The city of Lucena in southern Spain, an important intellectual and cultural center of Andalusian Jewry, is located approximately 64 kilometers (40 miles) southeast of Cordova, with which it maintained a dynamic relationship. According to the chronicler Joseph ibn Ṣaddīq, Lucena “was entirely Jewish. We hold a tradition that the original settlers were from the remnant of the exile of Jerusalem who built the city,” evoking the myth that the Jews of Iberia were descended from exiles who arrived after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusale…