Opportunities and setbacks went hand in hand for Jewish communities living under Muslim rule in the Eighteenth Century. In Istanbul, during the early years of the century, Jews were among the typesetters at the first ever Muslim printing press, providing the skilled labour needed to carry out the printing.1 Yet in Jerusalem, another Ottoman–ruled city, Jews suffered hardship in 1720 when Muslim Arabs seized the local Ashkenazi synagogue, burned the Scrolls of the Law and refused to return the synagogue to the Jewish community.2
In an account of his journeys through the Ottoman Empire, the Swedish traveller Frederick Hasselquist described Jewish prosperity in Jerusalem with a telling caveat. He noted that the rabbis of the city gained considerable revenue from co–religionists ‘throughout the whole world,’ as well as from Jewish pilgrims ‘who come from far and wide to pay their respects at the seat of their forefathers.’ It was, however, the local Muslim authorities who ‘draw the greatest part,’ for ‘Jews as well as Christians must constantly bring offerings to their altars, if they will kiss their holy places in peace.’3 In 1775 the Jews in Jerusalem–and throughout the Ottoman Empire–submitted to an increase in the jizya tax, so that the Ottomans could raise revenue for their war with Russia.
Jews in other Ottoman lands experienced a similar combination of promise and hardship. In 1740, Rabbi Hayyim Abulafia, a Jew from Izmir, travelled to Palestine and settled in the city of Tiberias. Jewish life had languished there since the land was leased to Don Joseph Nasi 180 years earlier, and for the previous seventy years all cultivation had ceased. The Muslim ruler of Galilee, Sheikh Dahir al–Amr, invited Rabbi Abulafia and a number of Jewish families to ‘come up and take possession of the land,’ and to revitalise the city and its surroundings.4 This they did, planting vineyards and olive groves; in the words of Cecil Roth, they ‘renewed in some measure the atmosphere of the autonomous Jewish settlement.’5
The Jewish community of Bukhara faced another kind of challenge. Being isolated in a desert oasis, far from any centre of vibrant Jewish life, the community was losing its Jewish identity amidst a vigorous and devout Muslim khanate. In 1793 the Jews of Safed sent an emissary, Joseph ha–Ma’aravi, to address the problem and to revive the Bukharan Jewish community. He travelled the 1,700 miles to Bukhara, crossing desert and mountains, and then sent for religious books from Istanbul, Leghorn (Livorno) and Vilna. The Khan of Bukhara subsequently agreed that there should be a community leader, the Nasi, who could serve as a communal judge and represent the community’s needs to the Muslim authorities. This beneficial system continued until 1873, when Russian control was imposed on the Khanate.6
In Yemen, a brief resurgence of Jewish life occurred during one period of Zaydi Shiite rule, when Jews rebuilt their synagogues and were able to achieve important positions in Yemeni society. A prominent Jew, Rabbi Shalom ben Aharon ha–Kohen Iraqi, was made responsible for the mint and the royal finances. But because the Jews worked mostly as artisans, there was no class of wealthy property owners or successful middle–class traders to support a thriving scholarly community. Yemen’s Jewish communities were small and scattered, so that it was often impossible to obtain a quorum for prayer. Rabbi Shalom ben Aharon managed to help the Jewish community for a short time, by raising its prestige among the Muslims, but he quickly fell from favour as a result of the envy and hostility of local Muslim officials.7
These hardships and challenges were sometimes compounded by large events. In the Libyan hinterland, Jews became entangled in the revolt of local Berber tribes in the 1750s. Some of the small Jewish communities chose to participate in the revolt, but others were forced to provide the rebels with weapons and medicine. A number of Jews secretly paid the jizya tax to the Muslim authorities in Tripoli, hoping to avoid punishment when the revolt was crushed. In Tripoli itself, Jews suffered at other times under the occupation of two different invaders, the Tunisian ruler Ibrahim Sherif and the Algerian Ali Burghul. Under both rulers the situation became so dire that the Jewish community later celebrated its liberation with local Purims: the ‘Purim Sherif’ on the twenty–third of Tevet in the Hebrew calendar (to commemorate 19 January 1705) and the ‘Purim Burghul’ on the twenty–ninth of Tevet (to commemorate 20 January 1795).8
During the rest of the Eighteenth Century, Tripoli’s Jewish community flourished under the rule of the Muslim Karamanli dynasty. Jews became successful as traders, effectively controlling the maritime trade in henna, wool and cereals with the Italian port of Leghorn (Livorno). They were also prominent in the trade across the Sahara, to the oases of the Fezzan, and south as far as the cities of northern Nigeria. They traded esparto grass, the alfalfa herb and ostrich feathers. Within Tripoli, Jews worked as silversmiths and goldsmiths, moneychangers and bankers, silk spinners, weavers and dyers. A few Jewish families in the city managed to become wealthy–those to whom the local Muslim authorities granted an official task, such as customs subcontractors or mint masters.9
