TRUJILLO

TRUJILLO, town in Estremadura, W. Spain, on an important junction near the Portuguese border. Trujillo was taken by Alfonso VIII in 1184, then reconquered by the Moors; it definitely became part of the kingdom of Castile only in 1233. It may be assumed that there was a Jewish settlement there in the Muslim period, but the available data mainly concerns the Christian period. Toward the end of the 13th century, the community of Trujillo was the second largest in Estremadura, after Badajoz. In the 14th century Jews in Trujillo owned land, vineyards, and houses, which apparently had belonged to them before. There also were merchants and craftsmen among them. No data has survived about the fate of this community during the 1391 persecutions, but there were Jews who forsook their faith under duress in Trujillo as elsewhere. Yet the community was able to pay 6,000 maravedis in 1439 and 7,500 in 1474. A year before the edict of expulsion, in 1491, it spiraled to 11,400 maravedis, owing to an influx of refugees from other Jewish communities and to a special tax imposed as a contribution toward the war against Granada. In 1480 the segregation of Jews and Conversos into different quarters was carried out in Trujillo. The Jews were ordered to leave their quarter within two years and resettle in another part allotted to them. Exchange of houses was arranged, and the Jews were allowed to build a synagogue in their own area. abraham seneor collected taxes and imposts in the town and its surroundings in the 1480s. The community existed until the edict of expulsion, when the exiles from elsewhere in Spain passed through Trujillo and Badajoz on their way to Portugal. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Baer, Urkunden, 2 (1936), index; J. González, El Reino de Castilla en la época de Alonso VIII, 3 vols. (1960), index; Suárez Fernández, Documentos, index. (Haim Beinart)