Samuel ibn Naghrīla was an eleventh-century Hebrew poet in the Spanish city of Granada. Like many Jewish poets of his day, he wrote in a style of poetry that had been adopted from Arabic poetics in the tenth century and that, by his lifetime, was flourishing amongst Hebrew-language writers and was simply the way to write poetry in Spain. It wasn’t seen as something foreign even though its origins were in the poetic tradition of another language. Samuel was the nagid, or head of the Jewish community, as well as a high-ranking vizier to the Muslim emir of the city-state of Granada. His known in historical sources as “twice the vizier,” which refers to his twin prowess in poetry and in military leadership. The research done by my doctoral advisor at Cornell, Ross Brann, has shown that Samuel was largely held in esteem by his contemporaries; and even when he is the object of religious polemic, these are largely superficial charges that simply conform to the rhetorical standards of the day and by conforming to those standards, authors could actually indicate their esteem for Samuel in between the lines.
People of Color in European Art History
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