Sephardic Jews in Damascus
Damascus, like Aleppo, was an important city on the old east-west trade route, before the opening of the Suez Canal. Most of the Jewish community were Mizrahi Jews, but there were a few Sephardic families such as the Lisbona. There seems not to have been much ‘inter-marriage’ between the communities.
In 1840 some Damascus Jews were accused of using children’s blood to make their matzot, in a famous blood libel in which the British and French Jewish communities took an interest.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1868 reduced the commercial importance of Damascus. Some Damascene Jews moved to Egypt, while others went to western Europe and the Americas.
Ottoman rule ended in 1922, when the French took over. Jews faced substantial antisemitism and there was significant emigration to the British Mandate of Palestine before Syrian independence in 1946. Anti-Semitic legislation after independence and discrimination against Jews meant that virtually the entire community had left by 1992.
Sephardic Jewish Genealogy in Damascus
Several databases can be viewed in the SephardicGen website. These include:
- Damascus Jews in the Ottoman period: as reflected in Sharia Court Files in the Center of Historical Documents in Damascus (1583-1909) [in Arabic] by Al-‘Ulabi, Akram Hassan, Damascus: Syrian General Book Authority – Ministry of Culture, 2011. Names extracted and provided by Alexander Beider
- 196 rabbis buried in Damascus, Syria during the years: 5410 – 5693 (1650 – 1933 c.e.) From the book by David Bension Laniado, Selection of Sephardic rabbis epitaphs. Jerusalem, 1952 (Hebrew). Index compiled by the late Mathilde Tagger.
Other useful records include those in the Ottoman Archives, French colonial records, the Alliance, archives of foreign consulates, memoirs/travel/trade/journalistic reports and newspapers, Zionist archives, Yad Vashem, archives of countries in which Damascus Jews later settled. Remember that Iberian Sephardim often had protection or citizenship of European powers.
Some sources include:
- Archives of the French consulate at Damascus, 1824-1945.
- British government Damascus archives prior to 1900.
- Les Fleurs de l’Orient website has material on Jews in Damascus.
- Les grandes familles juives de Damas de 1799 à 1948
- Les Registres des Tribunaux de Damas comme source pour l’histoire de la Syrie, by Abdul-Karim Rafeq
- The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain library contains a Damascus Boys’ School. List of pupils (1st Oct 1909 – 31 Mar 1910) from the Alliance Israelite Universelle.
- Persécutions contre les juifs de Damas. An account of the 1840 persecution.
- Brown University Library: Ottoman Records of Greater Syria: Islamic Court Registers, Advisory Council Records, and Private Family Papers
- The Ottoman Court Records of Syria and Jordan by Jon E. Mandaville
Every year I email the Syrian national archives and library asking about records relating to the Jewish community. One day I shall hear back!
From Glory to Dispersion – the Sephardic Lisbona family from Damascus was a Sephardic World talk by David Lisbona
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