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A Jewish princedom in feudal France, 768-900
A scholarly detective story establishing that King Pepin of France as well as Moslem Caliphs of Spain established a Jewish Princedom in 768 CE around Narbonne ruled by Prince Natronai-Makhir of the House of David and Baghdad.
- GenresHistory
432 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1972
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July 28, 2011In 768 the forces of Carolingian France and Ummayad Spain are at war with each other. The Caroligians get help in over taking Barcelona. THey are helped by the local Jews who turn the city over to the French in ex change for a quasi independence in Narbonne France. the Ommayad muslims used to conquer territory with the aid of the Jews. Once the territory was conquered the muslims would leave control of it to the Jews. This time the jews helped the enemies.
The French were not the only ones at war with the Ummayads, the Abbassids were also at odds with the Ummayads. Of course it made sence for the Abbassids and the French to make a treaty or alliance which they did. Part of this treaty was having a representative ogf the Abbassids hold a court in France. This place would be Septimania of France. The person they chose was the the Exilarch of the Israelites, Natronia ben Makhir.
The Exilarchs are descended from the line of King David. After they the Israelites were exiled from Judah by the Babylonians, the princely line of David remained in tact with the exilarch or the Nasi being in charge of the Jews in the Mesopatmian area. In Babylon there was a feud as to who should assume the office of Exilarch or Nasi of the Jewish people. THe choices were Natronia Makhir or Bustenai. Bustenai won out partially because he married into Persian royalty. Natronai then wnet off to France to recieve his own Princedom.
Upon arriving in Septimania not only did he recieve his own throne he had his name changed from Natronai to Theodric and was given a wife from thje Carolingian line. This was done to add legitimacy to the Carolingian line. Septimania served a purpose of defending the French frontier from Muslim Spain. Theodric often made military adventure into Spain. His son William was essential to the defense of the Carolingian empire and Charlemagnes realm. The Princedom lasted al the way until 900 ad. From 768-900 the Jews had major influence in France. The Christian clergy did not like the facts that an Israelite state was established on French soil. They used to offer several ruses to take control of Narbonne and Septimania. THe Enmperors backed up the Makhirs. Later on William would establish the House of G-d in the mountains of Gellone. Several member of the Makhir family died due to palace intrigue or in service of a king or emperor. Very intersting book.
The French were not the only ones at war with the Ummayads, the Abbassids were also at odds with the Ummayads. Of course it made sence for the Abbassids and the French to make a treaty or alliance which they did. Part of this treaty was having a representative ogf the Abbassids hold a court in France. This place would be Septimania of France. The person they chose was the the Exilarch of the Israelites, Natronia ben Makhir.
The Exilarchs are descended from the line of King David. After they the Israelites were exiled from Judah by the Babylonians, the princely line of David remained in tact with the exilarch or the Nasi being in charge of the Jews in the Mesopatmian area. In Babylon there was a feud as to who should assume the office of Exilarch or Nasi of the Jewish people. THe choices were Natronia Makhir or Bustenai. Bustenai won out partially because he married into Persian royalty. Natronai then wnet off to France to recieve his own Princedom.
Upon arriving in Septimania not only did he recieve his own throne he had his name changed from Natronai to Theodric and was given a wife from thje Carolingian line. This was done to add legitimacy to the Carolingian line. Septimania served a purpose of defending the French frontier from Muslim Spain. Theodric often made military adventure into Spain. His son William was essential to the defense of the Carolingian empire and Charlemagnes realm. The Princedom lasted al the way until 900 ad. From 768-900 the Jews had major influence in France. The Christian clergy did not like the facts that an Israelite state was established on French soil. They used to offer several ruses to take control of Narbonne and Septimania. THe Enmperors backed up the Makhirs. Later on William would establish the House of G-d in the mountains of Gellone. Several member of the Makhir family died due to palace intrigue or in service of a king or emperor. Very intersting book.
September 1, 2024
This appeared in 1972, and has since been largely discredited. So why did I read it? Well, my Hebraic ancestors allegedly were among those featured, and even if as a "trained medievalist" myself I know well the dangers of conjecture based on scanty material, alleged forgeries, and paleographic or onomastic errors on the behalf of the scholar, as have been charged against this author, I remain intrigued by it. Who wouldn't want to be related to the wanderers who sailed across seas to Spain?
Genealogists leapt in to include Zuckerman's thesis to boost family trees like mine, which at this attenuated extent inevitably stretch into legend anyway, right (or wrong)? His thesis of how Babylonian Jews sought, at least in the case of one exiliarch, a new home among the Frankish court who welcomed an alliance with the Ummayid dynasty against occupying Moors in Iberia ca. 700-800 posits daringly, if by conjecture, a supposed "Jewish kingdom" around Narbonne, Septimania.
They survived, in this account, by managing to stay on the side of the winners, against the Arian Visigoths, the Franks, the Cordovan Berber-Arab incursions, and the determined Catholic campaigns to eradicate the Jewish communities, while they negotiated ways to endure, hold land, keep slaves, unfortunately, and in the case of (in)famous "Judaizer" Deacon Bodo-Eliezer, to offer bold sanctuary to a convert from Christianity. Eventually, assimilation appears to have taken hold, inevitably, and the Jewish descendants of the arrivals from Persian realms likely bowed to intermarriage or "Rome" rule. There's no strong tie between Septimania and later Jewish Narbonne.
Their appeal, as Zuckerman interprets the fragmentary testimonies, may lie in Charlemagne's desire to link his bloodlines to those of rabbis said to be from the House of David. The better to boast of their claims, perhaps, as messianic messengers as they sought to build upon glories of empire and of the heirs to the same royal house from which their Savior was prophesied to spring from? I wish we'd be aware of contextual proof along these, to me, provocative allegations. Others counter that it's a jumbled passage from the Zohar that's erasing the original's Pepin and the Goths.