The Eighteenth Century saw equally impressive commercial activity among the Jews of Morocco. In 1766, Sultan Sidi Mohammed III decided to turn the small Atlantic port of Mogador (now Essaouira) into a mercantile metropolis, and to make it the only Moroccan port other than Tangier open to European trade. In order to create a thriving port, he invited several Jewish families to settle there–some of Berber origin from the High Atlas Mountains, others from the cities of Sousse and Marrakech.10 Five Jewish families came from Marrakech, among them the Pinto family, who brought to the city the cannons that still adorn the town walls.11
Several Jewish families in Morocco were able to achieve prominence in trade as well as in other fields. Members of the Benider family were active as ships’ chandlers, providing shipping supplies to the British in Gibraltar. Jacob Benider, who was born under British rule in Gibraltar but lived in Tangier, served as the official interpreter at British consulates in several Moroccan cities, including Mogador, Salé, Safi and Agadir. In 1772 the Sultan of Morocco even sent Jacob Benider as Ambassador to London on a diplomatic mission.12 Another Moroccan Jewish family, the Benoliel family, was active in diplomacy as well as commerce. Judah Benoliel, who died in 1839, was sent by the Sultan of Morocco on diplomatic missions to Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Belgium. He also negotiated peace between Sardinia and Morocco. It was at Jacob Benoliel’s request that the Sultan authorised the reconstruction of the synagogue in Tangier.13
This general sense of calm changed for the worse as dramatic events heralded the approach of the Nineteenth Century. In 1791, Spain made war on Morocco and bombarded Tangier. After the fighting ended, the Sultan of Morocco, Moulay Yazid, made the Jews of Tangier sell all their household goods, in order to pay for the war and fund the added protection that Tangier would need against future attacks.14 Only a year earlier, Moulay Yazid had turned against the Jews of Fez, who had hitherto prospered, especially as goldsmiths, lace–makers, embroiderers and tailors, and manufacturers of gold thread.15 Moulay ordered the destruction of the synagogues, the plunder of the Jewish Quarter and the expulsion of Jews from the city. It was not until two years later, when Yazid was succeeded as Sultan by Moulay Suleiman, that the Jews were allowed to return to Fez, albeit to a much reduced area.16
Individual Jews also suffered; two examples from the end of the Eighteenth Century give a flavour of what a Jew could expect, however influential or successful he might be. In the first case, a Jewish businessman, Jacob Attali, reached high favour as the protégé of the Moroccan Sultan Mohammad. But the Sultan’s successor, Moulay Yazid, decided to punish him for supporting the previous Sultan by having him beheaded. Not fatal but still disturbing for the Jewish community was the case of Isaac Pinto, a Jew who held the position of Chief of Customs in Tangier–the most lucrative office to which a dhimmi in Tangier could aspire. When Pinto died in 1792 the Sultan immediately confiscated all of his possessions and forced his son to sell the family’s home.17
In the first years of the Nineteenth Century, a Spanish Christian, General Domingo Badia y Lebich, travelled in the guise of a Muslim–under the name Ali Bey El Abassi–through North Africa and western Asia.18 After leaving Morocco he travelled to Tripoli, where he observed a rejuvenated Jewish community. These Jews, he noted, were ‘treated somewhat better than in Morocco. There are about two thousand who dress as Muslims do; only the cap and slippers must be black, and the turban usually deep blue.’ He added that there were ‘about thirty very rich families, the others being craftsmen or goldsmiths. Trade with Europe is almost entirely in their hands: they deal mainly with Marseille, Leghorn, Venice and Malta.’19
Such were the protective benefits of dhimmi status, but they were not always so evident. In 1806 a Belgian–born doctor, Louis Frank, became personal physician to the Bey of Tunis during the regency there. In an account of his experiences, Frank described the life of the Jews in Tunis and the effect of their dhimmi status. These Jews were the only subjects of the Bey who paid him a personal tax, and ‘although this payment is claimed for their protection, nothing is more common than to see them being molested and even struck by the Moors.’ Dr. Frank observed that ‘they accept these mistreatments and blows with astonishing resignation,’ and should a Jew ‘dare to reply to his aggressors, he would most certainly run the risk of becoming involved in serious proceedings from which he could extricate himself only at the cost of a large sum of money.’ Indeed, the insults hurled at Jews often had ‘no other aim but this abusive and tyrannical extortion.’20
