The Warrior-Poet: Shmuel ha-Nagid
🌅 An icon of "Golden Age" Sefarad, the life of Shmuel ha-Nagid is at once representative of the opportunities available to medieval Jews in Muslim Spain, and notably exceptional in its own right.
You’re reading Stories from Jewish History, a weekly newsletter exploring Jewish thinkers, events, and artifacts, from the famous to the obscure. Today we continue in the series on Jewish life in medieval Sefarad during the Islamicate period with an examination of the extraordinary life of R. Shmuel ha-Nagid. “Nagid” is often translated as “prince,” though it really means something more like courtier or statesman.
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In the work of mid-twentieth century historians, Jewish life in Muslim Spain was still known as the “Golden Age.” They characterized the period as being relatively secure, with a high tolerance for Jewish presence and expression. This also suggests an efflorescence of Judeo-Arabic culture, meaning an openness and cultural synergy between Jewish thought and the dominant Islamicate, Arabophone culture, including its “secular” aspects such as philosophy (including what we today call “science”) and literature.
This sanguine view was examined critically by the next generation of scholars, who problematized the purported “golden-ness” of the age. They pointed out that Jewish life quickly turned precarious in the Muslim period, and that premodern tolerance is quite different from the post-Enlightenment kind. But then, the Mizrachi experience in the years leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel prompted a “neo-lachrymose” conception of Jewish-Muslim relations, emphasizing their fraught and troubled nature. This in turn led to further reevaluation.
Where has the scholarship landed? With a far more critical view of the “Golden Age” (now in requisite quotation marks). It maintains that medieval Jewish life under Islam was, for complex reasons, relatively more secure and culturally porous than Jewish life in Christian Europe.
The remarkable life of Abu Ishaq Ismail/Shmuel ha-Levi ben Yosef Ibn Naghrila ha-Nagid contains within it nearly all the signal elements of Jewish life of his period and place, as well as reflecting the contours of this debate.
A Charmed Life and its Denouement
If you wanted to paint a picture of an elite member of Jewish society at the height of the Islamicate period in Spain, here are the boxes you’d need to tick:
Came of age in Córdoba;
Extremely well-learned in both Jewish and general topics;
Well-heeled, rubbing shoulders with all the great men of his day;
A technically perfect poet, writing in Biblical Hebrew with Arabic meter and tropes;
Effortlessly multilingual;
Has illustrious offspring;
And, importantly: is a courtier in the halls of power.
You couldn’t do better than Shmuel ha-Nagid, born in 993 in Córdoba, the jewel city of al-Andalus that was also home to an important early center of Torah learning. Though he has competitors for the title of consummate Andalusi Jew—R. Yehuda ha-Levi and Rambam (Maimonides) are surely, in their own ways, contenders—it is in the figure of Shmuel ha-Nagid that the elements of Jewish leader and courtly vizier come easily together, with superb ability in the renowned Andalusi art of formal poetry thrown into the mix, too.
Shmuel’s family hailed from Merida, a Spanish city, claiming Davidic descent; but he was raised in Córdoba, the New York of Muslim Spain. His teacher was a renowned scholar of the previous generation, and his father saw to it that he received an excellent general education. From extant polemical writings, it is evident that Shmuel was thoroughly knowledgeable in the language and law of the Quran and in contemporary currents of Muslim thought. These caught the attention of the great Muslim jurist and philosopher Ibn Hazm, who wrote a fierce counter-polemic against Shmuel’s work against the Quran. Shmuel thus began making a name for himself while still a young man in Córdoba.
And yet, for all the charm of Shmuel ha-Nagid’s early life, he was also privy to the first forces of dissolution to hit Muslim Spain. The Umayyad caliphate, which had staked its last outpost in the soil of Spain, found itself hiring mercenaries to protect its interests. Among the peoples serving as mercenaries were various Berber tribes. Once possessing substantial enough numbers, they began to establish their own rule, ushering in the era of the Taifa kingdoms, or small city-states that proliferated as Umayyad rule receded. Berbers sacked Córdoba in two waves beginning in 1009, and in 1013, Shmuel ha-Nagid (not yet a nagid) was impelled, along with many other Jews, to flee.
The Rise to Power
Because Berber rule was spread over many principalities, alliances were shifting, creating many possibilities—and pitfalls—for the elite classes. Unlike later waves of Berber movement into Iberia, these early eleventh-century Berber kingdoms were not uniformly prosecutorial towards the Jewish population. One Berber group, the Zirids, a tribe who formally ruled under the authority of the powerful (and Shi’a) Fatimids of Egypt, took control of the Taifa of Granada. It was here that Shmuel ha-Nagid rocketed to stunning power, coming to personally command the army of Granada.
