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Tamentit, Algeria
According to Arab historians, Tamentit was once the capital of a Jewish kingdom. Jews settled there at the beginning of the Common Era when in 118 A.D. Emperor Trajan ordered the extermination of Jews in Cyrenaica. Most were massacred, but those who escaped fled 1000 miles eastward, to the edge of the Sahara where they built the fortified village of Tamentit. "Here they flourished and in time became so rich and powerful commercially that in 1447 Antonio Malfante, a traveling merchant from Genoa, thought it worthwhile to send back a report on them to his home office. But their good fortune came to an end again in 1492 when a wave of Moslem fanaticism, sweeping southward from Morocco, caused another major pogrom and destruction of Tamentit. This time the survivors fled northeast and finally found shelter in the Mzab."
Description
Tamentit is located in southwestern Algeria in the Touat oasis. Its name comes from the Berber toponym aman meaning water and tit meaning source. Jews settled in Tamentit around the beginning of the common era and turned the oasis into an enclave where Muslims were only admitted as foreigners. According to the local historian of Tamentit, Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib al-Tuwātī al-Tamanṭīṭī al-Qurayshī, the town had “366 foggaras [underground water conduits] and 366 Jewish jewelers”1. The Jews of Touat had a monopoly on gold and worked as gold dealers and goldsmiths. Their wealth was used to sponsor caravans to North Africa and control central markets. As a result, Touat quickly became a hub for trans-Subsaharan trade. Tamentit was also an active religious center home to many synagogues, rabbis, and Jewish scholars. The town kept in contact with other Jewish communities and with the rabbinical courts in Algiers. According to Rabbi Mordechai Abisrur, a 19th-century explorer, “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 El Hammeda, one can still find descendants of the Jews who were expelled from Tamentit; they are called Tamentitiyin”2. In 1492 Muslim tribes were incited by Muḥammad al-Maghīlī to destroy the synagogue and massacre the Jewish population of Tamenetit. Survivors of the attack migrated to Kenadza, Beni-Ounif, and Ghardaia where their descendants remained until the independence of Algeria.
Tamentit, Algeria
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Sources
Notes
1 Oliel
2 Oliel
Works Cited
1. Briggs, Lloyd C., and Guède Norina Lami. Essay. In No More Forever: A Saharian Jewish Town ; with App. on Physical Anthropology, Demography and Social Structure, 10. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, 1964.
2. Oliel, Jacob, ‘Tamentit’. Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Ed. Norman A. Stillman et al. Brill Reference Online. Web. 29 June 2022. https://referenceworks-brillonline-com.oca.ucsc.edu/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/tamentit-SIM_0020920?s.num=0&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world&s.q=tamentit