THE TOMB OF ABEL AND THE ZABADANI VALLEY

 

The Nabi Habeel Mosque overlooking the Zabadani Valley,
illegally built on top of Abel's Tomb, banned to indigenous Syrians

On a hill in Syria near the Lebanese border, located in the mountains near the settlement of al-Husseineyah west of Damascus and overlooking the Zabadani Valley and the villages of the Wadi Barada, is a religious shrine, the Nabi Habeel Mosque. It was built in 1599 by the Wali Ahmad Pasha, a Bosnian subject of the Ottoman Empire, supposedly over the burial site of Abel, of Cain and Abel fame. As a Bosnian, Ahmad Pasha had friendly relations with the local Jewish and Christian communities, especially the indigenous Syrians, followers of the Aramaic-speaking Syriac Orthodox church. Had it been left to him, everyone would have been invited to pray at the mosque. But as the Arabs were the majority in the area and throughout the Middle East, and they were not necessarily tolerant of the indigenous peoples, in time, Nabi Habeel became a jealously guarded Arab Muslim shrine where no Jew, and certainly not an indigenous Syrian, would dare approach. 

According to legend, not mentioned in the Bible, after Cain murdered Abel, it was here, that he brought his body for burial. Putting aside the fact that Abel’s nationality bore no resemblance to any of the nationalities that were formed since, the fact still remains, he was buried in what later became “Aram Dimashq” – a non-Arab, non-Muslim country, inhabited by Aramean tribes, the descendants of whom, are the Syriac Orthodox, today, under Arab occupation. And the Nabi Habeel Mosque is just one symbol, of many, of that occupation, as well as that of Arab colonialism, and supremacism.  

But fortunately, the area isn’t totally empty of the indigenous inhabitants or other Christians. In the town of Zabadani, approximately 10 miles north of the mosque, Muslims and Greeks have lived together for centuries. The Greeks here, as with the rest of the Middle East, are the descendants (most of them) of Greek settlers who came when the area was under the Greek Hellenistic empire founded by Alexander the Great. (Arab settlers came 1000 years later.) For at least 1500 years, this community has followed mainly the Greek Orthodox church and today, those of Zabadani center around the local Church of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. For the Melkite, or Greek Catholic church, it would be the nearby Church of Our Lady. To be sure, there are many other churches in the area, mainly to the north of the mosque, near the settlements of al Jourjaniyah and Bloudan, and they are also, in the main, Greek Orthodox or Melkite. The nearest non-Greek and indigenous churches could be found only in Damascus, the Arab-occupied capital of Syria, about 25 miles to the west, most notably the Armenian Catholic al Mazzeh Church, and St. George’s Church for the indigenous Syriac Orthodox.

As with the rest of Arab-occupied Syria, this area suffered during the local Arab civil war with crippling years-long sieges. The Four Towns Agreement reached between the armed factions and Iran in 2017, with Qatari mediation, provided for the evacuation of Zabadani and nearby Madaya, as well as Shiite-majority Foua and Kafarya in northwest Syria. For the residents who remained in Zabadani and Madaya, they had to contend with poor security, drug smuggling – facilitated by Hezbollah and the 4th Armored Division – and property seizures. (Local sources confirmed that the Arab Occupation Authorities arbitrarily seize private property.) But since the establishment of, what passes for, peace, a sense of normality has returned somewhat, and Zabadani and Madaya have even witnessed a revival of Christian orthodoxy.

THE REIGN OF ABDULLAH I

King Abdullah I, courtesy, Wikipedia

Have you ever wondered how “Jordan” got to be “Jordan”? Well in fact, one would have to go back only 100 years at a time when the Arabs were beginning their quest to take over the entire Middle East and North Africa at the expense of the region’s non-Arab indigenous peoples – something they hadn’t done since the 7^th century. (This quest, BTW, is still going on today, although to a somewhat lesser extent.) As far as Jordan was concerned, it was Abdullah bin Al-Hussein, the son of Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, who led the Arab takeover of that part of the Middle East. In 1921, he became the founder and ruler of the, now separated, eastern portion of the British Mandate of Palestine, otherwise known as Transjordan, and was officially styled “Emir” beginning the local Hashemite dynasty. In 1946, Transjordan became independent and Abdullah was styled “King”, and ruled in that capacity until his assassination in 1951 in, what was then, Arab-occupied East Jerusalem.

