Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T15:29:20.786Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

10 - Hezekiah Shabetai's Struggle against Deposition in Aleppo

Yaron Harel
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Get access

Summary

‘And you shall take them to the Tent of Meeting’ [Num. 11: 16]. He [God] said to him [Moses]: Take them [i.e. persuade them] with words. First tell them words of praise: Happy are you that you have been appointed. Then go and tell them about their faults: You should know that they [the sons of Israel] are troublesome and stubborn people; you take [this task] upon yourselves [knowing] the condition, that they will curse you and stone you.

Sifrei bamidbar, ‘Beha’alotekha’

The Beginnings of Modernization

For the Jews of Aleppo, the seeds of transition from the old world to the new were sown during the early decades of the eighteenth century, as a result of the first prolonged encounter of local Jewry with European Jewish merchants who settled in their city, coming to be known as the ‘Francos’. The decision of European Jews to settle in Syria and to establish commercial bases there derived from a complex mixture of economic and political considerations. They saw that a window of business opportunity had opened in Syria—particularly in Aleppo, which for centuries had served as a bridge in the international trade between East and West. France was the most important European commercial presence in the area at the time, French economic involvement in the Middle East having grown through the establishment of the French Levant Company, the capitulation agreements signed with the Ottoman empire in 1673, and the special status granted to the port of Marseilles in 1699. The French trade led in turn to an increase in the number of Italian Jewish merchants in Aleppo, who enjoyed the protection of France for the purposes of their dealings with the Ottoman empire. Thus the Italian Jewish colony in Aleppo grew in both number and prosperity. At its head was the Picciotto family, whose members also enjoyed the protection of the French consul.

The expansion of the Franco colony in Aleppo laid the foundations for the modernization of the Jewish communities of Syria. The changes associated with this process during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries took several forms:

(a) change in the social composition of the community, which led in turn to social unrest, reshaping of the communal institutions, movement of population from the villages to the cities, and, finally, to increasing emigration overseas;

Type
Chapter
Information
Intrigue and Revolution
Chief Rabbis in Aleppo, Baghdad, and Damascus 1774–1914
, pp. 272 - 308
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×