Editing Alhambra Decree (section)

==Background==
{{main|History of the Jews in Spain}}
{{Antisemitism sidebar}}

By the end of the 8th century, [[Umayyad conquest of Hispania|Arab Muslim forces]] had conquered and settled most of the [[Iberian Peninsula]].<ref name=":1" /> Under [[Sharia|Islamic law]], the [[Jews]], who had lived in the region since at least [[Hispania|Roman times]], were considered "[[People of the Book]]" and treated as ''[[dhimmi]]'', which was a protected status.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The ornament of the world: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians created a culture of tolerance in medieval Spain|last=Menocal|first=María Rosa|publisher=Back Bay Books|year=2012|isbn=9780316168717|edition=Reprint|oclc=183353253|author-link=María Rosa Menocal|orig-year=2002|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/ornamentofworldh00meno}}</ref> Compared to the repressive policies of the [[Visigothic Kingdom]], who, starting in the sixth century had enacted a series of anti-Jewish statutes which culminated in their forced conversion and enslavement, the tolerance of the Muslim Moorish rulers of ''[[al-Andalus]]'' allowed Jewish communities to thrive.<ref name=":1" /> Jewish merchants were able to trade freely across the [[Islamic world]], which allowed them to flourish, and made Jewish enclaves in Muslim Iberian cities great centers of learning and commerce.<ref name=":1" /> This led to a [[Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain|flowering of Jewish culture in Spain during the Middle Ages]], as Jewish scholars were able to gain favor in Muslim courts as skilled physicians, diplomats, translators, and poets. Although Jews never enjoyed equal status to Muslims, in some [[Taifa]]s, such as [[Taifa of Granada|Granada]], Jewish men were appointed to very high offices, including that of [[Grand vizier]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/ha-nagid.asp|title = Internet History Sourcebooks Project}}</ref>

The ''[[Reconquista]]'', or the gradual reconquest of [[Al-Andalus|Muslim Iberia]] by the [[Christianity in the Middle Ages|Christian kingdoms]] in the North, was driven by a powerful religious motivation: to reclaim Iberia for [[Christendom]] following the [[Umayyad conquest of Hispania]] centuries before. By the 14th century, most of the [[Iberian Peninsula]] (present-day Spain and [[Portugal]]) had been reconquered by the Christian kingdoms of [[Kingdom of Castile|Castile]], [[Crown of Aragon|Aragon]], [[Kingdom of León|León]], [[Kingdom of Galicia|Galicia]], [[Kingdom of Navarre|Navarre]], and [[Kingdom of Portugal|Portugal]].

During the [[Reconquista|Christian re-conquest of Iberia]], the Muslim kingdoms in Spain became less welcoming to the ''[[dhimmi]]''. In the late 12th century, the Muslims in ''[[al-Andalus]]'' invited the fanatical [[Almohad Caliphate|Almohad dynasty]] from [[North Africa]] to push the Christians back to the North.<ref name=":1" /> After they gained control of the Iberian Peninsula, the Almohads offered the Jews a choice between expulsion, conversion, and death.<ref name=":1" /> Many Jewish people fled to other parts of the Muslim world, and also to the Christian kingdoms, which initially welcomed them. In Christian Spain, Jews functioned as courtiers, government officials, merchants, and [[Jewish usury|moneylenders]].<ref name=":1" /> Therefore, the Jewish community was both useful to the ruling classes and to an extent protected by them.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Faith of the Fallen Jews: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish History (The Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry)|publisher=Brandeis University Press|year=2014|isbn=978-1611684872|editor-last=Kaye|editor-first=Alexander|location=Massachusetts|pages=252–253|editor2-last=Meyers|editor2-first=David}}</ref>

As the ''[[Reconquista]]'' drew to a close, overt hostility against Jews in Christian Spain became more pronounced, finding expression in brutal episodes of violence and oppression. In the early fourteenth century, the Christian kings vied to prove their piety by allowing the clergy to subject the Jewish population to forced sermons and disputations.<ref name=":1" /> More deadly attacks came later in the century from mobs of angry Catholics, led by popular preachers, who would storm into the Jewish quarter, destroy synagogues, and break into houses, forcing the inhabitants to choose between conversion and death.<ref name=":1" /> Thousands of Jews sought to escape these attacks by converting to Christianity. These Jewish converts were commonly called ''[[converso]]s'', ''[[New Christians|Cristianos nuevos]]'', or ''[[marrano]]s''; the latter term was used as an insult.<ref name="Szlajfer 2023"/> At first, these conversions seemed an effective solution to the cultural conflict: many ''converso'' families met with social and commercial success.<ref name=":1" /> But eventually their success made these new Catholics unpopular with their neighbors, including some of the [[Hierarchy of the Catholic Church|clergy of the Catholic Church]] and [[Spanish nobility|Spanish aristocrats]] competing with them for influence over the royal families. By the mid-15th century, the demands of the Old Christians that the Catholic Church and the monarchy differentiate them from the conversos led to the first ''[[limpieza de sangre]]'' laws, which restricted opportunities for converts.<ref name=":1" />

These suspicions on the part of Christians were only heightened by the fact that some of the conversions were insincere. Some ''conversos'', also known as [[Crypto-Judaism|crypto-Jews]], embraced Christianity and underwent [[baptism]] while privately adhering to Jewish practices and faith. Recently converted families who continued to intermarry were especially viewed with suspicion.<ref name=":1" /> For their part, the Jewish community viewed ''conversos'' with compassion, because Jewish law held that conversion under threat of violence was not necessarily legitimate.<ref name=":1" /> Although the [[Catholic Church]] was also officially opposed to forced conversion, under [[ecclesiastical law]] all baptisms were lawful, and once baptized, converts were not allowed to rejoin their former religion.<ref name=":1" />

