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: