The Jewish Community of Mosul
Mosul
In Arabic: الموصل
City in N. Iraq, on the Tigris river.
Jews settled in Mosul, or rather in ancient Nineve, a suburb of which probably stood on the site of the present Mosul, on the left bank of the Tigris, when Shalmaneser, King of Assyria (730-712 B.C.E.), conquered Samaria.
In the middle of the seventh century there was a Jewish community in Mosul living in a special quarter called Machallat Al-Yahud (the Jewish quarter; according to Ibn Al-Fagih B.G.A. V p. 129; Batadhuri, Futuch, 1907, p. 340). In the middle of the tenth century the Jewish philosopher Ibn Abi Sa'id Ibn Uthman Sa'id Al-Mawsili lived in Mosul and through another Jew asked a contemporary Arab-Christian philosopher to settle several philosophical questions.
During the first half of the 12th century the Jewish community of Mosul increased when a Muslim principality was established there. It was ruled by Atabeg Zangi (1127-46) and his sons who sought to unite all the small kingdoms in the vicinity of Mosul, to expand his domain up to Syria, and later to make a joint attack on the crusaders. Many Jews who had suffered from the crusaders in Eretz Israel came to the town and placed themselves under the protection of the Muslim rulers, who did not harm them. The traveler Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Mosul before 1170, found "approximately 7,000 Jews headed by Rabbi Zakkai (b. Azariah b. Solomon), the nasi who claimed to be from the Davidic line, and Rabbi Joseph , who is called Burhan Al-Falak (ar. "Globe"), who is the (astrologer) to the King Zein Al-Din" (Benjamin, Travels, p. 94). Rabbi Pethahiah of Regensburg, who visited Mosul about ten years later, found more than 6,000 were of the Davidic line. The nesi'im had the authority to imprison transgressors. Every Jew paid a tax, one dinar per year, half of which was for the authorities and half for the nesi'im. They had fields and vineyards.
In 1289 the head of the flourishing community was the exilarch David b. Daniel. He, together with 11 members of the local rabbinical college, signed a letter threatening Solomon Petit of Acre, the opponent of Maimonides, with excommunication (Graetz, Gesch, 7 (c. 1900), 166). After a brief period of prosperity at the beginning of the Il-Khan rule, at the time of the Vizier Sa'd Al-Dawla in the second half of the 13th century, there followed a swift decline and harsh setbacks which impoverished the community. The savage Tamerlane, who captured the city at the end of the 14th century, caused great harm to its inhabitants. Nevertheless, there was a great yeshivah in the city at the beginning of the 16th century, which sent one of its students to the Adoni family to serve as rabbi of the Baghdad community (a. Ben-jacob, Kehillot Yehudei Kurdistan (1961) 34-36).
in 1848 the traveler Benjamin ii found 450 Jewish families there (Benjamin II, Masei Yisrael (1859), 34). In the 20th century, there was no improvement in the situation of the Jews of Mosul. They remained enclosed in their neighborhood, most of them poor and ignorant, a few of them merchants. Schools established by the Alliance israelite Universelle in 1906 (for boys) and in 1912 (for girls) were closed at the outbreak of World War I. In about 1930 schools for boys and girls were established by the philanthropist Eliezer Kadoorie, but there was no Jewish high school. A few children attended government schools and a very small number attained a higher education.
probably because of their lowly position the Jews of Mosul did not arouse the envy of their neighbors and were not persecuted. Nevertheless, they lived in great fear throughout this entire period. The rabbis of the community were not highly regarded. During World War I the chief rabbi of the community was Rabbi Elijah Barazani, and from the 1920s, his son Rabbi Solomon Barazani (d. 1960), who remained in this position until he emigrated to Israel in 1951. In the years 1950-55 all the Jews of Mosul emigrated to Israel.