Tamanart

455 454 agricultural and commercial activities flourished and the city became an important market for the whole region. For a very short time Talavera was an independent taifa kingdom. It was a border fortress exposed to incursions by attackers from Leon. Its citadel was particularly outstanding in the eleventh century, and there was a wall enclosing the center of the city, to which a second and a third one were added. There is very little concrete information about the number, areas of residence, or activities of Talavera's Jews, but it is known that there was a Jewish community in the Muslim epoch, and it came under Christian rule at the time of the conquest by Alfonso VI (l 083­1085). The proximity of the more important Jewish community of Toledo relegated the Talavera community to a secondary status, but the two cities were in close contact, and the Andalusi Muslim theologian Ibn Hazrn noted that there were Karaites in both. Many of the Jews of Talavera were engaged in metalwork. According to Lacave and Leon Tello, the Jewish quarter was in the center of the city, close to the gate of San Pedro, and not outside the first wall, where it seems probable that the cemetery was located. Most of the documents that have been preserved come from the fifteenth century. Little is known about events in Talavera during the anti ­Jewish outbreaks in 1391. In the fifteenth century Talavera's Jewish community, with 168 families­in all, nine hundred or a thousand people, according to Lacave­became more important than the Toledo community. After the converso conflicts of 1449, some Jews from Toledo apparently settled in Talavera. In 1492 the city's Jewish population went into exile with the rest of Spanish Jewry. 1St stance was in ostwar AJU lead. Braunschvig, but antly accepted by lorocco. Tajouri's onstrated in the ｾ AI U to adjust to raining its teach,g an Arabic pro­ standing achievevocational school echnical training. lis career included I d'Honneur and '. He died in 1960 IS before his wife uri. TlIifs du Maroc: Essai (Madrid: Consejo ntificas, Instituto "B. .elite Universelle and 10rocco, 1862-1962 v York Press, 1983). ｾ Twentieth Century y Press, 1994) , a SaW' Hesperis 3, )HAMMED KENBIB y located 89 kiloof Toledo, at the d Tagus rivers, in iinsula. Neolithic re area, and there nents on the site. Roman times. Its riga (I82B.C.E.), name with Celtic ty was an imp or­center. 2., putting an end The city's Arabic e Muslim period, Bibliography Ashtor, Eliyahu. TIle Jews of Muslim Spain, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1973­84), vol. 2, pp. 229­232. Ibn Da'ud, Abraham. Sefer ha-Oabbalah: The Book of Tradition, ed. and trans. Gerson D. Cohen. (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2005), p. xlvi. Cantera, Francisco. Sinagogas espanolas (Madrid: Instituto "Arias Montano;' 1955), pp. 309­310. Carrete Parrondo, Carlos. "Talavera de la Reina y su comunidad judia: not as criticas al padron de 14771478," En la Espana medieval: Estudios dedicados al . ,"J TAMANART profesor D. Julio Gonzalez Gonzalez, coord. Miguel A. Ladera Quesada (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1980), vol. I, pp. 43­57. Lacave, Jose Luis. luderlas y sinagogas espanolas (Madrid: Ed. Mapfre, 1992), pp. 293, 309­310. Leon Tello, Pilar. [udlos de Toledo, 2 vols. (Madrid: CSIC, Instituto B. Arias Montano, 1979). ANGEL SAENZ­BADILLOS Tamanart Tamanart is a region in western Bani of the southwestern ｾ Sous region of ｾ Morocco that includes the oases of Icht, Aguerd, Foum El Hassan, and Kasba Ait Harbil, It was one of the last stations in Bani for trans­Saharans caravans before they entered the desert. The region included two major dry rivers, Oued Tamanart and Oued Icht. Before the political and economic emergence of ｾ Akka, Tamanart was the most important settlement of the lower Anti­Atlas Mountains. The village of Aguerd, one of the main oases of Tamanart, was controlled by the Ait Tamanart (Berb. ait, also ayt or ayt, people of) before the rise of the Sa'di dynasty in the sixteenth century. Aguerd was also the home of the main Jewish settlement in Tamanart. During the sixteenth century, the Ait Tamanart were politically weakened following the emergence of the Ida Oublal and Ait Harbil, who competed for control of Aguerd because of its strategic location on the trans­Saharan trade routes. Despite the political instability of Tamanart following its conquest by Muhammad al­'Arim, the son of Sultan MawlayIsma'il (r. 1672­1727), Tamanart remained under the control of Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah al­ Tamanarti and his sons. Although many Jewish families remained in Aguerd and nearby Foum El Hassan (Tizgui­nIda­Ou­Sellam), some Jewish families moved north to Akka, where they settled under the protection of the qa'id« of Taourirt. However despite this Jewish migration and the decreasing importance of Tamanart and its villages, it did not lose its role in the protection of the caravans to ｾ Timbuktu. Charles de ｾ Foucauld listed twenty Jewish households in Aguerd in 1884, while just four TAMANART 456 Jews were counted in the census of 1936 in Foum El Hassan. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the melJah (Ar. ｭ｡ｬｩｾＩ of Aguerd had twenty or thirty families; many of the Jews were cobblers, saddlemakers, and jewelers. By the 1940s, even before the mass emigration from Sous, the Jews had abandoned Aguerd. Their synagogue was still standing, but in disrepair, at the turn of the twenty-first century. Bibliography FoucauJd, Charles de. Reconnaissance au Maroc: 18831884 (Paris: Cnallarnel, 1888). [acques-Meunie, Djinn. Le Maroc saharien des origines 1670, 2 vols. (Paris: Editions Klincksieck, 1982). Porte de Vaux, Andre de lao "Notes sur Ie peuplement juif du Sous," Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc 15, nos. 54-55 (1952): 448-459, 625-632. al-Susl, Muhammad al-Mukhtar, Khila I [azula (Tetouan: s.n, 1958-60). - - . al-Ma'sul. 20 vols. (Casablanca: Matba'at a al-Najah, 1960-61). AOMARBoUM Tamentit Tamentit (Berb. Tamantit) is a modest village of 260 inhabitants in southwestern Algeria located 11 kilometers (7 miles) from Adrar. An agglomeration of fortified hamlets (Ar. qsur], it lies within the vast -7 Touat oasis. The Berber toponym, from am an (water) and tit (source), attests the importance of water in the establishment of the town. According to traditions mentioned by Arab historians, it was once the capital of a Jewish kingdom. Jews are said to have arrived there at the beginning of the common era. In 118, the Roman emperor Trajan persecuted and expelled the Jews of Cyrenaica, driving the survivors to Tamentit, where they were joined by others "in the year of the Elephant [i.e., ca. 570]" and built the ｱｾｵｲ (fortified village) of Tamentit. The Jews were said to have turned the old oasis of Tamentit into an autonomous enclave to which Muslims were only admitted as foreigners. In subsequent years, there were several influxes of immigration, including many Arab tribes in the tenth century, some of which were bellicose. Tamentit's eighteen neighborhoods, also called "Little Jerusalem;' remained quiet and safe behind its double wall. According to the local historian of Tamentit, Muhammad al- Tayyib al-Tuwati al-Tarnantiti al-Qurayshi, the town had "366 foggaras [underground water COnduits I and 366 Jewish jewelers" (al-Qawl al Basi! fi Akhbdr Tamantit, ms. ar. 3663, B.N.F. Paris). A network of correspondents in the large centers of West Africa enabled the Jews of Touat, who held the monopoly as gold dealers and goldsmiths, to sponsor caravans to Sudan, North Africa, Egypt, and points east, and to control the two marketplaces where merchants from North Africa, Ethiopia, and Africa met. Touat thus became the hub for trans-Saharan commerce, since its abundant water resources attracted large caravans that needed rest for their animals and could buy gold, ivory, copper, and salt. In 1447, writing to his patrons from Tamentit, the Genoese merchant Antonio Malfante gave some information about Touat, including its marketplace, commerce, prices, and inhabitants; he noted that "the population includes many Jews who live well ... they form a perfectly happy community ... all commerce is in their hands." The Jews ofTamentit had many synagogues, rabbis, and scholars; and the town was an active religious center that kept in contact with other communities and with the rabbinic court in Algiers, as shown by responsa addressed to "Qahal Touat" by Isaac ben Sheshet -7 Perfet (Ribash), Simon bar Sernah-s Duran (Rashbas), and Solomon ben Simeon Duran (Rasbash). The nineteenth-century trans-Saharan explorer and rabbi Mordechai -7 Abisrur recounted that "our ancestors taught us that Tamentit had been one of the capitals of Judaism; it was full of erudite scholars and writers; ... you could see remarkable Jewish gravestones that were much larger than regular ones. The dates showed that they were over a thousand years old .... In EI Hammeda, one can still find descendants of the Jews who were expelled from Tamentit; they are called "Tamentitiyin" Two rabbis from Tamentit who left a mark on the history of the Jews of the Sahara were Solomon bar Berero and his son Isaac, both of whom were found dead around 1490 near Bechar,