The story of Shmuel’s rise is fancifully told, some one hundred and fifty years later, by R. Avraham Ibn Daud in the ever-dispensible Sefer ha-Kabbala:
ומגדולי תלמידיו [של ר’ חנוך] היה רב שמואל הלוי הנגיד בר' יוסף הידוע אבן נגרילה מקהל קורטובה היה תלמיד חכם מן המשכילים הגדולים. ועוד היה בקי בספרי הישמעאלים ובלשונם ומאשר כח בהם לעמוד בהיכל המלך… לאחר שנפסקה מלכות בני אבן אבי עמר וגברו סרני פלשתים. ונדלדלה מדינת קורטובה וברחו יושביה…
ור' שמואל הלוי זה ברח למלאקה והיה יושב בחנות והוא רוכל. והיתה חנותו סמוכה לחצר אבן אלעריף סופר המלך חבוס בן מאכס מלך פלשתים בגראנטה. והיתה שפחת הסופר מפייסת ממנו וכותב ספרים לאדוניה המשנה אבו אל קאס בן אלעריף. והיה רואה ספריו ותמה מחכמתו... מיד צוה הסופר והריצו אליו ר' שמואל הלוי. ואמר לו אין אתה ראוי לשבת בחנות אל תסור ממני ימין ושמאל. ונעשה סופרו ויועצו והוא היה יועץ המלך.
One of his [R. Chanoch’s] outstanding disciples was R. Samuel ha-Levi the Nagid b. R. Joseph, surnamed Ibn Nagrela, of the community of Cordova. Besides being a great scholar and highly cultured person, R. Samuel was highly versed in Arabic literature and style and was, indeed, competent to serve in the king’s palace… With the termination of the rule of the house of Ibn Abi ‘Amir and the seizure of power by the Berber chiefs, the city of Cordova dwindled, and its inhabitants were compelled to flee…
This R. Samuel ha-Levi fled to Malaga, where he occupied a shop as a spice-merchant. Since his shop happened to adjoin the courtyard of Ibn al-’Arif—who was the Katib [lead secretary, essentially, communications director] of King Habbus b. Maksan, the Berber king of Granada—the Katib’s maidservant would ask him [Shmuel ha-Nagid] to write letters for her to her master, the Vizier Abu’l-Qasim ibn al-’Arif. When the latter received the letters, he was astounded at the learning they reflected… The Katib thereupon ordered that R. Samuel ha-Levi be brought to him at once, and he said to him: “It does not become you to spend your time in a shop. Henceforth you are to stay at my side.” He thus became the scribe and counsellor of the counsellor of the King.
R. Avraham Ibn Daud, Sefer ha-Kabbalah, ed. G. Cohen, Heb. pp. 53-54, Eng. pp. 72-73.
The motif of a stately figure brought low and rediscovered through the prowess of his pen is classic, and its historicity is nebulous. However, as with so many of Ibn Daud’s literary flourishes, it does not fail to reflect a basic truth: fleeing as an exile from his hometown, Shmuel really did eventually become the vizier (of the vizier) and an insider at the highest level in the court of Granada. The indistinct term “vizier”—though today Orientalizing, it actually reflects a medieval Arabic term—captures the range of Shmuel’s role as advisor, representative, treasurer, and military leader. For this he was garnered the title of nagid. He seems to have passed through several offices first, including the collecting and administering the taxes of the local Jewish community, a lucrative role with a great deal of real power, as well as secretary, for which he must have marshalled his prodigious powers of poetry.
The Warrior-Poet
When, in 1038, the king of Granada, Habbus, died, his sons vied for the throne. With Shmuel ha-Nagid’s assistance, his son Badis emerged the victor, helping Shmuel rise to even greater power. In his new capacity as advisor to Badis, Shmuel was tasked with heading the Granadan forces, which were in constant battle, especially with the nearby Taifa of Sevilla (Seville). This unusual experience as a Jew leading a Muslim army was captured in Shmuel’s many military poems. The poem below is notable for combining a military setting with classic tropes of Arabic poetry. It also reveals a melancholy (if stylized) streak in the thought of this ultimate insider:
הֲלִינוֹתִי גְדוּד כָּבֵד בְּבִירָה / הֲרָסוּהָ, יְמֵי קֶדֶם, קְצִינִים,
וְיָשַׁנּוּ עֲלֵי גַבָּהּ וְצִדָּהּ, / וְתַחְתֵּינוּ בְּעָלֶיהָ יְשֵׁנִים.
