The New Babylonian Diaspora: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Community in Iraq, 16th-20th Centuries C.E. 900435400X, 9789004354005

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The New Babylonian Diaspora

The Brill Reference Library of Judaism Editors Alan J. Avery-Peck (College of the Holy Cross) William Scott Green (University of Miami) Editorial Board Herbert Basser (Queen’s University) Bruce D. Chilton (Bard College) José Faur (Netanya College) Neil Gillman ( Jewish Theological Seminary of America) Mayer I. Gruber (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) Ithamar Gruenwald (Tel Aviv University) Arkady Kovelman (Moscow State University) Baruch A. Levine (New York University) Allan Nadler (Drew University) Jacob Neusner Z’’l (Bard College) Maren Niehoff (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Gary G. Porton (University of Illinois) Aviezer Ravitzky (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Dov Schwartz (Bar Ilan University) Güenter Stemberger (University of Vienna) Michael E. Stone (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Elliot R. Wolfson (University of California, Santa Barbara)

VOLUME 57

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/brlj

The New Babylonian Diaspora The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Community in Iraq, 16th–20th Centuries C.E.

By

Zvi Yehuda

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Published in partnership with The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center (BJHC). Cover Illustration: Designed by Etzion Goel. Illustrations and maps used with permission. Names: Yehuda, Zvi, author. | Merkaz Moreshet Yahadut Bavel (Or Yehudah,  Israel), sponsoring body. Title: The new Babylonian diaspora : the rise and fall of the Jewish  community in Iraq, 16th-20th centuries C.E. / by Zvi Yehuda. Description: Leiden : Boston: Brill, [2017] | Series: The Brill reference  library of Judaism ; 57 | “Published in partnership with The Babylonian  Jewry Heritage Center (BJHC).” | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017031842 (print) | LCCN 2017032887 (ebook) |  ISBN 9789004354012 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004354005 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Jews—Iraq—History. | Iraq—Ethnic relations. Classification: LCC DS135.I7 (ebook) | LCC DS135.I7 Y44 2017 (print) |  DDC 956.7/00492400903—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017031842

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1571-5000 isbn 978-90-04-35400-5 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-35401-2 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface IX List of Figures and Maps Xiii List of Abbreviations Xiv Introduction 1 To be Babylonians 1 Modernization without Assimilation 5 Amiability and Animosity 10 Leadership under Muslim-Arab Rule 20

Part 1 Five Centuries of the New Babylonian Diaspora 1 From Destruction to Revival 31 The Disappearance of Babylonian Jews 31 The Beginning of New Babylonian Community 35 The Emergence of Lay and Spiritual Leadership 43 2 Rise and Fall of the New Babylonian Diaspora 51 Authority in Change 51 Return to Babylonia 57 Emigration from Kurdistan 57 Absorption of the Kurdish Immigrants 65 Emigration from Persia 72 Emigration from Europe and the Mediterranean Basin 74 Growth in the Number of Jews in Iraq and Its Consequences 77 Internal Migration 79 The Economy in Transition 81 The Traditional Economy 82 Toward Modern Professions 85 En Route to Modernization 87 Revival of the Spiritual Center 87 The Flow to Modern Schools 91 Changing Communal Life 96 Modernity and Communal Organization 98 Ottoman Reforms and Community Leadership 100 The Failure to Reform the Baghdadi Community 102

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Contents







The Struggle for Reform in Basra and Hilla 108 Conclusions 109 A Dream Which Was Not to Be 110 Integration into European Culture 110 Integration into Arab Society 112 Conversion and Assimilation 113 Changing the Social Order 116 Return to Zion 118 Modern Zionist Activity 118 Underground Zionist Activity 120 Operation Ezra and Nehemiah 123 Exodus Babylon 124

Part 2 Studies on Political Issues 3 The Jewish Blood-Libel against Christians in Basra (1791) 129 Basra in the Eighteenth Century 130 Jews in Basra in the Eighteenth Century 135 Christians Accused of Murdering a Jew for Ritual Purposes 140 The Christian Response 144 Christian Attempts to Refute the Libel Foiled 146 Escalating Confrontation between Jews and Christians 149 Christians Turn to Europe and India for Help 153 The British Envoy Visits the Pasha 158 Conclusions 167 4 Struggle of Iraqi Jewry for Control of Prophet Ezekiel’s Tomb at Kifil (1860) 168 Basis for the Jewish Claim of Ownership over Ezekiel’s Tomb at Kifil 169 Muslims Take Over Ezekiel’s Tomb at Kifil 171 Control of Ezekiel’s Tomb at Kifil in the 14th–18th Centuries 173 Jews of Iraq Regain Control of Ezekiel’s Tomb 177 Jews of Iraq Foil the Muslim Attempt to Take Control of Ezekiel’s Tomb 181 Muslims Changed the Compound of Ezekiel’s Tomb 188 Conclusions 190

Contents

5 Events Surrounding the Burial of Rabbi Abdalla Somekh (1889) and Their Consequences 193 State of Research and the Sources 193 Background to the Events 195 The Course of Events 199 Appeal to the Turkish Government 207 Request for Assistance from the Jews of England 210 Request for Assistance from the Jews of France 220 Appeal to Jewish Public Opinion 226 Appeal to Jewish Public Opinion in the Holy Land 227 Appeal to Jewish Public Opinion in Europe 230 Appeal to Jewish Public Opinion in the Far East 232 The Muslim Takeover of the “Ha-Cohen” Courtyard 237 Intervention by the Turkish Government 239 Jews on Trial 242 Conclusions 247 6 The Pogrom (Farhud) of 1941, Reexamination 249 Research on the Farhud 249 Dr. Fritz Grobba and the Pogrom 251 Outbreak of the Pogrom 255 The Course of the Pogrom 259 Those Responsible for the Pogrom 263 Denial of the Pogrom 267 Conclusions 274 Map of the Farhud Pogrom 276 List of Victims of the Farhud 276 Bibliography 283 Index 299

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Preface In recent years, the history of the Jewish community of Iraq has become a focus of growing interest with particular attention to Baghdadi Jewry, which was the largest and most important Jewish community in Iraq before the Jews left and the ancient Babylonian Diaspora came to an end. Not only the émigrés themselves and their descendants, who are today spread across the globe, wish to know something about their origins; the subject is of interest to scholars in various domains, including researchers in the field of medicine who search for the common origins of different populations and try to explain medical phenomena. However, whether one’s motives are personal curiosity or scholarly interest, there is disappointingly little available information. The few studies on the history of Iraqi Jewry in recent centuries, especially from the fourteenth century to the present, does not deal with this topic, perhaps because of the dearth of source materials, which are dispersed in many different places and written in languages that students of Iraqi Jewry in modern times do not know very well, or perhaps also because the topic is complex, and requires a familiarity with the many political, economic, and social changes that have taken place in Iraq (Babylonia, Mesopotamia) and the entire region in the last millennium. The present study will attempt to trace the changes that took place among Iraqi Jews during the 16th to 20th centuries CE, which was a time of major transformations following the Golden Age of the Talmud and the Geonim. Sources for this study are scant or non-existent for some parts of this period, but become more extensive towards the end of the eighteenth and in the course of the nineteenth century, as the Iraqi Jewish community grew in size and importance. The present study relies on Arab sources, descriptions of the community written by travelers of various nations, letters kept in libraries and private collections, questions that members of the community asked the rabbis in Baghdad and the Holy Land, Syria and Turkey, reports by itinerant fundraisers and by Christian missionaries who operated in Iraq, official documents kept in the archives of the powers that had interests in the region, especially Great Britain, France, and the United States, and the documents of Jewish organizations from the latter countries that engaged in political and educational activities among the local Jews, such as the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris and the Board of Deputies in London. To these must be added the Jewish press in Europe and the Holy Land, in Hebrew and in European languages, that reported events related to the Iraqi Jewish community, as well as Jewish newspapers published in India in Judeo-Arabic, that contain almost weekly reports from their correspondents in Baghdad, and a few publications of the

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Jewish community itself and the Ottoman authorities. In the twentieth century, the written sources become more plentiful, especially after the British occupation and the establishment of an Arab regime; they include Jewish and non-Jewish newspapers in the Arabic language, published in Iraq and other Arab countries, as well as newspapers in European languages published in Europe, America and the Far East, reports and interviews by members of the community, memoirs they wrote after having left Iraq, and their own personal documents. In 1947 the first comprehensive census was held in Iraq, which also listed one’s religious affiliation. Recently we have the archive of the Jewish Community of Baghdad which included documents mainly after the exodus of most of the community during the years 1949–1952. The New Babylonian Diaspora―Rise and Fall of Jewish Community in Iraq (16th–20th Centuries) has an introduction and two parts. Part One provides a historical survey of Babylonian Jewry and the community’s evolution from the apex of its golden age at the beginning of the second millennium, through its deterioration in the fourteenth century and its destruction in the fifteenth century, its rehabilitation and growth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to its final annihilation at the end of the twentieth century. The historical survey of Iraqi Jewry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries also contains a discussion of the trends that characterized the community’s evolution during this dynamic period. This part of the book tries to provide an explanation for the community’s rise and fall over a period of about a century and goes into some detail on topics that have so far received scant scholarly attention, such as the community’s growth during the nineteenth century, and deals only briefly with other topics, such as Zionist activity, that have been described at length in various easily accessible studies published over the last fifty years, including those of the present author. Anyone interested in these topics can peruse the sources listed in the appended list of references. The latter contains only the archives and libraries, interviews and testimonies, newspapers, studies and sources mentioned in this book. For more information on Iraqi Jewry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the interested reader is referred to The Asian and African Jews in the Middle East 1860–1971―Annotated Bibliography by the author (together with H.Y. Cohen) (Ben-Zvi Institute and the Institute of Contemporary Jewry—The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1976), 295–324). Part Two of this book consists of four studies on political topics. Two of these (the first and the second) were already published in the past over a period of thirty years in Hebrew, and the fourth in English. They are now presented to the reader in an updated form, with new details that were not known to the author at the time of the original writing. In addition, this part contains the

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first publication (the third) of a detailed study on the events surrounding the burial of Rabbi Abdalla Somekh. The period of persecution on the eve of the mass emigration of Iraqi Jewry in the years 1949–1952, the imprisonments and hangings in the course of the exodus, are described only very briefly in the book. The author is at present engaged in preparing a volume dedicated to this complex subject that is so important for understanding the exodus from Iraq and the end of the Jewish community there. This forthcoming work will be based on materials from archives in Israel, England, France, and the United States, oral testimonies and other relevant sources. For many years, the late Ms. Tmima Hillel helped me to search for and locate sources. She also translated German materials into Hebrew for me. Her commitment to the study of the heritage of Babylonian Jewry knew no bounds. I would like to thank the workers at the National Library of Israel and its Institute of Microfilmed Manuscripts, Jerusalem; the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem; the Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem; the Oral History Division of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ben-Zvi Institute, Jerusalem, the Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem; the Moshe Dayan Center Library, Tel Aviv University; the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center Library and Archives, Or Yehuda, all in Israel, for their dedication. I would also like to thank the librarians and employees of the India Office Library and Records, London; the Public Records Office, London; the Board of Deputies Archive, London; Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris; Archive Nationale, Paris; Alliance Israélite Universelle Archive, Paris; the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C., for their guidance and help. A special vote of thanks to the members of the Iraqi Jewish community, among them relatives of mine, who devoted many hours of their time to providing important information about their communities. I owe a debt of gratitude also to the directors of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center: To the President, Mr. Mordechai Ben-Porat, to the Chairman, Prof. Efraim Sadka, and to the General Manager, Ms. Ronit Azouri, for their interest and assistance. This book could not have been published without a generous grant by Mrs. Ruth and Mr. Uri David for paying the cost of translating it from Hebrew into English and of copy-editing it. In the course of the many years over which I worked on the book I was fortunate to receive information and advice from my fellow researchers Prof. Shmuel Moreh, Chairman of the BJHC Academic Council, Prof. Yitzhak Avishur, Prof. Eleizer Bashan, Prof. Shlomo Deshen, Prof. Bustenay Oded, Dr. Reeva S. Simon,

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and Dr. Shaul Sehayik, members of the Council; Prof. Yaron Tsur, and Prof. Aryeh Shmuelevitz. I thank them all. I also wish to thank Mr. Michael Guggenheimer for translating the book into English, and to the first copy-editor of the English version of Part One of the book, Ms. Marian Scheuer Sofaer, and the copy-editor of the last version of the book, Ms. Alifa Saadya. My thanks are due to Prof. Alan Avery-Peck, the editor of The Brill Reference Library of Judaism series, Ms. Katelyn Chin, Acquisitions Editor, Ms. Meghan Connolly, Assistant Editor, and Mr. Michael Mozina, Production Editor, for their devoted work to publish this book. May this book be a memorial to Babylonian Jewry after its uprooting from the land of its exile, in the hope that it will give rise to many further studies. Zvi Yehuda May 2017

List of Figures and Maps Figures 1.1 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Baghdad’s market place 47 Baghdad, 1880 56 Street in Baghdad’s Jewish quarter, 1916 71 Basra from the Euphrates 135 Saray (government house) in Basra 149 Kifil, 1922 177 Precinct of the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb, 1932 180 Outer courtyard of the precinct of Ezekiel’s tomb, 1932 181 The overseer of the courtyards of Ezekiel’s tomb, Yosef Yehuda Ezra (sitting in the middle) and his family, 1944 192 British steam boat on the Tigris in Baghdad 200 The Turkish government house (al-qala’a) in Baghdad, 1932 208 The British residence in Baghdad 211 Tomb of Joshua the High Priest 237 Incitement of the crowd on the eve of the Farhud, May 1941 255 Roofs of Jewish houses in old Baghdad, 1942 263 Iraqi youth in the royal palace greeted King Faisal I with the Nazi salute 264 British troops in Baghdad, 31 May 1941 267 Mass grave of the Farhud victims, 1945 277

Maps 2.1 Distribution of Jewish communities in Iraq in 1850 80 2.2 Distribution of Jewish communities in Iraq in 1947 81 2.3 The Yeshivas of Babylonia in the third to thirteenth centuries 88 2.4 Spread of modern Jewish schools in Iraq 1864–1949 92 2.5 The Jewish community’s institutions in the Jewish Quarter in Baghdad’s Old City (1949) 107 6.1 Map of the Farhud Pogrom 276

List of Abbreviations Archives AIU Archive AN BJHC CAHJP CZA FO IJA IMM IOR USNA

Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris Archive Nationale, Paris Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, Or Yehuda Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem Public Records Office, London Iraqi Jewish Archive, https://www.ija.archives.gov/search Institute of Microfilmed Manuscripts, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem India Office Library and Records, London National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC

Newspapers AJAR JC BM Bulletin

Anglo Jewish Association Report (London) Jewish Chronicle (London) Bulletin Mensuelle de l’AIU (Paris) Bulletin de l’AIU (Paris)

Encyclopedias EB EH EI EJ EJIW ERE VJE

Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopaedia Hebraica Encyclopaedia of Islam Encyclopaedia Judaica Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics Vallentine’s Jewish Encyclopedia

Introduction

To be Babylonians

In the 1840s, at a time when Iraq’s Jews were under the rule of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, they succeeded in regaining possession of the tomb traditionally ascribed to the prophet Ezekiel in the town of Kifil, not far from the ruins of ancient Babylon, after it had been in Muslim hands for some five hundred years. They collected contributions from local philanthropists and from fellow Jews in the Far East, the Holy Land, Syria, and Europe in order to renovate the mausoleum, build a yeshiva and reestablish a Jewish presence at the site. In March 1860 the new Ottoman governor of Iraq, Mustafa Nuri Pasha, arrived in Baghdad and decided, together with the local Muslim religious leadership, to return the tomb into the hands of the latter. The Jews objected and asked for the help of their brethren in Istanbul, the Far East, Europe, and the Levant as well as the representatives of England and France and the missionaries in Baghdad. The issue came before the imperial Ottoman authorities.1 The Muslim leadership, concerned that the matter would be taken out of its hands, invited the Jewish leaders in Baghdad to a meeting at the majlis, the Ottoman governor’s (wali) court. The meeting took place in May 1860. The mufti of Baghdad tried to convince the rabbis and the leaders of the Baghdadi Jewish community to accept his proposal: the Muslims would regain control of Ezekiel’s tomb and the surrounding courtyards and the Jewish pilgrims would be allowed to come into the tomb’s building through a side entrance and view the tomb through a grid. The leaders of the Jewish community rejected this proposal out of hand, arguing that the issue “was of concern to every Jew in the world.” Indeed, thanks to the intervention of Jews from around the globe, including the well-known Jewish leader, Sir Moses Montefiore, as well as the United Kingdom, the tomb and the surrounding courtyards remained in the hands of Iraqi Jewry.2 This affair demonstrates not only the confidence which Iraq’s Jews felt as the heirs of the original Jews who had been exiled to Babylonia with King Jehoiachin of Judah in 597 BCE, but world Jewry’s commitment to them. Jews from nearly every corner of the Jewish world had settled in Iraq, formerly Babylonia, land of the exiled Jews in the days of Jehoiachin, land of the

1  See below, Part Two, pp. 181–188. 2  Doresh Tob le-’Ammo (Bombay) 5, no. 45 (24 Aug. 1860): 5.

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Exilarchs, the Talmud and the Geonim, and saw themselves as belonging to those very same exiles by the very fact that they lived there. From the end of the eighteenth century to World War I, Iraq thus became a lodestone for tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants from Kurdistan, Persia, the Mediterranean Basin, and Eastern and Central Europe. After these Jews had settled in Baghdad and elsewhere in central and southern Iraq they became “Babylonians” and “forgot” their lands of origin, contrary to the habit of Jews in many other communities throughout history. As the anthropologist Shlomo Deshen in his study “Baghdad Jewry in Late Ottoman Times: the Emergence of Social Classes and of Secularization” writes:3 Jewish social life, especially since the Middle Ages, has commonly revolved around immigrant groups or quasi-ethnic groups, leading to the formations of synagogue congregations made up of people of common origin. One would have expected these to appear in Baghdad, since there were many immigrants from other places, such as Persia and Kurdistan. But in all the sources and secondary materials I have reviewed, there is no trace of such a development. The study of the history of the Jewish community of Babylonia in the second millennium CE is made difficult by the fact that the genealogy of twentiethcentury Jewish families in Iraq is detached from its roots and no longer retains a connection with the Jews of the Babylonian Exile and their descendants, the sages of the Talmud, the Geonim, and the Exilarchs. The problem has been exacerbated by the mass exodus of the New Babylonian Diaspora in the second half of the twentieth century as a result of the emigration of the Jews of Iraq to Israel, Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, and the Far East. These Jews and their descendants developed an interest in discovering their roots and prepared family trees. Dozens of family trees of this kind have come into the possession of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center and several have been published.4 None of the family trees of Iraqi Jews goes back earlier than the 3  Shlomo Deshen. “Baghdad Jewry in Late Ottoman Times: The Emergence of Social Classes and of Secularization.” AJS Review 19, no. 1 (1994): 19–44, 40–41. 4  Eliyahu S. Mani. “Ilan Mishpahti” (My family tree). In Zikhronot Eliyahu, part 1 (Jerusalem 1936); Abraham Ben-Yaacob, Toldot ha-Rav ‘Abdalla Somekh (Biography of Rabbi ‘Abdalla Somekh). (Jerusalem 1949); idem, Beit Zbeda (Zbeda family). (Jerusalem 1994); idem, HaRav Sason ben Rabbi Mordechai Shindookh. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1994); David Mouallim, Sefer Toldot ve-Zikhronot David Mouallim (David Mouallim’s biography and memoirs). (Tel Aviv 1971); Ezra Moshe Battat, Battat. (Jerusalem 1972); Stanley Jackson, The Sassoons. (New

Introduction

3

end of the seventeenth century. The one family that lays claim to a genealogy going back to the twelfth century is of Spanish origin. It arrived in Iraq from Aleppo, came to Basra and settled in Baghdad in the eighteenth century.5 The few studies that have been conducted on the history of Jewish families in Iraq support this conclusion, which is in apparent conflict with the claims made by Iraqi Jews themselves, whether members of long-established families or relative newcomers to Baghdad, Basra and other towns in the south of Iraq, that they were the descendants of the Jews who had been exiled from Judea to Babylonia together with King Jehoiachin.6 The same view was also held by the surrounding populace as well as by travelers and visitors to Iraq in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Nearly every writer who mentions the Jews of Iraq states that they are descended from the exiles mentioned in the Bible. A missionary who visited Baghdad in 1839 wrote: The Jews of Baghdad believe that they are the descendants of the Jews who had been brought here in the first exile. They are still led by someone called “the exilarch of Babylonia” a position that was created in the first or second century…. Today the exilarch is not a descendant of Judah but is appointed by the Sublime Porte and the local authorities in Baghdad.…7 A traveler, probably a Jew, who visited the city of Hilla and the town of Kifil in the 1880s, wrote: Today only vestiges and ruins are left of [the ancient city of] Babylon.… Kifil was probably a suburb of the city [of Hilla, near Babylon], where the Jewish cemetery was located. According to tradition the prophet [Ezekiel] lived in the city, prayed in one of its synagogues and was buried there. In the Prophet Ezekiel Synagogue, of Hilla’s two synagogues, to this York 1968); Esmond David Ezra, Turning Back the Pages, A Chronicle of Calcutta Jewry, 2 vols. (London 1986). Ben-Yaacob also writes about the families in his other books on the history of the Jews of Babylonia. 5  The family of Abdulla Faraj Haim; Zvi Yehuda. “On the History of the Jews of Iraq in the 18th Century: A Blood Libel of Jews Against Christians in Basra.” In Hebrew. Babylonian Jewry. Ed. Zvi Yehuda, 2 (Spring 1998): 43–64, 46–47. 6  See, for example, Zvi Yehuda. “The Jews of Babylon Struggle for Control of the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel in Kifil in the Second Millennium CE.” In Hebrew. Studies in the History and Culture of Iraqi Jewry. Ed. Y. Avishur. 6 (Or Yehuda 1991): 21–75. 7  Erasmus S. Calman, “Jews of Baghdad.” In Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews in 1839. (Edinburgh 1844), 528.

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day the spot is shown where the prophet stood when blessing the people. Doubtlessly since those days the synagogue was destroyed and rebuilt several times, but it certainly stands at the same place where it was first built by the exiles to Babylonia.8 Needless to say these claims have no historical validity, since the city of Hilla was founded in 1101–1102 CE.9 A teacher of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) who stayed in Basra during World War I wrote a report to the organization’s headquarters in Paris in which he describes the British occupation of the city and the local Jewish community. He writes that “the Jewish population is the oldest in this country, the descendants of the early Jews who went into exile in Babylonia and did not want to leave it after the Return to Zion because they had begun to love their new land. The Jews remained very pure and did not receive any outside influence.…”10 Rabbi Yosef Haim (1834–1909), the most illustrious rabbi in Iraq at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, viewed Babylonian Jewry in its various manifestations from the days of the Mishna and the Talmud to his own times as a single continuous entity. He maintained that although there were periods when Babylonia ceased to serve as a religious and spiritual center for Jews throughout the Diaspora, it never lost its greatness and its rabbis were always considered superior to those of the Holy Land. He visited the Holy Land in 1869, but returned to Iraq because he believed that in his times it was preferable to live in Babylonia, explaining that “he who lives in Babylonia is as if he lives in the Land of Israel.”11 Claims of descent from the original Jews exiled to Babylonia in antiquity are not unique to the Jews who lived in Iraq. The same claims can also be found among former members of the community and other Jews who joined them in their new places of residence in the Far East beginning in the end of the eighteenth century and in England, the United States, and Canada during the twentieth century. In other words, Jews who migrated to Iraq from other countries preferred to consider themselves a part of Babylonian Jewry, as did 8  Der Israelit (Mainz), 4 Feb. 1886. 9  Zvi Yehuda. “On the Jewish Community in Iraq in an Era of Change: The Jewish Community of Hilla Demographic and Economic Changes.” In Hebrew. Studies on History and Culture of Iraqi Jewry. Ed. Y. Avishur, 2 (Or Yehuda 1982): 83–120. 10   A IU Archive, Irak IC5, Zilberstein report, 20 Aug. 1915. 11  Shaul Regev. “Rabbi Yosef Hayim: His Attitude to Eretz Yisrael in Theory and Practice.” In Hebrew. Babylonian Jewry. Ed. Z. Yehuda, 2 (Or Yehuda, Spring 1998): 87–93, 90.

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Jews who left Iraq and established new communities. This tendency had a considerable influence on the assimilation into the local Jewish community of Jewish émigrés who came to Iraq during the period under discussion here. The many Jews who arrived in Baghdad in the second part of the nineteenth century encouraged even the Zionist Movement, which had not succeeded in obtaining a concession for Jewish settlement in the Holy Land during the lifetime of its leader, Dr. Theodor Herzl, to propose plans for settling Jews in neighboring lands, including Mesopotamia. The man behind these plans was Prof. Otto Warburg (1859–1938), a leader of the World Zionist Organization, who sought a solution for the many poor Jewish refugees in Eastern Europe. At the beginning of 1906 he presented David Wolfssohn, President of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), with a comprehensive plan for the settlement of 100,000 Jews in Mesopotamia, but Wolffsohn rejected the plan. In 1909 another proposal also came to nothing, apparently because the Ottoman authorities refused to approve it.12 The claim that they were the heirs of the ancient Jews of Babylonia was also used by Jewish supporters of the integration and by Muslims during the period of Arab rule in Iraq in the twentieth century.13

Modernization without Assimilation

The sociologist S.N. Eisenstadt points out the unique character of the process of modernization among the Jews of Iraq: Babylonian Jewry in the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth century provides an interesting example that would seem to refute some of the accepted assumptions concerning the connection between processes of modernization and of assimilation in Jewish communities in modern times …. What distinguishes Babylonian Jewry in the period in question, from nearly all other Jewish communities at the time, is that on the one hand it experienced quite far-reaching processes of modernization … that could have been expected to bring about the disintegration of organized community life, of communal and national identification, and 12  Mordechai Eliav. David Wolffsohn—The Man and His Times. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1977), 58, 74, 126, 183. 13  Nissim Kazzaz. The Jews in Iraq in the Twentieth Century. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1991), 58–65.

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even of Jewish solidarity, to an undermining of family life and to considerable assimilation into a foreign environment. But such processes hardly occurred.14 Several years after the wali of Baghdad’s attempts to wrest control of Ezekiel’s tomb from the Jews had ended, the Baghdadi Jewish community established a modern school for its children and asked the French Alliance Israélite Universelle for financial and pedagogical assistance, without at first realizing that in doing so it was opening the way for an extended and stubborn struggle to contain the European cultural influence whose penetration into the community was due in no small measure to its own initiative.15 The central issue to be considered is whether there is an inevitable connection between modernization and cultural change. Does the desire of communities to teach their sons and daughters languages, science, and vocations necessarily entail cultural change, especially when they live in an environment which has not undergone such a change? Does the acquisition of knowledge demand abandoning traditions and customs which have taken shape over many generations—especially when relinquishing the customs and traditions inherited from one’s forefathers appears to endanger religious and national existence in a foreign and hostile environment? Iraqi Jews also raised a question of principle: why must they exchange their ancient Jewish culture, which reached its apogee during the period of the Talmud and the Geonim and was responsible for the continued spiritual and physical exchange of the Jewish people, for a new culture which took shape in Christian Europe and led to conversion and assimilation? And as for the influence of the surrounding non-Jewish culture, by which Iraqi Jews have been influenced, that would make it appear preferable to them?16 Jews in Iraq conscious of the rise of the political and economic influence of Europe in the Middle East, desired to modernize their schools, but not with the aim of changing customs and traditions, which would exacerbate cultural 14  S.N. [Shmuel Noah] Eisenstadt. “Modernization without Assimilation. Notes on the Social Structure of the Jews of Iraq.” In Hebrew. Pe’amim 36 (1988): 3–6, 3–4. 15  Zvi Yehuda. “Iraqi Jewry and Cultural Change in the Educational Activity of the Alliance Israélite Universelle.” In Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries. Ed. H.E. Goldberg. (Bloomington, Ind. 1996), 134–45. This is the original published source of most of the following discussion, and it reused with the permission of Indiana University Press. 16   Perah (Calcutta) 8, no. 16 (23 Sept. 1885), 12; ibid., no. 43 (9 Apr. 1886), 300; ibid., 9, no. 13 (3 Sept. 1886), 90; Shim’on Aghasi. Drasha meét Hakham Rabbi Shim’on Aghasi she-Darash b-Shnat 5673 (Sermon of Rabbi Shim’on Aghasi delivered in the year 1913). (Jerusalem 1964), 43–57; AIU Archive, Irak IIE8, from Rabbi Yosef Haim to AIU 4 Adar 5667 (18 Feb. 1907).

Introduction

7

conflict in their communities. Rather, they sought to teach their children European languages and knowledge, enabling them to maintain commercial relations with Europe and to request economic and political aid from European representatives and from Jewish leaders and organizations in Europe. In Iraq, the question of acculturation came to the fore at the end of 1864 after the community transferred the administration of the first modern boys’ school, which it had established on its own, to the AIU. The issue continued to occupy both the spiritual and the lay communal leaders as other modern schools were established in the region under AIU administration. These included a girls’ school in Baghdad in 1893 and two more schools for boys in that city in 1902 and 1903. In smaller cities, schools were established in Basra (1890), Mosul (1906), Hilla (1907), Amara (1910), Khanaqin (1911), Kirkuk (1912), and elsewhere. After the Turkish revolution of 1908, several new schools were established under community administration alone, and during the period of the British occupation and Mandate, (1918–1932) these AIU schools were transferred to local community administration, except for the first two schools in Baghdad, which continued to be administered by the AIU under the control of the Jewish community.17 The AIU pursued its efforts to acculturate the Jews of Iraq in two central spheres: setting the curriculum in community schools, in which the French language was used; and changing the customs and traditions of the students in the spirit of France and the west. Under the presumption that French culture was superior to that of the Islamic East, the AIU sought to acculturate Iraqi Jews without first undertaking an examination of the cultural background of the community and without asking the opinions of community leaders about the changes they initiated. The external appearance of Jews in nineteenth-century Iraq remained as it had been for centuries. Men did not shave their beards or ear locks; they placed turbans or tarbooshes ( fezzes) on their heads; and they wore zboons (caftans) and ‘abayas (outer robes). The women covered their entire bodies with a dress and with an ‘abaya over it, concealing their faces with pushi (veil). The school principals, products of AIU education and French culture, thought this attire anachronistic and considered it evidence of cultural backwardness. But to the community leaders and rabbis, as well as to the surrounding non-Jewish society of Iraq, this attire symbolized the religious and national identity of the Jews, and any attack on their outward appearance was considered an injury to their tradition and their religious-ethnic identity.18 17   Bulletin, Bulletin de l’A IU (Paris), (2nd semester, 1886): 40; ibid. (1912): 97. 18   Perah 8, no.16 (23 September 1885), p. 12; Morris Cohen, “Superstition among the Jews in Baghdad,” AJAR, Anglo Jewish Association Report (London) 25 (1895/1896): 50–63, 61.

8

Introduction

This was the background for the confrontation between the AIU teachers and the leadership of the Jewish communities in Iraq. The AIU teachers who reached Baghdad and other Iraqi cities saw their educational objective as the inculcation of the French language and French culture, entailing a change in the outer appearance of the children studying in the schools, and the abandoning of familiar customs. They thought that if the Jewish child were to doff his traditional head covering, cut his hair and remove his ear locks, and speak and think in French, he would thus shake off backwardness, becoming “developed” and “progressive.” Jewish leaders in Baghdad—rabbis and prominent citizens alike—took a stand against the changes. They saw their challenge to tradition as a threat to the continued existence of Jewish society per se and to the stability of the community’s existence in a conservative Muslim environment. They denounced the new customs and forbade their practice by members of the community invoking religious, national, traditional, social, and protective considerations. In addition to the change in customs, AIU representatives in Iraq sought to impart both French language and thought to the students. They regarded this as a necessary condition for progress and for expanding the horizons of the young, and as an essential instrument for the development of local culture, both Jewish and Muslim. Because they understood the importance of the language of instruction in shaping cultural character, Jewish community leaders in Baghdad conducted a prolonged and stubborn struggle against the AIU objective of installing French in that role as a means of cultural change. In this struggle the AIU had two advantages. It was the body which appointed the school principals from among its teaching staff, and it supported the schools financially by paying the salary of the director whom it had sent to Iraq. The local Jewish community, whose main objective in providing its children with a modern education was to teach them foreign languages, had difficulty in recruiting and paying the salaries of instructors with suitable training and ability to teach European languages. The AIU, as a Jewish European association which concerned itself with the dissemination of modern culture, was regarded by community elders and rabbis in Baghdad as a positive, constructive factor, even after they became aware of its intention to instill French European values among them. They thus continued to make use of the services and educational, financial, and political assistance of the AIU, while simultaneously struggling against its acculturative aims. This struggle was consistent with the perception of the Jewish community in Iraq that it was responsible for the schools and the setting of educational policy. Accordingly, the AIU instructors could not teach the curriculum they had brought with them from

Introduction

9

Paris, since they were subject to the authority of the community regarding school policy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, participants in this struggle included prominent community leaders: Rabbi Yosef Haim, the most renowned rabbi in Iraq and surrounding areas, and Menahem Daniel, one of the outstanding communal leaders at the turn of the twentieth century. These leaders knew how to establish close ties with the AIU executive in Paris and its representatives in Iraq and, at the same time, conduct prolonged struggles with them over principles of running the schools. The same Rabbi Yosef Haim, who in a dedication speech (drush) at the opening of the Nuriel school in Baghdad in 1903 managed to find biblical sanction for teaching general studies as part of modern Jewish education, and exhorted members of his community (as well as that of Persia) to send their children to the AIU schools, did not hesitate to confront the AIU representatives in Baghdad and to intervene in AIU school practices when he found that they were detrimental to the customs and traditions of the community.19 He was angry at the AIU representative in Baghdad when, contrary to accepted practice in the community, the representative hired a Muslim instructor to teach crafts to Jewish girls in a community vocational school.20 It seems that this activity was successful in overcoming the acculturative efforts of the AIU, as N. Albala, one of the dominant AIU representatives in Baghdad at the beginning of the twentieth century, testifies: With our coreligionists, moral progress does not go hand in hand with material prosperity. Although they have almost monopolized control of commerce and have established flourishing colonies in Europe and Asia, their traditions, their habits, their ideas, have remained almost static.21 The community continued its struggle against the educational curriculum of the AIU, and when it realized that the latter was not ready to adapt itself to its educational objectives, it established community schools which did function in accordance with its own curriculum. Menahem Daniel and other community leaders in Iraq began to contact Jewish bodies in Palestine, Syria, and Europe

19  Yosef Haim. Sefer Imre Bina (Book of wise sayings). (Jerusalem 1973), 233–43; AIU Archive, Irak IIE8, from Rabbi Yosef Haim to AIU 4 Adar 5667 (18 Feb. 1907). 20   A IU Archive, Irak IIE8, from Rabbi Yosef Haim to AIU, 4 Adar 5667 (18 Feb. 1907). 21   BM, Bulletin Mensuelle de l’A IU (Paris), (Jan.–Mar. 1910): 39.

10

Introduction

to recruit qualified, capable teachers22 for instruction and administration in the numerous schools on the kindergarten, elementary, secondary, and college levels which had been set up in the first half of the twentieth century.23 Thus the AIU permanently forfeited its once prominent place in modern Jewish education in Iraq. It is apparent that the AIU was not very successful in its efforts to covey a French-Western education to members of the Jewish communities in Iraq. Iraqi Jews, who for political and economic reasons had made an effort as early as the 1860s to introduce modern education into their schools, wanted to divest this education of its acculturative elements. When this goal brought them into prolonged conflict with the AIU organization, they preferred to forgo AIU assistance to the educational institutions which they had established and to take upon themselves the development and maintenance of an independent community educational system. The community succeeded in freeing itself of financial ties to the AIU and mobilizing the financial means and teaching staff for its institutions. It thus developed a modern community educational system, the strongest and most developed in all the Arab countries. After World War I, when modernization and Western influence penetrated Muslim society, Jewish leaders in Iraq grew indifferent to cultural change, for they no longer saw such change as endangering the community. Iraqi Jewry continued to preserve its social and religious frameworks even after modernization. Evolution of an independent modern educational system helped the Jewish community in Iraq undergo modernization without accompanying assimilation.

Amiability and Animosity

In his article on the Jews in the lands of Islam during the Middle Ages, H.Z. Hirschberg noted the dearth of sources from which we could learn about the personal relations between Jews and the non-Jewish society within which they lived. Arab Muslim writers, too, have almost completely ignored the existence of non-Muslim communities, in “a faithful mirror of reality. This was the way

22  Shaul Sehayik. “L’éducation hébraïque au Moyen Orient arabe, 1900–1935.” In Hebrew. Shorashim ba-Mizrah 2 (1989): 11–64, 22–23, 36–46; AJAR (1926): 21–22; ibid. (1931): 18–19. 23  Yosef Meir. Socio-Cultural Development of Iraqi Jews since 1830. In Hebrew. (Tel Aviv 1989), 32–66, 105–38; Zvi Yehuda, ed. Jewish Schools in Baghdad 1832–1974: Picture Album. (Or Yehuda 1996), 3–9.

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of life of the people in the medieval orient.”24 In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the situation was not very different. While there are numerous reports on attacks on Jews by the authorities and the Muslim populace, very little material exists on the social relations between Jews and Muslims in Iraq. The Jews who left Iraq in the second half of the twentieth century and wrote dozens of memoirs in Hebrew and English during the last two decades also say very little on this subject. The few references that do occur are to be found mainly in memoirs that Jews, and lately Muslims, too, wrote in Arabic, in print and in the electronic media. This is the case despite the fact that Jews and Muslims lived in proximity for many years and were in contact as neighbors, at work and in commerce. One important source of information on this topic is interviews conducted with the elders of the Iraqi Jewish community after they had left Iraq. These elders stress the friendly relations which they had with their Muslim neighbors, but also mention the attacks on Jews by the government and the Muslim populace. It is thus not surprising that the only study that contains a brief discussion of this issue is based on the impressions of Iraqi elders in Israel and on the author’s personal knowledge.25 The way the government treated the Jews had a great effect on Jewish-Muslim social relations in Iraq during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When the authorities protected the Jews, social and personal relations were warmer while in times of official hostility tensions rose and ties weakened. In the two centuries that preceded the mass exodus of Iraqi Jewry it lived in the midst of a socially diverse Muslim majority society. The Muslims were divided into Sunnis and Shi’is, Arabs and Kurds, tribesmen and city dwellers, the powerful and the common people, the rich and the poor and, towards the end of that period, also into the educated and the illiterate, and to adherents of disparate modern political views, especially extreme nationalists and Communists. During this period Jewish society also underwent great changes, as a result of a large influx of immigrants, urbanization, and modernization. The number of Jews in the cities rose constantly, especially in Baghdad, where the Jews constituted about one-third of the populace at the end of the nineteenth century, and where about seventy percent of all Iraqi Jews lived by the 1940s. The penetration of Western rationalism did not make the two societies’ distinct religious frameworks disappear, although observance of religious commandments 24  H.Z. Hirschberg. “The Jews under Islam.” In Hebrew. In Studies in the History of the Arabs and Islam. Ed. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh. (Tel Aviv 1967), 316–32, 274. 25  Hayyim J. Cohen. The Jews in the Middle East Countries. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1972), 41–45.

12

Introduction

declined; however, it did add a national dimension to the religious distinction between Jew and Muslim, and thus moved the relations between them from the traditional framework of local religious corporations to the modern form of an Arab nation in conflict with Zionism.26 By the end of the 1940s, Iraq’s Jews not only suffered from attacks based on the rules of patronage and humiliation dictated by Islam but also came to be punished for the actions of other Jews outside Iraq against Arab Muslims. The chauvinist nationalists in Iraq thus found a way around the Muslim injunction to protect the Jews and attacked them instead for being “Zionists.”27 The British traveler J.P. Fletcher, who visited the city of Irbil in the 1840s, describes an incident that he witnessed as he passed through the lower city market in the company of his official Turkish host: [We] passed through the Bazaar of the lower town [of Irbil]…. As we proceeded, we observed an altercation going on near one of the stalls, which was destined to terminate in no very pleasant manner. The owner of the shop, a tall and portly looking Jew of about thirty years of age, had given dire offence to a customer, who, though yet in his teens, was a true believer, and determined to exercise the privileges of one. After heaping on the poor Jew many stinging epithets of abuse, in a shrill and piping voice, the urchin raised his small hand and struck the man on the face. The insulted shop-keeper could almost have annihilated his assailant with a single blow, but his hands were tied by the degradation of his people. He received the cuff with quiet submission, raising only a most dismal howl, which he hoped perhaps might excite the compassion of his opponent. The boy seemed at first rather startled by his own act, but soon recovered his composure, he spat in the man’s face, and departed. “That young scapegrace merits richly the bastinado,” said I, to one of the Governor’s attendants, who accompanied us. “He is Sheitan, that boy,” was his reply, “but the other is only a Jew.” Only a Jew!—A Mohammedan will often excuse even murder in this manner, and think no more of it than of the slaughter of a bullock.28 This incident reflects the reality of the daily lives of Jews in Iraq. They were forced to submit to insults, humiliation, physical attack and occasionally to 26  Gabriel Baer. The Arabs of the Middle East—Population and Society. In Hebrew. (Tel Aviv 1973), 87–93, 122–25. 27  Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 179–89, 270–75. 28  J.P. Fletcher. Narrative of a Two Years’ Residence at Nineveh and Travels in Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Syria. 2nd ed. Vol. 2 (London 1850), 45–46.

Introduction

13

pay with money or their very lives in their contacts with Muslims. The authorities and those acting on their behalf did nothing to prevent this harassment; to the contrary, they invented excuses to condone it. From the end of the 1870s an increasing number of reports published by Baghdadi Jews in the Judeo-Arabic press in India deal with the social contacts that these Jews maintained with Muslims. The increase in the number of such reports may well be due to the political changes that had taken place in Baghdad at the end of the 1860s, when Midhat Pasha, a major reformist figure in the Ottoman Empire, was appointed as governor of Iraq (1869–1872). This was the period when the Ottoman reforms (tanzimat) that granted equality to all religious communities without intervening in their internal structure, began to be implemented in Iraq; foundations were laid for the rule of law, including the establishment of the appropriate administrative and legal institutions.29 This activity continued also after Midhat Pasha left Baghdad and helped Jews become aware of the equality that they had been granted. They now had the confidence to stand up for their civil rights and to demand them from the Turkish authorities. True, at the end of the nineteenth century there were still Jews who were afraid to complain about attacks by Muslims and Jewish mothers continued to teach their children to fear Muslims;30 however, Jewish awareness that they were now equal under the law and that they, as citizens with the same rights as Muslims, had the opportunity to take Muslims who attacked and harassed them to court, brought about a large increase in complaints by Baghdadi Jews against acts of harassment, robbery and theft, even in minor cases.31 This new state of affairs deterred Muslims from attacking Jews and forced them to seek ways to cooperate with and become reconciled to them, even in tense times, in order avoid as well as they could the need to appear before the Turkish courts, where they were liable to be sentenced to whippings, prison, and heavy fines and bribes. These changes in the status of Jews did not fundamentally affect the deeprooted feelings of Muslims, especially lower class Shi’ites, towards them; these Muslims were incapable of adapting to the new situation and continued to perceive Jews as people whom one could attack and humiliate with impunity; cases of physical attacks of Jews by Muslims still occurred on various

29  ‘Abbas al-Azzawi. Ta’rikh al-’Iraq bayna Ihtilalayn (History of Iraq between two occupations). Vol. 7 (Baghdad 1955), 160–269. 30   Perah 1, no. 33 (7 Feb. 1879): 130. 31  Many cases of appeal to the authorities and complain can be found in the newspapers Perah and Magid Mesharim (Calcutta).

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Introduction

occasions.32 Muslims, including police officers and soldiers, ignored their duties towards the Jews and tried to extort money from Jewish merchants, steal their wares or force them to sell to them at a low price.33 Muslims also abducted Jewish children in order to raise them as Muslims or to murder them.34 Muslim officials, policemen and soldiers extorted money from Jews, stole property and attacked them physically.35 The Jewish victims immediately complained to the Turkish authorities in order to put a stop to such acts, the authorities set up a special supervision unit that was authorized to punish the offending soldiers, policemen, and other Muslims. This measure succeeded in deterring many potential attackers; the attacks became less frequent, and for a time even stopped.36 Jews now also dared to respond in kind to their attackers. Thus a Jew who caught a Muslim child trying to steal from him was not afraid to beat the child despite the protests of numerous Muslim bystanders, who were attracted to the spot by the child’s cries for help but did not dare touch the Jew, despite the difficulty they had in seeing a Jewish dhimmi (a person under Muslim protection) strike a Muslim. The Jew wanted to turn the child over to the Turkish 32   Doresh Tob le-’Ammo 2, no. 25 (4 Sept. 1857): 137; Perah 2, no. 5 (18 July 1879): 19; ibid., 5, no. 31 (19 Jan. 1883): 185; ibid., 7, no. 17 (3 Oct. 1884): 126–27; ibid., no. 35 (13 Feb. 1885): 239–40; ibid., 8, no. 7 (24 July 1885): 48; ibid., 9, no. 10 (13 Aug. 1886): 68; Magid Mesharim 1, no. 11 (16 Jan. 1890): 5–6; ibid., no. 3 (6 Feb. 1890): 5–6; ibid., 9, no. 3 (11 Nov. 1897): 3–4; ibid., no. 6 (2 Dec. 1897): 3–4; ibid., no. 44 (1 Sept. 1898); ibid., 10, no. 39 (20 July 1899); ibid., 11, no. 1 (19 Oct. 1899). 33   Perah 6, no. 50 (6 June 1884): 311–12; ibid., 7, no. 10 (15 Aug. 1884): 70; ibid., 8, no. 12 (28 Aug. 1885): 83; ibid., no. 28 (25 Dec. 1885): 196; ibid., no. 48 (21 May 1886): 337–38; ibid., 9, no. 9 (6 Aug. 1886): 62; Magid Mesharim, 1, no. 12 (30 Jan. 1890): 5–6; ibid., no. 13 (6 Feb. 1890): 5–6; ibid., no. 15 (20 Feb. 1890): 5; ibid., no. 30 (12 June 1890): 5–6; ibid., no. 33 (3 July 1890): 5; ibid., 9, no. 44 (1 Sept. 1898); ibid., 11, no. 37 (5 July 1900); Shoshana, 10 Oct. 1901. 34   Perah 3, no. 32 (28 Jan. 1881): 139; ibid., 5, no. 10 (19 Aug. 1882): 55–56; ibid., 8, no. 26 (11 Dec. 1885): 181–82; ibid., 9, no. 1 (11 June 1886): 6; Magid Mesharim 7, no. 33 (11 June 1896); ibid., 10, no. 31 (25 May 1899); ibid., no. 43 (17 Aug. 1899). 35   Perah 3, no. 35 (18 Feb. 1881): 151; ibid., 5, no. 44 (20 Apr. 1883): 263–64; ibid., 7, no. 3 (27 June 1884): 20–21; ibid., no. 12 (29 Aug. 1884): 83–84; ibid., no. 25 (5 Dec. 1884): 179; ibid., no. 30 (9 Jan. 1885): 210; ibid., no. 48 (22 May 1885): 329–30; ibid., 8, no. 6 (17 July 1885): 40–41; ibid., no. 8 (31 July 1885): 54–55; ibid., no. 17 (9 Oct. 1885): 119–20; ibid., no. 29 (1 Jan. 1886): 202–3; Magid Mesharim 1, no. 14 (13 Feb. 1890): 5–6; ibid., no 37 (31 July 1890): 5–6; ibid., 2, no. 35 (18 June 1891); ibid., 10, no. 4 (3 Nov. 1898); ibid., no. 31 (25 May 1899); 11, no. 36 (23 June 1900); ibid., no. 37 (5 July 1900); ibid., no. 43 (16 Aug. 1900). 36   Perah 7, no. 40 (20 Mar. 1885): 272–73; ibid., 8, no. 41 (26 Mar. 1886): 286; ibid., no. 43 (9 Apr. 1886): 300; ibid., 9, no. 23 (19 Nov. 1886): 159–60; Magid Mesharim 2, no. 24 (26 Mar. 1891): 118; ibid., no. 35 (18 June 1891).

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15

police, but some Muslim elders and clerics in the crowd placated the Jew, who eventually let the child go.37 Baghdadi Jewry’s improved political and legal situation also affected their social relations with Muslims in various domains. Contemporary Jewish sources tell of cases where Muslim residents protected Jews from attacks by other Muslims, whether soldiers, policemen, clerics, or simple people. We know of fifty-two Muslim coppersmiths who signed a declaration in which they denied the charge of blasphemy against Islam which one of their peers had brought against a Jewish copper merchant with whom he had a dispute.38 Muslims maintained social ties with Jews and engaged in social activities together. This was not limited to innocent pastimes such as Jewish men sitting in Muslim cafés, even on the nights of Ramadan, and staying there until the early hours of the morning; young Jews and Muslims would go to the orchards outside the city and engage in revelry, with music, singing, food, and alcoholic drinks. Sometimes this drunken merrymaking would end tragically; it happened that a young Jew was shot and killed by his Muslim partner, and a Muslim youth was killed by his Jewish friend.39 We also have reports of young Jews and Muslims who went to brothels together. There were Jews who went to Muslim brothels and Muslims who visited Jewish prostitutes.40 At least one Jew was a pimp for Muslim prostitutes.41 Social contacts between Jewish and Muslim friends and neighbors included participation in each other’s family events. Jews and Muslims invited each other to weddings, circumcision ceremonies, and parties with music on holidays. During such parties, which often involved alcohol and shooting in the air, drunken revelers often caused mishaps, sometimes leading to the unintended death of a guest, Jew or Muslim. The frequency of such incidents led the authorities to intervene; the use of firearms at celebrations was forbidden and disorderly drunks were brought to account.42

37   Perah 7, no. 4 (4 July 1884): 29; see also Perah 6, no. 23 (23 Nov. 1883): 135; ibid., 8, no. 12 (28 Aug. 1885): 83. 38   Perah 8, no. 3 (26 June 1885): 20; see also Perah 7, no. 17 (3 Oct. 1884): 126–27; ibid., 8, no. 5 (10 July 1885): 34; ibid., no. 28 (25 Dec. 1885): 196. 39   Perah 5, no. 31 (19 Jan. 1883): 185; Magid Mesharim 7, no. 10 (26 Dec. 1895). 40   Perah 1, no. 46 (16 May 1879): 182–83; ibid., 4, no. 44 (28 Apr. 1882): 201–2; ibid., 8, no. 11 (21 Aug. 1885): 76; ibid., 9, no. 6 (16 July 1886): 41–42; Magid Mesharim 7, no. 10 (26 Dec. 1895). 41   Perah 7, no. 47 (15 May 1885): 324. 42   Perah 7, no. 20 (31 Oct. 1884): 149–50; ibid., no. 32 (23 Jan. 1885): 222; ibid., 8, no. 21 (6 Nov. 1885): 147.

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Introduction

The closer social ties between Jews and Muslims also gave rise to cases of mutual assistance. Jews and Muslims helped each other in times of trouble, such as fires, floods or famine. Jews rescued Muslims and a Muslim woman rescued a Jewish child from drowning in the river;43 a Muslim bought food with his own money for a Jewish widow who did not have enough to feed her children, and a Jew supported the family of a Muslim who had gone on pilgrimage to Mecca.44 Jews and Muslims shared a belief in the efficacy of saints’ shrines and miracle workers. Muslim women from respectable Baghdadi families did not hesitate to ask an envoy from the Holy Land to help them discover who had stolen their jewelry,45 and Jewish men and women went to Muslim healers.46 The contacts between Jews and Muslims occasionally went beyond neighborly and friendly relations within a political system that strove to maintain equality among its members. Occasionally we find cooperation in ways that did not conform to the accepted moral norms of Jewish society. Reports from Baghdad tell of the existence of cooperation in crime; our sources, in addition to many reports they contain about acts of theft and robbery committed by Muslims against Jews, do not ignore the existence in Baghdad of the end of the nineteenth century of Jewish thieves who stole from both Jews and Muslims47 and of gangs of Jewish and Muslim thieves who acted together and targeted Jews and Muslims indiscriminately. It even happened that on the Day of Atonement a Jewish home was robbed by a pair of thieves, one a Muslim and the other a Jew.48 The rise in the city’s Jewish population also had the effect, in addition to strengthening social ties between Jews and Muslims, of causing Jews to move into Muslim neighborhoods.49As a result the religious barriers were occasionally broken and some Jews, usually women, went to live with Muslims and married them. When this happened, it was not the kind of assimilation found in the West in mixed marriages, but conversion, because Iraqi society retained very strict religious frameworks, and a neutral position was impossible. The Turkish authorities permitted the Jewish leaders, the rabbis and the family 43   Perah 7, no. 12 (29 Aug. 1884): 83–84; ibid., 10, no. 13 (2 Sept. 1887): 90–91. 44   Perah 2, no. 9 (15 Aug. 1879): 40; Shoshana, 31 Oct. 1901. 45   Perah 3, no. 20 (5 Nov. 1880): 84–85. 46   Perah 8, no. 31 (15 Jan. 1886): 216–17; ibid., 9, no. 25 (3 Dec. 1886): 174. 47   Perah 1, no. 41 (4 Apr. 1879): 162; ibid., 7, no. 4 (4 July 1884): 29; ibid., 9, no. 5 (9 July 1886): 34. 48   Perah 8, no. 39 (12 Mar. 1886): 272; ibid., 9, no. 24 (26 Nov. 1886): 168. 49   Perah 3, no. 31 (31 Mar. 1882): 190; ibid., no. 25 (5 Dec. 1884): 179.

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17

of the girl who wanted to convert to Islam to speak to her in private in order to convince her to change her mind, but in most cases the Jewish girls refused to do so and thus broke their ties with their family and with Jewish society.50 Such “mixed” marriages occasionally raised problems of personal status that required unusual solutions, for example when the adult son of a Jewish woman who had married a Muslim wanted to return to Judaism. According to Muslim religious law he was a Muslim, but according to Jewish law he was a Jew. The question was brought before a Turkish court, which ruled that he should be permitted to return to Judaism.51A phenomenon that caused the community greater concern was the many cases in which Jewish men converted to Islam because of quarrels within the family, debt, or for financial remuneration from the authorities.52 As a result the Jewish leadership appointed a special commission for finding a solution in consultation with the Turkish administration.53 The burgeoning social contacts between Jews and Muslims in Baghdad aroused concern among the rabbis, guardians of religion and social morality in the Jewish community. They issued repeated warnings and attempted to close the breaches that had formed in the walls of Jewish religious and ethical observance, but to no great avail. Despite their repeated prohibitions, Jews continued to perform the morning prayers on the Sabbath earlier than permitted by Jewish law, to the light of candles lit by Muslims, in order to have time later to go on outings outside the city or to take a boat ride or swim in the Tigris River. They did not heed the rabbis’ request that the Sabbath be used for rest and for learning Torah.54 The rabbis also publicly criticized Jews who profaned the Sabbath by holding parties with Jewish musicians to which Muslim guests were invited, or be selling alcoholic drinks to Muslims.55 Muslim society also condemned the laxity of religious observance among Baghdad’s Jews, because it feared that this would also cause young Muslims to cease to respect the Muslim religious framework. In fact, the rabbis used Muslim condemnation as an argument in their exhortations to Jews to be more

50   Perah 1, no. 34 (14 Feb. 1879): 134; ibid., no. 28 (28 Dec. 1883): 165–66; ibid., 9, no. 28 (24 Dec. 1886): 197–98; ibid., no. 29 (31 Dec. 1886): 204; Magid Mesharim 9, no. 28 (12 May 1898). 51   Perah 6, no. 26 (14 Dec. 1883): 153–54. 52   Perah 3, no. 41 (31 Mar. 1882): 190; Magid Mesharim 9, no. 9 (1 Sept. 1898); ibid., 10, no. 5 (10 Nov. 1898). 53   Magid Mesharim 9, no. 41 (11 August 1898). 54   Perah 3, no. 19 (29 Oct. 1880): 80; ibid., 4, no. 3 (1 July 1881): 13–14; ibid., 5, no. 31 (19 Jan. 1883): 185; ibid., no. 44 (20 Apr. 1883): 263. 55   Perah 3, no. 41 (31 Mar. 1882): 190; ibid., 8, no. 21 (6 Nov. 1885): 147.

18

Introduction

observant.56 The Turkish authorities in Baghdad helped prevent people from breaking away from the Jewish and Muslim religious frameworks. They forbade Jews to drink alcohol in public and to smoke in public during the month of Ramadan, and prevented Muslim notables from hiring Jewish musicians and dancers on the eve of their holiday.57 A crisis in the relations between Jews and Muslims in Baghdad occurred in the wake of the events surrounding the burial of Rabbi Abdalla Somekh, who died in the epidemic of 1889. Because of a dispute over payment, Shi’ite Muslims in the west of Baghdad attacked the Jews during the rabbi’s funeral.58 In the days following the funeral the Turkish ruler of Baghdad (wali) joined the attackers and imprisoned the leaders of the Jewish community and many other Jews, whom he accused of having participated in an illegal burial. The authorities no longer protected the Jews and the wali ’s emissaries and other hostile Muslims entered the Jewish quarter and attacked the Jews. Jewish merchants were forced to close their shops and shut themselves up inside their homes. Muslims who dared defend their Jewish friends were arrested.59 The Jews asked for British help, but the British consul in Baghdad replied that as a religious minority in a Muslim country they must accept the local norms of repression and humiliation.60 Thus, from one day to the next the equality which the Ottoman Empire had given to the Jews by law went up in smoke and they reverted to their former status as dhimmis at the mercy of the Muslims. During the 1890s and at the beginning of the twentieth century the relations between Jews and Muslims in Baghdad appear to have gradually returned to what they had been before the events of September 1889. However, we have fewer reports on this, due apparently to the fact that at the beginning of the twentieth century the Judeo-Arabic newspapers in India ceased publication and no other sources of information exist. Unlike the Shi’ite Muslims of Baghdad who attacked the Jews during the events of 1889 and were the first to attack them during the farhud pogrom (1–2 June 1941), evidence provided by Iraqi Jews living in Israel shows that during the first half of the twentieth century close social ties existed between well-to-do Jews and the Shi’ite tribal leaders in the central Euphrates region and in southern Iraq. Jews risked their lives to help the chiefs during the tribal 56   Perah 7, no. 33 (30 Jan. 1885): 228; ibid., no. 36 (20 Feb. 1885): 247; ibid., 8, no. 16 (23 Sept. 1885): 12. 57   Perah 6, no. 44 (25 Apr. 1884): 272; ibid., no. 48 (23 May 1884): 297. 58  See below, Part Two, p. 203. 59   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 1 (4 Nov. 1889): 4. 60   F O, 195/1647, Tweedie to White, 13 Apr. 1890.

Introduction

19

uprising against the British in 1920 while the tribal leaders protected the Jews during the farhud.61 After the British conquest of Iraq and the imposition of the British mandate (1920), an Arab government was established and King Faisal was given the crown (1 August 1921). The Jews took part in creating the administration of the new Arab government.62 Jews began to attend government schools and to participate in Iraqi state events. In many Iraqi cities cinemas, clubs, and other new places of entertainment appeared. Jews learned Standard Arabic, read, edited and wrote books and newspaper articles in this language, which was now the official language of the state.63 Young Jews dressed like Arab intellectuals. All these developments brought Jews and Muslims together and created ties of friendship and mutual assistance.64 However, after Iraq received its independence (1932) and King Faisal I passed away (1933), the attitude of the authorities towards the Jews changed once more, and attacks on them were again on the rise. By far the worst attack was the farhud, a pogrom that broke out in two Shi’ite neighborhoods, al-Karkh in western Baghdad and Bab alShaykh in the city’s eastern part. One hundred and forty one Jewish men and women, children, and the elderly were killed, some with unspeakable cruelty. But not all were filled with blind hatred; some Muslims helped and protected Jews,65 occasionally at the risk of their own lives. Once again the two extremes of the Muslim attitude towards the Jews in Iraq were revealed: love and hatred. Arab nationalism emerged in Iraq at the beginning of the 1930s and made it impossible for overt close social relations between Jews and Muslims to continue. The only framework within which such relations could be maintained, in secret, was the clandestine Communist Party. At the end of the 1940s many of the Party members were arrested and some were hung, among them Jews; under these circumstances true friendships were formed, involving mutual self-sacrifice by both Jews and Muslims, in which religion ceased to play any 61  Yehuda Barshan. Dead-End Lanes. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1995), 69–72; Shmuel Moreh and Zvi Yehuda, eds. Al-Farhūd—The 1941 Pogrom in Iraq. (Jerusalem 2010), 348–51, 356– 58; Moshe Devori. Amara, a City among the Palm Trees. In Hebrew. (Ramat Gan 1999), 104. 62  Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 75–83. 63  Meir, Socio-Cultural Development, 284–85, 330–34. 64  Yehuda (Gourji) Barshan. A Jew Under the Shadow of Islam. In Hebrew. (Ramat Gan 1997), 74, 78–79, 97, 103–4; Mazin Latif. Dawrat al-Qamar al-Qasira li-Yahud al-’Iraq (Small moon cycle of the Iraqi Jews.) (Baghdad 2013), 27–34, 36, 159–64. 65  Moreh and Yehuda, Al-Farhūd, 291, 296–97; Shmuel Aviezer, Rose Water. (Bloomington, Ind. 2006), 58–60; Eddy Mor. One Thousand Nights and a Day. In Hebrew. (Tel Aviv 2016), 15; Avner Meiri. Waters of Babylon. (Lugus 1996), 35–40; David Sagiv. The Jewish Community of Basrah 1914–1952. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 2004), 104–9.

20

Introduction

role but in which ethnic identity was retained. This was manifested most powerfully when Muslims opposed the authorities’ plan to separate Jewish from Muslim Communist prisoners who lived together in a commune in the Iraqi prisons. The Muslim prisoners objected to the separation and even rebelled and bravely faced the bullets of the prison guards. Dozens of prisoners were killed and many were wounded, the majority of them Muslims. Reminiscences concerning these events continue to be published to this day in the memoirs of former Communist Iraqi Muslims.66

Leadership under Muslim-Arab Rule

Relationships of Jewish leaders with the Muslim Iraqi authority and the colonial British and French Powers in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries were complex, involving both religious, national, and anti-Semitic hostility and economic struggles. In the eighteenth century the Mamluks seized power in Iraq, which became an autonomous wilaya (province) under the Ottoman sultan. During their rule (1704–1831) they established an autonomous government in Iraq based on a sole ruler who needed a loyal Jewish rich merchant, sarraf bashi, capable of organizing his income and financing his expenses. The sarraf bashi also served as the president of the Jewish community, who had unlimited authority; but while he was close to the ruler and very powerful, his position as the governor’s chief of finance made his economic standing and even his personal safety quite precarious.67 Toward the end of the 1780s, Choja Abdulla ibn Eusuf, head of one of the richest and most privileged Jewish families in Iraq and the Far East, came from Aleppo to lead the Jewish community in Basra. He claimed descent from the 66  Latif, Dawrat al-Qamar, 161; Khathem Habib. Yahoud al-Iraq wal Muwatana al-Muntaza’a (The Jews of Iraq and the expropriation citizenship). (Milano 2015), 674–5; personal interviews with Iraqi Communist Jews who wanted to remain anonymous. 67  David S. Sassoon. A History of the Jews in Baghdad. (Letchworth 1949), 120–127; Meir Benayahu. “Documents on the History of Iraqi Jewry and their Relationship with Kurdish and Persian Jewry.” In Hebrew. Studies on History and Culture of Iraqi Jewry.” Ed. Y. Avishur. 2 (Or Yehuda 1982): 1–81, 15–17; Zvi Yehuda, On the History of the Jews, 46–47; Meir Benayahu. Rabbi Yaacov Elyashar ve-Hibboro Megillat Paras—’al Mekorot Kehillat Basra bi-Shnot 535–539 (Rabbi Yaacov Elyashar and his book Megillat Paras—Basra community sources in the years 1775–1779). (Jerusalem 1960), 42, 45, 51–53; Walter J. Fischel, Ha-Yehudim be-Hodo, Helkam ba-Hayyeem ha-Kalkaliyyim veha-Medinyyeem (The Jews in India, their part in the economic and political life). In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1960), 97–111.

Introduction

21

twelfth-century Spanish nasi R. Yosef ibn Shelomo ibn Shushan and so considered himself a scion of Spanish Jewry. His son Faraj Haim, also a wealthy philanthropist, was known to possess a large library with some ten thousand tomes, which he probably inherited from his father. Abdulla ibn Eusuf and his sons contracted marriages with veteran respected Iraqi families in Baghdad and the Far East, such as the Ma’tuks and the Sassoons. Choja Abdulla was a prominent merchant with numerous commercial connections and held the post of sarraf bashi in Basra. The wali of Iraq Suleiman “the Great” (1780–1802) had complete trust in Choja Abdulla, whom he entrusted with provisioning Basra and managing the province’s income and expenses, and gave him the authority to supervise its mutasallim (governor). Choja Abdulla carried a dagger on his person and all the city’s residents submitted to him and sought his favor. He was also under British protection and served as moneychanger for the British East India Company’s agency in Basra.68 Choja Abdulla was an impressive leader who did not hesitate to lead his community into a severe confrontation with the Christians in Basra and with their leader, the British representative. For the first and only time in the history of the Jews a Jewish leader dared accuse Christians of having murdered a Jew for ritual purposes, to lead his congregation in violent demonstrations against the Christians in the streets of Basra and to demand revenge. Abdulla ibn Eusuf behaved in Basra as if he owned the city. He went about armed, convinced the mutasallim to act according to his instructions and personally conducted searches in the homes of Christians and interrogated both Christian and Muslim witnesses under threat of death. This incident, whose driving force was the struggle over control of Basra’s international trade, was affected by the Spanish origins of Choja Abdulla who used his solid standing, his influence on the mutasallim and the influence which his co-religionists in Baghdad had on the wali to defeat Jews’ Christian rivals and force them out of the international trade.69 He succeeded in maintaining his socio-economic standing and his considerable influence over the wali even after he was forced to leave Basra for Baghdad in 1791, despite the pressure of the British on Suleiman 68   I OR, G/29/22, pp. 663–66, Manesty’s letter of 5 July 1791; Abraham Ben-Yaacob. Yehudai Bavel me-Sof Tkofat ha-Geonim ‘ad Yamenu (Babylonian Jews from the Geonic era to the present day). (Jerusalem 1979), 114, 337–38; idem, Hebrew Poetry of Baghdadi Jewry. In Hebrew. (Ramat Gan 1970), 309. In the latter work Ben-Yaacob mistakenly states that Shaul ibn Abdulla, a student of Hebrew poetry in Spain, was the son of the president Abdulla ibn Eusuf. To judge by the year of his birth, 1850, and the details provided in BenYaacob’s previous book, Shaul was President Abdulla’s great-grandson. 69  See Part 2, Chapter 3.

22

Introduction

Pasha to punish him for his actions against the Christians and the British resident.70 He continued to enjoy the Pasha’s trust and remained one of his two closest confidants.71 But the power of the president’s position made it a perilous one. The president’s close relations with the ruler and his court, his wealth and his prestige, aroused jealousy and greed. We do not know of any of the presidents of the Jewish communities in Baghdad or Basra who were executed by the Mamluk rulers in the eighteenth century, but we have a report that the first known president, Moshe ibn Mordechai Shindookh, was forced to pay a very large ransom to the wali to ensure his own safety.72 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Iraqi Jews came to have increasing influence on the local Mamluk rulers and on the central government of the Ottoman Empire. They were powerful enough to affect the appointment and dismissal of walis. But these influential Jews eventually lost their posts and paid with their lives. Two of the Baghdadi Jewish community’s presidents were executed. Others forced to leave the country.73 As part of reforms throughout the Ottoman Empire, the presidency in the Jewish communities of Iraq was abolished in 1849. Henceforth the heads of the communities were to be called hakham bashi (“chief rabbi”). This points to a revolution in the leadership of the communities, where the lay leadership of the rich and influential Jews was driven aside by the spiritual leadership of the rabbis, who held the position of authority. However, this change, which was imposed from the outside by the Ottoman authorities, could not alter socio-economic realities in the second half of the nineteenth century and the wealthy still held the key to the proper functioning of the community framework. So although the Turkish authorities decided that rabbis would head the Jewish communities, in fact it was the wealthy upper class that continued to

70   I OR, G/29/22, pp. 663–66, Manesty’s letter of 5 July 1791; IOR, G/29/22, p. 680, Manesty’s and Jones’ letter to Ainslie from 7 Feb. 1792. 71  Stephen H. Longrigg. Four Centuries of Modern Iraq. (Oxford 1925), 219; Thabit Abdallah. The Political Economy of Merchants and Trade in Basra (Ph. D. diss. Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., 1993), 151; Tom Nieuwenhuis. Politics and Society in Early Modern Iraq. (The Hague 1982), 74, writes “the famous Jewish sarraf Khuja Abdallah ibn Yusuf who became chief counselor of Sulayman the Great and one of the prominent members of the informal power structure of the 1790’s.” 72  Sassoon, Baghdad, 115–27; Benayahu, “Documents,” 6; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 111; David S. Sassoon. “The History of the Jews in Basra.” JQR 17, no. 4 (Apr. 1927): 407–69, 412–16; Jean Otter, Voyage en Turquie et en Perse. (Paris 1748), 185–86. 73  Sassoon, Baghdad, 122–27; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 111.

Introduction

23

manage the community’s affairs without the authority and recognition that an official appointment would have given them. In the 1840s to 1850s this leadership obtained full control of Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards without having had recourse to foreign political or philanthropic assistance, after more than five-hundred years of Muslim control. They were able to influence the Muslim Turkish authorities to remove the Shi’ite supervisors of the tomb and the adjacent courtyards, and gave them the control of the site and appointed the head of Hilla’s Jewish community, Mordechai Salih ‘Abudi, as supervisor.74 In 1860, when Mustafa Nuri Pasha, the wali of Baghdad, tried to expropriate Ezekiel’s tomb from the Jews, a change took place in the way this leadership operated and for the first time they appealed to England for help, enlisting the help not only of their co-religionists in Europe and the Holy Land, but also that of influential Christians in Baghdad, in the persons of missionaries and the British consul, to foil this attempt.75 Three decades later the considerations that led the acting hakham bashi and local rabbis of Baghdad’s Jewish community, with no experience in how to administer the affairs of a large community of fifty thousand people in crisis, to act in the matter of Rabbi Abdalla Somekh’s funeral and the attendant events, turned out to have been mistaken. It led the community into the most serious crisis it had ever experienced throughout the entire Ottoman period, resulting in a serious confrontation with the local authorities, violent attacks on the Jews, the loss of religious real estate assets by the community, great financial distress, and an interruption in community services.76 Following the British occupation of Iraq and Britain’s decision to grant independence, the Jewish community faced the issue of the Jews’ future under Arab Muslim rule. It tried to bring about a continuation of British rule and did not support the establishment of an Arab Muslim administration.77 In the name of “80,000 Jews” it addressed the following plea to Iraq’s British Civil Commissioner, “That they may be graciously taken under the shield of 74   F O, 195/624, no. 1, Muzbattah regarding the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel at Kiffle (no date); Zvi Yehuda. “On the Jewish Community in Iraq in an Era of Change: The Jewish Community of Hilla Demographic and Economic Changes.” In Hebrew. Studies on History and Culture of Iraqi Jewry, 2 (Or Yehuda 1982): 83–120, 89. The great wealth of the president of the Hilla Jewish community, Mordechai Salih, and his considerable influence over Jews and Muslims quite likely played an important role in his obtaining this appointment. 75  See Part Two, pp. 181–188. 76  Part Two, p. 247. 77  Hayyim J. Cohen. Ha-Pe’ilut ha-Sionit be-’Iraq (Zionist activity in Iraq). (Jerusalem 1969), 18–19.

24

Introduction

the British Government and considered true subjects of His Majesty, holding themselves prepared to accept all obligation and rights of true citizens.”78 It explained the request with a number of arguments. One of them was the majority Arab Muslim populace’s inability to undertake “Serious political or administrative responsibilities” and the Jewish community’s fear of a government answerable to a populace with a “very strong theocratic character due to the dominance of religious feelings.” It defined the Jewish community’s aim at that time as a desire “To have a free opportunity for economic and educational development … which guaranteed the existence of their race in adversity.” The letter was signed by fifty-eight notables, headed by the President of the Jewish Lay Committee, and the Acting Chief Rabbi and President of Religious Council. The Hakham Bashi Moshe Haim Shlomo David sent a copy of this letter to the president of the AIU in the name of the Baghdadi Jewish community, accompanied by a letter of his own, in which he asked the AIU to lend its support.79 However, the British authorities rejected the request to give British citizenship to Iraq’s Jews.80 In fact, the community’s leaders were forced by the British authorities to sign a document agreeing to the establishment of an Arab administration.81 One of the Jewish leaders who had signed the request to obtain British citizenship and also supported the establishment of an Arab government was Menahem Salih Daniel (1846–1940), a prominent figure in the Jewish community from the 1870s until the end of the British mandate. He was the first Jewish delegate in the Ottoman parliament that convened in 1877, and the only Jew in the Iraqi senate. His family dealt in the development of agricultural regions, trade in grain and construction and maintenance of grain stores, and possessed markets and much other real estate in the central and southern Euphrates region. Daniel received a very large inheritance from his father and increased it, to become one of the richest Jews in Iraq. He possessed a large house on the Tigris in Baghdad, where he hosted the cream of Iraqi Muslim society, including senior figures in government and administration. In addition, he had a rural estate in the city of Hilla, from where he conducted his business activities. He took it upon himself to manage and fund the traditional shrine of the prophet Ezekiel, a popular annual destination for pilgrims from every 78   A IU Archive, Irak IC4, letter from the Jewish Community of Baghdad to the President of AIU, 28 May 1919, and enclosure. 79  Ibid. 80  Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 45. 81  Cohen, Ha-Pe’ilut ha-Sionit, 19; Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 51.

Introduction

25

part of Iraq. Daniel’s family owned a hostel on the grounds of the shrine and a mausoleum where he and his father Salih were buried.82 Menahem Salih Daniel devoted much time and money to community service, but refrained from filling an official position in the community. He played an active role in the community’s internal struggles during the 1880s but was absent during the affair of Rabbi Abdalla Somekh’s funeral; apparently he was not in Baghdad at the time. His major concern was to provide the community’s children with a modern Hebrew and Arabic education. He maintained close ties to the AIU in Paris and served as a member of its Central Committee; he also met with its heads during his frequent visits to Europe.83 His public activities were focused on the combined aim of strengthening Jewish identity and integration into Arab society and administration. He expressed his approach in a letter that he wrote in English after the Arab administration in Iraq had been formed. The letter came in response to a request by the World Zionist Organization that he help promote Zionist activity in Iraq.84 His letter opens with the following declaration: “It is needless to say that I greatly appreciate and admire your noble ideal, and would have been glad to be able to contribute towards its realization.” However, he believed that the political situation in Iraq made it impossible to carry out Zionist activities like in Europe, because in the Arab world Zionism is perceived as a threat to Arab nationalism. In fact, in Iraq opposition to Zionism and sympathy with the Arabs of Palestine is so strong that, for the local Arabs, “Any sympathy with the Zionist Movement is nothing short of betrayal of the Arab cause.” Daniel expresses concern for the situation of Iraqi Jews who, on one hand, are more competent than the Muslims, and their ability to fill senior positions in the new Arab government has aroused their (the Muslims’) jealousy but, on the other hand, have a messianic perception of Zionism which, they believe, will solve all their problems. As he wrote, This feeling [of the Iraqi Jews] is needless to say altogether unenlightened. It was more Messianic than Zionistic. To an observer it was merely the reaction of subdued race, which for a moment thought that by magic the tables were turned and that it were to become an overlord.

82  Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 182–85; Yehuda, “Jewish Community of Hilla,” 91. 83   A IU Archive, Irak VII E75, letter from Louria to AIU, 10 Mar. 1885; ibid., Irak IB7, various letters. 84  Cohen, Ha-Pe’ilut ha-Sionit, 237–40.

26

Introduction

The Jews of Iraq do not understand that the road towards the liberation of the Promised Land is long and until it will be able to absorb them they will have to find a way to coexist with the Arabs. He concludes: “In view of the above circumstances I cannot help considering the establishment of a recognized Zionist Bureau in Bagdad as deleteriously affecting the good relations of the Mesopotamian Jew with his fellow citizens.” A few years after he had written this letter he built two schools in Hilla, one for boys and the other for girls. He negotiated with the AIU to bring headmasters for the schools, but when his efforts proved unsuccessful, Daniel brought the journalist and Zionist activist Dr. Nissim Mallul and his wife from Palestine to run the schools.85 Menahem Daniel continued to be involved in the Jewish community’s affairs with the help of his son Ezra, and with him participated in the struggles over the community’s leadership throughout the 1920s, including the preparation of the community’s new regulations, as required by the Arab authorities. These came into effect in 1931.86 He became less active with time and his son took his place. He died before the farhud, the persecutions at the end of the 1940s, the establishment of the State of Israel and the mass emigration to Israel. The same is true of many other leaders of this community, who did not foresee these rapid developments in the history of Iraqi Jewry. After Iraq received its independence the leadership of the Jewish community in Baghdad became a tool of the authorities and obeyed their instructions.87 Ezra Menahem Daniel was appointed to the Iraqi Senate as its only Jewish member in his father’s place. In a speech to the Senate before the vote on the Law of Waiver of Citizenship he attacked the government for the persecution that caused Iraq’s Jews to flee from their homeland. However, the speech did not succeed in its aim; to the contrary, it was received with hostility by the nationalist Arab press.88 During the harsh persecutions of the Ba’ath regime in the years 1969–1971 the attacks on the community’s leadership reached a new high when the

85  Ibid., pp. 80–81; AIU Archive, Irak , IB7, letters from M.S. Daniel to AIU, 24 Jan. 1924, 14 Oct. 1925; Meir, Socio-Cultural Development, 173–76. 86   A IU Archive, Irak, IB7, letter from E.M. Daniel to AIU, 26 Apr. 1931. Salman Shina. Mi-Bavel le-Tsion (From Babylon to Zion). (Tel Aviv 1955), 86–87. 87  Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 71–73; Shina, Mi-Bavel le-Tsion, 131–32. 88  Nissim Kazzaz. Documents and Selections from Iraqi Newspapers 1921–1974. In Arabic. (Haifa 2013), 280–81, 289–91, 300.

Introduction

27

authorities arrested and tortured the son of the community’s old leader, Rabbi Sasson Khedhouri.89 The last of the Jewish leaders who still adhered to Iraq’s soil and considered themselves the descendants of the original exiles to Babylonia, with more right than the Arabs to live in Mesopotamia, were forced to flee for their lives.90

89  Sha’ul Hakham Sassoon, In the Hell of Saddam Husayn. In Arabic. (Jerusalem 1999), 15–58. 90  Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 73; Nissim Kazzaz. The End of a Diaspora. In Hebrew. (Or Yehuda 2002), 181–83.

Part 1 Five Centuries of the New Babylonian Diaspora

⸪

Chapter 1

From Destruction to Revival

The Disappearance of Babylonian Jews

The beginnings of Babylonian Jewry go back to the forced exile of Jews by the kings of Babylonia in the sixth century BCE. After the exile of Jehoiachin, King of Judea (597 BCE) and the destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE), the territory of Babylonia became the center of Jewish life in the Diaspora, with dozens of attested Jewish settlements in the Talmudic period.1 After the conquest of Babylonia by the Arabs, the rise of the Abbasid caliphate and the founding of Baghdad (762 CE) many Jews moved into the new city, which became not only an administrative, cultural, and commercial center but also the seat of the Exilarch and the Yeshivas. In addition, many Jews in Babylonia’s delta region abandoned farming, left their towns and villages and migrated to the big cities, especially Baghdad, in the eighth century CE, because of the taxes which the Muslim authorities imposed on farmers of the ahl al-dhimma (protected peoples).2 The Jewish community of Baghdad appears to have reached the apex of its growth in the twelfth century, as described by the traveler Benjamin of Tudela, who visited the city in 1170: In Baghdad there are some forty thousand Jews, who live in peace, tranquility and respect under the great king. Among them there are great sages and heads of yeshivas who are busy with Torah learning. In the city there are ten yeshivas. Rabbi Shmuel ibn ‘Eli is the head of the great yeshiva “Geon Yaacob” (Pride of Jacob). He is a Levite whose genealogy goes back to Moses, peace be upon him.… The head of them all is Rabbi Daniel ibn Hisday, whose genealogy goes back to David, King of Israel. The Jews call him Our Lord the Exilarch.… He has great authority over all the communities of Israel under the rule of Amir al-Mu’mineen (the Commander of the Faithful), the master of the Ishmaelites … and 1  Bustenay Oded, The Early History of the Babylonian Exile (8th–6th Centuries B.C.E.). In Hebrew. (Haifa 2010); Ben-Zion Eshel. Jewish Settlements in Babylonia During Talmudic Times. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1979). 2  Haim H. Ben-Sasson, History of the Jewish People, Vol. 2: The Middle Ages. In Hebrew. (Tel Aviv 1969), 23; Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands. A History and Source Book. (Philadelphia 1979), 28–32.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004354012_003

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all the communities of Shinar, Persia and Khurasan, Sheba or Yemen, Diyarbakir, the entire land of Mesopotamia, the land of Kut in the mountains of Ararat, the land of the Alanians … Siberia, the entire land of the Turks up to the mountains of Aswa, Georgia … who are the Girgashites who adhere to the Christian faith, until the gate of Samarqand, Tibet and India. The Exilarch gives all these communities permission to appoint a rabbi and a cantor over each.… In the city of Baghdad there are twentyeight synagogues.… Baghdad is a great city … merchandise comes to it from all lands. In it there are sages and philosophers who are versed in every wisdom.3 At this time the community of the city of Hilla (founded in 1101/1102), adjacent to the ruins of ancient Babylon, rose in importance. Benjamin of Tudela visited the city during his aforementioned journey. He found a community of ten thousand Jews with four synagogues.4 After Benjamin of Tudela’s visit, the fortunes of Baghdad’s Jewish community waned, because the central government weakened. An Arab account mentions a census, whose reliability cannot be assessed, according to which the number of Jews who paid the jizya or poll tax at the end of the Abbasid period was 36,000, and the number of synagogues sixteen, considerably fewer than the number quoted by Benjamin of Tudela.5 In 1258 Baghdad was captured by Hulagu. Its treasures were looted, the caliph and numerous inhabitants were killed and the city itself suffered great destruction, as did the irrigation canals around the city. Baghdad lost its greatness. The Mongols did not harm the Jews during the occupation; in fact, the Jews helped the Mongols in the administration of the state.6 But at the beginning of the fourteenth century, after the Mongol kings converted to Islam, they 3  Yehuda David Eizenstein, ed. Osar Masa’ot (Treasury of travels). (Tel-Aviv 1969), 32. 4  [Benjamin of Tudela]. Masa’ot shel Rabbi Binyamin z”l (Travels of Rabbi Benjamin). (London 1840), 65. 5  Quoted by Yusuf Rizq-Allah Ghanima, Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi Ta’rikh Yahud al-’Iraq (Yearning promenade in the history of the Jews of Iraq). (Baghdad 1924), 152. The number of Jews in Baghdad quoted in these sources should be taken as assessments that indicate a trend. Reports of the number of synagogues are perhaps more reliable; these show a discernible decrease, from twenty-eight to sixteen, in the period between 1170 and 1258, a clear indication of the community’s decline and the shrinking of the Jewish population. 6  Eliyahu Strauss [Ashtor]. “Kibbushai ha-Mongolim veha-Yehudim” (Mongol conquests and the Jews). Zion, Book 8, Vol. 4 (1939): 51–70; Walter J. Fischel. Jews in the Economic and Political Life of Medieval Islam. (New York 1969), 90–125; Henry H. Howorth. History of the Mongols. Part 3 (New York, [n.d.]), 126–32; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 57–79.

From Destruction To Revival

33

began to persecute the Jews. Jacob Mann describes the situation of Baghdad’s Jewish community following the Mongol invasion as follows: Baghdad lost its great former importance, and the authority and power of the Exilarch, who resided in the city, was reduced accordingly. Iraq’s Jewish community in general lost the prestige which it used to enjoy throughout the Jewish dispersion. Because of the many wars and the numerous conquerors Iraq was emptied of its Jews, who left their homeland in search of tranquility elsewhere.7 At the end of the fourteenth century, attacks on Jews increased and the situation of the community became dire indeed, as described by the Arab historian of Iraq, Abbas al-’Azzawi: These events which befell the Jews after they had attained a high standing in the state caused them to lower their voices. [Since then] we have not heard from them anything worthy of recording because they were prevented from participation in its government and politics. They were neglected and their voice was only heard [again] after a long time.…8 Baghdad and its inhabitants, including the Jewish community, suffered when Timurlane captured the city. The devastation was particularly catastrophic when he captured Baghdad for the second time, in 1401. Contemporary descriptions of the conquest describe the terrible destruction wrought by the Mongols. After an extended siege Timurlane’s troops attacked Baghdad in July of that year. The city’s inhabitants, who were unable to flee, were all systematically slaughtered, including the children. The historians of this period report that Timurlane demanded that every one of his fighters bring in at least one victim’s head. The heads were piled up in various towers throughout the city. Tens of thousands were killed and the very few who survived, about one in a hundred, were sold into slavery. Timurlane then destroyed the city’s public buildings, bazaars, and homes, leaving intact only buildings that housed

7  Jacob Mann. “Misrat Rosh ha-Gola be-Bavel ve-Hista’futa be-Sof Tkufat ha-Geonim (The position of the Exilarch in Babylon and its ramifications at the end of the Geonim era). In Livre d’hommage à la memoire du Dr. Samuel Poznanski (Warsaw 1927), 18–32, 25; see also: Yehuda, “Jews of Babylon Struggle,” 21–75, 24–25. 8  ‘Azzawi, Ta’rikh al-’Iraq. Vol. 2, 178.

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religious institutions.9 Baghdad’s sorry state after Timurlane’s conquests was described in 1437 by the Arab chronicler Al-Maqrizi: “Baghdad is in ruins. It has no mosque, no congregation of believers, no call to prayer and no markets. Most of the date palms have withered. Most of the irrigation canals are blocked. It cannot be called a city.”10 Among the victims were many Jews, including some who had fled from other places to Baghdad in the hope of finding shelter there. Many Jews escaped from Baghdad to Kurdistan and Syria. One report mentions 10,000 Jews killed in Mosul, Basra, and Husun Kifa.11 A few years later Timurlane died and Baghdad fell into the hands of Turkmen tribes who had neither the authority nor the ability to give the city back even a small part of its former glory. The capital of the Abbasid caliphate, a magnet for numerous nations, a center of commerce, culture, and wealth, was transformed into a minor town.12 Not only was Baghdad devastated, the entire fertile and thickly populated delta of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers lay in ruin, its irrigation canals destroyed, its arable land and settlements under water from destructive and noxious floods. The entire region became uninhabitable and its roads dangerous, and it fell into the hands of rapacious nomadic Bedouin tribes. Baghdad was severed from its traditional sources of commerce in the Levant and the Far East.13 This state of affairs seems to have made regular Jewish community life impossible in Baghdad. Throughout the fifteenth century there are no reports about Jews in the city or in its surroundings, in Basra, Hilla, Kifil, ‘Ana, Kurdistan, even in Persia and the Persian Gulf.14 Baghdad and its environs suffered 9  Jean Altbin. “Tamerlan à Bagdad,” Arabica 9, no. 3 (1962): 303–9, 308; ‘Azzawi, Ta’rikh al-’Iraq, vol. 2, 238–42; Ghanima, Nuzhat al-Mushtaq, 150; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 80. 10  Quoted by Altbin, “Tamerlan,” 309. 11  Sidney Mendelssohn. Mesopotamia. (London 1920), writes: “In the year 1400, Bagdad was besieged by Temorlane, and many Jews who had taken refuge there from other villages perished. In the course of the next year, the Jewish quarter of Aleppo was pillaged by the Mongols, and it is said that ten thousand Jews fell in Basorah, Mosol, and Hisn-Kef under the ferocious sword of the Tarter ruler,” 232; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 80. 12  Altbin, “Tamerlan,” 309. 13  Longrigg, Four Centuries, 12–21; “ ‘Iraq,” EH, vol. 26, p. 127. 14  Sassoon, Baghdad, 100–1; the collector and researcher David Sassoon writes: “From this time [1376] onward till the middle of the sixteenth century all our sources keep silent about the existence and the fate of the Jews in Baghdad. This silent cannot be interpreted as evidence for the non-existence of the Jewish community in Baghdad,” 101. Idem, “The History of the Jews in Basra,” JQR 17, no. 4 (Apr. 1927): 407–469, 412; Abraham BenYaacob, “Kehillat Yehudai Baghdad” (The Baghdad Jewish community). Mahanayim

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great political, cultural and spiritual devastation, and apparently also lost contact with centers of Jewish life in the Mediterranean region. About two hundred and thirty years after Benjamin of Tudela’s visit, we no longer hear about Baghdad as the center of Jewish life in the Diaspora, nor about the Exilarch, the city’s yeshivas and geonim, or its twenty-eight synagogues catering to the spiritual needs of its forty thousand Jews. What happened was not some sudden catastrophe or political convulsion after which the community recuperated, as it had done for two thousand years; the country’s Jewish community disappeared for more than four generations. This is the explanation for the Babylonian Jewry’s genealogy detachment.

The Beginning of New Babylonian Community

During the sixteenth century the region underwent political, economic, and spiritual changes that affected the status of Iraq and promoted conditions favorable to Jewish settlement there. The most significant changes were the discovery by the Portuguese, in 1498, of a sea route between Europe and the Far East, and the Portuguese occupation of Hormuz (1507), giving them control of maritime traffic in the Persian Gulf.15 There was also the founding of the independent Safavid state in Persia and the Persian occupation of Baghdad (1508).16 Baghdad was captured in 1534 and Basra in 1546 by the Ottoman Turks, who also took control of the caravan routes between the Mediterranean Sea, Persia, and the Far East.17 Aleppo became a regional and international commercial center connecting Europe to the Far East and Persia via Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul.18 In addition, there was the arrival of expelled Jews and crypto-Jews (Mar. 1967): 12–21, 14; Meir Benayahu. Tshuvot le-Kehillat ‘Ana (Answers to ‘Ana community). (Jerusalem 1951), 141; idem, Hebrew Books Composed in Baghdad and Books Copied There. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1993), 9; Yehuda, “Blood Libel,” 43; idem, “Jewish Community of Hilla,” 87; idem, “Jews of Babylon Struggle,” 25; Mann, “Misrat Rosh ha-Gola,” 25; idem, Texts and Studies in Jewish History. Vol. 1 (Cincinnati 1931), 480; Ghanima, Nuzhat alMushtaq, 151; Walter J. Fischel. “The Region of the Persian Gulf and Its Jewish Settlements in Islamic Times.” In Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume (New York 1950), 203–30, 208; idem, “The Jews in Medieval Iran from the 16th to the 18th Centuries: Political, Economic, and Communal Aspects.” Irano-Judaica. Ed. S. Shaked. (Jerusalem 1982), 265–91, 265. 15  “India,” EB; John B. Kelly. Britain and the Persian Gulf 1795–1880. (Oxford 1968), 1–2. 16  Fischel, “Region of the Persian Gulf,” 209–13; Longrigg, Four Centuries, 16–19. 17  Longrigg, Four Centuries, 20–32. 18  Bruce Masters, “Aleppo: The Ottoman Empire’s Caravan City,” in The Ottoman City between East and West (Cambridge [1999]), 17–78, 19–21; idem, The Origins of Western Economic

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from Spain and Portugal to the Ottoman Empire and establishment of the spiritual centers in Safed and Aleppo.19 These changes, despite the tensions among their various causes, conspired to create a measure of security and stability which in turn made it possible for Baghdad to once more develop into a regional and international center of commerce and to attract settlers from different nations, including Jews.20 However, although we do possess evidence for the existence of a Jewish community in Baghdad in the sixteenth century, the few available reports which have come to us, all through indirect and often anonymous sources, tell us very little indeed about its size, organization, institutions, and economic and spiritual situation. The first real report about the existence of a Jewish community in Baghdad after the silence of the fifteenth century comes from the days of the Persian occupation in 1508. The chronicler of the history of Iraqi Jewry, the Iraqi Christian Yusuf Ghanima, in an account whose source he does not give, states that “Shah Isma’il killed many Sunni Muslims [when he captured the city]. He slaughtered every Christian in the city, leaving not one. But he did not harm the Jews … they [the Jews] gave him expensive gifts and much money, of which he had need at the time.”21 Ghanima adds that the Persian Shah was not hostile to the Jews, whom he granted the right to freely pursue their activities and their livelihoods. As proof he quotes a Venetian traveler, whom he does not name. This traveler visited the city of Tabriz in Persia in the years 1511–1520 and reported that “there are also Jews there [in Tabriz]. They are not permanent residents of the city, but all Dominance in the Middle East: Mercantilism and the Islamic Economy in Aleppo, 1600–1750 (New York [1988]), 8–18. 19  Mina Rosen, “Collective Memories and Group Boundaries: The Judeo-Spanish Diaspora between the Lands of Christendom and the World of Islam,” Michael 14 (Tel Aviv 1997): 35–49, 35–38; idem, Beniamin Abendana, His Wanderings and Adventures in Italy and the Levant as Related by Francesco da Serino : Characteristics of the Iberian Peninsula Jewish Immigrants in the Mediterranean Countries in the Late 16th and the Early 17th Centuries (Tel Aviv 1985), 17–27; Abraham C. Taweel, “Megurrashe Sefarad bi-Khilat Aram Suba (Halab) ba-Mea’a ha-Shesh-’Esrai” (Jews expelled from Spain in the community of Aleppo in the sixteenth century), in Sephardi and Oriental Jewish Heritage Studies, ed. I. Ben-Ami (Jerusalem 1982): 97–107; Nathan Schur, History of Safed [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv 1983), 43, 71–78. 20  Longrigg, Four Centuries, 10; Aryeh Shmuelevitz, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the Late Fifteenth and the Sixteenth Centuries (Leiden 1984), 128–38. 21  Ghanima, Nuzhat al-Mushtaq, 154, quotes a book on the history of Iraq by Anastas alKarmeli, a writer and historian who lived in Iraq at the turn of the twentieth century.

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are foreigners who came from Baghdad, Kashan, and Yazd. They adhere to the Safavids and live in caravanseries like the other foreign merchants.”22 Despite the obscure origins of these reports they are of great importance, since they constitute evidence for the existence of a Jewish community in Baghdad after more than a century. The question is how reliable these reports are. Can we conclude from them that a Jewish community existed in Baghdad in the fifteenth century? From what we know of Persian history at the time, the Safavid rulers persecuted not only Sunni Muslims and Christians but Jews as well, until the reign of Shah Abbas I (1587–1629), when Persia changed its policy and began to welcome foreign merchants and craftsmen, who were permitted to practice their religion freely.23 From this we may conclude that the Persian policy at the time of the occupation of Baghdad was not in fact as depicted in the reports about the Jewish community mentioned above. Additionally, even if we were to accept these reports as reliable, we would posit that the Jewish community in Baghdad at the time numbered a handful of wealthy merchants who had recently arrived there to profit from the new economic opportunities, and who were able to pay the conquering Shah handsomely for protecting their lives; otherwise their fate would surely have been the same as that of the Christians. The Persian occupation of Baghdad lasted little more than a quarter of a century. In 1534 control of the city passed into the hands of the Ottoman Turks, who introduced a period of political stability that continued until the end of the sixteenth century. Immediately after the conquest, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent began to organize the city and province’s administration, and appointed a governor (wali) with the title of Pasha. In 1555 an agreement was signed with the Persians which ensured Turkish rule over Baghdad. This agreement, which remained in force until the end of the sixteenth century, promoted the continued development of the city and its defenses. Baghdad remained a major center for caravans and commerce increased. The European travelers who visited Baghdad at the end of the sixteenth century wrote in praise of the city, its buildings, and its markets, with local wares and merchandise from the Near and Far East. Despite this, however, Baghdad was only partially inhabited, with a population of between forty and fifty thousand.24 At the end of the sixteenth century we hear of the existence of a small Jewish community of some one thousand members. This community was in 22  Ibid., 155. 23  Fischel, Ha-Yehudim be-Hodo, 266–67; idem, Region of the Persian Gulf, 210–13; Peter Jackson, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods, 272–73. 24  Robert Mantran. “Baghdad à l’Époque Ottomane.” Arabica 9 (1962): 311–324, 313.

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contact with other centers of Jewish settlement throughout Iraq as well as with the communities in Aleppo, Safed, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Hormuz, and Cochin.25 Reports on the community’s spiritual life tell of the existence of a synagogue and the appointment of a rabbi from the city of ‘Ana, Rabbi Daweed Thabit. Rabbi Thabit received his rabbinical training and confirmation from the rabbis of Safed who granted him permission “to straighten and punish, to judge and to instruct in all the districts of the east, from Aleppo on, such as ‘Ana, Baghdad, Hormuz and their like, the communities of Persia and Media and their environs, and the communities of Kurdistan and Zagam and their satellites”.26 The fact that Baghdad was chosen as the seat of a rabbi sent by the rabbis of Safed to cater to the needs of the Jews in such a large region shows that no one had previously been appointed by the rabbis of Safed as rabbi of this region, and that the Jewish communities in the region had contact with the community in Baghdad, which in turn had contact with the community in Safed, because Baghdad was on the caravan route connecting Syria with Persia and the Far East. We are not in possession of any details about the lay leadership of Baghdad’s Jewish community. We do not know who was the head of the community or if it had a governing body, nor is it known whether there was a yeshiva in the city or whether it had any rabbis of stature. We know that the Jews of Baghdad sought the advice of the spiritual centers in Safed and Aleppo when faced with questions of religious practice. We also know of some wealthy people in the city who learned Torah, had large libraries, and held gatherings of sages in their homes. Jews in Baghdad also hosted scholars and fundraisers from Safed and Jerusalem.27 On October 2, 1604 a Belgian Jewish traveler of Portuguese origin named Pedro Teixeira arrived in Baghdad and wrote as follows: “There are perhaps two or three hundred homes of Jews. Ten or twelve of them claimed to be descendants of the original exiles. A few are wealthy but most are very poor. They live 25  Fischel, Ha-Yehudim be-Hodo, 58–60; Fischel surveys Jewish settlement in Hormuz during the period of Portuguese rule and mentions a Jewish resident of Baghdad who asked for permission to return to Hormuz to sell parasols; he was apparently an important person since the matter was brought to the attention of the king of Portugal; Yosef ben Lev, She’elot ve-Tshuvot (Responsa) vol. 3 (Amsterdam 1726; photo reproduction, Jerusalem 1970); Naftali Bar-Giora, “Ha-Yahasim bain ha-Yehudim ha-Levanim ve ha-Shehorim beCochin” (Relations between the white and black Jews in Cochin), Sefunot 1 (1957): 247–48; Benayahu, Tshuvot le-Khillat ‘Ana, 145, 170; and see below. 26  Benayahu, Tshuvot le-Khillat ‘Ana, 142, 150. 27  Abraham Sahalon, Sefer Yesha’ Elohim (Kraków 1898), author’s preface; Benayahu, Hebrew Books, 9–10; Benayahu, Tshuvot le-Khillat ‘Ana, 164; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 84–85.

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freely in their own quarter and they have a kanis or synagogue.”28 This description, of a small number of rich families in a mostly poor community, residing in a special quarter built around a synagogue, and including some who considered themselves descendants of the original exiles to Babylonia, would continue to characterize Baghdad’s Jewish community, (with some demographic fluctuation), until the nineteenth century. In the seventeenth century Mesopotamia and the rest of the region underwent political, economic, and spiritual changes that would affect the evolution of the Jewish community there and its connections to neighboring communities. It became a locus of the struggle between Persia and Turkey, not only because of its historical and strategic value but also because it was the territory that connected the Persian Gulf with Armenia, Kurdistan, and Syria.29 Due to the weakening of the central government of the Ottoman Empire the Persians managed to occupy Baghdad in 1623. The Turks failed repeatedly in their attempts to retake the city until the beginning of 1638 when Sultan Murat IV succeeded in driving out the Persians permanently. From that time until the end of the seventeenth century Baghdad enjoyed a period of peace, with no political upheavals.30 The political events of the beginning of the century had an adverse effect on the city’s economy, since they disrupted the trade caravans that traveled from Baghdad to Mosul and from there to ‘Ana and then to Aleppo. Shah Abbas I’s policy of cooperation with the British and the Dutch in order to expel the Portuguese from the Persian Gulf and at the same time to punish Turkey by creating a monopoly on Persian silk, the “oil” of that period, transporting it directly from Persian harbors to Europe, reduced the commerce of Aleppo and the Iraqi cities through which this trade had passed. Only after Shah Abbas’ death in 1629 was the monopoly on silk broken; silk could no longer be transported directly from the Persian Gulf to Europe, and so the silk trade once again went through Aleppo. After the Turks regained Baghdad and signed an agreement with Persia (in 1639) that secured the former’s rule over the city, the way was open for a return of the caravans.31 28  [Pedro Teixeira], The Travels of Pedro Texeira, translated and annotated by W.F. Sinclair (Nendeln 1967), i–ii, xx–xxii, 65–66. 29  Mantran, “Baghdad,” 316. 30  Longrigg, Four Centuries, 51–76. 31  Masters, “Aleppo,” 32–33; idem, Origens, 22–24. The importance of this trade can be seen from the data provided by Masters, Origens, 24: Persia produced about one thousand tons of silk per year, two-thirds of which were sent to Europe. In the middle of the seventeenth

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In the spiritual sphere, Safed’s importance was reduced, Aleppo became a regional spiritual center, and the new Torah centers that emerged in Persia and Kurdistan influenced the Jews of Baghdad.32 Baghdad at the beginning of the seventeenth century was described as a city that was recovering from its extended period of ruin. Only a third of the city’s area was inhabited. Its houses were newly built from old bricks taken from houses that had been destroyed. Where once there were markets, date palms grew. Only some disintegrating walls remained from the city’s former grand palaces and great walls.33 By the end of the century the damage done during the wars had been repaired, new public buildings had been constructed and commercial activity surpassed that of the previous century. Baghdad’s population grew apace and it became “the most important city in the Ottoman east.”34 Information about the Jews in Mesopotamia during this period is quite scarce. What little we know about the community is mostly to be found in reports about Jews in Persia and Kurdistan with whom the Jews of Baghdad were in contact. Following Shah Abbas I’s new policy towards non-Muslims and foreigners, beginning at the end of the sixteenth century, Jews from Baghdad moved to Persia, as did Jews from Aleppo, Tripoli, and Istanbul. Jews from the Holy Land made contact with Persian Jewry and sent fundraisers to the communities there.35 In the seventeenth century, a “Torah center consisting of Talmudic scholars, logicians, experts in religious law and midrash, who disseminated Torah and illuminated the lives of the communities” was found in Persia.36 The Kashan Jewish community had rabbis, a rabbinical court, and

century almost all such silk went through Aleppo. The silk reached England where the London silk industry, which in 1600 employed three hundred people and by 1640 came to employ ten thousand. Persian silk was cheap and constituted the majority of silk sold on the world markets until the end of the seventeenth century. See also Fischel, “Region of the Persian Gulf,” 222–23. 32  On the decline of Safed, see Schur, History of Safed, 43; Shmuel Avitsur, “Safed Wool Textile Industry Center in the Fifteenth Century,” in Safed Volume, Studies and Texts on the History of the Jewish Community in Safed, ed. Itzhak Ben Zvi and Meir Benayahu (Jerusalem 1962), 43–69. On the centers in Persia and Kurdistan see below. 33  Wilfrid Blunt, Pietro’s Pilgrimage (London 1953), 104. 34  Mantran, “Baghdad,” 316; Longrigg, Four Centuries, 81–95. 35  Fischel, “Region of the Persian Gulf,” 211–13. 36  Meir Benayahu. “Ktavav shel Rabbi David ben Maimon ha-Cohen me-Konsar, Makor le-Toldot Yehudai Paras ba-Mea’a ha-Shva’-’Esre” (The works of Rabbi David Maimon Haccohen from Konsar—a source for the history of the Jews of Persia in the seventeenth

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a yeshiva. The community in Isfahan also had a rabbi.37 The Jews of Baghdad were helped by their coreligionists in Persia, especially during the Persian occupation, and maintained commercial relations with them. However, at the end of Shah Abbas I’s reign and throughout the reign of Abbas II (1642–1666), the Jews were persecuted, forcibly converted and rabbis were executed. This was also the time when Shabbetai Zvi’s messianic movement failed. As a result, Jews from Persia sought refuge in other countries, including Iraq and Kurdistan, and some settled in Baghdad.38 The struggle between Persia and Turkey and the cessation of the caravan trade between Aleppo and Baghdad also hurt the Jewish community in ‘Ana. The wealthiest members of the community left for Aleppo and Damascus. Some also moved to Baghdad, among them the Ma’tuq family, which attained considerable renown and importance during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A Portuguese traveler who visited ‘Ana in 1663 found there only Jews whose livelihood came from making cloth out of camel hair.39 In contrast, the Jewish communities in northern Iraqi Kurdistan prospered in the seventeenth century). Studies in the Rabbinical Literature, the Bible and the Jewish History Dedicated to Prof. Ezra Zion Melamed. (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1982), 338–62, 345. 37  Ibid., 348; Walter J. Fischel, “Isfahan.” In Joshua Starr Memorial Volume ([n.p.] 1953), 111–28, 119–21. 38  Meir Benayahu, “Documents on the History of Iraqi Jewry and their Relationship with Kurdish and Persian Jewry.” In Hebrew. Studies on the History and Culture of Iraqi Jewry. Ed. Y. Avishur. 2 (Or Yehuda 1982), 1–81, 1–2, 4–6, 21–27; Fischel, “Jews in Medieval Iran,” 275–86; Ghanima, Nuzhat al-Mushtaq, 162; David Moualim, Sefer Toldot ve-Zichronot David Moualim (David Moualim’s biography and memoirs). (Tel Aviv 1971), 37; Walter J. Fischel, “Masa’ le-Kurdistan, Paras ve-Bavel mi-Tokh Sefer ha-Masa’ot shel R. David d’Beit Hillel” (A journey to Kurdistan, Persia and Babylon from the travels’ book of R. David d’Bet Hillel), Sinai, 3rd year, 5, nos. 1–6 (June–Nov. 1939): 218–54. We found no evidence for Fischel’s claim, based on Tavernier’s report, that in 1632 there were about 1,500 Jews in Baghdad (Fischel, “Masa’,” 231). While it is true that Tavernier states that there were Jews in Baghdad who were in the habit of making a pilgrimage to Ezekiel’s tomb, he does not say anything about the number of Jews in the city, only the total number of inhabitants, which he estimated at 15,000; Jean B. Tavernier. Les Six Voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Écuyer Baron d’Aubonne, en Turquie, en Perse et aux Indes…. (Paris 1679), 237. 39  Manuel Godinho, “Overland Return from India.” In Portugues Voyages 1498–1663. Ed. Charles D. Ley. (London 1947), 333–60, 352; Benayahu, Tshuvot le-Khillat ‘Ana, 143–45. Benayahu notes that after 1618 there are no further reports on the Jewish community of ‘Ana for the next 150 years (p. 145). See also Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 94–95; Sassoon, Baghdad, 106–7; Benayahu, Hebrew Books, 10; Abraham Shalom Yehuda, ‘Ever ve-‘arav (Hebrew and Arabic). (New York 1946), xiii; Battat. Battat, 13.

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century, due to the fact that this region remained under Turkish control and its trade with Aleppo continued undisturbed.40 In the city of ‘Amadiya, which enjoyed self-rule under Turkish protection, a yeshiva was established whose students came not only from the surrounding towns but also from Egypt, Istanbul, and the Holy Land.41 The head of this yeshiva was a rabbi who served also as the spiritual leader of other Jewish communities in Kurdistan, including that of ‘Aqra.42 Mosul, too, possessed a yeshiva in this period, which was supported by the communities of Baghdad, Aleppo, Diyarbakir, and other towns in Kurdistan. The head of this yeshiva was Rabbi Yaacob ibn Yehuda Mizrahi, formerly rabbi of ‘Amadiya.43 The Torah center in Kurdistan became the source for Baghdad’s rabbis after the Turkish occupation. Rabbis of the Mizrahi family held office in Baghdad from the mid-seventeenth century until 1742.44 A document from 1641 indicates that other Jews from Kurdistan also lived in Baghdad. The rabbis of Baghdad’s Jewish community in that year as well as in 1649 were from Kurdistan.45 So while at the beginning of the seventeenth century Jews emigrated from Baghdad to Persia and perhaps also to Kurdistan, after the Turks retook control of Baghdad, this trend was reversed and Jewish immigrants from Persia and Kurdistan began moving to Baghdad, including officiating rabbis. This development is consistent with the improvement in Baghdad’s political and economic situation at the time. The Jews of Baghdad maintained ties not only to communities in the region but also to Jews in India; Jews from Baghdad are attested among the members of the Jewish community of Cochin.46 Once again we have no knowledge in this period about the community’s organization and leadership. Benayahu surmises, on the basis of records found in copied books and in owners of manuscripts’ handwritten lists, that “the community leaders came from among the well-to-do, merchants who had the wherewithal to defray public expenses and defend the community when needed. Some of them were well-read or lovers of Torah and wisdom, and 40  Masters, “Aleppo,” 35; Blunt, Pietro’s Pilgrimage, 95; Mann, Texts, 485. 41  Longrigg, Four Centuries, 42, 98. 42  Simha Asaf. “Le Toldot ha-Yehudim be-Kurdistan ve-Shkhenotaiha” (History of the Jews in Kurdistan and its neighbors), Zion 1 (1934): 85–113, 101–6. 43  Mann, Texts, 480–83; Uri Melamed and Rina Levin Melamed, “Rabbanit Osnat Head of the Yeshiva in Kurdistan.” In Hebrew. Pe’amim 82 (Winter 2000): 163–78, 164–65. 44  Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 98–99. Sassoon, Baghdad, 106–7. David Sassoon thinks that this family is of Persian origin. 45  Benayahu, “Documents,” 4. Benayahu comes to this conclusion based on an analysis of the names and titles in the document. 46  Bar-Giora, “Ha-Yahasim.”

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established a yeshiva in their homes.”47 On the communities’ spiritual leadership he writes: “It is very doubtful if Baghdad possessed a community rabbi in the usual sense among Jewish communities everywhere; rather, it probably had a religious judge who was also tasked with carrying out the duties of rabbi.”48

The Emergence of Lay and Spiritual Leadership

In the eighteenth century an economic and political structure emerged in Iraq and its surroundings that gave an impetus to the growth of the Jewish communities in Baghdad and Basra and at the same time diminished the status of the Jewish centers in Aleppo, Kurdistan, and Persia. Baghdad became the seat of the Ottoman wali (governor) and Iraq’s political and administrative center when the Mamluks came to power in Iraq, and for the first time unified the provinces of Baghdad, Basra, Shahrazur, and Kurdistan into a single autonomous entity directly under the authority of the Sultan in Istanbul. The Mamluks’ long period of rule (from 1704 until 1831) brought Baghdad security and economic prosperity, with only short breaks due to the replacement of governors and war with Persia and rebellious tribes. Baghdad’s population rose to about 100,000 by the beginning of the nineteenth century.49 The situation was further improved by the British, who took control of and protected the maritime trade route from Basra to the Far East.50 Thus for the first time since the Abbasid period there was a secure trade route from the Mediterranean Sea to the Far East. Commerce was also affected by the weakening of the Persian state, the decline in the trade in Persian silk, and the emergence of new sources of silk in India and China that supplied European industry with raw material.51 These developments opened up new economic possibilities in Baghdad and Basra, which saw an influx of Jews from the neighboring lands. Some of the immigrants were agents for merchants in Aleppo and the Far East. Jews also immigrated to the Far East via Iraq from Syria, from the Holy Land, and from Turkey, and some of these emigrants chose to remain in Baghdad or Basra.52

47  Benayahu, Hebrew Books, 6. 48  Ibid., 10. 49  Longrigg, Four Centuries, 123–249; Mantran, “Baghdad,” 316–21. 50  Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 57; Yehuda “Blood Libel,” 44–46. 51  Masters, “Aleppo,” 48; idem, Origins, 30–33. 52  Yehuda, “Blood Libel,” 46; Fischel, Ha-Yehudim be-Hodo, 107; Yosef Kafih. “Sror Mikhtavim bain Manhigai Yehudai Cochin le-bain Yehudai Teman ve-Bavel” (A bundle of letters

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In this period the Jewish community of Hilla also grew, due to that city’s role as Baghdad’s main supplier of grain and other basic foods and as a commercial center for the Muslim and Jewish pilgrims who passed through on their way to the holy shrines in the region. Both Jewish and Muslim sources mention wealthy Jewish merchants in Hilla, some of whom worked as agents for the most prominent Jewish merchants and community heads in Baghdad; the same sources also note that some Jews from Baghdad settled in Hilla for economic reasons.53 In the eighteenth century the Jewish community of Aleppo had a great influence on the communities of Baghdad and Basra. The available sources speak of close ties between the communities and lead to the conclusion that in both Baghdad and Basra there arose colonies of Jews from Aleppo, some originally descended from Spanish Jews, who retained family and commercial ties with their home town. Some of these Jews from Aleppo belonged to the upper socio-economic strata and played an active role in the lay and spiritual leadership of both Baghdad and Basra. Several factors affected some of the wealthy Aleppo Jews of Spanish extraction who also went to India. The British Levant Company and the French merchants in Aleppo refused to allow the Jews there to participate in their international commercial dealings or to give them protection. Because of this attitude by the British and the French the Jews were limited in their international trade options, were unable to operate freely in the Levant trade, and were therefore forced to seek commercial opportunities in areas in which the Europeans did not or could not enter. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century the Jewish merchants of Aleppo suffered another setback when Syrian Christians established agencies on the Mediterranean coast and took the transit trade into their own hands.54 The British East India Company’s control of the trade route between the Far East and Iraq created new commercial opportunities that prompted Spanish Jewish merchants in Aleppo to move to Baghdad, Basra, and the commercial centers of the Far East. The East India Company was active in the Far East, Persia, Basra, and Baghdad and, unlike the Levant Company, allowed the Jews to trade freely, used their services and gave them British protection. In the second half of the eighteenth century the East India Company established an agency between the leaders of the Cochin Jews and the Jews of Yemen and Babylon). Sinai, 40th year, 79, nos. 1–6 (Apr.–Sept. 1976): 64–66. 53  Yehuda, “Jewish Community of Hilla,” 87. 54  Masters, Origins, 88–105; see also Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity. Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century. (New York 1989), 27–32, 145–53.

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in Basra, from where it supervised its commercial activities in the Persian Gulf. Basra became a regional and international commercial hub. Ships laden with merchandise from India docked there and passed on their wares to caravans that journeyed up the Euphrates and through the desert, or up the Tigris to Baghdad and from there to Aleppo, Izmir (which in this period also became an important commercial center), to Istanbul, Alexandria, London, Marseille, Venice, and Amsterdam. The British in Basra employed prominent members of that city’s Jewish community, including Spanish Jews from Aleppo, as moneychangers for the East India Company.55 This was apparently the background for an incident that occurred in Basra in 1791. The leader of the Jewish community, Choja Abdulla ibn Eusuf, a Jew of Spanish origin who came from Aleppo, used the case of a Jew who had been murdered under mysterious circumstances in Basra on the eve of Easter to lead the community into a sharp confrontation with the local Christians and their leader, the British Resident. The incident’s characteristics―involving the struggle for control of Basra’s international trade and accusing the Christians of the ritual murder of a Jew―suggest that it was influenced by the Spanish background of the community’s leaders and the tension between Spanish Jews and local Christians in Aleppo over a similar issue. But in contrast to Aleppo, where the Jews were driven out of the international trade, the Jews from Aleppo who had settled in Basra used their strong standing and their influence on the city’s mutasallim (governor), as well as the influence of their brethren in Baghdad over the wali, to defeat their Christian rivals and drive them out of the international trade. They would have achieved this goal had not the British Resident done his best to save the Christians.56

55  Yehuda, “Blood Libel,” 44–46, 55–56; Douglas Carruthers, The Desert Route to India, Being the Journals of Four Travelers by the Great Desert Caravan Route between Aleppo and Basra 1745–1751. (London 1929), 25; James Capper. Observations on the Passage to India through Egypt and Across the Great Desert. (London 1783), 54, 56 (Capper relates that in a caravan in which he traveled in 1779 from Aleppo to Basra through the desert a Jewish merchant named Khawaja Reuben [probably Khawaja Reuben b. Salih, a leader of the Jewish community of Basra at the beginning of the 1790s; see below] sent thirty-one cargoes on thirtyone camels); David S. Sassoon. Masa’ Bavel (Babylon journey). Ed. with biography of the author, introduction and comments by Meir Benayahu. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1955), 132. Benayahu considers the fact that manuscripts of books copied in Spain were found in Baghdad as proof “that Jews expelled from Spain did indeed come also to Baghdad,” while David Sassoon is of the view that Spanish Jews came to Iraq via Turkish territories in Europe, Asia Minor, and Aleppo (JC, 17 May 1912). 56  Yehuda, “Blood Libel,” 48–59.

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The picture which emerges from the available information is one of a network of relationships between the Jews of Baghdad and Basra and those of Aleppo. Merchants in Aleppo appointed commercial representatives in Baghdad and Basra, Jews from Aleppo left their families and went to trade in Baghdad, and Jews from Baghdad went to Aleppo for the same purpose. Some merchants divided their time between the two cities, and some families had people operating in Aleppo while others lived in Baghdad or Basra. These commercial ties took various forms: partnerships, financing, transfer of goods, litigation in the courts of Baghdad and Aleppo, and even mediation among merchants from the two cities.57 In times of trouble, such as epidemics or unrest, Jews from Baghdad would move to Aleppo until things settled down.58 Jews from Aleppo wielded such influence in Baghdad that they were able to impose the nomination of Rabbi Sadqa Husin from Aleppo as the rabbi of Baghdad (1743–1773).59 According to one report, based on the testimony of members of Baghdad’s Jewish community, about fifty families came from Aleppo to Baghdad together with Rabbi Husin in 1743, where apparently there was already a colony of Jews from Aleppo.60 Rabbis from Aleppo also served on the local rabbinical court of Basra. Political instability and wars in Persia in the eighteenth century also brought an influx of Jews to Baghdad and Basra. The traveler Ferrières-Sauveboeuf, who stayed in Baghdad in the 1780s, describes this movement as follows:61 In Baghdad there are many Persians who settled in this city with their families. There also came Armenian refugees from Shulfa, a suburb of Isfahan, who brought with them their wealth and artistic talents. This city [Baghdad] owes its growth to Persian immigrants and to Arabs who were weary of life in the desert, but perhaps most of all to its geographical position which makes it suitable for the development of commercial ties.… 57  These reports appear in the responsa literature. See Shimon Dwaik Haccohen. Riyah ha-Sadeh. (Constantinople 1738); Sadqa Husin. Sdaqa we-Mishpat (Righteousness and Justice). (Jerusalem 1928); Mordechai Galanti. Metzolot Mordechai. (Livorno 1860); Eliahu Shamma’ Halevi. Kurban Ishah. (Livorno 1821); Yisrael Sasson. Keneset Yisrael. (Livorno 1855). 58  Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 109. 59  Ibid., 118; Husin, Sdaqa, publisher’s introduction; Sassoon, Baghdad, 113. 60  Abraham Ben-Yaacob. The Jews of Iraq in Modern Times. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1979), 88. 61  Louis F. Ferrières-Sauveboeuf. Reisen durch die Türkei, Persien und Arabien in den Jahren 1782–1789. Vol. 2 (Leipzig 1790), 69–70.

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Figure 1.1 Baghdad’s market place. John P. Newman, Thrones and Palaces of Babylon and Nineveh, New York 1876.

In Persia, the Jews suffered economically and were persecuted, some even forced to convert, except during the reign of Nadir Shah (1736–1747).62 Their situation became ever more precarious towards the end of the century and drove many to leave their communities in Persia and move to Baghdad, Basra, and Kurdistan. The reports that we have from this period show an increasingly strong connection between the Jews of Persia and those of Baghdad, including commercial ties and families, some of whose members settled in Baghdad while others remained in Persia, as is typical in periods of emigration.63 In the eighteenth century, the emigration of Jews from Kurdistan and ‘Ana to Baghdad and Basra continued, driven by the economic deterioration in the

62  Fischel, “Isfahan,” 126; Fischel, “Jews in Medieval Iran,” 282. 63  Husin, Sdaqa; Benayahu, “Documents,” 12, 20.

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region, which was part of Aleppo’s commercial sphere.64 Jews also came to Baghdad and Basra from Damascus, Istanbul, the Holy Land, and Germany.65 We do not possess assessments on the number of Jews in Baghdad during this century. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the city’s Jewish populace was estimated at between six and seven thousand,66 with two synagogues.67 Political, economic, and demographic changes experienced by the Jewish community in Iraq in the eighteenth century created conditions for the emergence of a stable and influential leadership. For the first time since the Gaonic period we see presidents at the head of the Baghdad and Basra communities. The president was the governor’s chief of finance (sarraf bashi) and had the authority and political and economic means necessary for carrying out the duties of the position. The position of president of the community in Baghdad was likely a consequence of Mamluk rule, which established an autonomous government in Iraq based on a sole ruler who needed loyal people capable of organizing his income and financing his expenses. The political and economic climate in the region also allowed the emergence of some powerful merchants in Baghdad and Basra to develop local and international businesses and 64  Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. Mehkarim ve-Mekorot (Studies and Sources). (Jerusalem 1996), 397–406; idem, “Igrot me-Kurdistan min ha-Me’ot 18–19” (Letters from Kurdistan from the 18th and 19th centuries). In Hebrew. Sinai 28 (1951): 89–102, 92, 99–101; Benayahu, “Documents,” 20; idem, Tshuvot le-Khillat ‘Ana, 187–88. 65  Husin, Sdaqa; Yehuda, “Blood Libel,” 40. 66  “Journal of Rev. Joseph Wolf,” Jewish Expositor (London), 10 June 1825, p. 228. On 9 April 1824, Wolf wrote that the president of Baghdad’s Jewish community told him that it consisted of 1,500 families. James R. Wellsted. Travels to the City of Caliphs, Along the Shores of the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. Vol. 1. (London 1840), 274, 276. Wellsted in 1831 found 7,000 Jews in Baghdad, out of a total population of 120,000. 67  Sassoon, Baghdad, 113–14. Sassoon relies on R. Husin’s response as evidence for the construction of a new synagogue in Baghdad in the 1740s, a synagogue that was renovated in 1797 (ibid., 131). Hanna Batatu. The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement of Iraq. (Princeton 1978); Batatu’s assessment (p. 248), based on Olivier, that in 1794 there were 2,500 Jews in Baghdad appears to us unlikely, because it is inconsistent with (A) the development of the Jewish community in the city since the second Turkish occupation of 1638 as explained above, and (B) the great economic expansion which Baghdad experienced during the reign of Sulaiman the Great (1780–1802) and the good relations between the Jews and that ruler. We believe that Batatu used this datum, together with other selective and biased sources, in order to develop his anti-Jewish economic and political theses in support of Arab nationalist claims that emerged in Iraq during the first half of the twentieth century (ibid., 244–58). Deshen based his estimates for the growth of the Jewish population of Baghdad during the nineteenth century on this datum, Deshen, “Baghdad Jewry,” 19–44, 22.

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e­ xtensive commercial ties with merchants and agents in the Far East and the Levant. In their enterprises they made use of the newly-formed Baghdadi colonies in Cochin and Surat in India, and in the trade stations along the Persian Gulf.68 The first president of the Baghdadi Jewish community known to us is Moshe ibn Mordechai Shindookh, who headed the community in the 1730s and 1740s. He was followed by others, sometimes serving two at a time. The community president had unlimited authority; but while he was close to the ruler and very powerful, his position as the governor’s chief of finance made his economic standing and even his personal safety quite precarious. True, we do not know of any of the presidents of the Jewish communities in Baghdad or Basra who were executed by the Mamluk rulers in the eighteenth century, but we have a report that the president Moshe Mordechai was forced to pay a very large ransom to the wali to ensure his own safety.69 The community’s spiritual leadership remained in the hands of rabbis of the Mizrahi and other families from Kurdistan, until the death of Rabbi Shlomo Mizrahi in an epidemic in 1742.70 The president of Baghdad’s Jewish community, Moshe ibn Mordechai Shindookh, then approached the Aleppo community and asked it to recommend a rabbi for his community. The rabbi of Aleppo, Rabbi Shmuel Laniado, chose Rabbi Sadqa ibn Saadia Husin for the post.71 We believe that the fact that the president of the Baghdadi Jewish community chose to ask Aleppo’s rabbi for a suitable candidate for spiritual leader of his community, and the fact that the choice fell on Rabbi Husin, who was already well-known figure before he came to Baghdad, demonstrates not only the strong ties that existed between the two communities and the existence in Baghdad of a colony of Jews from Aleppo, but also the far-reaching changes that the Baghdadi Jewish community had undergone. For unlike a century earlier, when the rabbis and rabbinical court judges who were brought to Baghdad were not first class Torah scholars, left no scholarly writings of their own and did not educate a generation of students who would be able to serve a growing and influential community, this time a well-known rabbi was brought, one

68  Sassoon, Baghdad, 120–27; Benayahu, “Documents,” 15–17; Yehuda, “Blood Libel,” 46–47; Benayahu, Elyashar, 42, 45, 51–53; Fischel, Ha-Yehudim be Hodo, 97–111. 69  Sassoon, Baghdad, 115–27; Benayahu, “Documents,” 6; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 109–17; Sassoon, “Basra,” 412–16; Otter, Voyage, 185–86. 70  Sassoon, Baghdad, 106–10; Benayahu, “Documents,” 10–11; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 98–99. 71  Husin, Sdaqa, publisher’s introduction; Sassoon, Baghdad, 113; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 118–20.

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who grew up in a community with a long tradition of Torah learning that was home to great rabbis. The emergence of an authoritative and influential community president helped to strengthen the community’s organization, while the appointment of a prominent rabbi to stand at the head of the community’s spiritual leadership would contribute to strengthening its spiritual bonds, so that in the nineteenth century Baghdad would become a Torah center that influenced the neighboring communities and the colonies of Baghdadi Jews in the Far East. Rabbi Husin held his position in Baghdad for about thirty years, until his death in an epidemic in the year 1773. His rulings on Jewish ritual law were considered authoritative in his own community and in Persia, Kurdistan, and India.72 Baghdad remained spiritually dominant and exercised its influence on the communities of these countries in the times of Rabbi Salih Masliah (1775– 1781) and the rabbis who followed him.73 Writing about this transformation in the leadership of the Baghdad Jewish community in the eighteenth century, Benayahu states: “The reports about the Persian and Kurdish Jewish communities’ ties with Baghdad are significant. These communities accepted the authority of the Baghdad community’s president and chief rabbi (hakham). The situation was thus reversed: Earlier, the Baghdad community needed these communities, while now it influenced them.”74 The Jewish community of Baghdad thus constructed a solid organizational-spiritual basis on which it was able to absorb the large wave of immigration that would arrive from Kurdistan and Persia over the course of the nineteenth century.

72  Ibid. 73  Benayahu, “Documents,” 18–19; Sassoon, Baghdad, 128–34; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 121–36. 74  Benayahu, “Ducuments,” 19.

Chapter 2

Rise and Fall of the New Babylonian Diaspora

Authority in Change

In the nineteenth century, the developments of the previous century became even more pronounced. England expanded and deepened its influence in the Far East and the Ottoman Empire and became the dominant power in Iraq. The Ottoman sultan introduced government reforms (tanzimat), among them the granting of equal rights to Christians and Jews. In Baghdad, the autonomous government of the Mamluks ended with the removal of the last Mamluk ruler Daud Pasha (1831), ushering in a period of governors who were frequently replaced by the Sublime Porte. The most important of the many governors (wali) who came to Baghdad was Midhat Pasha (1869–1872), who introduced administrative reforms, established modern schools, made improvements in the city and provided security to its residents. In this period Baghdad confirmed its status as a commercial center through which goods flowed from the Far East to Persia, the Levant, and Europe, and in the reverse direction as well. The city’s standing improved even more after a motorized shipping route on the Tigris River opened in 1847, connecting Baghdad with the Persian Gulf.1 After the Suez Canal opened (1869) the trade with Europe by way of the land route came to a definitive end and Baghdad became connected by water to the Mediterranean Sea.2 This revolution in the region’s trade routes caused the decline of Mosul and Aleppo, a process that had begun at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the caravans no longer traveled the desert route between Basra and Aleppo and instead went by way of Baghdad.3 After the opening of the Suez Canal the role of Basra and Aleppo in Persia and the Far East’s trade with Europe declined, providing new commercial opportunities for Baghdad’s Jews, who used their connections in India and Persia 1  Mantran, “Baghdad,” 319–22; Longrigg, Four Centuries, 221–324; ‘Azzawi, Ta’rikh al-’Iraq, vol. 7, 160–269; Habib K. Chiha, La Province de Bagdad (Le Caire 1908), 229–33; [Johann Wilhelm Helfer], Travels of Doctor and Madame Helfer in Syria, Mesopotamia, Burmah and Other Lands (London 1878), 263–64. 2  Carruthers, Desert Route, 165. 3  Masters, “Aleppo,” 63–75; Robert Mignan, Travels in Chaldea: Including a Journey from Bussorah to Bagdad, Hillah and Babylon Performed on Foot in 1827, with Observations on the Sited and Remains of Babel, Seleucia, and Ctesiphan (London 1829), 119–20.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004354012_004

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and made new connections in the Far East and in Europe in order to expand their businesses.4 As a result, Jewish emigration from Baghdad to the Far East increased.5 Some of the emigrants later returned to Baghdad, where they served as agents for their relatives in the Far East.6 The business successes of Baghdadi Jews in the Far East made them willing to help their co-religionists in Iraq, and they contributed funds for the establishment of educational, religious, and welfare institutions, and to help in their upkeep.7 Indeed, the Baghdad Jewish community was in need of help, in order to absorb the great number of Jews who immigrated to Baghdad from Kurdistan and Persia. This migration, which continued throughout the nineteenth century, was driven by political persecution and economic need. In Persia the clerics became ever more influential under the Qajar rulers (1795–1925), with the result that Jews were increasingly persecuted, politically and economically, even being forced to convert. Entire

4  This change was documented by many contemporaries. Thus, for example, M. Sidi, the Alliance principal of the Jewish school in Mosul at the beginning of the twentieth century, writes that “Mosul was formerly on the great commercial road along which the caravans passed from Persia to Europe. But after the Suez Canal was dug its grandeur declined and its place in this great commerce was taken by the rich and grand city of Baghdad, its neighbor.” Maurice Sidi, “Ha-Yehudim be-Mosul (Ninve)” (The Jews of Mosul [Nineveh]), Mizrah ve-Ma’arav 1 (1919/1920): 247–49. 5  Abraham Ben-Yaacob, Babylonian Jewry in Diaspora. In Hebrew. (Jerusalem 1985). 6  F O, 195/204, Taylor to Cunning, 26 May 1843, “List of merchants returned from India and agents to the merchants now residing in India recommended by the Indian government to the care & protection of the Political Agent at Bagdad since the year 1818 and confirmed by a ‘Vezirial letter from Constantinople dated A.H. 1257 Rabeh el avel 28 [21 May 1841].” Among these merchants were some of the most prominent members of the Baghdadi Jewish community in the first half of the nineteenth century: “Yacoob Sima [Semah], Jew, Resided about 30 years in India and on his return was recommended by the Government of Bombay; Yoosef Bahar, Jew, Resided about 13 years in Calcutta and agent to Davood Bahar of that city and on his return was recommended by the Government of Bombay; Hiskeel Rooben, Jew, Resided about 19 years in Calcutta and on his return was recommended by the Government of Bombay; Hiskeil Dawood Hayim, Jew, A merchant of Surat and agent to his brother in that city recommended by the Bombay Government; Abdolla Faraj Hayim, Jew, An agent to Faraj Hayim of Calcutta recommended by the Government of India.” 7  Among the great philanthropists were the above-mentioned Yaacob Semah (previous note), the Sassoon family from Bombay and the Kadoorie family from Hong Kong. But the regular contributions sent by the communities of Iraqi Jews in the Far East were no less important. See, for example, the following items all from papers published in Calcutta: Perah, 5, no. 45, p. 271; 6, no. 10, p. 57; 9, no. 34, p. 239; and no. 45, pp. 311–12. Magid Mesharim, 1, no. 12, p. 5; 2, no. 15, p. 84. On contributions to help absorb the emigrants see below.

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communities were destroyed and their members were forced to emigrate.8 In Kurdistan, the Jews suffered from the political instability into which the region fell due to the extended warfare of the Turks against the Kurdish tribes, in addition to periods of famine and pestilence.9 For all these reasons many Jews were forced to leave their homes.10 These developments gave rise to two mutually complementary processes, both of which aided the growth of the Jewish community in Baghdad: on the one hand Baghdad’s emergence as a regional and international commercial center meant more job opportunities there, and on the other hand the Jewish community also grew rapidly due to the immigration of many Jews from Kurdistan, Persia, Europe, and the Middle East. The number of Jews in Baghdad grew to be a third of the city’s population in the course of the nineteenth century. That and their increasing economic weight had the effect of enhancing their political status and their influence on the local and the central governments, but also increased a possible threat to their very existence within local Arab-Muslim society. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Iraqi Jews came to have increasing influence on the local Mamluk rulers and on the central government of the Ottoman Empire. They were powerful enough to affect the appointment and dismissal of walis. But this situation did not last, and these influential Jews eventually lost their posts and paid with their lives.11 In the 1860s it appeared for a while that the Jews would be able to strengthen their political standing with the help of their coreligionists in Europe and in England, the strongest power in the region. Indeed, they succeeded in foiling the attempt by local Muslims led by the wali of Baghdad to regain control over the courtyards of the shrine of the prophet Ezekiel.12 However, their attempt to repeat this success in a confrontation with the wali of Baghdad and local Muslims in the course of the funeral of Rabbi Abdalla Somekh thirty years later did not succeed and nearly led to their annihilation.13 It became clear that the equality that the Ottoman Empire had declared could only exist as long as the Jews were careful to maintain the Islamic rules of the protection of 8  Walter J. Fischel. “The Jews of Persia, 1795–1940.” JSS 12 (1950): 119–160, 119–38; idem, “The Jews of Kurdistan a Hundred Years Ago—A Traveler’s Record,” JSS 6 (1944): 195–225, 224–25. 9  Ibid., 222; Longrigg, Four Centuries, 231–33, 242–49, 277–79, 284–87. 10  See below. 11  Sassoon, Baghdad, 122–27. 12  See Part 2, chapter 4. 13  See Part 2, chapter 5.

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non-Muslims. The Jews of Iraq turned for help to the Jews of Istanbul, headed by the appointed Chief Rabbi (hakham bashi) of the Ottoman Empire, to no avail. Nor did they have more success in their appeals to the Jews of Europe and the Far East for intercession with France and England, the great powers in the region, due to the anti-Semitic positions of the representatives of these powers in Baghdad. The British consul in Baghdad refused to help the persecuted Jews. In fact, he blamed them for their oppression by the authorities and their harassment by the Muslim populace and declared that they had to accept the situation as a necessary corollary of living in a Muslim country. He thus instituted a policy of English non-intervention on behalf of the Jews, a policy that would remain in force until the exodus of the Jews from Iraq. As a last resort the Iraqi Jews turned to Jewish public opinion in Europe, the Holy Land, and the Far East. The Jewish press in these places, which supported Iraqi Jewry, reported on their travails and demands, and appealed to the Jewish leadership in Europe and in Turkey to come to their aid, but was unable to bring about a change in their political situation. Because of the very difficult situation in which the community found itself, and the feeling that every avenue of assistance was blocked, Iraqi Jews for the first time considered the drastic option of leaving the country, at a time when the Jewish community there was at the height of its development and prosperity. Cases of persecution of Jews by the Muslim populace and the authorities in Iraq would occur repeatedly in the twentieth century. The twentieth century was marked by frequent political changes.14 At its beginning Ottoman Turkey still ruled Iraq. Turkish rule was affected by successive shocks to the disintegrating empire. The Young Turk Revolution (1908) aroused hopes for improvements in the way Iraq was administered, and the Jews hoped to take part in the reforms. Instead, however, the Muslim populace harassed and attacked the Jews.15 World War I (1914–1918) put an end to Ottoman rule in Iraq, which was captured by Great Britain. In the postwar period Iraq was put under a British mandate. The British established a modern Arab state headed by king Faisal ibn Hussein (Faisal I, 1921). The Jews enjoyed a period of relative calm until 1932, when the British mandate ended and the country 14  These changes are discussed in studies that deal with Iraq and Iraq’s Jews in the twentieth century. The most important studies for our present purposes are: Stephen H. Longrigg, Iraq 1900 to 1950. (London 1953); Cohen, The Jews in the Middle East Countries; Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq; idem, End of a Diaspora. 15  Nissim Kazzaz, “The Political Activity of the Jews in Iraq in the Late Ottoman Period.” In Hebrew. Pe’amim 36 (1988): 35–51, 42–45.

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achieved independence. Faisal I died shortly thereafter (1933) and was replaced by his son Ghazi. Until the latter’s death in an accident in 1939 he collaborated with a nationalist pro-Nazi campaign in Iraq, which included incitement against and harassment of Jews. Post-independence Iraq proved incapable of maintaining the democratic system of government that the British had established. Elections were held and there was a parliament but it had no control over the cabinet, whose ministers were appointed on an individual basis and were not accountable to a party or an electorate. The cabinet, lacking ties to political parties, was liable to be overthrown through military coups or other plots. The monarchic regime in Iraq suffered from instability and frequent changes of government. Iraq also adopted a violent and suspicion-filled nationalism bordering on xenophobia, which was occasionally also aimed at the country’s own minorities. Successive Iraqi governments ignored Iraq’s promise to the League of Nations to respect the rights of the country’s minorities, rights that were also recognized in the Iraqi constitution.16 Incitement against the Jews, acts of harassment and murder reached a peak when World War II broke out (1939). A pro-German government took power, headed by Rashid Ali al-Kaylani. The British put down this rebellion, recaptured the country and reinstalled the regent and pro-British Iraqi leaders. After Rashid Ali’s rule, when the British and their allies controlled Baghdad, the Muslims attacked the Jews on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. In two days of rioting (June 1–2, 1941), 149 Jews were killed in Iraq, 141 of them in Baghdad; hundreds of Jews were injured and Jewish homes and shops were plundered and devastated.17 Once again the Jews of Iraq were made to understand, after the attacks of 1889 and 1908, that they were unwanted in Iraq, not only by the radical and nationalist elements of the Muslim populace but also by the country’s leadership.18 So once again the Jews wanted to leave. This time it was the beginning of a mass exodus. The process of the establishment of the State of Israel advanced, and persecution reached its height in an anti-Jewish campaign orchestrated by the authorities after Israel received its independence. Jews were arrested and sentenced to prison and heavy fines on trumped-up charges; five Jews were hanged, including a prominent merchant from Basra, Shafiq Adas. The Iraqi authorities, influenced by nationalist Muslim circles, clearly intended to pursue policies that would bring about the exodus of the Jews from their h ­ omeland. 16  Longrigg, Iraq, 227, 395–96. 17  Shmuel Moreh and Zvi Yehuda, eds., Hatred of Jews and the Farhud in Iraq [in Hebrew] (Or Yehuda 1992). 18  See below, pp. 274–275.

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Indeed, the persecutions had the effect of driving many Jews to escape across the border to Iran, which gave them permission to stay temporarily until they moved to Israel. The next step which the Iraqi government took to implement its plan of expulsion was to pass a law that permitted Iraqi Jews to leave the country if they gave up their Iraqi nationality and their property. Most of them agreed to leave under those conditions. In an operation that lasted two years (“Operation Ezra and Nehemiah,” 1950–1952) they were brought to Israel.19 Few Jews chose to remain in Iraq and they, too, were eventually forced to flee from the persecutions instigated by the Ba’ath regime after the monarchy was destroyed and a republic headed by rebel army officers was established (the July 1958 Revolution). Between 1969 and 1973, Jews were hanged or murdered in secret and their property was confiscated. Many Jews fled for their lives, leaving all their possessions behind them. The remnants of the Iraqi Jewish community left the country towards the end of the twentieth century. Those few individuals who remained left Iraq after the American occupation of the country in 2003.20

Figure 2.1 Baghdad, 1880. Louis Denis de Rivoyre, Les vrais Arabes et leur pays, Paris 1884. 19  I will discuss this issue in a special study now in preparation. 20  Kazzaz, End of a Diaspora.

Rise And Fall Of The New Babylonian Diaspora



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Return to Babylonia

Emigration from Kurdistan In the nineteenth century all of Iraq, but especially Kurdistan, suffered from catastrophic floods, droughts, famines, and epidemics that devastated the region, undermined the economy, and claimed numerous victims. In some cases such catastrophes occurred year after year, in which case the inhabitants were forced to leave their homes and wander. In Kurdistan extended periods of famine had more serious consequences for the populace than elsewhere in Iraq, including the cities of Baghdad and Basra, which were located on rivers and could therefore obtain grain supplies from the Far East. The Kurdish populace, in contrast, was located far from maritime commercial routes and depended for its grain on the local growers, whose fields were irrigated by rainfall. Furthermore, until the middle of the nineteenth century the Jews of Kurdistan could not obtain assistance from the communities in Baghdad and Europe, because Baghdad at the time possessed only a relatively small Jewish community and the Kurdish community had relatively little contact with it or with the communities in Europe. In the second half of the century the situation changed dramatically. In 1864 a branch of the Parisian organization Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) opened in Baghdad. The Jews of Kurdistan turned to the Baghdad community, which had grown in size and importance, and to the Jews of Europe for help. The assistance which the communities in Kurdistan received helped them through the most difficult periods, but did not put a stop to the large wave of immigration from Kurdistan to Baghdad. The earliest reports about the emigration of Jews from Kurdistan to Baghdad in the nineteenth century date from the 1820s. They deal with the consequences of the famine and epidemic which the region suffered in the years 1827–1831. Rabbi Jonah Gabriel from Irbil wrote a chronicle of events between 1793 and 1843, in which he related the following: In the year 1827 rain was scant and the seed did not develop well. There were also locusts which ate everything green in the fields. One ilba (a measure of volume) of Irbil cost sixty akhilaj [four times the price of previous years] and all [the inhabitants of] the villages around Irbil fled. Some of them died of hunger and others fled; the villages were ruined and no one remained in them. Among the Jewish community of Irbil about two hundred Jews died, men, women and children, because they had nothing to eat. The horses and animals all died. The gentiles sold them cheaply but no one bought.… [In the year 1828 the grain situation improved but there

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was an epidemic] and thousands of gentiles died, impossible to count them. About one hundred and fifty Jews died. The Jews fled to the villages, but even there they died.… In the year 1831 there was pestilence in all the towns and in Irbil. The community left and fled to the villages on the day after Passover and sat in the villages about three months. Some seventy Jews died and the community returned on the first day of the month of Tammuz.21 Similar testimonies exist also from Mosul. The traveler Wallis Budge related that the famine during this period was so severe that the people of Mosul remembered it even sixty years later. Concerning the year 1826 he says: The Heavens became like brass and the earth like burnt brick, and all vegetables and life disappeared. The flocks and herds were killed to save them from perishing by hunger, and after their emaciated carcasses were eaten the people starved, and famished folk died in the streets and by the way-side, and lay unburied. In 1827 the suffering of the people of Mosul became more acute still.… To these troubles the Turkish authorities added another, a devaluation of the currency.22 These were circumstances that brought about the massive emigration from Kurdistan in this period. The city of Mosul was abandoned by many of its Jewish residents, as we learn from a halakhic question sent by the community to Rabbi Abraham Antebi in Aleppo: I was asked about what has been happening in the city of Mosul, may God protect it, which has seen catastrophes year after year. Many died in the city, and the surviving Jews wandered and went to other places, until such a time when God’s anger with the city will subside.… And when His anger subsided a few homeowners began to return to their places, most of them poor people.… In their letter they asked Rabbi Antebi to find a way to force the merchants, most of whom came from Baghdad to trade and then returned home, to pay

21  Yehuda Ratzabi, “Le-Toldot Yehudai Kurdistan ba-Mea’a ha-Kodemet” (For the history of the Jews of Kurdistan in the last century), Sinai, 21st year, 42, no. 1–6 (Oct. 1957–Mar. 1958): 371–77, 375–76. 22  Wallis Budge, By Nile and Tigris, vol. 2 (London 1920), 38–42.

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(local) taxes, because the newly-founded community was unable to support itself.23 This letter shows that Jews emigrated from Mosul to Baghdad after the famine at the end of the 1820s and after the pestilence of 1831. This was in all likelihood part of a larger movement of Jews from various places in Kurdistan to Baghdad. How can we explain the Baghdad Jewish community’s swift recuperation after the pestilence and flooding of that year? An answer is provided by the traveler Baillie Fraser, whose indirect but harsh testimony tells of the catastrophe which befell the city of Baghdad and its inhabitants in the spring of 1831. The epidemic broke out in March 1831 and thousands fled the city in order to save their lives. By the beginning of April thousands had already died. The pestilence became ever worse and in addition a flood caused the collapse of two thousand houses. The water that surrounded the city made it impossible for the survivors to flee. At the beginning of April 1831 the number of fatalities rose to over one thousand a day, and between April 16 and 21 this grew to two thousand. There were no burial places left so the dead were interred on the roads. At the end of April five thousand people were dying every day. No cloth was left for shrouds and the funeral workers were no longer able to bury the many corpses, which were left lying in their homes and on the streets. As if this was not enough, the flooding increased and the water entered the Jewish quarter, where two hundred homes collapsed. On the following day the entire lower part of the city was under water and another seven thousand houses fell or were destroyed, burying under them the sick, the dead, and the healthy. There was a serious food shortage. The Saray or government house collapsed; the governor or wali, Daud Pasha, was left without shelter and with no one under his command. The Saray’s horse stalls were destroyed and the horses in them fled. The situation finally improved at the beginning of May when the river’s water level began to drop. The pestilence, too, eased, and ended completely by the end of the month. The effects of the 1831 catastrophe were terrible: Only one-third of Baghdad’s population of one hundred thousand were left. Most of the merchants and nearly all the craftsmen died, so that even many years later there were certain professions that simply did not exist because all the practitioners had died. Basra was also badly hit by the epidemic.24 What happened to the Jews of Baghdad? As noted above, many homes in the Jewish quarter collapsed, but most of the Jews survived because they had left the city as soon as the epidemic broke out.25 23  Abraham ‘Antebi, Mar ve Ohalot (Livorno 1843), 87; Fischel, “Jews of Kurdistan,” 222. 24  Baillie J. Fraser, Travels in Koordistan, Mesopotamia, etc. (London 1840), 234–54. 25  Ibid., 253.

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We do not possess any reports about Jewish immigration from Kurdistan to Baghdad in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, although it is very probably that such immigration did take place.26 We know of a period of famine and rising prices at the beginning of the 1870s that lasted for two years (1870–1871). The price of grain quadrupled and quintupled, commerce came to a standstill and employment was not to be had. People could not sell household articles for food, because they had no more money. In Kurdistan the famine was worse than elsewhere: “Every day people come here [to Baghdad], impoverished people from the mountains of Kurdistan and the cities of Persia, to find succor from the terrible famine that was becoming ever worse in their places.” In order to be able to treat these newcomers, the Jewish community of Baghdad asked for the assistance of the Jews of Europe, who sent money.27 In the 1870s, Iraq also suffered from epidemics of cholera and pestilence, which made the situation of the poor Jews in Baghdad, including the immigrants from Kurdistan, even worse.28 We are in possession of detailed accounts from the 1880s about the famine in Kurdistan, about requests for assistance from the Jews of Baghdad, Europe, the Far East, and the Levant, and a great wave of immigration of Jews from Kurdistan to Baghdad. In contrast to previous reports, this time we are provided with the names of the towns in which the Jews of Kurdistan suffered from famine and epidemics, and details about the identities and numbers of the people who fled to Baghdad. Initial reports about the great Kurdistan famine of the 1880s were sent to the Jews of Europe from the communities of Mosul and Baghdad in February of 1880.29 At the end of March of that year a notification was received from Baghdad reporting a severe drought and great famine in Mosul, Irbil, and Kirkuk, and about Jews there dying from hunger. At the beginning of April, Isaac Lurian, head of the AIU’s branch in Baghdad, sent an urgent telegram to his organization’s headquarters in Paris, in which he wrote: “Great famine in Baghdad. In Kurdistan people are dying of hunger. Many are fleeing to Baghdad.”30 Other letters sent by the Jews of Baghdad to the AIU describe 26   Doresh Tob le ‘Ammo, 5, no. 25, p. 2; Ha-Magid (Berlin, Kraków, Vienna), 7, no. 34, p. 268. 27   Libanon (Jerusalem), 8, no. 20, p. 158. See also Ha-Magid (Berlin, Kraków, Vienna), 15, no. 37, p. 292. Moses Montefiore sent £500 (Ha-Tzfira [Warsaw], 2, no. 49, p. 387). See also Ha-Magid (Berlin, Kraków, Vienna), 24, no. 22, p. 182. 28  Ibid.; Ha-Tzfira (Warsaw), 3, no. 26, p. 202; ibid., 4, no. 20, p. 157; ibid., no. 24, p.188; ibid., no. 28, p. 221; Mebasser, 2, no. 37, p. 4; ibid., no. 38, p. 2; ibid., 3, no. 30, p. 110. 29  BM (Feb. 1880): 57–58; AJAR (1879/1880): 64. 30  BM (Apr. 1880): 110.

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the great distress of the Jews of Kurdistan, especially in Mosul and Irbil, and begged for urgent assistance.31 On April 28, Lurian described the terrible situation in a letter he sent to the AIU headquarters:32 For two years now there is drought in Iraq and Kurdistan, caused by a lack of rain. For a long period the authorities prevented the transport of grain from one town to another and its price has quadrupled in Baghdad and doubled in Kurdistan. With the advent of winter Kurdistan was cut off because of the snow. An epidemic broke out among the animals and caused their death. This brought about a rise in the price of wheat in Kurdistan up to three times the price in Baghdad, and in some places in Kurdistan wheat was unavailable even at that price. Thanks to the connections between Baghdad and India steamships laden with grain come from India to Baghdad on the Tigris. In January 1880 the authorities repealed the ban on the transfer of grain between cities and grain began to be sent from Baghdad to Kurdistan by means of camel convoys. The price of grain there was halved. In a letter which the Jews of Irbil sent to Rabbi Shlomo Bekhor Husin in Baghdad they wrote about cases of apostasy and mortalities due to the famine: We inform His Excellency about the rise in prices and the famine which are found in our city this year, in which many people suffered from famine.…. Today our situation is such that the people of our community wander in search of bread and unwillingly and to their detriment they convert. Some die of hunger in the streets and markets (on whom can we rely if not on our Father in heaven) and there is no one but their relatives to see to their burial, because the famine prevents the members of the burial society from occupying themselves with this mitzvah. Every day more than twenty people die and more than seven hundred souls cry out for bread. The famine in the city began on the new moon of Tevet. [At first] we did not want to inform the people of Baghdad and Frankistan [Europe] of our situation, but today we must do so, because the situation is desperate. We are in mortal danger and hope for help only from God’s mercy.…

31  BM (May 1880): 133–34. 32  BM (July 1880): 170–74.

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Rabbi Shlomo Bekhor Husin asked European Jewry to help the Jews of Irbil by sending them emergency aid. He also urged them to send help to Kirkuk, Zakho, ‘Amadiya, Jazira, Siduri, Tut, Taqar, and Kufri, in which also people were “dying of hunger and have received no assistance or succor from their brethren.”33 Jews in various places in Kurdistan also applied directly to the AIU for assistance.34 Jewish immigration to Baghdad brought about a great increase in the number of the community’s needy members, whose number increased to more than eight thousand.35 The local fundraising drives were insufficient to provide food and necessities for the needy. In desperation the Jews of Baghdad turned to outside help. They asked that the money be sent to the affected communities in the hope of stemming the flood of immigration to the city. The calls for help issued by the Jews of Baghdad, supported by the pleas of Kurdistani Jews for urgent assistance, drove Jewish individuals and organizations in Europe, Turkey, Egypt, and India to come to the aid of their brethren in Iraq. Contributions were passed on to the affected communities in Baghdad beginning in June 1880. After the Turkish authorities rescinded the ban on moving grain from Baghdad the situation among the Kurdish communities improved, the wave of immigration to Baghdad ceased, and some of those who had left even returned to their original places of residents, with the community’s help.36 But the end of the famine and the Kurdish Jews’ economic woes did not bring an end to all their troubles. In a report by Rabbi Shlomo Bekhor Husin published in the newspaper Hamagid in August 1880 he told of a horrible disease called typhus, born of the famine. It has always had the propensity to burst out after a famine. And now many good people have fallen prey to its terrible maw. The reports coming in from Kurdistan truly frighten us, because every day as many people die as did during the 33   Ibri Onochi (Brody, Lemberg), 16, no. 44, pp. 349–50. 34  BM (Aug. 1880): 185–86. 35  Morris Cohen, English teacher at the Jewish boys school in Baghdad, writes that the number of Jewish poor in Baghdad “amount to about 6000,” AJAR (1879/1880): 97. However, according to a report on the distribution of aid money sent by the deputy French consul in Baghdad to AIU headquarters in June 1880 there were 2,128 poor families, numbering 8,304 people in all (BM [July 1880]: 170–74). 36  BM (July 1880): 170–74; Bulletin (1st semester 1880): 39; ibid. (2nd semester 1880): 21–28; Ha-Magid (Berlin, Kraków, Vienna), 24, no. 14; ibid., no. 22, p. 182.

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­ estilence, so that no one buries them any more. Our poor brothers there p are in grievous trouble and are incapable of obtaining medical help for their illness, because the famine that had been among them in its rage took all their silver and gold and so they had nothing left but their own bodies.37 Reports of price rises and famine in Kurdistan and more waves of Jewish immigration to Baghdad continued throughout the 1880s. The situation deteriorated especially at the end of 1887. In November of that year the Perah newspaper reporter in Baghdad wrote that “from [the Jewish] New Year until now every week [immigrants] come, bare, dying of hunger. From week to week their numbers increase so that the poor of Baghdad are no longer recognizable among the Kurds. Wherever you go you encounter groups of men and women, and children in their wake”.38 A month later the same reporter wrote: A few weeks ago we wrote about the Kurdish Jews from Mosul who arrive weekly in our city. They are from the Kurdish towns of Rawanduz, KoySanjak and more; because of the high prices they come to Baghdad. This week, too, a large group came, men, women and children. Some come on foot by land and others come on rafts by the river. They are in a bad state because of the great cold. The poor people are naked and hungry, and it breaks the heart to see them.39 At the beginning of the 1890s, the wave of Jewish immigration from Kurdistan to Baghdad subsided and then ceased, but revived once more toward the end of the decade, when famine and rising food prices returned again. Numerous reports once more tell of a considerable stream of Jews leaving various places in Kurdistan and moving to Baghdad and of petitions for assistance from the Jews of Europe and the Far East. This time we learn that the Jews emigrating from Kurdistan to Baghdad and southern Iraq were part of a wave containing Muslims and Christians as well. The earliest report from this period about the famine in Kurdistan and a petition for assistance sent to the AIU was sent by Joseph Danon, the representative of the AIU and the headmaster of the boys’ school in Baghdad. On September 1, 1898 he wrote: 37   Ha-Magid (Berlin, Kraków, Vienna), 24, no. 31, p. 359; Ibri Onochi (Brody, Lemberg), 16, no. 44, p. 349–50. 38   Perah, 10, no. 26. p. 187. See also ibid., no. 29, p. 210. 39  Ibid, no. 33, p. 239. See also Habazeleth (Jerusalem), 18, no. 14, p. 110; ibid., no. 17, pp. 131–32; Ha-Tzfira (Warsaw), 15, no. 68, p. 3.

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For two years now the harvest in Kurdistan is very bad. This is a basically agricultural land, in which the populace lives almost exclusively on bread. The price of wheat has increased very much. Because of the famine that has attacked these poor people they left their towns and villages and came to beg in the streets of Baghdad. First came Christians and in their wake came Jews.40 In October 1898 the reporter of Magid Mesharim newspaper reported from Baghdad in greater detail: We already informed you that from the summer until today [October 20 1898] many Kurds have come. Every week nearly one hundred families arrive, men, women and children, so the city has been filled with Kurds. In addition to the many Jewish Kurds many Christian Kurds come as well. The residents of Baghdad say that the churches have become filled with impoverished Kurds.… These Kurds come from beyond the ­mountains. There is a town there with untold numbers of people, mostly Jews and Christians who till the fields. Last year the sowing was unsuccessful, and this year not only was the sowing unsuccessful but there also appeared worms that devoured the plants of the winter and the summer sowing from the roots. When the inhabitants saw this they left their place and wandered around all the towns. Most of them came to Baghdad.… Last week three apostate Jews, two brothers and a woman [came to Baghdad], went to the rabbis and wept. They said they wanted to return to the Jewish faith. They made a true repentance.…41 In an article from December 1898 the reporter of Magid Mesharim in Baghdad wrote that the towns from which the immigrants came were ‘Amadiya and Duhok. He added that many Muslim Kurds were also coming to Baghdad and some of them leave Baghdad and wander to other places in the south of Iraq, because they were unable to find a place to live or a job.42 According to Danon’s list of money distributed to the communities in Kurdistan, the famine hit that country’s major Jewish communities, in Mosul, Kirkuk, Irbil, Duhok, Sandur, ‘Amadiya, Beitanura, Zibar, ‘Aqra, and Nafkir.43 The famine continued in 1899 and Danon reported that Jews from Kurdistan continued to emigrate to

40  AIU Archive, Irak V E 34b, Danon’s letter. 41   Magid Mesharim, 10, no. 8. 42  Ibid., no. 14. 43  AIU Archive, Irak V E 34b, Danon to AIU, 12 Jan. 1899.

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Baghdad until the end of that year.44 Once again the communities of Kurdistan turned directly to the AIU and to the French consul in Mosul and begged for assistance.45 Absorption of the Kurdish Immigrants The arrival of a large wave of immigrants from Kurdistan to Baghdad throughout the nineteenth century forced the local Jewish community to see to their absorption. When they arrived in Baghdad, the immigrants were penniless, hungry, in tatters, and ill from the famine they had experienced at home. According to the reports the Jews who came to Baghdad were among the poorest in Kurdistan, who were the first to leave in times of economic trouble and to seek refuge in the big city. Upon their arrival in Baghdad the local Jewish community helped them in their first steps; it purchased food for the hungry people and found them temporary lodging in synagogues and Torah schools. Subsequently the community had to supply them with clothes and find permanent housing. The initial reception of a group of poor immigrants from Kurdistan that had come to Baghdad is described by the reporter in Baghdad of the newspaper Perah in December 1887: We have already written that in the Kurdish towns and villages prices rose and there was famine. This is the reason why the poor [Jews] among them are coming to us, they, their wives and their children. Some of them come on foot and others on rafts on the [Tigris] River, naked and lost from the cold. This week a large group came. They were hungry and as soon as they arrived bread and other necessities were purchased for them with the kolel’s money. They ate and went to sleep in the Torah schools. They had no bed sheets and covered themselves with the schools’ rugs. The next morning one of them died. On the day after that another one died. We wrote before that since the Jewish New Year many [Kurds] came and camped in the alley of the synagogues. The community rented houses for them and put them there. Now they also rented houses for the [new] immigrants and put them there. But they still lack clothing; the poor wretches still need garments. But not a week goes by without another group coming, who are also in need of housing and food.46 44  Ibid., letters of 10 Nov. and 30 Nov. 1899. 45  Ibid., Hebrew letters sent from Mosul by the communities of Bartinura and ‘Amadiya on the 9th of Iyyar 5659 [19 Apr. 1899] and by the community of Brashi on 2 Av 5659 [9 July 1899]. 46   Perah, 10, no. 29, p. 210.

