[3][4] Joseph ibn Naghrela, or Joseph ha-Nagid (Hebrew: רבי יהוסף בן שמואל הלוי הנגיד Ribbi Yehosef ben Shemu'el ha-Lewi ha-Nagid; Arabic: ابو حسين بن النغريلة Abu Hussein bin Naghrela) (15 September 1035[5] – 30 December 1066), was a vizier to the Berber monarch Badis ibn Habus, king of the Taifa of Granada, during the Moorish rule of al-Andalus, and the nagid or leader of the Iberian Jews.
[6] Joseph was born in Granada, the eldest son of the Talmudic scholar, politician, famous poet and warrior Rabbi Samuel ibn Naghrillah.
Some information about his childhood and upbringing is preserved in the collection of his father's Hebrew poetry in which Joseph writes[5] that he began copying at the age of eight and a half.
[6] Abraham ibn Daud describes Joseph in highly laudatory terms, saying that he lacked none of his father's good qualities, except that he was not quite as humble, having been brought up in luxury.
[2] The most bitter among his many enemies was Abu Ishak of Elvira, who hoped to obtain an office at the court and wrote a malicious poem against Joseph and his fellow Jews.
According to the historian Bernard Lewis, the massacre is "usually ascribed to a reaction among the Muslim population against a powerful and ostentatious Jewish vizier".
This poem, which is said to be instrumental in provoking the anti-Jewish outbreak of that year, contains these specific lines: Lewis continues: "Diatribes such as Abu Ishaq's and massacres such as that in Granada in 1066 are of rare occurrence in Islamic history".
Walter Laqueur writes, "Jews could not as a rule attain public office (as usual there were exceptions), and there were occasional pogroms, such as in Granada in 1066".