The French scholar Gautier noted[1099] that the Berber tribes of the 7th century were divided into the Bernes and the Botr, the latter being the Zenata, who lived in the Aurez mountains, and were attached, according to Ibn Khaldoun,[1100] to Judaism. The Jerwa and their renowned Queen Dihiyah al-Cahina,[1101] belonged to the same group. The Botr had two sub-divisions, the Luata and the Nafusah,[1102] whose descendants still inhabit the caves of Jebel a-Nefusah on the Syrtic coast.[1103] The Luata on the other hand, were derived from the Barka region,[1104] and Gautier[1105] is of the opinion that the tribal federation of the Zenata (i.e. the Botr) and their attachment to Judaism, were formed in the time of Trajan. But we shall see later that the Judaism of the Botr tribes has been subjected to sharp and negative criticism.
Finally, any consideration of the evidence for Jewish rural settlement in Roman Cyrenaica, must take into account the Arab tradition of Jewish occupation at a number of country-sites now virtually abandoned. Traditions of this sort are associated with ‛Ein-Shahat (Cyrene), Lamluda, Messa, Negharnes, al-Gubba and Gasr ibn-Igdem, all known to be ancient settlements.[1106] The name Hirbet al-Yahud is also found at several rural sites: such are ‛Ein Targhuna, Siret al-Dahar al-Ahmar on the Tocra pass; Al-Asgafa (east of Bengazi), and Lamluda. The name al-Yahudiyeh survives near Sauro north of Barka,[1107] while between here and the sea the names Ras e-Sabbat and Kaf e-Sabbat occur.
That these traditions preserve a historical nucleus is demonstrated by examples outside Cyrenaica: one is Hirbet al-Yahud, ascribed by the Arabs to the fortress of Bethar in Judaea;[1108] others are Tell al-Yehudiyeh in Egypt, attached to the fortified temple of Onias (Leontopolis)[1109] and Gasr bint al- Yehudi, associated with the Egyptian fortress of Tahpanhes, where Jews lived at the time of the Prophet Jeremiah.[1110] The degree of truth in the name-tradition is demonstrated in Cyrenaica itself at ‛Ein Targhuna. Such traditions, however, may reflect more than one period, and some may have grown up after the hellenistic and Roman periods. Such a possibility applies, for example, to the local Jewish tradition which holds that al-Fayyidiyeh, south of Cyrene, was the Rephidim of the Book of Exodus (XI, 1); here an ancient Hebrew tombstone has been found, to be dated, it would seem, after the Byzantine epoch.[1111] A similar tradition identifies ‛Ein Mara in the eastern Jebel (the ancient village of Hydrax), with the place of the same name that occurs in Genesis XV, 23, and Messa with the Masah of Genesis, XVII, 7.[1112] Even if the resemblance of later names with those of the Bible caused the identification, — and we are bound to ask why such Semitic names should be present there in the first place — the al-Fayyidiyeh tombstone shows that they reflect, in given cases, actual Jewish occupation at some period or other.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BACKGROUND OF THE JEWISH REVOLT
The period of transition of Cyrenaica from Ptolemaic rule to a thoroughgoing Roman administration was marked by two events, an understanding of which is important to our theme. These events were the social conflict revealed by the rising of Nicocrates and the revolution of Arataphila on the one hand, and the transfer of the Ptolemaic royal lands to the Roman state on the other.
Following the civil war which ended with the inauguration of an aristocratic regime at Cyrene by Arataphila in the years between 91 and 82 B.C., a Jewish stasis broke out. The word “stasis” may denote either a rising on the part of the entire Jewish group, or conflict between one section of the Jewish community and the rest of it. As we have no details of the affair, any explanation must be in the sphere of conjecture, yet an examination of the general contemporary background may cast some light on its significance. As mentioned above, the decade in which the rising of Nicocrates broke out at Cyrene was a stormy one; in the year 88 B.C. a civil war was raging in the Egyptian Thebais, one of a series of revolts by the lower classes of the Egyptian populace, more especially the peasants, caused by the general conditions imposed by the Ptolemaic regime. The same year beheld the beginning of the war of Mithradates king of Pontus against Rome, a war accompanied by violent social conflict, risings of debtors to throw off the yoke of debt, and of slaves to free themselves from their masters. In Italy the embers of the Social War still flickered, while the struggle between the party of the wealthy and the Populares continued, sharpened by monetary crisis and widespread indebtedness. On the sea, an unprecedented proliferation of piracy was nurtured by the same social privations. An investigation of Cyrene’s agrarian plight (Ch. III) has revealed that in the later 2nd century B.C. there were signs of agrarian crisis, and documents indicate a fall of agricultural production, while rural disturbances are deducible from the edicts of Euergetes II or Soter II.