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The Jewish community undertook to construct buildings for the newcomers from Kurdistan on land that it owned near the Jewish cemetery; it also purchased woolen blankets for them and had garments sewn from local contributions.47 It also provided medical care for the newcomers48 and distributed allowances to the needy from money that it collected from the local community and from contributions received from Europe, the Far East, and the Levant.49 However, because of the continuous great wave of new arrivals it had to take steps to quickly reduce the number of those in need of assistance so its resources could be used to receive new immigrants. The Jewish community therefore worked in close cooperation with local representatives of the AIU on two levels: assisting the immigrants to leave the city in order either to return to their original homes or to move elsewhere, to towns in central and southern Iraq; and finding work for the newcomers in Baghdad itself. Craftsmen among the immigrants were able to find work on their own, young people found employment as servants in the homes of well-to-do Jews, and anyone capable of strenuous physical labor was offered work as ditch diggers by the Turkish authorities.50 However, all these solutions did not suffice to put an end to the great distress of many of the newcomers, who turned to beggary.51 In a letter from February 1890 to AIU headquarters, J. Valadji, the deputy of the organization’s representative in Baghdad and a teacher in the Community boys’ school, described the dimensions of the economic distress and the problem of the beggars in Baghdad’s Jewish community:

47  Ibid.; Perah, 10, no. 33, p. 239; ibid., no. 26, p. 187. See also Habazeleth (Jerusalem), 18, no. 14, p. 110; ibid., no. 17, pp. 131–32; Ha-Tzfira (Warsaw), 15, no. 68, p. 3. 48  AIU Archive, Irak I B3, letter from Hebrat Miyasde Beit ha-Refua’a (Hospital founders organization) to the AIU president, 15 Mar. 1909. 49  AJAR (1879/1880): 96–97; Ha-Magid (Berlin, Kraków, Vienna), 4, no. 22, p. 182; BM (July 1880), letter from Lorian, 9 June 1880, and a report by the French consul in Baghdad. 50   Magid Mesharim, 5, no. 14; ibid., 10, no. 16; AIU Archive, Irak I B3, Danon to AIU, 20 Oct. 1898. Responding to the community’s request that he ask the AIU for aid for the many immigrants in Baghdad, Danon said that he had money but refused to distribute it to the newcomers except for defraying the travel expenses of Jews who were willing to leave Baghdad and for assisting those who remained in the city and were willing to work for their livelihood (Magid Mesharim, 5, no. 14). The head of the Jewish community convinced the authorities to let immigrants work in digging canals, but this attempt failed because the work conditions were too harsh, so that the new workers left after few days (ibid.). 51   Ha-Magid, 7, no. 34, p. 268; ibid., 24, no. 22, p. 182; Magid Mesharim, 9, no. 19; AIU Archive, Irak I C3, Valadji to AIU, 24 Feb. 1890.

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For five months now we have been distributing funds. This has aroused the jealousy of the Muslims, who are ignored by everyone. Last week many beggars, mostly strong and healthy men, literally laid siege to our school.… They were encouraged by previous distributions of money and thought that we were obliged to give them all the time. In order to put an end to the riot we were forced to open wide the doors to our school and allow all the beggars to enter. They numbered about fifteen-hundred men and women. We gave each of them a little more than one franc. This gift, although very modest, was received with great joy. The taste for beggary became so developed in Baghdad that people preferred a life of poverty and want as beggars over ten times the amount earned by the sweat of one’s hands. In view of this situation the representatives of AIU in Baghdad recommended to their headquarters to cease handing out money to the immigrants and instead to use the money contributed by European Jewry to provide vocational training for the children, to expand the community’s modern school system, and to build a monetary reserve for dealing with calamities such as epidemics, floods, and famine.52 Another issue which the community had to solve as quickly as possible was that of schooling for the newcomers’ children. They were accepted into the community’s Torah school (Talmud Torah). Since that institution provided its students with free meals, its expenses grew greatly, forcing the community to increase its fundraising activities on its behalf.53 However, the AIU representatives’ intention of putting an end to their financial support of the immigrants from Kurdistan apparently aroused the latter’s ire. In a rare report from the Jews of Baghdad written in Judeo-Arabic and published in the Calcutta Jewish newspaper Perah in the Summer of 1882 we read of a demonstration by Jews who had come to Baghdad from Mosul, Irbil, Kirkuk, and elsewhere in Kurdistan against the Baghdadi Jewish community’s leadership. These newcomers, who had come penniless to Baghdad during the above-mentioned famine of the beginning of the 1880s, did not submit their grievance to the Jewish community’s autonomous judicial authority to which the Ottoman government had granted the right to deal with matters pertaining to internal Jewish affairs. Apparently they did not trust this authority and instead complained to the Ottoman authorities in Baghdad. In their complaint the immigrants from Kurdistan claimed that they were given less than their 52  Ibid., Valadji’s letter. See also AIU Archive, Irak V E34b, Danon to AIU, 10 Nov. 1898. 53   Magid Mesharim, 2, no. 23, p. 121.

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due from the money which the Jewish community received from benefactors outside Iraq for their absorption, and that they wished to leave Baghdad and return to their original homes. They asked the Turkish authorities to require that the Jewish community provide them with an account based on written documents proving that all the contributed moneys were indeed invested in their absorption, and that if it transpired that the community leadership in Baghdad had not expended all the money it had received for this purpose, it should be forced to pay them the remaining sum and finance their trip back to their homes. This complaint was apparently ignored by the authorities, who were loath to interfere in the Jewish community’s internal affairs. Then a large group of immigrants numbering some four hundred men, women, and children, demonstrated loudly before the Ottoman saray (government house). When the mutasarrif (governor) of Baghdad arrived they surrounded him, caught his horse’s reins and shouted their demand for complete transparency on the use made of the contributions. The governor had no choice but to summon the hakham bashi (chief rabbi), Rabbi Elisha’ Dangoor, the head of Baghdad’s Jewish community. However, the governor’s messenger did not find the rabbi, who apparently preferred to hide and avoid a public confrontation with the demonstrators in the city governor’s presence.54 The report was composed by a Baghdadi Jew close to the community’s leadership. He argued that the newcomers had no reason to complain, since all the money which was collected on their behalf was indeed spent on their absorption. He also promised to continue to report on future developments in this affair, but no further articles were forthcoming. The Ottoman government, which recognized the authority of the Jewish leadership in Baghdad, appears to have preferred to refrain from becoming involved in the Jewish community’s internal affairs and therefore did not accede to the immigrants’ demands. Any interference by the government would have constituted an attack on the community’s recognized autonomous organization and would have encouraged separatist tendencies. The Kurdish immigrants in Baghdad continued to complain to the authorities about the treatment which they had received at the hands of the community leadership upon their arrival, as reported in an article sent by the reporter of Magid Mesharim from Baghdad to Calcutta in December 1898.55 The reporter relates that eighty-one of the many newcomers from Kurdistan to Baghdad who were in very dire straits presented a petition to the wali in which 54   Perah, 5, no. 15, p. 89, the report from 3 Aug. 1882. 55   Magid Mesharim, 10, no. 14.

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they claimed that they suffered from hunger and that the Jewish community did nothing to help them. The wali asked the head of the community about these accusations and was told that while the Jewish community did possess the means to support the newcomers to Baghdad, it preferred not to provide direct financial aid, since this would cause even more people to emigrate from Kurdistan to Baghdad, which the community would be unable to support, especially in light of the fact that the immigrants from Kurdistan were unwilling to work hard for a living. The community even offered to defray the travel expenses of any Jew willing to leave Baghdad for another community. Just as twenty years previously, the authorities supported the Jewish leadership and warned the complainants that they would be expelled from the city if they refused to work. The reporter ends his article with the statement that some of the immigrants agreed to the proposal of the community head to work for their living as construction workers in building Jewish houses. The community also raised funds from among its own members in order to help immigrants who were unable to work.56 Thus the Kurdish immigrants’ attempt to detach themselves from the Baghdad Jewish community and to found an independent organization that would deal with their needs failed. The employment of newcomers from Kurdistan as servants in Jewish homes created a class distinction that was enhanced by the uncomplimentary opinion which the veteran residents of Baghdad had of the behavior of the newcomers. This deprecating attitude grew stronger with the discovery of crimes that Kurdish servants had committed against their employers. In the Jewish press in Calcutta we find a growing number of reports towards the end of the nineteenth century about cases of theft, assault, and even murder by Kurdish immigrants against Baghdadis.57 These crimes undermined the trust which the Jews of Baghdad had put in the newcomers from Kurdistan, whom they let into their homes to manage their households. The reports of such deeds turned into a veritable smear campaign against the Kurdish Jews in Baghdad, who were coming to be perceived as a threat to the community. In a lengthy article sent by the reporter of Magid Mesharim in Baghdad in April 1898, he describes a sophisticated robbery in the home of a wealthy Jew that was planned and executed by Kurdish Jews who worked as servants in the

56  Ibid. 57   Perah, 9, no. 34, p. 240; ibid., no. 36, pp. 249–50; ibid., 10, no. 21, p. 148; ibid., no. 23, p. 164; Habazeleth (Jerusalem), 18, no. 7, p. 53; ibid., no. 9, pp. 67–68; Magid Mesharim, 7, no. 10, p. 2; ibid., no. 24, p. 4.

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home of that Jew and his neighbor.58 The rich Jew did not trust his servants and every night carefully locked the house door and kept the key with him. The theft, which included the dowry of the house owner’s daughter, was committed by the servants of the two homes together, who smuggled the valuables out through the neighboring house. The case was investigated by the authorities, who discovered the perpetrators and found the stolen goods as they were being distributed among a number of people and after some of them had already been sold. All those involved in the theft were arrested and interrogated. The reporter ended his article with the following harsh words about the Kurdish immigrants in Baghdad: These Kurds are employed as servants. They eat and drink, and then they steal from their employer’s home. We, the people of Baghdad, are naïve. Baghdad has fallen into the hands of foreigners. See these Kurds. As soon as [this newcomer] gets off the raft, wearing an old torn basht [a Kurdish garment], a belt made of a rag, a worn piece of cloth on his head and barefoot like a wild beast who cannot distinguish between his right and his left hand, he does not know Arabic and speaks jibli [a Kurdish dialect], he finds a job as a servant and a week later he begins to learn Arabic. In two weeks his knowledge is even stronger. And if he is still naïve, his companions will spoil him. On the Sabbath [the Kurdish immigrants] gather outside the city wall, buy arak and get drunk. They sing and dance the choppi [a Kurdish dance]. When the Sabbath ends each one goes to his employer’s house in a state of inebriation, walking in a rolling fashion. After six months he takes his pay from his employer’s family and immediately uses it to purchase a grand suit, consisting of a robe and cloak made of silk, shoes, and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. If his pay does not suffice for buying all these garments he will borrow the money from his friend, in return for his next salary. On the holiday he struts as if he were the son of a wealthy grandee. On the Sabbath he walks the street on tiptoe in obscene pride, viewing himself as greater than his boss. He has already forgotten the raft that brought him and the tatters he wore, filled with the third plague of Egypt [lice]. Who can speak even one word to him? Next he searches for a girl to marry. He asks for fifty [Turkish] pounds or more. He has forgotten his past and speaks in pounds. And after he marries, if he wants, he flees from Baghdad, abandons his wife, returns to whence he came and leaves her deserted.… 58   Magid Mesharim, 9, no. 25.

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He concludes as follows: In short, all the despicable evils are revealed among them … these Kurds multiply from one day to the next. They come to Baghdad. In Baghdad there are ninety percent or more Kurdish servants and only ten percent are residents of Baghdad or Persians. Their [evil] deeds are impossible to describe. We can accept everything, but not the plots of theft from their masters’ homes. That is unthinkable. That is all that they lack. The only thing we can say about these people is “May God have mercy.”59 Shortly after these harsh words about the newcomers from Kurdistan were published the Baghdadi Jewish community succeeded in successfully integrating many of them. The migration of Jews from Kurdistan to Baghdad and south of Iraq continued in the beginning of the twentieth century and did not stop until the communities of northern Iraq ceased to exist due to the mass emigration of 1949–1952.

Figure 2.2 Street in Baghdad’s Jewish quarter, 1916. Sven Hedin, Bagdad, Babylon, Ninive, Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1917.

59  Ibid.

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Emigration from Persia The second group of immigrants to Baghdad in the nineteenth century in importance and size came from Persia. Nearly every wave of immigration from Kurdistan due to persecution, high prices, famine and epidemics, had been accompanied by immigration from Persia.60 While the information that we possess relates to the second half of the century, it is more than reasonable to assume that Jews emigrated from Persia to Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq during the first half as well, and that we have no details because that at the time there were no accessible media, and no outside organizations existed to which the Jews of Baghdad could turn for assistance. The establishment of a branch of the AIU in Baghdad in 1864 not only opened the way for Baghdadi Jews to communicate with European Jewry and ask for help but also encouraged them to speak out on behalf of the Jews of Persia, including publishing in the Jewish press in Hebrew and in other languages in Europe, and in Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic in India. In a letter which Rabbi Shlomo Bekhor Husin sent from Baghdad to the newspaper Ha-Magid at the end of 1866, he describes the troubles of the Jews of Persia, who “suffer from the land’s despotic and cruel Gentiles,” because of whom There is much desolation in this land [Persia] and many families of our brethren Jews left their places and came to live here in Baghdad. The supervisor of visitors to the ill told me that recently nearly one hundred and fifty souls came, all of them impoverished and most of them very ill because of the travails of the journey and the change in climate. Therefore the people of our denomination must give them aid and support and find them treatment, medications, food and clothing until they recuperate, stand up and go into the market in search of work with which to earn their livelihood by the labor of their hands.61 Through Ha-Magid, Rabbi Husin urged European Jewry to assist the Jewish community of Baghdad, which found it very difficult to absorb the immigrants because of the high cost of living and the famine in Iraq. The emigration of penniless Jews from Persia to Baghdad continued, increasing in pace at the beginning of the 1870s. In a report from Baghdad published in Libanon (Jerusalem) we read that “every day poor people come 60  On famine in Persia, see Fischel, “Jews of Persia,” 128; AJAR (1880/1881): 38–39; Efraim Niemark, Masa’ be-Eretz ha-Kedem (Journey in an ancient land) (Jerusalem 1947), 69–70, 81. 61   Ha-Magid (Berlin, Kraków, Vienna), 10, no. 50, p. 396. See also Perah, 8, no. 17, p. 120.

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here from the mountains of Kurdistan and the cities of Persia in order to find refuge from the terrible famine that has taken such a strong hold in their countries. The few wealthy people here in Babylonia, may God protect them, are unable to provide for all the paupers asking for bread, whose numbers are like a flood.”62 Once more the leadership of Baghdad’s Jewish community asked for assistance from the Jews of Europe. The famine of the end of the 1870s and the beginning of the 1880s caused migration from Kurdistan and Persia to both Baghdad and northern Iraq. In a letter sent by the Baghdadi Jewish community to Rabbi Moshe Levy, the deputy Chief Rabbi in Istanbul, we read that “everyone already knows of the dire straits in which the community here finds itself, especially in these years, when in our sins prices are very high and many people are poor, more and more coming in from all around and also many from the cities of Persia.”63 More details about the migration and the Jewish community’s situation are provided in a letter which Morris Cohen, the English teacher at the boys’ school, sent to the Anglo-Jewish Association (AJA) in London: “This year the poverty in Bagdad has been excessive. Persons have been seen in every part of the town crying for food…. There is a great influx of poor people from Persia and from Kurdistan.” The price of basic foods rose by five hundred percent. The community in a fundraising drive collected one thousand pounds sterling, which it used to give some six thousand needy people a weekly stipend. On Fridays and Saturdays the poor were also given bread collected from people’s homes.64 The Jewish community of Baghdad, as already noted above, requested the aid of Jews in Europe, the Levant, and the Far East, who sent contributions to the Jews of Baghdad, Kurdistan, and Persia. Because of the dire economic situation and persecutions, Jews from Persia fled to Kurdistan. In a letter sent by the Baghdad community to the president of AIU it mentions destitute refugees from Persia who had come to Irbil and asks that they be given aid.65 The emigration of Jews from Persia to Baghdad continued in the 1890s. In a report from the beginning of 1890 we read about “many Jews fleeing from the cities of Karmanshah and Hamadan to Baghdad.”66 The stream of Jewish

62   Libanon (Jerusalem), 8, no. 20, p. 158. 63  CAHJP, HM2/8636–8638, from Baghdad Community to Rabbi M. Levy, 21 Shevat 5640. 64  AJAR (1879/1880): 96–97 (Appendix D). 65  AIU Archive, Irak I B5, from Baghdad Community to AIU, 12 Jan. 1881. The letter was translated into French and was published in BM (Feb. 1880): 32–33. 66   Magid Mesharim, 1, no. 9, p. 6.

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emigration from Persia to Baghdad continued, according to our sources, until World War I.67 The Persian Jews who arrived in Baghdad retained their Persian citizenship and enjoyed the protection of the Persian chargé d’affaires. They also had a Persian spokesman (mukhtar) who mediated between them and the Turkish authorities.68 Emigration from Europe and the Mediterranean Basin In contrast to the emigration of Jews from Kurdistan and Persia, reports of immigrants from Europe and the Mediterranean Basin to Baghdad in the nineteenth century are very scant, not because no Jews came from these places to Baghdad, but because the Jewish community did not usually need any help to absorb them and therefore did not ask the Jews of Europe and the Far East for assistance for them. Our main sources of information about Jews from Europe and the Mediterranean Basin living in Baghdad are family trees, memoirs, and answers to inquiries of former Iraqi Jews about their families’ origins. The place whence a Jew came to Baghdad is occasionally revealed as information about an event he attended. Jewish family names can also provide an indication of where the family came from. In Meir Benayahu’s article on “Names and family nicknames in Babylonia”69 we find not only family names and nicknames that testify to their bearers’ origins in Kurdistan or Persia but also some that prove that Jews came to Baghdad from Syria (Aleppo and Damascus), Egypt, Turkey, North Africa, Palestine, Greece (Saloniki), and Italy.70 67  Ibid., 2, no. 23, p. 121; ibid., 9, no. 19. These reports are supported also by the testimony of Iraqi Jews who came to Israel. See Uri Levi, Me-Eretz Naharayim li-Eretz Yisrael—Masa’ el ha-‘Avar (From Mesopotamia to the Land of Israel, a journey to the past) (Feb. 2000, photo edition), 3–4. Levi states that the family of his grandfather Yosef Levi left the city of Kashan in Persia at the end of the nineteenth century and came to Baghdad on its way to Jerusalem, but remained in Baghdad, where the sons married local women. The late Naeem Baqqal, too, told me that his family stems from Persia; it emigrated to Baghdad at the beginning of the nineteenth century and at the end of that century moved to the city of Amara. 68   Perah, 8, no. 5, p. 34; ibid., 10, no. 19, p. 133. 69  Sassoon, Masa’ Bavel, 56–98. 70  See also Meir Benayahu, “Pinkasim bi-Khtav-Yad le-Hakham me-Damasek” (Handwritten notebooks of a scholar from Damascus) Kiryat Sefer (June 1960): 389–400; Perah, 7, no. 44, p. 302; Moualim, Sefer Toldot, 50; David S. Sassoon, Ohel David: Catalogue of the Sassoon Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts (London 1932), 400–1; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 116– 17; Idem, Jews of Iraq in Modern Times, 86, 98, 106; Dian J. Saul, The Eliahu Bahar Family Book (Rehovot 1999).

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The large wave of Jewish emigration to the Muslim lands along the Mediterranean shores after their expulsion from Spain did not reach Iraq. However, Jews of Spanish origin did arrive in Iraq in the course of the eighteenth century by way of Aleppo and Istanbul, as noted above. Some of the Jews who emigrated to Iraq from Persia and Kurdistan from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries were also descended from the Jews expelled from Spain. Ties between the Jews of Aleppo and those of Baghdad continued to exist in the nineteenth century. Rabbis from Aleppo and from Damascus were appointed to the rabbinate in Baghdad, among them Rabbi Obadia Abraham Halevy and Rabbi Rafael Kasin, who was the first Chief Rabbi (hakham bashi) of Iraq, appointed in 1849.71 Jews from Aleppo, including descendants of exiles from Spain, continued to come to Baghdad to trade and to settle.72 In the second half of the nineteenth century Jews from Eastern and Western Europe also came to Baghdad. Their numbers grew towards the end of the 1850s and the beginning of the 1860s, when we hear already of an Ashkenazi community in the city, with a synagogue of its own. In a rare report from November 1858 in the newspaper Doresh Tob le’Ammo, published in Bombay, we read the following, written in Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic: “In the days of the hakham bashi [1849] a rather large room was built in the New External Synagogue, with a door from the street. Now the Ashkenazis and the European Jews in our city pray there and it has become a synagogue. May we see the construction of the Temple soon in our days, Amen.”73 More evidence for the existence of an Ashkenazi community in Baghdad at this time comes from the description of a struggle between that community and the Baghdadi Jewish leadership. According to the missionary J.M. Eppstein, the rabbis in Baghdad imprisoned a Jewish immigrant from Poland and confiscated his documents because of a deed whose nature is not made clear. Representatives of the Ashkenazi community asked Eppstein to intercede with the rabbis in order to free the man and return his documents. But after Eppstein began his efforts and spoke about the case to the mukhtar, the Polish Jews decided that they no longer wanted his services and dealt with 71  Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 157; Yaron Harel, Between Intrigues and Revolution [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem 2007), 64–77. 72  Mordechai Galanti, Sefer Divre Mordechai (Livorno 1869), 156b; Eliahu Dwaik Hacohen, Sefer Berakhot Eliahu (Livorno 1793), responsa section; FO, 195/237, from British Consulate in Baghdad to British Ambassador in Istanbul, 9 Dec. 1845; Perah, 6, no. 29, pp. 171–72; Flora Kiflawi interview (1965). 73   Doresh Tob le ‘Ammo, 4, no. 8, p. 5.

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the case on their own, by abusing the rabbis and demanding that their prisoner be released. Eppstein does not tell us how the affair ended, but his description provides further proof for the existence of an Ashkenazi community in Baghdad, among whose members were Jews from Poland.74 We have information from the 1850s about two Jews from Germany, a tailor and the wali’s personal physician, who was in Baghdad with his family.75 In the 1870s we hear of a Jewish physician from Austria and a Jewish tailor from Europe who was asked by the community to teach music, but died in an epidemic.76 In the 1890s we have a report of a Jew from Moldavia who left his wife and came to Baghdad.77 In addition to these piecemeal reports we are also in possession of a report on the constant immigration of impoverished East European Jews to Baghdad. The president of the Baghdad branch of AIU, Isaac Lurian, himself a newcomer from Russia, sent the report to the organization’s headquarters in Paris in August 1887. He wrote: “At every moment Jews from Russia and Romania fall upon us, people whose bitter fate drives them to this land. Since they arrive penniless, they cannot leave Baghdad and we constantly collect contributions to defray their journey’s expense …”78 Lurian informs the AIU of the contributions that he distributed to the needy in Baghdad and in other communities in Iraq. He notes that the immigrants use Baghdad as a place of transit and that the local community has been forced to pay the cost of their continued journey. However, certainly some of these immigrants remained in Baghdad. This wave was in all likelihood part of the great exodus of Jews at that time from eastern Europe to North America, Palestine, and Australia. When a new synagogue that used the Sephardi rite was opened in the Albert David Sassoon boys’ school in Baghdad in 1885, its services were attended also by “Frankish Jews who consider themselves educated Europeans.”79 Jews from Europe continued to come to Baghdad in the twentieth century.80 74  “Baghdad,” Jewish Intelligence, 1 Nov. 1862, pp. 279–80. 75  Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 288; J.M. Eppstein, “The Baghdad Mission IV,” The Jewish Missionary Intelligence (Sept. 1893): 131–34, 131. 76  AIU Archive, Irak I B5, from Joseph E. Levy to AIU, 19 Apr. 1876; ibid., Irak VI E50, from Garat to AIU, 3 May 1876. 77   Ha-Magid, 6, no. 34, p. 308. 78  AIU Archive, Irak VII E75, from Lorian to AIU, 14 Aug. 1887; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 288. 79   Ha-Tzfira (Warsaw), 13, no. 99, p. 4; Perah, 7, no. 29, p. 204. 80  German Jews, including physicians, arrived in Baghdad in the 1930s with the rise of Nazism, see Zvi Yehuda, “Selected Documents on the Pogrom (Farhud),” in Al-Farhūd— The 1941 Pogrom in Iraq (Jerusalem 2010), 256–367, 261.

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Growth in the Number of Jews in Iraq and Its Consequences In contrast to the eighteenth century, for which we have little information about the number of Jews in Iraq in general or specifically in Baghdad, we have numerous assessments from a variety of sources about the number of Jews in Baghdad in the nineteenth century.81 While these assessments differ from each other, sometimes wildly, they reflect significant growth overall. The Jewish population of Baghdad grew from about six to seven thousand at the beginning of the nineteenth century to about twenty to thirty thousand in the middle of the century, and fifty thousand at its end.82 This growth was due in large part to the massive immigration of Jews to Baghdad during the nineteenth century. There were two synagogues at the beginning of the nineteenth century and about thirty at its close.83 Shlomo Deshen used the increase in the number of synagogues as an indicator of the growth of the Jewish population in his study on the Jewish community of Baghdad during the nineteenth century, although he possessed no data on the great Jewish immigration to the city during that century.84 In the wake of this growth, the Jewish community of Baghdad became one of the largest and most important in the Ottoman Empire at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The increase was so great that newcomers had difficulty finding employment and some of them were encouraged by the Baghdadi community to move to communities, most of them newly founded, in the south of Iraq. During the second half of the nineteenth century the political situation in Iraq became more stable, as already noted above, and the positive economic trends of the eighteenth century continued apace. A significant change was the Jewish community’s introduction of a modern school system in cooperation with the French Alliance Israélite Universelle.85 The number of Jews in Iraq increased not only due to the arrival of Jewish immigrants from Kurdistan and elsewhere, mainly Persia, but also due to the natural growth, as a result of the 81  A number of such assessments can be found in Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 231–32. 82  According to the bulletins of AIU, based on information the organization’s representatives in Baghdad sent: Bulletin (1st semester 1873): 132; ibid. (2nd semester 1876): 49; ibid., (2nd semester 1878): 19; ibid., (1890): 54; ibid., (1894): 79; BM (Mar. 1897): 40. See also Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, vol. 2 (Paris 1892), 89; Der Israelit, 31 Dec. 1885, pp. 1737–38. 83  Zvi Yehuda, “Synagogues in Baghdad Listed According to Foundation Date and Location,” in Tombs of Saints and Synagogues in Babylonia, ed. idem (Or Yehuda 2006), 109–120. 84  Shlomo Deshen, “Yehudai Bagdad be-Mea’a ha-Tsha’-‘Esrai: ha-Tzmiha shel Ravgoniyut Ma’madit ve-Tarbutit” (Baghdadi Jews in the 19th century: the growth of class and cultural diversity), Zmanim 73 (Winter 2001/02): 30–44. 85  See above, pp. 5–10.

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adoption of modern medicine and advanced personal and environmental habits of hygiene. From the beginning of the twentieth century the use of vaccinations and other means of protection against the epidemics that so frequently devastated Iraq also helped reduce mortality rates. With the opening of hospitals and clinics (in the Baghdad Jewish community this began in 1884), the rate of infant survival rose. Due to all these factors, the number of Iraqi Jews in the first half of the twentieth century grew from 60,000 at the beginning of the century to about 135,000 just before the mass emigration. The Jewish community in Iraq became the largest in the Middle East.86 The growth in the number of Jews in Iraq had far-reaching consequences in many aspects of family life. We summarize these as follows: (1) Lower infant mortality and high growth rate. This took the form of a high birth rate and a rise in the number of newborn babies who survived infancy (576 children aged 0–4 per 1,000 women of child-bearing age). Family size increased and the base of the age pyramid expanded, so that the Jewish population became younger (See Table 1).87 (2) Higher marriage age. Until the above-mentioned changes it was common among Jews in Iraq to marry off girls at the age of twelve or thirteen. The average age of marriage rose continuously and the age difference between husband and wife, which in the past could be thirty years or more, was reduced as Jewish society in Iraq became familiar with social trends in Europe and began to provide girls with a modern education (in Baghdad beginning in 1893).88 (3) Increased life expectancy. The transition from folk medicine to modern medical practices raised the age at which Jews in Iraq passed away (see Table 1).89

86  Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 73–76; Longrigg, Iraq, 53, 204, 391. 87  Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 76. 88  Ibid., p. 162; Zvi Yehuda, “Toward a Study of a Jewish Community in Iraq in the Period of Change: The Jewish Community of Hilla—Changes in Education (1900–1914)” [in Hebrew], in Miqqedem Umiyyam, ed. by J. Chetrit and Z. Yehuda, 2 (Haifa 1986): 187–207, 195–98; Shaul Sehayik, “Changes in the Status pf Urban Jewish Women in Iraq at the End of the Nineteenth Century” [in Hebrew], Pe’amim (1988): 64–88. 89  Yehuda, “Hilla—Changes in Education,” 195–97; Longrigg, Iraq, 169, 204.

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Age of Iraqi immigrants to Israel (1950–1952) in percentages, compared to Jews from Egypt90

Age

Iraqi Jews

Egyptian Jews

0–4 5–14 15–29 30–49 50–59 60+

13.5 25.5 29.1 17.9 6.8 7.2

8.1 21.3 28.7 27.4 8.2 6.3

Internal Migration The growth of the population and the changes in family life were accompanied by movement of people inside the country (internal migration) as well as movement into and from Iraq. Internal migration of Jews within Iraq was influenced by a number of political and economic factors, among them improved security in southern Iraq, the transit trade through the port of Basra and the construction of dams that controlled the flooding of the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, which made it possible to resettle the fertile lands in the delta region that had been abandoned since the Mongol invasions. Many people from the towns and villages of the north streamed towards the south, including Jews from Kurdistan and the upper Euphrates. Some of the latter, as noted above, went through Baghdad. They either joined the old communities in Basra and Hilla or settled in the region’s new cities and towns, such as Amara and Diwaniya. As a result of the movement south the Jewish population in that area grew from a few hundred in the mid-nineteenth century to about fifteen thousand on the eve of World War I (see Maps 2.1 and 2.2).91 After World War I the direction of the internal migration changed. The British occupation of Iraq and the establishment of an Arab state there turned Baghdad into a capital city and an administrative and commercial center, a magnet for immigrants from all parts of Iraq. The Jews were among the first to take part in this process. They left their towns, including places where they 90  Cohen,  Jews in the Middle East Countries, 76. 91  Ibid., 73–75.

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had settled only shortly before, and moved to Baghdad, some directly and some through way stations, the nearby provincial towns and cities. A few of these migrants went to Basra, the new state’s sea port. The mass movement to Baghdad raised the number of Jews there from 50,000 at the end of the nineteenth century to about 80,000 in 1947. Together with the Jews of Basra, who numbered about 11,000 in 1947, they constituted some 75 percent of Iraq’s Jewish population of 125,000 in that year.92 The fact that the Jews in Iraq resided mainly in the large cities, especially in Baghdad and Basra, promoted the quick development of the Jewish community in the first half of the twentieth century. The Baghdad Jewish community, which as already noted comprised the great majority of the country’s Jews, was able to establish its own independent health, welfare, and education facilities and managed to meet the needs of the growing community and absorb the stream of immigrants that arrived from the villages and the provincial towns. This explains why the Jews in Iraq were spared the severe problems in health

Map 2.1

Distribution of Jewish communities in Iraq in 1850.

92  Ibid.; Yehuda, “Jewish Community of Hilla,” 91–95.

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Map 2.2

81

Distribution of Jewish communities in Iraq in 1947.

services, schools, housing, employment, and welfare that accompanied the process of urbanization of other Jewish communities in the Arab world, for example in Morocco and Egypt. The large number of Jews in Baghdad helped them become quickly absorbed into the country’s school system, state administration, and the economy, but also paved the way for the community’s exodus. As the number of educated local Muslims rose, Jews were driven out of the senior social and economic positions that they had occupied upon the establishment of the new state’s institutions and were forced to leave the country.

The Economy in Transition

The demographic changes which the Jews in Iraq experienced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were affected by changes in their economic situation. These changes did not occur all at once wherever there were Jewish communities. In the large cities, Baghdad and Basra, through which the international trade flowed, the economic changes had begun already in the mid-nineteenth century, but in the towns that were not in the vicinity of this commerce the

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significant change in the Jews’ economic situation occurred only after World War I. In the smaller settlements, especially the villages of Iraqi Kurdistan, European influence on the Jewish economy remained insignificant until they left their places of residence. For the present purpose Iraq may be divided into two kinds of places, according to the nature of the way they were governed: Regions in which the Jews were under tribal rule and regions in which Jews were directly subject to a central authority. In the regions where Jews lived under tribal rule they did not experience any change in their economic situation, but wherever Jews lived under a central authority signs of economic change began to make their appearance in the mid-nineteenth century. Furthermore, the constant migration of Jews from tribal areas to regions ruled by a central government, in central and southern Iraq and in the provincial cities of Iraqi Kurdistan, brought about a change in the migrants’ economic situation, as they adapted to the economic conditions in their new places of residence. The Traditional Economy In the regions where the Jews lived under tribal rule they engaged mainly in agriculture and craftsmanship. The occupation of agriculture, a legacy of the pre-Islamic period, was preserved among the Jews only in areas occupied by Kurdish tribes in northern Iraq, where tribal tradition was stronger than Muslim religious law (sharia). The Jews did not own the land that they tilled but worked as tenant farmers of the chief of the tribe that protected them. Like their Muslim counterparts, Jewish vassals received a plot of land from the tribal chief and tilled it in return for part of the harvest. Some Jewish farmers lived in villages of their own, for example the village of Sandur in north-eastern Iraq. The other occupation pursued by Jews in the areas of tribal protection was craftsmanship. Handicrafts in these areas, where the economy was undeveloped and the needs of the tribal population few, were almost exclusively in the hands of Jews. The Jewish tailors and smiths carried out all the stages in the production of their wares, using simple tools. They received the raw materials from the consumer and provided him with the finished product in return for part of the raw material. Some of the Jewish craftsmen succeeded in creating some basic commercial enterprises under tribal auspices. As they accumulated a certain capital of their own in raw materials such as wool, they created finished products, such as garments, and traveled through neighboring villages to sell them. Other craftsmen, who were unable to make a living where they resided, journeyed with the tools of their trade and offered their services far from home.

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Like all the vassals of the Kurdish tribes, the Jews were required to give a prescribed number of work days to the tribal chief, to work his lands, husband his herds and guard the tribe’s property. The tribal framework continued to exist in Iraq until the Jews left the region during the mass migration of 1950–1951.93 Until the middle of the nineteenth century the economic life of the Jews in Iraq did not differ markedly from what it had been during the Gaonic period, seven hundred years previously. Only in the cities of Baghdad and Basra, with their close contacts to Europe, could a modest change be discerned in the occupations of the Jewish community’s upper classes, which in addition to its traditional vocations began to mediate in the trade between Europe and the Levant and between Arabia, Persia, and the Far East.94 In the delta region and the upper Euphrates the Jews abandoned agriculture after the Muslim conquest of Iraq in 637 CE, settled in the towns and became craftsmen and traders.95 Their customers were Muslim farmers. The Jewish economy in these places thus became inextricably intertwined with an Arab-Muslim clientele that consisted mostly of agriculturalists.96 This meant that the Jews’ livelihood depended to a large extent on the success of the Muslim farmers. The Jews’ annual economic cycle followed the harvest cycle. Most of the Jewish breadwinners were craftsmen. The crafts were varied; indeed there was hardly any crafts which Jews did not pursue. Many chose to become gold- and silversmiths, a craft in which they had little competition because Muslims tended to shun it out of fear of transgressing against their religion. The goldsmith’s craft, which consisted of numerous secondary specializations, became so prevalent among Jews in Iraq that special markets were set up for these craftsmen. In the country’s north, where the Jews faced competition from Christian goldsmiths, this craft attracted a smaller proportion of Jews than elsewhere. In his Cinquante ans d’histoire, l’Alliance Israélite Universelle, Narcisse Leven wrote:97 The craft of the goldsmith is the preferred work among the Jews throughout Iraq. The goldsmiths are the only merchants who buy and sell precious 93  This survey is based on interviews with Jews from Iraqi Kurdistan that I held during a seminar of the community’s elders in the Jerusalem Forest in January 1973. 94  See above; Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 89–92. 95  Ben-Sasson, History of the Jewish People, 23. 96  Longrigg, Iraq, 29–30. 97  Narcisse Leven, Cinquante ans d’histoire, l’Alliance Israélite Universelle (1860–1910), vol. 2 (Paris 1920), 252.

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metals and gem stones. A good goldsmith can earn up to fifty francs per month, a modest salary but enough to feed a family. In most cases the Jewish craftsman did not possess capital of his own. He worked for pay in his open workshop which was also his store, and employed an apprentice who was paid very little, or a member of the family who was taught the trade and expected to eventually continue the business. At the beginning of the twentieth century ready-made products began to arrive in Iraq and the craft experienced a severe crisis. Jewish craftsmen thus lived from one day to the next, earning barely enough to feed their families.98 In periods of economic slump, such as years of drought or other calamities, the Jewish craftsmen had to close their shops, leave their families, and search for work outside their towns. When modern schools were established by the Jews of Iraq at the end of the nineteenth century young people abandoned the goldsmith’s craft in favor of new and more profitable professions such as office work, administration, liberal and technical professions, and personal service.99 As in the case of the crafts, Jewish commercial activity branched out into numerous professions. Most of the Jewish tradesmen in Iraq were peddlers and small shopkeepers who earned very little. Only a few were involved in large-scale commerce, import, export, and international trade. Jewish peddlers made the rounds of the neighboring villages, sold their goods to the Arab peasants and in return received produce which they sold in the city. This mediation between country and city left only a small profit in the Jewish peddler’s hands, barely sufficing for a living. They were also constantly in danger of their lives as they traveled the unsafe roads. The economic situation of the shopkeepers was better, because they were situated in urban areas where the clientele enjoyed a more stable income than in the villages. The urban clientele was of Jews, to whom the shopkeepers sold kosher foodstuffs such as meat, cheese, wine, and baked goods; and nonJews, to whom they sold jewelry, cloth, leather goods, dyes, perfume, food, and other goods. On the higher part of the commercial hierarchy there were Jews who engaged in money-changing and lending at interest in return for collateral, as well as traders in Baghdad and Basra who served as agents for commercial companies in Europe and the Far East. Wealthy Jews also served as bankers and tax collectors to the local rulers, a position that occasionally cost them 98  Zvi Yehuda, “Jewelry-Making in the Jewish Community of Hilla in the Early 20th Century” [in Hebrew], Pe’amim 11 (1982): 51–55. 99  Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 90–91.

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their lives. Other Jewish merchants bought or leased agricultural land which they made available to Muslim peasants in return for part of the harvest. The Jews who engaged in large-scale commerce tended to diversify their investments: they gave loans at interest, opened shops for imported goods, possessed warehouses where they stored grain in the hope of a price rise, exported raw materials, and leased fields and orchards.100 Toward Modern Professions In the first half of the twentieth century the following major developments occurred in the economy of Jews in Iraq: traditional crafts which the great majority of Jews had pursued became ever less profitable. Income from these professions was no longer sufficient to feed a family because of the competition from finished products imported from Europe, America and Japan that flooded the market, and because of the increase in family size. Iraq’s economic development opened new opportunities for Jews to make a living. Ever more Jews who had obtained a modern education abandoned the traditional occupations of handicrafts and petty commerce. A broad class emerged of Jews engaged in occupations such as photography, electricity, office work, and public and private administration, education, management, and the liberal professions. Commerce also became more modern. Jews began to trade in new and finished products such as cars, electric appliances, and machines for industry and agriculture, and some opened cinemas. More and more Jewish merchants engaged in the import of consumer products from countries such as England, Japan, Germany and the United States. Jewish merchants abandoned the traditional bazaars in favor of the commercial centers in the city’s main streets and new developments. Changes also occurred in large-scale commerce and finance; instead of money changers and lenders at interest, Jews went into banking, entrepreneurship, and brokerage.101 These developments are dramatically reflected in the statistics that show a drop in the percentage of Jews engaged in traditional crafts and petty trade and a rise in the percentage of those in the clerical, administrative and liberal professions, and in intermediate commerce. The changes are particularly evident if the data are shown in comparison with those of the Yemenite immigrants to Israel, who were only beginning the process of change; and with those of Turkish Jewry, which was in the middle of the same process of change, as shown in the following table.

100  Yehuda, “Jewish Community of Hilla,” 97–100. 101  Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 93–110; Abraham H. Twena, “Jewish Autonomy in Iraq” [in Hebrew], in Dispersion and Liberation, ed. by idem, part 7 (Ramla 1979), 123–72.

86 Table 2

Chapter 2 Professions of immigrants from Iraq (1950–1951) in percentages, compared with immigrants from Yemen (1948–1950) and Jews in Turkey (1960)102

Occupation

Liberal and technical professions Clerical and administrative Personal services Trade and sales Crafts and industry Transportation, construction, and mining Agriculture

Iraqi immigrants

Yemeni immigrants

Turkish Jewry

5.9

3.0

6.0

15.8 4.4 27.5 32.0 11.1

0.7 0.7 30.2 46.1 4.1

35.0 5.5 33.1 15.7 3.4

3.3

15.2

1.3

Jewish girls were given the opportunity to obtain an education and with the improvement in the status of women in Jewish society, this paved the way for Jewish women to engage in modern professions.103 Working Jewish women wrought a change in the family’s economic structure by increasing the number of earners and reducing the number of dependents per earner. As a result Jewish families in Iraq became less dependent on seasonal or periodical economic vacillations. Political changes in Iraq at the beginning of the twentieth century also increased family stability. After the British conquest the government came to be based on modern principles of administration and economics and Jews in Iraq, 96 percent of whom lived in the large cities that were also the country’s commercial and administrative centers, were the first to enjoy the benefits of this development. The economic changes that the Jews experienced in the first half of the twentieth century also affected social stratification of the Jews. Socioeconomic polarization was reduced and a new middle class emerged. This created some internal ferment in the community and fostered new ideas on how the community should adapt to the new realities in a way that would not lead to the abandonment of Jewish society and to assimilation. These social and economic changes in Iraq during the first half of the twentieth century 102  Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 91. 103  Ibid., 166.

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­ otivated the country’s Jews to leave their homeland and led to the end of the m new Babylonian diaspora in the second half of the century.

En Route to Modernization

Revival of the Spiritual Center In the third century CE Babylonia emerged as an important Jewish center, in the wake of the decline of the Jewish center in the Holy Land following the destruction of the Second Temple and the suppression of the Bar-Kochba rebellion. For the next millennium Babylonia was a cultural, intellectual, and educational center for the Jewish Diaspora. Major Torah-learning centers (yeshivas) were established in the cities of Sura, Nehardea, Pumbedita, Mahuza, Matha Mehasia, and Baghdad, which attracted numerous students from near and afar (see Map 2.3). The Jewish centers of learning in Babylonia ceased to exist in the wake of the Mongolian invasions at the end of the thirteenth century and the attendant destruction of the major Jewish communities in the delta region of Iraq. The yeshivas were no more and Torah learning, which now took place in private, became limited to passing on Jewish lore and tradition to the surviving Jews, mainly in the north of Iraq. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were scholarly rabbis in Iraq who were in contact with the Jewish center in Safed and trained personnel to see to the religious needs of Iraq’s Jewish communities.104 Jewish education in Iraq began undergo a transformation from the middle of the eighteenth century, due to the improvement of the economic and demographic situation of the Jews, and the support of the Baghdadi Jewish communities established in the Far East and in Western Europe.105 These supported their mother community in Iraq by financing schools, and received in return spiritual, religious, cultural, and educational assistance. A landmark event was the arrival of Rabbi Sadqa Husin from Aleppo to serve as the rabbi of Baghdad (1743–1773), and the decline of Torah-learning centers in Syria and the Holy Land. Rabbi Husin educated a generation of local rabbis who became the pioneers of change in traditional Jewish education in Iraq. At the beginning of the nineteenth century venerable traditional, privately owned educational institutions came under public ownership and the stadh (the equivalent of the heder), which had constituted the foundation of 104  See above. 105  See above.

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Map 2.3 The Yeshivas of Babylonia in the third to thirteenth centuries.106

traditional education since the end of the thirteenth century, began to be replaced by the Talmud Torah and the yeshiva.106 The first Talmud Torah opened in Baghdad in 1832. Subsequently, others were established in major Jewish communities in the country in Basra, Mosul, Hilla, and elsewhere. A few years later, in 1840, the first yeshiva was founded in Baghdad, named for the philanthropist Hesqel ibn Ruben Mnashi, who contributed the funds for its construction and maintenance. The yeshiva was headed from the beginning until his death by Rabbi Abdalla Somekh (1813– 1889), the greatest Torah scholar in Iraq at the time, who was said to have been a descendant of a gaonic family from Nehardea.107 The changes in the traditional educational system were introduced to improve the quality and to make it more accessible to lower classes in Iraqi Jewish society, who could send their children to the new public schools that were financed by the community and accepted students who were unable to pay the tuition. 106  According to Eshel, Jewish Settlements in Babylonia. 107  Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 150–54.

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The contents and objectives of the public traditional Jewish institutions of education in Iraq were identical with those of the private schools. Their purpose was to provide Jewish boys with the needed knowledge and skills to carry out the religious observances; after all, being able to read, recite, understand, and interpret the Holy Scriptures was a necessary condition for participation in worship, which in turn was the ultimate goal of a Jew’s faith and his being in Jewish society. A religious affiliation was necessary also because of the structure of the surrounding Muslim society, in which a neutral social identity was impossible. For this reason the Jews in Iraq saw to it that their sons received a basic traditional education even after the community had established modern schools. However, while those of modest means in the community had to be satisfied with providing their children with the basics of Torah reading and recital of the prayers, the more well-to-do gave their children a general education that would prepare them for working in the domains of international commerce and brokerage.108 Traditional Jewish education in Iraq consisted of two stages: The first or basic stage was open to all boys and took place in a private stadh (heder), owned and administered by the teacher (mu’allim, stayi), or in a public school (Talmud Torah), owned and administered by the community council. The second or advanced stage (yeshiva) was open to students who had proven their abilities in the first stage and wished to expand their Torah knowledge and to prepare themselves for the profession of rabbi or other religious offices. The yeshiva was a public institution maintained by the community and was supervised by senior rabbis, headed by the rosh yeshiva. The age of the students, the teaching methods, and the syllabus of the first stage were the same for traditional schools of all types, even if the overall level of study in a Talmud Torah was higher than that of a stadh. The teachers lacked pedagogical training, used physical punishment, and taught classes in which children aged three to thirteen studied together using the method of memorization and repetition. However, unlike the stadh in which teaching was on an individual basis, with each student hearing his lesson from the teacher in turn, in the Talmud Torah teaching was done in groups, divided according to the extent of the students’ knowledge. Toward the end of the nineteenth century more and more public traditional schools opened, and the number of Jewish students who regularly attended classes increased. These institutions gave free meals to needy students and taught rules of hygiene, resulting in improved overall health for the children, 108  Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 111–12.

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especially children from the lower classes of Jewish society. This was a period of spiritual blossoming for the Jews in Iraq. The yeshivas were centers of Torah learning and teaching, producing rabbis known for their knowledge and wisdom, among them Rabbi Yosef Haim (1834– 1909), the greatest rabbi in Iraq in latter times, the author of numerous works in halakha, biblical exegesis, Kabbala, ethics, drash and pshat, religious poetry, prayer, maxims, and tales. His fame spread to Palestine and throughout the Jewish world in the east and the west.109 Graduates of the yeshivas became the spiritual leaders of many Jewish communities in Iraq, among Iraqi Jewish communities abroad, and in Palestine. The increase in the number of graduates of the public traditional school system also meant that more and more people became knowledgeable in Hebrew, and so more people read the Hebrew newspapers that arrived from Europe and Palestine. Jews in Iraq, among them Rabbi Shlomo Bekhor Husin, sent reports and news items to be published in these newspapers.110 The great demand for Hebrew materials resulted in the first Hebrew printing press to be established in Iraq in the 1860s, and the appearance of a Hebrew newspaper, called Ha-Dober. The traditional educational system declined in prestige and importance with the establishment of modern Jewish schools in Iraq beginning in the 1860s. Jews who had immigrated to Iraq from Europe and local intellectuals criticized the traditional curriculum and teaching methods, the teachers, the physical punishments, the crowded classes, and the abysmal hygienic conditions in the traditional schools. In 1901, Y.D. Semach, representative of the AIU and headmaster of the modern Jewish school of boys in Baghdad wrote down his impressions of the new Talmud Torah that opened in the city of Hilla: It is a small house with no ventilation and no light. It has three narrow rooms with almost no furniture. One hundred and fifty boys and twenty girls sit packed together on very low benches and five rabbis teach them to say the prayers and to write.111 Demands for reforming the traditional system of education grew apace and despite the opposition of some of the rabbis in Iraq it was impossible to continue to prevent change. At the end of the nineteenth century general subjects began to be introduced in the curriculum of the Talmud Torahs, which 109  Abraham Ben-Yaacob, Rabbi Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad [in Hebrew] (Or Yehuda 1984). 110  Lev Hakak, The Collected Essays of Rabbi Shelomo Bekhor Hutsin [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv 2005). 111  Yehuda, “Jewish Community of Hilla—Changes in Education,” 189.

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g­ radually evolved into modern Jewish or Hebrew schools. The number of stadhs decreased continually; in all the communities in which modern Jewish schools opened the stadhs disappeared, with the exception of Baghdad. But the demand for reforming the traditional school system passed over the second or advanced stage, the yeshiva. In contrast to other Jewish communities in the Muslim world (Turkey, Algeria, Morocco) where general subjects were introduced into the yeshivas as well, and where rabbinical seminaries were founded with a new syllabus on religion and lessons were given in the national language, the yeshivas in Iraq continued to follow the traditional method until the Jews’ exodus in the mid-twentieth century. True, at the end of the nineteenth century, the community head and one of its most prominent rabbis, Rabbi Abraham Moshe Hillel, prepared a plan for reforming the advanced stage of traditional education, including the introduction of general subjects into the syllabus of the yeshivas, but his plan was never put into effect.112 After World War I fewer students attended the yeshivas because of the social and economic transformations that took place in Iraq and among the Iraqi Jewish communities abroad, and also due to the emergence of Palestine as an educational-spiritual center for the region’s Jewish communities. Torah learning lost its former prestige among Jews in Iraq, who preferred to send their children to modern schools (see Table 6 below). Those Jews in Iraq who wished to improve their Torah learning went to Palestine and joined the yeshivas in Jerusalem and Hebron. The Flow to Modern Schools Jews began to receive a modern education in Iraq after modern Christian schools opened there in the middle of the nineteenth century. The first students were sons of wealthy merchants from Baghdad who wanted to learn European languages and prepare themselves for engaging in commerce with Europe and the Far East. But unlike the situation in Egypt and Syria, where by the end of the nineteenth century some 50 percent of the Jewish children learned in Christian schools, in Iraq only a few Jewish students attended the Christian schools.113 This difference between Iraq on one hand, and Egypt and Syria on the other, in the extent to which Jews sent their children to Christian schools lay not only in the fact that Jews in Iraq remained relatively unaffected by Western European influences in the second half of the nineteenth century, but also due to the early establishment of modern schools that met the local community’s needs. 112   Perah, 10, no. 28, pp. 203–4. 113  Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 111.

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Map 2.4

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Spread of modern Jewish schools in Iraq 1864–1949.

The first modern Jewish school in Iraq opened in Baghdad at the end of 1864. The school was founded by the local Jewish community, but shortly after it opened the community asked the AIU to take over its administration. This school met the community’s needs for modern education until the end of the nineteenth century, when the demand for a modern education spread to other communities and to the middle and lower classes in Baghdad. Due to the pressure and the financial support of the communities, AIU expanded its participation in the schools’ administration. Modern Jewish schools were established in Basra (1890), Mosul (1906), Hilla (1907), Amara (1910), Khanaqin (1911), Kirkuk (1912), and elsewhere. By the beginning of World War I three more schools had opened in Baghdad (in 1902, 1903, and 1909).114 Jewish society in Iraq was very conservative, and would not tolerate the idea of coeducational schools. But it did want to give girls a modern general and vocational education, and so special schools for girls were needed. The first 114  Yehuda, “Iraqi Jewry and Cultural Change”, 135.

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Jewish girls’ school in Baghdad was founded in 1893, followed by schools in Hilla (1911), Mosul (1912), and Basra (1913). As a result of these developments the number of students who attended modern Jewish schools in Iraq rose from about two hundred in 1880 to some four thousand boys and girls in 1913.115 From the very beginning the AIU’s educational activities in Iraq were met with reservations on the part of the community’s leadership and rabbis. Although they were in favor of providing a modern education for their children, they opposed the AIU’s desire to “advance” and “develop” the Jews of Iraq in the spirit of the Christian West and French culture, without taking into consideration the community’s social structure and cultural heritage, or the great influence which the surrounding Muslim society had on the Jews’ social and cultural life. Indeed, the Jews in those days still retained their conservative social framework and the surrounding Muslim society and Muslim authorities were also very much opposed to changes in Jewish society, lest such changes be copied in Muslim society itself. While the AIU’s representatives wished to use education as a tool for bringing modernization into the life of the Jewish community and to transform Iraqi Jewry’s traditions and culture, the community itself wanted to provide its children with a modern education but to retain its unique culture and traditions.116 The attempts made by the AIU-appointed headmasters in Baghdad to give their students a more Western appearance by cutting off their side-locks and beards, adopting French attire and speech and changing the behavior of Jewish girls and women were met with great resistance on the part of the community’s leaders and rabbis, who perceived in these changes a threat to Jewish society and to Jewish survival in a Muslim environment. The opponents of the AIU’s activities also asked why Iraqi Jewry needed a cultural change in the spirit of the Christian West. Were their own culture and customs so undesirable that they had to be replaced by others? And in what way is Christian culture, which strives to make Jews abandon their own faith, superior to Arab-Muslim culture, in which the traditions of all the monotheistic faiths are nominally respected? The Jewish community’s leadership not only opposed any modification of Iraqi Jewry’s customs and traditions but also demanded that the AIU expand its teaching of Jewish subjects and give preference to teaching the languages of the country and the region (Arabic, Turkish, and Persian) rather than to European languages. In line with this policy, the community leadership in Baghdad 115   Bulletin (2nd semester, 1886): 40; ibid. (1912): 97. 116  Morris Cohen, “Superstition among the Jews in Baghdad,” AJAR 25 (1895/1896): 50–63.

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urged the AIU to reduce the teaching of the French language and French culture which, so it claimed, took up too much space in the syllabus and did not contribute to graduates’ prospects of obtaining a job. The AIU-administered school, the community leadership argued, should fulfill its main function of preparing students for positions in local and regional administration and commerce and in the engineering projects run by British experts, which students hoped to obtain after their graduation. However, neither AIU headquarters in Paris nor the headmasters of its schools in Iraq, who were mainly interested in the dissemination of French culture among the local Jews, were prepared for any reduction in the position of French in the curriculum, although they recognized the importance of the changes demanded by the community. As an interim solution they introduced a syllabus in which up to five languages were taught, but they were unable to bring students to a satisfactory level in any of these except for French. This aroused yet more criticism of the AIU and resulted in a demand for the establishment of independent modern community schools that would meet the needs of the Jews in Iraq.117 The change came in 1908. The Young Turk Revolution and the nationalist revival in Turkey gave support to the opponents of French education who demanded the establishment of Jewish schools in Iraq in which the language of instruction would be the national language, Turkish. Adult courses for learning Turkish were opened and a Jewish association was founded in Baghdad which in 1909 brought about the establishment of a modern Jewish school, the “al-Ta’awun School,” in which Turkish was the language of instruction.118 After World War I the Jewish communities in Baghdad and elsewhere founded numerous general and vocational schools for boys and girls from kindergarten through primary and secondary education, to college119 (see Map 2.4, Table 7). The AIU schools also came under the management of the community councils. The community schools in Baghdad were financed through the community’s income and supervised by a special committee appointed by the council (Table 4).

117  Yehuda, “Iraqi Jewry and Cultural Change.” 118  Meir, Socio-Cultural Development, 37. 119  Ibid., 30–236; Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 114–21; Zvi Yehuda, Jewish Schools in Baghdad 1832–1974.

Rise And Fall Of The New Babylonian Diaspora Table 3

Jewish schools in Baghdad 1905–1949120

Year

1905

1930

1949

No. of schools

4

18

32

Table 4

95

Community participation in school maintenance in Baghdad

Year

1905

1930

1949

In percentages In £ Sterling

70 5,000

90 20,000

99 80,000

But the growth in the number of Jewish schools did not keep up with the burgeoning demand for modern education among Jews in Iraq and could not prevent students from attending Arab government schools, which became the most significant element in modern education in Iraq during the British Mandate period and under Arab rule. There were a number of reasons for this: (1) The smaller Jewish communities did not possess the means to open modern Jewish schools of their own. (2) There were only four Jewish secondary schools for boys and one for girls in Baghdad and one in Basra, which was not enough. No other Jewish secondary schools were founded in Iraq. (3) Many Jews wanted to become integrated into the newly-established Arab state in Iraq. Iraqi Jewry’s enthusiasm for modern education brought about a constant increase in the number of Jewish students in the modern school system at all levels and led to stagnation and decline in traditional education. As a result of this trend the number of Jewish students who completed their primary, secondary, and higher education in Iraq and literacy among the Jewish populace increased (Tables 5, 6, 7). 120  Ibid. The data presented in Table 2.3 are based on these sources.

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Chapter 2 Jewish students in modern schools in Iraq, 1900–1949

Year

1900

1920

1949

No. of students

600

7,000

20,000

Table 6

Jewish students in Baghdad, 1900–1949

Year

1900

1920

1949

In traditional schools In modern schools

2,500 500

2,300 5,500

2,000 16,000

Table 7

Jewish high school graduates 1880–1951121

Period

1880–1920

1921–1940

1941–1951

No. of graduates

40

300

650

Changing Communal Life With the transition from traditional to modern education a process of change began to take place in the social and economic life of Jews in Iraq. Initially the change consisted in an improvement in the Jews’ demographic situation, due to improved hygiene, modern health care, and improved housing. Further changes occurred in the socio-economic situation of Jews with the spread of education throughout the community, later marriage, and changes in the status of Jewish women. The modern Jewish schools that opened in Iraq beginning in 1864 were established to change socio-economic conditions, such as the contagious diseases and high mortality rate from frequent epidemics which resulted in high levels

121  Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 121; idem, “University Education among Iraqiborn Jews,” JJS 11, no. 1 (June 1969): 59–66.

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of mortality, because of the lack of awareness of prophylactic measures and the use of folk medicine. Many of the first children to attend the new schools suffered from poor hygiene and malnutrition because they came from impoverished homes. Where traditional family structure was unchanged, Jewish girls were betrothed by their parents at age 9–11 and married at age 12–13. A Jewish girl who reached the age of fifteen and was still unmarried was considered an old maid with no chance of a husband. A girl-bride was not asked for her opinion in choosing her mate and parents occasionally married off their daughters to men dozens of years older than the bride. Jewish women’s inferior status was built into social and domestic norms: already at the age of eight, girls were told they must obey men and remain within the narrow circle of the females in their family and immediate surroundings; on rare excursions outside the home a girl had to wear an external robe (‘abaya) and a face cover (pushi) so that her body was completely out of sight and she had no contact with the outside world. In their dress and domestic role Jewish women in Iraq retained the traditions of the past, which were influenced by the surrounding Arab Muslim society.122 It was this traditional social system which the modern Jewish school system tried to change. The first improvement occurred in the hygiene and the external appearance of the students, boys and girls. The schools also opened health clinics and provided instruction on how to prevent disease, giving vaccinations against epidemic diseases and sending students from indigent families to receive modern medical care at the school’s expense. In order to strengthen their physical constitution, needy students were provided with a daily meal free of charge. However, the attempts by the modern school system to change the status of Jewish girls in the family and in society, including marriage customs, were not immediately successful. It took many decades before restrictions on women’s appearance and movements were lifted, the age of marriage rose and the age gap between husband and wife was reduced. The conservatism of the local Muslim environment impeded progress even more than opposition from local Jewish society. The modern schools provided vocational education to boys and girls and prepared them for jobs in modern administration or for higher education in medicine, law, and engineering. The penetration of modern education into Iraq’s Jewish communities also brought Jews and Muslims closer together and created conditions for 122  Morris Cohen, “A New Departure in the Apprenticing of Jewish Boys and Girls in Bagdad,” AJAR 15 (1885/1886): 50–56.

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friendships among them. Many Jewish schools accepted Muslim students and Jewish students, especially outside the big cities and in places where there were no Jewish schools, studied in Muslim government schools. Modern education also affected the nature of Jewish writings after World War I. Fewer religious compositions appeared, while more and more secular writings were published, in Arabic and in English. Jewish authors and poets emerged who wrote in Arabic, and Jewish newspapers in Arabic were founded, among them Al-Misbah (The Lantern, 1924–1929), Al-Hasid (The Harvest, 1929–1937) and Al-Burhan (The Proof, 1929–1930).123 The modern school system also contributed to changing the map of Jewish residential areas. Because Jews wanted to improve their housing conditions, many abandoned the narrow and overcrowded Jewish quarters in the cities and moved to new and more modern neighborhoods. Jews also moved from provincial towns and villages to the big cities, Baghdad and Basra, in order to give their children an opportunity to pursue secondary and higher schooling. The effects the modern school system had on Iraqi Jewry, with the increasing number of educated young Jews, led to the emergence of a new middle class and a restructuring of the community’s social stratification. These changes also had a beneficial effect on the absorption of Iraqi Jews in Israel and elsewhere after the exodus from Iraq in the second half of the twentieth century.

Modernity and Communal Organization

The characteristic features of the organizational structure of the Jewish community in Iraq from the eighteenth to the twentieth century were rooted in ancient times. The division into a lay and a spiritual leadership that existed in the community in the last few centuries was known from the times of the Talmud and the Geonim. The fierce struggles for influence in the community between these two permanent forces, the powerful lay leaders and the rabbis, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are reminiscent of the stormy relations between the exilarchs and the Geonim who headed the yeshivas in Babylonia a millennium earlier. The broad autonomy enjoyed by Jews, who were allowed to manage their community’s affairs and to establish organizational frameworks distinct from those of the non-Jewish environment, existed during the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BCE. 123  Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 122; Meir, Socio-Cultural Development, 275–344.

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In the middle ages, the exilarch stood at the head of the Jewish autonomy. According to tradition, he was a descendant of the House of David. The exilarch was recognized by the rulers of the land as the leader of the Jews. He was an important and respected member of the state’s political elite, wore elegant clothes, rode in a carriage, and was preceded by a retinue of slaves. The exilarch was the supreme judge of Babylonian Jewry, for both criminal and civil suits. He appointed the judges, and supervised the public safety of the Jews and commerce in the markets. He had the authority to impose punishments and fines and to collect taxes by force.124 The Mongol conquest of Baghdad in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries put an end to the post of exilarch. From the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century the Jewish communities in Iraq were headed by presidents appointed from among the community’s wealthy venerables (see above). The position did not pass on in the family as in the case of the exilarch, but was usually given by the provincial governor to a rich Jew of his acquaintance, usually the governor’s treasurer. The president, although not a descendant of the House of David, was greatly respected and possessed considerable authority to lead the community. He was an absolute ruler who had the right to judge, fine, lash and imprison members of the Jewish community. The following is a description of the president of the Jews of Baghdad, written by the traveler Benjamin the Second, who visited the community in 1848: Until the year 1849/1850 [sic!] Rabbi Joseph Moshe Reuben, may God protect him, was the president of the community, a wise, wealthy and generous man.… His authority was so respected and lofty that had he wished to stray a bit from the straight path he could have imposed his will not only on the Jews but on the Muslims as well, because over him he had no authority except for the king’s pasha [the wali of Baghdad], so that with bribe money he could have blinded him so that he could have done whatever he pleased with no interference.125 The power of the president’s position made it a perilous one. The president’s close relations with the ruler and his court, his wealth and his prestige, aroused jealousy and greed, often costing the president his life. At the beginning of the nineteenth century two of the Baghdadi Jewish community’s presidents were executed.126 124  Ben-Sasson, History of the Jewish People, 47–48. 125  [Tudela], Masa’ot, 45. 126  Sassoon, Baghdad, 122–27.

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The president’s task was to administer the community, collect taxes, manage the endowments, intercede on the community’s behalf with the authorities, pay the annual and occasional taxes imposed by the government, help the needy and solve the community’s security problems. The president was the head of the community’s religious, educational and charitable institutions and saw to the collection of adequate funding for them. In the large Jewish communities in Iraq the president had helpers in a position called mukhtar. The mukhtar carried out the orders of the president and the authorities, and mediated between them and Jewish inhabitants. In Iraq’s Jewish communities, matters of the spirit were the domain of the rabbis, who were appointed by the community presidents. Their salaries and expenses were paid out of the community’s treasury. While the fact that the rabbis were dependent for their livelihood on the president meant that in a sense Iraqi Jewry’s spiritual leadership was subordinate to the lay leadership, the more illustrious rabbis enjoyed a standing that allowed them to express their own independent views, even if these views clashed with those of the lay leadership. Following the establishment of the first public yeshiva in Baghdad in 1840, the spiritual leadership of Iraqi Jewry became more powerful and more independent, not only because of the increased respect for Torah learning and the rising influence of the rabbis, but also because the yeshiva succeeded in developing its own independent sources of financing and became less dependent on the president’s support. The spiritual leadership’s task was to supervise the traditional educational system and maintain the community’s religious rites. The rabbinical courts that sat in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra dealt with civil suits, personal status cases, and questions of ritual law.127 Ottoman Reforms and Community Leadership As part of reforms throughout the Ottoman Empire, the presidency in the Jewish communities of Iraq was abolished in 1849. Henceforth the heads of the communities were to be called hakham bashi (“chief rabbi”). This ostensibly points to a revolution in the leadership of the communities, where the lay leadership of the rich and influential Jews was driven aside by the ­spiritual 127  The administration of the Iraqi Jewish community has so far not been studied in depth. In addition to David S. Sassoon (ibid.) and Dr. Abraham Ben-Yaacob (Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel,) the topic was recently mentioned in Yaron Harel’s book (Harel, Between Intrigues and Revolution). In the survey below we shall attempt to present a broad outline of the leadership of Iraqi Jewry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries according to the sources quoted in the above-mentioned works and others.

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leadership of the rabbis, who held the position of authority. However, this change, which was imposed from the outside by the Ottoman authorities, could not alter socio-economic realities in the second half of the nineteenth century, where communities remained socially polarized, with no middle class and lacking the means to finance the community’s institutions or to pay the collective taxes demanded by the government. As a result, the wealthy still held the key to the proper functioning of the community framework. So although the Turkish authorities decided that rabbis would head the Jewish communities, in fact it was the wealthy upper class that continued to do so. The first hakham bashi to be appointed in Iraq was imposed on the community from the outside. He was Rabbi Raphael Kasin, a native of Aleppo, who arrived in Baghdad in 1848 with a royal appointment from Istanbul to the post of head of the Jewish community. The community’s elders, however, refused to recognize the government-appointed rabbi’s authority. Rabbi Kasin was forced to resign his position after a short time and left Baghdad. Subsequent attempts to choose a hakham bashi from among the rabbis of Baghdad only aroused conflicts within the community. In the absence of a consensus on who should be the leader, the wealthy continued to manage the community’s affairs without the authority and recognition that an official appointment would have given them.128 In 1865 the Ottoman Empire promulgated a Community Organization Law, known as nizam hakhamkhane,129 which the authorities in Istanbul tried to apply in Iraq, but with little success. The law was not fully enforced until the beginning of the twentieth century. The institutions which should have been established according to this law, namely a general commission, a spiritual council, and a lay council, were not appointed; instead, an occasional general meeting of all tax-paying members was held in order to elect a hakham bashi as head of the community and a commission consisting of twelve venerable members of the community, including rabbis.130 However, this leadership was incapable of managing the community’s affairs in the long run, because of the lack of cooperation between the lay leaders and the rabbis,131 who usually quarreled over the tax rate and the way the burden of the collective tax to be paid to the authorities should be divided. Taxation became 128  Harel, Between Intrigues and Revolution, 64–77. 129  Minna Rozen, The Last Ottoman Century and Beyond. The Jews of Turkey and the Balkans 1808–1945, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv 2005), 81–83. The Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic version of the law was printed in Baghdad in 1913 (Nizam al-Hakhamkhana, Baghdad 5673). 130   Perah, 2, no. 17, p. 78. 131  Ibid., 6, no. 28, pp. 165–66.

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heavier as the Ottoman Empire became involved in wars and lost its colonies. The community’s wealthy members, who paid most of the taxes demanded by the authorities, wanted to divide the burden among all the members, including the rabbis, the yeshiva students and other holders of sacerdotal positions, who were exempt from taxation according to a practice that originated in early times.132 Another source of contention was the requirement that the community’s income and its distribution were to be placed in the hands of its head, a rabbi. The wealthy wanted to decide how the money that they had given would be used. They opposed the very idea of appointing a hakham bashi, claiming that the community could not afford to pay his salary and expenses. It was only after the Young Turk Revolution (1908), when Iraqi Jewry’s economic position improved and a way was found for the lay and rabbinical leaders to cooperate, that the hakhamkhane law was gradually enforced. A hakham bashi was elected, as were two councils, lay and spiritual, to manage the community’s affairs. From this time on, the struggle over the community’s leadership and its policies took place in accordance with the rules set forth in the Ottoman Community Organization Law.133 The Failure to Reform the Baghdadi Community Following the British conquest and the end of Ottoman rule a new political order emerged in Iraq, with the establishment of an Arab state based on modern principles of government and administration. The Jews were the first to exploit the new opportunities and became active in the new state’s educational, administrative, and economic systems. This resulted in the creation of a Jewish middle class of clerks, teachers, and white-collar professionals who were not represented in the community’s organizational structure. In the large Jewish communities of Iraq this new class came to be headed by an intellectual elite whose influence in the community was derived from its senior position in the country’s administration and its close ties to the British mandatory authorities and to the Arab regime. The economic elite of powerful merchants that led the community during the Ottoman period lost its influence under the country’s new order. The rabbis, too, who had been an important element in the community’s leadership since the middle of the nineteenth century, lost much of their power as a culture of enlightenment and modern ideas of nationalism and Zionism spread among the Jewish youth. In the 1920s, Iraq’s larger Jewish communities (Baghdad, Basra, and Hilla) made public demands 132  Ibid., 6, no. 34, p. 203. See also ‘Abdallah Abraham Somekh, Zibhe Sedeq, 2 vols. (Baghdad 1904), Part 2, 115. 133  Twena, “Jewish Autonomy,” 18–22.

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for changing the community’s organization so that all members, and not just a small class of wealthy taxpayers, would have the right to elect and be elected to its institutions. The hakhamkhane law, which in Iraq took some fifty years before it was fully implemented, was perceived as outdated by the young intelligentsia, who demanded that it be adapted to the community’s new needs in education, culture, welfare, and health. These young educated people also believed that in order to make the community’s organization keep pace with the rapid social and economic changes, the traditional leadership had to be replaced by one that was well-educated, young and dynamic, and capable of carrying through the reforms required to meet the needs of the new times. In order to carry out these reforms the young Jewish intelligentsia tried to take control of the community through the elections to the general commission and lay council according to the hakhamkhane law, which remained in effect even after the British conquest and the establishment of an Arab government in Iraq. The struggle for the organizational reform of the Baghdad Jewish community began in October 1920, when young Jews burst into a meeting of the lay council and criticized its work.134 However, the recurring attempts by the Jewish intelligentsia in Baghdad to take control of the lay council and to reform the community’s organization and institutions failed until 1926, when they were able to win with the help of the local Zionist organization. Thanks to their control of the lay council they were able to introduce a series of reforms in the community’s administration and its school and health systems. They focused their efforts mainly on breaking the power of those who had formerly held it. Hakham Bashi Rabbi Ezra Dangoor did not agree with the actions of the new lay council and was forced to resign. He was replaced as community leader by the young and well-educated rabbi Sasson Khedhouri.135 However, the Baghdadi Jewish intelligentsia’s success in taking control of the community and leading it in the spirit of the new age did not last long. Struggles over personal prestige among the leaders of the intelligentsia led to a split in the camp, which became divided into two rival factions, reformists and Zionists on the one hand, and opponents of reform and of Zionism on the other. The rivalry between the two groups over control of the community came to a head during the elections that took place in 1928. The reformists and their Zionist allies lost and their victorious opponents reinstated the old order. However, the reformists’ struggle for control of the Baghdadi Jewish 134  Ibid., 24. 135  Ibid., 27–29.

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community did not cease. They exploited a controversy between the rabbis and the head of the community to regain their leadership over the community. The controversy in question began with criticism by Baghdad’s rabbis over the way in which Rabbi Khedhouri administered the community’s affairs and his refusal to resign from his post. The reformists and Zionists who had had him appointed in the first place now joined his rivals the rabbis, and the community once again became divided into two rival camps: anti-reformist and antiZionist intelligentsia, together with the old leadership, who were in favor of retaining Rabbi Khedhouri as community leader; and reformists, Zionists and the rabbis who opposed the leader and demanded his immediate resignation.136 The split in the Baghdad Jewish community was not based on class differences or ideological disputes. Rather, it was born of a struggle for prestige between a group of rabbis and the head of the community on one side, and two of the leaders of the intelligentsia who instigated the first split, on the other. The rival camps attached great importance to Jewish public opinion both within Iraq and abroad. They used the Jewish and non-Jewish press in Arabic published in Baghdad, Beirut, and Cairo, disseminated pamphlets in Arabic, and founded organizations that competed with the community’s institutions.137 At the height of the conflict the influential leader of the community head’s supporters, Attorney Naim Zilkha, chairman of the lay council, member of the Baghdad district court and member of the Iraqi Parliament, passed away. Rabbi Khedhouri’s party was weakened and his opponents gained growing influence over Jewish public opinion. The leader of the community came under increasing pressure to resign and when he refused to do so, a meeting of twenty-five rabbis, headed by the members of the community’s spiritual council, convened and took a step that was unprecedented in the community’s history: they placed a ban on Rabbi Khedhouri and revoked his rabbinical ordination.138 But even this unheard-of act did not end the conflict in the community. To the contrary, the dispute only worsened. It became clear that due to the political changes in Iraq, and the growing numbers of Jews with a modern 136  Ibid., 29–31. 137  See, for example, articles in the newspaper Israel (Cairo), in Arabic, on 28 Dec. 1928 and 1 Feb. 1929. Articles on this topic were also published at the time in the Baghdadi newspapers Al-Misbah and Al-Iraq. 138  Twena, “Jewish Autonomy,” 32–34; Israel (Cairo), 10 May 1929; Sha’ul Hakham Sassoon, A Leader and his Community [in Arabic], 43–113; Musa Bin-Nusair, Shuthuth wa-Ma’asi fi al-Taifa al-Israiliyya (Abnormalities and tragedies in the Israelite community) (Baghdad 1933).

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education, religion no longer had the same hold as in the past, and the authority of the rabbis had weakened. Rabbi Khedhouri, who also had the support of the authorities, refused to give in to the ban, and published a rebuttal in Arabic in which he accused the rabbis of a miscarriage of justice; he rejected the ban and the arguments used to justify it.139 The publications of both the rabbis and Rabbi Khedouri, together with the mutual attacks which the rival parties carried out on the pages of the Arabic press, further exacerbated the conflict. The Jewish community experienced a profound crisis. Employees of the community went on strike and violent protests took place. Those injured in the demonstrations complained to the police and the Arab courts, which intervened, arrested Jews, and sentenced them to fines and imprisonment. In the wake of this development the Iraqi authorities decided to intervene. They summoned the rival parties, dismissed Rabbi Khedouri, and announced that a new community organization law would be prepared. The law was formulated by Jewish legal experts. With the removal of Rabbi Khedhouri from office, the way opened for the return of the reformists and the Zionists to the community’s leadership. In the elections to the general commission held in April 1930 the reformists and Zionists were victorious. They regained control of the lay council and reinstated the reforms in the schools, the health system and the community’s administration that they had begun to implement in 1926. The reforms hurt many of the community’s employees, who fought against the new leadership, shut down the community’s institutions and succeeded in gaining the sympathy of the Jewish public. As a result many members of the general commission and the lay council resigned and the community’s affairs came to be managed by a small number of inexperienced people. The reforms were opposed by many members of the community, especially the more well-to-do. The community’s income dropped, its fiscal deficit grew and its institutions faced a financial crisis. The Jewish schools, which the great majority of the community’s children attended, were closed because the lay council was unable to pay teachers and other workers. The reformers failed and it became clear that the community needed an experienced and authoritative leadership that would bring unity and renew the operation of its institutions.140 In December 1931, the new Jewish community organization law, the “Law of the Israelite Congregation” was published. The community councils 139  Rabbi Sasson Khedhouri’s response to the ban and the rabbis’ arguments for the ban can be found in Sassoon, A Leader and his Community, 53–101. 140  Twena, “Jewish Autonomy,” 33–38; Sassoon, A Leader and his Community, 53–101; BinNusair, Shuthuth.

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throughout the country were disbanded and elections were announced in accordance with the new law, which adopted the provisions of the old hakhamkhane law to the new realities by reducing the number of rabbis in the general commission and enabling a non-rabbi to be elected to the position of head of the community, which weakened rabbinical influence on Jewish communal organization.141 In the elections held in Baghdad following the enactment of the new law, the reformists and Zionists were defeated. The lay council came under the control of the community’s economic and intellectual elite. Shortly afterwards, the rabbis of Baghdad and Rabbi Khedhouri made peace with each other, the ban was lifted, and Rabbi Khedhouri once again became the head of the community. The struggle over the leadership of the Baghdadi Jewish community was over. The leadership that emerged after the promulgation of the “Law of the Israelite Congregation” continued to manage the community’s affairs until just before the mass exodus of Iraqi Jews. At the end of 1949, because of the difficult political situation and the threat to the existence of the “He-Halus Underground Movement” following the arrest of many of its members by the authorities, the Jews of Baghdad demonstrated and demanded that the head of the community resign as a mark of protest against the persecutions. Rabbi Khedhouri resigned immediately, and was replaced by Hesqel Shemtob, one of the community’s wealthiest and most respected members, who had close ties to senior members of the Iraqi regime. This took place without any disputes or conflicts within the community.142 After the mass exodus of Iraqi Jews, Rabbi Sasson Khedhouri was appointed to lead the Baghdadi Jewish community in 1953, and remained in office until his death in 1971.143 From then until his departure for London in 1974, the writer, poet and economist Meer Basri was elected as the head of Baghdadi Jewish Community.144 The struggle over the leadership of the community that began in the 1920s exposed the cracks which the coming of the enlightenment had created within Jewish society. The old tools that enabled the community to survive as a cohesive unit lost their effectiveness and the community lost its unity. The situation worsened when local conflicts in the community were transferred to the 141   Majmu’a: Qanun al-Taifa al-Israiliyya Raqam 77 li-Sanat 1931, wa-Nizam al-Taifa al-Israiliya Raqam 36 li-Sanat 1931 (Collection: The Israeli community law no. 77 of 1931, and the regulations of Israeli community no. 36 of 1931) (Baghdad 1932). 142  Twena, “Jewish Autonomy,” 38–42, 60-61; Sassoon, A Leader and his Community, 268–75; Moshe Gat, A Jewish Community in Crisis [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem 1989), 48–56. 143  Sassoon, A Leader and his Community, 18; Kazzaz, End of a Diaspora, 38–41. 144  Kazzaz, End of a Diaspora, 37–41.