Born in Mecca in the Hejaz region of Arabia, Abdullah was the second of four sons of Hussein bin Ali and his first wife, Abdiyya bint Abdullah and was educated in Istanbul and Hejaz. As a member of the Hashemites, Abdullah was a 38th-generation direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad. He had three wives – all at the same time. He married his first wife in 1904, Musbah bint Nasser at Stinia Palace in Istanbul. He married his second wife Suzdil Khanum, also in Istanbul, becoming a “sister wife” to the first. Finally, in 1949, he married his third wife Nahda bint Uman, in Amman, and she became “sister wife” to the other two. Altogether, Abdullah fathered six children.

Early in the 20^th century, Abdullah persuaded his father to stand, successfully, for Grand Sharif of Mecca, a post for which Hussein acquired British support. Hussein was known to advocate for independence from Ottoman rule and the creation of a free Arab state in the ancestral homeland Arabia but stretching from Yemen to Damascus, a historically Syriac city long occupied and colonized by Arabs. In 1909, Abdullah became deputy for Mecca in the Ottoman parliament, serving until 1914, and acting as an intermediary between his father and the government. In 1914, he paid a clandestine visit to Cairo to meet Lord Kitchener to seek British support for his father's ambitions in Arabia. Abdullah maintained contact with the British throughout the First World War and in 1915 encouraged his father to enter into correspondence with Sir Henry McMahon, British high commissioner in Egypt, about Arab independence from Turkish rule. This correspondence in turn led to the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottomans which lasted from 1916 to 1918. During the revolt, Abdullah commanded the Arab Eastern Army, and began by attacking the Ottoman garrison at Ta'if on June 10. The garrison consisted of 3,000 men with ten 75-mm Krupp guns. Abdullah led a force of 5,000 tribesmen but they did not have the weapons or discipline for a full attack. Instead, he laid siege to the town. In July, he received reinforcements from Egypt in the form of howitzer batteries manned by Egyptian Arab personnel. He then joined the siege of Medina commanding a force of 4,000 men based to the east and north-east of the town. In early 1917, Abdullah ambushed an Ottoman convoy in the desert, and captured £20,000 worth of gold coins that were intended to bribe the Bedouin into loyalty to the Sultan. In August 1917, Abdullah worked closely with the French Captain Muhammand Ould Ali Raho in sabotaging the Hejaz Railway. Abdullah's relations with the British Captain T. E. Lawrence, on the other hand, were not good, and as a result, Lawrence spent most of his time in the Hejaz serving with Abdullah's brother, Faisal, who commanded the Arab Northern Army. After the war, in March 1920, Faisal was proclaimed, in Damascus, king of Syria, a position he held until July of that year when French forces captured Damascus at the Battle of Maysalun and expelled him, thus proclaiming a French Mandate. Abdullah then moved his forces from Hejaz into eastern Palestine with a view to “liberating” Damascus. But having heard of his plans, Winston Churchill, at that time, British diplomat and minister serving in the cabinet of Prime Minister Lloyd-George, invited him to a famous "tea party", where he convinced him to abandon his plans, telling him that French forces were superior to his and that the British did not want any trouble with the French.

So on March 8, 1920, an Arab Congress in Baghdad proclaimed Abdullah King of Iraq, a newly-established kingdom created on top of Assyrian and Kurdish lands. He refused however so they therefore chose Faisal. Instead. Abdullah had his sights on the British Mandate of Palestine. With British assistance, he tore Palestine’s eastern section away from the west and established a separate emirate to be called “Transjordan”. He then set about the task of building this new, artificial country with the help of a reserve force headed by British Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Peake, who was seconded from the Palestine police in 1921. The following year, the separation of east from west Palestine was approved by the League of Nations but still under a British Mandate. Illustrating the contradictions in his reign, both he and the British Mandate authorities banned Jews from living in “Transjordan”. On the other hand, he would often have a team of Jewish bodyguards, mainly members of the Sofer family, both the Palestinian and Yemenite Habani branches, who were known as tall, muscular and fierce warriors. (He also used Circassian bodyguards.) In 1932, he cooperated with the Jews in inaugurating the major hydro-electric power plant in Naharayim located on the Transjordan side of the Jordan-Yarmuk River confluence. This Jewish project was headed by Pinhas Ruttenberg, the founder of the Palestine Electric Company. The joint project required security cooperation between the two sides to protect the plant and power lines. 

