Editing Alcalá de Henares (section)

===Jewish history===
During [[Muslim]] rule, the [[Jewish]] community of the city was granted equal rights as the [[Christians]] living in it: special restrictions were not placed on Jews regarding criminal compensation, residency, and other municipal aspects. In the [[Middle Ages]], the Jewish congregation of the city paid taxes to the [[Archbishop of Toledo]].<ref name=autogenerated1>{{Cite web |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0001_0_00697.html |title=Alcalá de Henares<!-- Bot generated title --> |access-date=2015-11-14 |archive-date=2015-11-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151117022017/https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0001_0_00697.html |url-status=live }}</ref> The [[Jews]] of Alcalá were mentioned in the 14th-century Satire by [[Marrano]] [[Pero Ferrús]]. During the 15th century, the Jewish congregation of the city was one of the largest in [[Crown of Castile|Castile]], having about 200 Jewish families. [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] studies at the [[University of Alcalá]] were encouraged by Cardinal [[Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros]] during the 16th century, bringing some Jews and [[Marrano]] Hebraists to work in the city.<ref name=autogenerated1 /> The location of the [[Jewish quarter (diaspora)|Jewish quarter]] of the city is well known &ndash; between Mayor, Santiago, Imagen and Cervantes streets. One [[synagogue]] stood in Carmen Calzado street, no. 10. The other was on Santiago street. After the 1492 [[Alhambra Decree]] Jews were required to become Christians to continue living in Castile and Aragon; those who refused had to leave these kingdoms and most of them found residence in the North of Africa, Amsterdam and the Ottoman Empire.

The origins of Miguel de Cervantes' family are supposed (there is no total certainty) to be Jewish. Because his father worked on the former Jewish neighbourhood, the birthplace was close to the workplace, and also because the surname Cervantes makes reference to a different site in the Northwest of Spain, and geographical surnames were common among the Jewish population.