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regional and national level through the intervention of the authorities. The use of Standard Arabic in the Jewish and general press in Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt also posed a threat to the continued existence of Iraqi Jewry as an autonomous Jewish community. The Baghdadi Jewish community experienced this internal disintegration at a time when the Jews began to suffer from attacks by the authorities and by Muslims, and as a result, the Jews once again rallied around their community. Educated Jewish youth in Baghdad no longer thought about gaining control of the community and reforming its institutions, but began to struggle for the very existence of their community in the hostile and unaccepting Arab Muslim society in Iraq.145

Map 2.5

The Jewish community’s institutions in the Jewish Quarter in Baghdad’s Old City (1949).145

145  Yehuda, Jewish Schools in Baghdad; idem, “Synagogues in Baghdad”; Twena, “Jewish Autonomy,” 75–87; Meir, Socio-Cultural Development, 23–138.

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Because of the regime’s persecution of the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s the Baghdad Jewish community was forced to expand its existing institutions and open new ones in order to meet the rising demand for services in education, health, religion, and welfare. It was a time of rapid development and government schools were no longer open to Jews. The expansion of the community’s institutions created a need to mobilize large sums of money from internal and external sources, since the Iraqi authorities gave very little support to the Jewish community’s institutions, even those that also served non-Jewish citizens. At the end of the 1940s, the community was thus in possession of more than sixty educational, religious, and health institutions (see Map 2.5), which it financed by a tax on kosher meat (gabela), fees for prenuptial agreements (ketuba) and mortgages, and for the services of the rabbinical court, rent on its own real estate and endowments, contributions, synagogue income, and tuition fees. The community also received aid from the AIU, the Anglo-Jewish Association and Jewish philanthropists in Iraq and abroad.146 The Struggle for Reform in Basra and Hilla In Basra the struggle of the intelligentsia to reform the community began in 1927. In the elections of April 1929 they won, took control of the lay council and led the community. But when the leading Jewish reformists in Basra joined the theosophical movement, it angered the well-to-do members of the community and its rabbi. They banned the intelligentsia and expelled them from the community’s social and religious institutions. However, the few members of the intelligentsia who joined the theosophical movement did not want to leave Judaism or to introduce religious reform; they merely wanted to reform the community’s administration in the spirit of the modern age. The ban split the community. The intelligentsia withdrew from the community’s governing body and established a separate congregation, with its own synagogue, cemetery, ritual slaughter, marriage, and circumcision, but made no changes in their customs and traditions. The rival parties went so far as to ask the regime’s courts to intervene. Rabbis and Jewish leaders outside Iraq were also asked to help settle the dispute. In the midst of the conflict it became clear to those who had joined the theosophical movement without knowing much about it that it was not consistent with Jewish observances. They left the movement and established a group they called “Loyal Judaism” (yahadut ne’emana), in order to stress their adherence to the faith. But the dispute did not end, and the ban 146   Mizaniyat al-Majlis al-Jismani lil-Taifa al-Israiliyya fi Baghdad li-Sanat 1938–1939 (Balance Sheet of the Israelite Baghdadi Community’s Lay Council for the year 1938/1939); IJA, nos. 2647, 3101.

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was not lifted. Only in 1934 was an agreement reached with the help of rabbis and other leaders from Baghdad. The ban ended and the Basra community was united once more.147 In Hilla, too, attempts by the young intelligentsia to take control of the community and introduce reforms in the years 1925–1930 failed; the community leadership remained in the hands of wealthy Jews with close connections to the authorities.148 Conclusions The preceding survey of the history of Jewish community organization in Iraq after the British conquest demonstrates that the attempts of the Jewish intelligentsia to introduce far-reaching reforms in the community’s administration and its institutions failed, even when the old leadership was removed and the intelligentsia was put in control, because the Jewish reformists were incapable of finding the money needed for their reforms without the cooperation of the community’s wealthy members and without the support of the Iraqi authorities. For this reason the Jewish reformists ceased their struggles within the communities. They no longer considered it vital to bring change to the communities themselves, instead they adopted more radical and comprehensive solutions. They joined the Iraqi Communist Party, which operated clandestinely, and the equally clandestine Zionist Movement. The community continued as before to be led by its economic elite, together with members of the intellectual elite that had close connections to the authorities. The organization of Iraq’s Jewish community in the twentieth century continued, despite the struggle for reform, to be based on patterns that had evolved in previous centuries, although the community’s organization was weakened by intervention from Iraqi authorities, and young Jews preferred to act within the framework of clandestine movements outside the community. The Iraqi state remained opposed to social reform within the Jewish community, mainly out of fear these reforms would generate unrest in Muslim society. For this reason the authorities blocked the centrifugal forces at work in the community, prevented its disintegration and made it possible for it to continue to exist as an autonomous unit within the modern state. This prevented a process of assimilation and helped maintain the community’s unity, even at a time when young educated Jews were no longer as religiously observant as 147  Hayyim J. Cohen. “Jewish Theosophists in Basra.” In Hebrew. Ha-Mizrah he-Hadash 15, no. 4 (60) (Jerusalem 1965): 401–7. 148  Interview with the late David Muallim, 19–20 Apr. 1965; Al-Misbah, 22 Oct. 1925 and 19 Nov. 1925.

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their forefathers. In this the Iraqi Jewish community, like its sister communities in the other independent Arab states of the mid-twentieth century, differed from the Jewish communities in the Christian West during the Jewish Enlightenment period.

A Dream Which Was Not to Be

The demographic, economic and political changes in Iraq that Jews experienced at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century gave rise to intellectual ferment, as they confronted the issue of Jewish existence while having to vie with the Muslim majority over positions of influence in the new state’s economy and society. During the first period of the new order in Iraq, that is, the reign of King Faisal I, the Jews were at an advantage in the competition over senior positions in the new Iraqi state’s administration, since they had preceded the Muslims in the acquisition of a modern education and in adapting themselves to the modern era. But from the 1930s the class of educated Muslims in Iraq grew and the Jews began to be driven out of their positions in the state’s economy and society. However, unlike the situation in the Christian West, where the authorities encouraged the Jews to become absorbed into the majority society by making naturalization contingent on disbanding communal frameworks, in Iraq the authorities wanted to preserve Jewish society’s traditional frameworks and allowed the continued existence of the Jewish community as a religion-based organization, even though the Jews were recognized as citizens with equal rights under the new state’s constitution. Ethnically neutral social frameworks in which Jews, Muslims, and Christians could participate equally, could only exist clandestinely. Against this background we shall now examine the tendency of Iraq’s Jews to become integrated into the society around them and the ideological and social currents that arose within Jewish society in response to the failure of integration. We discern two periods in the process of Iraqi Jews’ integration into society at large: during the period of European influence, and during the period of Arab rule. Integration into European Culture At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, Iraqi Jews were influenced by French culture, with which they became familiar through the modern community schools run by the AIU, the first of which opened in Baghdad in 1864.

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After the British conquest of Iraq, English culture came to the fore. The Jews were the first to accept this change. The well-educated and well-to-do among the Jews adopted the values of Christian European culture in its French or English versions and strove to maintain a Western lifestyle, which also meant an improvement in their standard of living. Until World War I their role models were the teachers at the AIU administrated schools and the members of the small European colony in Baghdad. Following the British conquest, the British soldiers and administrators who were stationed in Iraq, and who sometimes brought their families with them, became objects of emulation. Newspapers and books in French and English from Europe, as well as films and other media, began to spread throughout the country and contributed to the trend. Iraqi Jews studied one or more European languages, usually either French or English or both. The new language, which was not their mother tongue, opened the way to an acquaintance with European culture, which was foreign to their own culture and traditions. Contact with Europeans taught Jews the life-style of the Christian West with its conveniences and material well-being. In order to become more like Europeans, Iraqi Jews changed their first names to a European version (for example, Haron was replaced by Aaron, Ishaq by Isaac, Yosef by Joseph, etc.), spoke like Europeans, dressed in accordance with French or English fashion, lived in houses constructed in the European style, and acquired European furniture and household articles. Iraqi Jews began to admire French and English culture and as time went by, writers and researchers came to write their works in English or French. Young educated Jews from wealthy families began to listen and to play classical music. The process of adopting the European culture and lifestyle created a gap between “progressive” Jews and other Jews and Muslim society. However, Iraqi Jews did not experience the kind of rejection by Europeans experienced by Jews in Muslim lands that had been colonized, because there was no European colonization of Iraq. Still, conservative circles in the Jewish community viciously attacked the “insubordinate” Jews who adopted the culture of the Christian West and abandoned the ancient and glorious traditions of Babylonian Jewry. Some rabbis went to extremes in their opposition to European culture and customs because they believed that the latter would suppress Iraqi Jewry’s own culture and traditions.149

149  Yehuda, “Iraqi Jewry and Cultural Change”; Yosef Meir, Mishnato ha-Hivratit-Musarit shel ha-Hakham Shim’on Agasi (Social and moral doctrine of Hakham Shimon Agasi) (Or Yehuda 2009), 70–79; Bin-Nusair, Shuthuth, 241–45.

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After an Arab regime was established in Iraq, following a short period of British occupation, the Jews changed direction; now their efforts focused on integration into the Arab majority. Integration into Arab Society Out of a desire to become absorbed into Arab society, Iraqi Jews adopted Arab culture. They learned Standard Arabic and wrote works of prose and poetry in that language. They also published newspapers, produced theater plays, wrote music and sang in Arabic. Involvement in Arabic cultural activity was so rapid that Jews became pioneers of Arabic music and literature. In order to come closer to the Muslim populace Jews adopted Arab names and Arab national dress, lived in Muslim neighborhoods, worked and studied on Saturdays in public institutions, and rested on Fridays. The communities of Iraqi Jewry opened their schools to Muslim and Christian students, while Jewish children went to study in Muslim public schools. As a result Jews in Iraq began to abandon their own culture in favor of Arab culture. From the 1930s more and more Jewish students did not get a Hebrew education and read the prayers using Arabic letters. The Jews’ attempts to become absorbed into Arab society intensified with the penetration of Nazi propaganda into Iraq and the rise of Arab nationalism there. In articles and essays which Iraqi Jews published in the Arab press in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt they called on Jews to learn Arabic and to adopt Arab culture, stressing the two nations’ common origin and close cultural ties.150 During the 1930s, Arab society in Iraq was influenced by Nazi propaganda and by the anti-Jewish incitement of the Arabs of Palestine, and ignored the writings of Jews who called for absorption. Arab public opinion and the Arab intelligentsia perceived the Jews as a national minority that was in a state of conflict with Arab nationalism. Consequently, the Jewish attempts at integration into Arab society were rejected. They were ousted from their influential positions in government and the economy, and obstacles were placed before Jews who wished to be accepted to government institutions of learning.151 These developments cast doubt on the continued existence of Iraqi Jewry and 150  Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 54–118; Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 122; Shmuel Moreh and Lev Hakak, “Contemporary Literary and Scientific Activities by Jewish Writers from Iraq in Iraq and Israel” [in Hebrew], Studies on the History of Iraqi Jewry and Their Culture, ed. S. Moreh, 1 (Tel Aviv 1981): 83–132; Reuven Snir, Arabness, Jewishness, Zionism [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem 2005). Kazzaz uses the term “Iraqi orientation” to refer to the idea that Iraqi Jewry should integrated into Arab Iraqi society. 151  Kazzaz, Jews in Iraq, 72–73, 84–86, 106–7, 110–18, 164–222, 259–86; Cohen, Jews in the Middle East Countries, 36–41, 44, 46–47.

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gave rise to conflicting views within the community, as happened in other Jewish communities in modern times. Their search for a solution led the Jews of Iraq to adopt two different approaches. One view was that Jews should strive to continue living in Iraq and so should find ways for Jews to be accepted into Arab society. Not everyone who held this position agreed on what should be done. Some thought that the Jewish problem in Iraq could only be resolved through conversion and assimilation into Arab Muslim society, while others believed that Jewish existence would only be guaranteed with a new social order and a new political regime, based not on religious separatism but on full civil equality and social justice. The other approach maintained that Jews could no longer survive in an Arab-Muslim society that rejected them due to nationalist antagonism. According to this view, the Jews should leave Iraq and settle in countries where they were more welcome, or emigrate to Palestine. The views of both of these camps became ever more sharply defined as attacks on Jews increased and their economic situation worsened in the course of the 1930s. In the 1940s, the positions held by Iraqi Jewry became clear, as did the results of the social processes which the communities experienced as a result of modernization. We shall now examine the background of these positions and whether and to what extent they were accepted by the Jews of Iraq. Conversion and Assimilation Those who were in favor of conversion and assimilation into Arab Muslim society as a solution to the Jewish problem believed that the Jewish religion and the Jewish identity were the reason for the Jews’ rejection and blamed Judaism for what they perceived as negative traits to be found among Iraqi Jews and for their supposed tendency towards self-imposed seclusion. They thus came to the conclusion that only by converting to Islam would Jews rid themselves of their immoral traits and their nationalism and be transformed into loyal citizens who would be welcomed by the Iraqi state and Iraqi society. This view was expressed in the Arabic writings of Moshe Ben Moshe (Musa Bin Nusair) and Nissim Susa (Ahmad Susa) after their conversion to Islam in the 1930s. These are the only compositions known to us that were written by Jewish converts to Islam in the Arab world in the twentieth century. Chronologically, the first of these two compositions was Abnormalities and Tragedies in the Israelite Community (Baghdad, 1933), written by Musa Bin Nusair,152 whose Jewish name was Moshe Ben Moshe Hakham Moshe. He was 152  Bin-Nusair, Shuthuth.

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born into an observant Jewish family. His grandfather was a shohet (kosher butcher) and his father ensured that he would attend the synagogue regularly and observe the Jewish ritual laws. He gave two reasons for his decision to convert to Islam: his desire to become part of Iraqi Arab Muslim society and so ensure his social advancement and economic future; and his anger at the rabbis of Baghdad who, so he claimed, acted unjustly in a dispute between his sister and her husband. Bin Nusair did not ascribe the rejection of Iraqi Jewry by Arab Muslim society to factors associated with the surrounding society, but rather to faults that he found in the Jews themselves, their religion, their communal organization, and their way of life. He claimed that Judaism encourages its adherents to cheat and to break solemn promises, by enabling Jews to atone for their sins through prayer on the Day of Atonement. The rabbinical establishment in Iraq in his view was also partly responsible for the Jews’ evil deeds and the rabbinical courts ruled contrary to the law, convicting the innocent and letting the guilty go free, because they were under the influence of the community’s wealthy members. Jewish society was also to blame for the rejection, according to Bin Nusair, because, so he claimed, its structure was such that it made it impossible for Jews to be loyal citizens of the state. Iraqi Jews viewed themselves as strangers in their own land, as temporary guests, and focused all their desires and aspirations to another land, the Holy Land, which they consider their true homeland. It is to that land that they send contributions, where they buy real estate, and to which they pray “Next year in Jerusalem.” Bin Nusair adds that in their way of life Iraqi Jews also take care to preserve their independent national identity. They maintain separate schools and do not mingle socially with Muslims. They teach their children to stay away from Muslims, speak in a special Arabic dialect of their own, and also possess a national language, Hebrew. The Jews of Iraq are strangers in their own land also because they wear European clothes and prefer Western culture. They support the Zionist idea, do not take part in the nation’s political activity and show no interest in the country’s problems. Bin Nusair concludes that the Jews of Iraq are traitors, a claim which he supports with the slanderous statement that Jews are taught from childhood to hate Muslim Arabs and that they prefer to speak to foreigners, the French or the English, or other Jews, rather than Muslims, thus attacking “the heart of the Arab nation.” As a consequence of this state of affairs, Bin Nusair calls on the Jews of Iraq to abandon their faith and their cultural heritage and to convert to Islam. In his opinion, only in this way can Jews become loyal to their homeland and become assimilated into Iraqi Arab Muslim society. A few years after Musa Bin Nusair published his book, another Jew, Nissim Susa, converted to Islam. Susa was born into an enlightened family in the

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district town of Hilla, located on the middle part of the Euphrates and surrounded by a rural Muslim populace. He was educated by his father and at the modern Jewish school that opened in the city in 1907 under the management of the AIU. Susa later wrote that it was in this school that he met Jewish children for the first time but did not feel drawn to them, preferring to befriend and play with Muslim children who learned in this Jewish school. The Jewish children from Hilla disgusted Susa, who claimed, similarly to Bin Nusair, that they refused to befriend Muslims and possessed other negative traits as well. Susa also testifies that from an early age he did not adhere to the Jewish religious observances, did not keep the Sabbath, and ate non-kosher food, although his family observed the ritual law strictly. After he finished school in Hilla, Susa went on to study irrigation engineering and theology in universities in Lebanon and the United States, where he finished his Ph.D. Upon his return to Iraq in 1930 he was hired by the government as an irrigation engineer; in this position he viewed himself as an Iraqi patriot serving his country. In 1936 he went to Cairo, converted to Islam, changed his name to Ahmad and wrote a two-part apologetic theological work in Arabic entitled My Road to Islam (Cairo 1936, Al-Najaf 1938).153 In this book Susa enumerates the reasons which, so he claimed, prevent Jews from assimilating into Arab Muslim society. He used theological tools to support his claims about Islam’s superiority over the other monotheistic faiths. For Susa, Judaism contained immoral elements while Islam was perfect. He analyzed his own Jewish background and his biography, concluding that he was different from other Jews, that from a young age he did not feel that he belonged in Jewish society. Susa also refused to observe the ritual laws of Judaism because, so he said, the Jews were hostile to Muslim Iraqi society. A large part of his book was devoted to the problem of the encounter between Islam and Western modernization. Susa criticized the materialism that spread throughout Muslim society, which he considered a great danger. Modernization and materialism, so he argued, cause moral decay among Iraq’s people and lead the country into a trap which the West has laid. Susa’s criticism in this respect is similar to the criticism which rabbis leveled at Jewish Iraqi society after the penetration of modern education. After his conversion, Susa became a fanatic Muslim and considered himself to be a guardian of Muslim values and a promoter of the dissemination of Islam in the world. Both of these Jewish converts were received well by Muslim society and enjoyed social and economic success in the wake of their conversion. However, 153  Ahmed Nissim Sousa, Fi Tariqi ila l-Islam (On my way to Islam), 2 vols. (Cairo 1936; Najaf 1938).

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their efforts to convince many Jewish young people to follow in their footsteps did not succeed. Jewish society in Iraq rejected them and refused to have any contact with them. The issue of conversion was much debated in Jewish society, with the conclusion that conversion to Islam would not solve their problems; indeed, mass conversion of Jews would merely bring about a new distinction and new discrimination and hostility on the part of Muslim society towards the “new Muslims,” as had happened to the Jews who had been forcibly converted in Mashhad, Persia.154 Changing the Social Order Among Jews who believed that Jews could continue to exist in Iraq despite their rejection by the Muslim majority, the dominant current that emerged in the 1940s adopted the view that a social revolution would bring about the full absorption of the Jews of Iraq into the society in the midst of which they lived. This approach was influenced by the spirit of the political developments in Iraq in the 1940s, when it became necessary to address the idea of Zionism and emigration to Palestine as a new solution to the problem of Jewish existence. Consequently, in 1946 a group of young Jews from Baghdad, members of the underground Communist Party, created the League for Fighting Zionism, in order to “protect” Iraq’s Jews from Zionists, whose idea of emigration to Palestine, so they believed, prevented a proper solution of the Jewish problem.155 In a manifesto and placards which the League published in Baghdad, it provided a comprehensive explanation of the problem of Jewish existence in Iraq. According to the League’s members, the hatred and rejection experienced by the Jews were not due to any special traits which they possessed, as argued by converts and anti-Semites, nor to special traits possessed by non-Jews, as the Zionists claimed, but to the general social order in Iraq, which was based on social injustice, exploitation, and oppression. They claimed that Jew-hatred was exploited by “the forces of reaction” against all parts of the people regardless of religion, and that the entire Iraqi nation had to fight these forces. Following the victory in this war and the establishment of the new order, the Jewish problem would also be solved. According to this approach, antiSemitism was not something eternal or inevitable, but could be defeated and a new society built, based on equality and welfare for every citizen of the state. Based on this analysis, the League’s view of the roots of the Jewish problem in their days included the following three factors: 154  Zvi Yehuda, From Babylon to Jerusalem [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv 1980), 84. 155  Yosef Meir, Jews and Policy in Iraq [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv 1993), 107–26, 133–36.

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(1) The problem of the Jews as a minority would be solved, according to the League, not by assimilation into the nations within which the Jews resided, but through the establishment of a progressive democratic regime. Zionism does not provide a solution to the problem of the Jewish minority because it would be impossible to bring all the world’s Jews to Palestine. (2) The problem in Palestine would be resolved through reconciliation with the local Arabs, expulsion of the British, and establishment of a democratic state. (3) The problem of the Jewish refugees in Europe would also be solved not by emigration to Palestine, where the immigrants would be exploited as colonists, but by settling them in their own countries or wherever they wished. The Jewish Communists rejected the Zionist propaganda out of hand. They accused the Zionists of introducing a chauvinistic and racist ideology which provided an “illusionary solution” to the Jewish community in Iraq for the purpose of using it in its struggle for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. They argued that Zionist propaganda was aimed at isolating the Jewish community from the general population in Iraq, thus putting the Jews in danger. For this reason, the Iraqi Jewish community had to fight Zionist propaganda. The Jewish Communists were thus led to the conclusion that the only way in which the Jewish community could solve its problem was by joining and supporting the Iraqi national movement. The Iraqi nation and its Jews had a common cause, namely to bring about a radical change in the regime and in the structure of society. Once Iraq received complete independence and a democratic regime was established, the Jews would be ensured true equality and all parts of the Iraqi nation would live in harmony. The struggle against Zionism thus served the interests of both Jews and non-Jews in Iraq, according to this approach.156 This conception of the Communist Jews in Iraq, replete with the same universal humanistic and socialist ideas that were common among European socialists at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, was not unique to Iraqi Jews but could be discerned among Jewish Communists in other Arab countries, such as Egypt and Morocco.157 However, Iraqi Jews’ political and socio-economic distress at the end of the 1940s was a stronger factor than these ideas. The Jews, both those who were in favor of 156  Request to found the League for Fighting Zionism and its program, 12 Sept. 1945. 157   Manifeste de la Ligue Juive Contre le Sionisme (Le Caire 1947).

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Jewish existence in Iraq and those who rejected it, preferred to leave the homeland in which they considered themselves to be the descendants of the original Babylonian exiles, and to emigrate to other lands, as the debate on the question of the continuation of Jewish existence in the Iraqi diaspora continued.

Return to Zion

From the time of the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century BCE, the Babylonian Jews never lost their connection to the Holy Land. Even during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they continued to preserve their ties to Zion and to wait impatiently for redemption. Rabbinical emissaries (shadarim) from the Holy Land visited Iraq frequently and raised funds for religious institutions in the four holy cities (Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias). Jews from Babylonia bequeathed their fortunes to Jewish settlement in the Holy Land. Immigration from Iraq to the Holy Land never ceased; individuals and groups continued to make aliya to the Holy Land in order to visit the holy sites, prostrate themselves at the graves of the righteous, and settle there. Modern Zionist Activity158 During the second half of the nineteenth century, thanks to newspapers and periodicals published by the Hebrew press in Europe and Palestine, Iraqi Jews began learn about events elsewhere in the Jewish world, and especially about the Zionist movement and the establishment of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). Modern Zionist activities in Iraq began in Baghdad around 1898 under the direction of Aharon Sasson ibn Eliyahu Naḥum (1872–1962), known as hamoré (the teacher). However, it was not until early in 1913 that Iraqi Jews began to make contact with the WZO. At that time, Jews in Basra and Baghdad requested information from the Zionist movement and began sending donations to the national funds. The Basra Zionists opened a modern Hebrew-language school at the end of 1913. The school was immediately successful and had nearly two hundred pupils registered. These ties ceased when the Ottoman authorities prohibited Zionist activities at the outset of World War I. 158  This survey based on the following: Cohen, Ha-Pe’ilut ha-Sionit; Yosef Meir, Beyond the Desert. Underground Activities in Iraq 1941–1951 [in Hebrew] ([Tel Aviv] 1973); Yehuda, From Babylon to Jerusalem; Shlomo Hillel, Operation Babylon (New York 1987); Gat, Jewish Community in Crisis; Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country: Jews in Iraq in the 1940s (London 2004); Mordechai Ben-Porat, To Baghdad and Back (Jerusalem 1998). This is an edited and updated entry of Zvi Yehuda, “Zionism in Iraq”, published in Brill’s EJIW, 219–222.

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Zionist activities in Iraq resumed after the war and the British occupation. Iraqi Zionists established associations, disseminated knowledge of the Hebrew language, ran camps that trained people for a life of productive labor, encouraged aliya, collected contributions for the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and Keren Hayesod, sold the shekel that represented membership dues in the Zionist Organization, distributed Ha-’Olam (The World), the official organ of the WZO, and bought land in Palestine. All of this ceased in 1935 when the Iraqi authorities, like its Ottoman predecessor, prohibited Zionist activity. The first announcement of intent to establish a Zionist organization in Iraq was made by Aharon Sasson in a letter he sent from Baghdad in April 1919 to the Council of Delegates (Va’ad ha-Ṣirim) in Jaffa. The aim of the proposed association was to encourage study of Hebrew and emigration to Palestine. Two years later, in 1921, Sasson founded the Mesopotamian Zionist Committee (Ha-Aguda Ha-Siyyonit le-Aram Naharayim) with the permission of the British authorities. Under the July 1922 Law of Organizations, the Iraqi authorities refused to renew the society’s permit, but it continued to operate without official sanction until January 1935, when Sasson was forced to leave Iraq. He went to Palestine and settled in Jerusalem. Other Zionist organizations in Iraq during this period were also unable to function openly and ceased operations after a short while. Despite this setback, the Zionist youth organizations that came into being in Baghdad during the 1930s thrived with the assistance of Jewish teachers from mandatory Palestine in the country’s Jewish schools. Abraham Rozen, who taught in the Shammash High School for Boys in Baghdad, particularly stands out. In 1929, he organized the Aḥi’ever Association, which promoted the Hebrew language, maintained a Hebrew library, and published a newsletter in Hebrew. It also raised money for the Jewish National Fund and prepared young people for a life of productive work in Palestine. Members of Aḥi’ever who emigrated to Palestine established labor groups in Reḥovot (1933) and Ra’anana (1934) in order to fulfill the pioneering ideals of manual labor. In addition to Baghdad, there were Zionist groups and activities in Basra, Amara, Hilla, Khanaqin, Kirkuk, and Irbil. These, too, focused on the Hebrew language and on fund-raising. The development of Zionist organizations in Iraq from 1919 to 1935 was dependent not only upon the political situation, but also on the ability of the organizations to meet the challenge of enabling the Jews of Iraq to realize their desire to settle in Palestine. Early in the 1920s, Iraqi Zionists formulated an ideological position that was influenced both by developments in European Jewish national thinking and by the traditional heritage that continued to guide the Iraqi Jewish community even after economic and cultural changes at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twentieth. According

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to this conception, Iraqi Zionists saw Zionism first and foremost as a return to Zion, the historic homeland of the Jewish people, in order to rebuild its ruins and establish a Jewish national political entity. They believed that in this movement there was no room for ideological disputes about the nature of its objectives and that all must unite and refrain from organizational and ideological schisms until the main goal was achieved. Until then, it was essential to give full and unrestrained fidelity to the leaders of the Zionist movement. From the instructions the Iraqi Zionists sent their representative at the Twelfth Zionist Congress (1921), it seems reasonable to infer that emigration to Palestine was, for them, a near reality. They called upon the WZO to facilitate this goal by creating suitable conditions for absorbing immigrants and by providing for the security of the Jewish settlement in Palestine, the Yishuv, by creating a defense organization. They further called upon the movement to claim the entire Holy Land on the strength of the historic rights of the Jewish people, and to demand that the British take forceful action to convince the Palestinian Arabs that they would never obtain any part of the Holy Land by means of armed struggle. Following this line of thinking, Iraqi Zionists took steps to increase immigration and to purchase land in Palestine even without official assistance from the Zionist movement. The idea of Iraqi Jews joining the WZO and supporting the national funds was strongly influenced by the movement’s responses to these demands. In the 1920s, with the rise in immigration and in land purchases, Iraqi Jews contributed a high percentage to the national funds in proportion to the size of the community. For example, for Keren Hayesod and the JNF alone, Iraqi Jews contributed the substantial sum of £ 52,220 sterling. (The lion’s share of this was donated by one single individual, Ezra Sasson Sehaiq). Some of this money went into the founding of the town of Kfar Yeḥezkel and the Kadoorie Agricultural High School, both in northern Palestine. However, with the crisis of immigration and absorption during the mid-1920s, the Jews of Iraq reduced their support for the WZO and instead concentrated on independent aliya activity, land purchases, and settling in Palestine. Underground Zionist Activity After an interval of seven years from 1935 to 1942, Zionist activity in Iraq resumed—but this time as an underground movement. The riots of June 1–2, 1941, known as the farhud, were the immediate impetus for the renewed effort. However, the change in the WZO’s immigration policies, which now began to work towards bringing the Jews of the Arab world to Palestine, combined with the disruption of ties with the Jews of Europe during the Second World War and the need to facilitate the immigration of East European Jews waiting on

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the border between the Soviet Union and Iran, were also contributory factors. The institutions of the Zionist movement suddenly became willing to send emissaries (shlihim) to Iraq and to allocate resources to Zionist activity there. Shaul Avigur (1899–1978), the head of the clandestine immigration organization (Ha-Mosad le-Aliya Bet), arrived in Baghdad during March 1942 to make contact with the Jewish community. Upon his return to Palestine, Shmaryahu Gutman (1909–1996), Ezra Kadouri (1914–2000), and Enzo Sereni (1905–1944) were sent to Iraq in April 1942 to launch the Underground Pioneer (He-Halus) Movement (Tenu’at He-Ḥaluṣ, often called Ha-Tenu’a, the Movement) to prepare Iraqi Jews for absorption and bring them to Israel. The three emissaries began by organizing the Movement’s first cells with recruits who were former members of Aḥi’ever. In addition, the Aḥi’ever library, which had moved underground with the cessation of the organization during the mid-1930s, now resumed its activities. The Movement organizational framework included a shaliaḥ (emissary), who stood at the head of the movement, a council (or central secretariat or center), and a national secretariat. Alongside these bodies, which coordinated the organization’s activities and determined its policies were the branch committee (Va’adat Ha-Snifim), the organization committee (Va’adat HaIrgun), the membership committee (Va’adat Haverut), and the JNF committee (Va’adat Ha-Qeren Ha-Qayyemet). The movement operated through three arms: education (ḥinnukh), defense (Ha-Shura, the line), and illegal immigration (ha’pala). The membership of the Movement consisted of youths between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three, mostly educated and from the middle class. The first members assembled for the movement’s foundational conference during Passover of 1943. On Shavuot of 1943, the members of the defense wing were sworn in while holding a pistol and a Bible in a ceremony conducted in a darkened room. Within a year, the membership numbered two hundred young people of both genders. By the end of 1944, He-Halus HaSa’ir (the Young Pioneer), a similar organization, was being organized for adolescents of both genders between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. Membership in the Movement only increased with time; it reached seven hundred by May 1945, over a thousand in September 1946, and around 1,650 members and a hundred instructors by 1949. Further growth accompanied the founding of branches in twenty-three Jewish communities throughout Iraq (1947). The movement’s educational activities included teaching Hebrew, instilling the culture of Zionism and the Yishuv through songs, trips, and parties, raising Jewish consciousness, and inculcating the Zionist idea. The emissaries were

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aided in all this by Palestinian Jewish soldiers in the British Army who were stationed in Iraq during the war. The Hebrew language was taught with textbooks brought from Palestine and the Zionist message was transmitted through lectures. Occupational and agricultural training prepared the members for a life of productive work. The main motivation for a Jewish youth joining the Movement was to establish an organization of self-defense to protect the community against a new pogrom. The first self-defense organizations were founded in Baghdad immediately after the farhud. Then the Movement established its defense organization―Ha-Shura. Ha-Shura was managed by the shaliaḥ or by a committee. It was a part of the Movement until 1945, but then broke off to become an independent body. Its leadership instituted strict criteria for selecting new members. Each new inductee underwent a swearing-in ceremony upon acceptance. The Ha-Shura organization focused on preparations for self-defense in the event of riots, encouraging the Jews to purchase weapons and practice using them. It made plans for defending the large Jewish concentrations in Baghdad, Basra, and Kirkuk. Pistols, hand grenades, submachine guns, and Molotov cocktails were purchased and also smuggled in from Palestine. Weapons were deposited in hiding places (seliqim) in the homes of Ha-Shura members. On the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Ha-Shura had around 350 members. They stood ready to defend the Jews of Iraq in the event of riots, but the Iraqi government’s imposition of emergency rule prevented any possibility of riots and anti-Jewish harassment. Illegal immigration (ha’pala) from Iraq to Palestine began soon after the establishment of the Movement. It was organized by the immigration emissary and members of the Movement. They hired smugglers, prepared the candidates for aliya, conveyed them to the smuggler, and followed after them until their arrival at their destination. They also paid the smuggler’s fee and punished any who did not fulfill their obligations. Ha’pala was fraught with danger: immigrants captured by the Iraqi authorities were sentenced to fines or imprisonment, some were robbed and even murdered, and there were other disastrous incidents as well. Despite the difficulties, however, the flow of immigrants did not cease; it grew ever stronger in the years 1949–1950, because of the vicious attacks on the Jews and the opening of an escape route to Iran. The process of the establishment of the State of Israel advanced, and persecution reached its height in an anti-Jewish campaign orchestrated by the authorities after Israel received its independence and Iraqi troops were sent to destroy the new Zionist State. A state of emergency was declared and military courts were established. Jews were arrested and sentenced to prison and heavy fines on trumped-up charges; three Jews were hanged, including a prominent

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­ erchant from Basra, Shafiq Adas. The Iraqi authorities, influenced by extremm ist nationalist Muslim circles, clearly intended to pursue policies that would bring about the exodus of the Jews from their homeland. Indeed, the persecutions had the effect of driving many Jews to escape across the border to Iran, which gave them permission to stay temporarily until they moved to Israel. Operation Ezra and Nehemiah So many people were sneaking across the Iranian border that the Iraqi government decided to permit Jews to leave the country on the condition that they give up their Iraqi citizenship. According to the explanation given by the Iraqi government, the law was designed to put an end to illegal exodus of Jews to Iran. The publication of the law to this effect in the government’s official organ on March 9, 1950 signaled the opening of the gates for Jews to leave the country. Many willingly gave up their citizenship and registered for immigration. The Movement organized everything under the supervision of the immigration shaliaḥ Mordechai Ben-Porat (b. 1923) by means of secret wireless communication with Israel. The mass movement was facilitated by Movement members posing as officials of the Jewish community who worked together with government officials and the Iraqi secret police. This was apparently the factor that brought on the tragic end of the Movement. In May 1951, the Iraqi authorities imprisoned the emissaries Mordechai Ben-Porat and Yehuda Tagger, as well as numerous members of the Movement and Ha-Shura. As a result of some mistakes the Movement had made, plus information obtained from detainees under torture, the Iraqis exposed an Israeli espionage network that operated in Baghdad headed by Yehuda Tagger, and discovered Ha-Shura’s weapons stashes and documents of the Movement. Ben-Porat managed to escape and made it to Israel. Some of the members who were arrested were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Two of them, Shalom Salih Shalom and the lawyer Yosef Abraham Basri (Abras), were hanged after they were falsely charged with having thrown bombs on Jews.159 This episode put an end to the He-Halus Underground Movement in Iraq after it brought the majority of the Jews to Israel. During its period of illegal operations (until 1950), it sent twelve thousand immigrants. In the legal immigration of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah from 1950 to 1952, about 110,000 Iraqi immigrants reached the State of Israel. Another eight thousand, who held Iranian citizenship, traveled from Iraq to Iran and were flown from there to Israel. 159  Zvi Yehuda, Israeli Espionage Net in Iraq 1951–1952 [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, C.S.S. 1997).

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Exodus Babylon

Jews began to emigrate from Iraq to the Far East at the end of the eighteenth century, and the stream of immigrants increased in the nineteenth century. Leading families of the Baghdadi Jewish community, such as the family of David Sassoon, renowned and respected families such as those of Abdulla Eusuf, Yehuda and others, left Baghdad for the Far East during the first half of the nineteenth century and established large commercial companies in India, China, Singapore, Burma, and elsewhere.160 The economic success of Baghdadi Jews in the Far East contributed greatly to the development of the Jewish community in Iraq because the Baghdadi communities in the important commercial centers of the Far East continued to maintain close relations with their home community. Baghdadi Jews from the Far East came on pilgrimage to the holy shrines in Iraq, maintained ties with their families in the old homeland, and visited in order to find brides. They also supported the community and absorbed young Baghdadi Jews who came with a modern education and who had found it difficult to find appropriate employment in Iraq.161 Baghdadi Jews in the Far East also became an important source of funding for schools and religious and welfare institutions in the Jewish communities of Iraq and contributed greatly to the absorption of the penniless immigrants who streamed into Baghdad in the course of the nineteenth century. They remained involved in the affairs of their original community and expressed their views on issues of faith, education, society, and organization that were faced by the community, with which they maintained cultural and religious ties. The Baghdadi Jewish communities in the Far East continued to speak in the Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic dialect and retained their forefathers’ rites and customs, attracted rabbis and other religious functionaries who had studied at the yeshiva that had been established in Baghdad, and were the main supporters of the latter’s students.162 160  Ben-Yaacob, Babylonian Jewry in Diaspora, first part. 161  See, for example AIU Archive, Irak I C2, Valaji’s letter to the AIU, 16 Oct. 1888, in which he says: “Baghdad sends many Jews every year to India (Bombay and Calcutta, among others), to Indo-China (Rangoon and Singapore), to China (Shanghai and Hong-Kong) and even to Melbourne in Australia, not to mention those who travel to Europe.… One of the early students of our school, who left Baghdad about ten months ago because of a family feud and moved to the Far East, told me that he met many families of Baghdadi origin in Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Shanghai and Hong-Kong. What is certain, from what I saw and from what I heard from Baghdadis who traveled to India and China, is that Baghdad is making a great contribution to the establishment of Jewish communities in the Far East.” 162  Newspapers in Judeo-Arabic that were published in India contain much information on these matters.

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In the second half of the century members of the prominent commercial families in the Far East began to move to England and they took part in British mercantile, social, cultural, and political life.163 Starting in the 1840s there are also reports of Baghdadi Jews returning from the Far East to Baghdad, where they served as agents for their families’ businesses. Some of these Jews were quite wealthy and became important supporters of the city’s Jewish religious and educational institutions.164 At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century Jews from Iraq joined the great migration of Jews to Egypt, Western Europe, North America, and Australia. After World War I and the establishment of Pahlevi rule in Persia, Jews from Iraq increasingly migrated to that country as well. But the largest wave of emigration was to Palestine. Emigration of Babylonian Jews to the Holy Land has never ceased since the Babylonian Exile. In the nineteenth century an increased number of individuals and families left Iraq for Palestine. The emigration in the 1850s of three families was particularly important: the Yehuda family that settled in Jerusalem, the Mani family that settled in Hebron, and the Avisar family.165 These newcomers played an important role in the settlement of Palestine. The flow of Jewish migrants from Iraq to Palestine increased at the beginning of the twentieth century and in the years 1919–1948 about twenty thousand Jews from Iraq made aliya. The establishment of the State of Israel and the permission given Iraqi Jews to emigrate according to the Citizenship Waiver Law of March 9, 1950 resulted in the exodus of most of the Jews in Iraq to Israel. Only about nine thousand Jews (of an original community of 135,000) remained in Iraq and most of these, too, were subsequently forced to flee due to persecution, expropriation of property, executions and murder of Jews by the Ba’ath government during the years 1969–1973.166 The New Babylonian Diaspora finally ceased to exist at the end of the second millennium CE.

163  The most prominent of these were members of the Sassoon family. See Ben-Yaacob, Babylonian Jewry in Diaspora, 282–22. The London Jewish Chronicle newspaper contains a wealth of information on this. 164  See above note 6. 165  Abraham Ben-Yaacob, The Jews of Iraq in the Land of Israel [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem 1980), 9–105; Yosef Yoel Rivlin, “Reshit ha-Aliya ha-Bagdadit” (First Aliya from Baghdad), BaMa'rakha (Mar. 1962): 11–12, 18; ibid., (Apr. 1962): 11, 19; ibid., (June 1962): 6–7; ibid., (July 1962): 8–9. 166  Kazzaz, End of a Diaspora, 33–37.

part 2 Studies on Political Issues

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Between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries, Iraqi Jewry’s political and economic influence was on the rise; yet, during the same span of time, the community’s very existence came under threat and Jews had to leave the country. The four studies presented here shed light on demographic and economic characteristics of the community in those two hundred years, and the ability of the Jewish leadership in Baghdad and Basra to cope with political crises. Relationships with the authorities and with Muslims and Christians were complex, involving both religious hostility and economic struggles. Prosperity enabled Jews to forge close ties with local or regional rulers. Some became quite powerful, but wealth could also expose them to mortal danger. Ottoman and Arab proclamations and legislation promised equality to the Jews but rules governing the conduct of non-Muslims under Islam inevitably prevailed over modern legislation where there was a conflict. Britain and France had considerable influence on the Ottoman rulers, and in the case of Britain, on the Arab monarchy in Iraq. Events in the Jewish community, and the personal backgrounds of high-level European officials had a critical impact on their attitudes and policies. The English representatives were strongly influenced by their associations with the local Arab and Christian population; this was expressed by the British representative in Baghdad during the events of 1889 and later, in his will, where he stated his desire to be buried in England dressed in an Arab robe. The growing anti-Semitism in Europe at the end of the eighteenth and throughout the course of the nineteenth century also influenced Europeans who held government positions. Iraqi Jews sought help from their co-religionists in the West in times of political distress, and their ties with European Jews increased in the second half of the nineteenth century. By the time of the 1941 farhud (pogrom) it was clear that the Iraqi monarchy was hostile to Jews and that their so-called English “friends” had abandoned them to Muslim rioters.

Chapter 3

The Jewish Blood-Libel against Christians in Basra (1791) In the eighteenth century the Jews of Iraq attained considerable political and economic importance, leading to an overt struggle against the Christians in Basra, Iraq’s main commercial center, and against their leader, the representative of England, at that time the major power in India and the Persian Gulf. In the course of this struggle, in 1791 the Jews accused the Christians of having murdered a member of the Jewish community for ritual purposes.

…

In seeking to understand the background of this incident, we must realize that not enough is known about the Basra Jewish community in the eighteenth century. The collector and scholar R. David S. Sassoon traveled through Iraq during the first decade of the twentieth century and collected numerous manuscripts and documents about Iraqi Jewry, but was unable to find any sources that would shed light on the history of the Jews of Basra, or about the history of the nearby tomb of Ezra the Scribe, between the time R. Benjamin of Tudela (end of the 12th century) and R. Petahiah of Regensburg, who visited the city in 1739.1 An important step in the study of the Jewish community in Basra during the eighteenth century was taken by the late Prof. Meir Benayahu in his “Rabbi Yaacov Elyashar and his book Megillat Paras,” in which he made use of Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic sources from the end of the eighteenth century.2 Benayahu published additions to these sources in another work published in 1982.3 He appears to have made use of every known communal and Hebrew document.

1  Sassoon, “Basra,” 469. R. David Sassoon writes as follows at the end of his article on Basra: “We aware of two facts. First of all that owing to our scanty material many gaps in the long course of this history are left open. Secondly, that a full history of a community like Basra can not be written without more material, the greater part of which is still unpublished, and a great part of which is perhaps lost without hope of recovery.” 2  Benayahu, Elyashar. 3  Benayahu, “Documents,” 1–81.

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Other important sources of information about Iraq are the archives of England and France, countries that had considerable influence in the region and maintained permanent consulates in Baghdad and Basra beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the archives of these powers I found important documents that shed light on Iraqi Jewry’s political and economic situation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.4 Jewish sources paid a relatively great deal of attention to the Persian siege and occupation of Basra in the 1870s when Suleiman Pasha was the city’s mutasallim (governor) but completely ignored the events to be discussed below, which are not mentioned even in later Jewish sources. It would seem that Iraqi Jewry wished to make them disappear from memory because of the deleterious political effects they had on its relations with Britain, the ruling power where Iraqi Jews settled in India and the Far East, and the European country into which they became absorbed so well during the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century. In order to understand the background against which the events to be described took place, their course and their consequences, we shall first discuss the political and economic climate in the region during the eighteenth century and the intervention of the European powers, especially Britain, in Basra affairs.

Basra in the Eighteenth Century

When the Ottomans occupied Iraq at the beginning of the sixteenth century there were hopes that this would put an end to the political instability which had plagued the region since the middle of the thirteenth century and would grant the “cradle of the Abbasid caliphate” another golden age of order and security, in which what the Mongols had destroyed would be rebuilt and international economic activity revived. But this was not to be. It took the Ottomans nearly three centuries to impose their rule on the Arab tribes in the south and the Kurds in the north, to quell the desire of the Shi’ite leaders of Persia to conquer Iraq, where their holy shrines were located, and to seize control of the commercial route that was the shortest way connecting Europe to the Far East. As a result the central and southern parts of Iraq were insecure and only sparsely populated. To this may be added the frequent epidemics and famine that decimated Iraq’s cities. The lack of security in Iraq’s delta region made it impossible to exploit its rich soil for agriculture and drove the Europeans to 4  As will be seen below.

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seek an alternative to the ancient route connecting the Levant and Europe to the Far East. Indeed, at the end of the fifteenth century a sea route was found to the Far East, and the cities of Basra and Baghdad found it very difficult to regain their former prosperity.5 In the eighteenth century the Mamluks seized power in Iraq, which became an autonomous wilaya (province) under the Ottoman sultan. During their long rule (1704–1831) Iraq enjoyed extended periods of political stability, of administrative reform and rebuilding activity, in which the economic situation improved and the population grew. These developments were most strongly felt during the rule of Suleiman Pasha “the Great,” whose reign (1780–1802) was deemed to have been the golden age of Mamluk rule in Iraq. In his days the country was secure, commerce flourished, and the population of Baghdad and Basra grew.6 However, there were also periods of political unrest under Mamluk rule, especially in times of changes in rulers and during wars. Thus, for example, the inhabitants of Basra suffered greatly when the city was occupied by Persia after an extended siege and remained under their rule for a time (1776–1779). During the Mamluk period Basra became a sanjaq (sub-province) of the wilaya whose main city was Baghdad. The wali (provincial governor) appointed someone close to him as the city’s mutasallim, the third most important position in the wilaya; some rulers of Basra were subsequently appointed to the post of wali. Suleiman Pasha, as noted above, was also mutasallim of Basra (beginning in 1765) before he was appointed to wali and moved to Baghdad. He defended the city during the lengthy Persian siege (1774–1776), but was forced to surrender and was taken as captive to Persia, where he befriended the members of the Shah’s court and returned to his post in Basra after the Persians left the city. Shortly thereafter, Suleiman was appointed wali of the provinces of Baghdad, Basra, and Shahrazur, which were united under his rule. In addition to his efforts to block Persia’s attempts to take over Basra the mutasallim also acted to subdue the powerful tribes to the east and west of the city which frequently rebelled against him.7 Following the Mongol conquests, the fall of the Abbasid dynasty, and the rise of the Safavids to power in Persia, Basra lost its importance as a city through which merchandise from India, China, and the oriental archipelago moved to markets in Persia and the Levant, and from Arabia, Persia, and 5  Longrigg, Four Centuries, 1–220; Mantran, “Baghdad,” 311–324; Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1–61. 6  Ibid.; [Jean B. Rousseau]. Description du Pachalik de Bagdad. (Paris 1809), 117. 7  Longrigg, Four Centuries, 186–95.

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Europe back to the Far East. Its situation worsened at the end of the fifteenth century when the Portuguese discovered the sea route to India and took control of the commerce in the region. The trade route between India and Europe was far removed from the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea during this period. In the seventeenth century Holland, France and England joined the struggle over control of trade with the Far East. The struggle lasted into the eighteenth century and ended when England seized control of India and the Persian Gulf. Basra then became an important commercial center,8 described by travelers as “the grand mart for the produce of India and Persia, Constantinople, Aleppo and Damascus; in short, … the grand oriental depository”.9 The English physician John Griffiths visited Basra in 1786 and described the great improvement in its economic situation: Bassorah is the emporium of this quarter of the world. It is here that richly laden ships, from every part of India, pour in their valuable cargoes. Those from Surat and the Malabar coast consist of pearls, elegant gold and silver cloths, shawls, and other splendid articles of dress for the Persians; coffee, spices, metals, and woolen cloths. The Coromandel coast and Bengal supply rice, sugar, muslins, and an infinity of white and blue cloths for common use. The returns are made chiefly in specie or jewels; and a certain number of highly bred Arab horses are annually consigned to India, for which is obtained a very considerable price from gentlemen who promote the pleasures of the turf or the chase.10 In addition to the trade with India, merchandise was also moved in caravans from Basra to Baghdad by way of the Euphrates and the desert or by way of the Tigris, and from there to Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul or Alexandria, whence to London, Marseilles, Venice, and Amsterdam. Goods imported from the Levant together with the large local date harvest were also moved by ship through Basra to Persia, Arabia, Muscat, and India.11

8  Ibid.; Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1–2. 9  Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 36–37. 10  John Griffiths. Travels in Europe, Asia Minor and Arabia. (London 1805), 389; Eliezer Bashan. “Reports of European Travelers from the 16th–19th Centuries on Jews in Iraq and Kurdistan.” Studies on the History of Iraqi Jewry and Their Culture. Ed. S. Moreh. 1 (Tel Aviv 1981): 19–28, 22–23. 11  Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 37; Rousseau, Description, 44.

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The large amounts of expensive merchandise passing through Basra were a source of considerable income for the city. In addition to customs duties the Mamluk authorities levied imposts on the tribes in the region and taxed the Christians and the Jews. It is estimated that the overall annual income of the wilaya in the closing years of the eighteenth century stood at between two hundred thousand and one million pounds sterling. Most of this money was spent within the wilaya; only about one-eighth was sent to the sultan.12 As Basra developed into a regional and international commercial center it attracted settlers from diverse places and of various nationalities: Arabs from the vicinity, Persians, Indians, Jews, Sabaeans, and Armenian and European Christians. At the end of the eighteenth century Basra’s population is estimated to have reached about fifty thousand.13 The economic rise of Basra in the eighteenth century was associated with the increasing hold of the British on the Persian Gulf. In 1723 the British East India Company established a permanent office in Basra. In 1763 it received the status of an agency and was tasked with supervising the Company’s trade in the Persian Gulf. One year later the Sublime Porte recognized it as a consulate that enjoyed the rights of the Capitulations.14 The British also used Basra as a central station for their rapid mail between India and England. The mail came by boat from Bombay to Basra, whence it was carried by horsemen through the desert to Aleppo and from there to Istanbul, Vienna, and London. Because of the great importance which the 12  Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 37. Kelly argues that Basra’s commercial importance waned after the epidemic of 1773 and the city’s capture by the Persians. Subsequently the city lost its position as a commercial center to Bahrain and Muscat, mainly because of the latter’s superior marine facilities while the Turks in Iraq possessed no navy and therefore could not protect the Pashalik’s sea shore. The commercial caravans that passed through the Shatt al-Arab to Baghdad by way of the Euphrates or the Tigris were also not protected. 13  Griffiths, Travels, 389; Rousseau, Description, 32. The Danish traveler Carsten Niebuhr visited Basra in 1765 and estimated that the city then had a population of 50,000; Carsten Niebuhr. Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und den Umliegenden Ländern. Vol. 2. (Kopenhagen 1774), 220–21; Capper, Observations. The English traveler visited the city in December 1778, at the end of the Persian conquest, and wrote (Capper, Observations, 86): “In the year 1772 there were supposed to be upwards of four hundred thousand inhabitants in the place, and on the time of our arrival, there were certainly not more than six thousand, including the Persians; the principal streets were like a burying ground, with scarcely a space of three feet between each grave.” It would seem that Basra’s political stability and economic prosperity in the days of Suleiman “the Great” attracted back many of the inhabitants who had left it during the siege and the Persian conquest. 14  Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 50–53.

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British attached to the sea route between India and Basra they sent a naval detachment from the large English fleet in Bombay to protect the shipping in the Gulf.15 At the end of the eighteenth century the British hold on Basra weakened. The British scholar John Kelly devoted a study to Britain’s standing in the Persian Gulf and showed that at the end of that century the British lost their primacy in the trade with Persia because of competition from Holland, France, and Russia as well as from Armenians and local merchants who seized control of the acquisition of raw materials and imported wool products from Europe. To this, other political and economic factors must be added, that brought about an overall drop in trade with Persia. The British suffered great losses in their trade and therefore reduced their activity in Basra, which was now restricted to running their rapid mail service.16 Kelly came to the conclusion that “So nebulous had the Company’s position in the Gulf become by the last decade of the eighteenth century that it was difficult to see on what grounds, commercial or otherwise, its continuance could be justified. Its trade was a mockery, and the Company had no political interest in the region.” Kelly states that the Company did not leave the Persian Gulf despite its commercial losses “because of the responsibility it had assumed for the protection of the country trade of India.”17 Because of this situation the Company reduced the standing of its agency in Basra from a consulate to a residency. According to Kelly the reduction of British commercial activity in Basra drove the British residents (agents) there to intervene in the wilaya’s politics, because they believed that political means were the only way to protect Britain’s commercial interests. However, such activities went beyond the residents’ commercial functions as defined by their superiors in Bombay.18 The resident maintained his ties with the wali in person or by means of a local agent situated in Baghdad. It was only in 1798 that the British appointed a resident of the Company in Baghdad, about sixty years after the French opened their consulate there.19

15  Ibid., 53–57; Ferrières-Sauveboeuf, Reisen, Vol. 2, 69–75. 16  Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 57–59. 17  Ibid., 61. 18  Ibid., 54. 19  Ibid., 49, 54; Rousseau, Description, 13, 15, 34–35.

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Figure 3.1 Basra from the Euphrates. Robert Mignan, Travels in Chaldea … performed on foot in 1827, London 1829.



Jews in Basra in the Eighteenth Century

The Basra Jewish community’s economic situation in the eighteenth century was affected by the improvement that took place in the city’s geopolitical status and the rise in its economic importance. From the few sources we have from this period we may surmise that this was an important community with considerable economic and political power, which reached its zenith at the end of the 1780s and the beginning of the 1790s. Community sources say nothing about the number of Jews in Basra and external documents also refrain from extensive statements about the size of the city’s Jewish community. Alexander Hamilton, who visited Basra around 1700 wrote that there were “many Jews in Bassora, who live by brokerage and exchanging money.… There are also about two hundred Christians of the Greek Church.…”20 In 1765 the Danish traveler Carsten Niebuhr found one hundred Jewish families and a large community of Armenian Christians.21 In the 1770s the number of Jews dropped due to an epidemic, famine, and an extended 20  Alexander Hamilton. “A New Account of the East Indies.” In Through Turkish Arabia by H.S. Cowper. (London 1894), 480. 21  Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung, Vol. 2, 220–21.

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Persian siege followed by occupation, accompanied by massacres, persecution, and great distress.22 After the end of the Persian occupation and Suleiman Pasha’s appointment as governor of Iraq the Jewish community of Basra grew once again. According to the local British resident, Samuel Manesty, the number of Jews rose to over five-hundred, who had come to the city from Baghdad and the north as well as from Syria, Persia, and Turkey.23 After Suleiman Pasha’s rule became stable many Jews came to Basra from different places in order to benefit from the city’s political stability and economic prosperity. This was part of a considerable wave of immigration to Basra, which now attracted merchants of every nationality and religion from Arabia, India, Persia, Syria, and Turkey. These merchants played important roles in the large-scale trade that took place in and through Basra, served as commercial agents, and maintained commercial relations with Jews and non-Jews in Baghdad, Istanbul, Aleppo, Bombay, Cochin, and along the trade route in the Persian Gulf.24 In addition to commerce, the Jews of Basra also engaged in brokerage and money changing.25 The community’s leaders were the money changers of the British East India Company26 and of the Dutch consulate in Basra.27 Their close relations with the local mutasallim and the Mamluk wali in Baghdad, and the trust which the latter had in them, enabled the Jews of Basra to become tax collectors and to be appointed to sarraf bashi (provincial treasurer).28 Their control of the government’s sources of income gave Basra Jews a great deal of influence over the lives of the city’s inhabitants. During Suleiman Pasha’s term in office the influence of the Jews of Basra increased considerably. This began with Ya’coob Haron Gabbai, Suleiman Pasha’s sarraf bashi, who helped the latter withstand the Persian siege by providing him and his soldiers with provisions. After Basra fell, Ya’coob Gabbai and Suleiman were exiled to Shiraz, where Gabbai continued to help Suleiman until both were released from captivity and returned to Basra. In appreciation of his help Ya’coob Gabbai received a royal charter of rights ( firman) from the 22  Benayahu, Elyashar, 46–49. 23  I OR, G/29/22, pp. 663–66, Manesty’s letter, 5 July 1791. 24  Benayahu, Elyashar, 39, 52; Benayahu, “Documents,” 14–17; Sassoon, “Basra,” 416, 420, 448– 49; Kafih, “Sror,” 64–66; Husin, Sdaqa, 22–23; Griffiths, Travels, 389; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 336–37, 360–63; Otter, Voyage, 66–78. 25  Hamilton, “New Account,” 480; Griffiths, Travels, 389. 26  I OR, G/29/22, pp. 663–66, Manesty’s letter, 5 July 1791. 27  Willem Floor. “The Dutch on Khark Island: the End of an Era, the Baron von Kniphausen’s Adventures.” In Européens en Orient au xviiie Siècle. (Paris 1994), 157–202, 197–98. 28  Ibid.; Hamilton, “New Account,” 480; Griffiths, Travels, 389. Benayahu, Elyashar, 42.

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sultan Abdul Hamid I in which he was praised for his deeds and received an exemption from taxes.29 Benayahu, who studied Ya’coob Gabbai’s career, concludes that he was an important merchant with property in Basra and elsewhere and agents in Aleppo, Istanbul, and more. At the end of the 1780s and the beginning of the 1790s the political and economic influence of Basra’s Jews increased even more due to their support for Suleiman Pasha in his struggle against the mutasallim and the tribes that tried to make the city independent of Baghdad and therefore rebelled against the wali. The Jews profited from their commerce with Baghdad and were therefore opposed to such a separation while their competitors for control over international trade and political influence in Basra supported it. The competitors were Armenians Christians, whose trade suffered because the caravans moved through Baghdad; the British residency, too, wanted to have more influence over the mutasallim and to help the Armenians, with whom the resident and his assistant has both personal and business relations.30 It was at this time that Choja Abdulla ibn Eusuf was appointed to the post of Basra’s sarraf bashi. He was also under British protection and served as money changer for the British East India Company’s agency in Basra.31 Suleiman “the Great” had complete trust in Abdulla ibn Eusuf, whom he entrusted with provisioning the city and managing the province’s income and expenses, and gave him the authority to supervise the governor. Choja Abdulla carried a dagger on his person and all the city’s residents submitted to him and sought his favor. His British protection enabled him to retain his life and his wealth even during the rebellions against Suleiman Pasha.32 His high standing was not affected even after he was forced to leave Basra for Baghdad at the end of 1791, as will be related below; he continued to enjoy the Pasha’s trust and remained one of the latter’s two closest confidants.33 After Choja Abdulla left for Baghdad the post of treasurer remained in Jewish hands; it was given to Choja Sasoon ibn ‘Abd il Nebee, another one of the community’s most wealthy members.34 29  Benayahu, Elyashar, 42, 45, 51–53. 30  ‘Abdallah, The Political Economy, 152–55. 31  I OR, G/29/22, pp. 663–66, Manesty’s letter of 5 July 1791. 32  Ibid. 33  Longrigg, Four Centuries, 219; ‘Abdallah, Political Economy, 151; Nieuwenhuis, Politics and Society, 74, writes “the famous Jewish sarraf Khuja Abdallah ibn Yusuf who became chief counselor of Sulayman the Great and one of the prominent members of the informal power structure of the 1790’s.” 34  We know this from Manesty’s and Jones’ letter to Ainslie, 7 Feb. 1792 (IOR, G/29/22, p. 680).

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The rise in the number of Jews in Basra and the presence among them of wealthy men who had influence locally and on the central government, and some of whom enjoyed the protection of Britain, the dominant European power in the Persian Gulf and the Far east, made it possible for the Jewish community to maintain strong organizational frameworks. At the head of the community stood a president with broad authority, as the community’s most prominent member, an economically successful merchant and the province’s treasurer, a post that gave him a great deal of political and economic influence. He used his money to support Torah learners and charitable institutions, and maintained close relations with the Jewish community in Baghdad. In the 1770s and the beginning of the 1780s the post was held by Ya’coob Gabbai who was, as already noted, Suleiman’s sarraf bashi when the latter was mutasallim of Basra, and with him went through the Persian siege of the city and the period of captivity in Persia. Shortly after he received the firman Gabbai wanted to move to Aleppo, giving rise to a lively debate within the Jewish community in that city on whether in such an eventuality it should honor the firman that exempted him from paying the taxes which the well-to-do were obliged to pay. Benayahu describes this debate at length and concludes that Gabbai appears not to have moved to Aleppo but to have died in Basra sometime between 1782 and 1790.35 One indication of Gabbai’s high standing may be the fact that the Dutch vice-consul turned to him for help in a quarrel that he had with the mutasallim in 1771.36 Toward the end of the 1780s the aforementioned Choja Abdulla, head of one of the richest and most privileged Jewish families in Iraq and the Far East, came to lead the Jewish community. According to one report he claimed descent from the twelfth-century Spanish nasi R. Yosef ibn Shelomo ibn Shushan and so considered himself a scion of Spanish Jewry. His son Faraj Haim, also a wealthy philanthropist, was known to possess a large library with some ten thousand tomes, including ancient books, some of which were brought by his forefathers from Spain and which he probably inherited from his father. Abdulla ibn Eusuf and his sons contracted marriages with veteran respected Iraqi families in Baghdad and the Far East, such as the Ma’tuks and the Sassoons. Choja Abdulla, like Ya’coob Gabbai before him, was a prominent 35  Benayahu, Elyashar, 42, 45, 51–57. Benayahu’s claim that “after Ya’coob Haron Gabbai’s death the Basra community lost its importance and did not regain it until it ceased to exist in 1951” (p. 58) contradicts reports we have from the 1790s that show quite clearly that the standing of the Basra Jewish community did not weaken but in fact became stronger, as will be shown below. 36  Floor, “Dutch on Khark Island,” 199.

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merchant with numerous commercial connections and held the post of sarraf bashi in Basra. He had great influence with the local mutasallim and was a confidant of the wali; according to the testimony of the British resident in Basra. Choja Abdulla’s economic and political standing was stronger even than that of the mutasallim himself.37 Of Choja Abdulla’s personality and abilities we learn from sources both external and from within the Jewish community. He was an impressive leader who did not hesitate to lead his community into a severe confrontation with the Christians in Basra and with their leader, the British representative. For the first and only time in the history of the Jews in Christendom and the lands of Islam, to the best of our knowledge, a Jewish leader dared accuse Christians of having murdered a Jew for ritual purposes, to lead his congregation in violent demonstrations against the Christians in the streets of Basra and to demand revenge. Abdulla ibn Eusuf behaved in Basra as if he owned the city. He went about armed, convinced the mutasallim to act according to his instructions and personally conducted searches in the homes of Christians and interrogated both Christian and Muslim witnesses under threat of death. This incident, whose driving force was the struggle over control of Basra’s international trade, was affected by the Spanish origins of Abdulla ibn Eusuf and other community leaders who had come to Basra from Aleppo, where a similar tension existed between Spanish Jews and the local Christians. But unlike Aleppo, where the Jews had been driven out of the international trade, the Jews who had moved from Aleppo to Basra used their solid standing, their influence on the mutasallim and the influence which their co-religionists in Baghdad had on the wali to defeat their Christian rivals and force them out of the international trade.38 President Choja Abdulla not only looked after the interests of his own community but also helped Jews in need from other communities. He succeeded in maintaining his socio-economic standing and his considerable influence over the wali even after he was forced to leave Basra for Baghdad, despite the pressure of the British on Suleiman Pasha to punish Choja Abdulla for his actions against the Christians and the resident.39 37   I OR, G/29/22, pp. 663–66, Manesty’s letter of 5 July 1791; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 114, 337–38; Ben-Yaacob, Hebrew Poetry, 309. In the latter work Ben-Yaacob mistakenly states that Shaul ibn Abdulla, a student of Hebrew poetry in Spain, was the son of the president Abdulla ibn Eusuf. To judge by the year of his birth, 1850, and the details provided in BenYaacob’s previous book, Shaul was President Abdulla’s great-grandson. 38  See above, pp. 44–45. 39  I OR, G/29/22, pp. 663–66, Manesty’s letter of 5 July 1791; IOR, G/29/22, p. 680, Manesty’s and Jones’ letter to Ainslie from 7 Feb. 1792.

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His political standing, his wealth and his lofty traits were praised in poems composed in his honor by R. Nissim son of R. Salih Masliah, son of the chief rabbi of Baghdad and himself a prominent member of the community, in gratitude for his assistance in Basra and for his help in funding and obtaining permission from the Pasha to rebuild the “New Synagogue” (slat el-jdidi) that opened in 1797 in Baghdad.40 When Choja Abdulla left Basra for Baghdad his position as sarraf bashi was given to Choja Sasoon ibn ‘Abd il-Nebee.41 The Basra Jewish community had its own court, whose judges were rabbis from Aleppo and the Holy Land.42 The community maintained contact with the Holy Land and regularly contributed money to kolels in the four holy cities there through an appointed official in Baghdad and the envoys from the Holy Land who frequented the city.43 At the beginning of the nineteenth century Basra went into commercial decline and the Jewish community became weaker and smaller. It did not regain its importance as the country’s second largest community until international commerce returned following the opening of the Suez Canal.

Christians Accused of Murdering a Jew for Ritual Purposes

The events in Basra in the spring of 1791 are known to us from two Christian sources, Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, the French consul in Baghdad, and Samuel Manesty, the British resident in Basra, both of whom were involved in the events themselves and clearly aligned themselves against the Jews. Manesty reported to his superiors in the British East India Company’s headquarters in Bombay and also sent them copies of his correspondence with Suleiman Pasha, from which we can indirectly infer the position of the Jews. We shall first present a factual account of the events based on these sources and then proceed to analyze the positions of both parties, Jews and Christians, and the steps they took to draw the mutasallim and the wali to their respective sides.44 40  Ben-Yaacob, Hebrew Poetry, 57–59. 41   I OR, G/29/22, p. 680, Manesty’s and Jones’ letter to Ainslie, 7 Feb. 1792. 42  Benayahu, Elyashar, 23; Benayahu, “Documents,” 14; Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 338–39. 43  Benayahu, “Documents,” 15–16; Sassoon, “Basra,” 449–50. 44   I OR, G/29/22, pp. 663–66, Manesty’s letter of 5 July 1791; AN, BI 177, pp. 207–9, “Traduction d’un mémoire sur une soulèvement faite à Bassora par les juifs contre les chrétiens écrites en italien à Bagdad par un particulier pour l’envoier à ses amis en Europe,” an appendix to Rousseau’s letter of 10 June 1791 to De Tleurieu, the French Secretary of State Minister of the Navy (below: the memorandum). Both sources are in general agreement on the facts, although Manesty, because he was present at the event and was personally involved in the

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On Purim of the Jewish year 5551 (Sunday, March 20, 1791) a Jewish resident of Basra named Shalom left his home and did not return in the evening. His family searched for him and also informed the authorities, but the man had disappeared. Two days later, on Tuesday, March 22 in the evening, an Arab Muslim came to the local saray (government house) and reported having found a dead man in a ruin near the brick factory in which he worked. The Turkish authorities sent “proper persons” to bring the corpse to the saray. The body was identified as belonging to the missing man. An examination of the body revealed that Shalom had been strangled to death with a rope. The body showed no signs of blunt force or firearms wounds, but the head was struck with a club. However, the body’s condition was very strange. It lay in a basket and in many places, the forehead, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the arms, the shoulders, the chest, the legs, the knees and the penis there were burn marks made by hot iron or white wax, which was poured over them. The deceased’s beard was partly burned.45 On the following day, March 23, the head of Basra’s Jewish community, Choja Abdulla ibn Eusuf, visited the British consular representative and head of the local Christian community, Samuel Manesty, and informed him that the Jews considered the Christians to be responsible for the Jew’s murder, because only a Christian could kill someone in such a cruel manner. Manesty, who reported these words, added that Choja Abdulla also told him that the Jews believed that Christians murdered Shalom because they (the Christians) were in the habit of sacrificing a Jew during the holy period of Easter, in order to satisfy their religious hostility towards the Jews. In view of these strong words by the head of Basra’s Jewish community Manesty did his best to convince his interlocutor that his claim that the Christians were hostile towards the Jews was groundless and that killing a Jew was considered a terrible sin by Christians. But his arguments failed to persuade the Jews, who remained convinced that the Christians in Basra had killed Shalom. On that same evening many Jews, more than five-hundred men and women, gathered and marched to the saray. They made a great commotion and stridently cursed the Christians and demanded that the mutasallim bring the perpetrators to justice. This action was repeated on the following morning, March 24, when a large Jewish crowd, led by Choja Abdulla and other

affair, provides more detail with greater precision than the author of the “memorandum,” who relies on reports that he had received. 45  Ibid.

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prominent members of the Jewish community marched to the government house and loudly demanded that the Christians be punished immediately.46 The pressure applied by the Jews caused Muhammad Agha, the mutasallim of Basra, to order the prompt arrest of a number of Christians, including four that were under British protection. But the British resident intervened on the spot and brought about their release, with the promise that the four men under British protection would be held under house arrest at the Company’s offices. But the Jews refused to be satisfied with these steps and continued to insist that the authorities find the killers and punish them. In order to make progress in the investigation the mutasallim decided to arrest and interrogate some more Christians, including missionaries under French protection and Muslims employed by wealthy Christians. On March 26 the authorities obtained testimony that put the blame for Shalom’s murder on one of the men held in the Company’s offices, a well-known Armenian Christian by the name of Risha. The testimony against him came from the Muslim brick factory worker who had found the victim’s body. He told his interrogators that on March 22, the day on which he informed the authorities that he had found the body, he saw a Muslim porter (hammal) casting away a basket he was carrying in a ruin near the factory where he worked. He asked the porter about the basket’s contents and was told that it was the body of a man killed by a Christian who gave him a bribe to keep silent. The worker’s testimony led the investigators to the porter, who admitted that Risha the Christian had met him at noon on that day and, although they were not acquainted, invited him into his home and told him that he had killed a man and put him in a basket. The porter added that he was paid by Risha to take the basket away and put it where it would not be found. And this is what he did; he took the basket from Risha’s home in the middle of the day, carried it to the ruin next to the brick factory and dumped it there. The porter also confirmed his encounter with the worker and the content of their conversation. Thus, six days after the Jew’s disappearance and four days after his body had been found the Turkish investigators obtained evidence that connected a Christian dignitary under British protection with the murder. That very same evening the governor sent a delegation to the Company’s offices to inform the resident of the investigation’s results and to demand that Risha be handed over to the authorities. In the presence of the delegation, consisting of the mutasallim’s son, the head of the Jewish community and Turkish officials, and in the presence of Risha himself and a large crowd that gathered there, Manesty 46  Ibid.

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announced that he would not protect a murderer who would be executed if found guilty and that if the Christian defendant were to be convicted of murdering the Jew in a just trial, he would himself demand the death penalty for him. However, he added, as the representative of the English nation he had a duty under the Ottoman sultan’s firman to assist those under British protection, and as head of the Christian community in Basra it was his duty to see that members of his congregation were treated justly. Following this statement Manesty took Risha to the saray where the issue of the murder and Risha’s guilt was deliberated in the presence of the mutasallim, the members of the delegation, Jewish leaders and Turkish officials. Risha vehemently denied the charges against him and protested his innocence. Then the porter was brought in. He was sworn in and repeated his testimony that he had received the murdered Jew’s body from Risha. The porter’s testimony caused Manesty to agree to turn Risha over to the mutasallim, not before he received a promise from the latter that the accused would receive a fair trial and that in case he was found guilty the verdict would not be carried out before it was confirmed by the wali. Following Risha’s arrest the mutasallim ordered the release of the other three Christians who had been detained in the Company’s offices.47 The fact that Risha was handed over to the Turkish authority was perceived by the Jews as proof that they had been right in their claim that Christians were responsible for Shalom’s death, and that he had been killed for ritual purposes out of traditional religious hostility. Risha’s arrest was thus the trigger that caused the members of the Jewish community to come out already on the evening of that Saturday, March 26, and demonstrate in the city streets against the Christians with burning torches. The demonstrations continued the following morning. According to the Christian sources that reported on these events, Jews attacked Christians that they encountered, cursed them and their faith, Jesus and the Virgin Mary using expressions described as the “most gross indecency,” and declared that they would not be satisfied with the punishment of just Risha for the crime of having killed Shalom and mutilated his corpse, but would demand the blood of other Christians as well. During the demonstrations the Jews went so far as to insult and threaten the British, the East India Company, and the resident. On March 27 the governor’s son and the head of the Jewish community conducted a search in the home of the accused in order to find further evidence for his involvement with the murder. Risha’s servant was brought to the treasury room in the saray, the office of the sarraf bashi, where Choja Abdulla took out his dagger and in the presence of numerous Turkish officials placed it on the 47  Ibid., Rousseau’s letter.

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servant’s throat and threatened him that he would kill him if he did not provide testimony that supported what the porter had said.48

The Christian Response

The Jews’ demonstrations, accompanied as they were by insults against the Christian religion and its saints, physical attacks and calls for vengeance, transformed this case of a murdered Jew from a crime committed by an individual and settled when the perpetrator was punished in accordance with the law, to the broader framework of an extra-legal struggle between two communities divided by continuous religious and economic hostility. In this confrontation, the Jewish community possessed clear superiority over its Christian counterpart in size, political power, economic strength, and influence over the local and central authorities. While the Christians in Basra together with their leader the British resident agreed to the mutasallim’s demand to turn over a prominent member of their congregation despite the fact that they believed in his innocence and that his lack of culpability would be proven if he were given a fair trial, the incidents that took place in Basra after Risha was handed over to the authorities so frightened the Christians that they became concerned for their safety and their very existence. The Christians of Basra were no longer certain that they would be protected by the local authorities, whom they believed to have been “bought” by Jewish bribes. In the absence of official protection the Christians feared that the Jews would carry out their threats and take revenge on them, and they therefore remained ensconced in their homes. The Christian sources contain graphic descriptions of deeds committed by the Jews during their demonstrations on the evening of March 26 and the morning of March 27. They call the demonstrations a premeditated Jewish “uprising” against them.49 These sources maintain that the Jews, who were numerically superior and to whose leader Choja Abdulla Suleiman Pasha gave the right to provision the city and the authority to supervise the mutasallim Muhammad Agha, who was also bought with Jewish gold, used the murder to attack and humiliate the Christians. The Jews were so confident that they dared insult even Great Britain and threatened its representative in Basra.

48  Ibid. 49  From French émeute, soulèvement (note 374).

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In a comprehensive report which Manesty sent to his superiors in Bombay he expressed his own feelings and those of the other Christians in Basra in the wake of the Jewish demonstrations:50 The night of the 20 [26] March was devoted by the Jews in the most scandalous manner to tumultuous joy and to the abuse, in terms of the most gross indecency of the blessed religion of our Savior, of the British nation, the British flag, the resident, and the Christians in general. Confiding in their influence with the muassaleem, and in the effect on his mind of their promises to him of a large pecuniary bribe, the Jews did not hesitate, openly, to assert that the blood of Risha should not be satisfy them, that blood of many Christians should expiate his guilt, and that in case the resident dared further to interfere in the affair, or again visit the government house, they would personally insult him there, and subsequently pull down the flag staff of the Honorable Company’s Factory. The Christians accused the Jews of using their power and influence to have Christians arrested and to have their domestic servants, whether Christian, Muslim, Turk, or Arab, interrogated. They beat these servants, tortured them, and offered them large bribes in order to make them falsely testify against their masters and implicate them in the Jew’s murder. And as if this was not enough, “they attacked the Christians, beat them and mishandled them in various ways, including an old and venerable merchant, who was wounded and whose beard was nearly torn off.”51 The demonstrations by the Jews were perceived by the Christians as worse than all the troubles that they had had in Basra since the beginning of the 1770s, including famine, epidemics and infectious diseases, the violence of the Persians during their occupation of the city, and of the surrounding tribes when they invaded the city in 1787, and their sufferings during the bloody rebellion of the mutasallim Mustafa Agha in 1788. Christian fear of the Jews was so great that they decided that they would leave the city, even if they had to move far away, if the Turkish authorities did not ensure their safety. Their decision was based on their belief that not only was the murder not committed by one of them, but that in fact it was the Jews themselves who planned and executed it in order to defame the Christians, to oppress them and to take control of the city’s trade, as Manesty wrote: 50  Manesty’s letter of 5 July 1791. 51  The memorandum.

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Having reason to believe, from variety of concurring circumstances, that the murder in question had been committed by a certain Jew on whom the deceased had a considerable pecuniary demanded, that Coja Abdulla and many others of the principal Jews of Bussora were well acquainted with the fact, and that they were labouring to criminate and scandalize the Christians, in order to conceal the truth, and to prevent their tribe from incurring the odium of committing murder, and in order, by disgracing the Christians to prosecute a plan of commercial monopoly….52

Christian Attempts to Refute the Libel Foiled

Manesty’s conviction that the Jews invented a libel against the Christians increased his determination to take it upon himself to protect his community and take steps to stop the Jews. He was especially worried lest pressure from the Jews would prevent the mutasallim from keeping his promise of a fair trial for Risha; that he would “prefer profit to justice” and sentence him to death in a staged trial. Since he, like the other Christians in Basra believed in Risha’s innocence, he decided to do two things: try to find the true killer, and pressure the mutasallim into holding a public trial for the man under his protection, as required by the capitulation laws and the firman he was granted as Britain’s consular representative. Because of the continuing demonstrations and attacks by the Jews Manesty went to the saray on the evening of March 27 with his firmans in hand in order to publicly demand that the mutasallim respect the rules which the Ottoman sultan had approved for dealing with murder suspects under British protection and convene his diwan to discuss Risha’s trial. Muhammad Agha’s attempts to convince Manesty to withdraw this demand served only to increase the resident’s fear for Risha’s fate and forced him to take the most extreme step available to him: He threatened to close the Company’s agency and to leave the city. Manesty, the author of this report, states that the 52  Manesty, letter of 5 July 1791. In a letter which the French consul in Baghdad sent to his government he writes: “We believe that this uprising of the Jews would not have occurred had it not relied on a secret base. It seems that they [the Jews] created this uprising using as an excuse a murder committed by the Christians, since it is reasonable to suppose that the murder of a lowly Jew, even if indeed committed by a Christian, would not have resulted in such riots and uprisings against anyone called a Christian. Therefore we believe that it was the Jews themselves who caused this Jew, who was old and had died a natural death, to the state mentioned at the beginning of the ‘memorandum’ [the mutilation of the body], so that they could publicly demonstrate the superiority which they have been enjoying in Basra for a long time.”

