Damascus affair
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The Damascus affair was an accusation of ritual murder and a blood libel against Jews in Damascus in 1840.
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[edit] The incident and arrests
On February 5, 1840, Franciscan Capuchin friar Father Thomas and his Greek servant were reported missing, never to be seen again. The French consul Ratti Menton presented the case as one of ritual murder of the blood libel type, as the alleged murder occurred before the Jewish Passover. The Turkish governor supported him in this.
The political situation of the time was complex. Syria was ruled by the Egyptian sultan Muhammad Ali. He was supported by France while Austria and Britain had the aim of restoring Ottoman rule and wished to halt the expansion of French influence in the region.[1]
An investigation was staged, and Solomon Negrin, a Jewish barber, confessed under torture and accused other Jews. Two other Jews died under torture, and one (Moses Abulafia) converted to Islam to escape torture. More arrests and atrocities followed, culminating in 63 Jewish children being held hostage and mob attacks on Jewish communities throughout the Middle East.
The Christian funeral procession for Father Thomas (without his body) through the streets of Damascus was widely attended. A tombstone was inscribed "... assassinated by the Jews the 5th of February of the year 1840." The Arabic translation of the tombstone still stands at the Franciscan church in Damascus.
[edit] Protests and negotiations
The affair drew wide international attention in particular due to the efforts of the Austrian Consul in Aleppo Eliahu Picotto who made representations to Ibrahim Pasha in Egypt who ordered an investigation. In a groundbreaking effort, 15,000 American Jews protested in six American cities on behalf of their Syrian brethren. The United States consul in Egypt expressed an official protest by the order of President Martin Van Buren. Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, backed by influential westerns including Britain's Lord Palmerston, the French lawyer Adolphe Crémieux, Austrian consul Merlatto, missionary John Nicolayson, and Solomon Munk, led a delegation to the ruler of Syria, Mehemet Ali.
Negotiations in Alexandria continued from August 4 to August 28 and secured the unconditional release and recognition of innocence of the nine prisoners still remaining alive (out of thirteen). Later in Constantinople, Montefiore persuaded Sultan Abdülmecid to issue a firman (edict) intended to halt the spread of blood libel accusations in the Ottoman Empire:
"... and for the love we bear to our subjects, we cannot permit the Jewish nation, whose innocence for the crime alleged against them is evident, to be worried and tormented as a consequence of accusations which have not the least foundation in truth...".
[edit] Aftermath
Pogroms spread through the Middle East and North Africa: Aleppo (1850, 1875), Damascus (1840, 1848, 1890), Beirut (1862, 1874), Dayr al-Qamar (1847), Jerusalem (1847), Cairo (1844, 1890, 1901-02), Mansura (1877), Alexandria (1870, 1882, 1901-07), Port Said (1903, 1908), Damanhur (1871, 1873, 1877, 1891), Istanbul (1870, 1874), Buyukdere (1864), Kuzguncuk (1866), Eyub (1868), Edirne (1872), Izmir (1872, 1874) - these are just key cases.[2]
[edit] Influence
According to Daniel Pipes,
...the real impact of the Damascus affair ... lay in Europe, where it led to a formidable backlash against Jews, the greatest in years. Jews found themselves completely unprepared for the tribulations they suffered but learned from this tragedy to organize and lobby, and from that came the first stirrings of modern Jewish solidarity, the basis of the formidable institutions that followed.[3]
The events encouraged the growth of the modern Jewish press:
As a result, a sense of solidarity was evoked among the Jewish communities of Europe they had never experienced before. Thus, the Damascus Affair gave birth to modern Jewish press especially in Western Europe, such as to the long-lived papers Les Archives Israélites de France (1840-1935) in Paris or The Jewish Chronicle (1841 ff.) in London.[4]
The Damascus affair prompted French Jews to establish the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1860.
[edit] Later references
Mahmoud Al-Said Al-Kurdi wrote two articles in the Egyptian daily Al Akhbar repeating accusations of the affair. The first article appeared on October 20, 2000. The second, titled The Last Scene in the Life of Father Toma appeared in the March 25, 2001 issue. [5]
In 2002 it was reported that the 1840 accusations re-emerged in a recent book "The Matzah of Zion" by a Syrian official, The Damascus Blood Libel (1840) as Told by Syria's Minister of Defense, Mustafa Tlass[6]. In the introduction to the book he writes, "My intention in publishing this book is to bring to light some of the secrets of the Jewish sect... the hateful fanaticism and their implementation of the teachings of the Talmud." The book has become a best seller in the Arab world.
In his interview aired on TeleLiban TV on January 30, 2007, Lebanese poet Marwan Chamoun alleged "... slaughter of the priest Tomaso de Camangiano ... in 1840... in the presence of two rabbis in the heart of Damascus, in the home of a close friend of this priest, Daud Al-Harari, the head of the Jewish community of Damascus. After he was slaughtered, his blood was collected, and the two rabbis took it." [7]
A fictional gay retelling of the Damascus Affair by the Israeli novelist Alon Hilu, emphasizing the contribution of Jews themselves to the false accusations, and claiming that Father Thomas died from a heart attack during intercourse with a Jewish young man, was published in 2004 in Hebrew and English under the title Death of a Monk.
[edit] References
- ^ Arnold Fine "The Infamous Damascus Blood Libel", Jewish Press, January 18, 2002
- ^ Yossef Bodansky. "Islamic Anti-Semitism as a Political Instrument" Co-Produced by The Ariel Center for Policy Research and The Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, 1999. ISBN-10 0967139104, ISBN-13 978-0967139104
- ^ Book Reviews by Daniel Pipes. Middle East Quarterly. September 1998
- ^ The Origins and the Development of German-Jewish Press in Germany till 1850 by Johannes Valentin Schwarz. (66th International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Council and General Conference. Jerusalem, Israel, 13-18 August 2000. Code Number: 106-144-E
- ^ The Blood Libel Again in Egypt's Government Press (MEMRI Special Dispatch Series - No. 201) April 2, 2001
- ^ The Damascus Blood Libel (1840) as Told by Syria's Minister of Defense, Mustafa Tlass (MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 99) June 27, 2002
- ^ Lebanese Poet Marwan Chamoun: Jews Slaughtered Christian Priest in Damascus in 1840 and Used His Blood for Matzos (MEMRI Special Dispatch Series - No. 1453) February 6, 2007
[edit] See also
- Rhodes blood libel
- Syrian Jews
- History of the Jews under Muslim rule
- Antisemitism
- History of antisemitism
- Islam and antisemitism
[edit] Further reading
- Frankel, Jonathan: The Damascus Affair: 'Ritual Murder', Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-521-48396-4 (Review)
- Florence, Ronald: Blood Libel. The Damascus Affair of 1840 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004) ISBN 0-299-20280-1 (Review)
- Damascus affair article by Gotthard Deutsch and M. Franco in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1911 ed.)
- The Infamous Damascus Affair (jewishgates.com)