No decade of the Nineteenth Century passed without such a threat or act of violence against Jews under Muslim rule. Sometimes violence took the form of the medieval Christian Blood Libel, but at other times it lacked even that pretence. In 1813 in Palestine, the leaders of the Jewish community in the Holy City of Hebron–the site of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob–were imprisoned and tortured until a ransom was paid to the Arab sheikhs who had abducted them.21 The Jewish community of Hebron was too poor to pay the ransom; it took them more than a year to collect the money from Jewish communities in Germany, Holland and England.22 In 1814, in the Russian–ruled Muslim city of Baku on the Caspian Sea, the Jews, who had been harassed by the local Muslims over many years, were subjected to a Blood Libel, being accused of using non–Jewish blood for the Passover meal. Only the intervention of the Russian Tsarist authorities saved them, offering them official protection and refuge in a nearby town.23
In Morocco in 1820, the Jewish Quarter of Fez was targeted by an invading Muslim tribe, the Udaya, who seized canvas, silk, silver and gold. The attack did not stop at plunder. Jewish women were taken to the Muslim quarter, where the young girls among them were raped. ManyJewish men were murdered while trying to protect their women from abduction. Leaders of the community and shopkeepers were tortured and forced to reveal where they had hidden their money. According to one source, when a man’s wife was particularly beautiful, the invaders ‘stole her from her husband to force him to pay a ransom.’24 The persecution only stopped after the Udaya tribesmen challenged the Sultan, who bombarded them with his canon and drove them from Fez.25
A similar attack occurred in the Galilee city of Safed in 1838. The Jewish community there was devastated when Druze raiders from southern Lebanon, joined by Muslims from Safed itself, rampaged through the Jewish Quarter during the night, looting as they went. Women were raped and men tortured in an attempt to make them reveal the whereabouts of their ‘hidden gold and money.’ The next day Egyptian troops arrived, restored order, punished a number of local Muslims for the attacks and forced them to return much of the looted property.26
On some occasions, Muslim rulers themselves initiated violence against the Jews. In 1818, in the eastern Mediterranean port city of Acre, Pasha Abdalla–determinedly independent of his nominal masters in Istanbul–turned against one of his leading Jewish citizens, Haim Farhi. A well–off and deeply religious man, Farhi had opened his home to those in need, whether Jews, Christians, or Muslims. But when Abdalla accused him of building his private synagogue higher than the Acre mosque, Farhi was sentenced to death and executed. His body was denied a proper Jewish burial and thrown into the sea. When the tide washed the body up on the shore, it was thrown in again. Farhi’s house was then ransacked and all his belongings taken away, leaving his family destitute. Abdalla also turned against the Jews of Safed and Tiberias, forcing them to hand over their valuable possessions. Only the intervention of the Austrian Consul in Aleppo, Baron Picciotto–a Jew–halted the Pasha’s rampage.27
Five hundred miles east of Acre, the Jews of Baghdad suffered ill–treatment at the hands of another Muslim ruler, the local governor Daud Pasha. The governor’s harassment, starting in 1817 and continuing for fourteen years, prompted hundreds of Baghdadi Jewish families to flee by ship from Basra to the Indian port of Surat, where they became active in the jute, cotton and tobacco trades. Jews fleeing from Baghdad also set up flourishing trading communities in Bombay and Calcutta, and later as far east as Rangoon, Hong Kong and Shanghai. These communities were all led by Baghdadi Jewish families, including the Ezras, Eliases, Gubbays and Kadhouries.28
A number of events in the Nineteenth Century brought the plight of Jews in Muslim lands to the attention of Western Europe and the United States. One of these events was the forced conversion of Jews in the Persian city of Meshed in 1839. The Jews of Meshed had faced an imminent massacre by a Muslim mob, until Muslim notables saved most of them by declaring that the Jewish community would convert to Islam. Some of the converts fled to the Central Asian city of Merv, 150 miles to the north–east, where they were welcomed by the Sheikh of Merv and were allowed to return to Judaism.29 Other refugees from Meshed went to Afghanistan to join the Jewish communities in Kabul, Herat and Maimana. There they began trading in animal skins, carpets and antiquities, and later produced liturgical and religious poetry of great beauty.30
In 1834 another event occurred that shocked the western Jewish world: the public execution of a seventeen–year–old Jewish woman, Sol Hachuel (also known as Zulaika Hajwal), in the Moroccan city of Tangier. The tragedy began when Sol befriended a Muslim woman who had ambitions to convert her to Islam–a particularly meritorious act under the code of Islamic law then prevalent in Morocco. When the woman’s efforts failed, she denounced Sol to the Muslim authorities, claiming that the girl had indeed been converted, but had returned to Judaism.
