Samuel ibn Naghrillah (, Sh'muel HaLevi ben Yosef HaNagid; ʾAbū ʾIsḥāq ʾIsmāʿīl bin an-Naghrīlah), mainly known as Shmuel HaNagid (, Shmuel HaNagid, lit. Samuel the Prince) and Isma’il ibn Naghrilla (born 993; died 1056), was a medieval Sephardic Jewish Talmudic scholar, grammarian, philologist, soldier, merchant, politician, and an influential poet who lived in Iberia at the time of the Moorish rule. Additionally, he held the position of Prime Minister of the Taifa of Granada and served as the battlefield commander of the Granadan army, making him arguably the most politically influential Jew in Islamic Spain.
Life
Samuel ibn Naghrillah was an Andalusian Jew born in Mérida to a wealthy family in 993. He studied Jewish law and became a Talmudic scholar who was fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, and one of the Berber languages.
He was the student of Rabbi Chanoch, who was the head of the Rabbinical community during the al-Andalus caliphate. He was twenty years old when the caliphate fell. He then moved to Malaga and became either a spice merchant or grocer. Around 1020 he moved to Granada where he was hired as the secretary to ‘Abu ‘l-’Abbas ibn al-’Arif, who was the chief secretary to the King of Granada. His relations with the Granada royal court, and his eventual promotion to the position of vizier, happened in a coincidental manner of which 20th century scholar Jacob Rader Marcus gives an interesting account pulled from a 12th century book Sefer Seder ha-kabbalah. The shop Shmuel set up was near the palace of the vizier of Granada, Abu al-Kasim ibn al-Arif. The vizier met Samuel ibn Naghrillah when his maidservant began to ask Shmuel to write letters for her. Eventually Shmuel was given the jobs of a tax collector, and then a secretary, and finally an assistant vizier of state to the Berber king Habbus al-Muzaffar.
When Habbus died in 1038, Samuel ibn Naghrillah made certain that King Habbus’ second son Badis ibn Habus succeeded him, not his firstborn son Bulukkin. The reason behind this act was that Badis was more favored by the people, compared to Bulukkin, with the general Jewish population under Samuel ibn Naghrillah supporting Badis. In return for his support, Badis made Samuel ibn Naghrillah his vizier and top general. Some sources say that he held office as a viziership of state for over three decades until his death sometime around or after 1056. Because Jews were not permitted to hold public office in Islamic nations as an agreement made in the Pact of Umar, that Samuel ibn Naghrillah, a Jew or dhimmi, should hold such a high public office was rare. His example was used to support the Golden Age theory, regarding Jewish life under Muslim rule, rather than the lachrymose view. His unique position as the viziership made him the highest-ranking Jewish courtier in all of Spain. Recognizing this, in the year 1027, he took on the title of nagid, or Prince. The peculiar fact regarding his position as the top general in the Granada army was that he was a Jew. That a Jew would command the Muslim army, which he did for 17 years, having them under his authority, was an astonishing feat. Other leading Jews, including Joseph ibn Migash, in the generation that succeeded Samuel ha-Nagid, lent their support to Bulukkin and were forced to flee for their safety.
One story that encapsulates Samuel ibn Naghrillah’s political prowess takes place soon after the succession of Badis. Yidder’s (Habbus’ favorite nephew) faction told Samuel ibn Naghrillah that they wanted to overthrow the new king and wanted his support. Samuel ibn Naghrillah faked support and allowed them to hold a meeting in his house. He told Badis and allowed him to spy on the meeting. Badis wanted to execute the traders but Samuel ibn Naghrillah convinced him that it would be politically better not to. In the end, he was even further respected by the king but also in good standing with the rebels.
As a Jew, Shmuel ha-Nagid actively sought to assert independence from the Babylonian geonim by writing independently on Jewish law for the Spanish community. The Nagid became the leader of Spanish Jewry around the late 1020s. He promoted the welfare of the Jewish people through various acts. For example, he promoted Jewish learning by purchasing many copies of the Talmud, the massive compendium of commentaries on the Jewish oral law. He also promoted the study of the Talmud by giving a form of scholarship to those who wanted to study the Torah for a living. He died in 1056 of natural causes.
It has often been speculated that Samuel was the father or otherwise an ancestor of Qasmūna, the only attested female Arabic-language medieval Jewish poet, but the foundations for these claims are shaky.