Intrigue and Revolution in the Jewish Communities of Damascus, Aleppo, and Baghdad, 1774-1914

Throughout most of the Jewish world, the modern period has been marked by political power struggles involving rabbis and Torah scholars. In the Middle East, this process of politicization began around the middle of the eighteenth century as European influences began to penetrate the region, and was exacerbated by the Ottoman imperial creation of the position ofh. akham bashi. One of the facts that strikes the student of this period is that very few of those rabbis elected to the office of h. akham bashi either completed their term of office or avoided embroilment in acrimonious conflicts. This book explores the turbulence and controversy so characteristic of Syrian and Iraqi Jewry at this time by building up a detailed picture of the communities in which rabbis were active and scrutinizing the political, social, and economic developments that took place within them.