History of the Jews in Portugal

The history of the Jews in Portugal reaches back over two thousand years and is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities that originated in the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain).

Jewish populations have existed in the area even before the country was established, back to the Roman era ( province of Lusitania ), or even before – an attested Jewish presence in Portuguese territory, however, can only be documented since 482 CE. With the fall of the Roman Empire, Jews were persecuted by the Visigoths and other European Christian kingdoms which controlled the area after that period.

In 711, the Moorish invasion of the Iberian Peninsula was seen by the many in the Jewish population as a liberation, and marked as the beginning of what many have seen as the Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula (the Islamic Al-Andalus), even if the Jews, as well as the Christians (the Mozarabs of the Visigothic rite), under Muslim rule were considered Dhimmi, and had to pay a special tax.

Rapidly in the 8th century, the Christian kingdoms of the north mountainous areas of the Iberian Peninsula (Kingdom of Asturias) started a long military campaign against the Muslim invaders, the Reconquista. The Jews, since many knew the Arabic language, were used by the Christians as both spies and diplomats on this campaign that took centuries. This granted them some respect, although there was always prejudice.

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