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Sefarad (Finis Terrae, el Confín - O comfim - Where the land ends)
The ties between the Jews and the Iberian Peninsula go back to biblical times. To be precise, they go back to Ancient Israel, when King Salomon was ruling in Jerusalem. There is a legend, supported by the Book of the Kings in the Torah and the Bible´s Old Testament telling us that Salomon wishing to finish what his father David was unable to accomplish asked Hiram, the Phoenician King of Tyre for his help in the building of the Great Temple to hold the Ark of the Covenant. Hiram, himself a son of a Phoenician prince from Sidon and a Israelite woman from the Tribe of Nephtali proclaimed he was kin to the King of Israel and responded in kind. He sent a huge amount of precious timber cut from the tall cedars of Lebanon and an Architect to help with the planning and execution of such a tremendous task. The Architect was non other than Hiram Abif (likely a nickname and not a name, proper, because in ancient samarian the term means something like: "Hiram chosen one") and the Great Temple was finally built. Salomon paid the favor with territories in Galilee in the north and participating in many of Hiram´s plans to expand his commercial Empire through the Mediterranean. Hundreds of Israelites, mostly from Neftali´s and Benjamim´s Tribes embarqued in the Phoenician ships and went abroad to North Africa, Sicilia and a barely known land at the end of the Earth where the Heracles -Herculean- Columns limmited the Mediterranean as a frontier with the Atlantic Ocean, a land the Phoenicians and Israelites called Sefarad to mean: "The place where the land ends", often used simply as "Far away...". Neither the Phoenicians nor their allies -the Israelites- dared to leave the coast, because the land was inhabited by the Iberians and the Celts, very brave and barbarian tribes. Thus, they stablished their first settlements in what is now Barcelona and Cadiz, around 850 B.C. In conclusion, Phoenicians and Israelites arrived to what is now Spain and Portugal before all the other powers came into the scene. To know more about Sefarad
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