Trouble is, a millennium later, we just can't fit all the jagged shards together to connect the earlier to the later Jewish pattern with continuity. Zuckerman insists on reading a fundamental passage in the text he uses as a proof to mean not "Goths" but "Jews" regarding the fall of Moorish Narbonne, but fails to ground his interpretation in other than his own surmise that the writer fudged the two terms on purpose to erase the latter from the tale. It's certainly confusing and rather opaque.
This period left much across Europe in disarray, and this era didn't manage to keep up or at least pass on the largely monastic-created (and biased) documents. Yet reading into the scanty evidence one's own theory without it being justified by other sources, but rather one's own determination for it to be so, undermines the validity of his statement, upon which rests the foundation of his diss.
To be fair, Dr Zuckerman acknowledges the paucity of material when it comes to linking the court of "nasi" Jews to the later culture that flourished with learning in the 12c in this region, leading to the Zohar itself being written. There's an undeniable gap between the fall of Carolingian rule and the rise of the Iberian renaissance of knowledge shared among its learned peoples. Although the convivial spirit is romanticized recently by those eager to find a counter-model to Ashkenazi Rhineland-Crusades conditions. It's another danger to conjure up a multicultural diverse paradise in another corner of the West where Christians, Muslims, and Jews supposedly got along better. I kept wondering if this professor had in his subsequent career corrected or refined his own proposal.
To his credit, he tries in the chansons, historical records, polemics, and chronicles to sort out what might have been the predecessor for the Jewish efflorescence a few centuries prior to its zenith along the Mediterranean, where present-day France and Spain blur. He has to make a lot of leaps of faith to justify his dissertation, and naturally, academics in decades since have picked apart a lot of his conclusions. All the same, it opens up material that Jonathan Levi (see my review) in his 2016 novel 'Septimania' mined, although I wish that turned out a tighter story than it was, as an aside...
Genealogists leapt in to include Zuckerman's thesis to boost family trees like mine, which at this attenuated extent inevitably stretch into legend anyway, right (or wrong)? His thesis of how Babylonian Jews sought, at least in the case of one exiliarch, a new home among the Frankish court who welcomed an alliance with the Ummayid dynasty against occupying Moors in Iberia ca. 700-800 posits daringly, if by conjecture, a supposed "Jewish kingdom" around Narbonne, Septimania.
They survived, in this account, by managing to stay on the side of the winners, against the Arian Visigoths, the Franks, the Cordovan Berber-Arab incursions, and the determined Catholic campaigns to eradicate the Jewish communities, while they negotiated ways to endure, hold land, keep slaves, unfortunately, and in the case of (in)famous "Judaizer" Deacon Bodo-Eliezer, to offer bold sanctuary to a convert from Christianity. Eventually, assimilation appears to have taken hold, inevitably, and the Jewish descendants of the arrivals from Persian realms likely bowed to intermarriage or "Rome" rule. There's no strong tie between Septimania and later Jewish Narbonne.
Their appeal, as Zuckerman interprets the fragmentary testimonies, may lie in Charlemagne's desire to link his bloodlines to those of rabbis said to be from the House of David. The better to boast of their claims, perhaps, as messianic messengers as they sought to build upon glories of empire and of the heirs to the same royal house from which their Savior was prophesied to spring from? I wish we'd be aware of contextual proof along these, to me, provocative allegations. Others counter that it's a jumbled passage from the Zohar that's erasing the original's Pepin and the Goths.
Trouble is, a millennium later, we just can't fit all the jagged shards together to connect the earlier to the later Jewish pattern with continuity. Zuckerman insists on reading a fundamental passage in the text he uses as a proof to mean not "Goths" but "Jews" regarding the fall of Moorish Narbonne, but fails to ground his interpretation in other than his own surmise that the writer fudged the two terms on purpose to erase the latter from the tale. It's certainly confusing and rather opaque.
This period left much across Europe in disarray, and this era didn't manage to keep up or at least pass on the largely monastic-created (and biased) documents. Yet reading into the scanty evidence one's own theory without it being justified by other sources, but rather one's own determination for it to be so, undermines the validity of his statement, upon which rests the foundation of his diss.
To be fair, Dr Zuckerman acknowledges the paucity of material when it comes to linking the court of "nasi" Jews to the later culture that flourished with learning in the 12c in this region, leading to the Zohar itself being written. There's an undeniable gap between the fall of Carolingian rule and the rise of the Iberian renaissance of knowledge shared among its learned peoples. Although the convivial spirit is romanticized recently by those eager to find a counter-model to Ashkenazi Rhineland-Crusades conditions. It's another danger to conjure up a multicultural diverse paradise in another corner of the West where Christians, Muslims, and Jews supposedly got along better. I kept wondering if this professor had in his subsequent career corrected or refined his own proposal.
To his credit, he tries in the chansons, historical records, polemics, and chronicles to sort out what might have been the predecessor for the Jewish efflorescence a few centuries prior to its zenith along the Mediterranean, where present-day France and Spain blur. He has to make a lot of leaps of faith to justify his dissertation, and naturally, academics in decades since have picked apart a lot of his conclusions. All the same, it opens up material that Jonathan Levi (see my review) in his 2016 novel 'Septimania' mined, although I wish that turned out a tighter story than it was, as an aside...
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October 20, 2021dnf –– will come back to this, eventually. It uses some of my favourite medieval poetry, the chansons de geste, to make the wild claim that the Carolingians set up a Jewish princedom as a sort of buffer state between themselves and the Muslims in Spain. I don't know enough about Muslim or Jewish history to make heads or tails of his other sources and I just don't have the attention span to focus on this right now.
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