Sol was brought before the Sultan’s representative, the Basha (Governor) of Tangier, Arbi Esudio, and accused of having agreed to be converted to Islam. Sol declared: ‘You have been deceived, Sir…. I never pronounced such words: she proposed it to me, but I did not consent.’ She then told the Governor, in Ladino, in words that became her epitaph: Hebrea naci y Hebrea quero morir–‘A Jewess I was born, a Jewess I wish to die.’ The Governor responded by offering Sol silk and gold if she agreed even then to convert to Islam. He then threatened her with punishment for apostasy: ‘I will have you torn piece–meal by wild beasts. You shall not see the light of day, you shall perish of hunger, and experience the rigour of my vengeance and indignation, in having provoked the anger of the Prophet.’
Sol, unflinching, replied: ‘I will give my limbs to be torn piecemeal by wild beasts; I will renounce forever the light of day, I will perish of hunger, and when all the evils of life are accumulated on me by your orders, I will smile at your indignation, and the anger of the Prophet: since neither he nor you have been able to overcome a weak female! It is clear that Heaven is not too auspicious to making proselytes to your faith.’
The Governor was indignant at Sol’s reference to Mohammed–‘you have profaned the name I revere,’ he told her–and sent her to prison, where she was held with an iron collar around her neck, and chains on her hands and feet. Her parents appealed to the Spanish Consul in Tangier, but his considerable efforts to have her set free were unsuccessful. Sol was then sent to Fez, for the Sultan to decide her fate. Her parents were made to pay a substantial sum for the cost of the journey, and threatened with five hundred lashes if they could not find the money. Fortunately for them, the Spanish Consul paid the charge.
In Fez, the Sultan appointed the Cadi–a senior Koranic judge–to determine Sol’s punishment. The Cadi summoned the Jewish sages of Fez, who urged him to spare Sol’s life. The Cadi replied that unless she agreed to convert to Islam she would be beheaded–and the Jewish community punished. Despite efforts by the sages to persuade her to convert in order to save her life and their community, Sol refused conversion and was found guilty. She was condemned to be executed in the main marketplace in Fez. The Cadi stated that the cost of the execution would have to be borne by her father.
A large crowd of local Muslims gathered to watch the execution, crying out as she was brought through the streets: ‘Here comes she who blasphemed the Prophet–death! Death! to the impious wretch!’ At the scaffold, Sol was permitted to wash her hands and say the Shema prayer, ‘Hear! O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is one …’ Then one of the executioners cut her with his scimitar and, in the hope of persuading her to convert to Islam–apparently on the Sultan’s orders–declared, ‘There is yet time to become Mohametan, and save your life!’ On seeing her blood she turned to him with the words, ‘Do not make me linger–behead me at once–for dying as I do, innocent of any crime, the God of Abraham will avenge my death!’ She was then beheaded.31
The Fez Jewish community had to pay to have Sol Hachuel’s corpse, her head and the bloodstained earth given to them for Jewish burial in the Jewish cemetery. She was buried next to one of the great sages of Moroccan Jewry and declared a martyr.32 Her story was told and retold by Jews all over the world as the tragedy of a Jew entrapped by Islamic enmity towards the infidel.
