Alagón
ALAGÓN
ALAGÓN , town near Saragossa, northeastern Spain. There is evidence that Jews were living in Alagón while the area was still under Muslim rule. Shortly after the reconquest in 1119 Christians began to buy land from the Jewish residents. In her testament of 1208 Queen Sancha of Aragon bequeathed a number of Alagón Jews to the convent of Sigena. The expulsion of six butchers from the town by the community board resulted in a cause célèbre in the 1280s. In 1283 the infante Alfonso ordered that a representative gathering for the allocation of the annual tax in the collecta of *Saragossa should be held each year in Alagón. Its proximity to Saragossa apparently saved Alagón during the massacres throughout Spain in 1391. A list of accounts from 1403 to 1408 includes the names of Jewish notables, and charitable societies (cofraías) as well as *Conversos. The community ceased to exist with the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492.
bibliography:
Baer, Spain, 1 (1961), 140, 430; Baer, Urkunden, 1 (1929), index; Ashtor, Korot, 2 (1966), 165–6; Cacigas, in: Sefarad, 6 (1946), 74–78; Piles, ibid., 10 (1950), 87–89, 367; J. Ma. Lacarra, Documentos para el estudio de la Reconquista del Valle del Ebro (second series, 1949), index.