Urban Morphology and Functional Hierarchy of the Jewish Quarter of Zaragoza (Spain) at the End of the Fifteenth Century

Abstract

This article analyzes the morphology and functionality of the Jewish quarter of Zaragoza at the end of the fifteenth century, shortly before the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, from a multidisciplinary perspective. It deals with the specific nature and understanding of one of the most important Jewish neighborhoods in Sepharad on the internal levels of Hebrew law and the confessional community, where urbanism is traced out from the privacy of the home and not from the public space and where the neighborhood is linked to the synagogues. Over two thousand documents from the 1492 to 1500 period, from the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, notarial protocols, municipal sources, and inquisitorial trials, have been consulted. A method of vertical cartographic coordination based on geographic information systems is applied as a way of geo-referencing the oldest surviving plans to reconstruct the physical and experiential space of the city in the Late Middle Ages.