page_title: A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France
section_title: Rise to power, life, sources
hierarchical_section_title: A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France / Makhiri dynasty, according to Zuckerman / The Carolingians and the Davidic line / From Babylonia to Frankia - Makhir of Narbonne / Rise to power, life, sources
caption_attribution_description: English: Muslim troops leaving Narbonne to Pepin le Bref in 759.
context_page_description: A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France, 768–900 is a research book about Frankish medieval history by Arthur J. Zuckerman.
  According to Zuckerman's thesis presented in the book, a vassal Jewish princedom was established in Narbonne by the Carolingian king Pepin as a reward for Jewish cooperation in the Frankish conquest of the city in 759 CE from Muslim Al-Andalus. The dynasty of Jewish rulers was later also confirmed by Pepin's son Charlemagne and endowed with significant lands and privileges. He views later counts and dukes of Toulouse and Barcelona under the Carolingians as scions of these Jewish rulers. The first ruler was Makhir of Narbonne, a likely descendant of the Babylonian exilarch Bostanai, of the 7th century CE.
  Zuckerman argues that the Princedom played an important role as a buffer zone in the border area between the Muslim caliphate south of the Pyrenees and the Christian Frankish Empire in the north. Its counts played influential roles in the imperial military campaigns in the Hispanic Marches, Aquitaine, and at the Carolingian court in Aachen.
  Zuckerman's thesis has been contested by several scholars and criticized for its conjecture and lack of reliable evidence.
context_section_description: For their cooperation in ending the seven years long siege of Narbonne in 759 CE, Pepin the Short promised the local Jews formal recognition and a prince (nasi) of their own.
  This was implemented 9 years later in 768 when Makhir of the Davidic lineage was received from Baghdad by Pepin and his son Charlemagne. Zuckerman argues that he was accepted into the Frankish nobility under the name Theodoric, identifying him with the documented Frankish count of that name. Theodoric was granted by the Carolingian broad authority over Jews and Christians, extensive hereditary territories and "a great possession", including former church property lost decades before to the Umayyad Caliphate. Makhir became by an act of commendation a vassal of the Carolingian who in turn received overlordship of the Jews as evidence of entering legitimate biblical succession. Theoderic (alias Makhir, according to Zuckerman) received a Carolingian princess as his wife - apparently Alda, the daughter of Charles Martel and sister of Pepin. A Hebrew description of Makhir's installation was documented by Abraham ibn Daud, author of Sefer Seder HaQabbalah (Book of the Order of Tradition) - specially in the Addendum to Sefer HaQabbalah (composed before 1165, during the life of the then-young nasi Kalonymos b. Tordos, a supposed descendant of Makhir). It refers consistently to Makhir and his descendants as a dynasty of nesi'im princes whose power and position in Narbonne were virtually identical with that of the exilarchs (k'mo rashe galuyot) in Babylonia. A fragment of a legal document from 791 that names Maghario Count of Narbonne is interpreted by Zuckerman as using a Romanized form of Makhir, making it the only non-Hebrew document specifically mentioning him.
  As Zuckerman relates, this assignment of "a great possession" was immediately sharply protested by Pope Stephen III, to no avail, in a papal epistle dated 768 complaining bitterly about gift of money and cession of territory to the Narbonne Jewry. Zuckerman finds what he considers to be a corresponding claim of a great endowment in favor of a Jewish scion of royal lineage from Baghdad in the Gesta. A Jewish principate in Septimania would have represented a significant theological challenge to the church during its whole existence and Zuckerman sees its aftertaste as still perceptible even in the 12th century after the Princedom lost most of its real power from the Carolingian era. In a caustic remark during a theological messianic dispute (before 1143) about Genesis 49:10 Peter the Venerable of Clune demanded from the Jews to produce an example of a king of the House of Juda and rejects their claim of a Jewish King in Narbonne because he did not fulfil his theological expectation of ruling over the Holy Land: "As for me, I will not accept that king (as something worthy of ridicule) whom some of you claim to have in Narbonne, the city in Gaul, others in Rouen. I will not accept a Jew as a King of the Jews except one residing in and ruling the Kingdom of the Jews (namely, Palestine)". This document mentioning a Jewish king in Narbonne is older than any of the Hebrew and Gesta sources and is viewed as independent of all of them.
  In 1829 Dumège reported the presence of a now lost manuscript from archives the Abbey Lagrasse near Narbonne relating a similar narrative of a king of the Jews, descendant of the prophet Daniel (also descendant of Davidic line according to rabbinic tradition) who ruled in Narbonne during the reign of Charlemagne. This document also mentioned that in 791 the Jewish king send an embassy of ten Jews led by Isaac to Charlemagne, paying a large sum for him to grant them a permanent king of their own in Narbonne. This Charlemagne accepted and ceded to them the part of Narbonne where they settled.
  Count Theodoric (identical to Makhir according to Zuckerman) participated successfully in multiple military campaigns to secure the southwestern border of the Frankish empire.The most important was conquering the Hispanic Marches on both sides of the Pyrenees in 791. In the same year Charlem
caption: Umayyad troops leaving Narbonne to Pépin the Short, in 759. Painting of 1880
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