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The First Jews from Aleppo in Manchester: New Documentary Evidence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2009
Extract
Professor Meir Benayahu's collection of documents includes a contractual agreement between some Jewish merchants in Aleppo and a hakham by the name of Yeshaya Attia. In it, Attia undertakes to go to the city of Manchester in England to serve as the spiritual leader of a colony of Aleppine merchants there. The document is very important because it enables us to fix, with a high degree of probability, the date of the founding of the Aleppine community in Manchester, the first of many communities of Jews from Aleppo in the West. The document also sheds light on the reasons why Jews emigrated from Aleppo to Manchester and the way in which they organized into a community in their new home. This article traces the background of Jewish emigration from Aleppo to Manchester and the model that the mother community of Aleppine Jewry adopted in dealing with communities made up of emigrants from Aleppo.
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This article is dedicated to the memory of Raphael Elyadin, my teacher and friend.
page 191 note 1. The Hebrew text of the document will be found at the end of this article. I am grateful to Prof. Meir Benayahu for having placed it at my disposal.
page 192 note 2. Hitti, P. K., The Syrians in America (New York, 1924), p. 109.Google Scholar T. Philipp also deals marginally with the Jewish emigration from Syria to Egypt and its motivations. See Philipp, T., The Syrians in Egypt, 1725–1975 (Stuttgart, 1985).Google Scholar
page 192 note 3. The few studies that have addressed this subject are Sutton, A. D., Magic Carpet: Aleppo in Flatbush (New York, 1979);Google ScholarZohar, Z., Tradition and Change [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 22–27Google Scholar, and Harel, Y., “Changes in Syrian Jewry, 1840–1888” [Hebrew] (Ph.D. diss., Bar-Ilan University, 1992), pp. 380–383.Google Scholar
page 192 note 4. See Antebi, A., Mor ve-Oholot (Livorno, 1842), p. 94aGoogle Scholar, hoshen mishpat, n. 13; Labaton, M., Nokhah ha-shulhan (Izmir, 1868), p. 77a, hoshen mishpat, n. 24, p. 112b, hoshen mishpat, n. 24; hoshen mishpat, n. 39.Google Scholar
page 192 note 5. On this phenomenon, see Harel, “Changes in Syrian Jewry,” pp. 139, 238–240.
page 192 note 6. On the Jewish view of the incidents in Aleppo, see at length in my “Jewish-Christian Relations in Aleppo as Background for the Jewish Response to the Events of October 1850,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 30, no. 1 (1998): 77–96. On the incidents in Damascus, see Fawaz, L. T., An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (London, 1994). On the Jewish angle in these events, see Harel, “Changes in Syrian Jewry,” pp. 261–270.Google Scholar
page 192 note 7. Ma'oz, M., Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine, 1840–1860 (Oxford, 1968), p. 241Google Scholar
page 193 note 8. On the influence of the Francos, their consular status, and their business activities, see Lutzky, A., “The ‘Francos’ in Aleppo and the Effect of the Capitulation on Its Jewish Inhabitants” [Hebrew], Zion 6 (1941): 46–79; Y. Harel, “The Status and Image of the Picciotto Family in the Eyes of the French Colony in Aleppo” [Hebrew], Michael 14 (1997): 171–186; idem, “The Controversy over Rabbi Ephraim Laniado's Inheritance of the Rabbinate in Aleppo,” Jewish History 12, no. 2 (1998) (in press).Google Scholar
page 194 note 9. France, Archives du Ministère des Affaires Ètrangères, Correspondance consulaire et commerciale, Alep, vol. 33, Bertrand, Alep, 21.3.1865; Sutton, Magic Carpet, p. 62
page 194 note 10. Great Britain, Public Record Office, Foreign Office Archives (F.O.) 78/1279, Skene to Stratford de Redcliffe, Aleppo, July 28, 1859. The merchants were members of the Picciotto, Altaras, and Gabbay families.
