the Spanish
Jews, leaving their goods, started off to join him, the Moslem governor,
Anbasa, seized the property so left, and refused to restore it on the
return of the disappointed emigrants.

From their contact with Arabs and Christians the Jews seem to have lost
many of their distinctive beliefs, and in the twelfth century
Maimonides,[2] the greatest name among the Spanish Jews, wrote against
their errors. One of these seems to have been that the books of Moses
were written before the Creation;[3] another, that there was a series of
hells in the next world.[4]

Many Jews attained to very high positions among the Arabs, and we hear
of a certain Hasdai ibn Bahrut, who was inspector of customs to
Abdurrahman III., ambassador to the King of Leon in 955, and the king's
confidential messenger to the monk, John of Gorz, a few years later. He
was also distinguished as a physician.[5]

[1] Conde, ii. 326.

[2] Fleury, v. 409.

[3] Cp. the Moslem belief about the Koran. Sale, Introduc., p.
50. (Chandos Classics.)

[4] _Ibid._, p. 72.

[5] Al Makk., i., App. v. p. xxiv. Note by De Gayangos.

While the Arabs still retained their hold on the fairest provinces of
Spain, the lot of the Jews, even in Christian territories, was by no
means unendurable. They were sometimes advanced to important and
confidential posts, and it was the murder of Alfonso VI.'s Jewish
ambassador by the King of Seville which brought about the introduction
of the Almoravides into Spain.

There is a strange story told of the Jews at the taking of Toledo by the
Christians in 1085. They waited on Alfonso and assured him that they
were part of the ten tribes whom Nebuchadnezzar transported into Spain,
and not the descendants of those Jerusalem Jews who crucified Christ.
Their ancestors, they said, were quite free from the guilt of this act,
for when Caiaphas had written to the Toledan synagogue for their advice
respecting the person who claimed to be the Messiah, the Toledan Jews
returned for answer, that in their judgment the prophecies seemed to be
fulfilled in Him, and therefore He ought not by any means to be put to
death. This reply they produced in the original Hebrew.[1] It is
needless to say that the whole thing was a fabrication.

Gradually, as the Christians recovered their supremacy in Spain, the
tide of prejudice set more and more strongly against the Jews. They were
accused of "contempt for the Catholic worship,