Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World

OAS seeArmée Secrète (OAS, Algeria)oases, of Khaybar, Khaybaroaths  imposed on Jews in the Muslim world, Egypt physician’s, Amatus Lusitanus (Amato Lusitano)Obadia, Hakki, Obadia, HakkiObadiah, Ibrāhīm, Arabic Literature (Modern), Jewish Writers inObadiah, Isaac, Greece (pre-1824) ​Obadiah of/da Bertinoro, Aliya to Palestine before Zionism, Bertinoro, Obadiah da, Khaybar, Palestine, Synagogues in the Islamic World, Tripoli, Lebanon, Ben Ezra Synagogue, Cyprus, Prostitution, Sholal (Solal), Nathan (Jonathan) ha-Kohen on Egyptian Jews, Egypt  Cairo community, C…

Orlov Revolt (1770), Morea, MoreaOrman, Joseph, Romania (Ottoman) Örneklerle Türk–Yahudi Basınının Tarihçesi (History of Turkish–Jewish Press with Examples, Benbanaste), Benbanaste, Nesim Orot Elim (Rams’ Skins, Eliezer ben Isaac Papo), Papo, Eliezer Orot ha-Ḥayyim-Yefa’er ‘Anavim (Sidi Fredj ben Abraham Ḥalimi), Ḥalimi, Sidi Fredjorphans, education of, EducationOrphans’ Decree ( gezerat ha-yetomim, Yemen), ConversionORT seeOrganization of Rehabilitation through TrainingOrtaköy neighborhood (Istanbul), Jewish community in, Istanbul, Ottoman EmpireOrtayli, I…

Ottoman-Israelite Union, Young Turk Movement, Jews andOttoman-Turkish Sephardic Research Center, Şarhon, Karen GerşonOttoman-Venetian Wars, Morea, Morea, Ashkenazi, SolomonOttomanism, Millet, Ottoman Empire, Kohen, Moïse (Tekinalp, Munis) Jewish support for, Ottoman Empire and Zionism, Ottoman Empire

Ouarzazate region (Morocco)  French rule of, Ouarzazate (and region) Jewish communities in, Ouarzazate (and region)  end of, Ouarzazate (and region)  Jewish quarters, Ouarzazate (and region)  merchants/peddlers, Ouarzazate (and region)Oublal, Ida, Tata and RegionOujda (Morocco)  anti-Jewish riots in (Oudja-Jerrada riots), Morocco, Oujda, Zionism Among Sephardi/Mizraḥi Jewry, Oujda - Jerrada riots Jewish community in, Oujda, Marciano, Eliahou Raphael, Oujda - Jerrada riots  Algerian Jews, Oujda   dhimmī status of, Oujda  Jewish quarters in, Oujda  Jews from …

Operation Ezra and Nehemiah (popularly called Operation Ali Baba) was the name given to the airlift in 1950 and 1951 that transported 119,000 Jews, the vast majority of the Jewish community of Iraq, to Israel. From the establishment of the State of Israel and the 1948 war on, Jews were persecuted and prohibited from leaving Iraq. Persecution of Jewsreached its peak in 1949 under Prime Minister Nūrī al-Saʿīd. When his government resigned in December 1949, persecution eased somewhat. In February 1950, the newly appointed prime minister, Tawfīq al-Suwaydī, a moderate pro-British pol…

Between June 1949 and September 1950, 41,914 Yemenite Jews left the British Crown Colony of Aden for Israel in an airlift that was initially called Operation Magic Carpet. Yemenite Jews had assembled in the British colony in hopes of immigrating to the Jewish state. The airlift that took them, at the time the largest airlift the world had seen, was called Operation Magic Carpet and subsequently Operation on Wings of Eagles, with reference to Exodus 19:4: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and…

Or-Ahayim (Heb. Or ha-Ḥayyim, Light of Life) Hospital in Balat, Istanbul, opened in 1887. It was originally an institution for needy Jews but now serves the general public. It was founded by idealistic doctors and philanthropists led by Dr. Captain Rafael Bey Dalmediko. Other members of the founding group included Dr. Avramino de Castro, Abraham Gerson, Admiral Dr. İzak Molho Paşa (the inspector general of the Ottoman fleet, later vice-admiral, d. 1920), Jakob Habib, the banker Jozef Halfon, Robert Levi, Yuda Levi Kebapçıoğlu, Samuel Rizzo, Elia Suhami Rafael Levi, Dr. İzidor Grayver…

Oran (Ar. Wahrān; Sp. Orán) is a major Algerian city located on the Mediterranean coast approximately 500 kilometers (311 miles) west of the capital city of Algiers. The Jewish presence in the area dated from Antiquity, when Jews are believed to have settled near the town of Yfri, thereby entering into close contact with local Maghraoua (Maghrāwa) Berber tribes, several members of which are likely to have converted to Judaism. This nascent Jewish community was joined by Spanish Jews fleeing persecution by the Visigothic king Sisebut in the early seventh century. In 903, …

