Near the end of his classic tale, Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott mentions that Rebecca, the healer rescued by Ivanhoe, and her father are fleeing to Spain. Even though Ivanhoe saved Rebecca from being burned alive as a witch, she no longer feels safe in England. So she and her father sail to Spain, where they have relatives. After deciding that I wanted to tell the story of Rebecca’s life in Spain, I realized I had to do a lot of research about conditions for Jews in 12th century Spain. And what I found confounded me.
Despite the commonly held belief that the Muslims who ruled southern Spain at the time were more tolerant of the Jews than the Christians (who ruled northern Spain), I learned that a more militant Islamic sect known as the Almohads had come to power in Cordoba by the mid 12th century and were persecuting the Jews who lived there, requiring them to convert or leave. That’s why the famous Jewish scholar Maimonides, then only 15, and his family left Cordoba in 1150 CE and moved first to Morocco and then to Egypt, where the Muslim rulers were more tolerant of Jews. Indeed, Maimonides was a physician to the Sultan.
In my novel, Rebecca of Ivanhoe, I portray Rebecca and her father arriving in Cordoba, only to find that their relatives are about to move to Toledo, Spain, a city just south of Madrid that was controlled by the Christian King Alfonso VIII. As I discovered in my historical research, Alfonso was more tolerant of Jews for two reasons: they contributed handsomely to his war chest, and his own mistress was Jewish. Even though King Alfonso was married to Eleanor, a sister of Richard the Lionheart (whose escapades figure prominently in Ivanhoe), he fell in love with a beautiful Jewess, Rachel of Esra, and set up court in Toledo with her. Rachel, according to my research, wielded unusual influence with the King, persuading him to appoint several wealthy Jews to his cabinet. In my novel, she becomes friends with Rebecca after the healer treats her for infertility.
I’m not going to tell you what happens to Rachel, only that her fate in the novel is historical accurate and will have a bearing on Rebecca’s destiny as well. If you want to learn more, you can pre-order Rebecca of Ivanhoe here or here.
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