Strolling along the river, RIO DARRO

on my way to The Palace of the Forgotten

Along Carrera del DARRO

Good location for lunch?!

Palacio de Los Olvidados. Casa Sephardi

The Palace of the Forgotten

"Lest we forget, the Jews played a vital role in the glorious Nasrid kingdom of Granada that reigned from the 1200s to 1492 built on peaceful Christian, Muslim and Jewish coexistence. The aptly named 'palace of the forgotten', which opened in January 2014 in the Albayzín revisits this oft-ignored Jewish legacy. It's the second and best of Granada's new Jewish-related museums with seven rooms filled with attractively displayed relics (scrolls, costumes and ceremonial artifacts) amassed from around Spain.

A well-versed guide takes you round the exhibits."

lonelyplanet.com

"The Palace of the Forgotten (Palacio de los Olvidados) is a palace from the XVI c. also known as the Palace of Santa Inés. Is one of the few aristocratic houses from the Albaycin that is still in perfect conditions. It is thought that the house belonged to a “converso” that wanted to erase his Jewish past, that is why the coats of arms from the facade are destroyed.

Close to the Alhambra and to the “Carrera del Darro” this 500 year building is now a cultural space where the magnificent art collection from the family Crespo López is shown with the intention to remind us the great importance that the Jewish culture had in Spain, and in particular, in Granada.
Through the six rooms where the pieces are distributed, the visitor can view the different periods of the Jewish history in Spain, always with the illustrative help of one of the guides from the Palace.

The creation of the Palace of the Forgotten (Palacio de los Olvidados) started with then private initiative of the family Crespo López, responsibles of the discovery, preservation and restoration of the Synagogue of the water (Sinagoga del Agua) of Úbeda (Jaén). This is an unique building that with under the management of Artificis has become an important reference about the Sephardic culture in that city, World Heritage by the UNESCO." (palaciodelosolvidados.com/en/)

Flamenco music is based on Hebrew liturgical music. Fancy that! True also of many successful modern musicals.

"The Conversos

In the 31st March of 1492 the Catholic Kings will sign in the Alhambra the famous "Edict of Expulsion", because of that all the Jewish population will have to abandon their beloved Sepharad. This room explains about the ones that did not leave, the ones who converted to Christianity, known as "conversos", "new Christians" and also "marranos". Here we explain all the difficulties that the "conversos"

will encounter to prove that they were "normal" Christians to the Spanish Inquisition. Some will keep symbols and traditions (hidden), others will be forgotten forever."

palaciodelosolvidados.com/en/

This menorah's centrepiece disguises its Jewishness. It is removable so can be replaced when needed.

Sephardic Shabbath

It is believed that the pomegranate has 613 seeds which is the same number as the Jewish Halachic laws. That is why the pomegranate is of such symbolic importance.

This is a 'secret' Magen David disguised as a floral decoration by Conversos in the 16th century.

My guide, Jorge, tells me that it was Samuel ibn Naghrillah Hanagid who started the project of the Alhambra.

"The Origins of the Alhambra as a Jewish Fortress

Although the Alhambra, the famous fortress-palace complex that sits magnificently on the Sabika hill overlooking Granada, is very much the product of the Nasrid dynasty (1238-1492) and has become the most recognizable symbol of al-Andalus, there is evidence to suggest that it was originally a palatial residence of the Jewish viziers of the Zirid dynasty (1013-1090). It is almost certain that before Granada rose to prominence as an Andalusi Muslim capital during the Taifa period, most of its population was Jewish, a fact that earned it the name “Gharnatah al-Yahud” (Granada of the Jews) by contemporary Muslims. Although there may have been a small fortification on the Sabika hill as early as 889, it was not until the early eleventh century that a Jewish vizier named Samuel ibn Naghrillah, or Samuel HaNagid (d. 1056), constructed a fortress on the hill and made it his residence. During the vizierate of Samuel’s son, Joseph, we have even clearer evidence of the construction of a fortification. The last Zirid emir of Granada, Abd Allah ibn Buluggin (d. 1095) records this fact in his memoirs, known as the Tibyan:

“Out of fear of the [increasingly-hostile] populace, Yusuf [ibn Naghrillah] moved from his house to the citadel (qasaba)…moreover, it is suspected that he had built for himself the Alhambra fortress (al-Hamra’) with a view to taking refuge there with his family…” This sentence, mentioned in passing, provides important evidence about the origins of the fortress-palace complex of the Alhambra. It seems, then, that the magnificent structure of the Alhambra owes its origins, at least in part, to a Jewish vizier. Moreover, as Abd Allah ibn Buluggin emphasizes, it became prominent because of its strategic location as a place of refuge for the elite from a potentially-hostile populace. Quite significant is the identification of the fortress by name as al-Hamra (Alhambra) which shows that it was known by this name almost two centuries before the advent of the Nasrids. The name (meaning “The Red Fortress”) probably stems from the red-colored brick which was used to construct it.

There is definitely a lot more that can be said about the role of Samuel HaNagid and his son Joseph in establishing the Alhambra as a fortified palatial residence in Granada, which was transformed from a village into an illustrious capital under the patronage and rule of the Zirids and these two Jewish viziers. Indeed, it is not without tragic irony that the infamous Edict of Expulsion, which ended the legal existence of Judaism in Spain, was signed by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 in the very same Alhambra."

ballandalus.wordpress.com

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. His poetry was one area in which he was well known for.^[2] He was perhaps the most influential Jew, politically, in Muslim Spain. ^[3]

Samuel ibn Naghrillah had a son named Joseph ibn Naghrela (Joseph ibn Naghrillah) (1035-1066), who succeeded to his father's position of vizier of Granada before he turned twenty-one.^[4] Many Muslims, envious of his position and unhappy with Joseph's excesses, accused Joseph of using his office to benefit Jewish friends. Joseph ha-Nagid was assassinated in a mob uprising against him on December 30, 1066. The people then proceeded to crucify his body upon the city's main gate. The following morning on December 31, 1066, the massacre of Granada's Jews began and a mob went on a rampage in Granada, killing a large number of Jewish inhabitants. The Jewish community was later reestablished but was destroyed again in 1090 by the Almoravids.^[3]"

^{(en.m.wikipedia.org - Samuel ibn Naghrillah)}

Yoshua Ha-Levi's sleeve book, long and thin so it can be concealed inside the sleeve when fleeing the authorities.

"The sleeve book was written by Joshua Ha-Levi in the XII Century and it is a liturgy book for Sabbath. That is why he wrote it in the sleeve book format because the Almohades were chasing them and obviously having a liturgy book for Sabbath was dangerous."

Jorge Rodríguez-Babé, my well-informed and erudite guide at the Palacio de Los Olvidados.

Women were forbidden to read or to be taught scholarly texts.

"Everything end, and this is the end of the splendor of the Sephardic Jews in Spain. This part of our history will mark completely the development of the country. The institution of the Spanish Inquisition will be established in 1478 with the purpose of keeping the " good practices" of the Christian religion and that will end up causing the signing of the Edict of Expulsion of 1492. This room ( Sala de la Inquisition) will make the visitor see all the details that will mark their expulsion, and that will cause a global weakness in Spain, specially intellectual."

(palaciodelosolvidados.com/en/)

Back to the river to relocate the present tense after facing the terrifying, sad past of our destroyed Sephardic population and culture.