Typical of many Arabs, both during that time and since, Abdullah believed the myth that there were no people on earth who were historically less anti-Semitic than the Arabs, stating that the persecution of the Jews was confined almost entirely to the Christian nations of the West. Holding up the example of medieval Muslim Spain, he claimed the Jews had never developed so freely and reached such high positions in society as they had under Arab and Muslim rule, ignoring the massacres that happened from time to time in Spain and other Muslim lands, preferring to call them “minor exceptions”.

In 1923, the Transjordan Arab army, which was made up of veterans of the Arab Revolt, was renamed the Arab Legion. Abdullah’s dream that, one day, his dynasty, who had ruled over Mecca for many centuries, would return there and take their rightful place over the holy places, was dashed in 1925 when Ibn Saud seized the Hejaz. Although he established a legislative council in Amman in 1928, its role remained advisory, leaving him to rule as an autocrat. His Prime Ministers formed 18 governments during the 23 years of the Emirate. Beginning in 1930, the Arab Legion was led by British Col. John Bagot Glubb, popularly known later as “Glubb Pasha”.  Abdullah supported the Peel Commission in 1937, which proposed that (western) Palestine be partitioned into a small Jewish state (20 percent) with the remaining land to be annexed into Transjordan. The Arabs within Palestine and the surrounding “Arab” countries objected to the Peel Commission while the Jews accepted it reluctantly. Ultimately, the Commission’s recommendation was not adopted.

Talal, courtesy, Wikipedia

During World War II, Abdullah was a faithful British ally, maintaining strict order within Transjordan, and helping to suppress a pro-Axis uprising in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the Hashemites experienced a spate of royal family intrigues. Abdullah had two sons: Prince Talal, an outspoken advocate against the British, and Prince Naif, a very pro-British advocate. Talal, being the eldest, was considered the "natural heir to the throne". However, his troubled relationship with his father led to his removal from the line of succession in a secret royal decree. After the war however, their relationship improved and Talal was publicly declared heir apparent. On May 25, 1946, the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan proclaimed its independence. On the same day, Abdullah was crowned king in Amman. In the period 1946–48, he supported various partition plans for western Palestine. In 1947, when the UN voted for a partition, Abdullah was the only Arab leader supporting the decision. His desire was that the Arab allocated areas of western Palestine could be annexed into Transjordan as well as the territories of Arab-occupied Lebanon and Syria of which would result in a “Greater Syria”, ruled by the Hashemites with its capital in Damascus. He even went so far as to have secret meetings with Jewish Agency officials including Golda Meir and Ezra Danin, and they came to a mutually agreed upon partition plan independent of that of the UN and stated that he would prefer to annex all of Palestine but would settle for the Arab-populated parts as a minimum. This partition plan was supported by British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin who preferred to see Abdullah's territory increase rather than risk the creation of another Palestinian state, headed by the Nazi-allied Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni. And it is possible that he might have been willing to sign a separate peace agreement with Israel, were it not for the Arab League's militant opposition to any independent Jewish state. Because of his dream for a Greater Syria, many Arab countries distrusted Abdullah and saw him as both a collaborator with the Europeans and a threat to the independence of their countries. As it turned out, the distrust was mutual.  

Meanwhile, tension between Abdullah and Talal resurfaced, especially after Talal had been "compiling huge, unexplainable debts". As a result, both Abdullah and Prime Minister Samir Al-Rifai were in favor of Talal's removal as heir apparent and replacement with his brother Naif. However, the British resident Alec Kirkbride warned Abdullah against such a "public rebuke of the heir to the throne", a warning which Abdullah reluctantly accepted. He then proceeded to appoint Talal as regent when he was on leave. Behind the scenes though, Kirkbride sent Talal to a Beirut mental hospital, stating that he was suffering from severe mental illness. Many local Arabs believed that there was "nothing wrong with Talal and that the wily British fabricated the story about his madness in order to get him out of the way." Because of the widespread popularity of Talal, Prince Naif was not given British support to succeed as Emir. The conflicts between his two sons led Abdullah to seek a secret union with Hashemite Iraq, in which his nephew Faysal II would rule Jordan after his death. This idea received some positive reception among the British, but it was ultimately rejected as Baghdad's domination of Transjordan was viewed as unfavorable by the British Foreign Office due to fear of "Arab republicanism".