Jewish communities still suffered at the hands of Christian Europe, yet European travellers in Muslim lands were frequently shocked by what they witnessed of the treatment of Jews there. This was even apparent in Jerusalem, the holiest of Jewish cities. The French writer and diplomat Chateaubriand, who was in Jerusalem in 1806, wrote that local Jews were the ‘special target of all contempt.’ Despite their troubles, he added, ‘they lower their heads without complaint; they suffer all insults without demanding justice; they let themselves be crushed by blows.’33 In 1834, a British traveller, Robert Curzon, was also in Jerusalem. ‘Many of the Jews are rich,’ he recalled later, ‘but they are careful to conceal their wealth from the jealous eyes of their Mohammedan rulers, lest they should be subject to extortion.’34
Similar accounts of harassment and fear were recorded by visitors to other Muslim lands. In 1835 a British visitor to Algiers, Perceval Barton Lord, noted that any Muslim soldier, ‘if so inclined, would stop and beat the first Jew he met in the street, without the latter daring to return or even ward off the blows.’ Lord wrote that the victim’s ‘only resource was to run as fast as he could, until he had made his escape.’ Complaint was, in his opinion, ‘worse than useless,’ for the Cadi of Algiers always summoned the soldier and asked him why he had beaten the Jew, to which the soldier would answer, ‘Because he has spoken ill of our holy religion.’ At that point, wrote Lord, the soldier would be dismissed ‘and the Jew put to death.’35
Another traveller to North Africa in the early Nineteenth Century was a British orientalist, William Edward Lane. In his book Manners and Customs of Modern Egypt, published in 1836, he described the situation of the Jews in Cairo. They were ‘detested by the Muslims far more than are the Christians,’ he wrote. ‘Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present they are less oppressed; but still they ever scarcely dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation for uttering disrespectful words against the Kur’an or the Prophet.’36
European travellers expressed the same surprise and dismay at the plight of Jewish communities in Asia. A British traveller in Persia, Charles Wills, wrote that the Jews there were repeatedly humiliated by the Muslim population. ‘At every public festival,’ he wrote, and ‘even at the royal salaam, before the King’s face–the Jews are collected, and a number of them are flung into the hauz or tank, that King and mob may be amused by seeing them crawl out half–drowned and covered with mud. The same kindly ceremony is witnessed whenever a provincial governor holds high festival: there are fireworks and Jews.’37
Another Western traveller, the Romanian–born Jewish historian Israel Joseph Benjamin, visited the Persian Jews in 1850. He wrote that they were ‘obliged to live in a separate part of town … for they are considered as unclean creatures.’ He also noted that, ‘under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt.’ Jews were even ‘prohibited to go out when it rains; for it is said the rain would wash dirt off them, which would sully the feet of the Mussulmans.’ At other times, if a Jew was recognised as a Jew while walking in the streets, ‘he is subjected to the greatest insults. The passers–by spit in his face, and sometimes beat him … unmercifully.’
Benjamin reported that if a Jew entered a shop, he was forbidden to inspect the goods that were on sale there. ‘Should his hand incautiously touch the goods,’ Benjamin wrote, ‘he must take them at any price the seller chooses to ask for them.’ Yet, on occasion, Persians enteredJewish homes uninvited to ‘take possession of whatever pleases them. Should the owner make the least opposition in defence of his property, he incurs the danger of atoning for it with his life.’ This demarcation in society–and the danger of any transgression–was equally apparent during the three days of the Muharram, an important period of mourning in Shia Islam. If a Jew dared to be in the streets during those days, Benjamin wrote, he was ‘sure to be murdered.’38
The situation was also discouraging for Jews in the Bukharan Khanate, where in 1863 an intrepid explorer, Arminius Vámbéry–a Hungarian Jew and a convert to Christianity–travelled while disguised as a Muslim ascetic. On his return to Hungary he wrote that the Jews of the Khanate were living ‘under the greatest oppression and exposed to the greatest contempt.’ He described how the head of the Jewish community in Bukhara, upon paying the collective jizya tax, was given ‘two slight blows on the cheek, prescribed by the Koran as a sign of submission.’ Some Bukharan Jews, hearing of the privileges accorded to Jews in Turkey, had made their way to Damascus and other places in Syria. But Vámbéry noted that ‘this emigration can only occur secretly, otherwise they would have to atone for the very wish by confiscation or death.’39 of all the places visited by outsiders during the Nineteenth Century, Palestine remained the focus of Western concern about the Jews. On 25 May 1839 the British Vice–Consul in Jerusalem, William Tanner Young, wrote a report comparing the condition of the Jews in Palestine to that of their counterparts in Egypt. Young wrote that the Governor of Egypt, Ibrahim Pasha, showed ‘more consideration’ for the Jews than the Christians did. Young also wrote that he had heard several Egyptian Jews acknowledge that ‘they enjoy more peace and tranquility under this Government, than they have ever enjoyed here before.’ But he then observed that, in contrast, ‘the Jew in Jerusalem is not estimated in value much above a dog–and scarcely a day passes that I do not hear of some act of tyranny and oppression against a Jew.’