page 194 note 11. F.O. 78/1865, Aleppo, Nov. 16, 1865. The family names of the Jewish merchants are Bejo, Gubbay, Shami, Ezra, Sacal, Dueck, Laniado, Sasson, Raffoul, Batis, Attia, Shalom, Shayo, Cassab, Ades, Cohen, Shamah, Sitton, Diab, Ziamma, Shalem, Silvera, Harari, Pinto, Tajer, and Hera. Some of these names are signed on the document in question. On the control of Aleppine Jews over most of the trade with Europe, also seeNeymark, E., Journey in the Land of the East [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1947), p. 67.Google Scholar
page 194 note 12. See at length inTibawi, A. L., A Modern History of Syria (Edinburgh, 1969), p. 139.Google Scholar
page 195 note 13. On this phenomenon, see at length inPamuk, S., The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism 1820–1913 (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar
page 195 note 14. On tolerance toward Jews in British society until the end of the nineteenth century, and its motives, seeRubenstein, V. D., “The Jewish Economic Elite in Britain, 1815–1939,” in Jews in Economics [Hebrew], ed. Gross, N. (Jerusalem, 1985), pp. 325–329.Google Scholar
page 195 note 15. SeeWilson, D., Rothschild: Wealth and Power [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1991), pp. 24–25;Google ScholarChapman, S. D., “Nathan Meir Rothschild's Establishment as a Banker,” in Jews in Economics [Hebrew], ed.Gross, N. (Jerusalem, 1985), pp. 304. See also W. F. Zenner's forthcoming article, “Bourgeois Immigrants: Syrian Sephardim in Manchester.” I thank Prof. Zenner for allowing me to read his manuscript.Google Scholar
page 196 note 16. Halliday, F., “The Millet of Manchester: Arab Merchants and the Cotton Trade,” British Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1992): 161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 196 note 17. Sutton, J. A. D., Aleppo Chronicles: The Story of the Unique Sephardeem of the Ancient Near East in Their Own Words (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1988), p. 58Google Scholar
page 196 note 18. SeeWilliams, B., The Making of Manchester Jewry (New York, 1976), pp. 320–321, and Zenner, “Bourgeois Immigrants.”Google Scholar
page 196 note 19. F.O. 195/1113, Skene to Elliot, Aleppo, Feb. 10, 1876.
page 196 note 20. The sources testifying to the first arrival of Christian merchants from Syria and Lebanon in Manchester also indicate that this occurred in the 1850s. See Halliday, “Millet of Manchester,” pp. 164–165
page 196 note 21. On the periodization of the Ottoman economy in the nineteenth century, see Pamuk, Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, pp. 10–17. On the decline of the textile industry, see Ibid, pp. 108–129.
page 197 note 22. On the Jewish-Sephardic immigrant colony in Manchester and its development, seeWilliams, , Making of Manchester Jewry, pp. 319–325.Google Scholar See alsoGubbay, L. and Levy, A., The Sephardim: Their Glorious Tradition from the Babylonian Exile to the Present Day (London, 1992), pp. 207–208.Google Scholar
page 197 note 23. See the testimony of Chaim Nehmad in Halliday, “Millet of Manchester,” p. 167.
page 197 note 24. For an example of a complicated commercial partnership, see Dayan, J., Zeh ketav yadi (Jerusalem, 1986), p. 152, hoshen mishpat, n. 7.Google Scholar
page 197 note 25. See, for example,Dayan, A., Zikkaron le-nefesh (Jerusalem, 1985), p. 56.Google Scholar On the supply of teachers and ritual slaughterers from Aleppo to the satellite communities, see Neymark, Journey in the Lands of the East, p. 69. On the shipment of etrogim and lulavim from Aleppo to the satellite communities, see, for example,Laniado, R. S., Beit dino shel Shelomo (Jerusalem, 1982), p. 70,Google Scholarorah hayyim, n. 15;Dayan, M., Yashir Moshe (Livomo, 1879).Google Scholar See also HaLevi's, Rabbi Yosef Yadid comments on Aleppo's influence on the satellite communities, in his She′erit Yosef, pt. 1 (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1974), p. 326, even ha′ezer, n. 1.Google Scholar
page 198 note 26. See, for example, the list of the virtues of Rabbi Abraham Dueck HaCohen, who left Aleppo to serve as the rabbi of the Antioch community in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, as they are enumerated byHaCohen, S.Dueck, in Emet Me′eretz (Jerusalem, 1910), pp. 27a–28a, n. 4.Google Scholar
page 198 note 27. See at length in Harel, “Changes in Syrian Jewry,” pp. 75–76
page 198 note 28. On the Aleppine immigrant colonies in South and Central America, particularly in Mexico City, seeHalabe, Liz Hamui de, ed., Los Judios de Alepo en Mexico (Mexico City, 1989);Google Scholar on the emigration to America, seeChira, R., From Aleppo to America (New York, 1994), and Sutton, Magic Carpet.Google Scholar
page 198 note 29. On the preservation of the Aleppine lifestyle in other countries, see, for example, Sutton, Aleppo Chronicles.Identification with the community of origin and close ties to it were characteristics of Syrian emigration in general. See Halliday, “Millet of Manchester,” p. 168 andKarpat, K. H., “The Ottoman Emigration to America,” 1860–1914, International Journal of Middle East Studies 17 (1985): 193.Google Scholar
page 199 note 30. On the temporary nature of their settlement abroad, see, for example, Dueck, Emet Me ′eretz, p. 44b, n. 34.
page 199 note 31. On these rabbis and their writings, seeHarel, Y., Sifrei eretz: The Rabbinic Literature of the Scholars of Aram Zova [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 235, 216–217, 334, 280–287, 307–314.Google Scholar
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