Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World

Ezekiel ben Joseph Nissim Menahem Gabbay, known by the sobriquet Baghdadli, was a prominent banker, Jewish communal leader, and philanthropist was born in Baghdad sometime in the second half of the eighteenth century. He was the sarrafbaşı (personal banker) of Sultan Mahmud II when he was executed in 1823.From 1806, when he became the leader of the Jewish community in Baghdad, Ezekiel did much to benefit his coreligionists. In 1811, as a reward for his help the previous year in suppressing the revolt of the Mamluk leader Küçük Süleyman Pasha and restoring order and the authority o…

Ezekiel Gabbay II (1825–1898) was descended from a family with roots in Baghdad and was the grandson of his namesake, Baghdadli Ezekiel Gabbay (d. ca. 1823), who had been banker to Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839). Ezekiel Gabbay II held several government offices during the reigns of Sultans Abdülaziz (r. 1861–1876) and Abdülhamid II (r. 1876-1909). He began in 1869 as an official at the Ministry of Public Instruction and subsequently became president of the Supreme Criminal Court. At the same time, he was also active in Jewish communal affairs and served as secretary of the counc…

The Gabbay family of merchants and Ottoman officials flourished from the late eighteenth century through the end of the nineteenth. The name Gabbay is found mostly in Iraq, but it also appears in Turkey and other countries. It is one of the most common surnames of Iraqi Jewry, attributed by family lore to Davidic descent. A number of well-known members of the family served in key roles in the Baghdad community.      Isaac ben David ben Joshua Gabbay was chief banker (Ar. ṣarrāf bāshī) and  nasi (Heb. head) of the Jewish community of Baghdad from 1745 until his death in 1773. His son Ezra al…

Moris Gabbay, born into a Sephardic family in Istanbul in 1922, is a Turkish Jewish left-wing political activist, writer, and public intellectual. In his childhood and youth, he witnessed the transformation of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious Ottoman Empire into the Turkish Republic, a period during which non-Muslims were expected to give up their religious autonomy and linguistic traditions and become “new citizens” of a homogeneous nation-state.Gabbay received his religious and elementary school education in the Jewish Primary School, and then moved on …

Moses ben Shem Ṭov Gabbay, who died around 1443, was a rabbi and scholar in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. He was active in Spain and North Africa, and particularly, after 1391, in the western Algerian city of Honaine. Situated on the Mediterranean coast north of Tlemcen, Honaine was an important port during the Zayyanid (or ʿAbd al-Wadīd) dynasty in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The city’s Jewish community was an active element in its mercantile culture.Leaving Spain after the edict of 1391, Gabbay spent some time as rabbinical judge (Heb. dayyan) of the J…

The gabela (from Sp. gabela, It. gabella, Fr. gabelle, excise tax; a word thought by O.E.D. to be of Teut. origin, but perhaps ultimately from Ar./med. Jud.-Ar. qabāla, a lease) was a tax on meat and other food staples that Jewish communities in Christian Spain, Islamic lands, and the Ottoman Empire imposed on their members. In the Maghreb, it was often called sija or siza (from Sp. cisa, Mod. Sp. and Port. sisa). In Tripolitania, it was called khaba. Although the terms gabela and sija appear to have come in with Sephardi exiles, such taxes existed in the Islamic world well bef…

Gabes (Ar. Qābis)is the last major port city in southern Tunisia before the Libyan frontier. It is situated on the Gulf of Gabes (the Little Syrte) 404 kilometers (251 miles) south of Tunis and 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Gafsa. The present city of Gabes is actually a conglomeration of four smaller towns: two ancient oases, Menzel and Djara; New Djara, dating from the era of the Arab conquest; and the port itself, El-Bihar. The development of the port area was a pet project of the French protectorate (1881–1956).Like Qayrawān, Gabes was an important Jewish center during the Midd…

Gafsa(Ar. Qafsa) is a small town on the site of Roman Capsa in southwestern Tunisia. It is situated to the north of the seasonal salt lake Chott el-Djerid on the eastern edge of the Sahara Desert, 360 kilometers (224 miles) southwest of Tunis. Gafsa derived its importance from its strategic location as a stopping place for merchants and caravans on the route between the Mediterranean ports and trans-Saharan trading posts and also from its date palm cultivation. The town’s fortifications were able to withstand attacks by Saharan tribes. Today, the area surrounding Gafsa…

Ḥayyim Gagin was born in Fez, Morocco, around 1460 and died there after 1535. He was a leader of the city's indigenous Jews, or toshavim , and the author of ʿ Eṣ Ḥ ayyim (Heb. Tree of Life), a chronicle and halakhic polemic describing their conflict over the correct mode of examining and slaughtering meat (Heb. sheḥiṭa) with the megorashim -the Sephardi newcomers who settled in Fez after the expulsion from Spain. The sheḥiṭa controversy began in 1523 and raged for many years in the Jewish quarter, pitting the two segments of the Jewish populace against each other. Ul…

Ḥayyim Abraham Gagin (known as Rav Aga"n , 1787–1848), was the scion of an illustrious North African family, based in Fez, that traced its origins to the Spanish expulsion. His mother was the daughter of David Majar, the prayer leader of the Bet El kabbalists. Upon the death of his first wife, Gagin married the daughter of Abraham Shalom Ḥasid, who was known as Doda (Aunt) Rivka in 1828. Gagin became the head of the yeshiva in 1827 and also served as the head of the Tiferet Yisra’el academy.In 1842 Gagin was appointed rishon le-ṣiyyon ("first of Zion ," the title of Sephardi head of the rabb…

Shalom Moses Ḥayy Gagin (1833-1883) was the son of Ḥayyim Abraham Gagin and his second wife, Doda Rivka, the daughter of Abraham Shalom Sharʿabi. He was called Shalom Moses after Shalom Sharʿabi and his grandfather Moses Majar, and subsequent Ḥayy was added to his name; thus he is known by the acronym SaMaḤ¤, which was incorporated into the titles of his books. The substantial library he inherited from his father was available to Aryeh Leib Frumkin when compiling Sefer Even Shmu' el Kolel Toledot Ḥakhmey Yerushalayim (Vilna, 1874).Gagin's father died when he was fifteen, and his m…

Abraham (Avram) Galante (usually with Gallicized spelling: Galanté), the scion of a distinguished Sephardi family in Bodrum, Ottoman Turkey, was a historian of Jewish and Eastern peoples, a linguist, journalist, educator, and social activist, and an exponent of the Ottoman Jewish Haskala. Born in 1873, Galante never married and devoted his entire life to intellectual and political pursuits. He was proficient in Turkish, Judeo-Spanish, Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, German, French, English, Greek, and Armenian. He died in Istanbul in 1961.Galante received his primary education…

Gallipoli (Turk. Gelibolu) is a port town on the southern coast of the Gallipoli peninsula in European Turkey at the Marmara end of the Dardanelles (Turk. Çanakkale Boğazı). It was the principal naval base and arsenal of the Ottoman Empire until the sixteenth century. The twelfth-century Spanish traveler Benjamin of Tudela, who visited the city under Byzantine rule, reports that it had a Jewish community of about two hundred souls ( Itinerary, ed. M. N. Adler, p. 24). Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sources mention Romaniots residing in the city. The Ottomans oc…

David Galula, born on January 10, 1919 in Sfax (Tunisia), grew up in Casablanca (Morocco), at a time when both Tunisia and Morocco were French protectorates. David Galula’s family were naturalized as French citizens in 1924.Unlike most of the Jews living in Morocco, David Galula did not attend a Jewish school but rather a French public school, which fostered his French identity. After high school, he decided to enlist in the French army, and was accepted into the Saint-Cyr Military Academy in 1939, a few months prior to the Nazi …

Ganj-nāma (Pers. The Book of Treasure), a versified book of wisdom and ethical counsel, was composed in 1536 by the Judeo-Persian poet ‘Imrānī  (b. 1454 in Isfahan; d. after 1536 in Kashan) and was his last major work. Together with the poet’s other long composition, Fatḥ-nāma (Pers. The Book of Conquest), Ganj-nāma was cherished and widely circulated in the Persian-speaking communities of Iran in premodern times.‘Imrānī’s Ganj-nāma is a versified commentary on tractate ’Avot of the Mishna, also known as Pirqe Avot (Heb. The Ethics of the Fathers), the only mishnaic treatis…

The geonim (Heb. geʾonim; sing. gaʾon) were the heads of the yeshivot (academies of higher learning) in Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Egypt between the sixth and thirteenth centuries. The office of gaon combined religious, legal, and political functions. Its incumbents had followers all over the Islamic world and in Christian Europe, and their works laid the foundation for all subsequent developments in Jewish law.  The title gaon is an abbreviation of rosh yeshivat geʾon Yaʿaqov (Heb. the head of the yeshiva of the splendor of Jacob, or alternatively, head of the yeshi…

Born in 1889 in Travnik (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in Bosnia), Moshe David Gaon came to prominence as an educator, writer, and Ladino specialist after his emigration to Palestine in 1909. Prior to making ʿ aliya, Gaon studied at the University of Vienna and worked in elementary education in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Smyrna (Izmir) in the Ottoman Empire. After settling in Jerusalem, Gaon continued to teach Hebrew and served as an elementary school administrator. In addition to his work in education, Gaon was a prolific writer and editor. His works i…

Nessim David Gaon is a prominent international businessman, philanthropist, and advocate for Sephardic Jewry. Born in 1922 in Khartoum, Sudan, Gaon quickly established himself as a leader in the Sudanese Jewish community as well as a successful businessman. From 1947 to 1957 he served as vice-president and treasurer of the Sudan Jewish community while building up the export firm he had begun with his brother, Albert. Exporting oilseeds, grain, and other produce, the brothers’ firm became one of Sudan’s leading export companies. Its success allowed the Gaons t…

Bouena Sarfatty Garfinkle (1916–1997), born in Salonica, was a Greek partisan during World War II. Her memoirs and collections of songs, proverbs, and verses are valuable documents on Jewish life in Salonica. She and her husband immigrated to Canada in 1947.Bouena Sarfatty Garfinkle (November 15, 1916–July 23, 1997) was born in Thessaloniki (Salonica), Greece, to Simcha Halewa and Moises Sarfatty; the latter died when she was a small child. Bouena and her siblings were well educated, and she became fluent in French, Judeo-Spanish, and…

Dr. Üzeyir Garih was born to Sephardic parents in Istanbul on June 28, 1929. His forebears had come to Istanbul from Baghdad in 1873. Garih graduated from Istanbul Technical University with an M.A. degree in 1951. He worked for  a time for the Carrier Corporation in Istanbul, specializing in heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning, but in 1954 he and Ishak Alaton entered into a partnership that was eventually to become Alarko Holding, one of the largest enterprises in Turkey, active in six major business sectors—construction contracting, real estate developm…

Rabbi Aaron Garish lived in Aleppo at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Since he is mentioned once by the cognomen al-Ṣafadī, it would appear that one of his ancestors was born or lived in Safed, Palestine. Other considerations, however, support the hypothesis that his family emigrated from the Christian West (perhaps Spain).Garish wrote several liturgical poems (Heb. piyyuṭim ), but his reputation is based mainly on his commentary on the Pentateuch, Meṣaḥ Aharon ("Aaron's Forehead"- see Ex. 28:38), written in Judeo-Arabic and containing many expressions in th…

Mullah Asher Garjī, born in Herat in 1882, was the son of Mullah Matityah Garjī, who provided him with a quality education meant only for rabbis’ sons. In 1896, at the age of fourteen, he and his father made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land on foot. Mullah Asher married at seventeen. He helped his father publish Ha-Azharot, Siman Tov Melammed’s Hebrew and Judeo-Persian poetical composition on the 613 commandments. After his father's emigration to Palestine in 1908, Mullah Asher, then twenty-six years old, was appointed to lead the community, and he did so for the next forty years unt…

Mullah Benjamin Garjī, born in Herat in 1902, was the son of Mullah Joseph Garjī and the grandson of Mullah Matityah Garjī. He emigrated to Palestine in 1911 and eventually replaced his father as leader of the Afghan Jewish community in Jerusalem. A darshan (preacher) who charmed his audiences, he taught in Talmud Torah schools in the Bukharan quarter of Jerusalem for fifty years and raised up generations of pupils and admirers thanks to his liberality and humanism. Mullah Benjamin headed the ’Ahavat Ḥesed (Love of Charity) aid organization, which extended discrete help to th…

Born in Herat in 1869, Mullah Joseph Garjī Melamed was the son of Mullah Mattityah Garjī. He was the rabbi of the Jewish community of Herat and later of the Afghan community in Jerusalem. In 1903, he set out for Palestine. When he reached Merv (Marv, Mary) in present-day Turkmenistan, the local Bukharan, Afghan, and Mashhadī Jews pleaded with him to remain, and he agreed to remain as their leader, rabbi, teacher, mohel (circumciser), and ritual slaughterer for seven years. In 1911 he finally arrived in Jerusalem, where he served as spiritual guide to the Bukharan a…

Mullāh Mattityah Garjī, the son of Mullāh Mordecai Garjī and grandson of Mullāh Abraham Garjī, was born in Herat, Afghanistan, in 1845 and died in Jerusalem in 1917. He was descended from a family of rabbis and teachers that was among the forced converts ( anusim) to Islam ( Jadīd-i Islām ) who fled from Mashhad, Iran, to Herat, in 1840, where they were able to openly return to Judaism. His family name, Garjī, indicates that his ancestors were transferred to Mashhad from Georgia by Nādir Shāh (r. 1732–1747), together with Kurds, Sunnīs, Armenians, and other minorities from Qaz…

Elyakim ben Isaac Gaṭigno (d. 1781 or 1795) was a rabbi and scholar in Izmir (Smyrna) in the eighteenth century. A scion of the Gaṭigno (Gaṭṭigno, Gaṭeigno) rabbinical family of Iberian origin, he was born in Salonica, but spent most of his life in Izmir, where he was a leading rabbi in the Jewish community until his death. Gaṭigno authored a number of works, including Toʿafot Reʾem (The Lofty Horns of the Wild Ox; Livorno, 1761), a commentary on the commentary on Rashi by Rabbi Elijah ben Abraham Mizraḥi, known as the Reʾem (d. 1526); Agura be-Ohalekha (I Will Abide in Thy Tabernacle; Sal…

The Gaṭigno (Gaṭṭigno, Gaṭeigno) family, of Iberian origin, produced numerous rabbis and scholars who held leadership positions in Salonica and Izmir (Smyrna) from the seventeenth century on. Originally from Aragon, the Gaṭignos lived in Denmark before settling in Salonica in the early seventeenth century, when Moses Gaṭigno served as rector of the Majorca synagogue.Ḥayyim Abraham (I) ben Benveniste Gaṭigno (1672–1730) was a kabbalist who studied under his uncle Joseph ben Abraham (d. Jerusalem, 1709) before becoming a rabbi and communal leader in Salonica. He authored Ṭirat Ke…

The Gavison (Gavishon, Gavizon) family attained prominence in the Jewish community of medieval Seville. After several members were killed in the anti-Jewish riots in 1391, the survivors settled in Granada, where they continued to be persecuted because of their Jewish faith. When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, the Gavisons, led by Abraham and Jacob Gavison, made their way to the city of Tlemcen in Algeria.Abraham Gavison (d. 1506) was a rabbi and poet. Jacob Gavison (d. after 1521), also a rabbi, wrote a tract entitled Derekh ha-Sekhel (The Way of Wisdom) in defense of Ma…

Hortense Cohen Gelbmann (Guelbmann) was an educator in the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) school system. She was born in Hagueneau, province of Alsace, France, in 1861, and died in 1932. After earning the diploma of brevet supérieur (teaching certificate granted after four years of normal school), she was appointed to a teaching post in Tangier, where she remained from 1878 to 1881. She married in 1882, and served as principal of the AIU School for Girls in Tunis from 1896 to 1900, when she was transferred to Salonica as principal of the School for Girls there. She retired in 1918.Gelbm…

see Cairo GenizaNorman A. Stillman

Yosef Habib Gerez (b. 1926) is a Turkish Jewish artist and poet. After graduating from Kabataş Erkek Lisesi, a high school for boys in Istanbul, he studied law at Istanbul University and at the same time attended the Academy of Applied Fine Arts in Istanbul as a guest student. With the encouragement of his teacher, Nurullah Berk, Gerez began to draw and paint. In 1972 he opened the Beyoğlu City Gallery in Istanbul. That same year, his paintings were shown at a gallery in Milan. Later, he became …

The Geron (Gueron) family produced many rabbis, judges, and communal leaders in Edirne (Adrianople) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first known member of the family was Mordecai Geron, a well-to-do merchant in Edirne who died after 1680. The Gerons reappear in the sources in the eighteenth century. After Abraham Ṣarfati, the chief rabbi of Edirne, died in 1722, the Jewish community could not agree on a single successor. One faction selected Menahem ben Isaac Ashkenazi as its chief rabbi. The other chose Ṣarfati’s son-in-law, Raphael Jacob Abraham Geron (d. 1751).…