===European context===
{{Main|History of the Jews in Europe}}
[[File:Expulsion judios-en.svg|thumb|right|250px|Expulsions of Jews in Europe from 1100 to 1600]]

From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, European countries expelled the Jews from their territories on at least fifteen occasions. Before the Spanish expulsion, the Jews had been expelled from England in 1290, several times from France between 1182 and 1354, and from some German states. The French case is typical of most expulsions: whether the expulsion was local or national, the Jews usually were allowed to return after a few years.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|title=Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe|last=Stow|first=Kenneth|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1992|isbn=978-0674015937|location=Massachusetts|pages=181–308}}</ref> The Spanish expulsion was succeeded by at least five expulsions from other European countries,<ref name="isbn0-7065-1327-4">{{cite book|title=Anti-Semitism: Israel Pocket Library|publisher=Keter Books|year=1974|isbn=9780706513271|volume=12|location=Jerusalem, IS}}</ref><ref name="Teacher's">{{cite web |title=Map of Jewish expulsions and resettlement areas in Europe |url=https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/gallery/expuls.htm |work=A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust  |publisher=Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida |access-date=9 September 2016}}</ref> but the expulsion of the Jews from Spain was both the largest of its kind and, officially, the longest lasting in western European history.

Over the four-hundred-year period during which most of these decrees were implemented, the causes of expulsion gradually changed. At first, expulsions of Jews (or absence of expulsions) were exercises of royal prerogatives. Jewish communities in medieval Europe often were protected by and associated with monarchs because, under the feudal system, Jews often were a monarch's only reliable source of taxes.<ref name=":3" /> Jews further had reputations as moneylenders because they were the only social group allowed to loan money at a profit under the prevailing interpretation of the [[Vulgate]] (the Latin translation of the Bible used in Roman Catholic western Europe as the official text), which forbade Christians to charge interest on loans.<ref name=":3" /> Jews, therefore, became the lenders to and creditors of merchants, aristocrats, and even monarchs. Most expulsions before the Alhambra Decree were related to this financial situation: to raise additional monies, a monarch would tax the Jewish community heavily, forcing Jews to call in loans; the monarch then would expel the Jews; at the time of expulsion, the monarch would seize their remaining valuable assets, including debts owed them by other subjects of the monarch and, in some instances, by the monarch himself.<ref name=":3" /> Expulsion of the Jews from Spain was thus an innovation not only in scale but also in its motivations.

===Ferdinand and Isabella===
{{Main|Catholic Monarchs}}
[[File:Expulsión_de_los_judíos.jpg|thumb|250px|Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 by [[Emilio Sala (painter)|Emilio Sala Francés]]]]
Hostility towards the Jews in Spain was brought to a climax during the reign of the "Catholic Monarchs," [[Ferdinand II of Aragon|Ferdinand]] and [[Isabella I of Castile|Isabella]]. Their marriage in 1469, which formed a [[personal union]] of the crowns of [[Crown of Aragon|Aragon]] and [[Crown of Castile|Castile]], with coordinated policies between their distinct kingdoms, eventually led to the final unification of Spain.

Although their initial policies towards the Jews were protective, Ferdinand and Isabella were disturbed by reports claiming that most Jewish converts to Christianity were insincere in their conversion.<ref name=":1" /> As mentioned above, some claims that [[Converso|''conversos'']] continued to practice Judaism in secret (see [[Crypto-Judaism]]) were true, but the "Old" Christians exaggerated the scale of the phenomenon. It was also claimed that Jews were trying to draw conversos back into the Jewish fold. In 1478, Ferdinand and Isabella made a formal application to [[Holy See|Rome]] to set up an Inquisition in Castile to investigate these and other suspicions. In 1487, King Ferdinand promoted the establishment of the [[Spanish Inquisition]] Tribunals in Castile.<ref name=":1" /> In the Crown of Aragon, it had been first instituted in the 13th century to combat the [[Albigensian heresy]]. However, the focus of this new Inquisition was to find and punish ''conversos'' who were practicing Judaism in secret.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0DoY6VKNSC0C|title=Imperial Spain 1469–1716|last=Huxtable|first=Elliott John|publisher=Penguin|year=2002|isbn=9780141925578|location=London, UK|oclc=759581255|orig-year=1964}}</ref> {{Page needed|date=April 2020}}

These issues came to a head during Ferdinand and Isabella's final conquest of Granada. The independent Islamic [[Emirate of Granada]] had been a [[tributary state]] to Castile since 1238. Jews and conversos played an important role during this campaign because they had the ability to raise money and acquire weapons through their extensive trade networks.<ref name=":1" /> This perceived increase in Jewish influence further infuriated the Old Christians and the hostile elements of the clergy.<ref name=":1" /> Finally, in 1491 in preparation for an imminent transition to Castilian territory, the [[Treaty of Granada (1491)|Treaty of Granada]] was signed by Emir [[Muhammad XII of Granada|Muhammad XII]] and the Queen of Castile, protecting the religious freedom of the Muslims there. By 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella had won the [[Battle of Granada]] and completed the Catholic [[Reconquista]] of the Iberian Peninsula from Islamic [[Al-Andalus|forces]]. However, the Jewish population emerged from the campaign more hated by the populace and less useful to the monarchs.