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''Aljama'' (, , ) is a term of Arabic origin used in old official documents in Spain and Portugal to designate the self-governing communities of Moors and Jews living under Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula. In some present-day Spanish cities, the name is still applied to the quarters where such communities lived, though they are many centuries gone. The Jewish communities of Spain, owing to their social isolation and to the religious and political regulations imposed upon them, had always formed groups apart from the rest of the population. The authority exercised by their own rabbis and the system of tax-collection by the heads of the congregations for the administration of communal affairs, placed them almost completely without the jurisdiction of the government of the country; and, as a result, they soon came to be dealt with by the officials not as subjects amenable to the general law of the land, but as collective bodies with special privileges and special duties. Thus, the Visigothic kings imposed a tax not upon each individual Jew or upon the heads of families, but upon the community as a whole, allowing the communal authorities to fix the individual rate of taxation. But both under the Visigoths and under the Moors there was neither regularity in the transactions of the rabbis and elders nor system in the attitude of the government toward the Jewish communities. With the reestablishment of Christian rule, however, the relation between the government and its Jewish subjects gradually became a well-defined one. In 1219 and 1284 in Toledo, in 1273 in Barcelona, in 1290 at Huete, and on more than one occasion during those years in Portugal, councils were held of Spanish officials and Jewish representatives for the purpose of establishing a just rate of taxation for Jewish communities, and of devising adequate means for tax-collection. This first official recognition by the government of the Jewish communities as separate bodies led to a still further change in the treatment of the Jewish congregations and in the legislation, both local and national, regarding them. The bishops of the various districts assumed immediate authority over them, and, in conjunction with Jewish representatives, formed rules which were henceforth to govern the communities. The elections of rabbis and judges were to be held at stated intervals, and the names of these dignitaries submitted to the bishop for approval; there was to be a "rabbi of the court" for the presentation of communal questions before the proper authorities; and the heads of the congregation were made answerable for the conduct of the community. In all government action, whether local or general, the unit considered was in most cases the community, not the individual Jew. ==Etymology and development of the concept== The word ''aljama'' is derived from the Arabic ''jama'' ("gather") plus the definite article ''al'', which meant originally "congregation", "assembly", "group", but which, even before the establishment of Spanish rule, was applied by the Moors to their own religious bodies and the larger mosques, and especially to the Jewish communities in the midst of them, and to the synagogues and schools which formed the center of all Jewish life. The term was adopted by the Christians, and its meaning extended so as to designate also the quarters that Jews and Moors had made their own. In some Spanish cities, the former Jewish quarters are still known by that name, even though the Jews were expelled in 1492. Very often, for purposes of distinction, such phrases as ''Aljama de los Judíos'' ("Aljama of the Jews") and ''Aljama de los Moros'' ("Aljama of the Moors") were used. But the circumstance that the Moors of Spain had by the term designated more especially the Jewish community has left its trace in the use of the word in the Spanish language; for in Spanish literature ''Aljama'', without any further specification, stands for ''Sanedrin'' or for ''Judería'' ("Jewry"), or even for the Jewish place of worship, in the concrete as well as in the abstract sense. This use occurs at a very early date. In the "Poem of Alexander", in the "Milagros de Nuestra Señora", and in the "Duelo de la Virgen" of Gonzalo de Berceo, all of the 13th century, ''Aljama'' or ''Alfama'' is employed to designate the people of ancient Jerusalem; and the historian of the 16th century, Mariana, uses ''Aljama'' for the synagogue: "they devastated their houses and their ''aljamas''." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Aljama」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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