1834 Hebron massacre

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The 1834 Hebron massacre occurred on 24 July 1834,[1] when forces loyal to Ibrahim Pasha attacked the city of Hebron to crush the Peasants Revolt. Egyptian soldiers subjected Hebron's inhabitants to violence following the fall of the city. The victims of the massacre included 500 Muslims who were killed and 750 forcibly taken as soldiers.[2] Although the Jews had not participated in the uprising and despite Ibrahim Pasha's assurances that the Jewish quarter would be left unharmed, Hebronite Jews were attacked.[3][4] In one incident alone, five young Jewish girls were raped and murdered.[5]

The Jews of Hebron later referred to the events as a pogrom or Yagma el Gabireh ("great destruction").[6][7][8]

Attack

The Jews of Hebron had not participated in the rebellion, but Egyptian soldiers who entered the city ignored this fact.[9] For three hours, troops committed atrocities against the people of Hebron.[10] Contemporary sources indicate Hebron's Muslim Arabs, the object of Ibrahim's incursion, fared worse with 500 killed and 750 forcibly taken as soldiers.[2] The Jews were not subject to Pasha's conscription policy but suffered the "most cruel outrages"[11] and were targeted for "special violence".[12] While many Muslims managed to escape the impending danger, the Jews remained, confident they would not be harmed by the Egyptians. Apparently, the Jews of Jerusalem had received an assurance from Ibrahim that Hebron's Jews would be protected.[13] In the end, seven Jewish men[10][14][15] and five girls[1][10] were killed. Isaac Farhi also described violent attacks on the Jews of Hebron committed by Egyptian soldiers.[16] He writes that the attack in Hebron was even worse than the plunder in Safed. In Hebron, the troops "vented their anger on the Jewish quarter which they pillaged with terrifying cruelty", desecrating Torah Scrolls and decapitating the Hebron's cantor while he lay ill in bed. For hours they "slaughtered European Jews and publicly raped their wives".[17] Synagogues were desecrated,[18] houses were ransacked, and valuable items were stolen[19] leaving the Jewish community of Hebron destitute.[20] The calamity succeeded in uniting Hebron's Sephardic and Ashkenasic communities, but it took until 1858 for the community to fully recover.[9]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Oded Avsar (1970). Sefer Hebron (in Hebrew). Keter. p. 56. "בשנת 1835, כשנה לאחר אותו פוגרום" 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Edward Robinson (1841). Biblical researches in Palestine: mount Sinaï and Arabia Petraea. John Murray. p. 453. 
  3. ↑ Moshe Maʻoz (1975). Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman period. Magnes Press. p. 147. "In Hebron, for example, Jews were massacred in 1834 by Egyptian soldiers who came to put down a local Muslim rebellion" 
  4. ↑ David Vital (1975). The origins of Zionism. Clarendon Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-19-827194-9. "In Safed the peasant revolt of 1834 hit the Jews particularly hard; in Hebron there was a massacre of Jews after the entry of Egyptian soldiers sent to put down the Muslim rebels." 
  5. ↑ Andrew G. Bostom (2008). The legacy of Islamic antisemitism: from sacred texts to solemn history. Prometheus Books. p. 88. "In fact there occurred during the short period of Egyptian rule some of the gravest anti-Jewish outbreaks in the recent history of Palestine and Syria. In Hebron, for example, Jews were massacred [including the rape-murder of five young girls] in 1834 by Egyptian soldiers who came to put down a local Muslim rebellion." 
  6. ↑ Hyam Zvee Sneersohn (1872). Palestine and Roumania: a description of the Holy Land and the past and present state of Roumania and the Roumanian Jews. Ayer Publishing. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-405-10291-2. 
  7. ↑ Pinchas Hacohen Peli; Avigdor Shinʼan (1973). "The shifts in the status of Jews in Syria and Palestine in the 19th-century". Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress of Jewish Studies, the Hebrew University, Mount Scopus-Givat Ram, Jerusalem, 3-11 August, 1969. World Union of Jewish Studies. p. 74. "A new era in the history of the region began with the conquest of Syria and Palestine by Ibrahim Pasha the Egyptian: a pogrom against Hebron Jewry, attacks on the Jews of Safed, and a blood libel in Damascus." 
  8. ↑ Andrew G. Bostom (2008). The legacy of Islamic antisemitism: from sacred texts to solemn history. Prometheus Books. p. 596. "They raided their homes and defiled any women whom they found. Had Ibrahim Pasha not hastened to come to their aid, there would not have remained a single Jew left in Hebron. The pogroms in Hebron..." 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Louis Finkelstein (1960). The Jews: their history, culture, and religion. Harper. p. 674. "During the war of Ibrahim Paha, when the Arabs of Hebron revolted against the Egyptians, the Jews of Hebron suffered more than any other Jewish community in the land. Ibrahim Pasha ordered his troops ruthlessly to suppress the revolt, and when they attacked the city with permission to plunder and slaughter at will, they did not distinguish between Arabs and the Jews, who had no part in the rebellion. This calamity united the Hebron Sephardim and the Habad Hasidim, and in 1834 they jointly sent Rabbi Nathan Amram to seek aid in Western Europe for Jewish Hebron. The community did not fully recover until Rabbi Elijah Mani arrived in the city in 1858." 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Sherman Lieber (1992). Mystics and missionaries: the Jews in Palestine, 1799-1840. University of Utah Press. p. 217. ISBN 978-0-87480-391-4. "During a ferocious onslaught of three hours, Ibrahim Pasha allowed his troops to slaughter Muslims, plunder the population, and defile the women. When Muslims sought safety in the Jewish quarter of Hebron, the soldiers pursued them, indiscriminately killing and looting all in their path." 
  11. ↑ Edward Robinson (1841). Biblical researches in Palestine, mount Sinai and Arabia Petrea. John Murray. p. 461. "Many were slain; and the Jews especially are reported to have suffered the most cruel outrages from the brutal soldiery." 
  12. ↑ American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1836). The Missionary herald. Published for the Board by Samuel T. Armstrong. p. 253. "After the battle the city was given up to the plunder and licentiousness of the soldiers. They fell upon the poor Jews with special violence, the rebels having made their strongest resistance in the Jewish quarter of the town fighting from…" 
  13. ↑ Joseph Schwarz (1850). A descriptive geography and brief historical sketch of Palestine. A. Hart. p. 398. 
  14. ↑ Church Pastoral-aid Society, London (1846). The Church of England magazine 20. J. Burns. p. 18. "Seven Jews were massacred by the soldiers; and atrocities were committed, in the quarter belonging to that devoted nation, which cannot be mentioned." 
  15. ↑ H. Z. Sneersohn & J. Schwarz only mention the murder of 5 Jews.
  16. ↑ Matthias B. Lehmann (2005). Ladino rabbinic literature and Ottoman Sephardic culture. Indiana University Press. p. 173. ISBN 978-0-253-34630-8. 
  17. ↑ Bat Yeʼor (2002). Islam and Dhimmitude: where civilizations collide. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-8386-3943-6. 
  18. ↑ J. D. Paxton (1839). Letters from Palestine. p. 142. "A few years ago, when Ibrahim Pasha's troops took Hebron, they committed great outrages on the Jews, by plundering them all of they could find. They broke into their synagogue, and opened all parts of it in which they thought anything could be found, mutilated and tore their roll of the law, and perpetrated many other enormities." 
  19. ↑ John Lloyd Stephens (1838). Incidents of travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land. Harper & Brothers. p. 127. 
  20. ↑ Martin Sicker (1999). Reshaping Palestine: from Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-275-96639-3. 
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