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mutasallim was surprised at his reaction and at his obvious lack of trust in his promise. The mutasallim “promised obedience to the Firmans of the Sultan his master and assured the Resident that he would give the necessary directions for the assembly on an early day of a Deuan for the purpose of proceeding to the trial of Risha.” This was the first time since the beginning of the affair that the governor showed less than complete support for the Jews. Manesty’s threat appears to have impressed both the Turkish officials and the Jewish leaders so much that the results in favor of the Christians went far beyond the promise of a fair trial for Risha. The threat was enough to induce a calmer atmosphere and induced the mutasallim and the Jewish leaders to make peace with the Christians. The Jewish sense of victory lessened and they stopped their demonstrations and attacks on Christians. The process of reconciliation continued on the night of March 29, at a meeting at the government house of the major actors in this affair, the governor and the leaders of the Jewish and Christian communities. At the meeting Manesty complained about the way the Jews behaved toward the Christians during their demonstrations and reminded both Choja Abdulla and Choja Ezekiel ibn Ibrahim, the leaders of the Jewish community, of the aid which the British representative in Basra gave them in times of trouble because they were under British protection, that they had been exempted from paying fines and their families had been spared suffering. He asked them and the mutasallim to do what they could to restore calm, to prevent the Jews of Basra from carrying out their threats to attack the Christians and to make them treat Britain with respect. The Jewish leaders at the meeting denied Manesty’s allegations that members of their community had attacked Christians or insulted Britain and expressed their respect for that country and for its flag and its representative.53 However, the climate of reconciliation at the meeting between the Jewish and Christian leaders on the night of March 29 did not last long. Tensions rose once again about convening the diwan. This was the main bone of contention between the leaders of the Jewish and Christian communities at a meeting held in the government house on the morning of March 31, because the diwan was perceived as the body that would determine victory or defeat for either side. Manesty was certain that the Jews did not have enough evidence in their possession to convict the Christian defendant under his protection and ­therefore 53  Manesty, letter of 5 July 1791. Manesty describes the response of the Jewish leaders to what he said as follows: “they had the impudence to deny the scandalous behavior of the Jews, to which the resident had alluded, although it was well known to all the inhabitants of Bussora.”

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demanded a public meeting of the diwan that would exonerate the accused and demonstrate to everyone that the Jews had libeled the Christians. For the same reasons the Jews insisted that the diwan not be convened and that instead the mutasallim should try the man himself, since they believed that he would convict him and so would confirm the guilt of the Christians. The mutasallim gave in to Jewish pressure and did not keep his promise to Manesty to convene the diwan. This had the effect of reigniting the confrontation between the two parties: The resident accused the Jews of rebelling against the laws of Turkey and of flouting the governor’s authority while the Jewish leaders accused Manesty of protecting a murderer and of blocking justice for the victim.54 The argument between the Jewish leaders and the resident at this meeting became so heated that Choja Abdulla and Choja Ezekiel announced then and there that they and their families renounced British protection. Manesty took this as an attack on British honor and once again threatened to close the Company’s agency in Basra and leave, whereupon the mutasallim was forced to change his decision once again and to convene the diwan immediately. The diwan held two consecutive sessions, on March 31 and April 1. Present were the qadi, the mufti, the mutasallim, a representative of the murdered Jew’s family and the heads of the Jewish and Christian communities in Basra.55 But the Jews, who, as noted above, did not want the diwan to convene, announced that they waived their demand to try Risha for the murder of Shalom and demanded that the case be judged by the Pasha. The Jews apparently believed that their influence over Suleiman Pasha was such that he would certainly rule in their favor. The Jews thus succeeded in foiling Manesty’s attempt to have Risha acquitted and so rid the Christians of the accusation of having murdered a Jew. It still remained to determine the fate of the Christian defendant held by the Turkish authorities. The fact that the Jews had waived their demand for a trial now gave them cause to insist that Risha remain in prison until the wali gave his decision on the case. Manesty now focused on this issue, after he had lost the battle for Risha’s acquittal. He demanded that the diwan order Risha’s immediate release on the ground that according to the firmans in his possession the local authorities did not have permission to imprison a person under British protection. The diwan accepted this argument but the mutasallim refused to release him, arguing that he had to remain in custody in order to prevent him from 54  Manesty, 5 July 1791; IOR, G/29/22, p. 635, letter from the resident to the Pasha, 2 Apr. 1791. This latter was sent on 5 April, as can be deduced from its contents and from Manesty’s letter. 55  Ibid.

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Figure 3.2 Saray (government house) in Basra. Max F. Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf durch den Haurän, die Syrische Wüste und Mesopotamien. vol. 2, Berlin 1899–1900.

e­ scaping. The resident was unable to convince Muhammad Agha to change his decision and free Risha, apparently due to Jewish pressure.56

Escalating Confrontation between Jews and Christians

Now that every possible avenue to end the affair of the murdered Jew at the local level had been exhausted, the case was transferred to the wali Suleiman Pasha. Both parties to the conflict used their contacts in Baghdad: The Basra Jews were assisted by the Jewish community in Baghdad and the influence it had at the Pasha’s court while the Christians, led by Manesty, were helped by the British agent Choja Marcar Aviat and the French consul Jean-Baptiste Rousseau. The Jews of Basra, as noted, took this step in order to foil the efforts of the British resident and head of the Christian community to clear the Christians of the charges of having murdered the Jew. However, Manesty appears to have sent the Pasha his own version concerning the murder by means of his agent in 56  Manesty’s letter, 2 Apr. 1791.

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Baghdad57 already on March 25, before the Jews began their demonstrations; and on April 5, after his efforts to free Risha had failed, he sent letters to the wali and the kahiya (the wali’s deputy) in which he described the deliberations of the diwan, expressed his opinion on the Jews’ and the mutasallim’s behavior and announced his intention to come to the Pasha’s court in order to demand justice and reparations for the attacks on him, Britain, and the Christians, before closing the Company’s agency in Basra and leaving.58 But Manesty’s letters to Suleiman Pasha did not remain without response. The Jews of Basra used their good relations with the Pasha’s court, bolstered by gifts, in order to convey their own version of events to Suleiman. We know this version from the wali’s response to the resident.59 In his letter Suleiman wrote that the Jews of Basra sent him letters in which they accused the Christian Risha of having murdered the Jew Shalom: “asserting that the testimony of the Hamal (porter) is true in every respect, and that the dead body had been seen on the Hamal’s back.” He added that the Jews complained that they had been prevented from getting justice, and that they “profess a desire to procure justice only, and deny any inclination to cause the punishment of an innocent person.” Faced with the parties’ contradictory versions the wali decided not to take sides and instead sent one of his confidants, Ahmad Agha, “a proper and well qualified person” to conduct an independent investigation and bring the affair to a fair end. In view of this, the wali urged the resident to defer his trip to Baghdad.60 The mutasallim and the Jewish leaders were unaware of the balanced content of Suleiman’s letter and his decision to send a representative to Basra when Manesty informed them on April 6 of his intention to go to the wali’s court in Baghdad and demand justice. The governor of Basra and his assistants apparently feared that the resident would convince the Pasha to remove them from office and therefore did everything they could to convince him not to go. As Manesty himself wrote, “The determination of the resident to proceed to Bagdat and to demand justice from the Pacha personally and publicly in his court was immediately productive of beneficial effects. It intimidated the 57  Manesty’s letter, 5 July 1791. 58  Manesty’s letter, 2 Apr. 1791. 59   I OR, G/29/22, pp. 636b–37, letter from Suleiman, Pasha of Baghdad to Manesty, received on 22 Apr. 1791. The letter appears in English translation as part of the correspondence which Manesty sent to the management of the British East India Company in Bombay on 5 July. See also Rousseau’s letter, 10 June 1791. 60  Ibid; the memorandum.

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Mussaleem and the subordinate officers of the Turkish Government, and it humbled the Jews.”61 This was the opportunity for which Manesty waited. He exploited the eroded confidence of the governor and his helpers to extract a promise from them to release Risha and to force the leaders of the Jews, including Choja Abdulla and Choja Ezekiel, to come to the Company’s offices and publicly apologize for their actions, in return for his agreement to postpone his journey to Baghdad. Manesty wrote about this in a letter he sent Suleiman Pasha on April 8, accompanied by suitable gifts, and added with satisfaction: I am now to inform Your Excellency that the Jews having this morning at the factory in the presence of the principal officers of Your Excellency’s government, and of the Jons of Bussora and in the most public manner, made me the most ample apologies for their late conduct, acknowledged the impropriety and infancy of that conduct and solicited my pardon and forgiveness, I have listened to them in favorable manner, and postponed my intended journey to Bagdat.62 With this outcome, together with the acceptance of his demand to give Risha a respectable acquittal, Manesty believed that his and the Company’s reputation had been restored among the residents of Basra, who were now convinced that “insults could not be offered to either with impunity.”63 The arrival in Basra on May 8 of Suleiman Pasha’s envoy Ahmad Agha further convinced Manesty that his efforts to remove the blood libel against the Christians were indeed successful. However, it turned out that the Basra Christian community’s leader’s joy was premature. His assumption that the Jews had given up their demand to punish the Christians proved groundless. In fact, the Jews of Basra rejected the mutasallim’s decision to release Risha and to remove from the Christians the accusation of murdering their co-religionist. They tried to convince Suleiman Pasha to overturn this decision, as we learn from a letter which the Jewish 61  Manesty’s letter of 5 July 1791. 62  I OR, G/29/22, p. 636. Suleiman Pasha replied to Manesty through the kahiya that he would “in a few days” send Ahmad Agha, whom he had entrusted “to administer justice to all parties,” and that if the matter could not be brought to a just and objective resolution on the spot he would deal with the matter himself after he returned from a military mission in the north which he had to undertake on the sultan’s orders (IOR, G/29/22, p. 637, a letter from the kahiya to Manesty, received on 6 May 1791). 63  Manesty’s letter, 5 July 1791.

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c­ ommunity’s president Choja Abdulla sent to the kahiya, in which he accused the mutasallim of being biased in favor of the Christians and viciously attacked the resident for his behavior in the affair. This letter reached the Pasha, who passed it on to the French consul in Baghdad, in response to Rousseau’s complaints about the deeds of the Jews in Basra. A copy of the letter came into the hands of the resident, who was furious.64 Manesty, who had been certain that the Jews had become reconciled to the result, having promised “future good behavior,” and would cease accusing the Christians of having murdered the Jew, considered Choja Abdulla’s refusal to accept the mutasallim’s compliance with the Christians’ demands an act of fraud. According to Manesty, Choja Abdulla “had the meanness and insolence, in consequence of the resident having claimed from the Mussaleem in favor of Risha the benefit of a fair and equitable trial, to address a letter to the Kia replete with infamous falsities and containing sentiments and expressions regarding the resident, of the most unpardonable nature” after the Basra Jews’ plan to libel the Christians and take control of the city’s commerce had failed.65 In response, Manesty instructed his employees to refuse Choja Abdulla and all the Jews entrance to the Company’s offices and once again wrote to the Pasha and the kahiya that he now would no longer be satisfied with Risha’s acquittal but also insisted that the Jews of Basra be punished for their attacks on the Christian faith, the British flag, and the resident’s honor. Manesty refused to change his position even after Ahmad Agha, the wali’s emissary to Basra, convened the diwan on May 23 in order to acquit Risha from the charge of having murdered Shalom the Jew and confirmed this decision with the qadi’s signature. The judges in their ruling explained that they had reached this verdict because under Turkish law one witness, in this case the porter, was not enough to convict a man of murder, and also because the victim’s family waived its right to sue the defendant. After Suleiman Pasha left Baghdad in order to quell a rebellion in the north no more actions were taken with respect to the affair at the national level and the Christians transferred their endeavors to the international arena.

64  Ibid. Manesty does not provide the complete text of Choja Abdulla’s letter to the kahiya but only a general statement of its contents. Ahmad the kahiya was the faithful servant of Suleiman Pasha and his second-in-command. He was appointed to the post in 1785 and the job of governing the wilaya fell mainly on his shoulders, due to Suleiman’s advanced age. He was an educated, noble, and physically impressive man (Longrigg, Four Centuries, 203, 218). 65  Ibid.

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Christians Turn to Europe and India for Help

The interruption which was forced on both parties by the Pasha’s absence from Baghdad was used by the Christians, especially the British resident in Basra, the French consul in Baghdad, and the Christian missionaries to work in Europe and India towards convincing England and France, the two most influential powers in the region, to insist that the Sublime Porte in Istanbul instruct the wali to punish the Jews of Basra and their leaders. The first known step to have been taken in this direction was a “Memorandum on an Uprising in Basra by the Jews against the Christians,” probably composed in Italian by a missionary and sent to his friends in Europe on May 10, 1791.66 The author of this memorandum attacked the Jews of Basra for having dared to libel the city’s Christians, whom they accused of having murdered a poor old Jew in order to sacrifice him in their churches on Easter, while in fact the Jew had died a natural death and it was the Jews who had mutilated his body in order to demonstrate their superiority in public. The author of the “memorandum” added that the Jews were so audacious as to buy the support of the Turkish governor and judges with money and to take the law into their own hands. They arrested Christians and interrogated them most cruelly, offering them large bribes so that they testify against their employers on the matter of the murder of the Jew. And as if that was not enough, the author continued, crowds of Jews in Basra, men and women, went out and attacked the Christians, beat them, molested them, insulted and humiliated them, insulted their saints, and nearly succeeded in bringing about the hanging of a well-known Christian in the city based on doubtful evidence and without a trial. The Jews of Basra also dared attack and insult the representative of Great Britain for having defended the accused Christian who was under his 66  The memorandum. We do not possess the original. Z.B. Rousseau, the French consul in Baghdad, sent the French translation to his superior in France. At the beginning of the memorandum the author notes that it was “written in Italian in Baghdad by a certain man, to send it to his friends in Europe”. We know that the French consul in Baghdad was involved in the defense of the missionaries under his protection in Basra after they had been summoned for questioning in the case of the murdered Jew. It thus seems, taking this fact into account as well as the letter’s contents, that it was composed by a missionary. We know of a religious French legation in Basra beginning in 1638, when a “Latin Bishop of Babylon” was appointed. In about 1740 a Carmelite priest was appointed as French consul in Baghdad and the Latin Bishop of Babylon. A French residency was established in Basra in 1755 but by 1765 the French legate no longer engaged in commercial activity. French commerce with Basra ceased almost entirely in the last quarter of the eighteenth century (Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 54).

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protection. Because of these deeds of the Jews the Christians in Basra were struck with fear and prepared to leave the city. This enraged the author, who had been in the habit of seeing the Jews humiliated and subservient to the Christians in Europe. He expressed his complaint in a way that was intended to incite his fellow Christians against the Jews: It is very unusual to see the Jewish nation—the lowliest, the most anathematized, and the most cowardly—proud, audacious, rebelling and marching in groups through the city streets, sometimes at night with burning torches, hitting and attacking Christians that it encountered. By its treacherous hostility to the solid truth it thunders its unclean cries, curses the name of the crucified Jesus, the cross and the Holy Virgin…. Oh what an insult to the Christian name. Oh what unexpected Jewish insolence. This is a period that will be remembered.67 After he accused the Jews of a blood libel and of rebelling against the Christians, of attacking them, their faith, and their saints with impunity, without the Turkish authorities taking any steps to protect them (because they had been bribed), the “memorandum” went on to praise the benevolent way in which Islam treats Christianity and Christians. As an example of the latter, he mentions the wali Suleiman’s sympathetic attitude, “since as a very pious Muslim his faith shows tolerance towards those who greatly respect Jesus and his virgin mother.” According to the author, the Pasha was quite incensed at the Jews’ deeds and declared that if it shall turn out “that the Jews had offended Jesus and Mary he would impose the death penalty according to Turkish law on those whom he would be convinced did so.” In order to complete his demonization of the Jews for the Christians in Europe who were the intended readers of the “memorandum,” the author finds cause to raise a blood libel against the Jews of Baghdad specifically, by writing about the hostility which the Turkish authorities and the Muslim population there felt towards the Jews after a Turkish girl child had been found strangled to death inside the well of a local Jew. But, the author ends with obvious disappointment: despite these deeds the Jews in their great insolence managed to greatly reduce the Pasha’s anger at them.68 The great anger and the incitement in the “memorandum” reflect the position of the European Christians in Iraq, especially that of the missionaries, and

67  Ibid. 68  Ibid.

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testify to the hostility between Jews and Christians in Basra, which provided the motivation for the events described above. This attitude towards the Jews is also reflected in the position taken by the French consul, the European representative with the highest diplomatic standing in Iraq. He decided to translate the “memorandum” into French and to send it to his superior, the French Minister of the Navy.69 Jean-Baptiste Rousseau himself also interceded with Suleiman Pasha on behalf of the Christians in Basra in order to prevent the interrogation of missionaries under the protection of France. He accepted the claims that appeared in the “memorandum” and added that the demonstrations of the Jews were “an unusual rebellion and uprising.” The French consul also condemned Suleiman Pasha for “his negligent behavior in the affair” and asked the French minister to become aware of the difficult situation of Basra’s Christians.70 As far as we know the calls which Christians in Iraq sent to Christian bodies and governments in Europe to come to the aid of their brethren in Basra did not produce any tangible results. Europe in the period of instability following the French Revolution was apparently not keen on protecting the Christian faith, its saints, and its congregations at the far eastern ends of the Ottoman Empire. More to the point were the British resident’s appeals to his superiors in Bombay and to the British ambassador in Istanbul, who maintained direct contact with Suleiman Pasha and with the court of the Ottoman sultan. However, the British East India Company forbade its representatives in Basra to become involved in local politics and instructed them to restrict their activities to commerce only. Manesty was therefore forced to use all his skills to convince his superiors in Bombay to approve of what he did in this affair until the Pasha left Baghdad and also to agree to help him in his endeavors to convince the wali to punish the Jews of Basra. 69   A N, BI 177, pp. 207–9, letter from Rousseau to De Tleurieu, 10 June 1791. Rousseau served first as French consul in Basra and later moved to Baghdad. 70  Ibid. Rousseau’s hostility towards the Jews can also be seen in the following passage from his book on Baghdad that he published after he had left his post there (Rousseau, Description, 12–13): “Pour ce qui est des Juifs de Bagdad, confinés dans un quartier reculé de la ville, haïs et insultés à tout moment par les Turcs, ils sont, comme dans tous les lieux ou ils vivent dans un état de dégradation et d’oppression politique, hypocrites, intrigants, fourbes, misérables et capables de toutes sortes de chicanes et de bassesses, quand il s’agit de leur intérêt. Néanmoins, malgré leur état d’abjection, ils ne laissent pas d’être assez adroits pour s’insinuer au sérail, à la douane et dans les maisons des grands, où ils trouvent toujours des gens qui ont besoin de leur souplesse et de leurs friponneries, pour parvenir plus promptement au but qu’ils se proposent.”

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All this is explained in a lengthy letter sent by Manesty on July 5 to the “Secret Committee of the Court of Directors for Affairs of the United Companies of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies,” accompanied by copies of his correspondence with the Pasha and the kahiya in English translation.71 Manesty in his letter first tried to explain to the Company’s directors in Bombay how he had become involved in a murder case and to resolve the contradiction between his position as a British consular representative committed to defending those under his protection, including the Jewish leaders, and his position as leader of the Christian community in Basra, which had a conflict with the city’s Jewish community. Manesty hid his family connections with the local Christians and explained his involvement in the murder case as due to his duty to defend a person under his protection whose life was in danger and would have been executed on false charges without a trial, had he not intervened on his behalf. In order to explain his actions against the Jewish leaders Choja Abdulla and Choja Ezekiel he accused the latter of having falsely accused a Christian under his protection of murder, refusing to cooperate with him in order together to find the real killer, and attacking the Company’s agency, Britain and its representative in Basra. Manesty added that such people did not deserve help but rather should have been punished severely for their behavior. As further support for his argument, Manesty mentioned in his letter that already in 1788 he was less than satisfied with Choja Abdulla’s and Choja Ezekiel’s behavior as the Company’s money changers and replaced them with others, but decided to allow them and their families to remain under British protection, in view of their previous services to Britain and in the hope that they would prove useful again in the future. Manesty added that despite his favorable treatment of these men their behavior towards him was arrogant, despotic, and underhanded. After having explained why he had intervened in favor of the Christians Manesty tried to fend off another potential accusation against him, namely that as resident he was biased and preferred some of those under his protection to others because of their faith. He therefore provided numerous pieces of “evidence” for his honesty, fairness and objectivity in the way he dealt with the affair and stressed the great efforts which he ostensibly made to resolve 71   I OR, G/29/22, pp. 663–66, Manesty’s letter, 5 July 1791, with appendices nos. 1–8 containing letters from the resident to the Pasha and kahiya of 2 and 8 April, and letters from the Pasha and kahiya to the resident received on 22 Apr. and 6 May 1791. This correspondence was intended to be sent to Bombay as early as 24 June, but halted due to the need to translate into English the letters written in Turkish. All presented below is based on Manesty’s letter of 5 July.

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the issue without a confrontation with the Jews. He stressed his willingness to cooperate in finding the murderer and bringing him to justice and mentions his own demand that the killer be given the death penalty if found guilty in a fair trial. However, despite his great effort to present himself as having acted faultlessly in the affair, he was unable to hide his intense anger at the Jews and their leaders, nor his attacks on them as he defended his fellow Christian. The British authorities in Bombay would certainly not have found it difficult to see from his letter how hostile Manesty was towards the Jewish leaders even before the affair of the murdered Jew. He did everything in his power to prevent his superiors from becoming aware of the Jews’ complaints about him and tried his best to present them and their leaders not only as having plotted the execution of an innocent Christian in order to cover up a crime which they had themselves committed and as having wanted to attack the Christians and take control of the city’s commerce, but also as the enemies of Britain and its legation in Basra: the Company agency, the British flag, and the resident. Manesty tried to arouse the anger of the British authorities in Bombay at the Jews of Basra by presenting the latter as a threat to the commercial interests of the British East India Company and to the British presence in Basra. After having explained why he acted against the Jews in Basra, Manesty next had to find an explanation that would satisfy his superiors in Bombay for his intervention in the province’s politics and for involving the wali. For this purpose he presented his appeal to Suleiman Pasha as a necessary last resort after all his other efforts to resolve the issue through the local instances had failed, because the latter were controlled by the Jews. To prove this point Manesty provided a detailed account of the course of events following the discovery and arrest of the person accused of the murder. In his description the mutasallim and his men are presented as subservient to the Jews, whose instructions they followed in the hope of obtaining a large bribe. Unlike the French consul and the missionaries, Manesty was in no need to accuse the Jews of having taken the law into their own hands, that they had arrested, beaten and tortured Christians and Muslims and then offered them bribes in order to extract from them confessions that would implicate Christians in the murder of the Jew. According to Manesty the mutasallim was corrupt and deceitful, treated him unfairly and had no respect for justice, Turkish law, or the firmans that the Ottoman sultan had granted the British representative. In order to prove his claims concerning the mutasallim’s evil character Manesty mentioned numerous instances in which the former supposedly failed to fulfill his promises and did not adhere to agreements made with the latter, who therefore was left no choice but to appeal to the wali. Manesty

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boasted to his superiors that his threat to travel to the wali’s court caused the mutasallim to accede to his demands to humiliate the Jews and so prevented any harm to the Company’s agency and to Britain. However, Manesty’s presentation of the affair hid the adverse effects of his actions from the British government in Bombay, namely the confrontation with the mutasallim and the Jews’ increased hostility towards the resident. These facts, as well as the Jews’ harsh accusations against Manesty and their denial of his claim that they had intended to attack him, the Company agency, or Britain, were noted in several letters written by Suleiman Pasha and Choja Abdulla, whose contents Manesty was forced to reveal to the British authorities in Bombay. Manesty tried to use these letters as evidence for his claim that the Jews had cheated him and so as justification for his appeal to Bombay to help him apply pressure on the wali to severely punish the Jews of Basra and their leaders, and to allow him to take large sums out of the meager profits of the Company’s agency in Basra in order to cover the considerable costs he had incurred in his lobbying activities at Suleiman Pasha’s court. On August 20 Manesty also sent Robert Ainslie, the British ambassador in Istanbul, a letter in which he described the affair and asked for assistance.72 We see that in the resident’s report to the British authorities in Bombay he focused on the harm done to British interests and the threats to British activities in Iraq and to its economic interests in the region if the Jews were to remain unpunished and the honor of Britain and the Company agency undefended. This is very different from the approach taken by the French consul in his appeal to his government, which was based on the religious hostility that Christians felt towards the Jews, and which accused the Jews of attacking the Christians, their faith, and their saints. In this way Manesty found an explanation which he hoped would satisfy his superiors in Bombay concerning his involvement in a conflict that had in fact nothing to do with the Company or Britain but rather with Jewish-Christians relations in Basra.

The British Envoy Visits the Pasha

In December, Suleiman Pasha returned from his campaign to put down rebellions in the north of the country and Manesty renewed his efforts to convince the wali to agree to punish the Jews of Basra. To achieve his goal he held “friendly 72   I OR, G/29/22, p. 680, letter from Manesty to Ainslie, 7 Feb. 1792. Robert Ainslie was Britain’s ambassador in Istanbul in the years 1772–1793 and had great influence at the court of Sultan Selim III (1789–1807).

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and temperate negotiation” by correspondence with the Pasha in which he demanded that three of the Jews’ senior leaders be jailed and expelled—the president Choja Abdulla ibn Eusuf, Choja Sasoon ibn Abd il-Nebee, and Choja Reuben ibn Salah—and that a heavy fine be imposed on the Jewish community as a whole. Following these negotiations the Pasha agreed to remove the mutasallim Muhammad Agha from office and to prevent Choja Abdulla (who was in Baghdad, probably in order to try to foil Manesty’s intentions) from returning to Basra.73 But Manesty was not satisfied with these punishments. He insisted that the wali give in to all his demands. Based on the advice of the Company’s Armenian agent in Baghdad, Choja Marcar he decided that there was no point in continuing his correspondence with Suleiman Pasha on this matter and that a “superior authority” was needed to force the Pasha to comply. Manesty then sent Harford Jones, an assistant agent of the Company in Basra, to the wali’s court in Baghdad where he was to try to convince the Pasha to agree to punish the Jews. In order to ensure the success of Jones’ mission the resident appealed to the British ambassador in Istanbul to use his influence with the Sublime Porte to obtain a special firman from the Ottoman sultan that would order Suleiman Pasha “to render speedy justice to the English, by severely punishing those who in the affair of the murdered Jew have dared to abuse the Christian religion and to insult the British flag, the Honorable Company and their representative.” Ainslie was also asked to add a “most forcible letter” of his own to the firman in which he would demand that the Pasha punish the offending Jews immediately. The ambassador was asked to send these documents to Baghdad with a speedy courier so that Jones would receive them in time to help him in his mission.74 Manesty informed his superiors of these steps and asked the governor of Bombay to send a letter to the Pasha similar to the one the ambassador was asked to send.75 Manesty completed his preparations for the mission at the end of February 1792, but his emissary had to postpone his trip to Baghdad because apparently the necessary documents from Istanbul and Bombay had not yet arrived. 73  Ibid. 74  Ibid. To his letter to Ainslie, Manesty attached a copy of his letter of 5 July 1791 to Bombay with its appendices. 75  IOR, G/29/22, p. 694, letter from Manesty to Jones of 29 Feb. 1792. Jones was attached as an agent at the Basra legation from November 1788. When Britain opened a consulate in Baghdad in 1798, Jones was appointed to be the first consul there (1798–1806). John Gordon Lorimer, The Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman, and Central Arabia. (Calcutta 1908–1915). Vol. 1 (1915). Historical Part 1B, 1289–90.

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Jones came to Baghdad at the end of May, accompanied by a large retinue of bodyguards, gifts, ample financial means, a letter of recommendation from Manesty to the Pasha and the kahiya,76 and a mission statement that defined his task and the degree of flexibility that he could show in his negotiations with Suleiman Pasha.77 Jones began his deliberations with the Pasha, the kahiya and their assistants with the help of the Company’s agent in Baghdad and the French consul, but without the firman and the letters from the ambassador in Istanbul and the governor of Bombay. He provided “proof” of attacks by Jews against Christians in Basra and against the resident, and demanded that the Jews be punished as requested by Manesty. But the Jews, with Choja Abdulla at their head, did not remain silent in the face of Jones’ activity and presented the Pasha with witnesses who testified to their innocence and demanded justice for their murdered co-religionist. They also pointed out contradictions in the testimonies of some of the witnesses whom Jones had brought with him from Basra to testify in the Pasha’s presence.78 This state of affairs made it impossible for Jones to obtain what he wanted from Suleiman Pasha and the negotiations dragged on until the beginning of September. The British delegate’s situation did not improve even after the courier from Istanbul arrived, because the desired firman was not issued. Furthermore, the letter from the British ambassador in Istanbul was formulated in such mild terms that it did more harm than good.79 Ainslie had decided not to appeal to the Sublime Porte because he was told that he had no chance of obtaining the firman demanded by Manesty, because the sultan’s court supported Suleiman Pasha. The British ambassador in Istanbul informed Manesty of this in a letter he sent him at the end of May 1792, giving the following reasons:

76  Ibid.; AN, CCC Tome 4 1792–1812, pp. 7–8, letter from Rousseau to De la Coste, 4 July 1792. According to Rousseau the board in Bombay sent Jones “to demand appropriate compensation for the damage and the uprising, threatening Basra with a siege if his mission did not produce positive results.” This report is not confirmed by any of Manesty’s or Jones’ documents. 77  Manesty to Jones, 29 Feb. 1792. 78  As noted above, we do not possess documents by Jews or those who operated on their behalf at the Pasha’s court; what we know comes from documents ascribed to the Pasha and the kahiya as provided by Manesty. IOR, G/29/22, p. 769, translation of a letter from the kahiya to the resident, received 27 Sept. 1792. 79   I OR, G/29/22, p. 794, letter from Manesty to Jones, 3 Oct. 1792.

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An agent who operated in the sultan’s court on behalf of the British embassy declared that he was against such a step. The sultan had issued a firman that abolished the special privileges of Ottoman citizens operating on behalf of foreign powers and restricted the rights of foreign citizens (see below). One of the Jewish leaders whom Manesty wanted to punish, Reuben ibn Salah, was a baratli under Austrian protection and therefore immune to punishment.80

In the absence of coercive pressure from Istanbul Jones hoped for effective results from a strongly worded letter from the governor of Bombay, Robert Abercromby, to Suleiman Pasha, who was requested to accede to Manesty’s demand that the Jews be punished for “the unheard of insults and indignities which have been offered to the British flag and to the person of our resident at Bussora by certain Jews there.” The governor threatened that in case his appeal and the ambassador’s and the resident’s requests were not met “that gentleman [Manesty] will be forced however reluctantly to strike the English flag and to remove the factory from Bussora, a circumstance that which cannot fail to damp the cordiality and good understanding so happily established for a great length of time between the Turkish and the British nations.”81 The governor’s letter was not couched in harsher terms than the threats which the resident passed on to Suleiman Pasha, but it proved effective. Suleiman Pasha’s close relations with the British, the help he had received from them when he had held the position of mutasallim of Basra and his desire to continue to enjoy the income from commerce with India, forced him to find a way to placate Abercromby and the British representative in Basra. However, Manesty had mentioned by name those Jews whom he wanted punished and thus put the Pasha in the untenable position of having to hurt the very people who saw to it that he had the income needed to finance his rule and who helped him maintain his authority in Basra. In order to extricate himself from this quandary and both please the British and not harm his Jewish helpers the Pasha declared himself willing to meet some of Manesty’s demands. In a letter of reply to Abercromby, Suleiman agreed to punish some of the Jews despite the fact that Jones could not “prove anything against them demanding serious punishment” and despite the fact that the Jews had lost one of their 80  F O, 261–7, pp. 208–11, letter from Ainslie to Manesty of 31 May 1792. A baratli was a man bearing a document (barat) from the Sublime Porte that granted him various privileges, including an exemption from being tried before Ottoman courts. 81  I OR, G/29/22, p. 788, letter from the Governor of Bombay to Suleiman Pasha (no date).

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c­ ongregation and that there was no evidence that they were guilty of attacking the resident. However, he refused to impose a fine on the Jews of Basra.82 In this spirit the Pasha and Jones prepared an agreement to end the affair, in which the following punishments were imposed on the Jews of Basra: 1.

Abdulla the Jew would not be permitted to return to Basra and would remain in Baghdad. 2. Basra’s sarraf bashi, the Jew Sasoon, would be transferred to Baghdad for a few days. 3. The Jew Reuben will be banished from Baghdad to Aleppo. 4. A number of specific Jews in Basra would be punished in accordance with their crimes and put in prison. 5. The sum of one-thousand piasters which Manesty had given to Ahmad Agha [the Pasha’s emissary to Basra] will be taken from the Jews and returned to him.83 With this agreement the wali tried to meet Manesty’s demands in a way that did not involve imposing a harsh punishment on the Jews. Indeed, the punishments meted out to the three Jewish leaders mentioned above were more on paper than real: Choja Abdulla had left Basra in any case and had become Suleiman’s financial advisor and his close counselor; the punishment of Choja Sasoon, who had been appointed as Basra’s sarraf bashi, was minimal; and Choja Reuben had come from Aleppo and returned to his city and his business. Jones clearly realized this and when the kahiya showed him the agreement he refused to accept it because it satisfied neither him nor Manesty, since it did not explicitly say that a fine would be imposed on the Jews of Basra. Jones attempted to convince the Pasha and the kahiya to reformulate the agreement in accordance with Manesty’s demands,84 but they refused, arguing that “the imposition of fines tends to destroy the protection which all governments ought to afford persons committed to their care.”85 In his numerous writings and in the lengthy reports he sent to the Company’s headquarters, Manesty does not explain why he was so insistent in his demand that the Jews be fined and was willing to risk an acrimonious confrontation with the wali over this issue instead of being satisfied with the Pasha’s ­willingness 82   I OR, G/29/22, p. 742, letter from Suleiman Pasha to Abercromby (no date). 83  Note 78. These three Jews were the same people Manesty wanted to punish. 84  I OR, G/29/22, pp. 786–787b, letter from Jones to Manesty, 2 Oct. 1792. See also Longrigg, Four Centuries, 218. According to Manesty, Choja Reuben served as “Imperial Biratlee of Aleppo” in Basra. 85   I OR, G/29/22, p. 742, letter from Suleiman Pasha to Abercromby (no date).

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to punish certain Jews with exile, imprisonment, and flogging. Nor is the reason revealed in the long report, quoted above, which Jones sent to Manesty about his mission and his talks with the Pasha and the kahiya. In contrast, Suleiman in his letters to the governor of Bombay and to the Sublime Porte emphasizes the fact that he did not find anything amiss in the way the Jews of Basra had reacted to the murder of one of their fellows and to the acquittal of the Christian murderer who was an Ottoman subject, and that he only agreed to impose the punishments in order to appease the British and to maintain good relations with them. However, it appears that Manesty’s dispute with the Pasha was not motivated only by a desire to punish the Jews for ostensibly having assailed the Company and besmirched the honor of Britain, but that in fact he was mainly after the Jews’ money. A letter that the Pasha sent to the Sublime Porte (see below) makes it quite clear that the fine which the British resident insisted be imposed on the Jews was meant, among other things, to defray the heavy costs he incurred in connection with Risha’s trial, the gifts and Jones’ profligate trip to the Pasha’s court. These costs had apparently been financed by the Company agency and the Christians of Basra. The wali rejected this demand out of hand, calling it “exaction,” even after the pressure which the governor of Bombay, the British resident, and his envoy applied, because he did not want to risk the great contribution which the Jewish merchants in Basra made to the wilaya’s treasury. Jones’ mission was about to end without any concessions from the Pasha. Tension between the parties was at a peak when an envoy arrived from Istanbul bearing a firman from the Sultan restricting the rights of foreigners throughout the Ottoman Empire and abolishing the special privileges of Ottoman subjects in the employ of foreign powers. This provided the Pasha with an opportunity to extricate himself from the pressure applied by Jones, whom he informed of the new firman and demanded its immediate implementation in the British legation in Basra and the Company’s sub-agency in Baghdad.86 Jones asked Suleiman to postpone the firman’s implementation to give him time to receive instructions from Bombay, but his request met with a firm refusal. The British envoy then informed the wali at their farewell meeting that since he had no authority to decide on these matters he would let the Company’s management deal with them.87

86  Letter from Jones to Manesty, 2 Oct. 1792. For a translated version of the firman see IOR, G/29/22, pp. 791b–792. 87  Jones’ letter to Manesty 2 Oct. 1792. In it Jones provides a lengthy account of his farewell meeting with the Pasha and how the latter used the firman to frighten him and to avoid acceding to his request to change the agreement.

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This was the situation when Jones at the end of September returned to Basra, accompanied by Suleiman Pasha’s special representative and gifts from the Pasha and the kahiya for the resident.88 Manesty confirmed the results of Jones’ mission, including his refusal to accept the agreement proposed by the Pasha for punishing the Jews of Basra without imposition of a fine.89 Another attempt at convincing the Pasha to change the agreement also ended in failure.90 Manesty’s disappointment with the results of Jones’ mission concerning the punishment of Basra’s Jews was not enough to cause him to carry out his threat to close the Company’s agency and leave the city; however, the Pasha’s insistence on immediate implementation of the firman that restricted his rights and those of the people under his protection91 did have this effect. In October 1792, Manesty informed the mutasallim of Basra and the wali that he was closing the agency and leaving the city. The reason he gave was that the firman’s implementation made it impossible for the Company to continue to operate in Basra.92 88   I OR, G/29/22, p. 769, translation of letters from the Pasha and the kahiya to the resident, received on 27 Sept. 1792. 89  I OR, G/29/22, p. 794, letter from Manesty to Jones, 3 Oct. 1792. 90  I OR, G/29/22, pp. 790b–791, translation of letters from the resident to the Pasha and the kahiya (no date) and translation of the kahiya’s reply to the resident, received 31 Oct. 1792. 91  The firman (A) abolished the special privileges granted to native Christians who had been appointed as consuls and vice-consuls by foreign powers, stating that all Ottoman subjects are to have the same rights, and special privileges were hereby abolished; (B) forbade the subjects of foreign powers to possess land or houses; (C) declared that children of local women married to foreign Christians were Ottoman subjects (IOR, G/29/22, pp. 791–792). Manesty, who had married a local Armenian woman and had children from her was thus personally affected by this firman. 92  Ibid. Manesty wrote to Suleiman Pasha as follows: “Notwithstanding the infringement by Your Excellency as before observed of the article for the punishment of the Jews, I should still have continued to carry on without interruption business of my Honorable Employers at Bussora until the pleasure of the Honorable the President might be known, but the content of the aforementioned firmaun are of such a nature, as utterly to deter me from submitting to them without the express orders of my Honorable Superiors. Upon which account I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that I instantly determined not again to hoist the British colours, to suspend all business on account of my Honorable Employers and not to reside at their factory in Bussora; therefore on the 11th of this moon [October 1792] I repaired to the Government House and then made known to Your Excellency’s Mussaleem the determination aforementioned.” In his letter to the kahiya Manesty explains the dire harm which the firman did to British rights by forbidding the Company to acquire land and other assets and abolishing the rights of its local workers. In his reply the kahiya explains to the resident that the firman does not s­ pecifically

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Manesty left Basra for Kuwait, but the affair of the Jew’s murder was not yet laid to rest. Suleiman remained adamant in his refusal to accept Manesty condition for returning to Basra, namely that the city’s Jews be punished by fine. In a letter which the wali sent to the Sublime Porte and which was given at the end of May 1794 to Sir Robert Liston, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, he once again described the events of March 1791 and sharply criticized Manesty for using the claim that the Jews cursed the Christian faith and hurt him personally in order to attack the Jewish nation and demand that financial and corporal punishment be meted out to its leaders, despite the fact that nothing had been proven against them and a Christian, an Ottoman subject accused of having killed a Jew, remained unpunished. The Pasha added that he had agreed to punish the Jews not because they deserved it but only in order to preserve his good relations with the British, and still Manesty was not satisfied and demanded that a fine be imposed on the Jews, “a cruel action [that] was contrary to my natural character.” Suleiman Pasha described Manesty as “a man of juvenile age, and deficient in sound judgment, accustomed to behave ill to all the inhabitants of Basora and particularly the body of merchants, and who contrary to the practice of predecessors has always held a conduct that has been overbearing and tending to disrupt the good order of government.”93 This letter shows that the lengthy confrontation with Suleiman that Manesty initiated for the purpose of having the Jews punished only made things worse for him. Shutting down the Company’s agency in Basra and leaving the wilaya not only did nothing to make the Pasha adopt his position on his conflict with the Jews, but only served to increase the Pasha’s hostility. The latter took the side of the Jews completely, and defended it in his letter to the Sublime Porte. Furthermore, Suleiman also lodged a complaint about Manesty with the Grand Vezir, the Reis Efendi and the British ambassador in Istanbul, both of whom promised him that they would write the resident and demand that “he should in future refrain from any disagreeable proceedings, and on the contrary endeavor to obtain approbation.” Manesty, however, stubbornly continued to apply just to the English in Iraq but to representatives of all foreign powers throughout the Empire. While there are those who have argued that Manesty left Basra for Kuwait because of his dispute with the Jews, the documents quoted above prove that this was not the case. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 54–55; ‘Abdallah, Political Economy, 151; Lorimer, Gazetteer, Vol. 1 (1915), Historical Part 1B, p. 1289; Denis Wright. Samuel Manesty and his Unauthorised Embassy to the Court of Fath ‘Ali Shah.” Iran 24 (1986):153–60, 153. 93   F O, 15–78, pp. 131–32, translation of an undated letter from Suleiman Pasha to Reis Effendi from 23 May 1794. I wish to thank Prof. Eliezer Bashan for having drawn my attention to this letter as well as to Liston’s, below.

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insist that the Jews be fined. The enraged wali wrote “that the proposition [of Manesty] was inhumane; that not having the first time consented to such an action, not ever for my own advantage, how shall I now for your sake condemn them without reason to a pecuniary punishment?” He declared himself willing to cover some of Manesty’s expenses but not to fine the Jews. At the end of his letter Suleiman Pasha repeated his demand that Manesty and Jones be replaced. In view of the contents of the Pasha’s letter, little credence should be given to the resident’s claim that the wali had agreed to hand fourteen Basra Jews over to him for punishment, especially in light of the fact that the Pasha noted in his letter that he had rejected such a proposal that Manesty had made through Jones when the latter came to Baghdad again in the spring of 1794.94 Despite the Grand Vezir’s insistence, Liston had no desire to make the decision on Manesty’s removal. Claiming that he was not familiar enough with the details he passed the matter on to the British Foreign Minister Lord William Grenville.95 Suleiman Pasha’s unwavering stand proved detrimental to Manesty’s position. The Pasha also wrote to the governor of Bombay to complain about Manesty’s behavior and asked that he be replaced. The matter was referred to the Company’s board of directors in London, which in April 1795 ordered that Manesty and Jones be replaced, because they had renewed their demand to punish the Jews after the matter had already been settled. But Manesty, who was apparently aware that he was about to be dismissed, succeeded in coming to an arrangement with the Pasha before the news of the dismissal reached Baghdad and returned to Basra on September 4 1795.96 Manesty, the enemy of the Jews, came to a tragic end. He continued to serve as the Company’s resident in Basra at a time of diminishing commercial activity, when most of the city’s important merchants left. Eventually he lost his wealth and was fired in 1810, whereupon he left Basra with his Armenian wife and his children and arrived in London in May 1812, broken and penniless. Six weeks after his arrival he put an end to his own life, at the age of fifty-three.97 94  Ibid. 95  Ibid., pp. 129–30b. In his letter to Lord Grenville, Liston writes that the Sublime Porte was too weak to oppose Suleiman Pasha and that the Reis Effendi “adopted the language of the Pasha of Baghdad” and urged him to remove Manesty from office. 96  Lorimer, Gazetteer, Vol. 1 (1915), Historical Part 1B, 1289–90; Wright, “Samuel Manesty,” 153–55, 159. 97  Ibid.

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Conclusions From the preceding survey of the events associated with the murder of the Jew in Basra on the eve of Passover in the year 1791, we learn of the considerable economic and political clout possessed by the Jewish communities of Basra and Baghdad at the end of the eighteenth century. The blood libel of the Jews against the Christians of Basra was born of a struggle for control of the city’s international trade and the hostility felt by the Jewish leaders towards the British resident, who was active in the local Christian community and was himself a merchant with shipping interests. This was the first, and to our knowledge the only, time when a Jewish community dared accuse Christians of murdering a Jew for ritual purposes and fearlessly attacked them and their leader, a representative of Britain, the most influential foreign power in the region at the time. Every effort made by the Christians to convince the wali Suleiman Pasha, with the help of the British authorities in Bombay, the British ambassador in Istanbul, the French consul and the missionaries, to impose a harsh punishment on the Jews, failed. It thus appears that Jewish influence on the Mamluk authorities in Iraq at the end of the eighteenth century was greater than the Christian and British influence. The Jewish influence did not wane even after the events that took place in the wake of the Jew’s murder and the British involvement in protecting the ostensible murderer. The position of the Jews as responsible for the Mamluk treasury and as confidants of the Pasha did not change. Britain and France remained dominant in the region throughout the nineteenth century and the fact that their representatives did their best to help their rivals the Christians caused the Jews to refrain from appealing to these powers in times of political trouble for the next seventy years. Only in 1860 did the Jews of Iraq, with the encouragement of the missionaries operating in Baghdad, ask the British consul general to ask his government to intervene with the Ottoman authorities, local and central, in a conflict in which they were involved concerning control over the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel in Kifil, as will be described below.

Chapter 4

Struggle of Iraqi Jewry for Control of Prophet Ezekiel’s Tomb at Kifil (1860) Control over the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb and its adjacent courtyards was a major issue throughout the history of Iraqi Jewry in the Muslim period. The religious, political, and socioeconomic importance of such sites for the Jews of Iraq and the constant attempts by the local Muslims to take control over them made this such an important issue for the Jewish community in Iraq and for Iraqi Jews in the Holy Land and the dispersion, that students of the history of Iraqi Jewry in the Muslim period can judge the community’s political and socioeconomic situation at any given time by the measure of control that it had over them.1 The tomb of the prophet Ezekiel was one of the most important shrines on the itinerary of visitors and travelers to central and southern Iraq in the Muslim period. Nearly every such visitor who came to Kifil or passed by it mentioned the tomb in his writings and described the Jewish pilgrimage to the site. Because the tomb was important to Muslims as well, it was mentioned also by Arab chroniclers and geographers who described Iraq, and by scholars of Islam. Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century the tomb and its adjacent courtyards began to attract the attention of European archeologists who came to Iraq, in particular those with an interest in Muslim architecture.2 Many who mentioned the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb also devoted space in their writings to the question of the tomb’s identity and to whether the local Jews’ belief that this is where Ezekiel’s bones were buried is justified. In the absence of historical or archeological-architectural evidence they had to be satisfied with the local Jewish tradition to assuage their curiosity. They considered the presence of Jews in Kifil, their identification of the site as Ezekiel’s grave 1  Despite its great importance this subject has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. Prof. Noam Stillman published without comment three documents in English from the British Foreign Office archives that deal with the attempt to deprive the Jews of control of Ezekiel’s tomb in 1860; Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, 389–92. Dr. Abraham Ben-Yaacob’s extensive chapter on Jewish saints’ tombs in Iraq consists mostly of passages from books and journals that were copied or translated inaccurately; Abraham Ben-Yaacob, Kvarim Kdoshim be-Bavel (Tombs of saints in Babylon), 38–98. 2  These works will be mentioned below.

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and their absolute belief in its sanctity as proof that it was indeed the prophet’s tomb. Therefore these writers never doubted the Jews’ right to the tomb and its courtyards and rejected Muslim claims of ownership.3 In addition to discussing Iraqi Jewry’s struggles for control over the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards we shall attempt to determine, with the help of archival materials, accounts by travelers, visitors and scholars, and the testimonies of local residents, whether these views are historically valid and to follow the history of the tomb and the Jewish community of Kifil in the Muslim period.

Basis for the Jewish Claim of Ownership over Ezekiel’s Tomb at Kifil From Hilla it is Four miles to the Tower of Babel … Thence it is three parasangs to the Synagogue of Ezekiel, the prophet of blessed memory, which is by the River Euphrates. It is fronted by sixty turrets, and between each turret there is a minor Synagogue, and in the court of the Synagogue is the ark, and at the back of the Synagogue is the sepulchre of Ezekiel. It is surmounted by a large cupola, and it is a very handsome structure. It was built of old by King Jeconiah, the king of Judah, and the 35,000 Jews who came with him, when Evil-merodach brought him forth out of prison … This place is held sacred by Israel as a lesser sanctuary unto this day, and people come from a distance to pray there from the time of the New Year until the Day of Atonement. The Israelites have great rejoicing on these occasions. Thither also come the Head of the Captivity, and the Heads of the Academies from Baghdad … Distinguished Mohammedans also come hither to pray, so great is their love for Ezekiel the Prophet; and they call it Bar (Dar) Melicha (the Dwelling of Beauty).4

3  See, for example, William K. Loftus, Travels and Researches in Chaldea and Susiana (London 1857), 35. Loftus writes that “There is no reason to believe that the tradition is unworthy of credence, which assigns to Keffil the honour of possessing the bones of the prophet Ezekiel. The continued residence of the Jews in the land where their forefathers were consigned in exile, and the respect with which the tomb has for so many centuries regarded, not only by the Jews themselves, but by the Mohammedans, ought to be considered a sufficient guarantee for the correctness of the tradition.” 4  According to the English translation from the Hebrew (Marcus Nathan Adler, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (London 1907), 43–45). The Hebrew text ([Tudela], Masa’ot, 65–68): ‫”ומשם לחילה … ומשם ארבע מילין למגדל שבנו דור ההפלגה ומשם שלשה פרסאות לכנסת‬ ‫יחזקאל הנביא עליו השלום שעל נהר פרת ובמקום הכנסת כנגדו ששים מגדלים ובין כל מגדל‬ ‫ ואחרי הכנסת קברו של יחזקאל בן בוזי הכהן ועליו כיפה‬,‫ ובחצר הכנסת התיבה‬,‫ומגדל כנסת‬

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This account by R. Benjamin of Tudela, who visited the “Synagogue of Ezekiel” in 1170 is the earliest detailed, extensive description of the prophet Ezekiel’s burial place and the surrounding courtyards, and their precise location: In Dar Maliha, on the western branch of the Euphrates south-west of the city of Hilla and the adjacent ruins of the Tower of Babylon (Birz Nimrud). This is a region with numerous tombs of prophets and saints that serve as pilgrimage destinations for both Jews and Muslims. This testimony by R. Benjamin of Tudela is supported by other reports from the same period as well as from the tenth and eleventh centuries.5 The main elements of the shrine as described by R. Benjamin of Tudela at the end of the twelfth century exist to this very day: the synagogue courtyard and the ark, with the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel next to it, surmounted by a dome.6 However, his claim that “the Synagogue of Ezekiel the prophet” was built by King Jehoiachin of Judah, a tradition that Iraqi Jews have maintained to the present,7 is historically without foundation. The Talmud not only ignores this specific tradition, but also makes no mention of “the Synagogue of Ezekiel the prophet” in the location specified by R. Benjamin of Tudela; in fact, it says nothing at all about the location of the prophet’s grave in Babylonia, nor of course does it mention the custom of pilgrimage to the shrine and prostration on the tomb.8 It thus seems to us that the custom of pilgrimage to Ezekiel’s tomb arose after the Muslim conquest of Iraq and the emergence of saint worship among the Shi’ites after the death of the caliph ‘Ali and his sons in a war over ‫גדולה ובנין יפה עד מאד מבנין יכניה מלך יהודה וחמשה ושלושים אלף יהודים שבאו עמו‬ ‫ באים‬,‫כשהוציא אותו אויל מורדך מבית הכלא … ואותו המקום עד היום הזה מקדש מעט‬ ‫ וגם ראש‬,‫מארץ מרחק שם להתפלל מראש השנה עד יום הכיפורים ועושים שם שמחה גדולה‬ ‫הגולה וראשי ישיבות באים שם מבגדאד … וגם בני גדולי ישמעאל באים להתפלל מרוב חיבתם‬ ”.‫ליחזקאל הנביא עליו השלום וקורין שמו דר מליחה‬ 5  Shelomo D. Goitein, “En Route to a Pilgrimage to the Tomb of Prophet Ezekiel” [in Hebrew], Studies on the History of Iraqi Jewry and their Culture, ed. S. Moreh, 1 (Tel Aviv 1981): 13–18; Eizenstein, Osar Masa’ot, 50–51; Ben-Yaacob, Kvarim Kdoshim, 38–39; Salamon Schechter, ed., Saadyana: Geniza Fragments of Writings of R. Saadya Gaon and Others (Cambridge 1903), 123. 6  Jewish Intelligence (Oct. 1846): 357–59; FO, 195/624, plans of Kifil prepared by Lt. Collingwood. On the synagogue next to the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb, see Zvi Yehuda, “The Synagogue at the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel at Kifil,” in Tombs of Saints and Synagogues in Babyloania (Or Yehuda 2006), 33–53. 7  Sassoon, Masa’ Bavel, 158; FO, 195/624, letter from the Jewish Community of Baghdad to Noorie Pasha, 4 May 1860. 8  Ben-Zion Eshel, Jewish Settlements in Babylonia during Talmudic Times [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem 1979), 222.

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the hegemony in the Muslim world. “The synagogue of Ezekiel the prophet” is on the main road to the cities of Najaf and Karbala, pilgrimage destinations for multitudes of Shi’ite Muslims who went there to prostrate themselves over their saints’ tombs and to bring their own relatives for burial. It was also located on the hajj caravan route from Iraq and Persia to Mecca.9 It would thus seem that the ascription of the synagogue’s construction to King Jehoiachin and the people who went with him into exile was a claim made by the Jews in order to give credence to the identification of the site as the prophet’s tomb and to give historical validity to their rights to it. During the Abbasid period, when all the Jews in the lands of Islam came to be united under the leadership of Iraqi Jewry, the importance of “the Synagogue of Ezekiel the prophet” greatly increased and attracted Jewish visitors from far and wide: a millennium after the destruction of the Second Temple a new focus arose for Jewish spiritual-national identification.

Muslims Take Over Ezekiel’s Tomb at Kifil

The increasing political-national and socioeconomic importance of the “synagogue of Ezekiel the prophet” at the beginning of the second millennium CE aroused the jealousy of the Muslims. Already in those days one finds Muslims writers who claimed that the site was in fact the tomb of a mysterious and controversial prophet, Dhu al-Kifil, who is mentioned twice in the Quran together with other prophets.10 The Arab geographer Abi ‘Abdullah Yaqut ibn ‘Abdullah in his Mu’jam al-Buldan (beginning of the thirteenth century CE) describes “Bar Malaha” as a place where many saints are buried, adding “and there, too, there is the tomb of Ezekiel, known as Dhi al-Kifil, to which Jews come on pilgrimage from all parts of the land.”11 Associating the Prophet Ezekiel with the

9  Goitein, “En Route”; Adler, Itinerary, 43–45; Eizenstein, Osar Masa’ot, 50–51; Yehuda, “Jewish Community of Hilla,” 85–86. 10   Quran, 21:85, 38:48; “Dhu al-Kifil wa-Madfanuhu” (Dhu al-Kifil and his burial place), Lughat al-’Arab (Sept. 1928): 641–46.; Ghanima, Nuzhat al-Mushtaq, 196–97. 11  Ferdinand Wüstenfeld,  Jacuts Geographisches Wörterbuch, vol. 1 (Leipzig 1866), 594. In

‫ن‬

‫ق‬

‫�ف‬

‫�ذ‬

‫ف‬

‫ق‬

‫أ ً ق‬

‫ف‬

‫� �ا ���بر ح‬ the original Arabic: ‫�ص�د ه ا �ل��ه د �م� ن ا �ل��ل�د ا‬ ‫��ز �ي���ل ا �ل���م�عرو�� ب� �ي� ا �ل ك‬ ‫ي�ه�ا � �ي���ض‬ ����‫و‬ �������‫��� �ل ي‬ ‫ي � و � ب � ا � ش � ة � ل�ز �ة‬ . The local Muslim tradition has ascribed tombs and shrines of Dhu al‫ا‬ � �� ‫ا‬ � ���‫ل‬ ‫ع‬ � ‫�س‬ � ‫ل‬ ‫ير‬ Kifil in various different locations in the Muslim world, the most important being Kifil Haris near Nablus and Kifil (Bir Malaha); see Ignaz Goldziher, “Dhu l’Kifil,” Encyclopedia of Islam (London 1911), 962–63.

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unidentified Dhu al-Kifil Yaqut provided the site with a Muslim identity, in line with the Muslim tendency to adopt the holy sites of other nations.12 At the beginning of the fourteenth century, during the reign of the Mongol sultan Uljaitu, the Muslims expropriated the courtyard of Ezekiel’s tomb and turned it into a place for Muslim prayer. This event is described at length in a work in Arabic, ‘Umdat al-Talib, which relates that the fanatic Shi’ite preacher Taj al-Din Abu al-Fadhil Muhammad, a confidant of Uljaitu who had appointed him to the post of naqib al-nuqaba’ of the entire kingdom, forbade the Jews to enter the courtyard, constructed a minbar (pulpit) on the site and regularly held Friday prayers there until he was murdered, together with his sons, by men sent by the converted Jewish vizier Rashid al-Din. ‘Umdat al-Talib does not say anything about the fate of Ezekiel’s tomb after Taj al-Din’s death, whether it was returned to the Jews or remained in Muslim hands.13 According to another writer, Mustawfi al-Qazwini, it was Uljaitu himself who ordered that the site be taken from the Jews and given to the Muslims, adding that the sultan built a mosque with a minaret there.14 In fact, to the year 2010 a damaged minaret and the remnants of a mosque can be seen not far from Ezekiel’s tomb in Kifil.15 Foreign archeologists who visited Kifil at the beginning of the twentieth century examined the minaret and the remains of an inscription there. They concluded that the minaret’s construction began during Uljaitu’s reign and that it was completed in the reign of his son, the sultan Abu Sa’id, soon after the year 1316.16 12  Ibid.; Hava Lazarus Yafeh, “Mysticism in Islam” [in Hebrew], in Studies in the History of the Arabs and Islam, ed. idem (Tel Aviv 1967), 316–332, 331. 13  Jamal al-Din Ahmad bin Áli al-Hasani, Umdat al-Talib (Najaf 1961), 341–43 (quoted incompletely also by Etienne M. Quatremère, Histoire des Mongols de la Perse [Paris 1836], xxiv– xxv); ‘Azzawi, Ta’rikh al-’Iraq. vol. 1, 419–20; Yusuf Karkush al-Hilli, Ta’rikh al-Hilla (History of Hilla) (Al-Najaf 1965), 19. The office of naqib emerged in the Abbasid period and came to have considerable social and political-religious influence. The naqib had the task of recording the genealogy of the ashraf, the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, among them the Abbasid caliphs. Each city had its naqib, and at their head stood a naqib alnuqaba’ appointed by the central government. 14  H. Mustawfi al-Qazwini, Tarikh-i-Guzida, Gibb Memorial 14, II (London 1913), p. 22; Gibb Memorial 23, II (London 1919), p. 39. 15  F O, 195/624, plans of Kifil prepared by Lt. Collingwood. 16  Ernst Herzfeld, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture, I,” Ars Islamica 9 (1942): 29–30; Louis Massignon, Mission en Mesopotamie (1907–1908), “Mémoires,” vol. 28 (Le Caire 1910), 53–54 (Massignon did not refer to the remains of the inscription and concluded that the minaret is from the thirteenth century); Donald N. Wilber, The Architecture of Islamic Iran. The Ilkhanid Period (Princeton 1955), 154; Tariq J. al-Janabi, Studies in Medieval Iraqi Architecture (Baghdad 1982), 96–105.

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The archeological findings and the written Muslim sources are thus in agreement, leaving no doubt that the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel was confiscated from the Jews during the reign of the Mongol sultan Uljaitu at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

Control of Ezekiel’s Tomb at Kifil in the 14th–18th Centuries

The scant reports we possess about Kifil and the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries make it impossible to determine who was in control of the tomb after Taj al-Din’s downfall. Nor is it possible to determine whether there existed a Jewish community in Kifil in this period and whether Jews continued to visit the site at a time of deteriorating roads, increasing insecurity in central and southern Iraq, and a contraction in the size of the Jewish population. We shall attempt to answer the question of who was in control of the tomb after Taj al-Din’s downfall using available sources from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. European Christian travelers who visited Iraq in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and the beginning of the nineteenth century report the existence of a “high building with a tower” over the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb in Kifil, which was visited every year by many Jews from Baghdad and Hilla.17 This is supported also by reports of Jewish travelers who visited Kifil and by local Jewish sources, which do not, however, say who was in control of the tomb nor do they mention the synagogue adjacent to it.18 The earliest information we have of such a synagogue comes from Jewish and Christian sources from the end of the 1840s. Control over the synagogue became an urgent issue in 1860, as will be described below, but at any rate we may with considerable confidence say that since the beginning of the 1840s at the latest the Jews were in full control of the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards, including the “outer courtyard,” that of the synagogue. We still need to determine who controlled

17  Pedro Teixeira, The Travels of Pedro Teixeira, translated and annotated by W.F. Sinclair (Nendeln 1967), 50; Tavernier, Six Voyages, 237; Carruthers, Desert Route, 24; Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung, Vol. 2, 264–66; Claudius J. Rich, Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon (London 1815), 10–11; Robert K. Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia during the Years 1817–1820 (London 1822), 389; Bashan, Reports of European Travelers, 20. 18  I MM, MS Sassoon no. 9389, letter from D.Y.E. Baba of Hilla to S.Y. Masliyah of Baghdad (no date); Fischel, “Masa’ le-Kurdistan, Paras ve-Bavel,” 218–54, 246; Yitzhak Avishur, Women’s Folk Songs in Judeo-Arabic from Jews in Iraq [in Hebrew] (Or Yehuda 1987), 163–92.

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these structures from the beginning of the fourteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. The evidence presented above for Jewish pilgrimage to the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel from the beginning of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century would seem to show that visits to the tomb took place also before that time. In all likelihood Jews never ceased coming to Kifil in order to prostrate themselves on Ezekiel’s tomb except for periods of unrest. A number of reasons can be given why this was probably the case: (A) The Shi’ite Muslims, who strictly forbade Jews from going the shrines of their saints in the cities of Najaf and Karbala, had no reason to prevent Jews from visiting the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel, whom the Shi’ites themselves recognized as a biblical prophet and not as a Shi’ite saint; (B) the sheikhs of the neighboring Arab tribes and the Turkish authorities were very keen to encourage mass Jewish pilgrimage to Ezekiel’s tomb and control the considerable income generated by such visits; and (C) Kifil was not a pilgrimage destination for the Shi’ite populace in the region, in southern Iraq or in Persia, all of whom were interested instead in visiting the tombs of their own saints in the cities near Kifil. However, for precisely the same reasons that the Muslims were keen to maintain the regular flow of Jewish pilgrims to the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb, they wanted to deprive the Jews of control of the tomb and its adjacent courtyards, in order to be able to put their hands on the large income generated by the Jewish pilgrims and in order to set aside a place for Muslim prayer there, after the mosque built by Uljaitu was destroyed. We learn more of these matters from the Danish traveler Carsten Niebuhr, who visited Kifil in December 1765. He found the Muslims in control of the town and the precinct of Ezekiel’s tomb, where they enjoyed the proceeds of the contributions made by “many hundreds of Jews” in return for permission to prostrate themselves on the tomb. The Jews, who apparently did not reside in Kifil, also paid for the tomb’s upkeep and gave “gifts” to the Arab tribes and to the local Turkish authorities so that they would provide protection during the days of pilgrimage.19 So clearly Ezekiel’s tomb and its surrounding courtyards were in Muslim hands in the middle of the eighteenth century, and probably before that as well. The synagogue in the “outer courtyard” was not in existence at this time and Jews were only allowed into the “inner courtyard,” where the tomb was located, on specific pilgrimage days. From Niebuhr’s description of Kifil we learn that the town was surrounded by a wall and in it were the tomb of the prophet 19  Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung, Vol. 2, 264–66; Louis Langlès, Voyage de l’Inde à la Mekke, 2nd ed. (Paris [1797?]), 130.

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Ezekiel, located “in a chapel underneath a small tower,” “a small mosque with a minaret,” and Arab houses.20 The existence side-by-side of Ezekiel’s tomb with a dome on top and a mosque with a minaret is consistent with the above-mentioned descriptions from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, and contradicts the conclusion reached by the Iraqi scholar Tariq Jawad al-Janabi, that the “outer courtyard” next to Ezekiel’s tomb was part of the mosque which Uljaitu had built at the beginning of the fourteenth century.21 Niebuhr’s testimony also settles the dispute which the local Muslims had, both among themselves and with the Jews, concerning the location of the mosque in Kifil during the struggle over control of the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb and its adjacent courtyards in 1860.22 While a number of local Muslim dignitaries claimed that a mosque had existed in the “outer courtyard” already in the days of the Abbasid caliphs and that “About 12 years ago some mischievous people of the Jewish community destroyed its walls and door and removed its Minbar (pulpit) and Mihrab (adoration niche), by which its all appearance of a mosque was entirely changed, and erected a worshipping place for themselves in that spot,”23 other Muslim dignitaries testified that “The place attached to the tomb is their worshipping place [of the Jews] where their ‘Tawrat’ [Bible] is kept. This place has never been a Mosque or worshipping place of the Mohammedans, and there never was a Munber or Mihrab there, and if there had been, it would have been impossible according to (our) Mohammedan religion to allow Jews to enter and put their feet on such ground.”24 The latter view was also supported by the Jewish notables of Baghdad, who claimed that “our worshipping, situated close to the tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel … has been in existence for some thousands of years and which has been in the hands of the Jews all that time.”25 20  Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung, Vol. 2, 264–66. 21  Janabi, Studies in Medieval Iraqi Architecture, 101–2. But in an official publication of the Iraqi Antiquities Administration other Iraqi scholars accept R. Benjamin of Tudela’s testimony, quoted above, to the effect that the tomb was that of the prophet Ezekiel and agree that the tomb building described by him has survived to this day; see ‘Ata’ al-Hadithi and Hana’ ‘Abd al-Khaliq, Al-Qubab al-Makhruta fi al-’Iraq (Cone domes in Iraq) (Baghdad 1974). 22  This issue will be discussed below. 23  F O, 195/624, no. 2, Muzbattah regarding the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel at Kiffle (no date). 24  Ibid., no. 3, Muzbattah regarding the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel at Kiffle, 15 June 1860. 25  Ibid., letter addressed by the Jewish Community of Baghdad to Mustaffah Noorie Pasha, 4 May 1860.

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The destruction of the mosque built under Uljaitu occurred sometime after the visit of Niebuhr to Kifil at the end of 1765. The Muslims who were in control of Ezekiel’s tomb turned the “outer courtyard” into a place of prayer and later claimed that this was the site of the mosque. However, the sources available to us do not make it possible to determine precisely when the mosque was destroyed or when the “outer courtyard,” that served as a synagogue, became a Muslim place of prayer. It would appear that some of the buildings and courtyards collapsed due to the rising water of the Euphrates that surrounded the precinct from the west, and when they were rebuilt during the governorship of Hasan Pasha (c. 1778) the Muslims added a minbar, a mihrab, a mahfal “and an inscription on marble was also put over the door as in other mosques, and paid Khadems were appointed to serve in the mosque, where prayers were read regularly five times a day.”26 The Muslim source that reports these facts, the only available document that describes Ezekiel’s tomb at the end of the eighteenth century,27 adds that after the afore-mentioned changes had been made the Jews continued to visit the tomb but without passing through the “outer courtyard” that had been turned into a mosque. In order to enable the Jews to continue to perform their pilgrimage to the tomb they were given another place in which to pray in a nearby building, and a separate entrance was created that led into the “inner courtyard,” where the tomb was located. These arrangements remained in force, according to this source, until the days of the wali ‘Ali Pasha Abu Ghadra (1802–1808), who issued an order forbidding the Jews from entering Kifil and visiting Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards. These changes in the arrangements for Jewish pilgrimage to the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb went hand-in-hand with the political vicissitudes in Iraq during this period. The more generous arrangements in effect at the tomb in the years 1780–1802, the period when Suleiman the Great was wali, were probably due 26  Ibid., no. 1, Muzbattah regarding the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel at Kiffle (no date). 27  In his account of Kifil from 1899, the priest Anastas al-Karmeli (1866–1947) basically confirmed the story related in this document about the Arabs in the region taking control of Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards, but says that this happened in 1848, a date which is inconsistent with the course of events to be described below (Anastas al-Karmeli, “Al-Kifil Ta’rifuhu wa-Wasfuhu” (Kifil definition and description), Al-Sharq 1 (1899): 61–66, 65). I wish to thank Dr. Shaul Sehayik for informing me of this source. It would appear that al-Karmeli collapsed two separate events into one, to wit the occupation of Ezekiel’s tomb and its adjacent courtyard by local Shi’ites with the permission of the Turkish authorities in the 1770s and the conquest of Kifil in 1848 by neighboring Arab tribes who rebelled against the Turks and slaughtered the Turkish garrison stationed in the town. This rebellion was quickly quelled by the Turks. See Israel Joseph Benjamin, Sefer Masa’ai Yisrael (Israel travels) (Lyck 1859), 54; Loftus, Travels; Longrigg, Four Centuries, 291.

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Figure 4.1 Kifil, 1922. Holy Places in Mesopotamia, Iraq 1922.

mainly to the great influence which Iraqi Jewry had on the Mamluk government at that time, as described above.28

Jews of Iraq Regain Control of Ezekiel’s Tomb

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Iraqi Jewry succeeded in once again gaining control of the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb, thanks to their improved economic situation and stronger political standing. The above-mentioned Arab source notes that when Suleiman the Little became wali of Baghdad in 1808 “some of the Jews having gained the favor of the Kahiyah of the said Pasha, were allowed to visit the place, until the time of Abdullah Pasha [1810–1812], when the said prohibition was removed and the Jews were allowed to visit the Tomb without passing through the mosque.”29 This account is consistent with the few Jewish findings discovered by David Sassoon during his visit to Ezekiel’s tomb in Kifil in 1910. Sassoon examined the courtyards and found nothing of a Jewish nature that could be dated before the Hebrew year 5570 (1809/1810).30 He found two Hebrew inscriptions dated to that year, one ­inscribed on a stone slab placed over the twin entrances leading from the “outer courtyard” to the 28  See above pp. 135–140. 29  See note 26. 30  Sassoon, Masa’ Bavel, 158–66.

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“inner courtyard” and the tomb, which says: “This tombstone is the epitaph of our master Ezekiel the prophet, son of Buzi the priest, may his merit protect us and all of Israel, Amen,” and the other on a piece of wood hanging alongside the stone inscription, with the text: “Made by Eliah Hakham Mordechai Hazan.”31 The fact that these Hebrew inscriptions were placed over the entrances to the “inner courtyard” testifies not only to the fact that Jews were at that time once again given permission to visit the courtyard in which Ezekiel’s tomb was located, but also to the Jews’ increasing political power in Iraq and the first steps towards their return to the “outer courtyard” where the original synagogue was located. At the beginning of the 1840s, during the governorship of the wali Najib Pasha (1842–1852) the Jews of Iraq obtained full control of Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards. This happened when the Jews were required to perform repairs in the “outer courtyard”; they used the opportunity to remove all Muslim symbols and ritual objects and transformed the place into a synagogue once more, over the objections of the Shi’ite Muslims who had controlled the tomb. The Jews succeeded in this endeavor thanks to the support of the governor of Hilla, Rashid Bey, whose jurisdiction included Kifil. The governor also expelled the Shi’ite supervisors of the tomb and the adjacent courtyards, and gave the Jews permission to also renovate and paint the “inner courtyard” where the tomb was located, and to erect new buildings in the western part of the precinct, which was in ruins, and in the adjoining khan (pilgrim hostel).32 The Jews wanted to exploit the renovation works to strengthen their hold on the tomb and its adjacent courtyards, during the pilgrimage season and throughout the year, by establishing a yeshiva there, consisting of between fifteen and twenty sages sent from Baghdad to reside in Kifil. They were paid a salary from the tomb’s treasury and in return undertook to devote their time to studying Torah and to hold prayers in the “outer courtyard.”33 The money for the repairs to the tomb and the courtyards and the maintenance of the yeshiva came from contributions and endowments provided by the philanthropist Ya’coob Semah from Baghdad and from the income of a special fund created for this purpose.34 The Jews of Baghdad also sent envoys to collect ­contributions from the Jewish communities in Syria, the Holy Land, Europe, and the Far East.35 31  Ibid., 159, 163. 32  Note 26; Sassoon, Masa’ Bavel, 166; Karmeli, “Kifil,” 65; Benjamin, Sefer Masa’ai Yisrael, 53–54; “Notizen,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 2 (1853): 480. 33   Benjamin, Sefer Masa’ai Yisrael, 53–54;  Jewish Intelligence, (Oct. 1846): 357–59. 34  Ibid.; Doresh Tob le ‘Ammo, 4 (32) (6 May 1859): 3. 35  Sassoon, “Basra,” 455–68.

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After removing the Shi’ite supervisors of Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards the Turkish authorities gave the Jews control of the site and appointed the head of Hilla’s Jewish community, Mordechai Salih ‘Abudi, as supervisor.36 The local Muslims received the symbolic task of guarding the tomb; the position was given to the head of one of the Arab tribes in the region, Sheikh Dharib, who resided near the khan and received his salary from the tomb’s treasury.37 In the days of the wali Mushir Pasha (1852–1856) the Turkish authorities removed the last Shi’ite religious functionaries from Kifil and strengthened the Jewish control over the tomb precinct by promoting the site’s Jewish supervisor from qa’im to kilidar, the same rank as that of the supervisors of the Shi’ite shrines in the region.38 The Jews of Iraq thus succeeded in regaining full control of Ezekiel’s tomb in Kifil after more than five-hundred years of Muslim control. This development went hand-in-hand with the improvement in the Jews political situation and economic power in Iraq in the eighteenth century.39 Following the transfer of control over the precinct of Ezekiel’s tomb to the Jews and the expulsion of the Muslims from Kifil, the entire town was given over to the Jews. A permanent Jewish community came into existence inside the town walls. In addition to the yeshiva scholars and the tomb’s employees and their families, Jews came to settle there from Hilla, Baghdad, and elsewhere in Iraq. The new residents earned their living from commerce with the Arabs in the vicinity and from providing them with services as craftsmen. Rich Jews from Baghdad built houses in Kifil where they resided during the pilgrimage season.40 36  Note 26; Yehuda, “Jewish Community of Hilla,” 89. The great wealth of the president of the Hilla Jewish community, Mordechai Salih, and his considerable influence over Jews and Muslims quite likely played an important role in his obtaining this appointment. 37  Notes 15, 26. The “Kifil Plan” contains the precise location of “the sheikh’s house.” Sheikh Dharib’s descendants continued to hold this position and to receive a salary from the tomb’s treasury until the exodus of the Jews from Kifil during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah (1951). (See David Moualim Jacob, “The Jewish Community in Hilla” [in Hebrew] in Dispersion and Libeation, (Ramla 1975) 89–90; Bayan Hisab Waridat wa-Masrufat Idarat Adonainu Yehesqel ha-Nabi … [in Judeo-Arabic] (Income and expenditure account of the management of our Lord Prophet Ezekiel …) for the year 1934) (Baghdad [Shohet Print]), 11. 38  Note 26. Salih, the son of the Hilla community’s president Mordechai Salih, was appointed kilidar. Ghassan Atiyyah, Iraq 1908–1921 (Beirut 1973), 47. 39  See above, 135–140. 40   Jewish Intelligence (Oct. 1846): 357–59; Karmeli, “Kifil”; Loftus, Travels. It is not known how many Jews resided in Kifil at this time, but clearly they numbered no less than twenty families. In this period Yehuda ibn Ezra ibn Ya’qub Rejwan arrived from Baghdad and

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Figure 4.2 Precinct of the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb, 1932. The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection (Library of Congress), Iraq.

settled in Kifil. His son Yosef was overseer of Ezekiel’s tomb at the beginning of the twentieth century (my interviews with his son, the late Yehezkel Yosef Yehuda on 23 Apr. 1978, and with his daughter, the late Flora Kiflawi, on 19 Mar. 1965). Eliahu Ishaq Menahem, too, arrived in Kifil in 1840, whence he fled from an epidemic in Baghdad, and became the Kifil community’s kosher butcher and mohel; see Izzat Sasson Muallim, ‘Ala Zifaf al-Furat (On the banks of the Euphrates) (Shafa ‘Umru 1980) 15–21).

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Figure 4.3 Outer courtyard of the precinct of Ezekiel’s tomb, 1932. The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection (Library of Congress), Iraq.



Jews of Iraq Foil the Muslim Attempt to Take Control of Ezekiel’s Tomb

The Muslims in Iraq could not reconcile themselves to the fact that the Jews controlled Ezekiel’s tomb and its adjacent courtyards, depriving them of the ample income that they generated thanks to the many visitors to the site after its renovation. They waited for a suitable moment to try to regain control over the site and found it upon the arrival in Baghdad of the wali Mustafa Nuri Pasha, at the beginning of March 1860. As soon as he came, the new wali

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showed his sympathy towards the Muslim fanatics and his hostility towards the Jews and the Christians. He did his best to promote the initiative of the director of Muslim endowments and of the mufti of Baghdad to take control of Ezekiel’s tomb away from the Jews and to register the site as a Muslim waqf (endowment).41 The Pasha visited Kifil, where the local Muslims told him that the tomb and its adjacent courtyards belonged to them. After his return to Baghdad he informed the Jewish community at the end of April 1860 that he intended to expropriate the precinct under the pretext that the “outer courtyard” was part of the destroyed mosque, as proven by the remains of the minaret in Kifil.42 The heads of the Baghdadi Jewish community immediately sent letters to the consuls of Britain and France in the city and to Mustafa Pasha, but the wali refused to change his decision.43 The Jewish community, its rabbis, and its notables were in dire straits, as related by rabbi Shlomo Bekhor Husin, one of Iraq’s most prominent rabbis at the time:44 They mourned and did not put on their jewelry … every man had his hands on his waist. All faces were dark, because that place [the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb] is very holy in the eyes of our brethren the Children of Israel since antiquity and was for them like a small temple. Every day our brethren the Children of Israel in Babylonia, Persia and Kurdistan come there to prostrate themselves on the prophet’s epitaph to pray for any trouble that may not come.… In their distress the rabbis and leaders of the Baghdad Jewish community decided to seek help from Jewish leaders in Turkey, Syria, the Holy Land, India, and Europe.45 They used the services of the envoy of the English missionary 41   Doresh Tob le ‘Ammo, 5 (48) (14 Sept. 1860): 3; Sassoon, Masa’ Bavel, 164; Shlomo Bekhor Husin, Ma’asai Nissim (Miraculous action) (Baghdad 1890), 29. 42  Ibid.; FO, 195/624, no.15, from the British Consulate in Baghdad, 9 May 1860; FO, 195/624, letter addressed by the Jewish Community of Baghdad to Mustaffah Noorie Pasha, 4 May 1860; Yehiel Fishman Kastilman, Masa’ot shel Shaliyah Sfat be-Artsut ha-Mizrah, Hotsio la-Or mi-Guf Ctav Yado Abraham Ya’ari (Journies of Safed envoy in the East, published from his manuscript by Abraham Ya’ari) (Jerusalem 1942), 56; JC, 17 Aug. 1860, p. 6; J.M. Eppstein, “The Baghdad Mission II,” Jewish Missionary Intelligence, 1 July 1893, 51–52, 51. 43  F O, 195/624, no.15, from the British Consulate in Baghdad, 9 May 1860; FO, 195/624, letter addressed by the Jewish Community of Baghdad to Mustaffah Noorie Pasha, 4 May 1860; JC, 17 Aug. 1860, p. 6. 44  Husin, Ma’asai Nissim, 29; Sassoon, Masa’ Bavel, 164. 45  Note 41; Husin, Ma’asai Nissim, 29–30; Kastilman, Masa’ot, 56; JC, 17 Aug. 1860, p. 6.

