Rabbi Shmuel HaLevi and the Granada Massacre

Rabbi Shmuel HaLevi was appointed prince in the year 4787 (1027), and he conferred great benefits on the Jewish people in Spain, in northeastern and north-central Africa, in the land of Egypt, in Sicily, and as far as the Babylonian academy and Yerushalayim. All of the students who lived in those lands benefited from his generosity, because he purchased for them numerous manuscripts of the Mishnah and the Talmud. (Printing had not yet been invented; manuscripts were very expensive.) Besides this, he furnished olive oil every year for the lamps of the synagogues in Yerushalayim. He spread the knowledge of the Torah and passed away at a ripe old age, having acquired the four crowns of Kesser Torah, Kesser Gedulah, Kesser Leviyah, and, most important, Kesser Shem Tov.

Rabbi Shmuel HaLevi died in the year 4815 (1055), and his son, Rabbi Yosef HaLevi, succeeded him as prince. Of all the good traits of his father, he lacked but one: he was not humble like his father, because he grew up in riches and never had to bear the yoke of poverty in his youth. The Berber princes were jealous of him, with the result that on the Shabbos of the ninth of Teves in the year 4827, he and the Jewish community of Granada were murdered. About 150 families were killed. (This is the first known massacre of Jews in Spain by Muslims.)