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ABSTRACT
Iraq's second city Mosul was once home to an ancient Jewish community whose history coincided in part with that of Baghdadis who were the majority of Iraqi Jews, but also differed significantly. This article compares experiences in the first half of the twentieth century, drawing on a key but little-known source, Ezra Laniado's Yehude Mosul (1981) which used extensive oral history interviews conducted in the 1970s with surviving community members, including eyewitness accounts of crucial events. Those narratives are often at variance with those of Baghdadi Jews. Laniado's work can make an essential contribution to re-evaluating the history of Iraqi Jews by integrating that of communities from the north. There are understandable reasons for the relative neglect of Mosul's Jewish community in English language histories of Iraq's Jews, but taking them more into account raises wider questions of representation. Including more marginalized Jews from outside Baghdad who had complex relationships with multiple other groups might require rethinking existing perspectives and adding nuance. A critical discussion of Laniado's memorial to his community explores possible reasons why it has been largely overlooked despite being such a unique source.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 “Mosul” is the customary spelling in English, as used by Moslawis themselves and by Laniado as well as other writers. Actual pronunciation especially of the “o” vowel varies but a hard “ts” or “tz” for צ is not generally used.
2 Rejwan, Jews of Iraq, 195.
3 Yehuda, The New Babylonian Diaspora.
4 Moreh and Yehuda, Al-Farhud:The 1941 Pogrom in Iraq.
5 Gat, The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948–1951.
6 Bashkin, New Babylonians; Julius, “New Babylonians” [Review].
7 See, for instance, the various studies by Ben-Yaakob, Brauer, and Zaken on the Jewish communities of Kurdistan.
8 Laniado, Yehude Mosul [The Jews of Mosul], 89. All translations the author’s own.
9 Shields, Mosul Before Iraq.
10 Laniado, 322.
11 Ibid., 92.
12 Ibid., 92–96.
13 Civil Administration Mesopotamia, “Mosul Report.”
14 Laniado, 95.
15 Ibid., 95.
16 Ibid., 97.
17 Jardine, Diary.
18 Stafford, Tragedy of the Assyrians.
19 Ben Zvi, Lost and Regained.
20 Brauer Jews of Kurdistan, 71; Gavish, Jewish community of Zakho, 172.
21 Gavish, 206–210.
22 Laniado, 111.
23 Hansard, April 5, 1939.
24 Bashkin, Mosul as Paradise, 160–161.
25 Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times, 116.
26 Zaken, Jewish Subjects in Kurdistan, 303.
27 Laniado, 121.
28 Ibid., 120.
29 Ibid., 119.
30 Ibid., 120.
31 Zaken, 304.
32 Meir-Glitzenstein, 26–33.
33 Laniado, 129.
34 Zaken, 324.
35 Laniado, 105–106.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., 124–125.
38 Ibid., 126–127.
39 Ibid., 129.
40 Ibid., 367.
41 Ibid., 385.
42 Ibid., 15.
43 Jastrow, “Ein Text im arabishen”, 7.
44 Ibid., 11.
45 Mosul Jewry Institute programme.
46 Laniado, 13.
47 Ibid., 11.
48 Ibid., 11.
49 Ibid., 29.
50 Beth-Hillel, Unknown Jews in Unknown Lands.
51 Laniado, 13.
52 Ibid., 15–16.
53 Ibid., 410–411.
54 Ibid., 291.
55 Rosman, How Jewish is Jewish History?
56 Gavish, 2–3.
57 Sabar, “Review,” 283–285.
58 Schwartzbaum, “Folk Literature” (Review), 389–397.
59 Mosul Jewry Institution, unpublished programme for a conference in December 1988 in Nahariya.
60 Naor, “City of Two Springs,” 329–349.
61 Personal communications by email in 2020. Several elderly Moslawi Jewish men and women participated in an online webinar with Omar Mohammed together with the author.
62 Omar Mohammed, website “Reviving the Jewish memory of Mosul”. Accessed July 2, 2024. https://mosuljewishmemory.wordpress.com/
Additional information
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Dena Attar
Dena Attar was a Senior Lecturer in Education and Language Studies at the Open University. She has specialized in women's and girls' education and gender and literacy. She received a DPhil from the University of Sussex in 2003 and an MA in Hebrew and Jewish Studies from UCL in 2019.