On May 4, 1948, ten days before Israel’s declaration of independence and in the midst of the Arab war of annihilation against Israel, Abdullah, as a part of the effort to seize as much of Palestine as possible, sent in the Arab Legion to attack the Jewish area south of Jerusalem known as the Etzion Bloc. He met with Golda Meir one last time on May 11, 1948 when he said, "Why are you in such a hurry to proclaim your state? Why don't you wait a few years? I will take over the whole country and you will be represented in my parliament. I will treat you very well and there will be no war". Abdullah proposed to Meir the creation "of an autonomous Jewish canton within the Hashemite kingdom," but so soon after the Holocaust, Meir stood her ground for an independent Jewish state. Depressed by the unavoidable war that would come between Jordan and the Yishuv, one Jewish Agency representative wrote, "[Abdullah] will not remain faithful to the November 29 [UN Partition] borders, but [he] will not attempt to conquer all of our state [either]." Abdullah too found the coming war to be unfortunate, in part because he "preferred a Jewish state [as Transjordan's neighbour] to an Arab state run by the mufti." On May 14, 1948, 10 minutes after Israel declared its independence, the local Arabs, the neighboring Arab states, the promise of the expansion of territory and the goal to conquer Jerusalem finally pressured Abdullah into joining them in an "all-Arab military intervention". Their intention was to embark on a war of annihilation and finish what Hitler started. On May 29^th, welcomed by the local Arabs, Abdallah’s Arab Legion conquered the eastern parts of Jerusalem and proceeded to ethnically cleanse the city’s generations-old Jewish population. He used the military intervention to restore his prestige in the Arab world, which had grown suspicious of his relatively good relationship with Western and Jewish leaders. Abdullah was especially anxious to take Jerusalem as compensation for the loss of the guardianship of Mecca. He saw himself as the "supreme commander of the Arab forces" and "persuaded the Arab League to appoint him" to this position. His forces under Glubb Pasha did not approach the area set aside for the Jewish state, though they clashed with the Yishuv forces around Jerusalem, intended to be an international zone. After conquering the rest of Judea and Samaria at the end of the war, King Abdullah tried to suppress any trace of opposition to his rule.

In 1949, Abdullah entered into secret peace talks with Israel, including with Moshe Dayan, the Military commander of the liberated part of Jerusalem, and other senior Israelis. News of the negotiations provoked a strong reaction from other Arab States and Abdullah agreed to discontinue the meetings in return for Arab acceptance of his annexation of Judea and Samaria. With no acceptance forthcoming, in 1949, Abdullah officially annexed the occupied territories anyway and the kingdom was then renamed “Jordan”. The annexation angered the Arab and Arab-occupied countries including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Abdullah’s popularity declined, and in 1951 he was assassinated in Jerusalem by an angry western Palestinian Arab while attending Friday prayers at the entrance to the Al-Aqsa mosque on Arab-occupied Temple Mount. He was succeeded briefly by his eldest son Talal. The following year, his brother Hussein succeeded to the throne.  

THE REIGN OF ABDUL HAMID II OVER THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Sultan Abdul Hamid II, 1880s, courtesy, Wikipedia

For Jews, friends in the international community, whether a head of state or the common man, are few and far between. That’s not to say that Jews have no friends. In fact, contrary to what I just stated, Jews have many friends. On the other hand, this also produces a quandary. What if a world leader has maintained a very close relationship with Jews but were tyrants to other peoples, such as the leaders of the American south who also held African slaves, or Napoleon who also persecuted and expelled the Huguenots from France, or even today when there are many friendly heads of state with atrocious human rights records. For this posting, I have decided to focus on the Ottoman Empire’s last sultan Abdul Hamid II who reigned from 1876 to 1918, a period of profound change and turmoil within the empire. He was known to love, admire, and protect Jews, and in the constitution of 1876 proclaimed the equality of all Ottomans subjects before the law. In the national assembly of 1877 three of the deputies were Jews, and they also held two seats in the senate, two in the council of state, and even the position of secretary of the council. In 1883, when a fire devastated the Jewish quarter at Haskeui, in Constantinople, the sultan subscribed £T1,000 for the relief of those who had been left homeless, and placed certain barracks at their disposal. Since 1887, Jews would serve as American ambassadors to the Ottoman Empire, beginning with Oscar Straus who was later succeeded by Solomon Hirsch. Upon Hirsch’s appointment, the grand vizier in his address of welcome said, "I cannot conceal the satisfaction it gives me to see that for a second time your country has called a son of Israel to this eminent position. We have learned to know and esteem your coreligionists in our country, which they serve with distinction." The fact that the masses of Jews, especially in the large cities, lived in poverty in cramped, dirty quarters, were due not to the legal discriminations against them, but to the general economic condition of the country and to the poverty and ignorance caused by the despotic rule of centuries. Indeed, all classes of society were affected. In addition, the anti-Semitic blood libel accusations often originated from certain segments of society. Hardly an interval of more than two or three years went by when such an accusation was not made such as the serious outbreak that occurred in Izmir in 1903. But the Ottoman government was always quick to punish the guilty.

