonides, HaLevi)
Christian Reconquista & Toledo
The Arc of Sepharad: A Historical Reading
A walk through seven centuries, from Obadiah's verse to the eve of 1391, in Hebrew, with the names that built Sepharad.