Conversion, Identity, and Memory in Iranian-Jewish Historiography: The Jews of Mashhad

Abstract

AbstractThe paper discusses the narratives of Jews from Mashhad, who were forced to convert to Islam in 1839. The community narrative as well as academic research is dominated by a modern understanding of religious identity and religious boundaries that fail to account for the diversity of practices among the community of converts, including multiple forms of religious belonging, and the switching of identities according to time and place. Based on historical sources and interviews with descendants from the Mashhadi community, the paper traces how a particular narrative of the history of the Jews from Mashhad prevailed and which significance this narrative entails for Mashhadi community and identity until today. While the Jews from Mashhad are a rather unique case among Iranian Jews–due to the long period in which they lived as converts–their pattern of memory building reflects a general trend among Jews from the Muslim world to assimilate to modern ideas of being Jewish.