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THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Abraham Seumech.

Though the Jews inhabited a certain quarter of the city, to live in that quarter was not compulsory upon them. Of the nine synagogues which Benjamin the Second mentions, eight were situated in one court while the ninth was a large building, resting on sixteen columns, called "Bet ha-Kcneset Sheik Isaac Gaon," in a side room of which building the body of that saint was

interred The trade of

Bagdad with India was then

largely

Bagdad

d'Asie,"

ii. 66, 97, 104) there were in the year 1890 53,800 Jews in the vilayet of Bagdad, of whom 52,500 lived in Bagdad, 500 in Hilla, and 800 in Kerbela. He gives the number of primary schools as 52, of synagogues as 26, and of cemeteries 2. The

women and young

children were at that time enmanufacturing what is called the "agabani," a garment made of European stuffs embroidered with India silk. The trade in Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities is largely in the hands of the

gaged

in

Girls' School of the alliance Israelite Universelle, at Bagdad. (From a photograph by D. Gazala, Bagdad.)

hands of the Jews, who had manufactories in This is Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore, and Canton. corroborated by the evidence of the Rev. Henry A. in the

("Dawningsof Light," p. 46, London, 1854), who says: "Jews are the governing element of the place. They have their stored booths in every bazaar, occupy all the principal caravansaries, and entirely control the business of banking and monopoStern

lies."

Stern estimated the Jewish population in his

16,000, as against 1,500 Christians and 40,000 Moslems. The Jews were at that time divided into

day at

"

Persian and Arabian. On March 27, 1845, a " herem (ban) was launched against all who had any connection with the missionaries (compare " Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland," 1848, ii. 373). In 1860 H. Petermann of Berlin found 1,300 Jewish families in Bagdad, of whom 2,300 persons paid the poll-tax. The oldest Jewish families, he says, came there from Ana on the

Euphrates.

According to

Cuinet ("La Turquie

Jews of Bagdad 1901, p.

(Delitzsch, "Babylon," 2d edition,

5).

Of the history of the Jews during the second half In of the nineteenth century very little is known. 1876 and 1877 the city was attacked by a plague, and the Jews suffered terrible hardships in consequence. For a lime they were compelled to leave the city and to camp in the wilderness (" Ha-Zeflrah, " iii., No. 26, p. 202; iv.,

No.

20, p. 157;

No.

24, p. 188;

No.

28,

Jews to their non-Jewish brethren seems, for the most part, to have been In 1860, however, an attempt was made amicable. to deprive the Jews of the Tomb of Ezekiel, situated a short distance outside of the city, and visited by Jews in the month of Ab. The Anglo-Jewish Association interposed in the matter; and the tomb was given back to its proper owners. A similar difp. 221).

The

relation of the

ficulty arose in the year 1889

with regard to a shrine

"Nabi Yusha"or "Kohen Yusha," situated about an hour's walk from the city in a small building called