This region held the largest Sephardi communities in the world for four centuries, and it holds the least-worked archives.
Ten countries are covered here, from Morocco to Iran. What unites them is that they were Ottoman or Islamic lands, that Jews lived in them under a common legal status, and that the records were kept in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Hebrew and Judeo-Spanish rather than in any European language.
Two populations, not one
The commonest mistake in North African and Middle Eastern research is treating the Jewish population as a single group. It was two, and they kept themselves distinct for centuries.
The Toshavim were the Jews long settled in the region, in some places since antiquity. They spoke Arabic or Berber, followed their own liturgy, and had their own names — Chetrit, Abitbol, Dahan, Ohana, Meghnagi.
The Megorashim were the exiles from Spain, who arrived after 1492. They spoke Judeo-Spanish, kept Iberian customs, and carried Iberian names — Toledano, Corcos, Almosnino, Pinto, Benattar.
In Morocco the two groups maintained separate synagogues, separate courts and separate marriage customs into the twentieth century. In Tunis the division was sharper still: the Grana, who came by way of Livorno, and the Twansa, the indigenous community, were formally separate bodies with their own institutions.
Both are Sephardi in the communal sense. Only one is Iberian by descent. A page that ignores the distinction will mislead you about where to look.
The Francos: why some records are in Europe
A significant number of Jewish families in this region held European citizenship or consular protection. They did so to escape the poll tax on non-Muslims and to fall under consular rather than local jurisdiction.
These families are called Francos, and the consequence for research is direct: if a family held foreign protection, its records are in a European archive rather than a local one. Italian, French, Dutch, German and British protection are all found, with Italian and French the most common.
The Italian consular registers of İzmir, which survive from 1871, are the best-documented example. They record Italian citizens born in the eighteenth century, with their birthplaces, and they include people recorded as being of Livorno origin. That is a direct link between the Eastern and Western Sephardi worlds.
The Ottoman archives
Seven of the ten countries here were Ottoman. The empire’s records are therefore the common source base for the whole region, and they are described in detail on the Turkey and the Ottoman Empire page rather than repeated on each country page.
Three things from that page apply everywhere in this region. The population registers from about 1878 name both parents. The Sharia court records are the best source before 1831 and are almost unused. And the Rumi calendar is solar, not lunar, so converting a nineteenth-century date as though it were Hijri will put you several years out.
The ten communities
Morocco — the largest Jewish community in the Islamic world, with the mellahs of Fez, Meknes, Marrakesh, Tetuan and Mogador, and the densest surviving records in the region.
Algeria — where the Crémieux decree of 1870 made Jews French citizens, which means civil registration in French from the 1830s and a research position quite unlike its neighbours.
Tunisia — the Grana of Livornese origin and the indigenous Twansa, formally separate communities with separate registers.
Libya — Tripoli and Benghazi, with Italian colonial records from 1911.
Egypt — Cairo and Alexandria, the Bassatine cemetery, and a community that grew rapidly after the Suez Canal opened in 1869 and left almost entirely after 1956.
Turkey — Istanbul, İzmir, Edirne, and the archives of the Ottoman Empire.
Syria — Aleppo and Damascus, and the Franco families whose descendants are now largely in Brooklyn.
Lebanon — Beirut and Deir el Qamar, a small community that left after 1967.
Israel — both the Old Yishuv, documented in the Montefiore censuses, and the destination of most of the region’s Jews after 1948.
Iran — specifically Hormuz, where Portuguese New Christians traded, and where the Inquisition followed them.
Where did these communities go?
Almost all of them emptied between 1948 and 1970.
Israel received the largest number by far. France received most of the North Africans, and today the majority of French Jewry is of Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian origin. Others went to Canada, particularly Montreal, to Brazil and Argentina, and to Britain and the United States.
This matters for research because the family papers usually left with the family. If a community’s own archive is inaccessible, the documents that survive may be in a house in Paris, Montreal or Ramat Gan.
Help us find records
This is the region where we most need help. If you hold family papers, identity documents, community registers, photographs or transcriptions from anywhere in the Middle East or North Africa, please email [email protected].
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