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Fezzan (Ar. Fazzān; Lat. Fasania/Fazania) is the southwestern region of Libya, covering some 700,000 square kilometers (200,000 square miles), bordering Tripolitania on the north, Cyrenaica and Sudan on the east, the Tibesti massif of Chad on the south, and the Hoggar massif and the Grand Erg Oriental of Algeria on the west. It is mostly a desert with large sand dunes (ergs) and includes mountains, dry river valleys, and oases. It is crossed by Wadi al-Shati in the north, Wadi Irawan in the west…

The Arbib family of Libya included wealthy communal leaders, public figures, entrepreneurs, industrialists, merchants, owners of real estate, publishers, and journalists, mainly in Tripoli, Zawiya, Tajura, Benghazi, and Barce, many of whom became Italian or British citizens under Ottoman rule (ending 1911). The Arbibs were active in introducing modern industry to Libya. In 1881, the family was the first to use a hydraulic press for processing esparto, a grass used in cordage, paper manufacture, and shoes. Eugenio Arbib (1847–1915) owned one of the four companies that pr…

Deghel Sion (The Banner of Zion) was the organ of the first Zionist organization in Libya, Circolo Sion (Zion Circle). Published in Tripoli in Judeo-Arabic from 1920 to 1924, it appeared twice a month for the first two years and then weekly. Its editors included Rafaelle Barce, Rafaelle Arbib, and Khuato Lagziel. Deghel Sion described itself as a “Zionist, religious, and political periodical” and had a Star of David in between the words of its title, which was printed in both Hebrew and Italian.The use of Judeo-Arabic made it possible for Deghel Sion to reach the largest possible reade…

1. Medieval PeriodThe education of the young in the medieval society documented in the Cairo Geniza was basically aimed at preparing them to integrate as early and efficiently as possible into the world of adults. This is clearly reflected in some eleventh- and twelfth-century halakhic monographs that discuss the passage from childhood to maturity. They present the early years of human life as a prolonged ascent toward the peak of full adulthood; the stages preceding adulthood are only important as  preparatory steps toward the goal. Religious studies, however, were lifelong and…

Zawiya lies on the Mediterranean coast 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of Tripoli, Libya. The town surrounds a Sufi compound (Ar. zāwiya) which became a commercial center for the region’s nomads.When the ancient Jewish community in nearby Sorman was destroyed in 1150 by the Almohads, the survivors settled in Zawiya, protected by local tribes. The community grew in the seventeenth century, but relations with the Muslims deteriorated in the late eighteenth century. The town’s Jews were prevented from building a new synagogue to replace the one, which had collapsed. A century lat…

The Arabic term kuttāb is the common designation for a traditional elementary school for boys. As such it was often also used by Jews in Islamic lands, although in some regions other terms were used: ṣlā (Mor. Jud.-Ar. synagogue) in Morocco, or knishta (Neo-Aram. by women) in Kurdistan, kanīs (also Yem. Jud.-Ar. knīs, or kenīs, synagogue or assembly), al-kanīs al-ẓighayreh (Yem. Jud.-Ar. little synagogue) in Yemen, maʿalma (Ar. place of learning), midrash (Afghanistan), molahi (Afghanistan), and ustādh (Ar. master) in Iraq. The term ḥeder (Heb.) came into use in Morocco in the…

Robert Attal (1927–2011) was the librarian of the Ben-Zvi Institute, a bibliographer, and a scholar of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. His collection of over 1,400 items, mostly in Judeo-Arabic, was acquired by the National Library of Israel. His publications include bibliographies on the Jewries of North Africa and Greece, and on Judeo-Arabic literature in Tunisia, as well as poetry, memoirs, and numerous articles on topics related to North African Jewry.Robert Attal (Avraham Hatal, 1927–2011) was the librarian of the Jerusalem-based Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study o…

Rabbi Abraham Khalfon (1735–1819) was an author, poet, historian, and communal leader in Tripoli, Libya, who served twice as the head of the community (1778–1781 and 1792–1795). He had close relations with Rabbi Ḥayyim David Azulay (Rav Ḥida; 1724–1806), whom he visited in Livorno (Leghorn) in 1804–1805. In 1806, Khalfon moved to Safed, where he died.Khalfon’s many poems and eulogies include information about him and his contemporaries. Most of his writings are still in manuscript. The Hebrew poem Mi Kamokha (Who Is Like unto Thee?) describes the suffering in Tripoli durin…

Printing began in Germany in 1445. Hebrew letters and words were sometimes inserted in books printed in Latin script, but since printing was the exclusive right of Christian guilds, Jews could not engage in printing until it spread outside Germany. The first dated Hebrew book was printed in Italy in 1475. From there Hebrew printing spread to Spain and Portugal, and through Jews from those three countries to the Ottoman Empire and Morocco. In fact, Jewish printers of Hebrew books pioneered printing in the Islamic world. In some areas Hebrew printing was long the only pr…

On February 7, 1942, following the second British retreat from Libya to Egypt during World War II, Benito Mussolini, the leader of Italy, ordered the Jews living in Cyrenaica to be moved out of the war zone to prevent them from collaborating with the British. Between May and late October 1942, some twenty-six hundred were transferred in convoys of eight to ten trucks, traveling for five days, to an internment camp at Giado, an isolated military post enclosed by barbed-wire fences on the high plateau 235 kilometers (146 miles) south of Tripoli. Italians administer…

