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Ezekiel's Tomb (al-Kifl)
(707 words)
The traditional tomb of the biblical prophet Ezekiel is situated in the village of al-Kifl (coll. Ir. Ar. al-Chifl) on the Euphrates River, 32 kilometers (20 miles) south of the town of Hilla in central Iraq. The name of the town is from Ezekiel’s epithet of Dhū ʾl-Kifl (the Guarantor) in Islamic lore (Ezekiel, Ar. Ḥizqīl, is not mentioned in the Qurʾān). The first known mention of the tomb is in the Epistle of Sherira Gaon (
Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaʾon) in the tenth century. Benjamin of Tudela visited the shrine around 1170 (Adler ed., pp. 67-68). His account notes that “people come from a distanc…
Mahdiyya, al-
(520 words)
Al-Mahdiyya is a coastal city in present-day Tunisia, 200 kilometers (124 miles) south of Tunis, founded by the first Fatimid caliph, ʿUbayd Allāh al-Mahdī (r. 909–934), to be his capital in place of Qayrawan. The establishment of a capital on the coast represented a singular break with Islamic tradition, which since the time of the conquests in the seventh century was to build new urban administrative centers inland away from the Byzantine Sea (as the Mediterranean was called). Al-Mahdiyya did not replace Qayrawan …
Blood libels
(11 words)
see Anti-Judaism/Antisemitism/Anti-Zionism; Damascus Affair (1840) Norman A. Stillman
Maqāma (- āt) (poetic form)
(17 words)
see Music, al-Ḥarīzī, Judah ben Solomon (c. 1166-1225) Norman A. Stillman
Contributor Biographies. Contributors
(25,035 words)
Abdar, Carmella PhD Among her main areas of expertise are folk art and material culture of Yemenite Jews, mainly rural communities. She has published several articles: “The dress code as an expression of ethno-religious status of the Jews”; “The Habbanic bride’s dress in 1950s in Israel—a bridge between past and present”; “The Yemenite jewelry and the myth of antiquity” She wrote the book Weaving a Story [Hebrew, 1999] about a village in Yemen and edited the book Maʾase Rokem: Dress and Jewelry in…
Date:
2015-09-03
Court Jews
(3,572 words)
As throughout Diaspora history, there were Jews in the Islamic world from the Middle Ages up to and including the modern era who served as officials and retainers at the courts of Muslim rulers. They served in much the same capacities as their coreligionists who served at courts in medieval Western Europe and in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Central Europe as physicians, advisers, bankers, and purveyors of goods and services to the ruler. Like their European counterparts, they often acted as intermediaries (Eur. Heb.
shtadlanim) with the authorities on behalf of their br…
LICA (La Ligue Internationale contre l'Antisémitisme Allemand)
(448 words)
LICA was the acronym of La Ligue Internationale contre l’Antisémitisme Allemand Formée par Toutes les Oeuvres et Institutions Juives en Egypte. It was founded in April 1933 under the name of La Ligue Contre l’Antisémitisme Allemand Formée par Toutes les Oeuvres et Institutions Juives en Egypte in conjunction with mass protests organized by the B'nai B'rith lodges in Cairo and Alexandria to counter increasing Nazi activity and propaganda in Egypt. The league was headed by a committee of important Jewish public figures. One of the founders was Léon Castro, a lawyer, journalist, and Wafd P…
Duwayk, Shaul
(15 words)
see Duwayk (Dweck, Dwek, Duek, Douek, Doweck, Dowek) Family Norman A. Stillman
Al-Andalus
(10,143 words)
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name throughout the Middle Ages for the Iberian Peninsula, including what is today both Spain and Portugal, although with the progress of the Reconquista, the name al-Andalus came to be limited to Muslim-ruled territory, which eventually was only the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. The name al-Andalus (Ar. al-Andalīsh) has been connected to the Vandals, who had given the name Vandalacia to the former Roman province of Baetica. Arabic-speaking Jews used the term, and Moses Maimonides, even years after he had immigrated to Egypt, wo…
Qalʿat Banī Ḥammād
(515 words)
Qalʿat Banī Ḥammād (also known as Qalʿat Ḥammād and Qalʿat Abī Ṭawīl) was the capital of the Hammadid dynasty in the Central Maghreb (today Algeria) during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The fortified town, which today lies in ruins, sits in the Maadid Mountains and dominates the Hodna Plain 500 meters (1,640 feet) below. The site was chosen by Ḥammād ibn Buluggīn in 1008 as his stronghold when he broke from the authority of his nephew, the Zirid ruler in Qayrawan, Bādīs ibn al-Manṣūr (r. 996–1016). At first, the population of the town was mainly made up of Ḥammād’s fel…
Ratti-Menton, Benoît Ulysse-Laurent-François, Count de
(13 words)
see Damascus Affair (1840) Norman A. Stillman
Onomastics
(18 words)
see Names and Naming Practices - Kurdistan Names and Naming Practices - Yemen Norman A. Stillman
Heqdesh (Qodesh, Waqf, Ḥabs)
(990 words)
Charity and social welfare have since ancient times been an integral part of the Jewish communal ethos. Already in biblical times, funds and property could be consecrated to the needs of the Temple (Bet ha-Miqdash) in Jerusalem (e.g., see II Kings 12:5–17; Mishna Temura 7:2, Sheqalim 4:7). The term for dedicated property was
heqdesh (consecrated). The Talmud forbade the dedication of
heqdeshproperty in the biblical sense following the destruction of the Temple, since the misappropriation of such property would have constituted sacrilege (Heb.
