Makhir of Narbonne - The Bnei Makhir and The Carolingian Dynasty

The Bnei Makhir and The Carolingian Dynasty

Arthur Zuckerman maintains that Makhir was actually identical with Natronai ben Habibi, an exilarch deposed and exiled in a dispute between two branches of the family of Bostanai in the late eighth century. Zuckerman further proposed that Makhir(/Natronai) is to be identified with a Maghario, Count of Narbonne, and in turn with an Aymeri de Narbonne, whom heroic poetry marries to Alda or Aldana, daughter of Charles Martel, and makes father of William of Gellone. This William was subject of at least six major epic poems composed before the era of the Crusades, including Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach, the most famous of the medieval Grail chroniclers. His historical counterpart, William I, Count of Toulouse led Frankish forces at the fall of Barcelona in 803. The account of the campaign in Ermold Niger's Latin poem dates the events according to the Jewish calendar and portrays William as an observant Jew. Count William was son of a Frankish Count of Septimania named Theoderic, leading Zuckerman to conclude that Theoderic was none other than Makhir, and that the well-documented descendants of Theoderic embodied a dynasty of Franco-Judeic kings of Narbonne, representing the union of the lineage of the exilarchs with that of Martel's Carolingians. David de Pravieux branch: Some of Theoderic's descendants are most likely from the Bondesen-David family tree that goes back, in direct patrilineal lineage, to Julien David. He was Seigneur de Pravieux and born (abt. 1195) in the Forez region in France. However, this underlying chain of identifications has been shown to be flawed, a negative opinion shared by other scholars, while the broader suggestions of a Jewish principality in Southern France have likewise been refuted.