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movement in Baghdad, the converted Jew J.M. Eppstein, to send letters to the Jews of England, in particular to Sir Moses Montefiore,46 and met with the British consul in Baghdad, J.M. Hyslop, whom they asked to inform the British ambassador in Istanbul of the affair.47 The Jews of Baghdad also sent letters to Jewish leaders in Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus, Paris, Bombay, and Calcutta, and to influential rabbis in Jerusalem.48 In their letter to Mustafa Pasha, the Baghdad Jewish community leaders and rabbis disproved the claims that had been used to argue for taking Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards away from the Jews.49 The community in its letter noted that the minaret was located at a considerable distance from the “outer courtyard” while the synagogue in it was ancient, and had been in the possession of the Jews for millennia. Furthermore, it argued that the Turkish authorities had recognized the right of the Jews to the “outer courtyard,” and to the other courtyards in the tomb’s vicinity, as proven by the permission which the authorities had given the Jews to make repairs to the site, and the security force sent every year to protect the Jewish visitors during the pilgrimage season.50 The Baghdad community forwarded a copy of this letter to the local British consul, as noted above, who in turn passed it on to the British ambassador in Istanbul, Sir H.L. Bulwer, together with an attached statement by Hyslop in which he dismissed the Muslim claims and expressed his support for the Jews’ arguments concerning the ownership of the tomb and its environs.51 The British consul in Baghdad also added arguments of his own to prove the Jews’ rights to the shrine:52 1. 2.

“[It is] unlikely that it (the tomb) could ever have appertained to the Mosque,” since the minaret was far from the tomb, as also shown in a plan of Kifil (which the consul attached to his letter).53 The Jews had for generations been in uninterrupted control of the tomb and the courtyards and had prayed in the synagogue next to the tomb for

46  Eppstein, “The Baghdad Mission II,” 51; idem, “Letter from Rev. J.M. Eppstein,” Jewish Intelligence, 1 July 1860, 240–41. 47  F O, 195/624, no.15, from the British Consulate in Baghdad, 9 May 1860. 48  Ibid; Ha-Magid, 4, no. 27 (1860): 107. 49   F O, 195/624, letter addressed by the Jewish Community of Baghdad to Mustaffah Noorie Pasha, 4 May 1860. 50  Ibid. 51  Note 47. 52  Ibid. 53  Note 15.

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many generations. This led the consul to conclude that the tomb and the mosque were not controlled as one but separately. The testimony of local Muslims that they had prayed in the “outer courtyard” did not prove the wali’s claim that it was a mosque, since Ezekiel was a prophet who was venerated by both Jews and Muslims. Mustafa Nuri Pasha’s attempt to expropriate the tomb and the courtyards from the Jews “was only a threat used for the purpose of extorting money from the Jewish community.” If the wali was to succeed in taking Ezekiel’s tomb and the courtyards out of Jewish control “he will be emboldened to act in a similar way toward the Christians,” and would seize church property to give to the Muslim waqf.

J.M. Eppstein, the envoy in Baghdad of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, also attacked “the shameless manner in which the present Pacha is trying to deprive the Jews from this place.”54 Eppstein was convinced that the Jews possessed the rights to the tomb and the courtyards, based on their own millennia-old tradition, and on historical evidence such as the testimony of R. Benjamin of Tudela and French travelers whom he did not name. Eppstein claimed that the wali of Baghdad wanted to find a place in Kifil to replace the destroyed mosque so that Muslims could pray, too, and was trying to rob the Jews of the synagogue after they had spent a great deal of money in its renovation, or perhaps wanted to extort a large bribe from them. As the representative of the Anglican mission in Baghdad Eppstein asked the Society to express its views, too, on Mustafa Pasha’s actions, and in support of leaving the Jews in control of the tomb.55 Eppstein’s requests were indeed accepted by the mission’s office in London, which passed on the Baghdadi Jewish community’s letters to their destination and published a detailed account favorable to the Jewish position in its newspaper.56 Both the British representative and the envoy of the Anglican mission in Baghdad thus supported the position of Iraqi Jewry with respect to the 54  Eppstein, “Letter.” The “London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews” was founded in London in 1809 by a converted Jew from Germany for the purpose of converting the Jews to Christianity. At first it operated in Europe, and from 1844 it also became active in Iraq and sent Jewish converts to open a center in Baghdad; see Eppstein, “The Baghdad Mission I,” Jewish Missionary Intelligence (April 1893) 34–37; EJ, vol. 13, 1248–49; ERE, vol. 8, 743. 55  Eppstein, “Baghdad Mission I.” 56  Eppstein, “Letter.”

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­ownership

of the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb in Kifil and urged their government to help the Jews. This position was also supported by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the rabbis of the Holy Land, as well as by the Jewish press, both in Hebrew and in other languages, in Europe.57 However, while the Iraqi Jewish community was active on the international stage in an attempt to convince the European powers to intercede on its behalf with the Sublime Porte in Istanbul, the wali of Baghdad continued to try to find evidence that would to support the Muslim claim of ownership over the tomb. For this purpose the wali sent a commission to Kifil, composed of his own confidants, in order to study the facts about the tomb’s ownership. At the end of May 1860 the commission presented its conclusions and recommendations before the wali.58 The commission confirmed that the Jews had renovated the courtyards adjacent to the tomb, but concluded that the renovation was done on the grounds of the destroyed mosque. The commission also denied that a synagogue had existed in the “outer courtyard,” and accepted the claim that it had been a mosque.59 “This community [that is, the Jews],” the commission stated, “originally had a large worshipping place (Towrat) behind and adjoining the mosque [the outer courtyard], being a separate place for themselves. The door of this place being shut from behind, it can therefore have no connection with the mosque.”60 In light of this, the commission recommended that the wali take steps to restore the original situation, that is, to return the “outer courtyard” to the Muslims to be used as a mosque and to transfer all the buildings that the Jews had constructed, including the khan for the pilgrims, to the Muslims for their use. The commission also demanded that Mustafa Pasha restrict the Jews to the prayer place that they originally possessed, so it claimed, next to the courtyards. A few days after the report was given to the wali, on May 21, 1860, the Baghdad Jewish community’s leaders and rabbis were summoned to the majlis (council), where the mufti of Baghdad tried to convince them to cease their efforts on the international arena and to accept the report’s conclusions which, while depriving them of the synagogue and the khan, still allowed them to continue to visit the tomb and to pray in another nearby courtyard. But the community’s representatives refused to agree, arguing that this was a religious matter “of

57   Ha-Magid, 4, no. 27 (1860): 107 and 4, no. 34 (1860): 136; Ha-Melitz, 1, no. 19 (1860/1861): 329; JC, 14 Sept. 1860, 5. 58  F O, 195/624, no.15, from the British Consulate in Baghdad, 9 May 1860; FO, 195/624, no. 16, 23 May 1860; FO, 195/624, the Muzbattah of the Commission. 59  F O, 195/624, the Muzbattah of the Commission. 60  Ibid.

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concern to every Jew in the world,” and that according to Turkey’s own reform laws it was a matter for the Sublime Porte and not the local authorities.61 The matter was referred to Istanbul and the wali and his men redoubled their efforts to confirm the commission’s conclusions. They obtained two testimonies, signed by dignitaries and Muslim clerics in Kifil, Najaf, and Karbala, in which they swore in God’s name that a mosque had existed in the “outer courtyard.” They described in detail how control over the tomb and the adjacent courtyards were transferred to the local Muslims at the end of the eighteenth century and the course of events that led to the Jews regaining control of the site during the first half of the nineteenth century.62 The wali of Baghdad thus planned to use his “commission of inquiry” and the testimony of Muslim dignitaries and clerics in Kifil to transfer control over the tomb and the courtyards to the Muslims and to expel the Jews from these places, after the latter had spent some twenty years in restoration and construction, with money they had collected from their co-religionists in Iraq and elsewhere. The Jewish community of Baghdad, which was responsible for the tomb, naturally refused to accept the commission’s conclusions and strove to obtain evidence in support of its own position.63 To counter the commission’s report and the testimonies of the Shi’ite Muslims in Kifil and its surroundings, the Jews of Baghdad succeeded in obtaining a document signed by fifty-seven Muslims from Kifil and environs in which the undersigned testify that this is what we heard from our forefathers and what we ourselves have seen and known. The present worshipping place [of the Jews = “the outer courtyard”] is enclosed on 4 sides and on one of which is the spot where the Tomb is situated and everything remained in the old state, the door [to the tomb courtyard] and the passage leading in, have never been changed and this is the way for the Jewish pilgrims who have no other road when they visit the Tomb; the place attached to the Tomb is their 61  Note 41. The commission of inquiry as well as the mufti in his speech in the majlis proposed that the Jews reach the courtyard of the tomb by way of the tombs of the geonim to the south of Ezekiel’s tomb, but that they should not enter the courtyard itself but only view the tomb through a window. They also proposed that the Jews should hold their prayers in a courtyard located to the west of the tombs of the geonim, near “Elija’s room”: Janabi, Studies in Medieval Iraqi Architecture, 96–105); interviews, Yehezkel Yosef Yehuda, 23 Apr. 1978, and Yehuda Shaul Yehuda, 22 Mar. 1965. 62  Notes 23, 26. 63  F O, 195/624, no. 16, 23 May 1860; note 41.

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worshipping place where their “Towrat” is kept. This place has never been a mosque or worshipping place of the Mohammadans.64 This testimony, which supports the Jewish position without reservation and refutes the previous claims made by Muslims in Kifil concerning their rights to the tomb, is suspect, in particular in light of the statement by the English consul in Baghdad that “the same parties” signed both mutually contradictory documents.65 We conclude that the Jews of Iraq succeeded, probably after having paid a great deal of money,66 to undermine the claim on which the wali and the Muslim clerics in Baghdad relied, by obtaining the support of local Muslims for their view. These testimonies were sent to Istanbul, where the issue of who controls the tomb was to be decided, and served the proponents of the two parties in their appeals to the Sublime Porte.67 Thanks to these steps by the Jews of Baghdad and the pressure that England’s ambassador in Istanbul applied, the Turkish government at the end of June 1860 ordered the wali of Baghdad to cease all activity with respect to the tomb.68 It decided to send its own representative to examine the question of the tomb’s ownership. The representative arrived in Baghdad at the end of October and then left for Kifil with a large entourage that included also notable members of the Jewish community. He saw where the mosque and the “outer courtyard” were located and measured the distance between them, whereupon he concluded that the “outer courtyard” did not belong to the ruins of the mosque and ruled that both Ezekiel’s tomb and its adjacent courtyards belonged to the Jews.69 The Jews of Iraq naturally received the decision to restore their control of the tomb with great joy, and thanked the British representative in Baghdad, the Board of Deputies, and Sir Moses Montefiore for their efforts on their behalf. However, they wanted this decision by the Turkish government to be affirmed 64  Note 24. 65  F O, 195/624, no. 23, 4 July 1860. 66  See Isaac Lurian’s article, Ha-Magid 6, no. 40 (1862): 315. Lurian was a prominent member of the Baghdadi Jewish community and very much involved in the affair of the tomb. He believed that the large sums which were held by the overseer of the tomb compound, Ruben Hesqel Yehuda, played a crucial role in bringing about an outcome favorable to the Jews. 67  Notes 41, 65. 68  See Ha-Magid 4, no. 34 (1860): 136; JC, 17 Aug. 1860, 6. These newspapers quoted a report that had appeared in a paper published in Istanbul: Levant Herald, 20 June 1860. See also note 41. 69  Sassoon, Masa’ Bavel, 164–65; Husin, Ma’asai Nissim, 30; JC, 26 July 1861, 6.

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in an official document and asked the Board of Deputies to intercede with the Turkish authorities to obtain a firman (imperial decree) that confirmed Jewish ownership of the tomb and would permanently protect them against future attempts by Muslims to regain control of it.70 However, the Board of Deputies was loathe to raise the issue again after it had succeeded in its previous efforts, and at first rejected the appeal by the Baghdadi Jewish community.71 But after the latter repeated its request in March 1862 the Board agreed to intercede and Montefiore asked the British Foreign Office to see what could be done.72 In response to Montefiore’s request the British Foreign Office promised to accede to the Baghdadi Jewish community’s request and to intercede on its behalf with the Turkish authorities. However, as far as we know the desired firman was never given. The Jews of Iraq continued to have control of the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel and its adjacent courtyards until the Jews emigrated from Kifil during the mass exodus of Jews from Iraq.73 Since 1952, the local Muslims have control of the tomb.

Muslims Changed the Compound of Ezekiel’s Tomb

Since the American occupation of Iraq in 2003 and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime the local Muslims have done all they could to strengthen their hold on Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards. The Iraqi authorities undertook to redevelop the ancient part of Kifil, including the tomb complex which was in a state of disintegration, and the local Muslims used this opportunity to add Muslim symbols and erase Jewish signs, in order to turn the old synagogue courtyard (the “outer courtyard”) into a Muslim place of prayer. They also conducted excavations within the mosque compound built by Uljaitu, which is today called masjid al-nokhaila, using modern techniques of subterranean exploration in order to find evidence that would prove their claim at the time of the dispute of 1860 that during the renovations that the Jews carried out they took over land that belonged to the mosque. However, their activities did not reveal any findings that would support such a claim. In order to convince the numerous Shi’ite pilgrims who visit the tombs of their saints in the cities of Karbala and Najaf to visit Ezekiel’s tomb as well, which they ascribe to their prophet Dhu al-Kifil, as noted above, they have 70  J C, 26 July 1861, 6. 71  Ibid. 72  J C, 28 Mar. 1862, 5; JC, 20 June 1862, 5. 73  Husin, Ma’asai Nissim, 30; Muallim, “Jewish Community in Hillah.”

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come up with a new claim, based on supposed “historical reports” whose contents and sources have never been revealed, to the effect that the tomb compound in Kifil and the adjacent mosque were used by the imam ‘Ali during the wars he fought to impose his hegemony over the Muslim community until he was murdered (in the year 661 CE). These claims are in conflict with the evidence as presented above, according to which the earliest testimony to the existence of Ezekiel’s (Dhu al-Kifil’s) tomb dates from the tenth century, while the mosque in question was constructed at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The removal of Jewish signs, including the erasure of Hebrew inscriptions in the tomb chamber and in the adjoining synagogue, incensed Israeli, American, and English Jews of Iraqi origin, who protested against this attack on the compound’s Jewish character and demanded that the repairs to the site be carried out by an international body such as UNESCO, who would ensure that the tomb precinct’s Jewish character was retained. Muslims who had moved into some of the houses on the site and into the market which the philanthropist Menahem Daniel had built at the end of the nineteenth century also opposed the project, which would have turned the compound into a tourist attraction. As a result, the Iraqi authorities in June 2010 decided to stop work on the site and to transfer its budget to other projects. The local Muslims operated within the framework of a committee that supervised Shi’ite pilgrimage sites. The committee took responsibility also for Ezekiel’s tomb in Kifil, and opposed the intervention of Iraqi Jews from abroad on the grounds that what happened at the tomb was an internal Iraqi matter of no concern to bodies outside the country. The local Muslims denied that Jewish signs had been removed from the site and that, to the contrary, all the Jewish elements had been retained, including the Hebrew inscriptions. However, from Iraqi government sources we know that as part of the renovation works at the site beginning in the summer of 2008 the mortar was removed from the walls of the synagogue to a height of three-and-a-half meters and in the tomb chamber to a height of two meters, and new mortar put in its place. A comparison of photographs of these places taken before and after the repairs shows that some Hebrew inscriptions were removed and Muslim symbols, including Quranic verses and pictures, forbidden in Judaism, were added in the tomb chamber and in the synagogue courtyard.74 Photos received 74  Steven Lee Myers, “Crossroads Of Antiquity Can’t Decide on New Path,” New York Times, 20 Oct. 2010; Muhii al-Masudi, “Al-Kifil Tuthir Sira’at Jadida bayn al-Muslimim wa alYahud” (Kifil raises new conflicts between Muslims and Jews) Mawsu’at al-Nahrayn (5 Ab 2010); idem, “Tajadud al-Niza’ bayn Amanat al-Mazarat al-Shi’iyya w ­ a-Mufattishiyyat

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recently (2016) show that a large mosque built on the ruins of the courtyards and the Jewish houses adjoining the tomb. The ancient buildings of prophet Ezekiel tomb also included in this new mosque. Conclusions We have made an attempt to show, using historical and architectural evidence, that the buildings of the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjoining synagogue that exist to the year 2010 in the town of Kifil in south-western Iraq are the remains of the buildings that were in the possession of Jews in the twelfth century, as described by R. Benjamin of Tudela. At the beginning of the fourteenth century the Mongol rulers of Iraq converted to Islam; control over the shrine passed into Muslim hands and a mosque was built nearby. Jews continued to visit the site and prostrate themselves over the prophet’s tomb, but it appears that there were no longer any permanent Jewish residents in the town. The custom of visiting the Ezekiel’s tomb continued, both because the authorities and the shrine’s Muslim overseers enjoyed the large income, in contributions and in vows, that the visiting Jews left, and because the shrine possessed little importance for the Shi’ite Muslims of southern Iraq and Persia, whose preferred pilgrimage destinations were the tombs their saints in Najaf and Karbala rather than the tomb in Kifil, ascribed to a prophet whose status was a matter of dispute among their scholars. In the second half of the eighteenth century the mosque that the Mongols had built near Ezekiel’s tomb was destroyed and the local Muslims took over the adjoining synagogue as their place of prayer. The Jews were permitted to visit the tomb but not to go through the synagogue that had been turned into a mosque. However, this arrangement did not last long. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Jews succeeded in regaining control of Ezekiel’s tomb without having had recourse to foreign political or philanthropic assistance. In fact, Iraqi Jewry had been adversely affected by European intervention in their affairs at the end of the eighteenth century, as already noted above.

Athar Babil Hawl Madinat al-Kifil al-Athariyya (Renewed conflict between the Shi’ite Shrines Secretariat and the Inspectorate Monument of Babylon about Kifil antiquarian town), Mawsu’at al-Nahrayn (6 Aylul 2010); Fadhil Rashad, “Al-Waqf al-Shi’i Yatawalla Tarmim Marqad Dhu al-Kifil wa l-Yahud Yua’kkidoon Annahu Qabr al-Nabi Hizqeal,” Al-Hayat, 6 Apr. 2010.

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We saw that the Iraqi Jewish community’s economic and political standing improved beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century and that this made it possible for it to confront the Muslims on religious and economic issues despite the fact that the government was in Muslim hands. The Jewish community succeeded in wresting from Muslim control the tomb which the latter ascribed to their prophet Dhu al-Kifil, without the help of European Jews or European powers. In 1860, when Mustafa Nuri Pasha, the wali of Baghdad, attempted to expropriate Ezekiel’s tomb from the Jews a change took place in the way the latter operated and for the first time they appealed to England for help, enlisting the help not only of their co-religionists in Europe and the Holy Land, but also that of influential Christians in Baghdad, in the persons of missionaries and the British consul. This development came at a time when the European powers gained growing influence over the Ottoman sultan, and the Sublime Porte became increasingly involved in the affairs of the Baghdad wilaya. The success of the British intervention in blocking the wali’s attempts to return Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards to Muslim control encouraged Iraqi Jewry to appeal to influential European bodies whenever they experienced political distress. The Jews were confident that these bodies would help them again, as they did indeed when the local authorities harassed the Jews of Baghdad and their leaders following the events connected to the burial of R. Abdalla Somekh.75 The community also trained young members to negotiate with European bodies and to seek their intercession. Shortly after the wali of Baghdad’s attempts to wrest control of Ezekiel’s tomb from the Jews had ended, the Baghdadi Jewish community established a modern school for its children and asked the French Alliance Israélite Universelle for financial and pedagogical assistance, without at first realizing that in doing so it was opening the way for an extended and stubborn struggle to contain the European cultural influence whose penetration into the community was due in no small measure to its own initiative.76 Following the exodus of Iraqi Jewry in 1951 the local Muslims once again took control of the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb and the adjacent courtyards. Since then the Muslims have consistently removed Jewish signs and have turned the shrine into a Shi’i Muslim holy site and place of prayer.

75  See below, chapter 5. 76  See Yehuda, “Iraqi Jewry and Cultural Change”, 134–45.

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Figure 4.4 The overseer of the courtyards of Ezekiel’s tomb, Yosef Yehuda Ezra (sitting in the middle) and his family, 1944. Family collection.

Chapter 5

Events Surrounding the Burial of Rabbi Abdalla Somekh (1889) and Their Consequences At the end of the 1880s it seemed as if the Jews of Iraq had it better than at any other time since the days of the geonim. But the events of 1889 concerning the burial of their spiritual leader, Rabbi Abdalla Somekh, showed them that they were in fact unwanted in their homeland, thus preparing the stage for the Jewish exodus from Iraq.

State of Research and the Sources

Despite the significance of the events surrounding the burial of R. Abdalla Somekh for the history of Iraqi Jewry in modern times, the affair has received only scant scholarly attention. The affair was first described by the late Dr. Abraham Ben-Yaacob in his monograph “Biography of Rabbi Abdalla Somekh,” published in 1949.1 In this work Ben-Yaacob gives an account of the events surrounding R. Somekh’s burial based on reports written in Arabic by Baghdadi Jews, whose translations were published in the Hebrew newspapers Habazeleth (Jerusalem) and Ha-Tzfira (Warsaw), who in turn relied mainly on articles sent from Baghdad to Magid Mesharim, a newspaper published in Calcutta, India. Ben-Yaacob also used a handwritten diary by Rabbi Shmuel Abraham Sadqa from Baghdad, an eyewitness to the events in question, and interviews with informants who had emigrated from Baghdad to Israel and still remembered details of the affair sixty years later. Ben-Yaacob was unable to obtain copies of the newspaper Magid Mesharim, where the original articles from Baghdad had been published, due to their “rarity,” in his words.2 Paul Dumont published an article in English a half-century later, in which he described the events surrounding the burial of R. Somekh based on documents in the archive of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris. These documents consisted mostly of letters sent by Shaul Somekh to the president of 1  Abraham Ben-Yaacob, Toldot ha-Rav ‘Abdalla Somekh. 2  Ibid., 33–34.

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AIU in Paris. Somekh, the grandson of R. Abdalla Somekh, was the representative of the AIU in Baghdad and principal of the Jewish community’s school for boys. Dumont used the events in question as examples from which he derived conclusions concerning the way the Turkish authorities dealt with conflicts among the Ottoman Empires’ subjects.3 The nature and contents of the sources used by the afore-mentioned scholars indicate that for them the events associated with the burial of R. Abdalla Somekh were of secondary importance relative to their main topics of interest, and that therefore they were satisfied with the partial sources at their disposal and did not make an effort to use all possible sources. Because of the great importance which these events had for Iraqi Jewry’s political situation at the end of the nineteenth and during the twentieth century and on the Jewish community’s very existence, we shall describe them at length and show how important they were to the community’s history sixty years before most of it left the country and one hundred years before it ceased to exist. For this purpose we examined the following sources: A. B. C. D. E. F.

Sources of the community, originally published in Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic in the newspaper Magid Mesharim (India), and in Hebrew and western languages in the Jewish press of the time in Europe and the Holy Land. Documents from the Alliance Israélite Universelle archive in Paris. Documents from the archive of the British Foreign Office in London. Documents from the Board of Deputies Archive in London. Arab sources. Reports in the writings of travelers and visitors who stayed in Baghdad at or near the time of the affair.

We also searched the archives of the Chief Rabbinate and the Ottoman archives in Istanbul but found no relevant documents there, despite the fact that the Jews of Baghdad and the AIU are known to have written to the Turkish authorities, the acting Turkish Chief Rabbi R. Moshe Levy, and other Jews in Istanbul. In order to determine the attitude of the Turkish authorities and the activities of Jewish bodies in Istanbul we used information gleaned from the other sources at our disposal.

3  Paul Dumont, “Jews, Muslims, and Cholera: Inter-communal Relations in Baghdad at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” in The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, ed. A. Levy (Princeton 1994), 353–72. Dumont mistakenly calls him Samuel instead of Shaul.

Events Surrounding the Burial of Rabbi Abdalla Somekh ( 1889 )



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Background to the Events

In the 1880s the reforms announced by the Ottoman sultan Abdul Majid I in the Hatt-ı Serîf of 1839 and in the Hatt-ı Hümayun of 1856 began to be implemented.4 These royal decrees for the first time granted the Jews equal rights in lands under Muslim rule without affecting the community’s autonomy. Unlike the situation in Christendom during the Emancipation, the decrees did not aim at assimilating the Jews into the majority Muslim society or at inducing Jewish conversion to Islam. However, the proclamation of these decrees did not bring about an immediate change in the political situation of Baghdad Jewry. Baghdad at the time was a provincial capital ruled by walis (governors) appointed directly by the Sublime Porte in Istanbul for relatively short terms of office, no more than a few years, and they did not bother to implement the decrees. This changed in 1869, with the appointment of Midhat Pasha, one of the Ottoman Empire’s most prominent reformers, to the governorate of Baghdad. During his short term of office (1869–1872) he laid the foundations for the rule of law and established modern administrative and legal institutions in the province.5 The governors who succeeded Midhat Pasha continued to carry out the reforms, with the result that the Jews became increasingly aware of the equality that they had been granted and demanded its implementation by the Ottoman authorities. In this period the Jews of Baghdad forged closer ties with their co-religionists in the Far East, the Levant, and Europe, and through them with the governments of Britain and France, the two powers with the most influence on the Sublime Porte in Istanbul. This also contributed to the improvement that took place in their political situation. Baghdad Jewry’s political situation was also helped by the demographic and economic changes which the community experienced in the course of the nineteenth century. Demographically, the waves of immigration of Jews from Kurdistan and Persia, together with smaller numbers of Jews from the lands of the Mediterranean and Europe, increased the number of Jews in Baghdad from about seven thousand at the beginning of the nineteenth century to between thirty-five and forty thousand, out of a total population of one hundred thousand in the 1880s, and to an expansion of Jewish settlement into Muslim neighborhoods.6 4  Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, 96–97. 5  ‘Azzawi, Ta’rikh al-’Iraq, vol. 7, 160–269. 6  The data on Baghdad’s population, including the Jews, are only assessments. The numbers here are based on the assessments in Bulletin (1890): 54; Morris Cohen, “On the Jews of Persia

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Economically, Baghdad’s commercial importance as a connecting link between the Far East, Persia, the Levant, and Europe increased after the introduction of motorized river transport on the Tigris River between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf and the opening of the Suez Canal. The Jews exploited these developments to enhance their socio-economic status, which in turn increased their influence on the Turkish administration, legal system, the army and the police, gave them greater protection against attack by the city’s Muslim populace and instilled in them enough confidence to demand their civil rights and to protect them, occasionally even by force.7 Baghdadi Jewry’s improved political situation in the 1880s also affected their social relations with the Muslims. While some of the latter, especially Shi’ites and Sunnis of the lower classes, found it difficult to adapt to the new situation and continued to perceive the Jews as suitable objects of humiliation and attack, other Muslims defended the Jews when they were harassed by fellow Muslims. Some Muslims also mingled socially with Jews, and Jews and Muslims helped each other in times of distress.8 Ostensibly the Jews of Baghdad at this time enjoyed the best times they had in the nineteenth century. It was a time of improved political standing, increased economic influence, demographic expansion, a sense of equality and friendship with the Muslim populace and the Turkish rulers, and the knowledge that they could depend on the help of European Jewry in time of trouble. Therefore the events that began in September 1889 during the funeral of R. Abdalla Somekh, the greatest Iraqi rabbi at the time, greatly affected the future course of Iraqi Jewry. The sources that discuss the events surrounding R. Abdalla Somekh’s burial mention the cholera epidemic that broke out in southern Iraq and spread towards Baghdad as the major cause of the affair. Epidemics of this kind were rather common in the nineteenth century throughout the Middle East, especially in Iraq and Egypt because of poor sanitation. Water sources became polluted as the water level in the rivers dropped towards the end of the dry summers; in addition, they lacked water purification and distribution systems, and the means of disease prevention and cure were non-existent. and Turkish Kurdistan,” Anglo Jewish Association Report, 18 (1888/1889): 42–45, 45; JC, 29 Oct. 1886, 11; Mantran, “Baghdad.” 7  Zvi Yehuda, “Kesharim Hevratiim bain Yehudim le-Muslimim be- Bagdad be-Sof ha-Mea’a ha-19 ‘al pi Mekorot Yehudyiim Mekomiim” (Social relations between Jews and Muslims in Baghdad at the end of the 19th century according to local Jewish sources), in Nation and History, ed. S. Ettinger, vol. 2 (Jerusalem 1984), 55–64, 57–58. 8  Ibid., 60–63.

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According to the information we possess, based on local testimonies and reports by the British and American consulates in Baghdad, the cholera epidemic spread from Yemen through the Persian Gulf and reached Basra and its environs at the beginning of August 1889. It reached Baghdad towards the middle of the month, by way of the heavy traffic on the Tigris River. The cholera spread quickly through the city; data provided by the British consulate show a constant rise in the number of deaths: from twenty-two on August 19 to seventyfour on August 22 and to a high of ninety-three on August 25. After that, the number of daily deaths decreased, to thirty on August 31, ten on September 10 and two on September 15. The epidemic in Baghdad thus lasted for about a month, from the middle of August to the middle of September 1889.9 The total number of fatalities in Baghdad was 934, out of a total of 7,327 in all of Iraq.10 When the epidemic reached Baghdad the Turkish authorities imposed restrictions on movement into the city and on burials inside it. The city’s residents panicked and many tried to flee immediately to the nearby villages, at least those with the means to pay for transportation, protection, food and lodging. John Henry Haynes, the American consul, describes the flight from Baghdad as follows: On Sunday the 18th [of August] a nurse died … a French woman, died after a few hours’ illness. The sad news flew from mouth to mouth, and before nightfall several hundred Jewish and Christian families hastily gathered together a few necessary things and fled hurrying from the city of death. Terror reigned in every heart … and on the following day, the 19th ultimo, nine tenths, it is said, of all the shops, bazaars and offices throughout the city were closed. It was with difficulty that the barest necessities of life could be obtained. Many thousands more of all religions deserted their homes for the burning deserts. At the present moment almost the entire Christian and Jewish population and many of the wealthier Mohmmadans live outside the city limits.11 9  F O, 195/1647/f249, from the British consulate in Baghdad to Ambassador William White in Istanbul, 22 Aug. 1889. The data are taken from the medical reports in this file; ibid., 1682, report of the British consulate in Baghdad; USNA, T509/1, from the American consulate in Baghdad to Washington D.C., 22 Aug. 1889. 10  F O, 195/1682, report of the British consulate in Baghdad. 11  U SNA, T509/1, from the American consulate in Baghdad to Washington D.C., 22 Aug 1889. A similar description is provided by J. Valadji, AIU teacher in the Jewish boys’ school in Baghdad, AIU Archive, Irak, IC2, from Valadji to AIU, 1 Oct. 1889. See also Dumont, “Jews, Muslims, and Cholera.”

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The Jews who left the city were forced to pay large sums and were harassed by the Muslim villagers. But the distance from Baghdad did not give them immunity from the disease; several Jews who had left Baghdad became ill and some died. The Jews who died in the epidemic, in Baghdad and outside, had to be buried. The authorities had forbidden burials within the city and allocated a plot about half a kilometer outside the walls for Jewish burial. This location was inconvenient and the Jews asked the authorities to be permitted to bury their dead in the Jewish cemetery inside the city walls. They gave three reasons for their request: A. The allocated burial plot outside the city was located in a depression and the graves would be swept away by the floods that frequently occurred in the region. B. The plot was far from the Jewish quarter and its soil was hard. It took three hours to dig a grave, making it necessary to leave the body of the deceased unburied through the night if death occurred in the evening, and until Sunday if death occurred on Friday evening. C. The ban on burial within the city was not enforced on the Muslims and the Christians, who continued to bury their dead inside the city.12 The local authorities were displeased that the Jews had left Baghdad and brought the city’s commerce to a standstill.13 Therefore they rejected their demand to be allowed to bury their dead in the Jewish cemetery inside the city. The Jews for their part did their best to evade the ban, thus angering the authorities. As the French vice-consul in Baghdad wrote, [The Jews] used every possible stratagem to bury their dead in their own cemetery [inside the city walls]. Even on the days when the epidemic was at its height corpses of Jews who had passed away outside the city were discovered at the city gates, placed inside sacks of wheat and grain laden on donkeys, which the Jews tried to bring into Baghdad.14 12  A IU Archive, Irak, IC2, from Valadji to AIU, 1 Oct. 1889; Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45; Habazeleth 20, no. 1 (18 Oct. 1889): 5–7; AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, [Somekh’s] letter, 14 Oct 1889; FO, 195/1647, Memorandum by M. Cohen, 29 Oct. 1889; ibid., 2 Sept. 1889; Magid Mesharim, 1, no. 11 (16 Jan. 1890). 13  F O, 195/1647, Memorandum by surgeon Major Bowman, 30 Oct. 1889. 14  Pierre de Vaucelle, La vie en Iraq ilya un siècle, vu par nos consuls (Paris 1963), 48. In contrast to the above, and to statements in documents of Baghdad’s Jewish community,

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The text clearly shows the French consul’s hostility towards the Jews, but his report seems to reflect the actual situation. Jewish sources relate that the Jews suffered in particular from the ban on entering the city, issued by the authorities on September 1, 1889 and imposed only on the Jews. Jews who had fled to the rural areas outside the city wanted to go back to their homes in Baghdad, because of the great heat, because they lacked the means to extend their stay far from their sources of livelihood, because they wanted to see their relatives who had not left the city, or because they needed some necessities to be had only in the city. After some time the authorities relented and allowed healthy Jews to return to the city, after being examined by a government physician. However, in order to enter the city the Jews had to bribe the guards at the gates, “for the guards told many lies about them in order to extort money. Eventually they robbed them of their skin.…”15 Jewish sources ascribed the fact that the restrictions were applied only to the Jews to the hostility of the wali Mustafa Asim Pasha towards the Jews.16 This was the background to the riots that broke out during the funeral of R. Abdalla Somekh, who had contracted cholera outside the city, was brought into Baghdad for treatment, but died on Friday evening, September 13, 1889, and to the incidents that occurred after the funeral.

The Course of Events

When R. Abdalla Somekh died the question arose of where to bury him. The Baghdadi Jewish community could not obey the authorities and bury this distinguished and universally loved man in an abandoned spot outside the city, far from where the Jews lived and exposed to the floods that regularly beset the region. The leaders of the Jewish community wanted to bury him “in the tombs of his ancestors,” inside the Jewish cemetery within the city walls, near the Jewish neighborhoods.

according to which Muslims and Christians did not obey the authorities’ instructions, Morris Cohen, a British Jew who taught English at the Jewish community’s boys’ school, wrote in a memorandum to the British consulate in Baghdad (note 12, ibid.) that the authorities’ order to bury cholera victims outside the city “had been more or less strictly obeyed by all parties.” We found no confirmation of Cohen’s claim in any other sources. 15  Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45. 16  Ibid.; Habazeleth 20, no. 1 (18 Oct. 1889): 5–7; AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh’s letter, 14 Oct. 1889; and in more sources which will be cited below.

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Figure 5.1 British steam boat on the Tigris in Baghdad. Max F. Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf durch den Haurän, die Syrische Wüste und Mesopotamien. vol. 2, Berlin 1899–1900.

When on the morning of Friday September 13, 1889 the heads of the community realized that R. Somekh was about to die they sent a delegation composed of R. Abraham Hillel, the acting hakham bashi, R. Sasson Smoha, a former hakham bashi, and Yosef Shemtob, a member of the provincial council, to the wali of Baghdad in order to ask him for permission to bury R. Somekh in the Jewish community’s cemetery. But Mustafa Pasha refused to agree, apparently because he did not want to violate the ban of the health authorities on the burial of cholera victims within the city walls. As a solution that would uphold the ban of the health authorities and also take the Jewish community’s desire to bury R. Somekh in a place that befit his standing into consideration, the wali agreed to the delegation’s proposal to allow the community to bury the rabbi in the courtyard of the tomb ascribed to Joshua the High Priest. The delegation received a written authorization to do so, signed by the wali.17 17  Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45; AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh’s letter, 14 Oct. 1889; FO, 195/1647, Memorandum by M. Cohen, 29 Oct. 1889. According to Cohen the Jewish community’s delegation insisted on getting written authorization from the wali, because it was not usual for deceased Jews from the Jewish quarter to be transported to the western bank of the Tigris River.

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Joshua ibn Yehosadaq the High Priest, called “ha-Cohen” by the Jews of Baghdad, had been a prominent religious leader in the days of the Second Temple. Iraqi Jews identified his place of burial in a building outside the Baghdad city walls, in al-Karkh on the western bank of the Tigris, about four kilometers from the Jewish quarter. The tomb’s importance grew in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the number of Jews who sought a holy tomb from the Second Temple period within walking distance from their home increased considerably. At the beginning of the 1880s the Jewish community strengthened its hold on the compound and invested large sums in renovating and expanding the site, which came to include the tomb chamber, a place for prayer, and a hostel. Because the compound was far from the Jewish neighborhoods, the community, in line with the practice at other holy shrines as well, employed a local Muslim resident, Sayyid Isa by name, to guard the courtyard, for which he was paid from the tomb’s treasury. The site’s upkeep was entrusted to Hesqel Malka, a Jew from Baghdad.18 R. Somekh passed away on Friday night, September 14 and the community decided to hold the funeral at the end of the Sabbath, Saturday evening. The conditions for the funeral were very difficult, because it was the Sabbath, so that the burial had to be done at night. To this difficulty several others were added: the burial site was quite far from the Jewish neighborhood; the funeral procession had to pass through hostile Muslim neighborhoods whose residents often harassed the Jews; and numerous Jews who had remained in Baghdad, including old people, wanted to participate in the procession as a mark of respect for their beloved rabbi. The Jewish community’s leadership strove to overcome these difficulties. Based on the wali’s permit the authorities provided a security escort and prepared torches and lanterns to light the way. And in order to prevent delays and keep the participants in a hostile area at night the shortest time possible, the grave diggers of the community’s burial society were sent ahead of time to “ha-Cohen’s” compound in order to prepare the grave in advance. The Muslim guard did not usually spend the night there, but he was summoned to open the shrine’s door, whereupon the community’s envoys entered, chose the burial plot and began to dig the grave. However, the Jewish community’s preparations for R. Somekh’s funeral were frustrated from an unexpected quarter. The death of an important Baghdadi rabbi, the decision to bury him in the courtyard of “ha-Cohen’s” tomb and the arrival of Jewish gravediggers to prepare the burial did not remain hidden from 18  Zvi Yehuda, “Tombs of Saints in Babylonia—A Historical Survey,” in Tombs of Saints and Synagogues in Babylonia, ed. Z. Yehuda (Or Yehuda 2006), 9–16, 13.

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the local Muslims, in particular the mayor of al-Karkh, Abdulla Zibaq, and his representative, the shrine’s Muslim guard. Sayyid Isa realized that this was a good opportunity to extort a handsome “gift” from the Jews and asked for a large sum in payment for permission to bury. The gravediggers had not been advised by the community leadership about such an eventuality and rejected his demand, explaining that they had written permission from the wali himself to perform the burial. In response the guard and his people stopped the gravedigger’s work, drove them out of the courtyard and locked the gate. The angry Sayyid Isa took the keys with him and went to his patron Zibaq. The heads of the Jewish community were not aware of these developments and continued their preparations for the funeral. As soon as the Sabbath was over, the funeral procession, numbering about two thousand mourners according to Jewish sources, and five thousand by the authorities, and headed by the community’s rabbis and notables, set out, carrying lanterns and torches and escorted by security guards provided by the authorities.19 But when the procession arrived at “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard the mourners were surprised to discover that they could not proceed with the burial. The community’s leaders held consultations on how to proceed. They decided they would not give in to the financial demands of the mayor of al-Karkh and his envoy, the guard at “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard. Instead they would appeal to the wali who had given his permission for the burial and ask him to convince Zibaq to allow the funeral to take place. A delegation of community leaders, including rabbis Hillel and Smoha, thus returned to the city and asked to meet with the Pasha. However, when the delegation arrived at the eastern bank of the Tigris, where the governor’s house and offices were located, they discovered that the wali was not present and were therefore forced to deal with his deputy, the commander of the Ottoman garrison in Baghdad, Tawfiq Pasha. With the help of the mayor of al-Rusafa, Isma’il Efendi, the garrison commander was convinced to agree to the delegation’s request and organized an armed force to carry out the mission. The force was headed by the mayor of al-Rusafa and the chief of police, who were accompanied by the members of the delegation. At the same time Menahem Hesqel, a member of the provincial court of appeals, was sent to meet Abdulla Zibaq.20 19  See note 16. 20  Ibid. Because of the serious trouble that resulted from the Jewish leadership’s decision not to placate the guard of “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard and his master, and to appeal for help to the central government, Shaul Somekh in his letter to the president of AIU was careful to explain the reasons which led the community to this decision: (1) The community leadership was not prepared to countenance a situation in which a guard whom it employed

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While the community’s delegation was busy in al-Rusafa the crowd of mourners listened to a eulogy delivered by one of Baghdad’s rabbis, R. Moshe Shammash, before the deceased’s coffin. But as the mourners waited into the night a number of youths decided to climb over the wall into “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard and to break open the entrance gate from the inside. After the gate was opened the many mourners streamed into the courtyard and the gravediggers resumed their work. The disorder and noise produced by the break-in awakened the people of al-Karkh, including its mayor. A large group of residents, about fifty people according to one account and between one and two hundred according to others, came and attacked the Jews and their lanterns and torches with heavy sticks in order to prevent them from burying their rabbi. Some Jews were wounded and even robbed by Zibaq’s men, but they fought against the attackers and with their bodies blocked the way to the gravediggers so that the latter could continue working. The security detail that had come with the Jews for protection did not intervene or help. The attack came to an end with the arrival of the armed forces, including cavalry, commanded by the chief of police and the mayor of al-Rusafa, who arrived with the delegation of Jewish community leaders. They arrested some of the attackers and drove the others away.21 Now it was finally possible to conclude R. Somekh’s funeral. The gravediggers finished preparing the grave on the spot the community had chosen inside “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard, the body was interred and the mourners returned home under the protection of the armed escort. The community leaders also returned home, satisfied after having succeeded in burying R. Somekh where they wanted, despite the opposition of the local Muslims, headed by the mayor of al-Karkh and without giving in to their demands to be paid for their permission. Furthermore, some of the local Muslim attackers were arrested. The and whose salary it payed would dictate to it; (2) “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard was a property that belonged to the Jewish community, like the synagogues and other properties that it owned, and it therefore had the right to bury R. Somekh there; (3) because of the late hour and the need for a speedy burial in that distant and isolated spot, there was no time to hold extended negotiations; (4) such negotiations would have constituted an unfortunate precedent in the relationship between the Jewish community and its Muslim employees; and (5) the community leadership did not know where to find the guard of the shrine. 21  Ibid. Local Muslim sources also reported the disturbance. One Arab-Muslim source from Baghdad noted that during the incident the Jews struck and cursed the mayor of al-Karkh Abdulla Zibaq: ‘Azzawi, Ta’rikh al-’Iraq, vol. 7, 94. Major Bowman, the surgeon at the British consulate in Baghdad, wrote in a memorandum on the affair that “resulted in injuries to both parties”: FO, 195/1647, Memorandum by surgeon Major Bowman, 30 Oct. 1889).

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leaders of the Jewish community decided that on the following morning they would go to the wali to complain about the criminal acts of Zibaq and his men; they were certain that the wali would be sympathetic to their case. But this was not the end of the affair. On Sunday September 15, 1889 there were some further surprising developments that put to naught the positive results of the previous night. Contrary to the expectations of Baghdadi Jewry, the wali decided to take the mayor of al-Karkh’s side against the Jews and their leaders. Most sources relate only the events of Saturday and do not mention the clashes between the Jews and the Muslims of al-Karkh on the following day. Only one source reports on these events, which appear to have marked a deterioration in the political situation of the Jews. It seems that the Muslims of al-Karkh and their leader Zibaq refused to reconcile themselves to the events of the evening and night of Saturday, September 14, and made preparations for continuing to attack and subdue the Jews of Baghdad. According to these reports two additional incidents took place on Sunday morning in Baghdad between Jews and Muslims from al-Karkh. The first incident occurred in the course of a well-attended eulogy given by R. Yosef Haim in the synagogue next to the “Beit Zilkha” yeshiva, a center of religious activity for Baghdad’s Jewish community. Muslims from al-Karkh came to where the gathering took place and made a disturbance. The Jews were enraged and a clash took place in which some Muslims were injured. The fight was stopped when the security forces intervened and arrested several Muslims. Zibaq’s men complained to the wali that one of them and a security guard were beaten by Jews.22 Another incident occurred some time later. The family of Asher Salim’s wife, who had died of cholera outside Baghdad, managed with the help of some influential Muslim friends to avoid the guards at the city gate near the Jewish cemetery and succeeded in bringing the deceased’s body into the city. The body was brought to the Jewish cemetery to be buried, but as preparations were made to conduct the funeral the matter came to the Muslims’ attention and they came riding on horses to prevent the burial. An altercation broke out between the two parties and several Jews were wounded from firearms, blows, and stones. The funeral was halted, the woman’s body was taken outside of the 22   Habazeleth 20 no. 1 (18 Oct. 1889): 5–7. This is the only source that describes the events of Sunday, 15 September 1889. MS 3750 mentions complaints about the Jews’ actions on that day but does not describe the events themselves. ‘Azzawi mentions the attempt to bury the Jewish woman but states that the burial place was “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard, which he notes was the cause of further incidents on that day, but does not elaborate on the nature of these incidents (ibid.).

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walls, and the Jews fled. The horsemen, accompanied by Muslim strongmen, pursued the Jews into their neighborhood and attacked Jews whom they encountered in the street, who sat in their shops, or were in their homes. News of the incident reached the authorities, who sent a cavalry force that restored order in the Jewish neighborhood. Zibaq’s men complained to the wali about this incident as well.23 The Jews of Baghdad claimed that in every such incident between Jews and Muslims it was the same person who pulled the strings, namely Abdulla Zibaq, the mayor of al-Karkh, who then went so far as to plot to convince Mustafa Asim Pasha to act together with him against the Jews. In order to put his plan into effect he came to the wali on Sunday September 15 and complained that the Jews had not only violated the order to bury their dead in the plot they had been given outside the city walls but had also forcibly acted to bury their rabbi in a mosque, as he called “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard where, he claimed, a Muslim prophet, Nabi Yusha’ (Joshua), was buried. The incidents on the Sunday morning, especially the Jews’ success in bringing the body of the dead woman into the city to be buried, could only have strengthened the wali’s resolve to act against the Jews, who could be accused of undermining public order by disobeying the instruction of an official representative, namely mayor Abdulla Zibaq of al-Karkh, attacked those under his command, and used force to bury R. Somekh. Furthermore, the wali also complained that the Jews insisted that the rabbi’s burial be considered a done deed. Therefore, when a delegation of the Jewish leadership came to him to complain about the physical assaults and robberies committed by Zibaq and his men on the previous night during R. Somekh’s funeral, he refused to listen to the complaint and arrested its members for disobeying his order to remove R. Somekh’s body from its grave in “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard. He also sent security forces into the Jewish neighborhood in order to arrest some other Jewish notables whom he accused of also having participated in the rebellion. The wali’s harassment of the Jews was interpreted by the city’s Muslims as an indication that the Jews of Baghdad no longer enjoyed the protection of the authorities. The Jews became victims of an incited Muslim mob. Muslims joined the security forces in their raids on 23  Ibid. According to Bowman the woman died in Baghdad and her burial was interrupted by the quarantine officials and the police, who refused to allow her to be buried in the Jewish cemetery inside the city wall. Bowman adds that on 15 September, ten rabbis and sixty other Jews were arrested, and also that “Some Arabs of the Abu Shibal quarter entered the Jewish houses near, insulted the females, and forcibly took away at least three women” while the authorities did not intervene: FO, 195/1647, Memorandum by surgeon Major Bowman, 30 Oct. 1889).

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the Jewish neighborhood. Jews walking unaware in the streets were beaten, robbed, tied to horses’ tails, and taken to jail. Muslims even broke into some Jewish homes, robbed them, and kidnapped Jewish women. The police put an end to such acts, but the wali continued to arrest rabbis and Jewish notables, whom he accused of having participated in the rebellion.24 The attacks on them by the authorities, led by the wali, aroused great fear among the Jews, who were terrified of a possible pogrom and the annihilation of the large Jewish community of Baghdad, at a time when it was flourishing as never before. The Jews closed their shops, shut themselves inside their homes and waited for what would come. Many began to think about leaving Iraq. This turn-about in the course of events was ostensibly the result of a substantive change in the position taken by the wali Mustafa Asim Pasha after he had given the Jews written permission to bury R. Somekh in “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard but then accepted the claim made by the mayor of al-Karkh that the Jews had violated the order they had received from the authorities by forcibly burying R. Somekh in a Muslim mosque, in which it was forbidden to bury a Jew. However, a perusal of the available sources shows that the wali’s permission could be interpreted in two ways. One interpretation was that of the Jews, who claimed that it allowed them to bury R. Somekh inside “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard which was in their possession, and that this is what they did and therefore they should not be punished; rather, those who interfered and attacked them should be punished. The other interpretation was that of the mayor of al-Karkh and the wali, who claimed that the place where the Jews had buried their rabbi was a mosque and that therefore, since a Jew could not be buried in a mosque, the permission given to the Jews was to bury R. Somekh in a Jewish cemetery outside the mosque. By forcibly burying R. Somekh inside the structure of “ha-Cohen” the Jews violated official orders in an act of rebellion, and at the same time violated the sanctity of a Muslim mosque. This difference in the position of the two parties in the conflict reflected a more fundamental difference of opinion on the site’s ownership: The Jews maintained that it had always been in their possession since antiquity while the local Muslims and the wali argued that it was a mosque and that the Jews had no claim to it.25 24  Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45; Habazeleth 20, no. 1 (18 Oct. 1889): 5–7; AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh’s letter, 14 Oct. 1889; FO, 195/1647, from Tweedie to White, 4 Nov. 1889; JC, 1 Nov. 1889, 8. 25  Ibid. ‘Azzawi, based on a Muslim source in Baghdad who claimed to have received his information from local sources, writes that the Jews asked the wali for permission to bury

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The question of the shrine’s ownership was important not only for the issue of who was to control it, but also for determining who the guilty party was in the events just described, as will be explained below. In the background of the affair, rivalries and political power struggles among the Turkish rulers in Baghdad also played a role. The Jewish leadership’s appeal for help to the commander of the Ottoman military forces in Baghdad, field marshal Tawfiq Pasha, seems to have been interpreted by the wali Mustafa Asim Pasha as an affront to him and as support for his political rival; apparently this perception played a considerable role in the wali’s hostile attitude towards the Jews.26

Appeal to the Turkish Government

The total number of Baghdadi Jews arrested on Sunday, September 15, 1889 was twenty-five, all rabbis and notables, in particular the members of the delegation that had come to complain to the wali about the events of Saturday evening, September 14. On Monday, September 16, R. Abraham Yehoshua Hazan was arrested, as well as R. Abdalla Hesqel al-Kabir, the head of the Jewish community’s burial society (hebra qadisha).27 The arrests of the community’s leaders, including its head, enraged the Jews of Baghdad. The Ottoman authorities did not as a rule take steps against the R. Somekh in “the courtyard of the Nabi Yusha’, it being clearly understood that he would be buried in the Jewish cemetery outside the place where the prophet Yusha’ was buried.” This source also claims that it was a group of hakhams who insisted that Rabbi Somekh “be buried at the site of the grave [of the prophet Yusha’], so they brought him in and buried him there.” It was this act that led to the confrontation between the mayor of al-Karkh and the Jews (‘Azzawi, Ta’rikh al-’Iraq, vol. 7, 94). The British consul in Baghdad, Colonel W. Tweedie wrote, after a talk that he had had with the wali Mustafa Asim Pasha, that the latter had denied that he had given permission for Rabbi Somekh to be buried inside the shrine. According to Tweedie the wali said to him that as the governor of a city with people of different faiths he could never have given such an embarrassing order. The wali further claimed that he had given his order on a piece of paper addressed to the mayor of the part of Baghdad on the eastern bank of the Tigris (al-Rusafa) and was of the view that the note was filed in his archive (FO, 195/1647, from Tweedie to White, 4 Nov. 1889). 26  Jewish sources stress the wali’s hostility to them and the Field Marshal’s support. Mustafa Asim Pasha is depicted as an elderly pious man with a long beard (JNUL, Rabbi Shemuel Sadqa’s diary, MS Benayahu). ‘Azzawi writes quite explicitly that “the state was aware of the true facts behind the events and the machinations that the wali and the commander of the army carried out behind the scenes” (‘Azzawi, Ta’rikh al-’Iraq, vol. 7, 94). 27  Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45.

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Figure 5.2 The Turkish government house (al-qala’a) in Baghdad, 1932. The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection (Library of Congress), Iraq.

community’s spiritual leaders and throughout the entire period of Ottoman rule in Iraq it was unheard of that rabbis were arrested and cast into prison like common criminals. The attacks on the community’s lay leaders that took place in the days of the Mamluk walis ceased as soon as Mamluk rule in Iraq ended in 1831 and the provincial governors came to be directly subordinate to the Sublime Porte. After the proclamation of the reforms in the Ottoman Empire, including the abolition of the post of community president, and with the appointment in 1849 of a chief rabbi (hakham bashi) to head the community, the leadership of the Baghdad Jewish community obtained its authority in the form of a royal firman signed by the sultan himself, the same way in which the wali of the province of Baghdad received his appointment. From that time the heads of the community enjoyed the double status of spiritual leaders and of delegates of the central government in Istanbul. The reforms also declared that the members of all the empire’s communities were equal. This would seem to explain the decision made by the community leadership, headed now by R. Elisha’ Dangoor, a former hakham bashi who now took over the role of community head after the arrest of the acting chief rabbi,

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R. Abraham Hillel, to complain to the Sublime Porte. This was done by means of a telegram sent on September 16, 1889 to Istanbul, relating the community’s version of the course of events and their causes. The telegram was signed by more than seventy people, including Baghdad’s most important rabbis.28 However, this step served to increase Mustafa Pasha’s anger at the Jews. He was informed of the telegram by a contact of his at the Sublime Porte in Istanbul, who also told him the names of those who had signed it.29 The wali immediately had the signatories arrested on trumped-up charges, with the help of Abdulla Zibaq, the mayor of al-Karkh, who provided witnesses from among his own people who accused the arrested Jews of having participated in a rebellion against the authorities and attacked Muslim residents. Only those with enough money to bribe the false witnesses and the officials, or who agreed to disown the telegram’s contents and to support the wali, were able to avoid being incarcerated.30 Among those who were arrested was Yosef Shemtob, the Jewish community’s representative in the provincial council. Shemtob was dragged out of the synagogue on Yom Kippur and taken to jail.31 Altogether some sixty Jews were arrested. The wali expelled the Jewish representatives from the provincial council, the city council, and the Baghdadi courts, and silenced Muslim notables who dared defend the Jews. He also sent a telegram of his own to the Sublime Porte, in which he gave his own version of the affair. Mustafa Pasha accused the Jews of refusing to obey the municipal authorities and of burying R. Somekh by force in the courtyard of a mosque. He explained the mass arrests of Jews as due to the latter’s violent and rebellious behavior.32 The fact that the Sublime Porte did not intervene in the matter of the arrests was interpreted as an expression of the central government’s support for the wali and his actions and as a rejection of the Jews’ complaints. 28  Ibid; AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, letter from Baghdad to AIU, 16 Oct. 1889; FO, 195/1647, Cohen’s and Bowman’s memorandums; S.B. Husin’s letter, Ha-Tzfira 16, no. 278 (1 Jan 1890): 1145. 29  Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45. According to another version, the head of the telegraph office in Baghdad brought the telegram to the wali for his perusal before he sent it (AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh’s letter, 14 Oct. 1889; Magid Mesharim 1, no. 4 (28 Nov. 1889). But to judge by the way in which the Sublime Porte dealt with the events it would appear that the first version is the correct one. 30  Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45; AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, letter of the Baghdadi community, 16 Oct. 1889; ibid., Somekh’s letter, 14 Oct. 1889; Ha-Tzfira 16, no. 278 (1 Jan. 1890): 1145; FO, 195/1647, from Tweedie to White, 4 Nov. 1889. 31  A IU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh’s letter, 14 Oct. 1889; ibid., Valadji to AIU, 8 Oct. 1889; BenZvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45. 32  Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45; AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh’s letter, 14 Oct. 1889; Magid Mesharim 1, no. 4 (28 Nov. 1889); JC, 1 Nov. 1889, 8.

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Because of the unfortunate situation in which Baghdad’s Jews found themselves on the eve of the holiday of Tabernacles of the year 1889, the community announced that festive aspects of the holiday should be avoided, “that the congregation should not go on the holiday to each other’s homes to bless them and greet them as they are accustomed to doing every holiday … and on the eighth day of a’seret and on simhat tora they did not decorate the synagogues, nor take out the Torah scrolls, nor read poems, only did the circumambulations”.33 Because of the situation, two important members of the community, the great merchant Yosef Gourji and the landowner Menahem Silman Daniel, decided to extend their stay far from the scene of the events, lest they be arrested by the wali and his helpers.34 When the community leaders saw that the Sublime Porte refused to act in their favor, even after they had asked R. Moshe Ha-Levi and other influential Jews in Istanbul to intercede,35 they decided to appeal to Jews abroad, in particular to the Jews of France and England, the powers that had the most influence on the Turkish government.

Request for Assistance from the Jews of England

The first appeal of Baghdadi Jewry to the Jews of England was sent in a roundabout way to London about two weeks after the affair erupted, in order not to arouse the authorities’ suspicion that they were inviting foreign intervention, which would have resulted in their arrest.36 The Jewish community still remembered the positive results of the British intervention in the dispute over the ownership of Ezekiel’s tomb in 1860, and hoped for a similarly successful outcome this time. Upon receiving the letter the Conjoint Foreign Committee of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association held a meeting and decided to send a letter to the British Secretary of State, the Marquess of Salisbury, 33  Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45. Rabbi S. B. Husin wrote about this in Ha-Tzfira 16, no. 278 (1 Jan. 1890): 1145: “There was a loud and bitter outcry among the Hebrews. The holiday of Tabernacles, a holiday of joy, was transformed into mourning and on the Celebration of the Torah they did not decorate the synagogue, nor did they set up the Torah scrolls in the Ark as they did every other year.” 34   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 2 (14 Nov. 1889). 35  AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, letter of the Baghdadi community, 16 Oct. 1889. 36  JC, 1 Nov. 1889, 8; Jewish Standard, 1 Nov. 1889, 11. The letter of the Baghdadi Jews sent on 30 September 1889 and received by the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association. It appears to have been written by Morris Cohen (see note 62). A second letter reached Sir Albert Sassoon.

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Figure 5.3 The British residence in Baghdad. Oliver J. Butler, Iraq: Photographic Studies, [s.l.], [s.m.], [1900?].

in which they reported the facts that they and the David Sassoon Company had received from Baghdad about “attacks upon the Jews, and the ill-treatment and imprisonment of the Ecclesiastical Heads and other members of the community.” The Conjoint Foreign Committee asked the British foreign minister to check the information and to take the necessary steps to ensure that the falsely-accused Jews were freed and compensated for what had been done to them, and to see to it that such attacks on Baghdad’s Jews were not repeated.37 The British Foreign Office forwarded the British Jews’ complaint to the British ambassador in Istanbul, Sir William A. White, and asked him to investigate the matter and to propose what steps should be taken. But White preferred to pass on the complaint to Britain’s consul-general in Baghdad, Colonel William Tweedie.38 Tweedie, who had arrived in Baghdad in May 1889,39 immediately acted on the Foreign Office’s request. He requested a meeting with the wali of Baghdad, Mustafa Asim Pasha, and asked Morris Cohen, the English teacher at the Jewish 37  Ibid., letter dated 25 Oct. 1889. 38  Ibid., letter from the Foreign Office to the Board of Deputies, 29 Oct. 1889. 39  FO, 195/1647, Tweedie’s letter of 21 May 1889.

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community’s boys’ school, and the consulate’s surgeon, Major R. Bowman, to provide him with information about the events. He also used his diary about the affair composed as the Political Resident in Turkish Arabia.40 Tweedie met with the wali on November 2 and heard his version of the events. He was greatly impressed by Mustafa Pasha and described him as a cultured man who maintains an official demeanor in his conversations with foreign consuls. At first the wali explained the precise content of the instruction he had given to the delegation of the Jewish leadership and categorically denied having given permission for the burial to take place inside “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard. In order to remove any doubts concerning the truth on this matter he referred Tweedie to the mayor’s archive where, so he said, the instruction was filed. As for the incident during the funeral, the wali claimed that the Jews undermined the public order by disobeying the instructions of a government official (the mayor of al-Karkh), who forbade them to bury R. Somekh in “haCohen’s” courtyard. Furthermore, the Jews went so far as to rebel against his men in order to carry out the burial. Mustafa Pasha’s version turned the question of the ownership of “haCohen’s” courtyard into a secondary issue, by focusing on the duty which Baghdad’s Jews, as citizens of the state, had at all times to obey government officials. The accusation of Jewish “rebelliousness” is further supported, according the Mustafa Pasha’s version, by the leadership of Baghdadi Jewry’s refusal to change the location of R. Somekh’s grave. Thus the wali justified his persecution of Baghdad’s Jews and their imprisonment.41 It would seem that Baghdad Jews realized that the wali’s arguments would come to the attention of the British authorities and therefore quickly wrote down their rebuttal arguments in a letter which they sent to the Jews of London on September 30, 1889. The Jews raised the following points in order to refute the wali’s claim that they had resisted the municipal authorities with armed force and forcibly buried R. Somekh in “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard: 1. 2. 3.

The Jews are known for their loyalty to the government and their fear of the Muslims. Jews do not bear arms, nor do they keep arms in their homes. During R. Somekh’s funeral the Jewish community did not have any need to defend itself, since it had received the wali’s permission for the burial and was given a police escort. Had the Jews borne arms, as the

40  FO, 195/1647, Tweedie to White, 4 Nov. 1889, with enclosures. 41  Ibid., Tweedie’s letter.

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wali claimed, they could have protected themselves and would not have needed the police escort. The Jews neither resisted the municipal authorities not did they attack them. Had they done so the police commander would have arrested the Jews who were guilty of assault, rather than just arresting Muslims who had assaulted Jews.42

Morris Cohen, a Jew and a British subject, also did his best to refute the wali’s version of the events. In a report that he sent to the British consul in Baghdad on October 30 he rejected out of hand the accusations that the Jews had ostensibly attacked the mayor of al-Karkh and claimed that in fact it was the Jews who had been the victims of violence by Abdulla Zibaq and his men. According to Cohen, the wali’s position was influenced by Zibaq, who had convinced him to present the Jews as the guilty party. As proof of Mustafa Pasha’s hostility towards the Jews, Cohen mentioned the authorities’ discriminatory behavior towards the Jews during the epidemic and their refusal to protect the Jews against attacks by the Muslims. According to Cohen, Baghdad’s Jews were in a very difficult situation but did not dare complain to the representatives of foreign powers because in their experience the latter did not help and the complaints only made matters worse for them.43 Major R. Bowman, the surgeon of the British consulate in Baghdad, also took the Jews’ side in his letter of October 30. He wrote that in his view the Jews were right to complain about the barbaric way in which some members of their community were taken to jail. He added that when the Jews asked the authorities for help their pleas went unanswered.44 Tweedie, as the Political Resident of Turkish Arabia, described the events in his diary. He relied on the information he was given by Morris Cohen and Major Bowman, to which he added his own assessment that the affair should best not be dealt with at the consular level at all. “If left alone, the chances are it will keep itself down to all the smaller dimensions for it.”45 Tweedie was expected to make up his mind after hearing the wali’s version and reading the Jews’ rebuttal, and hopefully to propose steps for stopping the persecution of the Jews and obtaining the release of the prisoners. The opinion of the British consul general in Baghdad was of great importance for any British decision to act on behalf of the Jews. But Tweedie disappointed 42  Note 35, Community’s letter. 43  FO, 195/1647, Memorandum by M. Cohen, 29 Oct. 1889. 44  Ibid., Memorandum by Bowman, 30 Oct. 1889. 45  Ibid., enclosure to Tweedie’s letter.

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the Jews of London and of Baghdad, and did not recommend that any action be taken to help the Jews, in contrast to an earlier British consul in Baghdad, J.M. Hyslop, who in 1860 supported the Jewish position in their dispute with the wali of Baghdad concerning the ownership of the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb in Kifil.46 Tweedie, who was favorably disposed towards Mustafa Pasha and imbued with anti-Semitic ideas about the Jews’ desire everywhere to use their wealth to gain political influence,47 accepted the wali’s position in toto and rejected the Jews’ arguments out of hand. Tweedie also refused to express support for the Jewish claim of ownership over “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard, claiming that this was a complex issue beyond the competence of a consul. He proposed that the question be referred to a mixed Jewish and Muslim commission, or a commission appointed by the authorities, that would decide the issue after examining both Jewish and Muslim customs and traditions. He also remained silent on the wali’s intention to prosecute jailed Jews on false charges of violent resistance to officials. After expressing his view on the two main issues engendered by the affair Tweedie presented his conclusions: 1. 2. 3.

4.

No Jew suffered such harsh treatment that would justify an appeal to a foreign consulate for protection. Although many Jews were arrested, not one of them had been put on trial yet. The steps which the municipal authorities took against the Jews at the funeral could not have been overly oppressive, since the Jews managed to carry out their plan and buried their rabbi despite their cowardice and their propensity to complain to the authorities. The Jews were not put under undue pressure.

Tweedie boasted that he had asked the wali to take pity on the arrested Jews and release them until their trial, but refused to take any steps to have the

46  Yehuda, “Jews of Babylon Struggle,” 21–75, 32–37. 47  FO, 195/1647, Tweedie to Foreign Office, 21 June 1890; ibid., Tweedie’s telegram to Foreign Office, 3 Aug. 1890. In accordance with his approach, Tweedie refused the David Sassoon Company’s request for British protection for its branch in Baghdad, that was run by a British Christian, because, so he claimed, the Sassoon family in London exploited its great wealth and economic clout in Britain to flout the local regulations in the conduct of its business in Baghdad (FO, 195/1722/f199–219, Tweedie to White, 26 Nov. 1891).

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false charges against them dropped and to have them released without trial.48 However, the wali refused to release the jailed Jews and in a reply to a letter sent by the Jews of Calcutta in which they asked him to intervene on behalf of the prisoners, Tweedie said that this was no longer necessary since most of them had been released after having paid bribes. He added that in his opinion his help would also not be needed in future, because as time passes the authorities will lose interest in persecuting the Jews of Baghdad for what they had done during the affair. After explaining why he would not do anything on behalf of Baghdad’s Jews, Tweedie repeated his support for Mustafa Pasha’s version of the events. Furthermore, he blamed the Jews themselves for their suffering: So far as is possible for one to ascertain, it has further to be reported that the interment so effected has been left uninterfered with by the authorities. If the Jewish community suffer from any apprehensions touching this point, such, I would fain hope, are groundless. The days are past in Baghdad when even a fanatical and autocratically disposed wali49 (the present Governor General is neither) would venture, save under instructions from his government, on so extreme a measure as the disturbance of an act of interment merely because of its having been brought to pass irregularly. He went on to state that the American consul and European merchants in Baghdad also thought so, and related the words of an Englishman, captain of a steamboat belonging to the Lang Company, who said that the Jews had only themselves to blame and that the authorities treated them much more mildly than they deserved.50 The opinion of the British consul in Baghdad, that the Jews were to blame for the troubles that had befallen them at the hands of the Muslims of al-Karkh and the wali, and that therefore there was no reason for the British government to intervene on their behalf, was passed on to the British ambassador in Istanbul and the British Foreign Office, and from there to the Jews of London. But the London Jewish community refused to accept Tweedie’s view and, after it received more complaints from the Jews of Baghdad about the wali and the local judicial system,51 continued to pressure the British Foreign Secretary, who 48  Ibid., Tweedie to White, 4 Nov. 1889. 49  Ibid., Tweedie to White, 17 Nov. 1889. 50  Ibid. 51  JC, 22 Nov. 1889, 8.

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contacted his representative in Baghdad directly and asked him to recommend ways for dealing with the complaints.52 In his reply Tweedie did his utmost to justify his refusal to do anything for the Jews and his support for Mustafa Pasha and his version of the affair. Tweedie happily used Morris Cohen’s report that the situation of Baghdad’s Jews had improved to excuse his own inactivity. He went so far as to praise Cohen, whom he described as “an English Jew; second master in the Israelitish Alliance School, Baghdad, a person of education and respectability; whose statements are worthy of all consideration.” But, in order to dismiss Cohen’s version of the events he added “At the same time, as a Jew, his religious sentiments are necessarily here moving him; while as he has a ready pen, his coreligionists and employers naturally press him to make use of it.” Cohen, he noted, “was not present at the burial-scene” and everything he wrote about the attacks on the Jews was merely taking a stand in the Jews’ favor in their dispute with the wali.53 In a letter to the Foreign Office in London Tweedie openly took the wali’s side on the issue, and justified the arrest of members of the Jewish community by the latter. He argued that the Jews must prove that they had acted in line with the permit given them by the wali, but in fact they acted in violation of it, as the wali claims, so “I do not see how they could expect anything else than arrests should be made next morning”. He then went on to enumerate in detail the actions which the Jews had taken in violation of the wali’s permit: 1. 2. 3.

They opened the gate of “ha-Cohen” without permission. They entered “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard and dug the grave. They did not disperse when Ottoman officials arrived and protected the gravediggers until the burial had taken place.

To emphasize his position the British consul mentioned the case of a Christian burial in Baghdad’s Christian cemetery. The mourners came to the cemetery and discovered that the gate was locked and did not break it open as the Jews did, but waited until the next day, when officials came and opened the gate so that they could go ahead with the burial.54 Tweedie also dismissed Morris Cohen’s complaint about the cruelty of the actions of the wali towards the Jews, as due to the fact that “it is not the duty, or

52  FO, 195/1647, Tweedie to White, 30 Nov. 1889, with enclosures. 53  Ibid. 54  Ibid.

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habit, of schoolmasters to weigh their sentences in official balances,” which is how the authorities in the Orient operate. On the main question raised by the affair, namely that of the ownership of “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard, Tweedie was even more extreme in his views. He claimed that it was no business of the British consulate to intervene in a dispute between the Ottoman government and its subjects. Furthermore, he expressed doubt about the Jewish ownership of not only “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard but also of the other holy tombs along the Tigris, those of the prophet Jonah and Ezra the scribe. He suggested that official records in Baghdad should be studied in order to determine who owned them. In fact, he interpreted the Baghdad Jewish community’s application to the wali for permission to bury R. Somekh in “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard as proof that the compound did not belong to the Jews, for if it had belonged to them they would not have needed the wali’s permission, according to Tweedie. After providing evidence for the validity of the version given by the wali and the hostile Muslims of al-Karkh and refuting the justifications for the Jews’ appeal to the British government for help in putting an end to the attacks against them, Tweedie continued on a note of feigned objectivity: He did not wish to express an opinion on the rights of the Jews to “ha-Cohen’s,” but he had always had the impression that the courtyard was held in common by the Jews and the Muslims, and could continue to be so. But it was the Jews who raised the question of ownership by their refusal to pay the bribe demanded by the Muslim guard.55 Tweedie passed on his views to London, but this did not put an end to the efforts of Baghdad’s Jews and the London Jewish community to enlist the help of the British authorities,56 which once again asked Tweedie for his views. In order to justify his continued position that Britain should not help the Jews the British consul raised the following points on the question of the repression of the Jews in Baghdad: 1. 2.

Repression of the weak by the strong is the norm in Baghdad. The Jews throughout the Orient live under these conditions and there is nothing that the consuls can do about it. Muslims can do what they please to Jews, thanks to their natural and religious superiority.

55  Ibid., Tweedie’s letter, 27 Nov. 1889. 56  Ibid., Tweedie to White, 13 Apr. 1890; Board of Deputy Archive, letter of 28 Feb. 1890 attached to Community letter from 20 Shevat 5650.

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The Jews must rely on themselves and not on outside help, nor should they try to gain political influence. The Jews of Baghdad have good reason to be thankful for their situation, which is better than that of their brethren in other places in the Asian provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

In conclusion Tweedie advised the Jews of Baghdad to be “yielding today, and hoping for better luck tomorrow.”57 Apparently the British consul in Baghdad realized that he had gone too far in the opinions about the Jews that he had expressed in his reports to his superiors in London, and therefore assured them of his benevolent intentions. He was sympathetic towards the Jews, so he wrote, and consulted on their situation with the French and American consuls and others, but the Jews of Baghdad were guilty of resisting municipal officials, so why do they complain? They should have been satisfied with the punishment they had received, since the authorities could have treated them much more harshly. After defending the wali and the mayor of al-Karkh and after accusing the Jews of responsibility for the persecution they suffered, Tweedie went on to explain why Britain should not intervene on their behalf even when the attackers were Muslim civilians, not officials. Tweedie admitted that the Muslims of Baghdad harassed the Jews, but explained this as due to the fact that the Muslims’ faith told them that they were superior. Tweedie added that in his opinion the wali should not take any steps against the Muslim population in order to protect the Jews, because such steps would only make matters worse. He was of the opinion that it was better to let the Muslim attacks against the Jews recede naturally.58 By thus presenting his views, the British consul in Baghdad wanted to absolve the wali and the mayor of al-Karkh and his people of all responsibility for the events and their aftermath, and to present the Jews as responsible for the two main issues to which the affair gave rise: (a) the arrest of Jews, including leaders of the community, and their prosecution on trumped-up charges; and (b) expropriation of “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard from the Jews’ possession. In this way he freed himself and his government from the need to intervene on the Jews’ behalf. By doing so Tweedie intentionally ignored the Sublime Porte’s commitment to equality among the Ottoman Empire’s subjects, a ­commitment 57  FO, 195/1647, Tweedie to White, 13 Apr. 1890; ibid., Foreign Office to Tweedie, 9 May 1890; ibid., Tweedie to Foreign Office, 21 June 1890; ibid., Foreign Office to Tweedie, 24 June 1890; ibid., Tweedie to Foreign Office, 3 Aug. 1890. 58  F O, 195/1682, Tweedie to White, 21 June 1890 (with enclosures), and from 3 Aug. 1890.

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to which Britain, too, was a party since it was among the leading powers that urged the Ottomans to made the reforms. The Jews of Baghdad could not have expected such a forceful and reasoned argument against their position on the part of the representative of the power from which they expected the most help in alleviating their sufferings. They were aware that Britain had great influence on the Sublime Porte and could have changed their situation for the better. They also knew that there were influential Jews, among them immigrants from Iraq, living under British rule, whose efforts could motivate the British government to act in their favor. They were familiar with Tweedie’s anti-Jewish views and therefore repeatedly wrote to refute them, in the hope that the British government would act on their behalf through its ambassador in Istanbul, but their hopes were not realized. The British Foreign Office and the British ambassador in Istanbul accepted the views expressed by their consul in Baghdad and acted accordingly. Nor did the Jews of Baghdad fare better with the hopes they had pinned on the ability of British Jewry to influence its government. The only thing which the London Jewish community was able to do was to pass on their complaints to the Foreign Office, which was asked to check the matter and act in accordance with its findings. But since all such requests were sent to Britain’s representative in Baghdad who was hostile to the Jews and avoided doing anything for them, nothing positive for them could have been expected from that quarter. Clearly the way Tweedie dealt with the events connected with R. Abdalla Somekh’s burial were influenced by his own personal prejudices, just as the British resident in Basra, S. Manesty, had behaved a century before. William Tweedie was born in Scotland in 1836 and at the age of twenty-one joined the British army in India. During his long tour of duty in India and Afghanistan he learned Arabic and became an enthusiastic proponent of Islam. His expertise in Arab culture was evident in a book he published on Arabian horses (printed in 1894).59 His admiration for the Arabs was reflected in the somewhat bizarre will that he wrote seven years before he died. In it he ordered his body to be buried on an estate he had purchased in Scotland, clothed in Arab garb. This last wish was respected when he died in 1914.60 Thirty years before the events of September 1889, appeals by Iraqi Jewry for British intervention when the wali of Baghdad, Mustafa Nuri Pasha tried to take Ezekiel’s tomb in Kifil out of their hands had achieved very different 59  W. Tweedie, The Arabian horse, his country and people with portraits of typical or famous Arabians and other illustrations. Also a map of the country of the Arabian horse, and a descriptive glossary of Arabic words and proper names (Edinburgh 1894). 60  For these details and the text of the will, see the Dunscore site.

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r­ esults. The British consul at the time, J.M. Hyslop, supported the Jews against the wali and the issue was decided in the Jews’ favor. Of these two approaches it was Tweedie’s policy towards the Jews in the wake of the events surrounding the burial of R. Somekh that would become characteristic of British government policy with respect to Iraqi Jewry until the community’s exodus and the end of British influence in Iraq during the second half of the twentieth century.61

Request for Assistance from the Jews of France

The Jews of Baghdad, who believed in British Jewry’s ability to help them, were also certain that the Alliance Israélite Universelle and influential French Jews such as Baron Maurice de Hirsch and the Rothschild family could intervene effectively on their behalf. They hoped that French Jewry would succeed, whether by appeal to the French government or through direct intercession with the Sublime Porte in Istanbul, in removing the wali from office, stopping the persecutions and bringing their Muslim enemies to justice. However, it turned out that French Jewry’s ability to help their c­ o-religionists in Baghdad was even less than that of British Jewry, as we shall see below. To this we must add the fact that a local Jewish Ottoman subject, Shaul Somekh, had been given the post of representative of AIU in Iraq and principal of the boys’ school it administered in Baghdad. Somekh did not have the protection of a foreign power and had neither the training nor the courage to act as the defender of the community in which he served. The representative of the AIU in Baghdad, who feared that the wali would arrest him and throw him into prison far from his wife and children, preferred to remain locked up in his home with no contact with his superiors in Paris, rather than to stand at the head of his community and attempt to protect it when it came under attack. A month passed after the events before Somekh finally dared to break his silence and wrote to his employers, but even then he remained extremely cautious: He did not sign the letter he sent to Paris, which he sent not to the address of the AIU offices but to the private residence of its president. In this letter the representative of the AIU in Baghdad explained why he waited so long to report on the events and why he refused to accede to the Jewish community leadership’s

61  Elie Kedourie, “The Sack of Basra and the Farhud in Baghdad,” in Arabic Political Memoirs and Other Studies, by idem (London 1974), 283–314.

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plea to write to the AIU and ask for its help.62 He wrote: “The Jews of Baghdad raise their eyes to you. They are convinced that AIU can initiate diplomatic intercession on their behalf. They urged me to send you a telegram in which I would ask you for help. But I refused to comply with their request.” Somekh explains why he evaded helping the Jewish community in its hour of need: First of all, I am an Ottoman subject and subject to the wali’s whims like the other Jews. If I sign a telegram to AIU, as they want, I would certainly become implicated in the general guilt and be thrown into jail like the others. But the state of my health does not permit me during an epidemic to wallow in the darkness of the prison, where I can be of no use to the community. And also because my wife suffered from dysentery, a serious illness which requires devoted and wise care. How could I leave her alone with my two children in her state? A second reason … is that a telegram addressed to AIU would do more harm than good, because the wali would present it to Istanbul as an appeal to a foreign power. That is what he did in the case of the hakham bashi’s telegram, which he had insisted on addressing to the Anglo-Jewish Association immediately after the events, despite my objections.63 While the AIU representative preferred to refrain from any act that could be interpreted as resistance to the wali and support for the latter’s Jewish opponents, he did enable the English teacher Morris Cohen to write to the AngloJewish Association in London,64 and also permitted his assistant J. Valadji to write to the AIU management through contacts in Greece and Bulgaria. Valadji sent his first letter to Paris two weeks after the affair began and described the terror which Baghdad’s Jews and the school’s staff felt: For a trifle we were almost slaughtered on September 15.… We became miserable. Baghdad’s Jews are no longer safe … they were reduced to absolute zero. They lost much of the freedom that they had. A Jew cannot walk with raised head and peacefully engage in trade.… He is afraid to open his store lest he be exposed to losing his life and his merchandise. Whoever dared opened their shop from among the community’s poor 62  AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, [Somekh’s] letter, 14 Oct. 1889. 63  Ibid. 64  Ibid., Valadji’s letter to AIU, 8 Oct. 1889. Valadji does not state the letter’s date, but apparently it is the one sent to London on 30 September 1889 (see note 35).