Orléansville (which became El Asnam and present Ech-Chelif) is a city in western Algeria, located about 200 kilometers (124 miles) southwest of Algiers at an altitude of 140 meters (459 feet), at the convergence of the Chelif and Tsirhaout rivers. The modern city was founded in 1843 by Marshal Thomas Robert Bugeaud(1784–1849) on the ruins of the Roman settlement of Castelum Tingitanum, and it was he who named it Orléansville. About half of its Jewish settlers came from Miliana, roughly 70 kilometers (44 miles) upriver. Jews played a major part…

The Orphans’ Decree, the reinstatement by Imam Yaḥyā (r. 1918–1948) of an older Zaydī law, required the conversion to Islam of Jewish orphans in Yemen. It was enforced only sporadically during his reign.The term Orphans’ Decree (Heb. Gezerat ha-Yetomim) refers to the reinstatement of a Zaydī law in Yemen requiring the conversion of orphaned Jewish children to Islam. The law had been implemented in previous centuries but had not been enforced by the Ottomans during the period that they controlled the Yemeni highlands in the late nine…

Rab Joseph Or Shargā (Shragā) was a rabbi in eighteenth-century Yazd who was believed to have possessed miraculous powers. He was born in Sabzehvār around the middle of the eighteenth century and died in Yazd in 1793. His shrine in Yazd has become a pilgrimage site for both Jews and Muslims.Many stories and legends were associated with Rab Or Shargā during his lifetime and after his death. In one tale, a Muslim pilgrim from Yazd is on the way to Mecca. His ship is caught in a storm and about to founder. The other passengers pray with no result, bu…

1.  From 1300 to 1492 BackgroundThe Ottoman Empire (Ott. Tur. Devlet-i Âliye-yi Osmâniyye; Tur. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu; Ar. al-Dawla al-ʿUthmānīyya) emerged from a group of Turkic principalities in western Anatolia. The conventional date for the foundation of the Ottoman state is 1299, when one Osman (r. 1299–1324), the son of Ertuğrul, made the town of Söğüt his capital and embarked on a series of raids against neighboring villages and towns. In 1302, the Ottomans faced and defeated the Byzantines for the first time in the Battle of Nicaea, whence Osman’s forces moved on to capture most…

Ouarzazate(Ar./Berb. Warzāzāt) was the region with the last major Jewish settlement on the southern slopes of the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco before one entered the southern interior toward Sous and the Sahara. The origins of the Jewish community are unknown. The first detailed reference to the cluster of communities in Ouarzazate comes from Charles de Foucauld, who visited the region in 1883. He noted that Tikirt was the largest Jewish settlement in the region. In the second decade of the twentieth century, Nahum Slouschz reported that about 240 Jews lived in the valley o…

Founded in 994 C.E. and located in eastern Morocco adjacent to the Algerian frontier, Oujda (Ar. Wajda) sits upon the crossroads of the north-south trade route leading from the Mediterranean to Sijilmasa and the east-west route that links Tlemcen and Fez. The ancient Jewish cemetery of Qbūr el-ihūd testifies to the antiquity of the city’s Jewish community. The original Jews of Oujda may have been Judaized Berbers (see Berber Jews). As elsewhere in Morocco, the community later received an influx of Jews of Andalusian descent (Sephardim). With the establishmen…

The anti-Jewish riots in the eastern Moroccan towns of Oujda and Jerrada in 1948 occurred in a region that still had not recovered from the devastating 1945 famine, in the context of the tense relationship with France arising after Sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Youssef's speech in Tangier (1947) calling for an end to the protectorate. Equally important were the deteriorating political situation in the Middle East, the United Nations partition for Palestine, and the clandestine Jewish emigration to the newly declared State of Israel. A steadily increasing number of Moroccan …

Oulad Mansour (Awlād Manṣūr), in the rural hinterland of southern Morocco , is a small cluster of tiny villages situated off the Marrakech-Demnat road. It is part of Sidi Youssef Ben Ali province, in the municipality of Ouhat Sidi Brahim. Until the early twentieth century it was a pastoral community.As in many other villages in Morocco, the Jews lived in a separate Jewish neighborhood called the mallāḥ (mellah). In Oulad Mansour, the mellah was an amalgam of houses in the village of Ksar Tessaout, named after the nearby Oued Tessaout, which empties into Oued Oum er-Rabia.The origins of th…

see SousDaniel Schroeter

Clément (Raḥamim) Ouziel (1867–1955), born in Tatar-Bazardik, Bulgaria, began teaching at the Alliance Israélite Universelle School for Boys in Tunis in 1887. From 1892 he headed the AIU boys school in Haifa and founded the AIU girls’ school there. In 1895 he became principal in Damascus, and in 1898 in Jerusalem. In 1900 he was appointed director of the AIU School for Boys in Tunis, a post which he retained until 1935. In 1905 he opened two AIU schools in Sfax, one for boys and the other for girls, both of which continued to function until around 1963. As director of the School for Boys in Tuni…