Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World

Maggui (Marie-Yvonne) Cacoun (Kakon), a Moroccan Jewish politician and businesswoman, was born in Casablanca in 1953 and is known for her work in the field of women’s rights. She is also the author of La Cuisine juive du Maroc de mère en fille (Toulouse, 1996).In August 2007 Cacoun ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Moroccan parliament as head of the women’s list of the Parti du Centre Social (PCS; Ar. Ḥizb al-Wasṭ al-Ijtimāʿī). Cacoun was not the first Moroccan Jew to run for parliament, but she was the first Jewish woman to do so. She also heads the party’s foreign relations department.Cacou…

Cadima was a Zionist organization that oversaw the massive immigration (aliyah) of Moroccan Jews to Israel from 1949 to 1956. It was created by a “gentlemen’s agreement” between the administration of the French protectorate in Morocco and the Jewish Agency for Israel. The agreement was signed by the resident-general, Alphonse Juin, and the Agency’s representative, Jacques Gershoni, on March 7, 1949, and suited both parties. The colonial administration would no longer interfere with illegal Jewish emigration and would maintain the social status quo, …

Abraham Cahen was born in Metz in 1831, into a family of notables established in that city since the sixteenth century. After earning his high school diploma, he attended the Central Rabbinical School and was ordained in 1861. He was appointed rabbi in Constantine, Algeria, in 1863, and was named chief rabbi in 1867. In 1877, he became chief rabbi of Algiers.Cahen’s rabbinate in both cities was marked by opposition from local rabbis and community leaders. Their dissatisfaction was provoked in part by his ignorance of local traditions—he learned Arabic onl…

Cairene Purim is a local holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jews of Cairo in 1524 from Aḥmad Pasha, a tyrannical Ottoman governor. Aḥmad, the third vizier of Sulaymān I (Suleiman the Magnificent), arrived in Egypt in January 1524. Disappointed by the governorship, because he had hoped that Sulaymān would promote him to a higher post, he left no doubt as to his intention to establish his own sultanate in Egypt. Forming an alliance with the Mamluks, he ordered his name to be mentioned in Friday sermons at local mosques, instructed the head of the mint, a Jew named Abraham Castro, t…

1. HistoryMiddle AgesCairo (Ar. al-Qāhira), the capital of Egypt, sits on both banks of the Nile River, 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) south of the Delta. It was built by the Fatimids following their conquest of Egypt in 969 near the earlier capital of Fustat (now called Old Cairo). From that time, and under diverse regimes, it has grown in size and importance, becoming the most populous city in Africa (with over 15 million inhabitants at present). At first, only Jews connected to the court or serving…

The Cairo Collection consists of more than one hundred photocopied manuscripts, mostly from Egypt, dating from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. In the 1980s this collection was brought from a synagogue in Cairo to the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. Most of the manuscripts are Jewish liturgical texts written in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Judeo-Arabic. The documents in the collection have made it possible to reconstruct…

1. General Survey and History of DiscoverySource"Geniza" is a convenient one-word title to describe an extensive and unique collection of medieval manuscripts, mainly in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, and Aramaic, and usually written on vellum and paper, that has illuminated virtually every aspect of life in and around the eastern Mediterranean areas of the Islamic world a thousand years ago. The collection, consisting of well in excess of 200,000 items (written on almost half a million folios) was amassed in …

see Egyptian Riots (1945, 1947)Norman A. Stillman

Calatayud (Ar. Qalʿat Ayyūb), a city located in northeastern Spain near Saragossa, had an important Jewish community throughout the period of Muslim rule. Following the Reconquista it became, after Saragossa, the second-most-importantaljama (autonomous community) in the Crown of Aragon.Most scholars date the foundation of Calatayud to the ninth century, following the Nuṣūṣ ʿan al-Andalus of the Arab chronicler al-ʿUdhrī, known as ibn al-Dilāʾī (11th century), who states that the emir Muḥammad rebuilt the city in 862. The oldest archaeological test…

Shalome Cohen, a merchant from Aleppo, Syria, reputedly established the Jewish community in Calcutta in 1798. His diary, along with Moses Dwek's diary (preserved in the Sassoon Library) with entries from 1806 to 1861, provides source material on the early years of the community. In 1832, after the pogroms in Iraq under the Mamluk governor Daʾud Pasha (1817-1831), the wealthy businessman David Sassoon (see Sassoon Family) fled Baghdad for India and the Far East in order to pursue his commercial interests. Thousands of Baghdadis followed him to India, where they lived peacefully…

It is unclear how the biblical calendar was set, despite the fact that the observance of many biblical laws, such as the holiday celebrations, is dependent upon calendrical calculation. In the immediate postbiblical period, at the end of the Second Temple, there were competing calendrical systems, and it is unclear which one was predominant. The best-known of these calendars was the Pharisaic luni-solar system, which eventually became the accepted rabbinic calendar. The months of this calendar were lunar, beginning with the new moon. The years, however, f…

Abraham Salomon de Camondo (Kamondo)a member of the prominent SephardiCamondo family, was born in Istanbul in 1785. In the late 1830s he emerged as an important leader of Ottoman Jewry and played an essential role in modernizing the Turkish Jewish community. Camondo wielded significant influence in ruling circles, especially at the courts of sultans Abdülmecid I (r. 1839-1861) and Abdülaziz (r. 1861-1876). He was instrumental in the appointment of the first chief rabbi in Jerusalem in 1841. He also worke…

The Camondo (Kamondo) family was a renowned Jewish family of Spanish-Portuguese origin. Members of the family settled in Istanbul in the seventeenth century after living in Venice for some time. In the eighteenth century the family acquired Austrian citizenship. Its most illustrious member was Abraham Salomon de Camondo (1785–1873), an influential banker, philanthropist, and leader of the Jewish community. During the early nineteenth century, the family established Banque Camondo, also known as I. Camondo & Cie, which extended credit to the Ottoman government d…

The Sephardi community of Canada came into being in the mid-twentieth century; it now comprises thirty-three thousand people, mostly in Montreal (21,500) and Toronto (8,500), with smaller pockets in Halifax and Vancouver (1,000 each), Ottawa, and Winnipeg. The vast majority came from Morocco (70 percent). Others came from Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq (1,370), Iran (200), Turkey (180), Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia (245), and scattered in Canada. Many attend the oldest Sephardi house of worship in Montreal, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, founded in 1768.The postcolonial exodus…

Çanakkale is a town in Turkey on the eastern side of the Dardanelles, founded in 1463 not far from the site of the ancient Abydos. Sephardi Jews settled there sometime in the seventeenth century. In 1740, there were approximately fifty Jewish families in the town. Due to Çanakkale’s increasing political and economic importance, the Jewish populationgrew steadily during the nineteenth century: estimates point to about 550 Jews in the city in 1820, 700 in 1840, 1,100 in 1876, 1,354 in 1888, and 1,805 in 1894. At the beginning of the nineteenth centu…

The Cansino family originally came from Seville, found refuge in Tlemcen, and eventually settled inOran by order of King Ferdinand II “the Catholic.” In 1509, along with the Satorra, Ben Zmiro, and Sasportas families, the Cansinos represented “the natural families of Oran” and the Jewish circle closest to Spanish power until the expulsion of the whole community to Leghorn (Livorno) and Nice in 1669. In 1510, Isaac Cansino  was ambassador of the Zayyanid kingdom of Tlemcen to the new Christian rulers of the Spanish presidio of Melilla; he owned a house in both cities.Between 1509 and 16…

The Capital Tax Law (Turk. Varlık Vergisi kanunu) was a wealth levy enacted by the Turkish Grand National Assembly on November 11, 1942 as Law No. 4305. Although its ostensible purpose was to raise funds against Turkey’s possible entry into World War II, it really was intended to destroy the economic position of non-Muslim minorities in the country and reinforce the ongoing process of economic Turkification. The Varlık Vergisi law was the final act in the pattern of anti-Jewish and anti-minority measuresadopted in the early years of the Turkish Republic. Such action…

The capitulations (Ar./Ott. Turk. imtiyāzāt) were bilateral agreements between the Ottoman Empire and various European states that conferred certain rights and privileges on subjects of those states residing or trading in Ottoman lands. The capitulations were meant first and foremost to serve Ottoman political and fiscal interests. The Ottoman government granted these commercial privileges in order to make political allies within Christendom, obtain scarce goods and raw materials, and increase custo…

Elijah ben Elkanah Capsali(ca. 1489–ca. 1555) was the chief rabbi of the Jewish community of Candia (Heraklion) in Crete and served several times as its civil head (It. condestablo/ rettor). He was initially educated by his father, but in 1508 left Crete to study in the yeshiva of Judah and Abraham Mintz in Padua, and then fled to Venice during a period of unrest in 1509. He returned to Crete in 1510. While in Italy, he also studied with Israel Isserlein, who proved to be the most influential of his teachers. Other rabbis …

Moses ben Elijah Capsaliwas born in Candia (Heraklion), Crete, in 1420. Like his relative Elijah Capsali, Moses left Crete at a young age to further his education. He went to Germany, where he studied with major Ashkenazi rabbis such as Jacob Landau and Judah Mintz. Throughout his life, Capsali’s writings and actions were heavily influenced by his German-Ashkenazi background, even though he himself was a Romaniot. Some sources indicate that he also studied in Italy.Capsali became the leader of the Romaniot congregation of Constantinople around 1445.According to some a…

Albert Carasso (Karasu, 1885–1982)was a Jewish journalist and political scientist in Turkey. Born in Salonica, Carasso learned French from his parents and then attended the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). After completing his studies, Carasso moved to Istanbul, where in 1918 he founded and edited the French-language daily Le Journal d’Orient (1918–1924, 1926–1971). Carasso intended the newspaper to reach an elite audience in Istanbul; its readership, particularly in later years, consisted mostly of minorities. Albert Av…

Emmanuel Carasso (Karasu) (1862–1934) was a lawyer and statesman who was active in the Young Turk movement and a member of the Ottoman parliament during the last years of the empire. Born in Salonica in 1862, Carasso studied law and gained experience in the legal practice of Yudajon Yeni, who also mentored several other successful Jewish lawyers, including Carasso’s relative Emmanuel Raphael Salem (1859–1940) and Vitali Farraggi (or Faraji, 1854–1918), who like Carasso was a member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).Carasso became a noted lawyer and taught criminal …

Carmona (Ar. Qarmūna) in southwestern Spain, 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of Seville, had a flourishing Jewish community in the eleventh century. During the period of the party kings (Ar. mulūk al-ṭawā'if) it was the capital of the small kingdom of the Berber Zenāta tribe, but it lost its independence when annexed by Seville.Like other small taifa states, Carmona was situated in between the great kingdom of Seville and the Berber kingdom of Granada. It survived the hunger for expansion of the ʿAbbādid ruler of Seville, al-Muʿtaḍid, thanks to its alliances with the powerful …

Bekhor Isaac David ben Elia Carmona (1773–1826)was an important merchant, courtier, Jewish community leader, and political figure in the Ottoman Empire whose influence reached its peak under Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839). Born in Istanbul to the distinguished Carmona family, which produced a number of prominent figures on the Ottoman political, economic, and social scene during the empire’s last centuries, Carmona built upon the financial and political success of his uncle Moses ben Isaac Carmona, who had founded a bank and obtained a concession for the sale of alum ( şap), succee…

Elia Rafael Carmona, born October 21, 1869 in Istanbul, was a writer and journalist, who died in 1935. He was the author of many dozens of novellas in Judeo-Spanish and edited the humoristic weekly El Jugeton for over twenty years (1908–1931). A member of the distinguished Carmona family, he was the grand-nephew of the banker Bekhor Isaac David ben Elia Carmona (1773–1826) through the latter’s younger brother Hezekiah.Although Elia Carmona was raised in penury because of his parents’ economic difficulties, his connection with more illustrious Carmonas opened do…

The Carmona family produced a number of prominent Jewish political, economic, and social figures during the last two centuries of the Ottoman Empire and was part of the Jewish elite of Istanbul. The family probably originated in the city of Carmona in southern Spain, but little is known about it until the eighteenth century, when mention is made of the scholar Rabbi Abraham Carmona, who died in Jerusalem in 1739. His contemporary in Istanbul, Isaac Carmona, had two sons, Moses and Elia. The elder son, Moses, engaged in the textile trade in Salonica and then founded a bank, a…

Isaac ben Joseph Caro (d. 1518–1535) was a rabbi and scholar of the generation of the expulsion from Spain. Born in Toledo, Caro had a superb religious education and also studied medicine. He was called to become the head of the yeshiva in Lisbon, whence he was exiled in 1497. He then settled in Istanbul, where he established himself as a respected halakhic scholar. It is known that for a while he also lived in the city of Manisa in western Anatolia. If Caro had children, none of them survived childhood, but he raised and educated his nephew Joseph ben Ephraim Caro (1488–1575), the author of…

Joseph ben Ephraim Caro (1488–1575), known also by his Hebrew acronym as the Riq, was one of the most important halakhic adjudicators of all time. Honored with the title maran (Heb. our master) or maran ha-meḥabber (Heb. our master the author) for his monumental compilation, the Bet Yosef, he was born in 1488, apparently in the city of Toledo in the Kingdom of Castile. In 1492, when the Jews of Spain were expelled, his family went to Portugal, but after only a few years they were forced to flee eastward and headed to the Ottoman Empire. Caro…

Records from the Cairo Geniza are the earliest indication that North African Jews were involved in selling carpets and prayer rugs. The first evidence is an eleventh-century receipt for prayer rugs sent from *Qayrawan to *Cairo. That Jews became patrons of carpets in the Middle Ages is known from an early fourteenth-century rug in the form of a runner that is also the earliest surviving medieval rug made on the Iberian Peninsula (fig. 1). The basic composition of the rug is of the type known as the “sacred tree,” a central trunk with flowering branches, but it is the form of the “…

The city of Casablanca ([al-]Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, Sp. and Ar. white house), Morocco’s principal seaport, was home to the largest Jewish community in the Maghreb in the twentieth century. Situated on the central Atlantic coast, it was known as Anfā in the Middle Ages. During the decline of the Marinid dynasty, its relative autonomy made it a safe haven for corsairs. The Portuguese destroyed the town in 1468 or 1469, and it was only rebuilt in the latter half of the eighteenth century by Sultan Sīdī Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh, who renamed it al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ. Grain was its principal expor…

Jacob ben Abraham Castro was one of the most important rabbis of Egypt during the sixteenth century and the first decade of the seventeenth. Born in 1525, either in Egypt or Jerusalem, into a family of Iberian origin, Castro (known by the acronym Mahariqas) was a pupil of both Levi ben Ḥabib (Ralbaḥ, ca. 1483–1545) and David ibn Abi Zimra, (Radbaz, 1479–1573). Castro stood at the head of the community of Mizraḥi Jews ( Musta‘ribūn) in Egypt throughout the second half of the sixteenth century until his death in either 1612 or 1610. A leading halakhic authority in his …

Léon Casṭro was born in Izmir, Ottoman Turkey, in 1884 and died in Egypt in 1954 (?). A lawyer, journalist, publicist, and Zionist leader, he was one of the founders of the Cairo branch of B’nai B’rith, a leader of the Zionist Organization in Cairo in the 1920s, and president of the Zionist Federation of Egypt from 1944. Also a supporter of the nationalist Wafd Party, he was very close to its leader, Saʿd Zaghlūl, and accompanied him on several journeys to Western Europe to explain the Wafd’s demand for full Egyptian independence. At Zaghlūl’s request he became chief…

Albert-Daniel Cattan was born in Tunis on March 16, 1875 to a family from Algeria. He died in Pennaroya on September 4, 1932. After attending the Saint-Charles high school and the Lycée Carnot in Tunis, he studied medicine in Lyon, where he participated in demonstrations in favor of Alfred Dreyfus and joined the Human Rights League. With Marius Moutet, he founded the Committee of Socialist Students.After completing his studies, Cattan opened a medical practice in Tunisat a time when the first unions, left-wing movements, and newspapers were emerging, and when sc…

The Cattaoui (Ar. Qaṭṭāwī) familywas one of several privileged grandes familles of the Jewish aristocracy in Egypt under the Muḥammad ʿAlī dynasty (1805–1952). Several leading families in Cairo and Alexandria distinguished themselves during this period in communal affairs, local politics, the economy, and intellectual life, including, in addition to the Cattaouis, the Mosseris, de Menasces, Suarès, and Rolos. The Cattaouis of Cairo started as moneychangers and moneylenders(Ar. ṣarrāfūn), then entered modern banking and acted as commercial intermédiares between Egypt an…

The Mountain Jews are an Iranian-speaking community that took shape in the eastern and northern Caucasus after the areas in which they lived were annexed by Russia from Qajar Iran in 1812 and 1813.  The name “Mountain Jews” derives from an official Russian designation (Rus. gorskije jevrei) intended to differentiate the community from the empire’s Russian (Ashkenazi) and Georgian Jews. The modern designations in Israel are yehudim harariyim and yehude ha-har, both of which are nineteenth-century Hebrew renderings of the Russian term that are regarded as academic a…

see Maghāriyya, al- (The Cave Sect)Norman A. Stillman

Hélène Cazès Benathar (1898–1979) was the first certified Jewish woman lawyer in Morocco. In 1940 she established the Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugies Étrangers in Casablanca to help Jewish war refugees arriving in Morocco from Nazi-dominated Europe. She cooperated with the Joint Distribution Committee (of which she became a representative), HIAS-HICEM, and the American Friends Service Committee.Cazès-Benathar (Ben-Attar, Benattar, Benatar), HélèneRachel Hélène (Nelly) Cazès was born in Tangier on October 27, 1898, to Miriam Nahon and Amram Cazès, a bus…

David Cazès, (1850–1913), viewed as the doyen of Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) principals, established apprenticeships and workshops in the schools he directed. These enterprises were emulated throughout the AIU system and justified the AIU’s role in promoting the “ régéneration” of Jews in its domain.David Cazès (1850–1913), born in Tetouan, Morocco, ranks as one of the outstanding teachers and directors of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) educational network. He was among the first students to attend the Ecole Normale Isr…

Moshe Cazes (ca. 1890–1943), a journalist/author in Salonica between the two world wars, was an editor and writer for a number of Judeo-Spanish satirical periodicals. He and Sadik Gershon composed popular songs in Judeo-Spanish and performed as Sadik y Gazóz.Moshe Avram Cazes (ca. 1890–1943) was a prolific journalist/author of Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) periodicals in Salonica between the two world wars. Born into a family of modest means, he received a traditional education in havra de kaza (elementary religious school) and a brief Western education at the Alliance Is…

Çabaçay, Yuçaf, Joseph al-QarawīCabeça, Isaac, El Jadida (Mazagan)Cachia, Pierre, Mawwāl (Muwwāl, Mawāliya)Cacoun, Maggui, Cacoun, MagguiCaddebostan neighborhood (Istanbul), IstanbulCadima office (Casablanca), Casablanca, Morocco, Morocco, Zionism Among Sephardi/Mizraḥi Jewry, Cadima (Morocco), Cadima (Morocco)Caesarea (Palestine)  Muslim conquest of, Jewish involvement in, Muslim conquests and the Jews Samaritans in, Samaritans under Muslim Rule Le Café bleu (El Maleh), El Maleh, Edmond Amramcafés/coffeehouses  Jewish musicians performing in, Music, …

​Cairo Geniza, Cairo Geniza, Cairo Geniza, Manuscripts and manuscript collections, Ben Ezra Synagogue, Ben Ezra Synagogue amulets in, Jaén discovery of, Cairo Geniza, Fustat documents/texts, Cairo Geniza, Cairo Geniza  on Abiathar, Abiathar ben Elijah ha-Kohen  al-Fāsī’s code, al-Fāsī, Isaac ben Jacob  al-Fāsī’s poems, Solomon ben Judah  on alluf title, Alluf  on Almohad persecutions of Jews, Almohads  on anti-Judaism in Islamic world, Anti-Judaism/Antisemitism/Anti-Zionism  in Arabic language, Cairo Geniza  in Arabic script, Cairo Geniza  on astrology, …

Caprotti, Giuseppe, Manuscripts and manuscript collectionsCapsali, Elijah, Greece (pre-1824), Music, Sambari, Joseph ben Isaac, Capsali, Elijah, Crete, Vital, David Ben Solomon Ha-RofeCapsali, Moses ben Elijah (1420–1495), Anatolia, Millet, Ottoman Empire, Romaniots (Bene Romania), Sephardim/Sephardi Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Capsali, Elijah, Capsali, Moses ben Elijah, Crete, Rav Akçesi (Rabbi's Tax), Saporta, ḤanokhCapsali family, Greece (pre-1824)captives  ransoming of, Algeria, Charity, Charitable Institutions and Societies in the Medieval Peri…

Cenival, Pierre de, Ibn Mishʿal, Aaroncensorship  in Europe, Printing and Printers in Jewish communities, Salonica, Printing and Printers in Ottoman Empire, Journalism, Printing and Printers Cent Ans d’histoire (André Chouraqui), Chouraqui, AndréCenter for Advanced Judaic Studies (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), Manuscripts and manuscript collectionsCenter for Iranian Jewish Oral History (United States), Diaspora CommunitiesCenter for Piyyuṭ and Song (Ashdod), Elmaghribi, Samy (Amzallag)Center for the Young Jews of Iran, Levy, ḤabῑbCentral Asia  anti-…

Christianity  adopted by rulers of Ethiopia, Yemen baptism in, Romaniots (Bene Romania) conversion of Jews to, Kirmanshah  in Albania, Albania  forced, Demography   in Iran, Tehran   in Serbia, Serbia  in Spain, Calatayud, Saragossa, Valencia conversion of Muslims to, Toledo   see alsoMoriscos influences of   on Islam, Academic Study of Islamicate Jewry  on Jewish literature and thought, Ibn Paqūda, Baḥya (Abū Isḥāq) ben Joseph   Andalusian Jewish culture, Literature, Hebrew Prose (medieval), Literature, Hebrew Prose (medieval)   converso culture, Usque,…