Young’s task in Jerusalem was to follow the British Government’s pledge ‘to afford protection to the Jews generally.’ In his report he informed the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, that he had succeeded in obtaining ‘justice for Jews against Turks,’ but added that it was ‘quite a new thing in the eyes of these people to claim justice for a Jew.’ Young went on to warn Palmerston: ‘What the Jew has to endure, at all hands is not to be told.’ But tell it he did: ‘Like the miserable dog without an owner, he is kicked by one because he crosses his path, and cuffed by another because he cries out–to seek redress he is afraid, lest it bring worse upon him; he thinks it better to endure than to live in expectation of his complaint being revenged upon him. Brought up from infancy to look upon his civil disabilities everywhere as a mark of degradation, his heart becomes the cradle of fear and suspicion–he finds he is trusted by none–and therefore lives himself without confidence in any.’40
When the English traveller John Lowthian visited Jerusalem in 1843, Jews made up more than half of the city’s population, yet still their situation appeared lamentable. ‘What a painful change has passed over the circumstances and condition of the poor Jew,’ Lowthian wrote, ‘that in his own city, and close by where his temple stood, he has to suffer oppression and persecution.’ Should a Jew have ‘a little of this world’s good in his possession, he is oppressed and robbed by the Turks in a most unmerciful manner; in short, for him there is neither law nor justice.’41 Lowthian’s words were reinforced two decades later, when an Italian geographer, Ermete Pierotti, spent a number of months in Jerusalem, where he observed that the local Muslims ‘unfortunately hold the opinion that to injure a Jew is a work well pleasing in the sight of God.’42
Eventually the plight of Jews in Muslim lands became known far and wide. In 1854 the New York Daily Tribune published an article by Karl Marx that included a damning description of howJews were treated in Jerusalem. The article was based entirely on what Marx had read in the British Museum in London, for he had never visited any part of the Ottoman Empire. Marx used the information he had read to draw wider conclusions about Islam’s relationship to the outer world. ‘The Koran and the Mussulman legislation emanating from it,’ he wrote, ‘reduce the geography and ethnography of the various people to the simple and convenient distinction of two nations and of two countries; those of the Faithful and of the Infidels.’ He explained that ‘the Infidel is “harby” i.e. the enemy,’ and that ‘Islamism proscribes the nation of the Infidels, constituting a state of permanent hostility between the Mussulman and the unbeliever.’