meʿila). But in the Middle Ages bo…
Anqāwa (Al-Naqawa), Ephraim
(493 words)
Ephraim ben Israel Anqāwa (fl. late 14th to early 15th century), known to his devotees simply as Rab (Heb. master), was a Sephardi rabbinical scholar, philosopher, and physician who became a leading saint in the Maghrebi Jewish pantheon of holy men (Heb.
ṣaddiqim). His tomb in Tlemcen became an important site of pilgrimage (Ar.
ziyāra). Ephraim was born in Toledo, where his family had lived since the twelfth century and had their own synagogue, established by his great-uncle Abraham ben Samuel, who was murdered in 1341. Ephraim’s father, Israel ha-Qadosh (Heb. the martyr), was the …
Identité et Dialogue
(14 words)
see Azoulay, André; Assaraf, Robert; Berdugo, Serge Norman A. Stillman
Anqāwa (Al-Naqawa), Raphael
(429 words)
Raphael ben Mordechai Anqāwa (Raphaël Encaoua and also Ankaoua in the usual French transcription) was a leading Moroccan halakhic authority. The scion of a distinguished Sephardi rabbinical family, he was born in Salé in 1848. He was a pupil of Issachar Assaraf, the chief rabbi of Salé, whose daughter he married. At the relatively young age of thirty-two, he was appointed
dayyan in Salé. His reputation for judicial acumen spread his name throughout Morocco. In 1910, he published his collection of responsa
Qarne Reʾem (The Horns of the Buffalo) in Jerusalem, which enhanced his …
Wargla
(461 words)
Wargla (Warglān; Fr. Ouargla) is an oasis town in the Algerian Sahara located 659 kilometers (410 miles) southeast of Algiers. It was once an important way-station on the caravan route to Timbuktu and West Africa. Nothing is known about the town before the Islamic period. The Muslims of medieval Wargla were adherents of the Kharijite Ibāḍī sect, which was generally tolerant of Jews. The Jewish community in Wargla during the Middle Ages was apparently a Karaite center and is noted as such by Abraham ibn Ezraand Abraham Ibn Da’ud. In his commentary on Exodus 12:11, Ibn Ezra ment…
Duwayk, Jacob Saul
(16 words)
see Duwayk (Dweck, Dwek, Duek, Douek, Doweck, Dowek) Family Norman A. Stillman
Ghriba Synagogues
(550 words)
Ghrība (Coll. Ar. wondrous, unique) is the name given to seven supposedly ancient synagogues in Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria which are considered to be holy places and have become pilgrimage sites. The most famous of the Ghrība synagogues is the one in the village of Dighet near Hara Seghira on the island of Jerba. The others are located in Yefren and Mʿanin (actually between Mʿanin and al-Qsir) in the Jebel Nafusa region of Libya, in Le Kef in southern Tunisia and Ariana on the northeastern coast, and in Bône (Būna) and Biskra in Algeria. Many of the Ghrība shrines are in places that …
Women
(23 words)
see Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah; Clothing, Jewelry and Make-up; Education; Life Cycle Practices; Marriage; Prostitution; Polygyny; Veiling Norman A. Stillman
Academic Study of Islamicate Jewry
(12,763 words)
Prior to the second half of the twentieth century, much of the research devoted to the Jews of the Islamic world followed in the paths established by the Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars of the nineteenth century and dealt with the history, literature, and thought of the medieval period. Judeo-Arabic civilization was one of the major foci of Wissenschaft scholarship, as too were aspects of Hispanic Jewish history and culture—but only for the classical Islamic Middle Ages (ca. 850–1250) in the…
Date:
2014-09-03
Tiferet Yisrael School (Ar. al-Madrasa al-Waṭaniyya al-Isrā'īliyya)
(384 words)
The Tiferet Yisrael (Glory of Israel) School in Beirut, known in Arabic as al-Madrasa al-Waṭaniyya al-Isrā'īliyya (The Jewish National School), was established by Ḥakham Zakī Cohen and his son Salīm in 1874. It was one of the first and more successful indigenous attempts to create a modern Jewish religious school in the Arab world. Due to financial difficulties, the school closed after one year, but it reopened as a boarding school in 1878 and attracted students from Damascus, Aleppo, Jaffa, and even as far away as Istanbul and Izmir. By 18…
Amram ben Diwan
(457 words)
Amram ben Diwan is one of the best-known saints (Heb.