As Abdul Hamid was protecting Jews from harm, in the 1890s, he fomented massacres against the Armenian community, the indigenous people of the southwestern Caucasus and, what is today, northeastern Turkey. Known historically as the Hamidian massacres, these killings culminated in 1915 with the Armenian genocide, not to mention the attempted genocide of the Assyrian Christians, the indigenous people of Mesopotamia before it became the Arab-occupied country of Iraq. Throughout all this, the Ottoman forces were often aided by many of the Kurdish tribes who would participate in the massacres. (The Kurds were the indigenous people of what is now northern Iraq, western Iran, and southeastern Turkey.) So how are Jews to react to such a close friend as this? This article will not attempt to answer that question, maybe because that question could be a separate posting of its own. The reader is certainly invited to comment below.

Upon his accession to the Ottoman throne, Abdul Hamid invited his former teacher, the prominent Sufi Sheikh Muhammad Zufir al-Madani, to Constantinople. Al-Madani came from Libya, from the lands of the indigenous Berbers in Arab-occupied North Africa. Early in his reign, Abdul Hamid had to contend with rebellions in the Balkans, and a war with Russia (1877-78) in which the empire was defeated. On the other hand, this was also a period of expansion in the Land of Israel. Beginning in 1878, Jewish agriculture in the ancestral Jewish homeland entered into a period of expansion beginning with the founding of Petah Tikvah, approximately 11 miles east of Jaffa, which became known as the mother of modern Jewish settlement. At the same time, new, mainly Jewish, neighborhoods were established around Jerusalem. By 1881, several hundred Jews from Yemen established their own Jerusalem neighborhood of Kfar Hashiloah, or Silwan to the Arabs. They were followed the next year by the arrival of Russian Jews, in a wave known as the First Aliyah, who made their way to Jaffa and then established the farming community of Rishon l’Tzion to the south of the city on lands purchased by the Montefiore Fund. The activities of the French Jewish educational society Alliance Israelite Universelle were also a major factor in improving the lot of the Jews, not just in Israel, but throughout the empire. But even though Abdul Hamid’s administration was very friendly, he did not look favorably on Jews coming to settle in Israel. There were enough nationalist rebellions in the empire already. A largely Jewish region, he felt, would just add to that. So a law was enacted where a Jew could not stay in Israel for more than three months. This law was ultimately challenged later in the year when the diplomatic offices of the United States were invoked in obtaining permission for a group of Russian Jews to settle there.

Rebellions continued however. In Arab-occupied Egypt, Abdul Hamid mishandled relations with Urabi Pasha, Arab rebel leader who led a revolt against the Khedive Tewfik Pasha in 1882. During the revolt, Egypt’s indigenous Copts were divided: their close affiliation with Europeans angered many Arabs and sometimes made them a target, but the deep rivalry between Coptic and Syrian Christians, the indigenous people of Syria, led many to align themselves with other “Egyptian” rebels. The Coptic Patriarch Cyril V, lent his support to the revolt when it was at its peak, but later claimed that he was pressured into doing so. ʻUrabi and other leaders of the revolt acknowledged the Copts as potential allies and worked to prevent any targeting of them by nationalist Arab Muslims, but they were not always successful. Urabi was victorious in the rebellion and he became “prime minister” of Egypt under Tewfik but was soon overthrown by the British which gained de facto control over the country even though it was technically still part of the Ottoman Empire. Soon, other North African territories were lost. Over time the hostile diplomatic attitudes shown from Britain and also France caused Abdul Hamid to gravitate towards their national rival, Germany. This produced an interesting international situation. Turkey, Germany, Britain, France, and the United States were all friendly to Jews at the time. However, the latter three supported Jewish settlement in Israel while the former two did not. Matters came to a head in 1888. The Lubrowsky brothers, two naturalized American citizens, were expelled from Safed in accordance with the three-month law. Letters of protest were sent not only from the government of the United States, but also from Great Britain, and France. In spite of US protests, no permanent settlement of the question was ever arrived at. But the Turks did announce that the restriction applied only to Jews arriving in Palestine “in numbers”. It would take many years afterwards before the law was abandoned.

The ʿAmmiyya, a revolt in 1889–90 among the Druze of the Arab-occupied Djebel Druze region of southern Syria, and other Syrians, mainly Arab settlers, against the excesses of the local “Syrian” sheikhs, led to capitulation to the rebels' demands, as well as concessions to Belgian and French companies to provide Beirut and Damascus with a railroad between them, to be built partly on ancient Phoenician Maronite lands.

In 1897, war broke out with Greece and the empire emerged victorious. However, in the following year, an Anglo-Egyptian Arab joint task force took over Sudan, the ancient lands of the Nubians, long considered part of Ottoman Egypt. From that point and until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Britain maintained a strong military presence in both Egypt and Sudan, as well as in strategically located Cyprus. In 1898, the Ottoman-German alliance culminated with the state visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II. When he visited Israel, he became host to a deputation of Zionists, with Dr. Theodor Herzl at its head. The Kaiser politely turned down Herzl’s request for support and so Herzl appealed directly to the Sultan. Using the metaphor of Androcles, he offered to pay down a substantial portion of the Ottoman debt (150 million pounds sterling in gold) in exchange for a charter allowing the Zionists to settle in Palestine. But even with this offer, he was unsuccessful. In 1899 a significant German desire, the construction of a Berlin-Baghdad railway, to be built partly on ancient Assyrian and Syrian Christian lands, was granted. Beginning in 1904, there were disturbances in Mesopotamia and Yemen. In 1908, the Hejaz Railway was inaugurated. Two years later, construction began on the Berlin-Baghdad Railway.

With the growing power of the British and French in North Africa, war with Italy in 1911, and wars in the Balkan territories the following year, Abdul Hamid grew increasingly pan-Islamic. He issued a call to Muslims in Europe to unite into one polity. This threatened several European countries, namely Russia with its large Tatar and Kurdish populations, and France through its new colony of largely Muslim Morocco. With the outbreak of the world war, Britain formally annexed those territories in which it already had a presence, in response to Ottoman participation on the side of Germany and the Central Powers. The outbreak of the war spelt the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire and the reign of Abdul Hamid II who remained loyal to his German friends and allies throughout. At the very end of his reign in 1918, as the empire was losing the war, he provided funds to start construction on the strategically important Constantinople-Baghdad Railway and the Constantinople-Medina Railway, making the trip to Mecca for the Hajj more efficient. After he was deposed, the construction of both railways was accelerated and completed by the Young Turks.

JEWS OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN DURING THE TIME OF ABD AL RAHMAN III

Jewish Quarter, Cordoba

One of the many talking points that anti-Semites like to use is that Jews had it so much better under Muslim rule than under Christian rule. It’s one of their core arguments against the ancestral Jewish homeland (as if one has anything to do with the other). So I thought it would be a good idea to examine this talking point. The fact is, yes and no. Generally speaking, Jews were treated much better by Muslims – generally speaking. But being treated better does not mean being treated like kings. It simply means that if 1000 Jews were massacred in Europe, 999 Jews would be massacred in Islamic lands. It depended on the region which determined how well Jews were treated. In Yemen for example, Jews were usually treated like filth. In medieval Spain, Jews were treated very well. And this is what I decided this article would focus on today – medieval Spain, and specifically the period of the Caliph Abd al Rahman III who ruled in Cordoba in the 10^th century. (Other aspects of Muslim rule over Jews will be talked about in later posts.) This period in Spanish history was a glory period for the Jews. All subjects under Abd el Rahman were treated equally under the law and this brought in a period of a cultural renaissance. Jews achieved high positions in government and also excelled in science and medicine, the arts, literature, philosophy, scholarship. And no one personified this better than Hasdai ibn Shaprut. He became physician to the Caliph, but also was very influential in government and was well respected internationally as a talented diplomat and politician. He encouraged Hebrew poetry and of the study of Hebrew grammar among his coreligionists by the purchase of Hebrew books, which he imported from the East, and by supporting Jewish scholars whom he gathered about him. Among them, Rabbi Moshe ben Hanoch, great halakhist and rabbinical figure; and Menahem ben Saruq of Tortosa, the protégé of Isaac, Hasdai's father. Also prominent at this time was Dunash ben Labrat who was born in Morocco, had studied in the great yeshivot in Babylonia, then returned to Morocco, later, being invited by Hasdai to make his dwelling place in Cordoba.

With the guidance of Hasdai, Hebrew literature flourished and with it, a strong sense of a personal connection to the Land of Israel. In fact, Dunash himself had lived in Israel (Gaza specifically) for a period before moving on to Babylonia. Much of the Hebrew poetry of the time had a very deep religious and Biblical connection to Israel and even Hasdai himself was proud of that connection. He mentioned so in his letter, written in Hebrew, to Joseph, the king of Khazaria, a Jewish kingdom in Eastern Europe: “I, Hasdai, son of Isaac, son of Ezra, belonging to the exiled Jews of Jerusalem in Spain, a servant of my lord the King, bow to the earth before him and prostrate myself towards the abode of your Majesty from a distant land. I rejoice in your tranquility and magnificence and stretch forth my hands to God in heaven that He may prolong your reign in Israel. …I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs who bring gifts about our brethren the Israelites [notice, he never says “Jews” – ed.], the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have languished in bondage and have found no rest. .. I pray for the health of my lord the King, of his family, and of his house, and that his throne may be established forever. Let his days and his sons’ days be prolonged in the midst of Israel!”

Hasdai retained his high position under Abd al Rahman's son and successor, al-Hakam II, who even surpassed his father in his love for science and culture. 

THE PERSIAN JEWISH/ISRAEL CONNECTION

 

Pentateuch in Hebrew and Judeo Persian

The Jewish community of Persia, today Iran, is probably one of the oldest Diaspora communities in the world along with, what is now, Iraq, and goes back roughly 2500 years. The history of the Jews in this country could best be summarized by stating “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. The best of times were very good and Jews excelled in the arts, commerce, and politics. The worst of times were not very good and was marked by severe persecution which included expulsions and sometimes forced conversion to Islam (the 1839 pogroms in Mashhad). When the Pahlavis came to power in the 20^th century, the situation for the Jews was very favorable. Then came the Islamic revolution in 1979 and the new government has vowed, and is vowing, to destroy Israel and annihilate the Jews in it. In addition, the Jewish community in Iran has often been intimidated to take a vocal anti-Israel stance. Tens of thousands have since emigrated, most, never returning.

It is mentioned in the Bible, in II Kings, that in the ninth year of the reign of Hosea, king of Judah (722 B.C.), the King of Assyria took Israel captive and "placed" some of the Jews whom he deported "in the cities of the Medes” (today’s Kurds)—an event which may have a possible bearing in connection with certain likenesses between the Zoroastrianism and Judaism (see postings in this blog on Assyria and Kurdistan). In the ensuing centuries, the Assyrians were overthrown by the Babylonians who were, in turn, overthrown by the Persians under King Cyrus who was highly thought of in Jewish history. The taking of Babylon in 539BCE by Cyrus inaugurated a new era in Jewish history. Jews in his empire were given an immense amount of freedom, and this freedom also extended to his decree that permitted the Jews to return to Judea and rebuild their homeland. (The fact that only a few tens of thousands willingly went back to Judea has no bearing on him.) During the reign of Ahashverash, the story of Purim took place where Jews were allowed, through the urging of Esther, the wife of Ahashverash, to defend themselves from an attempted annihilation at the hands of their enemies under the evil Haman. Since that time, the Jews in Persia (including Babylonia) had very close ties to the Jews in the ancestral homeland. Jewish life within the empire itself reached a high point in the 5^th century when King Yazdagird I married a Jew and became the mother of his successor, Bahram V.  

In the 7 century, the Arabs began to invade foreign lands in the Middle East and North Africa, including Persia. All lands that were invaded became “Arab” countries. But Persia was an exception. The Persians had no love for the Arabs and resisted becoming “Arabized”. However, they did adopt Islam and Persian life was influenced by sharia law ever since. This involved relegating Jews to subservient dhimmi status. This, along with Christian discrimination, led many Jews to seek some relief through mystical/religious observance, leading to some individuals to proclaim themselves the “messiah” of the Jews who would lead them back to the ancestral homeland. Among the most well-known of such individuals was one, historically referred to as the Prophet of Khuzistan. His anger was directed mainly at the Christians and he led his following in the destruction of numerous churches in Khuzestan province and the surrounding areas, but ultimately, he didn’t succeed in leading a return to the Land of Israel and he died an unknown. Another of these “messiahs” went by the name Abu Isa, a Jew of Isphahan. In the 8^th century, he led a rebellion against the caliph of Persia in order to bring freedom to the Jews and lead them back to Israel. He, too, was unsuccessful, and his rebellion was crushed.

For many centuries, Persian, as well as Babylonian Jews, often settled in Israel, messiah or no messiah. Some also visited, or went back and forth between the two countries. Rabbis often corresponded with those in Jerusalem on controversial matters of Jewish law. In the 15^th century, there was a notable increase in the number of Persian Jews coming to settle in Israel. Correspondingly, Halukkah activity between the two countries also increased and many Palestinian emissaries would visit the Jewish communities of Persia to raise funds for the poor in Israel. Among these emissaries was Rabbi Moshe Alsheikh who went at the end of the 16^th century. In the mid 17^th century, as the study of kabbalah increased and with it, the concerted search for the location of the Lost Tribes of Israel, the emissaries who went to the east, did so with that objective. The most well-known was Rabbi Baruch Gad who went to Persia for the express purpose of finding the Lost Tribes. Through his efforts, contact was made with the community known as the B’nai Moshe who were thought to be one of them. Unfortunately, nothing more is known of them other than they seem to be a very powerful force in Persian society. Other emissaries who established close contact with the Jews of Persia, especially the rabbis, were Jacob Eliashar in the 18^th century and Abraham ibn Ephraim in the 1890s. Since the beginning of the 19^th century, Aliyah from Persia increased slightly. The vast majority who came were poor, but even so, many among them were merchants and rabbis. One was even a physician – Eliahu Mizrahi. In 1839, some of the Jews of Mashhad, who were forced to become Muslim, and known thereafter as Jadid al Islam, a status similar to that of the anusim from Spain and Portugal, had settled in Israel where most had returned to Judaism.

In the mid-19^th century, Persia established a diplomatic mission in Israel and, as with the European missions, the local Jews were very much involved with Persian political affairs. Yitzhak Maman had acted as Persian consular agent as had Yosef Moyal in the 1870s and Avraham Ajami c. 1900.

Since the beginning of the Zionist movement, Persia Jews became very active in the Jewish renaissance in Israel although they didn’t necessarily refer to themselves as “Zionists”: 1886 The Jerusalem neighborhood of Shkhunat Pahim was founded by Persian Jews. 1895 Mula Haim Eleazar came to Israel. He was a prominent hazzan and was active in the local Persian Jewish culture. 1900 The Ohave Tzion society was established for the welfare of the Persian community. 1902 Agaian Yaacov Hacohen and Mashiah Levi were active in raising the necessary funding for the establishment of a Persian synagogue and Talmud Torah. 1917 Toward the end of the First World War, there was another Aliyah of the descendants of the Jadid al Islam. C. 1918 The General Committee of the Persian Community in Jerusalem, and the association of Persian Youth were established. 1920 Aliyah of entire Jewish community of Barsheh. 1925 Reza Shah outlaws Zionist activity. Jews were prohibited from going to British Mandatory Palestine but some secretly do. 1941 Abdication of Reza Shah. 1943 Mohammad Reza Shah, his successor, establishes a friendly policy towards Jews and allows a group of Polish Jewish orphaned children from the Holocaust to transit through his country on their way to Palestine.

Since independence, many Persian Jews became prominent in Israeli society: Menashe Amir has been a Persian-language broadcaster for Kol Israel since the late 50s; Amnon Netzer was likewise a broadcaster since the late 50s, journalist and activist in the Persian community; Moshe Katzav was former President of Israel, a strong supporter of ethnically cleansing the Jews from Gaza, later convicted of rape; Rita is one of the top singers in Israel today, singing in both Hebrew and Persian. She is also very popular in Iran itself in defiance of the ruling ayatollahs; Shaul Mofaz is a retired Israeli military officer and politician serving in various Knesset posts.