Yakir Astruc ben Eliakim Geron (1813–1874) was born into the distinguish Geron family of rabbis in Edirne (Adrianople). Early in his career he served as a rabbi in Bucharest. After his return to Edirne, he sojourned for a time in Rustchuk (Ruse, Bulgaria) and helped the Jewish community there reach a compromise on a major (but now unknown) issue. Geron left so strong an impression that in 1852 the community named a synagogue after him, Qahal Qadosh Geron (The Holy Congregation of Geron). When his father died in 1835, Geron inherited the rabbinate of Edirne from him. He helped rees…

Sadik Gershon (ca. 1888–1943) was a musician, arranger, composer, and choir director in Salonica, as well as an oud player and the leader of a çalgı (traditional Turkish ensemble). He and Moshe Cazes composed popular songs in Judeo-Spanish and performed as Sadik y Gazóz.Sadik Gershon (ca. 1888–1943) was a musician, arranger, composer (mainly of liturgical music), and synagogue choir director. Born in Salonica, Gershon was blind from an early age and was known as Sadik el Ciego (Sadik the blind). An expert in Turkish music and also versed in European music, Gershon was a…

The Gerush (Heb. exile) Synagogue in the Turkish city of Bursa (Prusa) was built in the early sixteenth century by Jewish exiles from Spain. The synagogue is located on Arap Şükrü Street, near Sakarya Boulevard. It has a seating capacity of 100 to 150 people. Its strong and well-maintained structure suggests that the synagogue was most likely restored after the shattering earthquake of 1855. An inscription next to the prayer hall of the synagogue is dated to the year 5632 (1872), possibly the ti…

Gabbai, Ezekiel ben Joshua (1824–1896), Sassoon FamilyGabbai, Ezekiel ben Ṣālị (1812–1887), Sassoon Family gabba’im (official responsible for charity), Ottoman EmpireGabbay, Abraham ben Jedidiah, Printing and Printers, Printing and Printers, Printing and PrintersGabbay, Ezekiel I (Baghdadli) (d. 1823 or 1826?), Ottoman Empire, Aciman, Isaiah (Yeşaya), Carmona, Bekhor Isaac David, Gabbay Family (Iraq), Gabbay, Ezekiel (Baghdadli), Ocak BazirganiGabbay, Ezekiel II (1825–1898), Gabbay Family (Iraq), Gabbay, Ezekiel II, Jurnal Izraelit, IstanbulGabbay, Ezra, Gabbay…

​geonim/gaonate, Gaon and Gaonate and Abbasid caliphs, Gaon and Gaonate appointment/selection of, Hay (Hayya) Gaon, Yeshivot in Babylonia/Iraq, Ibn al-Dastūr, Samuel ben ʿAlī authority/influence of, Gaon and Gaonate, Yeshivot in Babylonia/Iraq, David ben Daniel ben Azariah, Elḥanan ben Shemariah  in al-Andalus, Al-Andalus  role in yeshivot, Yeshivot in Babylonia/Iraq of Babylonian yeshivot, Iraq, Gaon and Gaonate, Ibn al-Dastūr, Samuel ben ʿAlī  appointment and selection of, Iraq, Gaon and Gaonate, Ibn Sarjado, Aaron (Khalaf) ben Joseph ha-Kohen  authority/infl…

Gilan (province, Iran), Gilan Jewish communities in, Gilan Gilda Stambouli souffre et se plaint (Paula Jacques), Jacques, PaulaGilou, Thomas, Cinema, French, North African Jewish Actors and Characters in gimel, Judeo-Arabic - History and Linguistic Description Gindin, Thamar, Tafsīr of Ezekiel (Jud.-Pers. Tafsīr-i Yehezkel) Ginnat Bitan (Isaac ben Abraham ha-Kohen), MysticismGinzberg, Louis, Historiography/Historical Writing, Naṭronay bar Ḥavivay on origins of Babylonian yeshivot, Yeshivot in Babylonia/Iraq Ginze ha-Melekh (Abraham ben Esquira Mas‘ūd), Myst…

​Grana communities (Jews from Livorno), Livorno (Leghorn) in Algiers, Grana (Livornese), Livorno (Leghorn) in Tunisia, Grana (Livornese), Sephardi Impact on Islamicate Jewry  as agents of modernity, Grana (Livornese)  in French colonial period, Grana (Livornese)  growth of, Grana (Livornese)  influence of Italy on, Grana (Livornese)  Italian citizenship of, Tunisia  merchants, Tunisia  protégé status of, Tunisia  relations with Twānsa community, Grana (Livornese), Grana (Livornese), Sephardi Impact on Islamicate Jewry  Sousse, Sousse  Tunis, Jerba, Tu…