Maribor (German: Marburg an der Drau) is the second largest city in Slovenia with 2008 population: 106,308. Maribor lies on the river Drava at the meeting point of the Pohorje mountain, the Drava Valley, the Drava Plain, and the Kozjak and Slovenske gorice hill ranges. Maribor is also the seat of the Municipality of Maribor, with 119,071 inhabitants in 2007, and the center of the Slovenian region of Lower Styria and its largest city. Maribor Airport is the second largest international airport in Slovenia. [September 2010]
BOOK: Gruber, Ruth Ellen. Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to East-Central Europe. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1992. Pages 237 has town and photo information for Maribor. Extracted by Elaine B. Kolinsky before 1997.
On the Drava river, near the Austrian border., Maribor was an important mediaeval Jewish area with a Jewish community is first recorded in 1277. Rabbi Israel Petahya Isserlein (1390-1460) lived in Maribor for twenty years as ‘Chief Rabbi of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola'. Jews were artisans, bankers, moneylenders and merchants with commercial interests into Italy, Hungary and Moravia. In the 15th century several Catholic families converted to Judaism. Near the southwest corner of the town walls and above the Drava Rive an area known as Židovska Ulica (Jewish Street) was the Ghetto. Kulturni Center Sinagoga Maribor, (Maribor Synagogue Cultural Centre), Židovska Ulica 4, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia: http://zpn.maribor.si/SINAGOGA.56.0.html and http://users.volja.net/zemljicbo/ When Emperor Maximilian I expelled all Jews of Styria, including Maribor, in January 1497, most went to Venice. The Morpurgo family went to Split (Croatia) and to Trieste, where a descendant, Giuseppe Lazzaro Morpurgo (1762-1835), founded "Assecurazioni Generali", the first Austrian life-insurance company. Now, Maribor is a university town rich in mediaeval and Baroque architecture.
CEMETERY: In 2004, ground-penetrating radar revealed a possible mediaeval Jewish cemetery and mikveh across from a city defence known as Jews Tower. A fourteenth-century gravestone from Maribor can be seen at Nova Gorica's Jewish cemetery. Maribor Regional Museum has three main fragments of Maribor's first rabbi's ( a man named Abraham who died in November 1379) Hebrew inscribed tombstone, 109-cm high and made from an older Roman funerary monument with Latin lettering on the back and one side. See www.pmuzej-mb.si and www.culturalprofiles.org.uk/Slovenia/Units/4238.html [January 2009]