168 Tasca
The aljama enforced Jewish laws, formulated regulations to uphold these
rules, and provided education for the children as well as all the other social,
legal, and religious functions. On 1 May 1335, Alfonso IV additionally granted
Cagliari’s aljama the same rights as the Jews of Barcelona, inviting the com-
munity to systemize their internal organization secundum et pro ut sit per
aljamam Barchinone (according to how it is for the Barcelonan alhama).10 The
“Cagliari” Jews held various professions: a few were craftsmen, the majority
were merchants and traders, and others practiced the art of medicine with a
degree of expertise unrivaled in this period.11 The Catalan troops simultane-
ously occupied the town of Sassari, where the Jews began to settle near the city
walls from 1340 onwards. Their numbers soon increased, and in 1345 they re-
ceived the same rights from the king as those granted to the aljama of Cagliari
ten years earlier. Sassari’s aljama was populated exclusively by merchants and
tradesmen, and consequently had the economic means to readily become a
community of moneylenders.12
In 1354, after a long series of reprisals and a siege lasting almost five months,
the town of Alghero also surrendered to Catalan troops, who evacuated the
former inhabitants to provide space for the new population of conquerors.
Among the incentives that King Peter IV offered to all the new pobladors was
the annulment of any punishments or crimes, as well as special guarantees of
safe conduct. Many Jews were encouraged to take part in the 1354 royal expe-
dition to the island, spurred on by their desire for new territory, and presum-
ably hoping to desert the royal army at the first opportunity. More Jews from
Barcelona, Cervera, Gerona, and Sicily arrived on the island with the army,
comprising the first group of what was later to become Sardinia’s economically
most important aljama. The population of the Alghero aljama increased in
ca. 1370 with the arrival of a number of families from southern France. A third
migratory wave of Provençal merchants arrived at the beginning of the fif-
teenth century—as shown by the surnames de Nathan, de Bellcayre, de Lunell,
de Carcassona—a period in which the aljama reached its greatest economic
splendor.13
10 Gabriella Olla Repetto, “Vicende ebraiche nella Sardegna aragonese del ‘300,” Archivio
Storico Sardo 42 (2002), p. 292.
11 Cecilia Tasca, “Medici ebrei nel regno di Sardegna in epoca catalano aragonese,” Bollettino
di Scienze Mediche di Bologna (2011).
12 Tasca, Gli ebrei in Sardegna, p. 95.
13 Ibid., p. 106; Marco Milanese, “Fouilles récentes dans la juharía médiévale d’Alghero en
Sardigne,” in L’archéologie du judaïsme en France et en Europe, eds Paul Salmona and
Laurence Sigal (Paris, 2011), pp. 153–160.