In his article, Marx wrote, ‘Nothing equals the misery and the sufferings of the Jews at Jerusalem.’ They lived in ‘the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth el–yahoud, in the quarter of dirt, between the Zion and the Moriah, where their synagogues are situated–the constant object of Mussulman oppression and intolerance.’ In addition, they were insulted and persecuted by the Christian inhabitants of the city. Marx added that the Muslims, ‘forming about a fourth part of the whole, and consisting of Turks, Arabs and Moors, are, of course, the masters in every respect.’43
One of the first guidebooks to Jerusalem, published in 1871, gave a similar impression of Muslim attitudes towards the Jews. The book contained a particularly revealing entry about the al–Aqsa Mosque. Readers were told they could expect ‘the Muslim guide’ at the mosque to describe how, on the day of judgement, after the ‘Anti–Christ’ had been killed, ‘the victors will then proceed to a general massacre of the Jews in and around the Holy City, and every tree and every stone shall cry out and say: “I have a Jew beneath me, slay him.”’44
That such information caused concern was evident in a dramatic Western intervention. It took place after a notorious Blood Libel case in Damascus. An Italian friar had disappeared in that city together with his Muslim servant on 5 February 1840. Local Christians accused the Jews of murdering the two men in order to use their blood in the Passover meal. The charges were then brought by the French consul in Damascus, supported by the city’s Egyptian Muslim governor, Sherif Pasha. Seven leaders of the Jewish community were arrested and tortured. Two died; one accepted Islam to save his life. Sixty–three Jewish children were imprisoned and manyJewish homes destroyed in the search for the bodies. It then emerged that the friar had been killed by a Muslim.45
To forestall any further Blood Libel accusations in Muslim lands, the British philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore travelled with a Jewish delegation first to Cairo and then to Istanbul. There he persuaded the Sultan, Abdul Mejid, to declare the Blood Libel a fallacy and to forbid its propagation anywhere in the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan’s decree was issued on 6 November 1840, addressed to the chiefjudge of Istanbul. Montefiore had prepared the draft and given it to Reshid Pasha, the Ottoman Minister for Foreign Affairs.46
The Sultan’s decree was emphatic in its defence of the Jews and the Jewish religion. It began: ‘An ancient prejudice has prevailed against the Jews. The ignorant believe that the Jews were accustomed to sacrifice a human being to make use of his blood at his feast of Passover…. The calumnies which have been uttered against the Jews and the vexations to which they have been subjected have at last reached our Imperial Throne.’ The Sultan noted that Muslim theologians had examined Jewish religious books and found that the Jews ‘are strongly prohibited, not only from using human blood, but even from consuming that of animals. It therefore follows that the charges made against them and their religion are nothing but pure calumny.’
The ‘Jewish nation,’ declared Abdul Mejid, ‘shall possess the same advantages and shall enjoy the same privilege as are granted to the numerous other nations who submit to our authority. The Jewish nation shall be protected and defended.’47
A Muslim ruler had come to the rescue of the Jews.
1 Bernard Lewis, The Middle East, page 10.
2 The synagogue was returned to the Jewish community ninety years later, in 1816.
3 Frederick Hasselquist, Voyages and Travels in the Levant in the Years 1749, 50, 51, 52.
4 The quotation echoes the biblical book of Hosea, one of the twelve Minor Hebrew Prophets.
5 Cecil Roth, The House of Nasi: The Duke of Naxos, pages 134–5.
6 Aviva Müller–Lancet, ‘Bukhara,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 4, column 1473.
7 Reuben Ahroni, Yemenite Jewry: Origins, Culture, and Literature, page 138.
8 These Purims reflected the age–old Festival of Purim, which celebrated the saving of Persian Jews in ancient times from the mass murder decreed by the Grand Vizier Haman, as described in the Book of Esther: ‘… in the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped to have power over them, (though it was turned to the contrary, that the Jews had rule over them that hated them),’ Book of Esther: 9:1.
9 Renzo De Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835–1970, pages 7 and 8. De Felice lists the wealthy families as the Halfons, Hassans, Labis, Arbibs, Ambrons and Nahums, ‘etc.’
10 Daniel Schroeter, The Sultan’s Jews: Morocco and the Sephardi World, page 13.
11 Information provided by Barbara Barnett (herself a Pinto). When plague devastated Mogador in 1799, the Pintos went to England, where they went into the tobacco trade.
12 Leon H. Spotts, ‘Benider, Moroccan family,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 4, column 520.
13 David Corcos, ‘Benoliel, Moroccan family,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 4, column 544.
14 A Jew, Yeshaya (Isaiah) Benamar, was brought by the Sultan from Fez to supervise the building of a new pier to replace the one that had been destroyed in the war.
15 The Jews also held two monopolies, one over tobacco and the other over the minting of coins.
16 David Corcos, ‘Fez,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 6, column 1257.
17 Attali’s brother only escaped execution by converting to Islam. M. Mitchell Serels, A History of the Jews of Tangier, page 4.
