Burying a Rabbi in Baghdad: The Limits of Ottomanism for Ottoman-Iraqi Jews in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Burying a Rabbi in Baghdad: The Limits of Ottomanism for Ottoman-Iraqi Jews in the Late Nineteenth Century Annie Greene (bio) In mid-September 1889, several Ottoman-Baghdadi Jewish leaders were arrested following an incident of intercommunal violence that had been sparked by the burial of Rabbi ‘Abdullah Somekh (1813–1889) at a shrine compound venerated by both Muslims and Jews outside the city center. A cholera epidemic and state-imposed quarantine had prevented his burial in the Jewish cemetery within the city limits. When the Jewish funeral procession reached the shrine, its members began burying the body, but the Jews were met by a crowd from Karkh, a Muslim neighborhood on the west bank of the Tigris, who attacked them in order to prevent the burial.1 To regain public order, the vali (provincial governor) arrested several of the Muslim men who attacked the Jewish community, but he also arrested twenty-five Jewish leaders the day after the burial. Waves of arrests continued during September and October; in total, sixty-three members of the Jewish community were detained. Jewish leaders were arrested on the bases of rumors and false charges. For example, there were vague claims from the vali’s office that the Jewish community had not received permission to bury Rabbi Somekh and refused an order to disinter him.2 ‘Abdullah Zibaq, the mayor of Karkh, claimed that 5,000 Jews armed with revolvers and martini rifles marched through Karkh to bury “one of their own in a mosque.”3 Baghdadi Jews also faced mob violence from rioters in town, who attacked their homes and businesses. Furthermore, the arrests continued when members of the Jewish community attempted to seek help and justice within the Ottoman Empire’s petitioning system, and outside of the Ottoman Empire, through a press campaign of support within the Jewish diaspora network.4 The outcome of this scandal was mixed. Over a dozen Jews remained in jail until January 1890, by which time the cholera epidemic had subsided, and Somekh had been forcibly disinterred and reburied in the Jewish cemetery in town. Yet, the gains—the dismissal of the vali and the freeing of most of the jailed community members—were the results of the activities of the Baghdadi Jews and their supporters in Istanbul and among European Jewry. [End Page 97] This series of events involving the burial of a major rabbi during a cholera epidemic should be examined by considering the Ottoman-Baghdadi Jewish community’s mobilization of support, both within the Ottoman government and within its confessional diasporic network. The Ottoman-Baghdadi Jewish community petitioned first the Ottoman authorities in Istanbul and then members of their own confessional diasporic network when the Ottoman petition channels yielded no results. While it was within Ottoman state protocol to handle regional crises, the authorities were displeased with foreign intervention and negative press abroad, especially after the Tanzimat (reordering) reforms had been implemented and Ottomanism as a civic ideology and national identity had spread and strengthened.5 The Ottoman-Baghdadi Jewish community identified and acted as both Ottoman imperial citizens and Jews during a moment of intense local crisis in 1889, and it expected protection and justice from the Ottoman sultan while it also used the Jewish press network to broadcast for assistance. I argue that the burial of this important rabbi and the subsequent communications about the violence and the terror from continued arrests demonstrates a non-dominant community navigating the limits of Ottomanism, and how, when this community felt threatened, it claimed entitlement to justice, as Ottoman, on an imperial level and as Jews on a diasporic level. What began as an intercommunal conflict over a burial amidst a cholera epidemic transformed into a protracted conflict: the Jewish community sought justice, while the local Ottoman government proclaimed justice had been meted out. The sources agree on the main narrative—that violence occurred during the burial and Ottoman authorities arrested leaders from the Jewish community on the grounds of disturbing the public order—but they disagree on the details, or they focus on different actors altogether. Avraham Ben-Yaakov describes the narrative of events in his biography of Somekh, which is based on contemporary...