It may be supposed that this crisis also furnished the conditions of the severe struggle between the Cyrenean aristocracy and the broad strata of the people, which reached a stage of violence several years after the end of Ptolemaic rule. The question is, did these antagonisms find an echo among the Jewish community, when Lucullus arrived in Cyrene? One aspect that may assist a solution of the question is the fact that we hear faint reports of anti-Jewish disorders in Alexandria in the same year.[1113] Even if we are not in a position to decide whether what occurred at Cyrene was a clash between Jews and Greeks or between two Jewish factions, either would fit the situation of civil strife and economic crisis in which social ferment was apt to seek an outlet in inter-community hatred as a substitute for class-hatred. But the synchronization of the phenomenon in both places — each important as a Jewish centre — possesses historical significance in so far as it proves the unity of public mood and of the social setting in both cities, and, despite the difficulties of communication over distances in those days, shows that the use of analogy is permissible in order to understand events in the various eastern Mediterranean centres of the period. If then we face two possibilities — the hatred of gentiles for Jews, or antagonisms within the Jewish group itself, — we may note that the events in Alexandria are decisively in favour of the first interpretation, while Josephus’ language derived from Strabo that “(Sulla) sent Lucullus... against the stasis of our people... at Cyrene”,[1114] supports it. If so, it is possible that the Jews had fallen out with the aristocratic regime of Arataphila, meaning that the movement was the work of the popular elements among the Jewish community.
The acute class antagonisms revealed in the last period of Ptolemaic rule and at the beginning of Cyrene’s entry into the sphere of Roman influence, find expression also in the juridical division of the city as reported by Strabo (p. 176), and principally in the separation of the peasantry (meaning probably the Libyans) from the rest of the population. In considering this subject, we encounter the phenomenon of the alliance between Anabus, the Libyan king, with Arataphila and the Cyrenean aristocracy. Under the Ptolemies the Libyan tribes were controlled by a royal official, the Libyarch, but on the “liberation” of the cities by Rome those settled on the fringes of their territories, in so far as their lands were not included in the ager publicus, gained their freedom, and again became a political factor and an influence on security. A tangible expression of Anabus’ alliance with the Pentapolis towns has in my view been found in a new inscription from Cyrene, published in 1962:[1115] this commemorates the erection by Cyrene of the statue of one “Aiglanor son of Demetrius of Cyrene, one of the kinsmen of the late King Ptolemy, benefactor in the greatest matters both of his country and of the other cities and peoples round about the city-territory”. This inscription was engraved after the death of Ptolemy Apion, and informs us that the political situation created by the end of royal rule was common to all the cities of the Pentapolis; it also reflects the rapprochement between their aristocracy and the Libyan tribes. Such a rapprochement had taken place once before in the 6th century B.C. when Arkesilaos II’s brothers founded Barka jointly with the Libyans and formed an alliance with the local king, whose descendant, Aladdeir, still lived in the town in the hellenistic period. That step was in its time an attempt to maintain together with the Libyans the extensive economy based chiefly once real cultivation and the rearing of horses and cattle, as opposed to a more varied and intensive agriculture combining sheep-raising, silphium, arable farming, plantations and green crops. The alliance of Anabus and Arataphila was a political one, and would have obliged certain concessions in exchange for the aid rendered by Anabus to the Cyrenean nobility in their struggle. Accordingly it may be supposed that the Libyan tribes were awarded greater freedom of movement over the plateau, and this tendency was probably not contrary to the will of the large estate-owners who devoted their lands chiefly to stock-rearing and cereals. This hypothesis would offer an explanation for the Jewish stasis suppressed by Lucullus, for the new political settlement would have exposed the tenants of the royal land to the unrestrained depredations of the nomads, and have alienated them from the rule of the aristocrats of Cyrene.
1114
Ap. Jos.
1115