18 Bey was originally a Turkish title for a chieftain, and then later for the ruler of a region or province. The first three Ottoman Sultans used the title Bey. From the Nineteenth Century onwards, Bey was used as a term of respect.
19 Renzo De Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835–1970, page 6.
20 L. Frank, Tunis, Description de cette Régence, published in Paris, 1862, quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi, pages 292–3.
21 The four Jewish Holy Cities are Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed and Hebron.
22 Tudor Parfitt, The Jews in Palestine, 1800–1882, pages 39–48.
23 Simha Katz, ‘Baku,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 4, column 119.
24 A. an–Nasiri, Recherches approfondies sur l’histoire des dynasties de Maroc, Paris, 1906, quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi, pages 293–4.
25 In commemoration of their deliverance, the Jews of Fez celebrated a special Purim–Purim del Kor, the Purim of the cannon balls–every year on the anniversary of the bombardment. David Corcos, ‘Fez,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 6, column 1257.
26 Tudor Parfitt, The Jews in Palestine, 1800–1882, pages 67–9.
27 ‘Haim “El Muallim” Farhi (1740–1818)’: www.farhi.org/history.htm. ‘El Muallim means ‘The Teacher.’
28 The Chief of Staff of the Indian Army’s Eastern Command in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, Lieutenant–General J.F.R. Jacob, was of Baghdadi–Jewish descent. He later became the Governor of two Indian States, Goa and Punjab.
29 Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi, page 88.
30 W.J. Fischel, ‘Afghanistan,’ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 2, column 327.
31 Sixteen years later, Sol Hachuel’s execution was the subject of a graphic painting by the French painter Alfred Dehodencq. The painting, which is in Paris, in the Musée d’art d’histoire du Judaïsme, is reproduced as the front cover of Andrew G. Bostom (editor), The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, which has a full account of the case–‘A Note on the Cover Art,’ pages 13–16.
32 Eugenio Maria Romero, El martirio de joven Hachuel o la heroina Hebrea: Gibraltar, Imprinta Militar, 1837. Published anonymously in London in 1839 as Jewish Heroine of the Nineteenth Century: A Tale Founded on Fact. Quoted by Andrew Bostom (editor), The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pages 13–17.
33 François–René Viscount de Chateaubriand, Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, pages 426–7.
34 Robert Curzon, Visits to Monasteries in the Levant, page 208.
35 Perceval Barton Lord, Algiers, with notices of the neighbouring States of Barbary, Volume Two, page 81. Lord added: ‘It is true that the testimony of two Musulmans was required to the fact of the Jew having abused their religion, but on such occasions witnesses were never wanting.’
36 William Edward Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, page 554.
37 Charles James Wills, Persia as It Is: Being Sketches of Modern Persian Life and Character, page 230.
38 Israel Joseph Benjamin, Eight Years in Asia and Africa, from 1846–1855; also published in France as J.J. Benjamin, Cinq années en Orient; quoted in Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, pages 181–183. It is the tenth day of Muharram (the first month of the Muslim year), and to some extent the days leading up to the tenth, that is the Ashura, the period of mourning for the Shia.
39 Arminius Vámbéry, Travels in Central Asia, pages 372–3. Vámbéry was born Armin Bamberger.
40 Albert M. Hyamson (editor), The British Consulate in Jerusalem, pages 8–9.
41 John Lowthian, A Narrative of a Recent Visit to Jerusalem and Several Parts of Palestine in 1843–44.
42 Ermete Pierotti, Customs and Traditions of Palestine, Illustrating the Manners of Ancient Hebrews.
43 Karl Marx, ‘Declaration of War: on the History of the Eastern Question,’ New York Daily Tribune, 15 April 1854 (written on 28 March 1854).
44 Walter Besant and E.H. Palmer, Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin. According to the book, the Muslim guide would also explain how ‘the Messiah will break the crosses and kill the pigs’–the Christians–‘after which the Millennium will set in.’
45 Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, born in 1797 in the Ottoman city of Sarajevo, was so deeply perturbed by the Damascus Blood Libel that in 1843 he called for the adoption of Hebrew as the national language of the Jews, and for the purchase of land in Ottoman–ruled Palestine and the development of agriculture there, for both the absorption of new immigrants and the encouragement of Jewish national unity.
46 Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair, page 376.
47 Quoted in full in Stanford J. Shaw, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, pages 200–1.