וְדִבַּרְתִּי לְלִבִּי: ״אֵי קְהָלִים / וְעַמִּים, שָׁכְנוּ בָזֹאת לְפָנִים?
וְאֵי בוֹנִים וּמַחֲרִיבִים, וְשָׂרִים / וְדַלִּים, וַעֲבָדִים וַאֲדוֹנִים,
וּמוֹלִידִים וְשַׁכּוּלִים, וְאָבוֹת / וּבָנִים, וַאֲבֵלִים וַחֲתָנִים,
וְעַם רַב נוֹלְדוּ אַחַר אֲחֵרִים / בְּיָמִים אַחֲרֵי יָמִים וְשָׁנִים,
וְהָיוּ עַל פְּנֵי אֶרֶץ שְׁכֵנִים – / וְהֵם הַיּוֹם בְּלֵב אֶרֶץ שְׁכוּנִים!
וְקֶבֶר חָלְפוּ מֵאַרְמְנוֹתָם / וְעָפָר מֵחֲצֵרִים נַעֲמָנִים,
וְאִלּוּ הֶעֱלוּ רֹאשָׁם וְיָצְאוּ – / שְׁלָלוּנוּ נְפָשִׁים וַעֲדָנִים.
אֱמֶת, נַפְשִׁי, אֱמֶת, כָּהֵם לְמָחָר / אֱהִי אָנִי וְאֵלֶּה הַהֲמוֹנִים״.I bade my troops encamp once at a town /
That enemies had razed in ancient times.
We pitched our tents and slept upon its site, /
While under us its former masters slept.Then to myself I mused: “Where are the folk /
Who long ago inhabited this place?
Where are the men who built and those who wrecked? /
Where rich, where poor, where slaves, and where the lords?Those who begot and those bereft, and sons /
And fathers, mourners, bridegrooms—where are they?
And generation after generation, born /
As centuries succeed years of days.Upon the face of earth they used to live, /
And yet today they lie within its heart.
They’ve changed their palaces for sepulchers; /
They’ve moved from lovely mansions into dirt.But should they lift their heads and leave those graves, /
How easily they’d overwhelm our troops!”
Never forget, my soul, that one day soon /
This mighty host and I will share their doom.Translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin in Wine, Women, and Death, pp. 154-155. Hebrew here on Ben-Yehuda.
The abandoned campsite is one of the topoi that often sets the scene for musing in medieval Arabic poetry, exactly as we see here. Even at the height of military power, Shmuel’s thoughts turn to the inevitable, as he is reminded of the common lot of humankind. Of course, this is a heavily scripted kind of musing, but that does not make it insincere. The morose moment reminds us that, like the academic debates about relative toleration, even the most charmed of lives was fraught with upheavals and limitations that were deeply felt.
Of Fathers and Sons and Ignominious Ends
Shmuel had three sons and a daughter; we know the most about his eldest son and successor Yehosef, who began to copy out his father’s poetry as a young child of eight (a common pedagogical practice at the time). By this time, it seems his father’s poetry was organized into collections (in Arabic, singular, diwan) known as Ben Tehilim, Ben Mishlei, and Ben Kohelet, although Yehosef later had a hand in editing them. Shmuel managed to make an important marriage match for Yehosef with the daughter of R. Nissim Gaon of Qayrawan (Kairouan), cementing the two illustrious families’ relationship.
Twenty-one when his father died, R. Yehosef ha-Nagid was given his father’s position in Badis’ court and proved skillful in forging alliances against Sevilla. However, the glittering life of the Nagids came to a halt in 1064, when Yehosef was accused of poisoning the crown prince (Badis’ brother and competitor for the throne). This accusation mushroomed into another, which claimed that Yehosef had assassinated Badis, who had stopped making public appearances. (Yehosef had not.) At the same time, however, Yehosef undermined Badis’ plot to slaughter his opponents by tipping them off, which did little for his standing in court. The nail in the coffin, quite literally, was the provocative poem promulgated against Yehosef by the Muslim theologian Abu Ishaq al-Ilbibi. Though Shmuel did not live to see it, his son was murdered and the Jews of Granada subjected to violence in the wake of these accusations. Even the mighty, even in the “Golden” Age, were subject to the vagaries of power and prejudice.
Reads and Resources
Dr. Gerson Cohen’s English translations of all the sections of Sefer ha-Kabbala that deal with R. Shmuel ha-Nagid can be found here.
Another translation of the poem above, by Peter Cole, is available at the Poetry Foundation. It is part of a group of three translations by Cole; this poem is a great favorite of mine and this one is seriously on-brand. The originals are published in Haim Schirman’s anthology. (Can there be any more perfect name for a scholar of classical Hebrew poetry than Schirman?)
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