ṣaddiqim) in the pantheon of Moroccan Jewish holy men. According to tradition, he was a rabbinical emissary (Heb.
shadar or
meshullaḥ) from Hebron, who arrived in Morocco with his son, Ḥayyim, sometime in the eighteenth century and took up residence in Fez. When Ḥayyim fell gravely ill, Rabbi Amram prayed, offering his life for that of his son, who miraculously recovered. Shortly thereafter, while on a visit to Ouezzane to collect funds for the religious institutions in Hebron, he fell ill and died and was buried in the nearby cemetery of As…
Romanelli, Samuel
(588 words)
Samuel Romanelli was born in Mantua on September 19, 1757. Little is known about his youth, but clearly he had a superb Jewish and secular education in the Italian Jewish tradition. An accomplished linguist, he was fluent in ten languages. He was a poet, playwright, and translator of European literature into Hebrew. In 1786, while returning home to Italy from London, he was stranded in Gibraltar (see Gibraltar) and, strapped for funds, accepted an offer to accompany a merchant on a business trip to Morocco. Losing his passport, Roman…
Rassemblement Mondial du Judaïsme Marocain
(17 words)
see Zionism in the Maghreb to be combined Norman A. Stillman
Barukh, Marco
(399 words)
Marco (Joseph Marcou) Barukh, an early apostle of pre-Herzlian Zionism in the Muslim world, was born in Constantinople in 1872. He studied at several European universities and because of his involvement in radical student groups was under police surveillance for much of his brief adult life. His involvement with Jewish nationalism began in 1893 when he joined the Kadimah student association in Vienna. The following year he was in Algeria, where he tried to propagate the Jewish national idea among the rapidly assimilating Algerian Jews. He published a short-lived journal,
Le Juge, bu…
Sacred Grottoes, Pools, and Trees
(25 words)
See Pilgrimages and Pilgrimage Rituals, Saints' Tombs (Modern Period), Saints' Tombs Venerated by Jews and Muslims Norman A. Stillman
Kāhina, al-
(415 words)
Al-Kāhina (Ar. the sorceress) was the name given by the Arabs to the leader of the Berber Jerāwa tribe in the Aurès Mountains region of the Central Maghreb (present-day Algeria). The name reflected the fact that she was an ecstatic who prophesied and performed divinations. Al-Kāhina led the resistance against the Muslim Arab invaders after the fall of Byzantine Carthage in 692/93 to Ḥassān ibn al-Nuʿmān. She inflicted a major defeat on him and drove his forces out of Ifrīqiya (modern Tunisia) almost to Tripoli. For several years, she held sway over a lar…
Executive Editor's Introduction
(4,122 words)
Why an Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World? Until the middle of the twentieth century, over a million Jews lived in the Islamic world, some 800,000 of them in the Arab countries. Some of these Jewish communities were very ancient, as in Iraq and Iran, where there had been a Jewish presence since the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century B.C.E. In most other Middle Eastern and North African countries, there had been Jews since Greco-Roman times, long before th…
Tlemcen
(2,104 words)
Tlemcen (Ar. Tilimsān) is a city in western Algeria situated 138 kilometers (86 miles) southwest of Oran, 91 kilometers (56 miles) west of Sidi Bel Abbès, and 63 kilometers (40 miles) east of Oujda across the Moroccan border. Nourished by springs and called Pomaria (city of orchards) in Roman times, Tlemcen lies at the crossroads of major east-west and north-south trade routes. Although Arab historians state that Judaizing Berber tribes lived in the area at the time of the Islamic conquests, there is no evidence for a Jewish presence in Tlemcen at that time. 1. Middle Ages to the Almoh…
Ibn Mishʿal, Aaron
(332 words)
According to a legend still current in Morocco, Aaron ibn Mishʿal was a rich Jew who became the ruler over the Muslims living in the Taza region of east-central Morocco early in the second half of the seventeenth century. As tribute Ibn Mishʿal took Muslim maidens into his harem each year until the sharif Mawlāy Rashīd, the founder of the Alawid dynasty (r. 1666–1672), went to his residence disguised as a maiden, killed him to avenge the honor of Muslim maidenhood, and took his wealth. This foundation legend of the Alawid dynasty has been analyzed in detail by the French scholar Pierre de Ceniv…