​Club des Intimes (Salonica), Club des Intimes, Salonica, La Nation (Salonica) opposing Zionist movement, Club des Intimes, Salonica  see alsoCercle des IntimesClub de los Lavoradores (Salonica), BalkansClub National Israélite (Beirut and Damascus), Club National Israélite (Beirut and Damascus)Club Social (Havana), CubaClub Socialista (Salonica), BalkansClub X (Jewish social/cultural club, Istanbul), Yıldırım Sports and Youth ClubCochin (India)  Jewish community in, India  influx of European Jews, India  merchants/businessmen, Long-Distance Trade  migration…

commercial networks  of Jewish peddlers, Peddling  see alsotrade, networksCommittee of Aid and Charity seeComité d’Aide et d’AssistanceCommittee of Officials of Eretz Israel (Istanbul), PalestineCommittee of Officials for Jerusalem (Va‘ad Peqide Yerushalayim be-Qushṭa, Istanbul), Istanbul, Palestine, Navon, Ephraim Ben AaronCommittee of Officials (Safed), Modaʽi, Ḥayyim ​ ​Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), Balkans, Capitulations, Carasso (Karasu), Emmanuel, Franco (Franko), Milasli Gad, Freemasons (Ottoman Empire and Levant), Le Jeune…

​conversos, Duran, Simon ben Ṣemaḥ, Sephardim/Sephardi Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Amatus Lusitanus (Amato Lusitano) arrests and trials by Inquisition of, Almosnino, Isaac in Brazil, Brazil, Brazil culture of, Christian influences on, Usque, Samuel emergence of, Perfet, Isaac ben Sheshet European relations of, Sephardi Impact on Islamicate Jewry in Ferrara (Italy), Usque, Samuel, Usque, Solomon in Gibraltar, Gibraltar, Gibraltar and Hebrew printing in Islamic world, Printing and Printers intellectuals, Amatus Lusitanus (Amato Lusitano) in Izmir, Shabbetay Ṣ…

courts of law  of exilarchs, Exilarch and Exilarchate Muslim   discriminatory rules for non-Muslims in, Ottoman Empire  Jews making use of    in Afghanistan, Garjī, Mullah Asher   in Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Empire   for registration of charitable foundations, Heqdesh (Qodesh, Waqf, Ḥabs)   in Yemen, Yemen  see alsorabbinic courts‘couscous literature,’ Francophone Maghrebi Jewish LiteratureCoutinho, Vasco, Arzila (Aṣīla)Covo, Abraham, Covo, Raphael AsherCovo, Asher, Salonica (Thessaloniki; Selanik)Covo, Elias Judah, BalkansCovo, Elijah, Covo Family, Cov…

A well-known intellectual, journalist, and statesmanof his times, Celâl Nuri (İleri) (1882–1938) was born into an Ottoman bureaucratic family. He was educated at the Lycée Galatasaray and the Istanbul Law School, graduating from the latter with a doctorate in 1908. Giving up a career in the Ottoman diplomatic corps, Celâl Nuri became an eminent journalist of the late Ottoman era, both as a founder of and contributor to numerous journals and newspapers. One of them, Le Jeune Turc, an Istanbul daily in French, is known to have been secretly funded by the World Zionist Or…

Born in 1913, Marcel Ceresi (also known as Marcel Israel) was a prominent Communist organizer in Egypt and Italy in the twentieth century. Ceresi’s political career began as a youth coordinator of Wafd demonstrations against King Fuad in 1930. In 1936 he volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the International Brigades but was denied entry into the country. Ceresi traveled extensively and was connected to other Communist parties in the Mediterranean region, maintaining international contacts in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.In 1939 Ceresi and Raoul Curiel founde…

Ceuta is an autonomous city of Spain situated on the North-African side of the Strait of Gibraltar about 61 kilometers (38 miles) northwest of Tetouan. Its population of 75,861 includes Christians, Muslims, and Jews.The name of the town goes back to Roman times, when it was called Septem (Septem Fratres; Lat. the seven neighboring hills [lit. brothers]). It already had been occupied by Carthaginians and then Greeks, and it was Byzantine at the time of the Muslim conquest. The Arabs called the town Sabta. An important port, it w…