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were attacked by savage Muslims and soldiers until they were forced to close.… The authorities do nothing. They shut their eyes and close their ears.… Most of the Jews have shut themselves inside their houses out of fear.…65 Valadji continued in his letter to relate that the Jews were persecuted by the wali and the Muslims of al-Karkh. They were accused of rebellion even though the accusers knew full well “that the Jews of Baghdad are afraid of their own shadow. So how could it be that the miserable rabbis had the courage to rebel against the Muslims, whom they fear like the plague, and to shoot at them with a pistol?”66 After describing the hopeless situation of the Jews in Baghdad Valadji went on to urge the AIU to provide immediate help for the Iraqi Jewish community: It is necessary to begin immediately to deal adequately in Paris and London with the dire events that occurred in this outlying corner of Asian Turkey. For the position of the Jews in Arab Iraq has become ever more complicated. According to reports that come to us from the more remote regions it appears that the anti-Semitic movement is slowly conquering the provinces and is spreading, like the cholera, into the valleys of the Tigris, the Euphrates and Diyala, up to the Persian border.…67 Valadji chose to describe Muslim harassment of Jews in Iraq as an “anti-Semitic movement,” in order to explain the situation to the AIU in terms with which it was familiar. The Jews of Baghdad appealed not only to AIU headquarters in Paris but also asked for the intervention of the organization’s regional commission in Istanbul. The latter refused to cooperate and Shaul Somekh expressed the Baghdadi community’s concern over the organization’s inability to help. He asked: “Can AIU do something for this abandoned community?”68 He suggested approaching Baron Hirsch and asking him to use his considerable influence on the Sublime Porte in order to achieve the following objectives:

65  AIU Archive, Irak, IC2, Valadji to AIU, 1 Oct. 1889. This letter was sent by way of Sarah Guéron from Philippopolis. 66  Ibid. 67  Ibid. 68  Note 62.

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To appoint independent judges to try the Jewish defendants. To put false witnesses on trial and to punish them severely so that they would not give false testimony against Jews in future. To punish the wali and his helpers.69

However, Somekh’s and Valadji’s appeals came to naught, and they turned once again to the management of the AIU, reported on the continuing persecution of Jews in Baghdad, and urged the organization and Baron Hirsch to act.70 The community itself also appealed to the management of the AIU and pleaded for its help in “convincing our glorious government to remove this trial from us … and to demonstrate our innocence, to bring to trial those who attack us for all that they have done to us.”71 In view of the great hopes which Baghdad’s Jews had in the AIU’s ability to convince the Sublime Porte to stop the persecutions from which they suffered and to punish their attackers, it is important here to discuss the organization’s real ability to do something about the situation. It turned out that contrary to the expectations of Baghdadi Jews the management of the AIU did not ask the French government to intervene in the matter of the harassment of the Jews by the wali and the Muslims of al-Karkh, because it believed that an appeal to the European powers was risky72 in light of the anti-Jewish atmosphere in France following the publication of Édouard Drumont’s anti-Semitic book, La France Juive (1886). We have already shown the anti-Jewish position of the French consulate in Baghdad at the end of the eighteenth century.73 This anti-Semitic hostility towards Baghdad’s Jews continued to adhere to France’s representatives in Baghdad during the events surrounding R. Somekh’s burial as well, as we can learn from a letter sent by M. Pognon, the deputy French consul in Baghdad, to his superior in Paris about the affair.74 Pognon exploited the events in order to slander the Jews and used 69  Ibid. 70  AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Valadji to AIU, 14 Oct. 1889 and 11 Nov. 1889; and from Somekh to AIU, 11 Nov. 1889. 71  Ibid., letter from 24 Heshvan 5650 [18 Nov. 1889], signed by rabbis Elisha’ Nissim, Hesqel Moshe Halevi, and Abraham Moshe Hillel, with the stamp of the Bagdad Conseil Rabbinique (Baghdad Rabbinical Council). Sent attached to Valadji’s letter from 18 Nov. 1889. 72  As can be understood from Somekh’s letter to AIU, 6 Jan. 1890, in reply to a letter from the AIU management that he received on 29 Nov. 1889 (ibid.). 73  See above, pp. 153–5; and note 68. 74  De Vaucelle, La Vie, 48–50.

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anti-Semitic stereotypes in order to accuse them of using their wealth in order to gain political advantages and overcome their opponents. With respect to the ownership of “ha-Cohen’s” tomb, Pognon, like Tweedie, did not accept the Jews’ claim that it was their possession, but adopted the Muslim claim that this was the shrine of the prophet Joshua, revered by both Muslims and Jews, although he expressed doubt as to the possibility that Joshua son of Nun was in fact buried in Baghdad. Pognon went so far as to accuse the Jews of having violated the permit they had been given by the wali by interpreting it “in a very Jewish way,” and “buried their rabbi not only in the middle of the day in an extravagant manner, but also in the middle of the holy shrine, a few steps from the prophet’s tomb in the midst of Muslim graves.”75 Such an accusation, that the rabbi was buried among Muslim graves, was not uttered even by the hostile Muslims of al-Karkh. Pognon also justified Muslim attacks on Jews, which he considered an unavoidable response to Jewish provocations. After having accused the Jews of being responsible for the events and their aftermath the French deputy consul in Baghdad discussed the trials of Jews which the wali held. Pognon sharply criticized the judicial system in the wilaya of Baghdad, which he called “corrupt and greedy,” but distinguished between it and the wali, whom he described as “the most honest governor that Baghdad has had in a long time. He is very fair, friendly towards foreigners and full of good will. But unfortunately his weakness paralyzed his good intentions.” The Jews, Pognon continues, accused the wali of being responsible for the persecution against them by the local authorities and sent a petition to AIU, an organization headed by Baron Hirsch [sic!], so that it should act against the wali. The deputy French consul in Baghdad continued to weave his anti-Semitic plot as follows: This poor man [the wali] became the new Antiochus, a new Heliodorus wishing to defile the Temple.76 The evening’s rebels [the Jews] became innocent victims, suffering for their faith, the daughters of Israel covered their heads with ashes and as in the beautiful days of antiquity their voices were heard from on high, like Rachel mourning her sons.77 75  Ibid. 76  On this image, based on the story of Heliodorus, state treasurer and deputy to King Seleucus IV, who tried to put his hands on the temple’s treasure but was attacked by angels and forced to flee for his life, see Simon Dubnow A General History of the Jewish People [in Hebrew], 2 vols. (Tel Aviv 1962), vol. 1, 80. 77  Note 74.

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Pognon goes further and based on “certain rumors” provides his superiors in Paris with the following anti-Semitic account: The angel appeared in the shape of Baron Hirsch who, armed not with his sword but with his wallet, succeeded in felling the new Heliodorus to the ground by fighting in the sultan’s council of ministers and defeating the wali. No one knows how things occurred, but it is nearly certain that the Sublime Porte asked the latter in a humiliating manner for explanations, and that the latter replied haughtily and in a telegram addressed to the sultan accused the Grand Vizier of corruption. In short, the governor was ordered to move immediately to Adana, a change of location that meant shame.78 The version of the events surrounding the burial of R. Somekh disseminated by the French consulate in Baghdad contained anti-Semitic elements aimed at the Jewish community in France itself, and appeared to have been well received by the French authorities. It is in light of this that we must judge the behavior of the management of the AIU with respect to its response to Baghdad Jewry’s plea for help. The sources available to us show that the deputy French consul’s version of the events has no truth but was wholly made up from the wicked imagination of its creator and shows how much he was influenced by anti-Semitic literature. An examination of AIU files and publications shows that not only did it not turn to the French authorities on this issue, but that it also refrained from raising it with influential French Jews such as Baron Hirsch. Instead, it preferred to contact influential Jews in Istanbul, such as the deputy chairman of the AIU’s regional committee, Solomon Fernandez79 and the influential community activist Count A. de Camondo, who was staying in France at the time. The result of their intercession was also quite the opposite of that described in Pognon’s anti-Semitic account. In his reply to Camondo’s query the Grand Vizier accepted the wali’s version of the event: According to information received from a reliable source, the Grand Vizier wrote to Camondo, some Jews wanted to make a public disturbance 78  Ibid. 79  BM (Oct. 1889): 149. It was reported that in light of information from Baghdad about the persecutions, AIU’s central committee interceded with the Turkish interior minister on behalf of Baghdad’s Jews through S. Fernandez. This is the only mention in AIU publications of anything done by the organization concerning this affair.

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and attacked the gendarmes charged with maintaining order during the funeral with weapons in their hands. This forced the local authorities in Baghdad to arrest them and put them in prison. That is the truth about what happened.80 The Grand Vizier’s answer was passed on to the management of the AIU. It left no room for doubt as to the Sublime Porte’s position in favor of the wali, its rejection of the arguments presented by the Jews of Baghdad. As far as we know this position of the Sublime Porte was not passed on to the Baghdadi community, which did not cease to believe that the Jews of England and France were continuing their efforts to stop the attacks against them, to punish their opponents, and to return “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard to them.

Appeal to Jewish Public Opinion

At the same time the Jews of Baghdad appealed to the Jews of England and France they also contacted the Jewish press in Europe, the Holy Land, and the Far East, in order to make Jewish public opinion aware of their situation and to apply pressure on influential Jews to intercede on their behalf with the governments of England and France and with the Sublime Porte in Istanbul. The main mover in this international effort was the former hakham bashi R. Elisha’ Nissim Dangoor, who was forced to lead the Baghdadi Jewish community once again after the acting hakham bashi R. Abraham Hillel and the former hakham bashi R. Sasson Samoha were arrested the day after the funeral because they had refused the wali’s request to move R. Somekh’s body from its grave in the courtyard of the tomb of Joshua the High Priest.81 As part of his efforts to put an end to the attacks on the Jews and to bring about the release of the imprisoned community leaders and having the charges against them dropped, 80  AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, letter from Camondo to AIU, 28 Nov. 1889, to which was attached the Grand Vizier’s answer from 12 November 1889 to Camondo’s letter from 29 October 1889. 81  From this we learn about the actions taken by the Baghdadi Jewish community in the affair (and see Ben-Yaacob, Yehudai Bavel, 188). Yaron Harel’s statement that R. Dangoor never again led the Jewish community after his resignation in 1885 is inaccurate: Yaron Harel, Between Intrigues and Revolution [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem 2007), 112–13. R. Dangoor’s activity led to his arrest by the wali on 30 September 1889: Magid Mesharim 1, no. 1 (4 Nov. 1889), but he was released after twenty-five days: Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, 44–45) and continued to lead the community.

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R. Dangoor wrote to the newspapers Ha-Tzfira (published in Warsaw) and Habazeleth (published in Jerusalem) shortly after the events. Appeal to Jewish Public Opinion in the Holy Land Rabbi Dangoor’s first letter was sent to Habazeleth, in the hope of getting the Jewish community in Jerusalem to ask the leaders of the Jewish community in Istanbul to use their contacts at the Sublime Porte to stop the persecution, obtain the release of the Jewish prisoners, and punish the wali and his Muslim supporters. In his letter82 Rabbi Dangoor gave the Baghdadi Jewish community’s version of the events and then described the difficult situation of the Jews, who were persecuted by the wali and his Muslim helpers: For the net is spread and the oppressor [the wali] is ever more domineering, searches for libels and we are all arrested. No one can escape from the arrests and the libels, for every Jew who walks in the street the Gentile thugs take out their anger on him. Children ask for bread but they have none, because we bring bread at the risk of our lives.… Woe unto us, we are lost like sheep with no shepherd, and we do not know what the next day will bring, for his [the wali’s] hand is still raised against us.… After describing the sad state of Baghdadi Jewry due to the persecution, Rabbi Dangoor went on to ask the newspaper to help putting a stop to the attacks: “For our eyes are raised to you, may you be strong and do whatever you can, and may God help you.”83 Rabbi Dangoor’s letter was printed in full in Habazeleth,84 thus bringing the issue of Baghdadi Jewry to the attention of Jewish public opinion in the Holy Land. The arrest of the Baghdadi Jewish community’s spiritual leaders seems to have greatly affected the rabbis of Jerusalem, who also lived under Ottoman rule and therefore felt threatened by the precedent of arresting rabbis in important positions. It is therefore not to be wondered that the newspaper published an emotional appeal to R. Moshe Ha-Levi to intercede on behalf of the Baghdadi community and try to affect the release of the jailed rabbis. The publisher of Habazeleth wrote that rabbi Ha-Levi,85 the most senior rabbi in Turkey, had the authority and ability to make the complaint of 82   Habazeleth 20, no. 1 (18 Oct. 1889): 5–7. 83  Ibid. 84  Ibid. The letter is from 19 September 1889, four days after the incident. Rabbi Dangoor signed it EBN (Elisha’ Ben Nissim). 85  That is, Israel Dov Fromkin.

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Baghdadi Jewry heard by the Sublime Porte and to demand justice. He was certain that the sultan, “a king of grace, an enlightened and merciful king … who in his pity does not distinguish one nation from another,” would accept his request and command his ministers “not to help ignorant fanatics persecute honest people of a faith other than their own.” The publisher of Habazeleth condemned the local authorities in Baghdad who had prevented the Jews, who had suffered so greatly in the epidemic, from burying their dead in the ancient Jewish cemetery and from taking respectful leave of Rabbi Somekh, “who had taught more than two-thousand students, authorized rabbis, excellent judges, sages, kosher butchers and cantors.… [The Jews of Baghdad] are still beaten and tormented, and their leaders are imprisoned in chains on false charges.” Habazeleth appealed not only to Rabbi Ha-Levi but also pleaded with the leaders of Istanbul’s Jewish community “to convince the appropriate authorities to remind the officials in Baghdad that it is their duty to treat the Jews just like the other residents of the city and to demand that their oppressors and tormentors be brought to justice.”86 However, neither Rabbi Dangoor’s letter nor the appeal by the publisher of Habazeleth elicited a response from the acting hakham bashi and the heads of the Jewish community in Istanbul. The newspaper then repeated its appeal to Rabbi Ha-Levi “to fulfill his duty and to intercede as best he can on behalf of our poor brothers.” It complained that the Judeo-Spanish newspapers published in Istanbul “do not report anything either about the catastrophe that has happened to our brothers in Baghdad or about the steps which the heads of the congregation in the capital, headed by the chief rabbi, have taken on their behalf.”87 On the other hand, it praises the Jewish press in Britain for the reports it published concerning the intercession of the London Jewish community with the British Foreign Minister, and uses the occasion to appeal once again to Rabbi Ha-Levi to do something. However, the acting hakham bashi in Istanbul, who was appointed to his post by the authorities and did their bidding,88 was not prepared to intercede on behalf of Baghdadi Jews accused of resisting the authorities. In light of the acting hakham bashi and the Istanbul community’s refusal to act despite the newspaper’s repeated appeal,89 and despite reports of continued persecution of the Jews of Baghdad, where Muslims took over the tomb 86  Note 84. 87   Habazeleth 20, no. 4 (15 Nov. 1889). 88  Minna Rozen, The Last Ottoman Century and Beyond. The Jews of Turkey and the Balkans 1808–1945, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv 2005), 87–91. 89   Habazeleth 20, no. 17 (14 Feb. 1890).

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of Joshua the High Priest and the community leaders and rabbis were put on trial,90 Habazeleth published the following bitter complaint: How long will this situation last? Will the sword of our oppressors’ jealousy and hatred forever strike our miserable brethren in Baghdad while not one of our own high officials and heads of the Jewish congregation in the capital city of our government lifts a finger to put an end to this terrible state? … We mention the honorable rabbi and the heads of the congregation … because it is in their hands, and only in their hands, to save tens of thousands of their brethren, residents of a great city to God and Israel from the threat of murder and annihilation which has come upon them, and it is their duty to do this thing.…[Baghdad is] a provincial capital in Turkey and is subject to his majesty the pious and merciful king, sultan Abdul Hamid the Second, in the shadow of whose government all his loyal subjects find shelter irrespective of their faith.… The remoteness [of Baghdad] … cannot deny our brethren who reside there their rights, the rights of Turkish citizens which our government has granted to all the Jews in the country’s cities. Its governors and officials do not have the right to ignore the Jews or to expose them to the whims of the powerful of the land, contrary to the government’s laws and the desire of his majesty the sultan. The newspaper then went on to admonish Rabbi Ha-Levi and the Jewish leaders in Istanbul: “If they choose to remain silent in this time of trouble … they will not be able to wash their hands of the affair and say ‘Our hands have not spilled this blood’ [emphasis in the original].”91 But even these strong words remained without a response, whereupon Habazeleth ceased its involvement in this issue. Indeed, the inactivity shown by R. Moshe Ha-Levi and the leaders of the Jewish community in Istanbul in the face of the persecution suffered by the Jews of Baghdad at the hands of the wali Mustafa Asim Pasha and his Muslim helpers despite the equality which the central government had granted the Jews, signaled to the Jews in the Holy Land what they could expect at the hands of the Turkish and local Muslim rulers in time of trouble, and also proved to Iraqi Jewry that it could not expect the hakham bashi and the leaders of the Jewish community in Istanbul to intercede on their behalf with the 90   Habazeleth 20, no. 23 (28 Mar. 1890); ibid., 20, no. 26 (28 Apr. 1890); ibid., 20, no. 30 (23 May 1890). 91  Ibid., 20, no. 42 (22 Aug. 1890).

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Sublime Porte, even if an appeal to do so originated in the pressure of public opinion in the Holy Land. Appeal to Jewish Public Opinion in Europe A few days after he had written to Habazeleth R. Elisha’ Dangoor wrote a similar letter to the newspaper Ha-Tzfira, in which he described the events and reported on the dire straits of Baghdad’s Jews, “who are in great trouble and danger, in risk of their lives … because the Ishmaelites threaten to annihilate us, God forbid, just as the Ishmaelites in Damascus planned to do to the Christians there in 1860.” In light of the danger facing the Baghdad community, Rabbi Dangoor asked the publisher of Ha-Tzfira to help by appealing to the leaders of the Jews in Europe, “to save us from our trouble as soon as possible, so that we do not die at the hand of the cruel savages.”92 Ha-Tzfira agreed to publish Rabbi Dangoor’s letter and the newspaper’s publisher93 informed his readers “about the terrible deed committed by fanatic Muslims and the great evil which threatens the Jewish congregation in that city [Baghdad], which has done no wrong,” although he was of the opinion that his newspaper alone was not powerful enough to bring the events in Baghdad to the attention of Jewish public opinion in Europe when the news agencies, most of them owned by Jews, paid no attention to the affair and preferred instead to report much less important events from around the world. He blamed this on the Jewish leadership, especially in Germany, which in his view had tended to become ever less involved in the prevention of attacks on Jews since the Damascus blood libel. This leadership, according to the publisher of Ha-Tzfira, ignored Jews in trouble and fawns to the Gentiles, as proven by its refusal to use the means available to it to make public the events surrounding Rabbi Somekh’s funeral. He identified with the sufferings of Baghdad’s Jews: “The heart suffers as we read the pleas of the author of the letter from Baghdad, who begged us to rush to help the oppressed.” But he doubted his ability to influence the leaders of German Jewry, from whom he could expect assistance, to help the Baghdadi Jewish community, because the German Jews cannot read his Hebrew-language newspaper, and therefore urged editors of Jewish newspapers in European languages: “Arise, go to your philanthropists, imbue them with a generous spirit so that they do whatever is in their power to extricate our brethren from their troubles.”94 And indeed, as the publisher 92   Ha-Tzfira 16, no. 220 (24 Oct. 1889): 94. The letter of Rabbi Dangoor, 26 Elul 5649 [22 Sept. 1889]. 93  That is, Haim Zelig Slonimsky, assisted by Nahum Sokolow. 94  Note 92.

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of Ha-Tzfira predicted, his appeal to Jewish public opinion and to Jewish leaders to do something about the events surrounding the burial of Rabbi Somekh remained unanswered. The one positive development he noted, as did the publisher of Habazeleth, consisted of the reports he read in the Jewish press in London about the appeal of the Jewish leadership there to the British Foreign Secretary to intervene on behalf of the Jews of Baghdad: “We were very glad to read in the English press that the leaders of the Jews in London hurried to help our brethren who are in great trouble in Baghdad … blessed be God who has not left us without a redeemer.”95 But the efforts of the Jews of England also came to naught, as we noted above, and Rabbi Dangoor, too, was arrested by Baghdad’s wali because of his appeals for intervention from outside the country. In this situation R. Shlomo Bekhor Husin, who until then had refrained from turning to the press out of fear of the wali, “for I, because of the great terror which the oppressor cast upon us, crawled and did not dare let my voice be heard outside. I put a hand on my mouth.…” used the opportunity of the change of walis in Baghdad to write to Ha-Tzfira and beg “the leaders of Israel” who have influence on ministers and kings “to make every effort to bring our justice to light, to punish our mortal enemies and to return our heritage to us.”96 But Rabbi Husin’s repeated appeals to the Jewish leadership in Europe for help through Ha-Tzfira went unanswered. He expressed his disappointment and that of Baghdadi Jewry with the leaders of European Jewry in the following emotional words: “To our great sorrow our words remained as a voice calling in the wilderness.” “Ha-Cohen’s” tomb remained in Muslim hands and the rabbis were put on trial and sentenced to a year in prison: “We see this but can do nothing to help. We have no one to rely on except our Father in heaven, whom be beseech to look upon us with a merciful eye, demonstrate our justice and redeem us forever.”97 The Jews of Baghdad also sent an appeal to German Jewry, which was published in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, a Jewish newspaper published in Berlin, but this, too, proved fruitless.98 Baghdadi Jewry’s belief that the Jews of Europe could prove to be their salvation were dashed, and now could only hope for divine intervention.

95   Ha-Tzfira 16, no. 232 (7 Nov. 1889): 951. 96   Ha-Tzfira 16, no. 286 (12 Jan. 1890): 1178. 97   Ha-Tzfira 17, 193 (5 Sept. 1890): 797. See also ibid., 17, no 50 (12 Mar. 1890): 209. 98  The letter was sent from a rabbi in Baghdad to a teacher in Vienna (no names are mentioned), who in turn passed it on to the newspaper, which published it on 14 November 1889.

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Appeal to Jewish Public Opinion in the Far East While the appeals to Jewish public opinion in Europe and the Holy Land were addressed to those with direct influence on the Sublime Porte, including European powers such as England and France, the objective of the appeals to Jewish public opinion in the Far East was to mobilize the communities of Iraqi Jews who had settled there in order that they might pressure influential members of British and French Jewry to intervene on behalf of Baghdadi Jewry. However, at the time of the events in Baghdad, Iraqi Jews in the Far East did not possess a newspaper of their own. The last local newspaper published in Calcutta in Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic had closed down about half a year before the affair. Since the Ottoman authorities refused to allow the publication of a Jewish newspaper in Baghdad, it was the newspapers published in India that served as the means of expression not only for Iraqi Jews in the Far East but also for the Jews of Baghdad, who regularly sent these newspapers reports about events in the community, both via reporters stationed in Baghdad and via members of the community itself. These newspapers also constituted a means of communication whereby Iraqi Jews passed on information to their relatives and acquaintances in the Far East. The newspapers had a large readership among Iraqi Jews in the Far East, in Iraq, and in the Holy Land, and to a lesser extent in other countries, especially England.99 The publication of an organ giving expression to Iraqi Jewry in the Far East had an advantage over the publication of a similar newspaper in Baghdad, because in the Far East Jews from Baghdad were able to express themselves freely on disputes they had with the local authorities and did not have to fear that they would be persecuted for this. Therefore the Jews of Baghdad urged emigrants from their community in the Far East, especially in Calcutta, where the last newspaper in their language had been published, to renew its appearance so that they could have a platform where they could express their concerns, through which they could conduct their fight against the wali and their Muslim opponents, and in which they could ask influential Jews in the Far East, in Istanbul, in London, and in Paris to help them. Their pleas were answered by R. Shlomo Twena, a native of Baghdad and a graduate of the “Beit Zilkha” yeshiva headed by R. Abdalla Somekh. Twena founded a new newspaper in Judeo-Arabic which he named Magid Mesharim. The first issue appeared on November 4, 1889, about seven weeks after the

99  Abraham Ben-Yaacob, Babylonian Jewry in Diaspora [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem 1985), 63, 167–70; Yitzhak Avishur, “Literature and Journalism in Judeao-Arabic of Babyloanian Jews Printed in India” [in Hebrew], Pe’amim 52 (1992): 101–15, 110–14.

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affair began.100 The entire issue was dedicated to the affair, which was presented purely from the perspective of Baghdadi Jewry. It contained reports from Baghdad giving the community’s version of events, analyses that condemned the actions of the wali and his helpers against the Jews, an appeal to the Jews of the Far East and to influential Jews in Europe and Istanbul to help their brethren in Baghdad, and a call on the Jews of the Far East to sympathize with and come to the aid of the Baghdadi Jewish community. On the issue’s front page Rabbi Twena explained that he decided to found the newspaper Magid Mehsarim because of the many letters he had received from the Jews of Baghdad, who described the attacks on them by the authorities and the local Muslim population and had asked Rabbi Twena to publicize them so that Jews everywhere became aware of their sufferings and would do what they could to bring them to an end. The newspaper’s publisher did his best to do as they wished. He presented a detailed report of the affair sent to him from Baghdad by an unnamed source and called on the Jews of the Far East, and especially their notables, to come to the aid of the Baghdadi community: “It is incumbent upon us all,” Rabbi Twena wrote, “residents of India, China and Burma, to utter a loud cry against the persecution of our brethren who are oppressed by the wali and his henchman Abdulla Zibaq.” He informed his readers of the difficult situation of Baghdadi Jews, whose rabbis were imprisoned with shackled feet in the company of murderers and criminals, and asked for help: We, the nation of Israel, are one body, and it is our duty in this time of trouble to help. We must see ourselves as if we were in the same trouble and help as much as we can. Certainly the wealthy and influential Jews in India, especially … the David Sassoon [Company] … must not remain indifferent in the face of the oppression faced by our brothers, including Torah scholars and old men. Rabbi Twena did not merely ask his readers to identify with the suffering of Baghdad’s Jews but also demanded that they take specific steps: to contribute money and to contact the AIU in Paris and the Anglo-Jewish Association in London to ask for their intercession in the Baghdadi community’s favor. The paper’s publisher ended his message with the following emotional plea: Our heart bleeds for the poor sons of our nation who suffer from many catastrophes that have befallen them. We hope that our dear readers will 100   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 1 (4 Nov. 1889).

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pay attention to this; let every man tell his friend and help as much as he can, with money, advice and letters. And may God blessed be He help them so that these wretches will be freed with your help from their persecutors. Amen.101 But the Jews of Calcutta had decided to do something to help the Jews of Baghdad even before the first issue of Magid Mesharim saw the light of day. Through the offices of Slaiman David Sassoon from Bombay, they contacted Albert David Sassoon, the head of the Sassoon Company in London, and asked him to intercede to put an end to the oppression of Baghdadi Jewry. Rabbi Twena, who reported this news, asked Slaiman Sassoon to immediately report the results of the intervention in London to his newspaper, because “we are all sitting with an angry heart and await the release of our wronged brethren. We are very sad over our wrongly imprisoned brothers.” He expressed his hope that Albert Sassoon’s intervention on behalf of the prisoners would have positive results.102 In the following issues of Magid Mesharim reports from Baghdad and on the steps taken to stop the attacks continued to figure prominently. In the second issue the newspaper’s publisher provided a summary of events as reflected in letters that he had received on the eve of Tabernacles (October 9, 1889), some of which he published in the same issue. According to these reports the Jews of Baghdad continued to be persecuted and their situation became ever worse. The rabbis were in jail, “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard was in Muslim hands, and the wali continued to arrest ever more rabbis and Jewish notables. Mustafa Pasha was reported to have attempted to arrest some of the community’s most prominent leaders, among them the merchant Yosef Gourji and the landowner Menahem Silman Daniel, but both prudently stayed away from Baghdad. Rabbi Twena once again asked influential Jews in Europe and India to intercede with the Sublime Porte on behalf of the Jews of Baghdad and to put an end to the attacks on them.103 The third issue of Magid Mesharim contained a report that had been published in the Jewish Chronicle on the efforts of the London Jewish community which, however, did not produce any results, according to information received from Baghdad. The Jews of Calcutta had high hopes that their intercession with the British Foreign Minister would prove efficacious,104 and when this 101  Ibid., “Call for Help.” 102  Ibid., “There Is Hope.” 103  Ibid., 1, no. 2 (14 Nov. 1889). 104  Ibid., 1, no 3 (21 Nov. 1889).

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failed they appealed once again to Albert Sassoon, whom they asked to transmit a letter from them directly to the British ambassador in Istanbul, in which they asked him to try to obtain the release of the Jewish prisoners.105 This letter appears to have been passed on to the British consul in Baghdad, who mentioned it in his correspondence with his superior in Istanbul. As noted above, Tweedie refrained from taking any action to free the Jewish prisoners since, so he claimed, they had already been released.106 Two main issues continued to preoccupy the Jews of Baghdad in their letters to Magid Mesharim, the expropriation of “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard, and the judicial steps taken against them. Baghdad’s Jews repeatedly appealed to the Jews of India, the AIU in Paris, the Jews of England, including the David Sassoon Company, as well as the hakham bashi and the Jewish leadership in Istanbul, to help them regain control of “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard, call off the trials and punish their Muslim opponents. This included a call for a commercial boycott against the latter by Jewish merchants in India and the David Sassoon Company. The Jews of Baghdad used the newspaper to express their disappointment with the lack of results. Thus, for example, in an article published in the fourteenth issue of Magid Mesharim the paper’s reporter in Baghdad stated that despite the numerous appeals which Baghdadi Jews had made to the Sultan, the hakham bashi and the Jewish leaders in Istanbul, the AIU, and Magid Mesharim in the matter of “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard, nothing was done.107 After the appeals of the convicted Jews were rejected and they were sent to prison (see below) the reporter of Magid Mesharim in Baghdad once again wrote to the AIU and the Anglo-Jewish Association requesting help for the imprisoned Jews. He asked: if at a time such as this these organizations would not support the Jews of Baghdad, when would they ever do so? He added, I called but received no reply. For God’s sake, do what you can, find a solution for the sake of our holy Torah … the trial is a trial, the prison sentence is a prison sentence, ‘ha-Cohen’ has been taken from us, and we have no one on whom to rely except for our Father in heaven.108 When this appeal remained unanswered as well, he wrote: “Poor man that I am, how many times in the past year did I call [for action] but no one replied.

105  Ibid. 106  See above. 107   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 14 (13 Feb. 1890). 108  Ibid., 3, no. 5 (3 Dec. 1891).

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I told you, do it for the sake of our holy Torah, find a solution for ‘ha-Cohen’ … but we saw no redemption from anyone.”109 Thanks to the intercession of Jewish leaders in Istanbul the sultan did grant a reprieve to the Jewish convicts. Their release from prison was received with joy by the Baghdadi community and the reporter of Magid Mesharim there tried to use this success in order to once again raise the issue of “ ‘ha-Cohen” in a letter he sent to his paper: But the question of “ ‘ha-Cohen,” may his righteousness protect us, which is still in the hands of the Gentiles, is very difficult. For many Gentiles come and say to us: “We wonder at you Jews, how you agreed to renounce Nabi Yusha’ [Joshua son of Nun]. We could not believe that you yielded it. You are weak.” In short, if “ha-Cohen,” may his righteousness protect us, be returned to us we would win much respect among the nations of the world.… How can it be in the hands of the Gentiles and no one demands it?”110 This defiant appeal also remained unanswered. Subsequently the issue was no longer pursued by the newspaper and its reporter in Baghdad. As we saw, although the Jews of the Far East sympathized with the distress of Baghdad Jewry with respect to the events associated with the burial of Rabbi Abdalla Somekh, they were unable to help them avoid the attacks on them by the wali and his local Muslim helpers, who had powerful supporters in the Sublime Porte in Istanbul. Since influential Jews in Europe and Istanbul had proven ineffective, the Jews of Calcutta decided to act independently by making a direct appeal to the British ambassador in Istanbul and through him to the British consul in Baghdad. But this appeal, too, came to naught, because it was not accompanied by effective pressure by the British government on its representative in Baghdad, who was hostile to the Jews (see above). To summarize this discussion of Baghdad Jewry’s appeal to Jewish public opinion in Europe, the Holy Land, and the Far East, we may conclude that this activity did not contribute anything beyond the direct appeals to the powersthat-be in Istanbul, London, and Paris. This was the case even when there were newspapers willing to inform their readers of the affair, and publishers and editors who did react to Baghdadi Jewry’s appeals and agreed to help. We saw that the Jewish press that supported the Jews of Baghdad was unable to ­influence

109  Ibid., 3, no. 6 (10 Dec. 1891). 110  Ibid., 3, no. 31 (14 June 1892).

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the Sublime Porte and did not convince Jews in influential positions to act so as to bring the affair to a favorable conclusion. The Jewish community’s options for stopping the persecutions and for punishing its enemies were thus exhausted. It now only remains for us to describe how subsequent events were dictated by the wali and his Muslim supporters, who proceeded to act against the Jews in two directions: Giving the Muslims control of “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard, and prosecuting the Jews for having rebelled against the local authorities.

The Muslim Takeover of the “Ha-Cohen” Courtyard

The Baghdadi Jewish community’s proposal to the wali that it bury Rabbi Somekh in the courtyard of the tomb of Joshua the High Priest raised the question of the ownership of the shrine. The question became a key issue in the struggle between Mustafa Asim Pasha and the local Jewish community. The Jews claimed that the burial took place on a plot that had been in their possession for many generations and that the mayor of al-Karkh and his men

Figure 5.4 Tomb of Joshua the High Priest.

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should be punished for having stopped the burial and for having attacked the funeral participants. Abdulla Zibaq and the wali, on the other hand, argued that the site was a mosque, that the Jews should not have tried to bury one of their own there in the first place, and that by disobeying their orders and using force to complete the burial the Jews in fact rebelled against the Turkish authorities and deserved to be punished for their deed. This was the main crux of the dispute between Baghdadi Jewry and the wali before the Sublime Porte. The dispute came to an end with the Grand Vizier’s telegram to Count Camondo in which the Sublime Porte accepted the version of the wali and his supporters and rejected the Jews’ claims. There was now no longer anything that could stop the wali’s attacks on the Jews, with the help of Zibaq and his men. But the Jews’ enemies went further, and undertook a number of steps for strengthening their hold on “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard. They removed all the Jewish religious symbols from the site, including Hebrew inscriptions of biblical verses, names of Jewish philanthropists from Baghdad and elsewhere who had provided contributions for the renovation and upkeep of the burial chamber, and decorations on the chamber walls, including a Menorah carved into the wall opposite the entrance. The Muslims also removed an epitaph that had been placed on the grave of R. Ya’acob Yosef Ha-Rofé who had died in 1850 and was buried in a room next to “ha-Cohen’s” burial chamber, and removed all traces of the grave itself.111 After having removed every sign of Jewish ritual from the place, the Muslims of al-Karkh proceeded to turn the synagogue next to the burial chamber into a Muslim place of prayer, by adding Islamic symbols, and also to demonstrate their ownership of the site by organizing large-scale religious events attended by numerous Muslims from Baghdad.112 In order to carry through these changes the Jews’ opponents also had to give a different identity to the saint who was buried there. Instead of a figure from the Second Temple period that Islam did not recognize ,they chose a personage from the days of Moses who also appeared in Muslim tradition, namely Joshua son of Nun (al-Nabi Yusha’ in Arabic). The wali, in order to obtain official recognition for these steps from the Sublime Porte, organized petitions, together with the mayor of al-Karkh, which the Muslim residents of Baghdad were asked to sign, some under pressure and threats of violence. In these petitions it was claimed that “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard was a mosque that had been in Muslim hands for many generations.113

111  Ibid., 1, no. 19 (20 Mar. 1890). 112  Ibid.; Ibid., 1, no. 20 (27 Mar. 1890). 113  Ibid., 1, no. 8 (26 Dec. 1889); ibid., 1, no. 14 (13 Feb. 1890).

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After the Muslims had expropriated “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard from the Jews and transformed it into a mosque, Jews were forbidden to enter the shrine. Baghdad’s Jews had thus not only been deprived of the tomb of a venerated saint that was located near the Jewish quarter, that was a pilgrimage (ziyara) destination on the holiday of Pentecost, and whose adjacent synagogue was constantly in use for religious rituals, but they had also lost the place where Jews who had died outside Baghdad’s city limits were prepared for burial in the nearby Jewish cemetery. As a result the Jews who wanted to go on pilgrimage, even those whose health or financial situation made it difficult, had no choice but to travel all the way to the prophet Ezekiel’s tomb in Kifil, near the city of Hilla, or to the tomb of Ezra the Scribe in al-’Uzair, next to the city of Basra.114 The Jews of Baghdad refused to accept this result and did everything in their power to regain control of “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard, without success.115 The shrine remained in Muslim hands for more than twenty years; it was only when the wali Nazim Pasha arrived in Baghdad in May 1910 that it was given back to the Jews. The Jewish symbols were once again put in place, the synagogue was reconsecrated, and the Jews of Baghdad renewed their pilgrimage to the site on Pentecost.116

Intervention by the Turkish Government

The events surrounding R. Somekh’s funeral ostensibly did not attract the attention of the central government in Istanbul. However, the very fact that the wali and his supporters were able to continue their harassment of the Jews, including arbitrary arrests and taking control of “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard, without any public reaction on the part of the Sublime Porte, clearly shows that the central government supported the governor and his deeds and rejected the Jews’ arguments, as can also be deduced from the Grand Vizier’s telegram to Count Camondo. The Sublime Porte’s position was also made clear in talks which representatives of the central government held with delegates of Baghdad’s Jewish community.117 114  Ibid., 1, no. 21 (3 Apr. 1890); Ibid., 1, no. 32 (26 June 1890); Ibid., 3, no. 6 (10 Dec. 1891). 115  See above. 116  Sassoon, Masa’ Bavel, 176–77, 180; Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45; Kazzaz, “Political Activity”, 46. 117   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 16 (27 Feb. 1890). The article reports on what the Sultan’s representative, who accompanied the new wali to Baghdad, said to the leaders of the Jewish community during their meeting. Dumont, whose work was based on the AIU archive

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Until the end of November 1889 the Sublime Porte did not deign to reply to the Baghdadi community’s direct and indirect appeals. Its first public statement associated with the affair was given on December 1, 1889, when it announced that the wali Mustafa Asim Pasha would be removed from his position in Baghdad as part of a plan to force the Jewish community to move Rabbi Somekh’s body from “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard and to complete the Muslim takeover of the shrine.118 The Jewish community of Baghdad initially received the news of Mustafa Pasha’s removal with satisfaction, because it interpreted the move as a blow to the wali and to his policies. However, they were quickly disappointed when they saw that his removal was not accompanied by any steps to reduce the attacks on them or to return “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard into their hands, and that Mustafa Pasha had in fact been promoted to the more senior post of governor of Damascus.119 Indeed, on December 5, 1889, only a few days after the notice of Mustafa Pasha’s removal, an order came from the Sublime Porte to remove Rabbi Somekh’s body from its grave in the courtyard of Joshua the High Priest.120 In other words, Mustafa Pasha’s transfer was part of the Sublime Porte’s plan to force the Jewish leadership in Baghdad to agree to removing Rabbi Somekh’s body from “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard. The community leadership, which before had refused to comply with the same demand when it came from the wali because moving the dead was contrary to Jewish religious law and therefore preferred going to jail, were now faced with an order that came from the central government. The Sublime Porte entrusted the execution of its decree to the commander of the Ottoman forces in Baghdad, Field Marshal Tawfiq Pasha, a man considered friendly towards the Jews, immediately after it had appointed him as acting wali of Baghdad. The Jewish leadership was summoned to Tawfiq Pasha, who formally informed them of the decree. The Jews could not refuse to obey, but they did succeed in convincing the governor to allow them to bury Rabbi Somekh in the city’s Jewish cemetery and to move the body at night, in order to prevent manifestations of (see Dumont, “Jews, Muslims, and Cholera”), claimed that in this case the Turkish central government decided to operate by “striking one faction and then the other, and thus to give both sides a measure of satisfaction,” a view which, however, is not consistent with the comprehensive documentation on which the present study is based. Dumont clearly ignores the Grand Vizier’s position as expressed in his telegram to Count Camondo (found in the AIU archive; see note 80 above) and the overall course of events as described above, where we showed that the central government was very one-sided in its support of the wali and paid no attention to the Jews’ appeals and arguments. 118   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 9 (2 Jan. 1890); see also Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45. 119   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 29 (5 June 1890). 120   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 10 (8 Jan. 1890). See also Ben-Zvi Institute, MS 3750, pp. 44–45.

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joy and harassment by the Muslims of al-Karkh.121 The rabbi’s body was moved on that same night. The area through which the funeral procession went was put under a full curfew. The rabbi was removed from the grave in the dark, under a heavy guard, and those present were surprised to see that the body was still fully preserved after having been buried for eighty-seven days, “as if he had died just now, or like a man asleep in his bed … Then the Gentiles [the Muslims who were present] said ‘Now we know that Jews also have Paradise’ … and honored him greatly, as befits a prophet and a saint.” The funeral party accompanied the body on foot to its new burial place. Those present, including the representatives of the authorities, remained in the Jewish cemetery until the burial had been completed and an epitaph had been placed on the grave. At the end of the funeral the Jews were given protection until they reached their homes.122 Mustafa Asim Pasha at the time was still in Baghdad, but was not involved in moving the rabbi’s body. He left the city one week later.123 The new wali, Sirri Kamil Pasha, arrived in Baghdad about one month later, on January 11, 1890, and was received by the city’s residents and notables, including Jewish leaders and rabbis.124 The Jewish leadership quickly met with the new governor and presented him with a comprehensive report of the affair, which it also gave to the representative of the central government who had come to Baghdad for the new wali’s inauguration. The Jews gave their replies to the claims against the Jews which the previous wali and his supporters had made to the Sublime Porte.125 But this action also did not bring about any change in the Sublime Porte’s hostile position towards the Jews as described above. The Baghdadi Jewish community had refused to agree to move Rabbi Somekh’s body from its grave in “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard in order to prevent the shrine being turned into a Muslim mosque, especially in view of the fact that the residents in the surrounding neighborhoods were Shi’ites, who viewed the Jews as unclean. After the body was removed the Jews could no longer hope that the site would ever come back into their possession. In fact, all of Mustafa Asim Pasha’s demands of the Jewish community were fulfilled. Had the Jewish community’s leadership accepted his demands immediately after the burial and obeyed his wishes it would have saved itself and Baghdadi Jewry as a whole a great deal of suffering and considerable expense. 121   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 10 (8 Jan. 1890). 122  Ibid. 123  Ibid., 1, no. 11 (16 Jan. 1890). He left Baghdad on Thursday, 12 December 1889. 124  Ibid., 1, no. 15 (20 Feb. 1890). 125  Ibid., 1, no. 16 (27 Feb. 1890). The report was thirty pages long.

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When the community’s leadership met with the new wali it was told that it must maintain peace and quiet and in return it received promises of help.126 However, since the Jews had been forced by the Sublime Porte to give in to all of the former wali’s demands, including the trial of Jews on charges of having violently resisted the local authorities, the new wali’s arrival did not bring about any change in their situation, as clearly described by the reporter of Magid Mesharim in Baghdad: We have gained nothing by the removal of Asim Pasha from office. We had hoped for light but now came darkness. For they removed our teacher, rabbi and the crown of our head [rabbi Somekh] from his place, and the revered rabbis and other people were put on trial. They took “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard and turned into a mosque. Everything was done according to their will. So what did we gain from Mustafa Asim’s removal from office?127 Now that Rabbi Somekh’s body had been removed and all the efforts to regain possession of “ha-Cohen” had failed, it was the trials of the Jews that preoccupied the community and its leaders.

Jews on Trial

The wali of Baghdad and his Muslim supporters not only oppressed and humiliated the Jewish community by taking over “ha-Cohen’s” courtyard and forcing the community leadership to remove its deceased spiritual leader from his grave, but also wanted to punish it for its refusal to obey the mayor of alKarkh’s orders not to bury Rabbi Somekh in “ha-Cohen’s” and to deprive it of its financial assets. For this purpose they arrested numerous members of the Jewish community, in particular its spiritual leaders, during the High Holidays of 1889, even on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and prepared to put them on trial. Jews with enough means were able to avoid being arrested and tried after paying large sums of money to their oppressors so that they would leave them alone. Numerous Turkish officials participated in these acts of blackmail. Money from the community also reached the central government. In addition, the community defrayed the costs of the trials and the

126  Ibid. 127  Ibid., 1, no. 29 (5 June 1890).

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expenses of activities abroad and in Istanbul.128 It also supported the prisoners and the families whose breadwinners had been incarcerated for a long time. These heavy expenses, which continued to press as long as the trials continued, put the community deeply in debt, so that it stopped paying the salaries of its employees, including the rabbis of the yeshiva, and ceased its support of the community’s poor and its welfare institutions. It also raised the annual taxes it collected for the government in order to cover a part of its expenses.129 At the end of November 1889 most of the jailed Jews were released, some on bail, until their trial. The community went to great lengths to prove that the defendants did not participate in the funeral, but Zibaq and his men saw to it that witnesses testified that they saw these people at the funeral.130 The local authorities also insisted that the Jews be put on trial, apparently on the orders of the Sublime Porte.131 Two trials were held. In the first, on December 3, 1889, seven Jews were accused of having participated in burying Asher Salim’s wife in the Jewish cemetery inside the city. The defendants were sentenced to six months in jail and remained incarcerated until they completed their sentences.132 In the second trial, twenty-six Jews were accused of having participated in the events surrounding the burial of Rabbi Somekh, including several leading rabbis and other community notables. The Jewish community asked that the venue of the trial be moved outside of Baghdad because of the undue influence which the community’s enemies had on the city’s judiciary, but this request was rejected. At first the prosecution asked for very harsh sentences, including long periods of imprisonment, death, and exile to a remote region. But after Mustafa Asim Pasha was removed from office the prosecution, in return for

128  Ibid., 1, no. 11 (16 Jan. 1890); ibid., 1, no. 18 (13 Mar. 1890); ibid., 3, no. 6 (10 Dec. 1891); AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh to AIU, 23 Dec. 1889, 13 Feb. 1890, and 26 June 1890. 129   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 11 (16 Jan. 1890). 130  Ibid., 1, no. 4 (28 Nov. 1889); ibid., 1, no. 9 (2 Jan. 1890); ibid., 1, no. 11 (16 Jan. 1890); AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh to AIU, 23 Dec. 1889. 131   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 5 (5 Dec. 1889); ibid., 1, no. 11 (16 Jan. 1890). 132  Ibid., 1, no. 9 (2 Jan. 1890); ibid., 1, no. 36 (25 July 1890); see also FO, 195/1682, Tweedie’s letter, 3 Aug. 1890. According to the British consul in Baghdad thirty-eight Jews were arrested in the incident of the burial of the Jewish woman. Eight of these were released because they were considered to have suffered enough through their mistreatment by the police as they were arrested, twelve were charged by the investigating officer and put on trial, seven were sentenced to six months in prison, three were released for various reasons and only four remained in prison.

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a considerable bribe, agreed to replace the serious charges with lighter ones. The Jewish community also retained a Christian lawyer to defend the accused.133 After numerous delays this trial opened on January 28, 1890 and lasted until February 6.134 At the end of the trial the court ruled that “ha-Cohen,” which it called Nabi Yusha’ Mosque, belonged to the Muslims, and that since the Jews had broken into this mosque and had forcibly buried their rabbi in a Muslim shrine where no non-Muslim had the right to be buried, they deserved to be punished with imprisonment and a fine. The attorney for the defense brought both Jewish and Muslim witnesses to prove that the defendants were not present at the burial and “ha-Cohen” was not a mosque but a Jewish shrine that had been in the possession of the Jews since antiquity, and that it was also the Jews who had always paid for its expenses and for the construction of a synagogue in it, but these testimonies were rejected by the court, which relied on the decree of the Sublime Porte to move R. Somekh from his grave, to argue that the burial which the Jews had carried out in “ha-Cohen” had not been legitimate. The court gave out its verdicts on the same day. Fourteen defendants were found not guilty, including the community leaders, the hakham bashi Elisha’ Dangoor, and the rabbis Abraham Hillel and Sasson Samoha. The twelve other defendants, including four rabbis, were sentenced to one year in prison and a total fine of thirty-six Turkish pounds.135 The verdict was received with great consternation by the defendants as well as Baghdadi Jewry as a whole, and with great joy by their Muslim enemies, who also attacked the Jews and robbed them, so that many merchants closed their shops and shut themselves up in their homes. Muslim residents of al-Karkh went out in a joyful procession, with drums and dancing, marched to “haCohen” and all night celebrated their victory over the Jews. The reporter of the newspaper Magid Mesharim described the mood among Baghdad’s Jews well:

133   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 10 (8 Jan. 1890); ibid., 1, no. 11 (16 Jan. 1890); AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh to AIU, 23 Dec. 1889. 134   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 16 (27 Feb. 1890); ibid., 1, no. 17 (5 Mar. 1890). In issue no. 12 (30 Jan. 1890) the newspaper reports that Jews were emigrating from Baghdad to Damascus, Aleppo, the Holy Land, Bombay, and Calcutta, and that as a result there was a great drop in real estate prices. 135   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 18 (13 Mar. 1890); AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh to AIU, 13 Feb. 1890; see also FO, 195/1682, Tweedie’s letter, 3 Aug. 1890. According to Tweedie about one hundred Jews were arrested in connection with the rabbi’s funeral. Seventy-four of these were released without trial and fourteen were charged and tried, of whom twelve were sentenced to prison and fines. They appealed their sentences and were released temporarily.

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Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens (Lamentations 5:2), none did search or seek (Ezekial 34:6), and we do not find a balm for our soul. Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish (Numbers 17:27). If the Jews of Babylonia had the means to do so, they would have left the country, abandoned their homes and mansions, and fled.136 In order to avoid imprisonment, and out of their belief that a court outside of Baghdad would decide in their favor, the convicted Jews decided to appeal to the High Court of Appeals in Istanbul. This required a great sum of money, which the community did not possess; only with the help of the representative of the AIU in Baghdad was the necessary sum obtained and the appeal was presented to the court in Istanbul.137 The court ruled on the appeal two years later, in October 1891. The Jewish community was bitterly disappointed, for the high court did not overturn the original verdict. In the meantime the wali had been replaced again: instead of Sirri Kamel Pasha, Hajj Hasan Rafiq Pasha was appointed as wali of Baghdad.138 The news about the decision by the High Court of Appeal reached Baghdad on October 17, 1891, the third day of the feast of Tabernacles. The twelve men who had been convicted received the news with consternation while the Muslims were overjoyed. The Muslims taunted the Jews, saying: “Jews, we wish to inform you that the documents of the rabbis arrived from Istanbul, and they will go to jail for twelve months”.139 The rabbis among the convicted Jews appealed to the wali Hasan Pasha and in the presence of the hakham bashi R. Elisha’ Dangoor and the commander of the Ottoman army in Baghdad pleaded to have their sentences reduced. In their appeal the rabbis repeated their claim that they had not participated in the funeral and “wept copiously.” The wali sympathized with them and promised that he would ask the Sublime Porte to give them an amnesty. He also succeeded in postponing the date 136   Magid Mesharim 1, no. 18 (13 Mar. 1890); AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, from the convicted to AIU, 3 Apr. 1890. 137  Ibid.; AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh to AIU, 17 Feb. 1890; ibid., Irak XII E 112b, 28 Apr. 1890. At first Somekh claimed that the Sublime Porte was dissatisfied with the trial results and said that in his view the convicted Jews would win their appeals. However, later he wrote that the Jews of Baghdad were worried about the appeals after having received reports from Istanbul about the Grand Vizier’s hostility towards them. Somekh wrote to AIU requesting that it act to obtain reprieves for the convicted Jews (AIU Archive, Irak, IC3, Somekh to AIU, 6 May 1890). 138  ‘Azzawi, Ta’rikh al-’Iraq, vol. 7, 115. Hajj Hasan Pasha arrived in Baghdad on Monday, 16 August 1891. 139   Magid Mesharim 3, no. 3 (20 Nov. 1891); ibid., 3, no. 5 (3 Dec. 1891).

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when they were required to begin serving their sentence to after the holiday of Tabernacles. Jews in senior official positions in the Turkish state, headed by the wali’s translator, Sasson Hesqel Shlomo Daweed, the future Finance Minister in the first Iraqi Arab cabinet, met in order to discuss what could be done to prevent the imprisonment of the rabbis. They found a law that made it possible for the rabbis to serve their sentences under the supervision of the hakham bashi. Thanks to this law the sentenced rabbis were moved to the community’s beit ha-midrash for the duration of their sentences, while the other Jews who had been convicted were sent to jail.140 On the wali’s advice all the convicted Jews submitted an appeal to the Sublime Porte, but no immediate reply was forthcoming. The situation of these Jews is described in reports sent from Baghdad and published in the newspaper Magid Mesharim. Among the convicted Jews were old rabbis and others very poor, with large families whom they were unable to feed. The Jewish community was unable to help them, due to its own very precarious financial condition. The convicted Jews’ wives and children went to the synagogue on Sabbath and wept. The author of the report continues: Honored editor, believe me, I was very sorry for them. My heart broke and I wept, because each of them has to provide for ten or more souls, and could not earn enough even when they worked from morning to evening. They always barely had enough food, and never earned their livelihood easily, yet they accepted their situation.… But now the men are imprisoned and they require a great deal of money for their own livelihood, and three times as much for their families. What will their wives and children eat?141 Some seven months had passed when on May 13, 1892 the Sublime Porte’s answer to the wali arrived in Baghdad. The wali was informed that the Sultan had given a reprieve to all the Jews who had been convicted, and they were released. “Our people were very happy. The city of Babel was joyous,” according to a report from Baghdad. The local Jewish community organized large-scale public celebrations, among them public prayers of thanks to the sultan, the wali, the military commander, the hakham bashi, and leaders of the Istanbul Jewish community. On May 15 a large celebration was held, with a band and 1,400 students of the local Talmud Torah as well as a large audience of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. The Baghdadi reporter for the newspaper Magid 140  Ibid., 3, no. 5 (3 Dec. 1891). 141  Ibid., 3, no. 6 (10 Dec. 1891).

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Mesharim provided a detailed description of the celebrations. He wrote that the reprieve and the release of the prisoners gave much honor to our brethren the Children of Israel among the nations of the world. Where you went you heard people say: The sultan loves the Jews. He reprieved their prisoners and released them. The Gentiles who loved the Jews were very happy … but those who hated the Jews went about with downcast looks.”142 With this the affair of R. Abdalla Somekh’s funeral came to an end. Conclusions The considerations that led the leaders of Baghdad’s Jewish community to act as they did in the matter of R. Abdalla Somekh’s funeral and the attendant events turned out to have been mistaken. We saw that the basic assumptions which the community’s leaders made and the steps that they took proved to be unrealistic and led the community into the most serious crisis it had ever experienced throughout the entire Ottoman period. During the affair the community was led by an acting hakham bashi and many of its most experienced and influential leaders were absent from the city. The leaders who were present consisted of local rabbis, with no experience in how to administer the affairs of a large community of fifty thousand people in crisis, resulting in a series of mistaken decisions that led to a serious confrontation with the local authorities, to violent attacks on the Jews, to the loss of religious real estate assets by the community, to great financial distress, and to an interruption in community services. We conclude that the equality among all subjects which the Ottoman state had announced could last as long as the Jews respected the rules of protected minorities under Islam. When these rules came into conflict with the laws of the Ottoman state, the Ottoman authorities preferred the rules of protected minorities and ignored the imperial decree that declared that all the subjects of the state were equal, irrespective of their religion. In this confrontation the good social relations which the Jews had with local Muslims were no help to them, because Muslims who wanted to help the Jews were condemned, and some were even imprisoned. 142  Ibid., 3, no. 31 (14 June 1892).

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We also showed that the European powers with influence on the Ottoman Empire, namely England and France, did not insist on the implementation of the equality decree and avoided doing anything to help the Jewish community of Baghdad, using as excuses empty anti-Semitic arguments. In fact, the position of W. Tweedie that the Jews should not be helped even when they attacked by the authorities and by the local Muslims, also characterizes the attitude of Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, the British representative in Baghdad, towards the Jews of Iraq during the farhud pogrom of 1–2 June 1941. Because of this policy English Jewry was unable to help their brethren in Iraq. Jews elsewhere in Europe refrained from appealing to their respective governments on this issue. The AIU, too, did not contact either the French government or prominent French Jews; it preferred instead to seek help from its representatives in Istanbul and from influential Jews there. The Turkish acting hakham bashi in Istanbul, too, who was in close contact with the authorities, did nothing to help the Jews in Baghdad whom he ostensibly represented. The last option which Baghdadi Jewry possessed was to turn to Jewish public opinion in Europe, the Holy Land, and the Far East. The Jewish press in those places did indeed support the Jews of Baghdad, publicized their troubles and their complaints, and demanded action on the part of the Jewish leadership, but lacked the power to bring about a change in the situation. Due to the great distress into which the Jewish community had fallen, and the refusal or inability to help which it encountered in its appeals to all those from whom it had hoped for assistance, for the first time the very real possibility was raised that the Jews might have to abandon Iraq, precisely when the community was well-developed and prosperous as never before. Incidents of persecution and attack aimed at Jews in Iraq at the instigation of the authorities and the Muslim populace recurred in the twentieth century. The most terrible of these incidents, the farhud on Pentecost of 1941, occurred some fifty years later, under the Arab monarchy, as will be described below.

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The Pogrom (Farhud) of 1941, Reexamination The pogrom of Pentecost (Shavu’ot) festival, 1–2 June 1941, known as the farhud, was not documented by the main forces that were responsible for its occurrence, the British government and monarchic Iraq. The involved governments in fact did all in their power to prevent any information about the attacks on the Jews from reaching the public in Iraq and abroad, downplaying their severity and trying to ignore them. In the present study we shall reexamine important issues in the study of the pogrom of Pentecost 1941 and its denial, in light of new sources and including archival material ignored by researchers, new testimonies which were dictated to us by witnesses to the pogrom, and memoirs, mostly by Iraqi Jews, some published and some still in manuscript form.1

Research on the Farhud

Studies of the pogrom published in the last fifty years have therefore had to rely on sources located in the Central Zionist Archive in Jerusalem, including testimonies taken by employees of the Jewish Agency from Iraqi Jews who came to Palestine shortly after the pogrom; and on documentation, mostly indirect, found in archives in England and the United States. To these we may add contemporary news reports as well as memoirs and testimonies published in the last twenty years. The first study of the farhud was published in English by Prof. Hayyim J. Cohen in 1966.2 Cohen’s work contains a description of the events, their background and aftermath, a presentation of the main questions which they raised, and an attempt to answer them using contemporary press reports, documents 1  Zvi Yehuda, “Selected Documents on the Pogrom (Farhud),” in Al-Farhūd. The 1941 Pogrom in Iraq, eds. S. Moreh and Z. Yehuda (Jerusalem 2010), 256–367. This is an edited and updated article of Zvi Yehuda, “The Pogrom (Farhud) of 1941 in Light of New Sources,” in Al-Farhud. The 1941 Pogrom in Iraq. Eds. S. Moreh and Z. Yehuda. Published within the book series of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center (Magnes Press, Jerusalem 1910), 9–25, 250–6. 2  Hayyim J. Cohen, “The Anti-Jewish Farhud in Baghdad 1941.” Middle Eastern Studies 3, no. 1 (Oct. 1966): 2–17.

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from the Central Zionist Archive in Jerusalem, and testimonies which Iraqi Jews in Israel dictated to the author. Cohen did not examine documents located outside Israel, but still succeeded in arriving at important conclusions concerning the British view on the pogrom. The relevant documents in British archives, which deal more directly with Rashid ‘Ali al-Kaylani’s rebellion and its suppression, formed the basis of Prof. Elie Kedourie’s comprehensive work in English on the pogrom, which was published eight years after that of Cohen.3 Kedourie made an extensive analysis of British policy towards Rashid ‘Ali’s rebellion and the farhud as articulated by the British military in the Middle East and India and British policy-makers in Iraq, India, and Britain. He highlighted the contradictions in that policy and the differences in the way policy makers in the British government and the British officials in Iraq assessed the situation and in the actions which they proposed. Kedourie did not have access to the documents on the pogrom in the U.S. National Archives in Washington D.C., which contain reports that American officials in Baghdad sent to the American State Department. These documents were examined by Prof. Harold Luks in a study published in English (1977).4 However, because his study dealt with a very long period of time, from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of World War II, and because of the scant amount of American documents dealing with the pogrom, his brief overview of the pogrom adds nothing to what Cohen and Kedourie put into their works. None of the above-mentioned publications used the many memoirs composed by Iraqi Jews. These are discussed in a comprehensive work by Prof. Shmuel Moreh.5 Another study by the same scholar discusses Palestinian incitement before the pogrom and the attitudes of Arab intellectuals towards the farhud in light of memoirs and other writings composed by Iraqi and Palestinian Arab politicians and writers at the time.6 Dr. Yehuda Taggar also wrote a study in which he presented the quite scarce mentions of the pogrom by Arab writers.7 The pogrom of Pentecost 1941 has also been discussed as one topic among others in studies dealing with various aspects of the history of Iraqi Jewry 3  Kedourie, “Sack of Basra.” 4  Harold Paul Luks, “Iraqi Jews During World War II,” Wiener Library Bulletin 30, no. 43/44 (1977): 30–39. 5  Shmuel Moreh, “The Pogrom of June 1941 in the Literature of Iraqi Jews in Israel,” in Al-Farhūd. The 1941 Pogrom in Iraq, eds. S. Moreh and Z. Yehuda (Jerusalem 2010), 207–49. 6  Idem, “The Role of the Palestinian Incitement and the Attitude of Arab Intellectuals to the Farhud,” in ibid., 119–50. 7  Yehuda Tagger, “The Farhud in the Arabic Writings of Iraqi Statesmen and Writers” [in Hebrew], Pe’amim 8 (1981): 38–45.

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in the twentieth century. Among them are those of Dr. Sylvia Haim8 and Dr. Nissim Kazzaz,9 in which the pogrom is mentioned as part of a discussion on the social and political situation of Iraq’s Jews in the twentieth century. Other studies that shed light on issues touching on the pogrom were published by Kazzaz, who analyzed the attitude towards the pogrom by the Iraqi Communist Party—which supported Rashid ‘Ali’s pro-Nazi regime10— and by Prof. Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, who discussed how the Jewish yishuv in Palestine responded to the pogrom, based on new documentation that she found in archives in Israel.11 A new study by Dr. Orit Bashkin minimized the influence of the national and radical religious ideologies in Iraqi society, concluding that the farhud was marked by total disorder and the collapse of the state. Jewish and Muslim neighbors and friends remained loyal to each other because of religious and tribal traditions. Most Jews in Iraq continued to believe that Iraq was their homeland, and it was only the war in Palestine in 1948 which “shattered this vision.”12 Our survey of studies on the pogrom shows that while most of the materials to be found in archives, in the press, and in published memoirs has been examined by scholars as part of their research, dictated testimonies have not been systematically used.

Dr. Fritz Grobba and the Pogrom

The report of the government Committee for Investigating the Events of June 1–2, 1941,13 and later the scholars who dealt with it,14 regarded the anti-Jewish 8  Sylvia G. Haim, “Aspects of Jewish Life in Baghdad under the Monarchy,” Middle Eastern Studies 12, no. 2 (May 1976): 188–208. 9  Nissim Kazzaz, “The Influence of Nazism in Iraq and Anti-Jewish Activity, 1933–1941.” [In Hebrew]. Pe’amim 29 (1986): 48–71. 10  Nissim Kazzaz, “The Communists in Iraq and Rashid ‘Ali al-Kaylani’s Revolt,” in Al-Farhūd. The 1941 Pogrom in Iraq, eds. S. Moreh and Z. Yehuda (Jerusalem 2010), 173–85. 11  Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, “The Baghdad Pogrom and Zionist Policy,” in Al-Farhūd. The 1941 Pogrom in Iraq, eds. S. Moreh and Z. Yehuda (Jerusalem 2010), 186–206. 12  Orit Bashkin, New Babylonians (California 2012), 138–140. 13  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” no. 27. For other English translations of this report see Norman A. Stillman. The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times (Philadelphia, New York 1991), 405–17. 14  Cohen, “Anti-Jewish Farhud”; Kedourie, “Sack of Basra”; Luks, “Iraqi Jews”; Haim, “Aspects of Jewish Life”; Hamdi Walid, Rashid Ali al-Gailani and the Nationalist Movement in Iraq 1939–1941 (London 1987), 165.

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propaganda distributed by Dr. Fritz Grobba, the German envoy in Baghdad, as the chief cause of the outbreak of the riots. Grobba was not in Baghdad at the time of the pogrom, and in the few missives he sent to the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin referring to the Jews of Iraq he does not mention the distribution of anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda, nor, of course, does he boast of its success. On the contrary, in these letters, all dating to the period before the outbreak of World War II, the German envoy in Baghdad expressed his uneasiness about the Jews of Iraq.15 He describes the attitude of the Iraqi authorities and people toward the Jews, and reveals the nature of his activity to deflect the attacks of the Jews against him and the emissaries of Nazi Germany in Iraq. It would appear from this that rather than dealing with the onset of assaults against the Jews, Grobba was busy defending himself against them. These reports seem to show that the success of the Jews’ struggle to thwart Nazi propaganda in Iraq on the eve of the war was so great that the position of Nazi Germany was shaken and its activities faced failure. The question arises if indeed Grobba feared the Jews. Or did he, by presenting himself as one beleaguered by them, wish to give greater weight to his efforts to influence the authorities and elite circles of the Iraqi people to support Germany despite the great influence of Britain on them? Grobba presents the Jews as Germany’s enemies, who pass intelligence to the British so that the latter will harm the Germans in Iraq. According to Grobba, the Jews were informers for the British, and bribed Iraqi citizens with the aim of undermining Germany’s status in Iraq and injuring its representatives. The Jews, he said, also spread propaganda against Germany, and in this they made use of events that embarrassed the Iraqi government, such as the murder of the British consul in the city of Mosul, and the mysterious death of King Ghazi. Their aim was to have the blame for these events laid at the Germans’ door; this would cause the Iraqi authorities, on British instructions, to take vigorous steps against them and their propaganda. In a letter to his masters in Berlin on June 6, 1939 Grobba warns: The Jews were playing a dangerous game. They forgot that this is not Germany, who indeed wants to remove them but treats them humanely, but Iraq, an oriental land. If the Jews continue to make it difficult for Iraq with their deeds, a day will come when the anger of the masses will erupt, and the result will be: a massacre of Jews. When an oriental people’s feelings erupt all restraint disappears; they want to see blood. Indeed, during 15  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” nos. 1–3.

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the uprising [against the British] in 1920, six thousand Englishmen were killed by the Iraqi populace.16 Grobba foresaw an outbreak of riots against the Jews of Iraq two years before they occurred. He did not regard German policies or the Nazi propaganda he distributed as central factors in any future riots, because, he says, even when Germany acts to expel the Jews it treats them “humanely”; the Jews themselves, he claimed, were running a campaign of incitement against Iraqi leaders: they themselves were the prime cause of the coming pogrom. From Grobba’s letters, the underlying feature of his propaganda against the Jews in Iraq becomes clear—the Jews, who enjoy great economic and political influence—are aiding the British to consolidate their rule in Iraq through suppression of the domestic national elements. Hence, it is understandable that the Arabs in Iraq accuse the Jews of assisting the British. This charge was confounded during the farhud when the Jews were abandoned to the mercies of the rioters by their “friends” the British.17 From information transmitted by Grobba through his connections in 1937– 1939 with people in the Iraqi government, we learn that even leaders considered to be supporters of the British, such as Nuri al-Sa‘id, strove to establish ties with Nazi Germany and adopted Nazi educational methods for schooling Iraqi youth. Nuri al-Sa‘id, according to Grobba, agreed on the eve of the war to send a delegation from the al-Futuwwa youth organization to Germany in order to participate in a conference of the German Nazi Party.18 Senior officials in the Iraqi Ministry of Education, such as Sami Shawkat and Fadhil al-Jamali, maintained firm ties with Grobba and frustrated an initiative by the Iraqi security services to deport German teachers who were spreading Nazi propaganda in Baghdadi high schools. They also maintained a pro-Nazi nationalist organization.19 From this information it also emerges that the Arab intelligentsia in Iraq was generally supportive of Nazi Germany and hostile to the Jews because they believed that a strong Germany would constitute an obstacle to the British and French policy of repression against the Arab peoples.20 The

16  Ibid., no. 2. 17  Kedourie, “Sack of Basra.” 18  Walid, Rashid; Stefan Wild, “National Socialism in the Arab Near East between 1933 and 1939,” Die Welt des Islams 25, nos. 1–4 (1985): 126–73. 19  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” nos. 2–3. 20  Ibid., no. 2.

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popularity of Nazi Germany was so great in Iraq that participants in processions in the royal palace greeted King Faisal I with the Nazi salute.21 Grobba thereby confirms the findings of scholars of Iraqi history, who hold that the affinity of the Arab leadership and intelligentsia in Iraq with Germany was not a result of their adherence to the Nazi racist ideology but of their nationalist ideology.22 Hence it is possible to understand Grobba’s statement that immediately following the assassination of King Ghazi, Iraqi army officers and pupils demonstrated against Nuri al-Sa‘id and Rashid ‘Ali al-Kaylani, accusing them of the murder and demanding their removal from power.23 These findings brought a segment of the Jews of Iraq to the conclusion, soon after the pogrom, that no essential difference could be discerned between the rule of Rashid ‘Ali and the rule of other Iraqi leaders, such as Nuri al-Sa‘id in their attitude to the Jews. Therefore, it could not be expected that the crushing of the revolt and the halting of the riots reflected a fundamental change in the policy of the Iraqi government toward the Jews.24 This conclusion is reinforced by evidence about the condition of the Jews of Iraq under the pro-Nazi regime of Rashid ‘Ali. Not only did persecution and rioting against the Jews not take place in this period,25 they actually continued to serve at their posts as civil servants, including senior and sensitive positions, and as officers in the army and the police even as the Iraqi army was fighting the British.26 We thus see that the attitude of the Arab-Muslim Iraqi state towards the Jews was not dictated by the sympathy which the authorities and large parts of the Muslim populace felt towards Nazi Germany, but mainly by their own religious and nationalist conceptions. Therefore one cannot accept the claim made by the official Committee that blamed Nazi propaganda as the main 21  G. Eric Matson, The Middle East in Pictures, 4 vols. (New York 1980), vol. 4, 853, fig. 1611. 22  Luks, “Iraqi Jews”; Cohen, “Anti-Jewish Farhud”; Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement of Iraq (Princeton 1978), 453–55; Elie Kedourie, “The Break between Muslims and Jews in Iraq,” in Jews among Arabs: Contacts and Boundaries, eds. Mark R. Cohen and Abraham L. Udovitch (Princeton 1990), 21–62; Ahmad A.R. Shaikara, Iraqi Politics 1921–1941. The Interaction between Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy (London 1987) 165–200. 23  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” no. 3. 24  This subject will be discussed below. 25  Abraham Twena relates in his testimony that Rashid ‘Ali promised the Jewish senator Ezra Menahem Daniel that no harm awaited the Jews of Iraq as long as he was in power. See Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” no. 28. 26  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” nos. 4, 32; Haim, “Aspects of Jewish Life”; BJHC, Ms. A.S. Alkabir, vol. 3, pp. 124–27.

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Figure 6.1 Incitement of the crowd on the eve of the Farhud, May 1941. Photo: M. Othniel.

cause for the outbreak of the farhud and its consequences. The government of the independent kingdom of Iraq cannot be exempted from responsibility by this claim, since the Iraqi authorities’ hostility towards the Jews was very ingrained and all that German propaganda did was to lend further support to this hostility.

Outbreak of the Pogrom

The government Committee for Investigating the Events of June 1–2, 1941, and in consequence Jews from Iraq and historians, have paid particular attention to the question of the outbreak of the riots. They wished to determine the place, the time, and the manner in which the riots started, to find out the political and organizational membership of its initiators, and to define the immediate causes of its eruption. The Committee’s report states that the riots broke out on the morning of Sunday, June 1 1941 (the first day of the Pentecost festival), next to the al-Khurr bridge situated in al-Karkh, the western part of Baghdad, on the main road to the tomb of Joshua the High Priest. Soldiers of the Iraqi army together with civilians fell on Jews making their way to visit the tomb, as was their custom in celebrating the Pentecost holy day. The ­writers

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of the report believed that this onslaught, which was not put down right at the start by the army and police authorities, was the direct cause of the riots at al-Rusafa, the district in Baghdad where concentrations of Jews were located.27 However, local Jewish sources, who agree with the details of the incident given in the report, in which soldiers and Muslim civilians injured the Jews, diverge from its conclusions regarding the background to its onset. These sources maintain that it was not the Jews’ holy day pilgrimage to the tomb of Joshua the High Priest, but rather, their participation at a reception held for the Regent and his entourage on their return to Baghdad.28 The local Jewish sources considered Jewish identification with the Regent and his British supporters in Baghdad as the immediate cause, whereas the authors of the government report preferred to disregard these facts so as to free the Regent from responsibility for the harm done to the Jews close to his palace, and to downgrade the gravity of the pogrom and minimize its effect of rocking the foundations of Jewish existence in Iraq. We shall try to explain the differences between the two versions by examining the events that occurred at al-Karkh on the morning of Sunday, June 1, 1941, relying on new documentation that we have obtained. From the evidence of local Jews we learn that a delegation of Jewish notables did indeed attend the Regent’s reception. However, this was not held at the Baghdad airport or on the main road from Habbaniyya, as some sources assert,29 but at the Palace of Flowers (Qasr al-Zuhur),30 where delegations arrived representing the population of Baghdad, as witnessed by the writer Freya Stark, who was present.31 Some Jewish sources are hard pressed to settle the question of whether, on returning from the reception, the delegation from 27  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” no. 27. 28  See notes 29, 30. 29  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” nos. 8, 28. 30  Ibid., nos. 22, 23; no. 23 tells of the participation of a delegation composed of the spiritual leadership and dignitaries of the Baghdad Jewish community at the Regent’s reception, without stating the place where the function was held. 31  Freya Stark, Dust in the Lion’s Paw (London 1961), 113–14. Stark relates how on the morning of 1 June she traveled from the British Embassy in Baghdad to the Palace of Flowers to attend the reception for the Regent and his retinue. At the palace she saw the heads of the Christian community and representatives of the Muslims in Baghdad. Even if she does not recall the Jewish delegation, it is certain that the Regent’s reception was held at the Palace of Flowers and not at Baghdad’s international airport. See also Walid, Rashid, 165. Cohen’s version, that some Jews “including leading members of the community, went to the airport to greet the Regent and his entourage … were attacked on their way back by soldiers and civilians, as they passed al-Khurr bridge connecting al-Karkh with al-Rusafa,”

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the Jewish community came under attack at the al-Khurr bridge, which was near the Palace of Flowers and on the main road from it to al-Rusafa.32 It seems that the assault was against a different group of Jews, defined as young people, who were on their way to the festivities at the tomb of Joshua the High Priest and crossed the bridge after the deputation of Jewish notables had returned.33 The version in the report on the attack on the Jews according to which it took place close to the palace where the Regent and his retinue resided and operated, and on the main road connecting the Palace of Flowers to the Baghdad international airport and the British Embassy raises a question. How did it happen that at a place so sensitive to the security of the British and the rulers who supported them, riots could erupt, and a bloody incident could occur in which Jews were injured? Had the British neglected the security of the road connecting their Embassy with the residence of the Regent and allowed the assembly of armed soldiers and civilians who opposed them and their supporters among the domestic rulers? The report of the Committee and British sources did not trouble to address these questions. The great importance ascribed by the report to the incident at al-Karkh did not stem from the ferocity of the assault against the Jews but from its being the spark which, in the opinion of the report’s authors, ignited the atrocities at alRusafa. The authors thereby linked two events, and exempted themselves from considering the background to the riots at al-Rusafa. Researchers of the farhud have done likewise, evading a discussion of what it was that caused the rioters to begin their frenzy precisely in the Muslim Bab al-Shaykh quarter, and not in the Jewish neighborhoods nearby. These matters become apparent from the evidence we possess on the mode of operation of the rioters in the old Jewish quarter and in the adjacent which, based on the report of the government Committee for Investigating the Events of June 1–2, 1941, seems mistaken. Cohen, “Anti-Jewish Farhud.” 32  Some sources note that several of the Jews who were in the delegation were injured (Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” no. 23). Others do not mention if those injured were members of the Jewish delegation or other Jews (ibid., no. 28). Another source states that the assault was near the al-Washshash camp, situated close to al-Khurr bridge, and the injured were young Jews on their way to welcome the Regent, as Radio Baghdad announced (ibid., no. 8). 33  In his testimony, M. Itah, who was a leader of the Baghdad community and was wellinformed on what took place on the days of the farhud, denied that members of the delegation were injured. He stated: “The Regent arrived in Baghdad on Sunday, June 1, at 10 a.m. and went to his palace outside the city. Some eight or ten senior members of the Jewish community (members of parliament and so forth) went to visit him. It is not true that they were harmed when they came back from the palace.” (Ibid., no. 22).

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­ eighborhoods in al-Rusafa. We learn that the riots were not accidental, but as n in other occurrences, the physical attacks against Jews, their homes, and institutions began after incitement. According to the witness Ya‘qub Peres, On Sunday, June 1, 1941, when the crowd left the mosque named Jami‘ al-Gaylani, at about 10.30 a.m., there was anti-Jewish incitement among those who were leaving. At 5.30 p.m. a crowd gathered again in the same mosque. Anti-Jewish speeches were given. At 6 p.m. the crowd left the mosque and went on the rampage.34 We learn that the outbreak of the riots in the morning and afternoon of June 1 was preceded by incitement among the crowd of Muslims who had assembled at the al-Gaylani mosque, one of the largest and oldest mosques in Baghdad, known for its sanctity for Muslims. It is located in the Bab al-Shaykh neighborhood, where the riots began. The witness does not identify any of the inciters or name the organization to which they were attached. But it is certain that they belonged to the nationalist circle, which goaded the Muslim mob to riot in order to deter the Jews from rejoicing at their defeat and from raising their heads. The nationalists wished to show that even after the victory of the British they still had it in their power to uphold the superiority of Islam over the Jews, to harm them, to humiliate them.35 From the information we possess, we find that the organizers assembled the mob at a certain place, divided them into groups, and gave them speciallydefined tasks.36 These facts were certainly known to the pro-British Iraqi authorities and to the members of the Committee for Investigating the Events of June 1–2, 1941. Yet these chose to determine that the riots were spontaneous in order not to embarrass the new government, which had been formed 34  Ibid., no. 21. The sources are divided on the question of the time when the pogrom started on Ghazi Street, near the Bab al-Shaykh neighborhood. Some accounts maintain it was 2 p.m. (ibid., no. 28), 3 p.m. (ibid., no. 6), or 4 p.m. (ibid., no. 7); but most testimony indicates 6 p.m. as the time (ibid., nos. 8, 10–13, 21). It is possible that times conveyed by the first testimonies are inaccurate as the testifier was not himself a witness to the events (ibid., no. 28), or was a child when they took place and the evidence was submitted 50 years later (ibid., no. 6–7). 35  Twena writes: “A group of Kata’ib al-Shabab that had run away from the schools [of the community, with the intervention of the police] on May 30, 1941, established itself at Bab al-Shaykh. The Emergency Committee [the Committee for Internal Security] chaired by the mayor Arshad al-‘Umari knew of their presence there but did not lift a finger” (ibid., no. 28); and see ibid., no. 22; Longrigg, Iraq, 296–97. 36  See, e.g., Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” nos. 6, 7, 10, 12, 13.

