Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World

Algiers (Ar. al-Jazā’ir), the capital of Algeria and a thriving port city, is located midway along the Algerian coast of the Mediterranean Sea. South of the low hills of the Sahel that ring the city on the south lies the fertile Mitidja plain. The Phoenicians established a commercial outpost called Ikosim on the little islands off the northwestern shore of the Bay of Algiers. By Roman times it had become a small town and was called Icosium.1. Medieval PeriodAccording to the medieval geographer al-Bakrī (ed. de Slane, pp. 65-66 [Ar.]), the site of Algiers was in ruins until the…

Mathilde Twersky Alhalel, born in Kovno, Russia, in 1867, was a teacher and principal in the school system of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU). She held the brevet elémentaire diploma, a teaching certificate granted after three years of study at a normal school. In 1891 she began her career as teacher in the AIU School for Girls in Tunis. In 1893 she married Aron (Aaron) Alhalel, a teacher at the AIU School for Boys on Malta Srira Street, Tunis. From 1894 to 1896 she was provisional co-principal of the AIU …

‘Alī ibn Sulaymān, whose full Arabic name is attested as Abu ʾl-Ḥasan ‘Alī ibn Sulaymān al-Muqaddasī—or, as otherwise attested in Hebrew (cf. Skoss, Commentary, p. 34; Mann, p. 41; Ibn al-Hītī, p. 435, l. 21), ‘Eli ben Shelomo (i.e., Eli ben Solomon)—was a Karaite grammarian-lexicographer and Bible exegete who flourished toward the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth. As suggested by his nisba, he was a native of Jerusalem, but he clearly must have departed before the Crusader destruction of the Jewish community there in 1099. According…

see MoroccoDaniel Schroeter

From Hitler’s rise to power in Germany to the end of World War II, Turkey provided a safe haven for Jews fleeing Europe. The Turkish government invited and employed German scientists and scholars of Jewish origin who had been sacked by German universities. As a nonbelligerent, Turkey was an island of stability at a time of chaos and turmoil in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, and this explains why very few Turkish Jews left the country for Palestine during those years.According to the 1945 census, the total number of Jewish citizens of Turkey was 76,965. Althoug…

Other Middle Eastern Jewish communities have all but disappeared, but Iran is still home to around 15,000 Jews (or perhaps 30,000 according to some estimates). On the eve of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, some 80,000 to 100,000 Jews lived in Iran, but by 2008, over 60,000 had emigrated, especially from Tehran, among them the majority of the community’s leaders, philanthropists, and professionals. Iran’s remaining Jews live mainly in the cities of Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz. Towns and villages …

Aliya (Heb.  ʿ aliya - lit. "ascent") is the  term for immigration to Palestine from the Diaspora, whether prompted by religious, national, political, or messianic urges. In some instances immigrants (Heb. ʿolim, sing. ʿoleh) settled in the Holy Land because of oppression or expulsions elsewhere. Conflicts between ʿolim and the indigenous Jewish population sometimes occurred, especially if the new arrivals sought to import their former way of life and impose it upon the local Jews and even to take control of communal institutions.1. The First Islamic Period (638–1099)From the acco…

The word  aljama, the latinized form of Arabic al-jamāʿa (the community/congregation), was the term that normally designated Jewish communities in Christian Spain after the Reconquista. The term could be applied to places inhabited by Jews ( aljama iudaeorum) or by Muslims ( aljama s arracenorum). In the former instance, for all intents and purposes, aljama was synonymous with qahal (pl. qehillot; Heb. the community/congregation). It was sometimes also a synonym for “Jewish quarter,” which had various names in the Romance vernaculars: call in Catalonia, Majorca, and Rousillo…

 Solomon ha-Levi Alkabetz [Alqabeṣ] (ca. 1505, Salonica[?] – ca. 1584, Safed[?]) was a prolific author and a teacher of some of the most important kabbalists and legists in Jewish history, including Joseph Caro and Moses Cordovero. Born into a Sephardic family that had been expelled from Spain, Alkabetz grew up in Salonica, where he attended the yeshiva of Joseph Taitatzak (Taitaṣak; also Taitazak) and instructed pietists in Kabbala mysticism. In 1529, Alkabetz set out on a journey to Palestine,…

Avi Alkaş was born on December 26, 1956 in Istanbul. A graduate and M.B.A. of Bosporus University, he initially worked as managing director for several shopping mall projects. Since 1997 he has been the managing director of Alkaş Alışveriş Merkezleri Danışmanlık Co. Ltd. (www.alkas.com.tr), a consultancy for investors interested in building shopping malls. He is a member of the (International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) and a European member of both its board and its jury.In 2008 he merged his company and he became the Country Chairman of Jones Lang LaSalle.Alkaş has been acti…

Allāhverdī Khān, (d. 1613) was one of the most important courtiers of Shah 'Abbās I (r. 1581-1629). A Georgian or Armenian Christian by origin, he had been enslaved by the Safavids in his youth and became a trusted soldier. After converting to Islam, he rose to the rank of qullār āghāsī (Turk. general of the slave army) and was appointed governor of the provinces of Fars and Koghīluya. Having distinguished himself in battles against the Uzbeks with an army he had reorganized along European lines as suggested by Sir Robert Shirley. Allāhverdī Kh…

