Draft:Katalanim
Stand alone page for Katalanim
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The Katalanim / Katalaní were Jewish communities from the Crown of Aragon (Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and Aragon) who, although traditional historiography has tended to lump the entire Iberian diaspora under the “Sephardic” label, constituted a distinct group. [1][2][3][4][5]
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| Submission declined on 15 February 2026 by ChrysGalley (talk). This draft appears to be a duplicate of an existing article. Wikipedia does not permit multiple articles on the same topic.
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Comment: I can see this is a partial translation of a longer article in Catalan Wikipedia. The problem at the moment is that almost all the material here is covered in existing English wikipedia entries, around 4 of them. These articles are not linked into this draft, but this draft does not add much more than is in those existing articles. The big exception is the sourcing, which is more/better than the existing articles. Some of this sourcing is available online, but only the offline reference is provided (e.g. Molho).I think further thought is needed on this, as to whether it is better to improve the existing articles, or whether it is better to develop this draft so that it provides more material from the Catalan version, and gives additional insights not currently in English wikipedia. ChrysGalley (talk) 12:22, 15 February 2026 (UTC)
It should be noted that the term Sefarad originally referred to Al-Andalus[6], not the entire peninsula, and that the modern use of the term has created a presentism that has unfairly blurred these identity differences. The historian Simon Schwarzfuchs devoted an article specifically to this question: ‘La Catalogne et l'invention de Sefarad’, presented in the Proceedings of the First Congress for the Study of Jews in Catalan-speaking Territories (Barcelona–Girona, 2001).[7]
Liturgically, they followed their own rite, documented in the Catalan Mahzor (a cycle of prayers according to the rite of Barcelona), of which several editions were published in Thessaloniki until the 20th century, thus maintaining the link with medieval Catalonia.[8]
Organizationally, they founded their own synagogues and social structures wherever they settled: the Catalan School of Rome (1523)[9][10], described as the most architecturally notable in the Ghetto[11][12], and the Kahal Kadosh Qatalan of Thessaloniki, which was even divided into two qahalim (‘Old Catalan’ and ‘New Catalan’) in 1515.[13]
In Thessaloniki, the quarter was called the ‘Catalan Jews' Quarter’, its community was called the Katalaní, and its own quarter called Kahal Kadosh Qatalan[14][15][16][17]. There they published several editions of the Catalan Mahzor until the 20th century, keeping alive the connection with medieval Catalonia through liturgy and prayers.[8]
Judeo-Catalan, a variant of medieval Catalan with Hebrew influences, was preserved in Thessaloniki and other cities until the late 16th century, when it was gradually replaced by Ladino as the smaller Catalan communities integrated with the Sephardic ones. The Catalan community of Thessaloniki existed until the Holocaust[18], when it was completely annihilated. The Katalanim also reached the Netherlands[19] and NorthAmerica[20][21], where they were between the pioneers in the founding of Jewish communities in New York and Newport[22][23], leaving a cultural legacy that testifies to the diversity of Iberian Jewish communities.
To date, several texts written in Catalan using Hebrew characters have been discovered, mainly from the 14th and 15th centuries, including legal and communal documents, Catalan wedding poems with Hebrew components, and fragments of philosophical treatises.[17]