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Cádiz, Spain

CÁDIZ, Atlantic seaport in S.W. Spain. Certain historians have identified Cádiz with the biblical *Tarshish ; Jews may have been living there during the period of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula. A Jew, Samuel of Cádiz, was among those allocated properties in the area after its reconquest and resettlement in the 13th century. The Jewish settlement increased in importance when the island on which Cádiz was situated became linked with the mainland by silt from the Guadalquivir. More about Cádiz Jewry is known during the 15th century. The Inquisition's ruthless handling of cases from Cádiz tried in 1481 in Seville shows that a community of *Conversos existed there at this time. When the Jews were expelled from Andalusia, those of Cádiz moved to Castile. A number of Jews – Moses and Isaac Aben Zemerro among others – were granted safe conducts to settle their affairs in the city. According to the chronicler Bernaldez, 8,000 Jews left from Cádiz, mainly for North Africa, on the expulsion from Spain (1492). The 1877 census showed 209 Jews in Cádiz, mostly from Morocco, but no permanent community was formed (JC, Oct. 8, 1886).


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Baer, Urkunden, 2 (1936), 58, 424; Baer, Toledot 552 n. 141; García y Bellido, in: Sefarad, 2 (1942), 5–93, 279ff.; idem, in: Ars Hispaniae, 1 (1947), 137–66; idem, La Península Ibérica (1953), 467ff.; Sancho de Sorpranis, in: Sefarad, 13 (1953), 320–8; Suárez Fernández, Documentos, 35, 57, 257, 467.

[Haim Beinart]


Source: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.