Allāhverdī Khān [II] (d. 1662) was a high-ranking military officer of Armenian origin in the service of Shah Ṣafī I (r. 1629–1642) and Shāh ʿAbbās II (r. 1642–1666) of Iran. In 1654 he advanced from the post of amīr shikār bāshī (Pers./Turk. master of the royal hunts) to sardār-i lashkar (Pers. commander-in-chief) of the army, thereafter distinguishing himself in campaigns against the Ottomans, Mughals, Uzbeks, and Georgians. He was instrumental in bringing about the downfall of Muḥammad Beg, the grand vizier who, according to the Judeo-Persian chronicle of Bābāī ibn Luṭf, was resp…

The arbitrary nature of the persecution of Jews in Iran during the reign of Shah Sulṭān Ḥusayn (r. 1694–1722) is vividly described in the Judeo-Persian chronicle Kitāb-i Sar Guzasht-i Kāshān dar Bāb-i ʿĪbrī va Goyimi-yi Sānī (The Book of Events in Kashan Concerning the Jews; Their Second Conversion) by Bābāī ben Farhād. In 1694 the shah issued a decree prohibiting alcoholic beverages. Sometime after this, and possibly on the twenty-first of Ramaḍān (the Shīʿī commemoration of Imam ʿAlī’s martyrdom), a Jew in Kashan named Allahyār gave a feast for his friends that involved musi…

The Allatini (Alatini, Alatino) family, of Iberian origin, prospered in Italy and Salonica. The earliest family member on record was Isaac Allatini (Alatin), who was the rabbi of the Lisbon congregation in Salonica around 1512, soon after the expulsions from Spain and Portugal, which began in 1492.The next mentions of the family pertain to the three Alatino brothers Jehiel, Vitale (or Ḥayyim), and Moses Amram, all of whom were physicians in Italy in the sixteenth century. Jehiel settled in Todi, in central Italy. Vitale (d. ca. 1577) lived mostly in ne…

Moïse Allatini (1809–1882) was a banker from Salonica who studied in Italy. Following a family tradition, he earned his doctorate in medicine from the University of Pisa. However, he never practiced his profession, because he had to take over the family business after the death of his father, Lazare, in 1834, to provide for the material needs of his numerous siblings. In 1837, he founded the firm of Allatini Frères, which later became Allatini and Modiano . The company managed the assets of the Darblay de Corbeil family, bought shares in mills, and was engaged in variou…

The Alliance Israélite Universelle was founded in 1860 in Paris to fight for Jewish rights and combat anti-Jewish prejudice wherever manifested. Organized by a group of younger Jewish activists, it soon came to encompass much of the French Jewish elite in its leadership. The AIU lobbied actively for Jewish emancipation and represented world Jewry on the international stage—at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, for instance and the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. It continued its political activities during the interwar period, especial…

After outbreaks of antisemitic violence in Tunisia in 1917 and 1918, members of the country’s Jewish and Muslim intelligentsia attempted to bring about a reconciliation between the two communities. They were motivated in part by President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the Versailles Treaty, which had aroused hopes of emancipation from the French colonial yoke. The Jewish and Muslim elites who came together to discuss the country’s future were motivated by the crisis situation in Tunisia at the end of World War I. They began meeting in late 191…

Félix Allouche (1901–1978), journalist, editor, and Zionist activist, was born in Sfax, Tunisia, in 1901 and was educated at the Alliance Israélite Universelle school there. He began his journalistic career as the editor of the local newspaper, La Dépêche Sfaxienne, and correspondent of La Voix d’Israël , one of the earliest journals of Revisionist Zionism. In 1924, he founded Le Réveil Juif (1924–1935), moving its offices to Tunis in April 1930. In 1932, when the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth Le-Yisrael) of Tunis, of which he was the secretary gen…

The title alluf, which in the Bible designates tribal chieftains (e.g., Gen. 36:15 ff.), was given new significance in the gaonic period along with other biblical titles, such as nagid . It was granted by the Babylonian yeshivot to those who sat in the first row of the yeshiva, those destined to be candidates for the gaonate, and later also to their supporters who headed congregations (Heb. qehalim) in other Babylonian communities and served as intermediaries for a Babylonian yeshiva (see Yeshivot in Babylonia/Iraq). In a tenth-century account often called “The Report of Nathan the …

Elijah (Sīdī Bahi) ʿAllūsh (Allouche) (d. 1892) was a noted rabbi and scholar of the second generation of rabbis of Constantine and Algeria following the French occupation—the last generation of the nineteenth century. He served the Jewish community as a jurist (Heb. dayyan) during a time of far-reaching changes that required him to cope with the implications of modernity. In particular, he took great pains to preserve the unity of both the family unit and the community. To compensate for the loss of rabbinic authority under the French …