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under British auspices, in opposition to Islamic national-religious circles of great influence at the grass-roots level. As may be learned from similar sources on incitement and attacks against the Jews, these circles habitually fanned the flames of hatred against the Jews in Iraq and urged that harm be done to the Jews as long as it seemed to them that the Jews were infringing the rules of “protection” (the dhimma) and the inferior status that Islam decreed for them as a condition for their existence in a Muslim state.37

The Course of the Pogrom

The intention of the mob immediately after they streamed out of the al-Gaylani mosque was to murder Jews. The first victims were Jews traveling by public taxi transport (a type of minibus) or going about their usual business on Ghazi street, which was the main traffic artery linking the Jewish neighborhoods in 37  The same happened in September 1889 when the local Turkish authority and religious Muslim circles in Baghdad persecuted the Jews and imprisoned their spiritual leaders, for the first time in the history of Ottoman rule in Iraq. The Jews of Baghdad were so furious that they sought to flee the country (see above, chapter 5). It occurred again at the time of the attacks against the Jews in 1929 (Cohen, “Anti-Jewish Farhud”). A third occurrence was in November 1912 in the city of Amara after news about the defeat of the Turkish army in Greece reached Iraq. J. Panigil, the AIU headmaster of the local community school wrote to Paris informing the AIU’s President of the dangerous situation of the Jews there who were threatened with looting and massacre by the Muslims: “Le télégramme qui nous annonçait la prise de Salonique, était conçu en ces termes: ‘Les habitants ont livré la ville entre les mains des ennemis.’ De là à accuser les Israélites de cette trahison, il n’y avait que un pas qui fut d’ailleurs vite franchi. Aussi depuis quelques jours ils nous menacent de nous massacrer. Pas un musulman ne rencontre plus un Israélite sur son chemin sans lui cracher à la face sa haine et le désir de le voir mort à ses pieds. Partout dans les cafés, dans les rues, dans les bazars, on n’entend parler que du pillage et du massacre prochain des Israélites.… Je vous laisse à penser l’angoisse de nos malheureux coreligionnaires. Ils vivent dans des transes et n’osent plus mettre le pied dehors. Ils restent blottis d’effroi dans leurs maisons. Un massacre ferait disparaitre en moins de 2 heurs toute la communauté israélite. Personne ne pourrait prendre sa défense, elle serait livrée entière à son triste sort.” (AIU Archive, Irak IE2, letter of 27 Nov. 1912). In contrast to the events in Baghdad on 1–2 June 1941, the local Turkish governor and army commander gave the orders to protect the Jews in time, and so saving the lives and property of the Jewish community.

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old Baghdad to the new Jewish districts in southern Baghdad. The frenzied crowd fell on passers-by who were identified as Jews. They stopped taxis, dragged the Jewish passengers out, and murdered them. From the evidence we have, at this stage of the pogrom firearms were not used and the killing was done by knives and beating with clubs.38 A few Jews managed to escape the rioters, either by pretending to be Muslims or by fleeing to the nearest police station, which served as a refuge for those who escaped from the mob. The rioters surged around the police station and demanded that the police officers hand the Jews over to them.39 The gathering of the mob on Ghazi Street and in front of the police station at Bab al-Shaykh and the killing of Jews in these places was halted, according to our evidence, when the governor of Baghdad, supported by armored cars of the police, ordered firearms to be used on the crowd at about 7 p.m. The rioters dispersed, and the disorder died down about an hour after the killing had begun.40 This testimony contradicts the conclusions reached in the Committee’s report,41 which claimed that the reason for the spread of the disturbances was the impotence of the police, who avoided firing on the rioters at the start of their action. The testimony also confirms the version of the governor of Baghdad as given in the report, that he ordered the police to fire on the rioters.42 This version was rejected by members of the Committee, apparently because it did not harmonize with their conclusions which first and foremost blamed the police, senior police officers and commanders of police stations, and the governor of Baghdad for the events. The halt to the mob rioting at Bab al-Shaykh and on Ghazi Street did not bring an end to the pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad. The rioters, who had been chased away from Ghazi Street, moved to the east of old Baghdad, to an uninhabited area bordering on the poor Jewish neighborhoods of Tatran and Abu Sifayn. One gang of rioters turned to the mixed neighborhoods of al-Qishil and ‘Aquliyya, situated on the northern and southern limits of the old Jewish quarter.43 After regrouping, they began at about 9 p.m. to burst into the homes of Jews and to murder the residents who did not succeed in escaping over the 38  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” nos. 6, 7, 13. 39  Ibid., no. 7. 40  Ibid., nos. 7, 13. 41  Ibid., no. 27. 42  Ibid., no. 7. 43  See below Map 6.1 of the Pogrom; Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” nos. 16, 17.

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rooftops of the houses of neighboring Jews that had not yet been broken into, or who sought refuge with Muslim neighbors. Escape was made possible in old Baghdad because the houses were constructed with common walls and flat roofs divided by partitions. Steps led up to these roofs, and at that season of the year the Jews of Baghdad customarily slept on them.44 Abu Sifayn and Tatran were economically and socially the weakest of the Jewish neighborhoods in the old Jewish quarter of Baghdad and the least organized for self-defense. Residents of other neighborhoods made preparations for their defense by hiring Muslim guards and storing defensive means, including weapons; but in those sections the Jews had no way of maintaining an effective defense.45 Rioters easily entered the houses in these neighborhoods, most of which were old, and injured a large number of Jews who crowded into them. Some of the Jews in Tatran were able to organize self-defense quickly, wrenching bricks out of the partitions on the roofs, and hurling bottles and other objects down from the rooftops onto the rioters in the alleyways below, preventing them from breaking down the doors of their houses. Policemen who patrolled the alleys of the neighborhoods did not join in with the rioters; nor did they help the Jews, from whom they had received money to protect them. These riots continued until 3 a.m. of the morning of June 2, and only stopped because of the “fatigue” of the rioters.46 Three hours later, at about 6 a.m. on the morning of June 2—the second day of the Pentecost festival—the rioters reorganized on Ghazi Street and at Ras al-Chol, and began a systematic onslaught against the Jewish neighborhoods; they penetrated into the heart of the old Jewish quarter, this time with the active support of the police.47 The rioters, among them army and police personnel, used rifles and machine guns, to burst into the homes of the Jews. In places where the Jews tried to prevent them from entering their houses by throwing objects at them, the rioters took up positions above the houses, from where they fired at the defending Jews and those trying to escape over the roofs, and giving cover to the rioters swarming through the alleyways in order to break down the doors of the houses. Police also aided those breaking into Jewish houses by firing at the locks and at the defenders, who were taking cover in the upper rooms of the house with a view onto the alley, attempting to stop the invaders reaching the doors of their 44  Matson, Middle East in Pictures, vol. 4, 830, fig. 4519. 45  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” nos. 10–13, 23. 46  Ibid., nos. 9, 10, 21, 23. 47  Ibid., nos. 10, 21, 23.

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houses. Police and soldiers with guns also shot and killed Jews in their houses and in the nearby alleys and streets.48 When the Muslim citizens of Baghdad and surroundings realized that the Jews were essentially defenseless and that the security forces themselves were participating in the killing, robbery, and looting, the throng of violators expanded to residents who did not belong to organized groups. This development widened the area of the riots, which encompassed almost all the neighborhoods where Jews lived, including those far from old Baghdad. The inciters eventually lost the initiative and the ability to organize the rioters for specific missions as they had on the first day. That had included the systematic murder of Jews and the destruction of their property. Now they began to devote themselves to robbing and looting as they approached the wellestablished Jewish neighborhoods, markets, and commercial areas next to them such as al-Shorja and al-Rashid Street. At some point the rioters lost interest in killing Jews, and they began to allow them to flee for their lives from homes that the intruders entered. At this point, the rioters only harmed anyone whom they considered a danger to themselves or who tried to stop their plunder.49 As the mob entered the large commercial areas of Baghdad it ceased to distinguish between Jewish and non-Jewish property, methodically breaking into the stores and stealing their contents. This seems to have been the factor that caused the Regent to expedite his decision to order the disturbances stopped. It emerges that the Regent and his British friends were in no hurry to halt the riots as long as the perpetrators were engaged in killing Jews and looting their property. One may infer that in addition to the riots against the Jews being initiated and organized, they also won support, or at least lack of opposition, from the Regent and the British, who had no interest in their being interrupted as long as they were under the control of their initiators. Only when the rioting mob got out of their control, with the expansion of the circle of participants and the spread of the disturbances to the large commercial areas of Baghdad, were decisive and speedy steps taken to stop them. These findings accord with others touching on the anti-Jewish nationalist awareness at the highest level of the pro-British government in Iraq at that time. 48  Zvi Yehuda, The Farhud, documentary film (Or Yehuda, Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, 2008). 49  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” nos. 8, 10, 12–17, 19–21, 23, 28; IJA, no. 3329 (List of looted Jewish stores in al-Shorja, Bab al-Agha, Suq al-Saray, Qamber ‘Ali, ‘Abbas Afandi, Taht alTakya, Suq Hannun, Khaldiya, Faraj Allah, Tatran, al-Taurat, al-Maydan, al-Hayderkhana).

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Figure 6.2 Roofs of Jewish houses in old Baghdad, 1942. Photo: E. Kadoori.



Those Responsible for the Pogrom

The sources and the published research on the pogrom emphasize the view of the Jews of Iraq that it was a transient, one-time event that could have occurred only in the special circumstances that arose at that time. These were Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda, a defeated Iraqi army, latent hatred, and a period in which no legal government was in power;50 this tallies with what was set out in the report of the government Committee.51 However, from the new sources we have found, a different picture emerges of how the Jews of Iraq viewed the farhud. We learn that people in the Jewish intelligentsia in Baghdad, like others in the community, tended to accept the main facts presented in the Committee’s report, yet were able to point out flaws in it, analyze the events in depth, and conclude that in the Iraqi government’s attitude to the Jews, no radical difference could be discerned between the pro-Nazi government of Rashid ‘Ali and the pro-British government that administered Iraq in the period of Arab rule, particularly in the period of independent Iraq. 50  Cohen, “Anti-Jewish Farhud”; Kazzaz, “Influence of Nazism.” 51  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” no. 27; Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, “Documents on the Baghdad Pogrom and the Response of the Yishuv in Palestine” [in Hebrew], Pe’amim 8 (Jerusalem 1981): 70–77.

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Jewish Agency files in Jerusalem contain a letter from a Baghdadi Jew written in Arabic who preferred to sign with a pseudonym rather than disclose his identity.52 Writing about the riots, its causes and consequences against the background of the findings of the Committee, he concludes that all governments of Iraq were guilty of persecution of the Jews and of anti-Jewish disturbances. In his view, the governments that preceded Rashid ‘Ali’s revolt not only did nothing to stop the torrent of hatred and hostility towards the Jews, they themselves encouraged it, and acted against the Jews overtly and covertly. They did so in order to appear as nationalists in the eyes of the people. Hostility to the Jews was, in the writer’s opinion, a means whereby Iraqi leaders ascended the ladder of power. In this, Rashid ‘Ali and his government were no different from the other leaders, and the British claim that the government of Rashid ‘Ali was illegal was unsound. At issue, the Jewish writer states, was not new people in the leadership of the Iraq state, for Rashid ‘Ali himself, and most of his government, had served in senior positions in the “legal” governments of Iraq and had been members of the Iraqi parliament for many years.

Figure 6.3 Iraqi youth in the royal palace greeted King Faisal I with the Nazi salute. The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection (Library of Congress), Iraq.

52  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” no. 29.

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As proof of the lack of favor towards the Jews by the Regent and by the proBritish Iraqi government that formed immediately after the suppression of the Rashid ‘Ali revolt, the writer of the letter notes the following: (1) the recommendations of the Committee were not implemented; (2) those responsible for the riots were not punished; (3) payment of compensation to the victims of the pogrom was evaded. The writer sees the acme of this derogatory attitude in the omission of any mention of the riots against the Jews in the Regent’s speech from the throne delivered on November 1, 1941 before the Iraqi parliament, marking the resignation of the government of June 2 headed by Jamil al-Madfa‘i and the installation of a new government under Nuri al-Sa‘id. The anonymous letter writer wrote: Who are the Jews, that they should be shown any consideration? Do they deserve to have their tragedy mentioned in a crown speech?… Are not the events of these two days [the farhud] to be considered a catastrophe? Was not the harm done to them worse than what happens in war (injuries, murder, looting, rape, torture), when people with no means of defense were attacked by an armed gang with machineguns, rifles, pistols, bombs, knives, and sticks (by police, the army, and civilians)?… Why were those responsible for the events not brought before a military court, as were the cases of Rashid ‘Ali and his henchmen? Is neglect forbidden when it concerns Muslims but permitted when it concerns Jews? Are not the souls of those who lost their lives after being tormented during those two days pure?… Not content with blaming the Regent and government of Iraq, including the pro-British governments, for the riots, the writer also accuses Britain, because, he says, it undertook responsibility for the well-being of the Jews of Iraq when it recommended to the League of Nations that independence be granted to the country, “and it was Britain which guaranteed that Iraq will function well [towards the minorities] as a civilized state.” This was so even though it knew that among the Arab Muslims in Iraq, no one had a sense of equality of rights and duties between the Muslim and the non-Muslim. But Britain, the writer contends, not only did not act to meet its obligations toward the Jews of Iraq, it was also careful to conceal the fact of the riots against the Jews and was anxious that news of them would not go beyond Iraq. By contrast, when the Japanese slaughtered British civilians in Hong Kong, Britain made certain to publicize the matter far and wide, and charged the emperor of Japan, his government, and the entire Japanese people with responsibility for the deed. The writer goes on to ask:

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But was it also proper for it to act to conceal the terrible atrocities committed by Muslims and Arabs, the army, the police, and civilians, against the Jews of Iraq in Baghdad on June 1–2, 1941? Why did that same government [the British] decide that what had happened in Hong-Kong should be broadcast and made known in all languages, whereas what had happened in Baghdad should be kept secret? Were the crimes committed by the Arabs less terrible than those committed by the Japanese army, or were they more so [in their gravity]? And if the British government considers the Emperor of Japan, his government, and his people to be responsible for the incident in Hong-Kong, is it not more than proper that the Regent of Iraq, the governments of Iraq, and indeed the British government itself … should be held responsible for the events of those two days? … [It should be noted] that the hostile acts in Hong-Kong were committed by an army fighting against the subjects of a state which is at war with its own state, whereas in Baghdad they were committed by the (Iraqi) army, police and people, in a premeditated fashion, against one of the ethnic groups of Iraq itself. We find similar views, placing responsibility for the pogrom on the Iraqi authorities and the British government, in the evidence of other people in the Jewish community in Baghdad. Abraham Twena, a community activist and educator, documented the riots in a monograph that he published. In testimony that he submitted in 196653 he analyzed the report of the Committee in light of personal knowledge and of eyewitness accounts which he heard from workers in the community in Baghdad during the farhud. He concluded that it was untrue that the cause of the riots was the al-Karkh incident, for which the report alleged the Jews were to blame. In fact, they erupted because of the British and their helpers among the domestic rulers, who “wanted to impose a curfew on the city and wanted military rule; that is why they incited the rioters and encouraged them.” In his opinion, “it is well-known that no pogrom or looting can take place in Iraq without the consent of the ruler.” Twena believed that the British were interested in the riots, also because they wished to be rid of the Jews of Iraq so that they would not hinder their taking control of commerce in the state. Other figures in the Jewish community in Baghdad concurred in charging the Iraqi and British authorities with responsibility for the farhud.54

53  Ibid., no. 28. 54  Ibid., no. 15.

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Figure 6.4 British troops in Baghdad, 31 May 1941. Photo: M. Othniel.

Twena confirms that the British participated in the incitement against the Jews and that British forces were in evidence in Baghdad during the pogrom. His testimony is supported by photographs that have come into our possession (see figure 6.4).

Denial of the Pogrom

Iraqi statesmen and public figures who wrote about the Rashid ‘Ali rebellion remained silent on the issue of the farhud.55 Only Muslim intellectuals who had left Iraq during the Ba’ath regime mentioned the pogrom in their memoirs.56 Recent Arabic publications on the Jews of Iraq have positive attitude toward the farhud and blame chauvinist nationalist circles in the Iraqi Muslim society of it occurrence.57 55  Tagger, “Farhud in the Arabic Writings.” 56  Moreh, “Role of the Palestinian Incitement.” 57  Khathem Habib, Yahoud al-Iraq wal Muwatana al-Muntaza’a (The Jews of Iraq and the expropriation of citizenship) (Milan 2015), 361–83.

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The only document that dealt with the pogrom was the government Committee’s report, which was buried immediately after it was written and only published outside of Iraq in 1958.58 Clearly both the Iraqi authorities and the Arab-Muslim intelligentsia in Iraq made every effort to make the farhud disappear and to deny its very occurrence. But since the Jews of Iraq refused to cooperate and continued to document and publish descriptions of the events after their exodus from Iraq, a number of Iraqi publications in Arabic have appeared in which the farhud is presented as a shameful episode in the history of the Iraqi state for which, however, neither the Iraqi government nor the country’s Arab-Muslim population was responsible, but rather the Jews of Iraq themselves and the Jewish yishuv in Palestine. The first Iraqi Arab-Muslim who wrote about the farhud was ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Hasani,59 who gave a short account of it as part of his description of Rashid ‘Ali al-Kaylani’s rebellion, in his book about the history of Iraq’s governments, published in Lebanon in 1953. Al-Hasani briefly described the pogrom in his survey of the government of Rashid ‘Ali and its war on Britain, using official Iraqi government documents.60 Al-Hasani had access to the report of the government Committee on the pogrom which, as noted above, blamed Rashid ‘Ali’s government and the Committee for Internal Security that controlled Baghdad from the time Rashid ‘Ali and his men fled to Persia on Thursday, May 29, 1941 until the formation of Jamil al-Madfa’i’s pro-British cabinet on the morning of Monday, June 2, 1941. He used data from the Committee of inquiry in order to invent a new description of the events, which in his account became nothing more than everyday quarrels, caused by the Jews, and put to an end when the attackers were arrested by the police. According to this version the Jews celebrated Pentecost of the year 1941 by taking walks and amusing themselves throughout the city, dressed in their holiday garments. The Jews ridiculed and teased the defeated Iraqi soldiers who roamed the streets of Baghdad grief-stricken and angry. This gave rise to quarrels that developed into violent altercations in which people from both sides, Muslims and Jews, were hurt. Al-Hasani completely ignored the pogrom’s terrible outcome, the 141 Jewish men, women, and children who died, hundreds 58  Yehuda, “Selected Documents,” no. 27. 59  ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Hasani, Al-Asrar al-Khafiyya fi Hawadith al-Sana 1941 al-Taharruriyya (Hidden secrets in the year 1941 libertarian incidents) (Sidon 1958). 60  ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Hasani, Ta’rikh al-Wizarat al-’Iraqiyya (History of the governments of Iraq), part 5 (Sidon 1953), 233–35.

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who were wounded, the cruel cases of murder, rape, robbery, and desecration of synagogues. He restricted himself to a short account of the incident in alKarkh in which Jews were wounded and killed, claiming that it began not with an attack by soldiers and Muslim civilians on Jews strolling in the streets, an attack in which neither the civilian nor the military police intervened, as described in the report of the Committee of inquiry, but with a verbal altercation between a Jew and a Muslim who had been on the way to the airport in order to view the arrival of the regent. This altercation developed into a fight between Jews and Muslims that was nothing more than “a normal event that ended with the arrest of the attackers by the police.” Similarly the pogrom in al-Rusafa is described by al-Hasani as confrontations between taunting Jews and units of the Iraqi army that deteriorated into pushing, blows, and murder, “which became a shameful blot on the history of modern Iraq.” He adds that in this case, too, the police succeeded in putting an end to the trouble, ignoring the attacks on Ghazi Street on the eve of June 1, in which Jews were forcibly taken off minibuses and killed with sticks and knives by an incited mob that had come out of the al-Gaylani Mosque, and the attacks in the Jewish neighborhoods of Tatran and Abu Sifain, in which rioters systematically broke into Jewish homes and murdered their occupants in the night of June 1 and the morning of June 2. He also ignores the number of Jews murdered in the pogrom, arguing that the 110 victims mentioned in the Committee’s report were killed by the forces sent by al-Madfa’i’s newly appointed government in order to put an end to the looting of shops and markets by the rural mob that had come from the environs of Baghdad.61 Al-Hasani’s fabricated description transforms the vicious, organized attacks which Muslims carried out against the Jews on the two days of Pentecost 1941 into ordinary squabbles between Jewish and Muslim youths for which the Jews were at fault and which were dealt with by the Iraqi police. This description served as the basis for the imaginary account of the farhud written by the nationalist journalist Shamil ‘Abd al-Qadir in an article published in 1994 as part of a series entitled “The Secrets of How Iraqi Jews Were Taken to Israel in 1951.” The series was published in book form, under the same title, in 2000.62 61  Ibid. 62  Shamil ‘Abd al-Qadir, “Baritanya … al-Mukhatit wa al-Sharik” (Britain … the planned and the partner), Aleefbaa 1342 (15 June 1994): 18–11; idem, Asrar ‘Amaliyyat Tahjeer Yahud al-’Iraq (1950–1951) (Secrets of the displacement of the Jews of Iraq [1950–1951]), 1st ed. (Baghdad 2000), 87–90. I thank Prof. S. Moreh who directed me to this book.

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‘Abd al-Qadir kept track of publications in Iraq and in Israel about Zionist activity in Iraq and the Israeli spy network caught in Baghdad in May 1951,63 in which emissaries from Israel were involved, and also interviewed the head of the interrogation team that questioned the members of the spy ring that had been arrested. He used this information to weave a plot about the involvement of Jewish military organizations from Palestine in the farhud. As proof of his claim he mentioned the death on May 20, 1941 of the commander of the Irgun, David Raziel, who was killed in Habbaniyya from a bomb dropped by a German airplane. Raziel at the time was on an intelligence mission for the British army. ‘Abd al-Qadir’s imaginary account begins on Saturday, May 31, 1941, after the British victory over Rashid ‘Ali, who fled with his men to Persia and the signing of an armistice agreement between the British and the Iraqis. As foundation for his plot he used the claim that the British army reportedly did not enter Baghdad in order to prevent giving the impression that the regent was brought back on British bayonets. He further claims that the British purposely allowed Jewish soldiers and officers from Palestine who served in the British army to spend a one-day holiday in Baghdad, as part of three events which the British had planned for Sunday, June 1: The arrival of the regent and his entourage, the Jewish Pentecost, and the return of the defeated Iraqi soldiers. The Jewish soldiers and officers in the British army who received a furlough which they spent in Baghdad were, so he claimed, for the most part members of the Haganah, Palmach, and Irgun groups and were absorbed within the groups of celebrating Jews on their way to the airport to greet the regent in their holiday clothes. These Jews shouted calls in support of ‘Abd al-Ilah and against the rebels, in the presence of the defeated Iraqi soldiers who passed by. ‘Abd al-Qadir continues: The soldiers pursued by their enemy [the British] who wants to kill them encounter thousands of “Iraqi Jews,” joyful at the arrival of the man who had been the cause of their failure and the loss of their uprising. Iraqis like them, but Jews, happy at the traitor’s entry into his palace.… Hostility burned and a battle broke out between the two sides.… On June 1 the Jews of Baghdad were in an untypically belligerent mood. The residents of Baghdad clearly realized that the Jews’ behavior was influenced by “elements” who had infiltrated the night before from Habbaniyya, were absorbed by them and are now “fighting” the people.… But although the Jews were protected by people from the Haganah and the Palmach 63  Zvi Yehuda, Israel Espionage Net in Iraq 1951–52 [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, C.S.S., 1997).

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in their fight on June 1, they had seventeen wounded, of whom two later died. On the next day, June 2, “peaceful” Baghdadi Jews continued to provoke retreating units of the Iraqi army by taunting them with words that slandered their honor and their patriotism: Then the people of Baghdad and the officers and soldiers of the retreating Iraqi army realized that those standing before them were not peaceful Jews but wild tigers … bloodthirsty criminals. Another clash occurred when the people of the Haganah, the Palmach and the Irgun formed a special unit that battled against the masses of Baghdadi residents instead of the Jews, who became victims of the minor massacre64 planned by the Jewish Agency in Palestine before the British army moved towards Iraq. 110 people were killed and many were wounded from every community, but this was not enough for the people of the special unit, who ordered the others to continue the attack. But then a sudden change occurred when the people of the special unit, who were very familiar with the Arabic language and the Baghdadi dialect, began to attack the Jews’ homes, businesses and shops and to loot the Jews’ property.… The issue of the denial of the farhud pogrom was raised by the author at a memorial evening held in June 2010 at the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda, Israel, to commemorate the victims of the farhud. Prof. Shmuel Moreh published an account of this evening on the Arabic-language electronic news website Elaf.65 His article elicited responses from readers in Iraq, including Iraqi writers who attacked Shamil ‘Abd al-Qadir for his libel. However, the latter’s response shows that he continues to adhere to his fabrication.66 ‘Abbas Shiblaq, a Palestinian residing in England who claims to be an objective student of the farhud and the expulsion of Iraq’s Jews, draws on the 64  According to ‘Abd al-Qadir, the Jewish Agency also planned on carrying out a “great massacre” of Arabs in Palestine. 65  Shmuel Moreh, “Umsiya Tithkariyya le-Zahaya al-Farhud fi Baghdad 1941” (A memorial evening for the victims of the Farhud in Baghdad), Ilaf (28 June 2010). 66  See his new book: Shamil ‘Abd al-Qadir, Tarikh al-Haraka al-Sihuniyya fi al-’Iraq wa Dawruha fi Hijrat al-Yahud ‘Am 1950–1951 (The history of the Zionist movement in Iraq and its rule in the Jewish emigration it the years 1950–1951), 1st ed. (Baghdad 2013), 54–55, 141–46.

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i­nformation provided by al-Hasani (see above) in his book (2015; in Arabic), and ignores published English and Hebrew studies and sources on the pogrom, its causes and its consequences, although he is fluent in English and also knows Hebrew. He unsurprisingly comes to the conclusion that to view the farhud as basically aimed at Jews is to take a very superficial approach, one that borders on distortion. It [the farhud] must be seen as a profound, repressed expression of hatred towards the British and the ruling class that supported them, and that found release in violent acts against the Jews.67 This conclusion constitutes yet another attempt at denying the responsibility of Iraq’s extreme nationalists for the pogrom, and this despite the fact that the latter did not hide their animosity towards the Jews or their desire to expel them from Iraq. In contrast to Shiblaq’s aforementioned book and the other compositions in Arabic by Muslims from Iraq in which they tried to deny that the pogrom took place or to place the responsibility for it on the Jews themselves and the Jewish yishuv in Palestine, in 2015 a thick 800-page volume68 devoted to Iraqi Jewry was published by Dr. Kadhim Habib, an Iraqi-born Shi’ite Muslim, who as a young man in the 1940s was a Communist activist, for which he was persecuted, imprisoned, and forced to emigrate to Germany, where he lives and works to this day. In those days his activities brought him into contact with likeminded young Jews, who together with him fought for the Iraqi Communist Party, that was under vicious attack by the government and its right-wing extreme nationalist supporters. Together with them he experienced the horrors of prison, which included the use of live ammunition against the inmates, hanging of the party’s leaders, Muslims, Christians and Jews, and forcing those who were released from prison to waive their Iraqi citizenship and to emigrate. His main objective in writing the book, as expressed in its subtitle, is to take to task the people who were responsible for expelling the Jews from Iraq. In order to do so Habib utilized a great variety of sources written in Arabic, some of them quite rare and not easily accessible, sources in German from the Nazi period and, to a lesser extent, sources in English. He also went to great lengths 67  ‘Abbas Shiblaq, Hijra aw Tahjir: Zuruf wa Mulabasat Hijrat Yahud al-Iraq (Emigration or displacement: conditions and ambiguities surrounding the emigration of Iraqi Jews) (Beirut 2015), 56–57. 68  Habib, Yahoud.

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to ­interview former Iraqi Jews in Germany, England, and Israel, many of whom were Communist activists during the period in question. The book devotes considerable space to describing the rise of what he calls right-wing extremist chauvinistic Islamic forces at the beginning of the 1930s. These forces formed a clandestine organization named for al-Muthanna bin Haritha al-Shaybani, an Arab general who participated in the conquest of Iraq at the dawn of Islam, and the underground Al-Sha’ab (The People’s) Party, that played a pivotal role in the coup of May 1941 and the rise to power of Rashid ‘Ali al-Kaylani. These forces were driven by an ideology based on extreme opposition to the British for having broken their promise to the Hashemite Sherif Hussein from Arabia to give him control of the Middle East in return for the latter’s help in defeating the Ottoman Turks in World War I, and for having recognized the right of the Jews to establish a national home in the Holy Land as expressed in the Balfour Declaration. They also hated and opposed the Zionist movement because of its settlement activities in Palestine, and the Jews of Iraq, in whom they saw a national rival that exploited Iraq’s economic resources and worked against Arab nationalism by its support for and assistance to the Zionists in Palestine. These extremist nationalist forces were quite open in expressing their desire to confiscate the Jews’ property and drive them out of Iraq by means of economic and political persecution. They exploited the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany and the arrival of Palestinian émigrés to Iraq during the Arab rebellion in Palestine in the years 1936–1939 to enhance their power vis-à-vis the British and the Jews, and cooperated with senior government and military leaders in order to advance their objectives. Habib does not believe that the support Iraq’s Muslims showed for Nazi Germany meant that they accept the latter’s racial theories; he argues that the support was motivated rather by a desire to expel the British from Iraq and to stop Jewish settlement in Palestine.69 With this historical background in place, it was easy for Habib to deal with the farhud pogrom. He shows that the extreme nationalists and Muslim clerics who preached against the Jews in the mosques were those who incited, organized, and implemented the pogrom. He writes: The extremist nationalist forces organized planned and focused attacks on the Jews in Baghdad, characterized by great violence and the use of light firearms. They were supported by the ignorant masses, who only 69  Ibid., 177–79, 255–56, 280–84, 313–15, 327–34, 343–62.

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waited for yet another opportunity to rape, loot, rob and murder, of the kind that Iraq witnessed more than once in its ancient and recent history.70 Habib adds that soldiers, policemen, army officers, and politicians of the nationalist chauvinist camp participated in the pogrom, together with Katai’b al-Shabab, Al-Haras al-Hadidi, and Fidai’yu Yunis al-Sabawi. Many Muslim residents of Baghdad protected the Jews, but some betrayed their neighbors and took part in looting, robbery, and killing. Habib agrees with the number of victims as published by the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center and defines the farhud as “a vile crime that cannot be forgotten.”71 According to Habib the pogrom’s most significant result was that Iraqi Jews were made more aware that they lived in a society in which many people hated them because of their religion. They no longer trusted the Iraqi people and feared that there would be more pogroms. Many began to consider emigration to other countries where they could live in security. Some concluded that what was needed was that Jews have a state of their own, one that would protect them from similar acts. This helped the Zionist movement in its efforts to inculcate this idea. Habib believes that the actions of the nationalist extremists in Iraq against the Jews was the main cause of the exodus of Iraqi Jewry.72 Conclusions In light of new sources available to us, it is clear that the pogrom that took place on the Pentecost festival in 1941 (the farhud) did not occur due to special, one-time circumstances, as was previously claimed. An examination of the letters from the German envoy in Baghdad to his masters in Berlin, shows that earlier research published on the farhud greatly overestimated the strength of German propaganda in Iraq. In our view, this stemmed from the reliance on the interpretation given by the report of the government Committee for Investigating the Events of June 1–2, 1941. Our

70  Ibid., 361. 71  Ibid., 177–79, 196, 380. 72  Ibid., 381.

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analysis showed that this interpretation was subjective, and intended to cast blame for the riots on enemies of the Iraqi leadership, which supported Britain, and on the lower-ranking army and police officers and officials in the domestic administration. These matters also became clear from an examination of the conclusions of the Committee’s report concerning the outbreak and course of the riots. On the basis of contradictions we found in the report, and by a check of its findings against eyewitness testimony of Jews from Baghdad, we showed that members of the Committee emphasized facts that served their purpose and disregarded other facts that ran counter to it. Reinforcement of these findings is provided by the reactions and the interpretations of members of the Jewish intelligentsia in Baghdad. Not only was the pogrom organized by Muslim national-religious groups, it was also planned and directed in order to crush the large Jewish community in Baghdad, which constituted about two-thirds of all the Jews of Iraq in that period. This also harmonized with the nationalist perception of the leadership of independent Iraq, for all its variety and leanings, be it pro-British or proNazi. The Iraqi nationalists were united in treating the Jews as a hostile nationalreligious minority, which had to be ejected from the social and economic positions it occupied in the Iraqi state. The Jews who remained in the country after the farhud were to endure a much harsher persecution by the authorities, until they left Iraq and their ancient community was extinguished. We also found out that British troops were patrolling in Baghdad during the farhud, but stand aside and not came to stop the murder, rape and looting when the Jews attacked by Muslim rioters, in accordance to the attitude of the British representative in Baghdad Sir K. Cornwallis, which was also adopted by W. Tweedie during the events of 1889. An analysis of Arabic publications on Rashid ‘Ali’s rebellion also shows that the Iraqi government and Iraqi nationalists not only ignored and denied their own responsibility for the farhud but also did and do everything they can to erase it from public consciousness and from the history of the Arab Iraqi state, in fact going so far as to invent a slanderous account that puts the blame on Iraqi Jewry itself and on the Jewish yishuv in Palestine. Recent works in Arabic by writers in Iraq and elsewhere reflect a change in this position and a growing willingness to accept the facts commemorated in the documentation of and research on the farhud.

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Map of the Farhud Pogrom

Map of the Farhud Pogrom.

List of Victims of the Farhud

The exact number of Jews who were killed by rioters during the two days of the pogrom in Baghdad (Pentecost, June 1–2, 1941) is not known. Various sources give different numbers. Some put the number of victims as low as 110 Jews and Muslims (the number given by the report of the official investigative committee) and others give numbers as high as 400 or more (oral eyewitness accounts). Among scholars who have studied the farhud the number given by Salman Shina and Abraham Twena, of 179 Jewish victims, is generally accepted as reliable. As part of a study I conducted on the occasion of the founding of the Babylonian Jewry Museum, I was able to establish the names of 114 victims of the pogrom. These names were placed on a plaque in the museum. Since the museum opened in April 1988 many Jews of Iraqi origin living in Israel and abroad have visited it and studied the list of names. Some of these visitors provided evidence which necessitated making some changes in the list. These changes were incorporated into the list which is given below (June 2017).

The Pogrom ( Farhud ) of 1941, Reexamination

277

It turns out that in Baghdad 141 Jews were killed and in other cities (Hilla, Shamiya, and Sandur, and on the way to Samawa) another eight were killed, making a total of 149. The number of those killed in Baghdad in the farhud is close to the assessment of the council of the Jewish Community as reported by Moïse Itah, a leader of the Baghdad Community, to the Political Bureau of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem on July 19, 1941 (see Yehuda – Selected, no. 21). Sources 1. Tuvya Ashkenazi, Parashat Méora‘ot Bagdad ba-Rishon veha-Sheni beYuni 1941 (The Affair of Baghdad Events of June 1–2, 1941) (Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1960), 17–33. 2. Abraham Hayim Twena, The Pogrom in Baghdad (Dispersion and Liberation) (in Hebrew) (Ramla: Geoula Synagogue Committee, 1977), Part 6, pp. 51–80. 3. Accounts provided by relatives of the victims. 4. Central Zionist Archive, S25/5290, Addenda to the list of Jews killed in the pogrom in Baghdad on Pentecost; document no. 7 (dated August 2, 1941).

Figure 6.5 Mass grave of the Farhud victims, 1945. Photo: M. Ben-Sur.

278

Chapter 6

Killed in the Farhud A. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

In Baghdad Ya‘qub ‘Abdalla (Eliezer). Habiba A’bdu (‘Abd il-’Ezer) of Zbaida family. Shua‘ ‘Abdu. ‘Ezra (‘Ezer) Abraham. Hnini wife of Shim‘un Abu-al-Fiusa. Sister of Shim‘un Abu-al-Fiusa. Na‘ima Murdukh Abu-al-Msaghin. Ishaq Abraham Abu-al-Nugha. Ya‘qub Shim‘un Abu-al-Nugha. Mis‘uda daughter of Abu-al-Pacha. Daughter of Mis‘uda daughter of Abu-al-Pacha. Son of Mis‘uda daughter of Abu-al-Pacha. ‘Aziza daughter of Abu-al-Samak. Me’ir Aghababa. Abraham Eliyahu ‘Ajmi. ‘Ezra Mushiyah ‘Ajmi. Ya‘qub Eliyahu ‘Ani. Hisqel al-A’raj (‘Ittagh) ‘Abud ‘Ezra Asfigh. Ishaq Salim Asher. ‘Abdalla Nissim Aslan. Salih Abraham Aslan. Silman Eliyahu Barukh. Barukh Battat. Rosa Bay. Silman Hisqel Changana. Ishaq Chicho. Shmuel Dahud Cohen. Rahmin Eliyahu Dabbi. Ragina Mnashi Dabbi. Salim Dabbi. Abraham Dahud. Ishaq Yosef Hisqel Barukh Dangoor. Salim Sion Dangoor. Dahud Daniel. Khatun Hnini Dayan. Na‘im Ruben Dbora.

The Pogrom ( Farhud ) of 1941, Reexamination

38 Moshi Sha’ul Dihhan. 39 Salih Eliyahu Dihhan. 40 ‘Abdalla Nissim Dillal. 41 Bertin Dillal (daughter of Khela Hisqel Horesh). 42 Daughter of Sion Jamal Dillal. 43 Khela Dillal (daughter of Hisqel Horesh). 44 Sasson Jum‘a Dillal. 45 Ya‘qub Nissim Dillal. 46 Salha Efrayim. 47 Dahud ‘Ezer. 48 Na‘im Sha’ul Faqiru. 49 Silman Gurji. 50 Abraham Ishaq Habsha. 51 Ya‘qub (Nuri) Ishaq Habsha. 52 Farha Hagla. 53 Mazli daughter of Haguli. 54 Daughter of Halima. 55 Son of Halima. 56 Rahmin Eliyahu Hami. 57 Salih Abraham Hardun. 58 Wife of Hisqel (daughter of Hakham Barukh). 59 Haron Hiyyim ‘Ezra Hiddad. 60 Abraham Hisqel Hilali. 61 Hindawi. 62 Farha, daughter of Khela Hisqel Horesh. 63 Simha ‘Abudi Horesh (mother of Khela Dillal). 64 Daughter of ibn Gabriel 65 Hisqel ‘Ittagh. 66 Efrayim Abraham ‘Ittagh. 67 Nissim Yamen Silman ‘Ittagh. 68 ‘Ezra Eliyahu Juri. 69 Moshi Janabi. 70 Haron Abraham Kashi. 71 ‘Abid Eliyahu Kedunchi. 72 Sion (Moshi) Khalifa. 73 ‘Abdalla Nissim Khibbaza. 74 Ya‘qub Nissim Khibbaza. 75 Barukh Khiyyat. 76 Eliyahu Sion Khiyyat. 77 Ishaq Abraham Khlef.

279

280

Chapter 6

78 Me’ir Abraham Khlef. 79 Hisqel Kima. 80 Khdhuri Barukh Lewi. 81 Hisqel Silman M‘allim. 82 Salih Mash‘al. 83 Estegh Mdallal. 84 Mis‘uda Mikhael. 85 Milo. 86 Gurji Mislawi. 87 Hisqel Mnashi Mislawi. 88 Eliyahu Mizzala. 89 ‘Ezra Abraham Mizzala. 90 Ya‘qub Dahud Msaffi. 91 Na‘im Murdukh. 92 Nahum Sha’ul Nahum. 93 Rosa Moshi Nahum. 94 Mittana Salih Nijjagh. 95 Simha wife of Dahud Niqqagh. 96 Me’ir Abraham Nizzah. 97 Ishaq Sha’ul Pasha. 98 ‘Abdalla Qashqush. 99 Hnini ‘Ezra Qigh‘in (wife of Sasson Shim‘un). 100 Ishaq Moshi Qirr. 101 Nahum Yosef Qizzaz. 102 Eliyahu Dahud Rahmin. 103 Farha Salih. 104 Elias Salih Reuben. 105 Estegh Samra (wife of Moshi Halima). 106 Hisqel Samra. 107 Wife of Eliyahu Samra. 108 Farid Sasson. 109 Hiyyim Shim‘un Hiyyim Shim‘un Sasson. 110 Moshi Shim‘un Hiyyim Shim‘un Sasson. 111 Salih Shim‘un Hiyyim Shim‘un Sasson. 112 Shim‘un Hiyyim Shim‘un Sasson. 113 Farha daughter of Menahem Dahud Shimmash (sister of Khela Dillal). 114 ‘Imam Moshi Ishaq Hiyyim Shimmash (wife of Hisqel Minni). 115 Marcel Shimmash (wife of Salih Yosef Sasson). 116 Ya‘qub Shim‘un. 117 Eliyahu Shina.

The Pogrom ( Farhud ) of 1941, Reexamination

118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141

‘Ezra Abraham Shina. ‘Ezra Abraham Dahud Shlomo. Bidur Shu‘a. Me’ir Shu‘a Shukur. Efrayim Simantob. Mis‘uda Simantob (daughter of Abraham Mani‘). Berta Sion. Salha Sion (daughter of Abraham). Yosef Abraham Sit-al-Kul. Hiyyawi Mnashi Siti. Salim Sofer Hisqel Sweri. Shim‘un Abraham Sweri. Hisqel Abraham Twena. Rima Dahud Tutunchi. Eliyahu Sion Yahya. Latifa Ya‘qub. Menahem Ya‘qub. ‘Abd Eliyahu al-Yatim. Abraham Moshi al-Yatim. Menahem Yhuda. ‘Ezra Yosef. Khatun daughter of Yosef (wife of Abraham). Salha Yosef.

B. 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149

Outside of Baghdad Sasson Pinhas (Hilla). Jim‘a Hilu (Sandur). Hakham Moshi Mazzi (Sandur). Shabtai Abraham Mazzi (Sandur). Yosef Nahum (Sandur). Faruq Sasson (Sandur). Mnashi ‘Ezra Khlaschi (Shamiya). Yosef Abraham Siddiq (killed on his way to Samawa).

281

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AIU. Archive. Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris Irak, IB 3, IB 5, IB 7, IC2, IC3, IC4, IC5, IIE 8, VE 34b, VIIE 75, XIIE 112b AN. Archive Nationale, Paris BI 177, CCC Tome 4 (1792–1812) Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris Correspondance consulaire et commercial de1793–1901 Ben-Zvi Institute, Jerusalem Manuscript 3750, A.S. Eliyahu Nahum, Sefer Zikkaron le-Haim 5687 (1927) BJHC. Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, Or Yehuda Manuscript, Abraham S. Alkabir, My Governmental Life Board of Deputies of British Jews Archive, London B2/9/Z CAHJP. Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem HM2/8636–8638 CZA. Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem S25/5289, S25/5290 FO. Public Records Office, London 195/204, 195/237, 195/624, 195/1647, 195/1682, 195/1722, 78–15, 261–7 Hayyim J. Cohen Archive Testimonies (in the author’s possession) IJA. Iraqi Jewish Archive, https://www.ija.archives.gov/search IMM. Institute of Microfilmed Manuscripts, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem Sassoon, no. 9389; Benayahu, 14‫כ‬, R. Shmuel Sadqa Diary IOR. India Office Library and Records, London G/29/22 USNA. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. T509/1 Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem JM 2495; JM 3234

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Doresh Tob le-’Ammo (Bombay) Israel (Cairo) Magid Mesharim (Calcutta) Mebasser (Calcutta) Perah (Calcutta) Shoshana (Calcutta)

Hebrew

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English, French, German

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Encyclopedias

EB, Encyclopedia Britannica EH, Encyclopaedia Hebraica EI, Encyclopaedia of Islam EJ, Encyclopaedia Judaica EJIW, Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World ERE, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics VJE, Vallentine’s Jewish Encyclopedia, eds. A.M. Hyemson and M. Silberman (London 1938)

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Interviews

Interviews by the Author



Testimonies Recorded by the Author



Studies and Sources

Flora Kiflawi (1965) David Mualim (1965) Yeheskel Yosef Yehuda (1978) Yehuda Shaul Yehuda (1965)

Mordechai Ben-Porat (1991) Yaacov Sion Dallal (1997) Attorney Ovedia Gourji (1991) Dr. Nissim Kazzaz (1991)

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Index ‘Abaya (outer robe) 7, 97 Abbas I (Shah) 37, 39–41 Abbas II (Shah) 41 ‘Abbas Afandi (neighborhood) 262n Abbasid Caliphate 31, 32, 34, 130, 131, 171, 172n, 175, 262 ‘Abd al-Ilah (Regent) 55, 256, 256n, 257, 257n, 262, 265, 266, 269, 270 ‘Abd al-Qadir, Shamil 269, 271 ‘Abd il Nebee, Choja Sasoon 137, 140, 159, 162 Abdul Hamid I 137 Abdul Hamid II 229 Abdul Majid I 195 Abdulla, Shaul ibn 21n Abdullah Pasha (Wali) 177 Abercromby, Major General Robert 161 Abu Sa’id (Sultan) 172 Abu Sifain (neighborhood) 269 Acculturation 7–10 Adana 225 Adas, Shafiq 55 Afghanistan 219 Ahi’ever (society) 119, 121 Ahl al-Dhima 31, 259 Ahmad Agha (Mutasallim) 150, 151, 151n, 152, 162 Ainslie, Robert 22n, 139n, 140n, 158, 158n, 159, 159n, 160 Albala, Nissim 9 Aleppo 3, 20, 34n–49, 51, 58, 74, 75, 87, 101, 132, 133, 136–140, 162, 162n, 183, 244n Alexandria 45, 132 ‘Ali (Caliph) 170, 189 ‘Ali Pasha Abu Ghadra (Wali) 176 Alliance Istaélite Universelle (AIU) 4, 6, 52n, 57, 77, 83, 191, 193, 194, 216, 220 ‘Amadiya 42, 62, 64 Amara 7, 74n, 79, 92, 119, 259n America 2, 56, 76, 85, 139, 188, 189, 250 American Consul 197, 215, 218 American Consulate 197, 197n American State Department 250 Amsterdam 45, 132 ‘Ana 34, 38, 39, 41, 47

Anglo Jewish Association (AJA) 73, 108, 210, 210n, 221, 233, 235 Antebi, Rabbi Abraham 58 Antiochus 224 Anti-Semite 20, 54, 116, 128, 214, 222–225, 248 ‘Aqra 42, 64 ‘Aquliyya (neighborhood) 260 Arab 5, 10, 12, 19, 20, 23–26, 32–34, 48, 53, 54, 79, 81, 83, 84, 93, 95, 97, 102–107, 110, 112–117, 120, 128, 130, 132, 141, 145, 168, 171, 174–179, 194, 203n, 219, 222, 246, 248, 250, 253, 254, 263, 265, 268, 273, 275 Arabia 83, 131, 132, 136, 212, 213, 273 Arabic 11, 13, 70, 93, 98, 104, 105, 107, 113–115, 171n, 172, 193, 219, 238, 264, 267, 268, 271, 272, 275 Arabs 11, 26, 27, 31, 46, 114, 117, 120, 133, 176n, 179, 205n, 219, 253, 266, 271 Archipelago 131 Armenia 39 Armenian 46, 133–135, 137, 142, 159, 164n, 166 Ashkenazi 75, 76 Ashraf 172n Asia 9, 45n, 218, 222 Assimilation 5, 6, 10, 16, 86, 109, 113, 117 Australia 2, 76, 124n, 125 Austria 76, 161 Aviat, Choja Marcar 149, 159 Avigur, Shaul 121 Avil-Merodach (King) 169 Avisar (family) 125 ‘Azzawi, ‘Abbas al- 33 Ba’ath 26, 56, 125, 267 Bab al-Agha (neighborhood) 262n Bab al-Shaykh (neighborhood) 19, 257, 258, 258n, 260 Babylonian exiles 2, 3, 4, 27, 38, 39, 118 Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center (BJHC) 2, 271, 274 Bahar, Dawood 52n Bahar, Yoosef 52n Bahrain 133 Balfour Declaration 273

300 Banker 84 Banking 85 Baqqal, Naeem 74n Bar-Kochba 87 Bar Malaha (see Dar Maliha) Baratli 161, 161n Bashkin, Dr. Orit 251 Basht (Kurdish garment) 70 Basra 3, 4, 7, 20–22, 34, 35, 43, 44–49, 51, 55, 57, 59, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 88, 92, 93, 95, 98, 100, 102, 108, 109, 118, 119, 122, 123, 128, 129–167, 197, 219, 239 Basri (Abras), Attorney Yosef Abraham 123 Beirut 104 Beit Zilkha Yeshiva 204, 232 Beitanura 64 Bengal 132 Ben-Porat, Mordechai 123 Berlin 231, 252, 274 Bible (Tawrat) 3, 121, 175 Bin-Nusair, Musa 113–115 Blood-Libel 129–167 Board of Deputies of British Jews 185–188, 194, 210, 210n Bowman, Major R. 203, 205, 212, 213 Boys School (Albert D. Sassoon, Alliance) 7, 62n, 63, 66, 73, 76, 197n, 199n, 212, 220 Britain (see also England) 1, 23, 54, 128, 130, 134, 138, 144, 146, 147, 150, 153, 156, 157–159n, 163, 167, 182, 196, 211, 214n, 217–219, 228, 250, 252, 265, 268, 275 British 4, 7, 12, 18–24, 39, 43–45, 54, 55, 79, 86, 94, 95, 102, 103, 109, 111–112, 117–122, 125, 128, 133–149, 152–163, 164n–168n, 182n, 183–185, 187–188, 191, 194, 197, 199n, 207n, 210–220, 214n, 228, 231, 232, 234–236, 243n, 248–250, 252–254, 256–259, 262–268, 270–273, 275 British Consul (in Baghdad) 18, 23, 54, 167, 183, 191, 207n, 213–218, 220, 235, 236, 243n British Consul (in Basra) 141, 156 British Consul (in Mosul) 252 British Consulate 197, 199n, 203n, 213, 217 British East India Company 21, 44, 45, 133, 136, 137, 140, 143, 150n, 155, 157 British Embassy (in Baghdad) 256n, 257 British Embassy (in Istanbul) 161 British Levant Company 44

Index British Mandate (for Iraq) 7, 19, 24, 54, 95 British Resident (see also Samuel Manesty) 22, 45, 134, 136, 137, 139–167, 219 Brokerage 84, 85, 89, 136 Budge, Wallis 58 Bulwer, Sir H.L. 183 Burial Society (Hebra Qadisha) 61, 201, 207 Burma 124, 233 Caftan (zboon) 7 Cairo 104, 115 Calcutta 52n, 67–69, 124n, 183, 193, 215, 232, 234, 236, 244 Camondo, Count Avraham de 225, 238–240n Canada 4 Capitulations 133, 146 Capper, James 45n, 133n China 43, 124, 124n, 131, 233 Cholera 60, 196, 197, 199–200, 204, 222, 240n Choppi (Kurdish dance) 70 Christian 6, 32, 36, 37, 45, 64, 83, 91, 93, 110–112, 128, 139, 140–157, 159, 163, 165, 167, 173, 197, 214n, 216, 244, 256n Christian schools 91 Citizenship Waiver Law 26, 123, 125, 272 Cochin 38, 42, 49, 136 Cohen ha- (see Joshua the High Priest (Ha-Cohen) Tomb) Cohen, Prof. Hayyim J. 249 Cohen, Morris 62n, 73, 199n, 210n, 211, 213, 216, 221 Commercial agents 43, 44, 49, 52, 52n, 84, 125, 134, 136, 137 Committee for Internal Security 258, 268 Communist 11, 20, 20n, 117, 272, 273 Communist Party 19, 109, 116, 251 Constantinople (see Istanbul) Conversion to Christianity 184n Conversion to Islam 17, 32, 41, 47, 52, 61, 113–116, 172, 190 Cornwallis, Sir Kinahan 248, 275 Coromandel 132 Council of Delegates 119 Damascus 41, 48, 74, 75, 132, 183, 230, 240, 244n Dangoor, Rabbi Elisha’ 68, 208, 226–228, 230, 231, 244, 245 Dangoor, Rabbi Ezra 103

301

Index Daniel, Ezra Menahem 26, 254 Daniel, Menahem Salih 9, 24–26, 189, 254 Daniel, Menahem Silman 210, 234 Danon, Joseph 63, 64, 66n Dar Maliha (see also Kifil) 170, 171 Daud Pasha 51, 59 David (King) 31 Deshen, Shlomo 2, 48n, 77 Dhima (see Ahl al-Dhima) Dhu al-Kifil (see also Ezekiel Tomb) 171, 172, 188, 189, 191 Diwan 52, 147, 148, 150, 152 Diwaniya 79 Diyarbakir 32, 42 Dober ha- 90 Drumont, Édouard 223 Duhok 64 Dumont, Paul 193, 194, 194n, 239, 240n Dutch (see Holland) Dysentery 221 Easter 45, 141, 153 Eastern Europe 5 Egypt 42, 62, 70, 74, 79, 81, 91, 107, 112, 117, 125, 196 Eisenstadt, S.N. 5 Elisha’ Nissim Sasson (see Dangoor, Rabbi Elisha’) England (see also Britain) 1, 4, 23, 40n, 51, 53–54, 85, 125, 128–130, 132–133, 153, 156, 183, 187, 191, 210, 226, 231–232, 236, 248–249, 271, 273 English (see also British) 11, 25, 54, 62n, 73, 98, 111, 114, 128, 132, 133n, 134, 143, 150, 156, 156n, 159, 161, 166n, 168n, 169, 182, 187, 189, 193, 199n, 211, 215–216, 221, 231, 248–250, 251n, 253, 272 Epidemic 18, 46, 49, 50, 57–61, 67, 72, 76, 78, 96, 97, 130, 133, 135, 145, 180, 196–198, 213, 221, 228 Eppstein, J.M. 75, 76, 183, 184 Euphrates River 18, 24, 34, 45, 79, 83, 115, 132, 133, 135, 169, 170, 176, 222 European 6–8, 37, 43, 44, 82, 91, 94, 110, 111, 114, 117, 120, 128, 130, 133, 138, 154, 155, 168, 173, 185, 190, 191, 215, 223, 230, 232, 248 European Jews (see also Frank) 62, 67, 72, 75, 76, 120, 191, 196, 231

Exilarch 2, 3, 31–33, 35, 98, 99 Ezekiel Tomb, Prophet 1, 3, 24, 53, 167–192, 214, 239 Ezra the Scribe Tomb 129, 217, 239 Faisal I, King 19, 54, 55, 110, 254 Famine 16, 53, 57–65, 67, 72, 72n, 73, 130, 135, 145 Far East 1, 2, 4, 20, 21, 34, 35, 37, 38, 43, 44, 49–52n, 54, 57, 60, 63, 66, 73, 74, 83, 84, 87, 91, 124, 124n, 125, 130–132, 138, 155, 178, 195, 196, 226, 232, 233, 236, 248 Faraj Allah (neighborhood) 262n Faraj Haim (family) 3 Faraj Haim, Choja Abdulla ibn Eusuf 20, 21, 45, 137–144, 147, 148, 151–152n, 156, 158–160, 162 Faraj Haim ibn Abdulla 21, 52n, 138 Farhud (see Pogrom of 1–2 June 1941) Fernandez, Solomon 225, 225n Ferrières-Sauveboeuf, Louis F. 48 Fida’iyu Yunis al-Sab’awi 274 First Temple 31 Fischel, Prof. Walter J. 38n Fletcher, J.P. 12 Floods 16, 34, 57, 59, 62, 67, 79, 198 France 1, 7, 54, 128, 130, 132, 134, 153, 153n, 155, 167, 182, 195, 210, 220, 223, 225, 226, 232, 248 Frank (see also European Jews) 61, 76 Fraser, Baillie J. 59 French 6–10, 20, 44, 62n, 65, 66n, 73n, 77, 93, 94, 110, 111, 114, 134, 140, 140n, 142, 144n, 146n, 149, 152, 153, 153n, 155, 155n, 157, 158, 160, 167, 184, 191, 197–199, 218, 220, 223–225, 232, 248, 253 French Consulate (in Baghdad) 62, 66n, 140, 146, 149, 152–160, 167, 199, 223–225 French Consulate (in Basra) 155n French Consulate (in Mosul) 65 Fromkin, Israel Dov 227 Futuwa al- 253 Gabbai, Ya’coob Haron 136–138n Gabela (tax) 108 Gabriel, Rabbi Jonah 57 Gaylani al- (see Kaylani al-) Gaylani Mosque al- 258, 259, 269 Geon Yaacob (yeshiva) 31

302 Geonim 2, 6, 35, 48, 83, 88, 98, 186, 193 Germany 48, 76, 85, 184n, 230, 252–254, 272, 273 Ghanima, Yusuf 36, 36n Ghazi (King) 55, 252, 254 Ghazi (street) 258n, 259–261, 269 Goldsmith 83, 84 Gourji, Yosef 210, 234 Greece 74, 221, 259n Grenville, Lord William 166 Griffiths, John 132 Grobba, Dr. Fritz 251–255 Gutman, Shmaryahu 121 Habbaniyya 256, 270 Habib, Dr. Kadhim 272–274 Haganah 270, 271 Haim, Rabbi Moshe 24 Haim, Dr. Sylvia 251 Hajj 171 Hakhamkhane Law 101–103, 106 Halevi, Rabbi Hesqel Moshe 223n Halevy, Rabbi Obadia Abraham 75 Halus Ha-Sa’ir he- (Young Pioneer) 121 Halus Underground Movement he-(Ha-Tenu’a) 121–123 Hamadan 73 Hamilton, Alexander 135 Haras al-Hadidi, al- 274 Hasan Pasha (Wali, 1778) 176 Hasan Rafiq Pasha, Hajj (Wali, 1891) 245, 245n Hasani, ‘Abd al-Razzaq al- 268, 268n Hasid al- (journal) 98 Hatti Humayun of 1856 195 Hatti Serif of 1839 195 Hayderkhana al- (neighborhood) 262n Hayim, Abdolla Faraj (see Faraj Haim ibn Abdulla) Hayim, Faraj 52n Hayim, Hiskeil Dawood 52n Haynes, John Henry (se also American Consul) 197 Hazan, Rabbi Abraham Yehoshua 207 Hazan, Eliah Hakham Mordechai 178 Hebron 91, 118, 125 Heliodorus 224–225 Herzl, Dr. Theodor 5 Hesqel, Menahem 202n

Index Hilla 3, 4, 7, 23, 23n, 24, 26, 32, 34, 44, 79, 88, 90, 92, 93, 102, 108, 109, 115, 119, 169, 170, 173, 178, 179, 179n, 239, 277 Hillel, Rabbi Abraham Moshe 91, 200, 202, 209, 223n, 226, 244 Hirsch, Baron Maurice de 220, 222–225 Hirschberg, Haim Zeev 10 Hisday, Rabbi Daniel ibn (Exilarch) 31 Holland 39, 132, 134 Holland Consulate (in Basra) 136, 138 Holy Land (see also Land of Israel, Palestine) 1, 4, 5, 16, 23, 40, 42, 43, 48, 54, 87, 114, 118, 120, 125, 140, 168, 178, 182, 185, 191, 194, 226–230, 232, 236, 244n, 248, 273 Hong-Kong 124, 266 Hormuz 36, 38, 38n Hulagu 32, 134 Husin, Rabbi Sadqa ibn Saadia 46, 48n–50, 87 Husin, Shlomo Bekhor 61, 62, 72, 90, 182, 210, 231 Hussein, Saddam 188 Husun Kifa 34 Hyslop, J.M. 183, 214, 220 Ibn ‘Eli, Rabbi Shmuel 31 Ibn Shushan, Rabbi Yosef ibn Shelomo (President) 21, 138 Ibrahim, Choja Ezekiel ibn 147, 148, 151, 156 India 32, 42–45, 49–52n, 61, 62, 124, 124n, 129–134, 136, 153, 161, 182, 219, 232–235, 250 Indians 133 Indo-China 124 Integration 5, 25, 110, 112 Iran (see Persia) Irbil 12, 57, 58, 60–62, 64, 67, 73, 119 Irgun 270, 271 Isa, Sayyid 201, 202 Isfahan 41, 46 Islam 7, 10, 15, 17, 32, 53, 82, 113–116, 128, 139, 154, 168, 171, 190, 195, 219, 238, 247, 258, 259, 273 Isma’il Efendi 202 Isma’il Shah 36 Israel (Kingdom of) 31 Israel (State of) 2, 11, 18, 26, 55, 56, 74, 85, 98, 121–123, 125, 193, 250, 251, 269, 270, 271, 273, 276 Israeli Espionage Net 123

303

Index Israelite Congregation Law 105, 106 Istanbul 1, 38, 40, 42, 43, 45, 48, 52, 52n, 54, 73, 75, 101, 132, 133, 136, 137, 153, 155, 158–161, 163, 165, 167, 183, 185–187n, 194, 195, 208–211, 215, 219–222, 225–229, 232, 233, 235, 236, 239, 243, 245–246, 248 Itah, Moïse 277 Italy 74 Italian 153, 153n Izmir 45, 132 Jamali, Fadhil al- 253 Janabi, Tariq Jawad al- 172n, 175, 175n, 186n Japan 85, 265, 266 Jazira (settlement) 62 Jehoiachin (King of Judah) 1, 3, 31, 170, 171 Jerusalem 38, 74n, 91, 114, 118, 119, 125, 183, 193, 227, 249, 250, 264, 277 Jesus 143, 154 Jewish Agency 249, 264, 271, 271n, 277 Jewish National Fund 119 Jibli (Kurdish dialect) 70 Jizya (poll tax) 32 Jones, Harford 159–164, 166 Joshua the High Priest (Ha-Cohen) Tomb 201–206, 212, 214, 216–218, 224, 226, 231, 234–242, 244 Joshua son of Nun (Nabi Yusha’) 205, 207n, 224, 236, 238, 244 Judea 3, 31 Judeo-Arabic 18, 67, 72, 75, 101n, 124, 124n, 129, 194, 232 Judeo-Arabic Press (in India) 13, 18, 72, 193, 194 Judeo-Spanish 36n, 228 Kabir, Rabbi Abdalla Hesqel al- 207 Kadoorie (family) 52n Kadoorie Agricultural High School 120 Kadouri, Ezra 121 Kahiya 150, 151n, 152, 156, 156n, 160, 162–164n, 177 Karbala 171, 174, 186, 188, 190 Karmanshah 73 Karmeli, Anastas Mari al- 36n, 176n Kashan 37, 40, 74n Kasin, Rabbi Rafael 75, 101 Kata’ib al-Shabab 258n, 274 Kaylani, Rashid ‘Ali al- 55, 250, 251n, 254, 258, 268, 273

Kazzaz, Dr. Nissim 112, 251 Kedourie, Prof. Elie 250 Kelly, John 133n, 134 Keren Hayesod 119, 120 Kfar Yehezkel 120 Khadem 176 Khaldiya (neighborhood) 262n Khanaqin 7, 114, 119 Khedhouri, Rabbi Sasson 27, 103–106 Khurr al- (bridge) 255–257n Kifil 1, 3, 4, 167–191, 214, 219, 239 Kiflawi, Flora 75, 180 Kilidar 179, 179n Kirkuk 7, 60, 62, 64, 67, 92, 119, 122 Koy-Sanjak 63 Kufri 62 Kurdish 50, 53, 57, 62, 63, 66, 68–71, 82, 83 Kurdistan 2, 34, 38–43, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 57, 58, 60–69, 71–75, 77, 79, 82, 83, 182, 195 Kuwait 165, 165n, Land of Israel (see also Holy Land, Palestine) 4, 74 Lang Company 215 Laniado, Rabbi Shmuel 49 Latin Bishop of Babylon 153n League for Fighting Zionism 116, 117 League of Nations 55, 265 Lebanon 107, 115, 268 Levant 1, 34, 44, 49, 51, 60, 66, 73, 83, 131, 132, 195, 196 Leven, Narcisse 83 Levi, Rabbi Moshe ha- 210, 227–229 Levi, Yosef 74 Liston, Sir Robert 165–166n Loftus, William K. 169n London 3, 40n, 45, 73, 106, 132, 133, 166, 184, 184n, 194, 210, 212, 214–222, 228, 231–234, 236 London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews 184 Luks, Prof. Harold 250 Lurian, Isaac 60, 61, 76, 187n Madfa’i, Jamil al- 265, 268, 269 Mahfal 176 Mahuza (yeshiva) 87 Majlis 1, 185, 186n Malabar 132

304 Malka, Hesqel 201 Mallul, Dr. Nissim 26 Mamluk 20, 22, 43, 48, 49, 51, 53, 131, 133, 136, 167, 177, 208 Manesty, Samuel 136, 140–166, 219 Mani (family) 125 Mann, Jacob 33 Maqrizi, Taqi al-Din al- 34 Marquess of Salisbury, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affaires 210, 211, 215, 216, 219–221, 228, 231, 234 Marseille 45, 132 Mashhad converted Jews 116 Masjid al-Nokhaila (mosque) 188 Masliah, Rabbi Nissim son of R. Salih 140 Masliah, Rabbi Salih 50 Massignon, Louis 172n Matha Mehasia (yeshiva) 87 Ma’tuq (family) 41, 138 Maydan al- (neighborhood) 262n Mecca 16, 171 Media 38 Mediterranean Sea 35, 43, 51 Meir-Glitzenstein, Prof. Esther 251 Melbourne 124 Menahem, Eliahu Ishaq 180 Mesopotamian Zionist Committee 119 Middle Ages 10, 99 Middle East 6, 53, 78, 196, 250, 273 Midhat Pasha (Wali) 13, 51, 195 Midrash 40, 246 Mihrab (adoration niche) 175, 176 Minbar (pulpit) 172, 175, 176 Misbah al- (journal) 98, 104n, 109n Mishna 4 Missionary 3, 23, 75, 142, 153, 153n–155, 157, 167, 182, 184, 191 Mizrahi (family) 42, 49 Mizrahi, Rabbi Shlomo 49 Mizrahi, Rabbi Yaacob ibn Yehuda 42 Mnashi, Hesqel ibn Ruben 88 Modernization 5, 10, 11, 87, 93, 113, 115 Moldavia 76 Money Change 21, 45, 135, 136, 137, 156 Mongol 32, 33, 34n, 79, 87, 99, 130, 131, 172, 173, 190 Montefiore, Sir Moses 1, 60n, 183, 187, 188 Moreh, Prof. Shmuel 250, 269n, 271 Morocco 81, 91, 117

Index Moses 31, 238 Mosque 34, 172, 174–177, 182–190, 205, 206, 209, 238, 239, 241, 242, 244, 258, 259, 269, 273 Mosul 7, 34, 35, 39, 42, 51, 52n, 58–65, 67, 88, 92, 93, 100, 252 Mu’allim 89 Mufti 1, 148, 182, 185, 186 Muhammad Agha (Mutasallim) 142, 144, 146, 149, 159 Muhammad, Taj al-Din Abu al-Fadhil 172, 173 Mukhtar 74, 75, 100 Murat IV (Sultan) 39 Muscat 132, 133 Mushir Pasha 179 Mustafa Agha 145 Mustafa Asim Pasha (Wali) 199, 205–207n, 211, 229, 237, 240–243 Mustafa Nuri Pasha (Wali) 1, 23, 181, 184, 191, 219 Mutasallim 21, 45, 130, 131, 136–152, 157–159, 161, 164 Muthanna al- (Club) 273 Muthanna bin Haritha al-Shaybani al- 273 Nabi Yusha’ (see Joshua son of Nun) Nablus 171n Nadir Shah 47 Nafkir 64 Najaf 115, 171, 174, 186, 188, 190 Najib Pasha (Wali) 178 Naqib al-Nuqaba’ 172, 172n Nasi (president) 20–23n, 48–50, 99, 100, 138, 139n, 152, 159, 179n, 208 Nazi 55, 76, 112, 239, 251–254, 263, 264, 272, 273, 275 Nazim Pasha (Wali) 239 Nehardea (yeshiva) 87, 88 New Muslims 116 New Synagogue (Slat el-Jdidi) 48n, 140 Niebuhr, Carsten 133n, 135, 174–176 Nizam Hakhamkhane (see Hakhamkhane Law) North Africa 74 Nuriel School 9 ‘Olam ha- (journal) 119 Operation Ezra and Nehemiah 56, 123, 179n Orient 11, 132, 217, 252

305

Index Ottoman (see also Turk) 1, 23, 24, 35, 37, 40, 54, 68, 102, 119, 128, 130, 161, 163–165, 202, 216, 219–221, 247, 273 Ottoman Archives 194 Ottoman Authority (see also Turk) 1, 5, 22, 43, 54, 67, 68, 101, 102, 118, 128, 167, 195, 207, 208, 217, 227, 232, 247, 259n Ottoman Empire (see also Turkey) 1, 13, 18, 22, 36, 39, 51, 53, 54, 77, 100–102, 155, 163, 165, 194, 195, 208, 218, 248 Ottoman forces 202, 207, 240, 245 Ottoman Sultan 20, 51, 131, 143, 146, 155, 157, 159, 191, 195 Pahlevi 125 Palace of Flowers 256–257n, 270 Palestine (see also Holy Land, Land of Israel) 9, 25, 26, 74, 76, 90, 91, 112, 113, 116–122, 125, 249, 251, 268, 270–273, 275 Palmach 270, 271 Paris 4, 9, 25, 57, 60, 76, 94, 183, 193, 194, 220–225, 232–236, 259n Pentecost (Shavu’ot) 239, 248–250, 255, 261, 268, 269, 270, 274, 276, 277 Persia (Iran) 2, 9, 20n, 32–47, 51–52n, 56, 72–74, 83, 93, 116, 121–123, 125, 130–138, 145, 171, 174, 182, 190, 195, 196, 222, 268, 270 Persian Gulf 35, 39, 40n, 45, 49, 51, 56, 121–123, 129, 132–138, 196, 197 Persian Jews 40–42, 47, 50–53, 60, 71–77 Persian silk 39, 40n, 43 Pestilence 53, 58–60, 63 Philippopolis 222n Pilgrimage (ziara) 16, 41n, 124, 168, 170, 171, 174, 176, 178, 179, 183, 189, 190, 239, 256 Pognon, M. 223–225 Pogrom of 1–2 June 1941 (farhud) 18, 19, 26, 120, 122, 128, 248–281 Poland 75, 76 Portugal 36, 38n Portuguese 35, 38–39, 41 Prophet Ezekiel Synagogue (in Hilla) 3 Prophet Jonah Tomb 217 Pumbedita (yeshiva) 87 Pushi (veil) 7, 97 Qadi 148, 152 Qa’im 179 Qajar 52

Qamber ‘Ali (neighborhood) 262n Qasr al-Zuhur (see Palace of Flowers) Qazwini, Mustawfi al- 172 Qishil al- (neighborhood) 260 Quran 171, 189 Ra’anana 119 Ramadan 15, 18 Rangoon 124n Ras al-Chol 261 Rashid al- (street) 262 Rashid al-Din 172 Rashid Bey 178 Rawanduz 63 Raziel, David 270 Red Sea 132 Regensburg, Rabbi Petahiah of 129 Regent (see ‘Abd al-Ilah) Rehovot 119 Reis Efendi 165, 166n Rejwan, Yehuda ibn Ezra ibn Ya’qub 179 Return to Zion 4, 118, 120 Revolution of July 1958 56 Rofé, Rabbi Ya’acob Yosef ha- 238 Romania 76 Rooben, Hiskeel 52n Rothschild (family) 220 Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste 140, 140n, 149, 152, 153n, 155, 155n, 160, 160n Royal Palace 254, 264 Rozen, Abraham 119 Russia 76, 134 Sabaean 133 Sadqa, Rabbi Shmuel Abraham 193 Safavid 35, 37, 131 Safed 36, 38, 40, 40n, 87, 118 Sa’id, Nuri al- 253, 254, 265 Salah, Choja Reuben ibn 45, 159, 162, 162n Salih ‘Abudi, Mordechai 23, 23n, 179, 179n Salih ‘Abudi, Salih ibn Mordechai 179n Salim, Asher 204, 243 Saloniki 74 Samawa 277 Sandur 64, 82, 277, 281 Sanjaq (sub-province) 131 Saray (government house) 59, 68, 141, 143, 146, 149 Sarraf Bashi 20, 21, 22n, 48, 136–140, 143, 162

306 Sasson, Aharon ibn Eliyahu Nahum 118, 119 Sasson, Hesqel Shlomo Daweed 246 Sassoon (family) 21, 52n, 124, 125n, 138, 214 Sassoon, Albert David 210, 234, 235 Sassoon, Albert David School 76 Sassoon David Company 211, 214n, 233–235 Sassoon, David S. 34n, 42n, 45n, 48n, 129, 129n, 177 Sassoon, Slaiman David 234 Sauvebeuf, F. (See Ferrières-Sauveboeuf) Second Temple 87, 171, 201, 238 Sehaiq, Ezra Sasson 120 Sehayik, Dr. Shaul 176 Seleucus IV (King) 224n Selim III (Sultan) 158n, 178, Semach, Y.D. 90 Semah, Ya’coob 52n, 178 Sereni, Enzo 121 Sha’ab Party al- 273 Shabbetai, Zvi 41 Shahrazur 43, 131 Shalom, Salih Shalom 123 Shamiya 277 Shammash High School 119 Shammash, Rabbi Moshe 203 Shanghai 124 Sharia 82 Shatt al-Arab 133n Shawkat, Sami 253 Sheikh Dharib 179, 179n Shemtob, Hesqel 106 Shemtob, Yosef 200, 209 Sherif Hussein 54, 273 Shiblaq, ‘Abbas 271, 272 Shina, Salman 276 Shindookh, Moshe ibn Mordechai 22, 49 Shiraz 136 Shmuel ibn ‘Eli, Rabbi 31 Shorja (market) 262, 262n Shulfa 46 Shura ha- 121–123 Sidi, Maurice 52, 52n Siduri 62 Silk 39, 39n, 40n, 43, 70 Sima [Semah], Yacoob 52n Singapore 124, 124n Sirri Kamal Pasha (Wali) 241, 245 Slonimsky, Haim Zelig 230n

Index Smoha, Rabbi Sasson 200, 202, 226, 244 Sokolow, Nahum 230n Somekh, Rabbi Abdalla 18, 23, 25, 53, 88, 191, 193–247 Somekh, Shaul 193, 194, 202n, 220–223, 245n Soviet Union 121 Spain 21n, 36, 45n, 75, 138, 139n Spanish 3, 21, 44–45n, 75, 138, 139 Stadh (“Heder”) 87, 89, 91 Stark, Freya 256, 256n Stayi (traditional teacher) 89 Stillman, Prof. Noam 168n Sublime Port 3, 51, 133, 153, 159–161n, 163, 165, 166n, 185–187, 191, 195, 208–210, 218–220, 222, 223, 225–228, 230, 232, 234, 236–246 Suez Canal 51, 52n, 140, 196 Suleiman Pasha (The Great) (Wali) 21, 22, 130, 131, 133, 136–140, 144, 148–167, 176 Suleiman Pasha (The Little) (Wali) 177 Suleiman (The Magnificent) (Sultan) 37 Suq Hannun (market) 262n Suq al-Saray (market) 262n Sura (yeshiva) 87 Surat 49, 52n, 132 Susa, Ahmad (Nissim) 113–115 Synagogue 2–4, 32, 35, 38, 39, 48, 48n, 66, 75–77, 108, 114, 204, 209, 210, 238, 239, 244, 246, 269 Synagogue of Ezekiel the Prophet (in Kifil) 169–174, 176, 178, 183–185, 188–190, 203 Syria 1, 9, 34, 38, 39, 43, 44, 74, 87, 91, 112, 136, 178, 182 Ta’awun al- (School) 94 Tabernacles (Succoth) 210, 210n, 234, 245, 246 Tabriz 36 Taggar, Dr. Yehuda 250 Taht al-Takya (neighborhood) 262n Talmud 2, 4, 6, 31, 40, 98, 170 Talmud Torah (school) 67, 88–90, 246 Tanzimat (Ottoman reforms) 13, 51, 100 Taqar 62 Tatran (neighborhood) 260–262n, 269 Taurat, al- (neighborhood) 262n Tawfiq Pasha 202, 207, 240

Index Tax collectors 84, 136 Teixeira, Pedro 38 Thabit, Rabbi Daweed 38 Theosophical Movement 108 Tiberias 118 Tigris River 17, 24, 34, 45, 51, 61, 65, 79, 132, 133n, 196, 197, 200n, 201, 202, 207n, 217, 222 Timurlane 33–34n Tombs of Saints 16, 168n, 170, 171, 174, 188, 190 Tower of Babylon (Birz Nimrud) 170 Transit trade 44, 76, 79 Tudela, Benjamin of 31, 32, 35, 129, 169n, 170, 175n, 184, 190 Turban (tarbush, fez) 7 Turk (see also Ottoman) 7, 12–18, 22, 23, 32, 35, 37, 39, 42, 45n, 48, 53, 58, 62, 66, 68, 70, 74, 85, 86, 93, 94, 101, 102, 133, 141–148, 151–157, 160, 174, 176n, 179, 183, 187, 188, 194, 196, 197, 207, 208, 210, 212, 213, 225n, 229, 238–242, 244, 246, 248, 259n, 273 Turkey (see also Ottoman Empire) 39, 41, 43, 54, 62, 74, 86, 91, 94, 136, 148, 182, 186, 222, 227, 229 Turkman tribes 34 Tut 62 Tweedie, Colonel William 207n, 211–220, 224, 235, 243n, 244n, 248, 275 Twena, H. Abraham 254n, 258n, 266, 267, 276 Twena, Rabbi Shlomo 232–234 Typhus 62 Uljaitu (Sultan) 172–176, 188 ‘Umari, Arshad al- 258n UNESCO 189 United Kingdom (see Britain) United States 4, 85, 115, 249 ‘Uzair al- 239 Va’ad ha-Sirim (see Council of Delegates) Valadji, J. 66, 197n, 221–223n

307 Venice 45, 132 Venetian 36 Vienna 133, 231n Virgin Mary 143, 154 Vizier, Grand Vizier 172, 225, 226, 238–240n, 245 Waqf 182, 184 Warburg, Prof. Otto 5 Warsaw 193, 227 White, Sir William A. 211 Wilaya (province) 20, 131, 133, 134, 152n, 163, 165, 191, 224 Wolfssohn, David 5 World Zionist Organization (WZO) 5, 25, 118, 119 World War I 2, 4, 10, 54, 74, 79, 82, 91, 92, 94, 98, 111, 118, 125, 250, 273 World War II 55, 250, 252 Yahadut Ne’emana (Loyal Judaism) (Society) 108 Yaqut, Abdallah ibn Abdallah 171, 172 Yazd 37 Yehuda (family) 124, 125 Yehuda, Ruben Hesqel 187n Yehuda Ezra, Yosef 180n Yemen 32, 85, 86, 197 Yeshivas (3rd–13th centuries) 31, 35, 87, 98 Yeshivas (17th–20th centuries) 1, 38, 41–43, 88–100, 102, 124, 178, 179, 204, 232, 243 Yosef Haim Eliahu, Rabbi 4, 9, 90, 204 Young Turk Revolution (1908) 7, 54, 94, 102 Zagam 38 Zakho 62 Ziara (see Pilgrimage) Zibaq, Abdalla 202–205, 209, 213, 233, 238, 243 Zibar 64 Zilkha, Attorney Naim 104 Zionist Congress 120 Zionist Movement 5, 25, 109, 118, 120, 121, 273, 274