About Yosef Navarro (ibn Yahya)Don Joseph Navarro HaLevi (ibn Yahya), was tax-collector of Seville. He was nephew of Samuel HaLevi Abulafia.Samuel, uncle of Don Yosef, was a Spanish financier and treasurer to Don Pedro the Cruel of Castile.In 1350 he was recommended to the king as chief treasurer by the minister Juan Alfonso de Albuquerque, whose estates he managed. He soon became privy councilor of his new master, and was the most influential man in Castile.Samuel was an intimate friend of Doña Maria de Padilla, the mistress of Pedro, and he drew on himself the hatred of the legitimate queen and of the grandees who adhered to her cause. In 1354, while with the king in the fortress of Toro, Samuel was seized by the enemies of the monarch and thrown into prison. He succeeded in procuring his release through the payment of a large ransom and escaped, together with the king, who had also been seized.Don Samuel ha-Levi restored the disorganized finances of the state, and by rigorous control of the tax-collectors, on the one hand, and by an arrangement which he made with the creditors, on the other, he managed to accumulate a large amount of money in the royal treasury. He appointed a number of his relatives collectors of taxes. His nephew, Don Joseph ha-Levi, became tax-collector of Seville.Don Samuel ha-Levi occupied a mansion in Toledo, which is still known as Palacio del Judío ("Jew's Palace"). Several synagogues were built at his expense in various parts of Castile, among them a magnificent one in Toledo. This synagogue was finished in 1357, and was afterward converted into a church under the name of El Tránsito. Hebrew inscriptions, still preserved on the side walls of this edifice—to-day a national monument—perpetuate the memory of his good deeds. Samuel maintained himself nearly twenty years in his high position.In 1360 Don Pedro discovered the existence of a widespread conspiracy in which the archbishop of Toledo and Don Samuel were said to be implicated. The archbishop was expelled, but Don Samuel, who, it is said, had been denounced by envious coreligionists, was dragged to Seville and imprisoned, together with his wealthy relatives. His entire fortune and that of his relatives, consisting of 190,000 doubloons ($950,000 or £195,737), twenty boxes filled with jewelry and silk and velvet clothing, and eighty slaves, were confiscated by the king. He died under torture in Seville, November, 1360. "From the prison, in which his king caused him to be afflicted, the Lord summoned him to a heavenly habitation."Bibliography: Amador de los Rios, Historia de los Judios, ii. 223 et seq.; Grätz, Gesch. d. Juden, vii. 411 et seq.; Kayserling, Don Pedro und sein Schatzmeister Samuel Levi, in Monatsschrift, vi. 365 et seq.