Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela documented the flourishing Jewish life under the Abbasid Empire during Islam’s Golden Age, highlighting the stark contrast between the prosperity of Jews in Baghdad compared to their persecution in Europe, centuries before the rise of the Zionist movement disrupted historical Jewish-Muslim coexistence
In the seventh century, the Prophet Muhammad revolutionised Arabia through his egalitarian message. He uprooted an oppressive hierarchical social structure and ended a cycle of reprisals and warfare, laying the foundation for Islam’s Golden Age. The Prophet gave Arabs a sense of community, making them a force to reckon with. The Arab influence expanded rapidly just a hundred years after the Prophet’s passing, with the extension of their realm from the Iberian Peninsula’s Ebro River in the west to the Indus (modern-day Pakistan) in the east, over 8,000 km away.The golden age marked the flourishing of Arab culture, learning, science, commerce, and manufacturing. The Arabs built schools, universities, and great cities such as Cairo and Baghdad. A culture of openness and acceptance drew people of all persuasions, including the Jews, who helped Arabs acquire Greek learning and science as they found protection. Christendom’s dark ages coincided with the golden age of literature for Jews and Arabs.
The golden age marked the flourishing of Arab culture, learning, science, commerce, and manufacturing. The Arabs built schools, universities, and great cities such as Cairo and Baghdad. A culture of openness and acceptance drew people of all persuasions, including the Jews, who helped Arabs acquire Greek learning and science as they found protection. Christendom’s dark ages coincided with the golden age of literature for Jews and Arabs.
Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela (Spain), who travelled through Europe and the Middle East in the 12th century, found that Jews thrived under the Abbasid Empire at the peak of the Islamic Golden Age, unlike in Europe, where restrictions would often degenerate into violence against them. He saw firsthand how Jews were treated as undesirables and banished outside the protective walls of Constantinople, then the center of the Christian Byzantine Empire.
Equals in The Abbasid Empire
Benjamin of Tudela wrote that no Jews lived in Constantinople and that they were confined to an inlet of the sea. He called the condition of Jews ‘very low’, noting the Greeks hate them, subject them to great oppression, and beat them in the streets. Benjamin reported that 40,000 Jews lived as equals in Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Empire, while over 2,500 of their co-religionists struggled on Constantinople’s fringes.
Benjamin of Tudela detailed the beauty of 28 richly decorated synagogues spread throughout Baghdad. The Great Synagogue of the Head of the Captivity among the 28 synagogues had columns of multi-coloured marble overlaid with silver and gold. Psalms sentences in golden letters adorned the columns.
Benjamin of Tudela wrote about the Muslim caliph’s respect for Jewish officials and institutions and how Muslims of all ranks and Jews paid homage to the Jewish community head Exiliarch. The Jewish wealth and influence, dignity, and civility towards Jews stood out to Benjamin. He called it the defining feature of Jewish life in Islam’s heart.
Common Grounds
Benjamin reported Muslims praying at the Prophet Ezekiel’s shrine in Kifl near Baghdad. Both Muslims and Jews revere Ezekiel, who is believed to have seen God’s visions and is mentioned twice in the Quran. Ezekiel preached in modern-day Iraq in the sixth century BC. He is known as Dhul Kifl in the Islamic tradition. Kilf, located at the centre of routes to the Muslim pilgrimage cities, gets its name from Ezekiel.
Jews particularly thrived in the mountainous north of the Abbasid caliphate (present-day Kurdistan), where Benjamin described Amadiya as a flourishing center of Jewish culture and home to the Navi Yehezqel Synagogue. Benjamin of Tudela reported 25,000 Jews in Amadiya.
Jewish villages stretched from Amadiya to Gilan (present-day Iran), over 800 km away. In parts of what is now northern Iraq and western Iran, Jews outnumber Christians. Benjamin of Tudela reported that the Jews in the mountains were also known for their battle prowess.
Ray Of Hope
A synagogue and a mosque surround Ezekiel’s tomb remains an example of shared reverence for Abrahamic religious figures, offering a ray of hope for rekindling Muslim-Jewish bonhomie. In July 2016, Kilf was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage after the Iraqi government began the restoration around Ezekiel’s tomb in 2009. The outer courtyard of the shrine has a mosque, where the Arabic calligraphy wishes peace upon him. The inner sanctum retains the Hebrew markings to protect its Jewish heritage.
Jews lived in Muslim lands for centuries and contributed to Islamic civilisation. Baghdad’s foundation was laid in 762 after astrologers, including a Jew, chose the auspicious day. It remained a center of Jewish culture for over 700 years after Benjamin’s visit. Over a third of the city’s population was Jewish in the 1920s. Four Jews represent Baghdad in the first Ottoman parliament (1877–78) as the Ottomans implemented Tanzimat (re-ordering) reforms in the 19th century to reflect religious diversity in administration, military, education, etc.
Arab Jews were celebrated for their ancient heritage and rich culture. They remained integrated into a tolerant and multicultural Muslim-majority Iraq, which also had a significant Christian population. Iraq’s Jews, tracing their presence in Babylon for over 2,500 years, were privileged, prosperous, and distinguished sections of society. They were top businesspeople, government officials, academics, musicians, and writers. Iraqi Jews ran religious, educational, and social welfare institutions when their co-religionists faced mass murder in Europe.
The Sassoons were among the prominent Jewish families from Baghdad. Their businesses spanned from Britain to India and the Far East while maintaining ties with Iraq. Iraqi Jews sent their kids to the best schools and were the Crème de la crème in cosmopolitan Baghdad.
The Mortal Blow
The settler-colonial Zionist project, which originated in 19th-century Europe for a Jewish state in Palestine, dealt a mortal blow to the position of Jews in Arab lands. It accelerated attempts to persuade Jews to move to Palestine. The British colonialists helped the project by regulating migration and increasing the Jewish population in Palestine from 9% in 1922 to 27% in 1935.
Three decades after the 1917 British Balfour Declaration for Israel’s creation, an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes to make the Zionist state a reality. Israel’s Law of Return in 1950 entitled all non-Israeli Jews and Judaism converts to Israeli citizenship.
In his book Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew, Baghdad-born former Oxford professor Avi Shlaim uncovered what he described as an ‘undeniable proof of Zionist involvement in the terrorist attacks’ targeting Jews in Baghdad in 1950 and 1951 to persuade them to settle in Israel. The attacks forced around 110,000 of an estimated 135,000 Iraqi Jews to emigrate. The Zionist underground deliberately inflamed anti-Semitism in Iraq even as Ashkenazim, the European Jews, looked down upon Arab Jews, or the Sephardim, and Iraqi Jews were sprayed with insecticide DDT upon arrival in Israel.
The Eurocentric Zionist movement and Israel intensified divisions between Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, Hebrew and Arabic, and Judaism and Islam. They sought to erase an ancient heritage of pluralism, religious tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and coexistence that places such as Baghdad represented, propounding the myths of the clash of the Arab and Jewish civilisations and the rescue of Eastern Jews to the detriment of better Muslim-Jewish ties.