 Misrata lies in a large palm oasis 220 kilometers (124 miles) east of Tripoli, Libya.  The town bears the name of a Berber tribe, the Miṣrāta (or Misrāta).  In modern times consisted of two quarters,  Matin, built in  the Ottoman period, and the older village of Yidder.   Its ancient Jewish community was persecuted in 1150 by the Almohad dynasty. The poet Abraham ibn Ezra asks God, in his elegy to the victims of the Almohads: “And the stricken community of Misrata hast Thou forgotten / Whose suffering was so great, and whose tongues are weary with lament…

Mislata (Mesallata, Qusabat) is 225 kilometers (140 miles) southeast of Tripoli, Libya. It had an ancient Jewish community which was persecuted under the Almohad dynasty in 1150 and had to temporarily move to the island of Jerba (as mentioned in the addition to Ibn Ezra’s famous lament for communities that suffered under the Almohads). From then on the Jews kept their homes closed to foreign visitors during the first two days of Passover and the two days of the New Year. Following another tradition, Jewish men rode…

Elia Nhaisi was a Tripolitanian photo-journalist and reporter for the Italian Jewish periodicals La Settimane Israelitica and Israel . In 1912, he established the first Zionist organization in Tripoli, Ora ve-Simḥa (Heb. Light and Joy), which was short-lived due to apathy, lack of support, personal rivalries, and fear of Italian government opposition. Rabbi Dario Disegni from Verona, who visited Tripoli in March 1914, supported Nhaisi and suggested that he focus on educational activities in order to promote Zionism. In June 1914, Nhaisi establishe…

Amrus, known as Sūq al-Jumʿa (Ar. Friday Market), is situated on the Mediterranean coast 6 kilometers (slightly less than 4 miles) northeast of Tripoli in Libya. According to tradition, Jews from Gharian settled in Amrus in the sixteenth century, followed by refugees from Tunis in the eighteenth. In the twentieth century somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred Jews lived in Amrus, most of whom were merchants, moneylenders, and blacksmiths providing agricultural equipment and services to…

The Ecoles Franco-Israélites were public schools for Jews established in 1916/17 by the education department of the French protectorate in Morocco, parallel to the Muslim state educational network, in order to develop a French-controlled school system and limit the influence of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. In 1921 there were twenty-seven EFI schools, which by 1926 had around five thousand students. By comparison the AIU had seventeen schools with 4,683  students. The EFI schools were tuition-free, placed no financial obligations …

Khoms (Ar. al-Khums), built by the Ottomans in 1871, is a port town on the Mediterranean coast of Libya 120 kilometers  (75 miles) east of Tripoli. Jews lived in nearby Leptis Magna (medieval Islamic Lebda) from the Roman period until the late twelfth century. Documents from the Cairo Geniza mention a number of people with the family name Lebdī. Jews returned to the area in the nineteenth century when Khoms became a center for processing esparto grass, used in the production of quality paper. Mainly under the management of Jews who moved there from Tripoli because of t…

The Ben Yehuda Society for the promotion of spoken Hebrew, headed by Jacob Fargion and Sion Saul Adadi, was established in Tripoli, Libya, in 1931 by young Zionist men eager to read Hebrew periodicals from Palestine in order to deepen their knowledge of events there and in the Zionist world. Self-taught in modern Hebrew, they set out to make Hebrew the spoken language of the whole community. They started Hebrew courses for adults followed by afternoon classes for children in the Ha-Tiqva school; in both cases, classes were gender-based. The number of children increased from …

Zliten lies on the Mediterranean coast about 93 miles (150 kilometers) east of Tripoli, Libya. Little is known about the town’s Jewish community before the eighteenth century, but it numbered more than seven hundred in the twentieth. Most of the local Jews were craftsmen, peddlers, and small merchants, but there were a few wealthy traders and moneylenders. In the late nineteenth century Zliten’s Jews were involved in the processing and exporting of esparto grass for paper production.Zliten is famous for the Bu-Shayf synagogue, the focus of numerous miracle tales and a pilgri…

The oldest Jewish settlements in Libya were in Jebel Nafusa (Nafusa Mountain), also known as al-Jabal al-Gharbī (Ar. Western Mountain) and Adrar n Infusen (Ber.). The region extends some 170 kilometers (106 miles) southwest of Tripoli to the Tunisian border, and includes the areas around Yefren, Gharian, and Nalut. It is a mountainous desert plateau interspersed with deep valleys and fertile oases. Due to its rough terrain, governments located in the coastal areas historically found Jebel Nafusa…

1. Middle East and North AfricaJewish journalism in the Middle East and North Africa began in 1842 with the Ladino weekly La Buena Esperansa in Izmir (Smyrna). Between then and the end of the twentieth century, over eight hundred Jewish newspapers and periodicals were published in the region, many quite short-lived. Published by and about Sephardim and Mizraḥim, they appeared in regional, Jewish, and European languages, in a variety of formats and frequencies, differed great in longevity, and covered a wide range of t…