La Giudecca

In Southern Italy and Sicily, la Giudecca identified any urban district (or a portion of a village) where Jewish communities dwelled and had their shrines and business.Unlike ghettos, in some Southern Italian hamlets and cities the Hebraic families and their members concentrated without constraint and they could freely circulate and even contribute with Christian neighbours to the success or commercial, cultural and artistic progresses of a region.A very few Sicilian Giudeccas were unhealthy and declined, the greater part numbered lots of craftsmen, doctors and dealers.

The toponym's meaning

Judeca and Giudecca are the corrupt or jargonized medieval versions of the latin female adjective Judaica , namely Judaical or Judean.Two further and plausible significances for this vocable are The Jewess or The Jewry .

Southern Italian Jewish neighbourhoods

Italian Region	Southern Italian Cities, small towns, villages with their Hebrew Districts
Sicily	Palermo: Meschita and Guzzetta. In the Arab Balarm^[1] these two areas were called Harat-Al-Yahud (The Jewish Ward)[1]. Caccamo Castelbuono Castronovo di Sicilia Polizzi Generosa Termini Imerese: Celtigene Messina: Tirone and Paraporto Castroreale San Marco d'Alunzio Taormina: Giudecca Milazzo: Borgo Vecchio Lipari Catania: Giudecca Soprana, Giudecca Sottana, Piano di Giacobbe Caltagirone Castiglione di Sicilia Mineo Paternò Randazzo Syracuse: Giudecca,San Giovanni delle Grotte Pelopee Lentini Palazzolo Acreide Rosolini Cittadella Maccari Noto: Judaica Parva (from Latin Parva = The Little) Enna: Iudeca Agira Calascibetta Caltanissetta Gela Sofiana Ragusa Caucana Comiso Modica: Cartellone Santa Croce Camerina Scicli Agrigento Bivona Caltabellotta Cammarata Sciacca Siculiana Trapani: Giudecca and Santa Margherita Alcamo Erice: Rabato Marsala Mazara del Vallo Mozia Salemi
Calabria	Reggio Calabria: Giudecca Catanzaro: Cafarone Cosenza: Giudeca or Iudaica Nicotera: Musconà and Timpone Gerace Montalto Altomonte Monteleone Castrovillari Bisignano Seminara Acri Santa Severina: Iudea Nicastro Crotone Rossano Corigliano
Campania	Naples Sorrento Amalfi Salerno
Basilicata	Melfi
Apulia	Bari Trani: Giudecca Brindisi Nardò Taranto
Sardinia	Cagliari: Giudaria di Castello Oristano Alghero

Some names' senses

Meschita derives from Arab Masjid meaning Mosque^[2].
Cafarone, corruption of Cafarnao or the local Hebrew dialectization of "Qaphar Aharon", namely "The Hamlet of Aaron" (maybe a Jewish religious leader, a rich and prominent Jewish person from Catanzaro or a simple respectful eponym to remember Moses' brother).
Rabato is the Sicilian arabicized translation for Rabāṭ (literally a Stronghold or a Fortalice).The fortified zone of Erice was mainly populated by Jews.

Sources

Sicilia Judaica, N.Bucaria.Flaccovio Editore (1996)

Footnotes

^ Balarm was the Arab name of Palermo.
^ In the Saracenic Sicily the Synagogue or the Temple were called Mosque , since a Beit Tefila could often phagocyte and take place in an abandoned Muslim cultic building.The words Meskita, Moschetta, Muschitta, Moschella are the Siculo-Arab variants for Little Mosque. After 1492, Moschetta and Moschella were widely adopted as surnames by several Southern Italian anusim.Nowadays, they are two very common last names highly diffused in all the meridional regions of Italy.

External links

[1] Balarm was the Arab name of Palermo.

[2] In the Saracenic Sicily the Synagogue or the Temple were called Mosque , since a Beit Tefila could often phagocyte and take place in an abandoned Muslim cultic building.The words Meskita, Moschetta, Muschitta, Moschella are the Siculo-Arab variants for Little Mosque. After 1492, Moschetta and Moschella were widely adopted as surnames by several Southern Italian anusim.Nowadays, they are two very common last names highly diffused in all the meridional regions of Italy.

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