Antisemitic discrimination in the Arab world
Antisemitic discrimination in the Arab world has included unequal legal status, compulsory identifying clothing, restrictions on residence and worship, forced conversion and expulsion. These measures shaped Jewish life across centuries, alongside periods of security, scholarship, trade and participation in government. They also supplied ways to humiliate, dispossess or attack Jewish communities.
In the predominantly Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa, Arab caliphs, Berber dynasties, Ottoman officials and local imams imposed different laws at different times. Enforcement also varied. For attacks and killings, see Antisemitic violence in the Arab world before 1948.
Legal status and social subordination
Under the dhimma, Jews and Christians could retain their religions and communal institutions while paying the jizya and accepting an inferior legal position. Rules could restrict dress, riding, public religious display, the construction or repair of places of worship, and access to office. Protection and subordination were parts of the same arrangement; their practical effects depended on the ruler and local authorities.[1]
Captain Allen History explains the relationship between this inherited subordinate position and resistance to Jewish political independence in his dhimmitude thread. His argument is that a community accustomed to treating Jews as subjects could experience Jewish sovereignty as a reversal of the established hierarchy. He presents this reversal as one historical source of hostility to Israel.[2]
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| Jewish riders in Tunis, around 1900. Garrigues’s postcard, captioned Juifs à Bouricot, is catalogued by the Alliance israélite universelle as two Jews riding donkeys. Photo: Garrigues; AIU, Fonds Isacco, AIUPHOT22710.[3] |
In nineteenth-century Tunisia, before the reforms of 1857, discriminatory rules barred Jews from carrying arms and riding horses or camels. These restrictions made rank visible in everyday movement. Historian Lucette Valensi places them within the legal subordination that the Fundamental Pact of 1857 began to dismantle.[4]
Compulsory Jewish dress before the Holocaust
Compulsory yellow markings for Jews long predated Nazi Germany. Captain Allen traces examples from Baghdad through the medieval Middle East and Christian Europe in his thread of 22 September 2023. Rulers used visible dress distinctions to mark religious minorities and reinforce their subordinate status.[5][6]
| Date and authority | Documented requirement | Historical setting |
|---|---|---|
| 807: Harun al-Rashid, Baghdad | Yellow belts or fringes for Jews. | An early example of compulsory visible differentiation recorded by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[6] |
| 850: al-Mutawakkil, Abbasid caliphate | Honey-coloured outer garments, belts and yellow patches; the details differed by garment, sex and status. | The decree applied to non-Muslim subjects and also imposed restrictions on riding, property and worship. Medieval accounts differ on details of the clothing provisions.[7] |
| 1005: al-Hakim, Fatimid Egypt | Bells attached to Jewish clothing. | Identification could be audible as well as visible.[6] |
| Later medieval and Ottoman periods | Coloured turbans, belts, patches and other local distinctions. | Regulations were renewed and changed; neither a single design nor uninterrupted enforcement can describe the whole region.[8] |
Earlier regulations prescribed belts, fringes, patches, headgear and bells, with forms and colours varying between places and periods. The six-pointed yellow Star of David became especially associated with Nazi persecution.[6]
Christian Europe also imposed compulsory Jewish dress. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 required distinguishing attire; later rulers specified local designs. England’s 1275 requirement used the Tablets of the Law. The Nazis’ badge requirements helped isolate Jews and facilitate their confinement and deportation during the Holocaust.[6][9]
| Ottoman comparison: Constantinople | European comparison: Worms |
|---|---|
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| Jewish merchant in Constantinople, a plate from Nicolas de Nicolay’s Navigations (1568), etched by Léon Davent. The print is monochrome; Nicolay’s accompanying text identifies the merchant’s turban as yellow. Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1975-74-4; public domain, CC0 reproduction.[10] | Jewish man from Worms, Germany, depicted wearing a yellow ring badge in the sixteenth century. This European example illustrates the wider history of compulsory Jewish markings before the Nazi era. Image and source record, public domain. |
Forced conversion, confinement and expulsion
| Period | Place | Measure and consequences |
|---|---|---|
| Twelfth century | Almohad North Africa | Almohad rulers compelled Jewish and Christian communities to convert or depart. Some Jews practised Judaism secretly; others fled.[11] |
| Later twelfth century | Yemen | Forced conversion under Abd al-Nabi ibn Mahdi formed part of the crisis addressed by Maimonides in his Epistle to Yemen around 1172.[12] |
| 1438 | Fez, Morocco | Jews were confined to the first Moroccan mellah, a separate Jewish quarter.[11] |
| 1465 | Fez, Morocco | Killings during the revolution ending Merinid rule were accompanied by forced conversion. Jews were permitted to return to Judaism in 1471.[11] |
| Seventeenth century | Yemen under the Qasimid imams | After Ottoman withdrawal in 1635, Zaydi rulers applied discriminatory laws. Imam Ismail’s reign brought renewed restrictions; the 1667 headgear decree and the subsequent Mawza exile belong to this history.[13] |
| 1679–1680 | Yemen: Mawza exile | Jewish communities were expelled to the coastal region of Mawza. Many died; surviving exiles were eventually permitted to return.[13] |
| 1790–1792 | Morocco under Mulay Yazid | Killing and pillage accompanied expulsion, extortion and public humiliation in several towns, including Tetuan and Fez.[11] |
| Renewed enforcement from 1922 | Yemen | The Orphans’ Decree required the conversion of Jewish orphans to Islam. Families and communities tried to protect children from its enforcement.[14] |
Legal discrimination and physical attacks often overlapped. Confinement could make a quarter vulnerable to pillage; an accusation could lead to arrest, torture or pressure to convert.
See also
- Antisemitism and Holocaust
- Antisemitic violence in the Arab world before 1948
- Violence in Palestine before British rule
- Killings and massacres in Mandatory Palestine
- Zionism and Israel and antisemitism
- Captain Allen History
References
- ↑ Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton University Press, 1984), chapter 1; RELMIN/CNRS, Ibn al-Athir’s account of the 850 decree, including clothing, riding, property and worship restrictions.
- ↑ Captain Allen History, thread on dhimmitude and Jewish sovereignty, also linked and reproduced at Antisemitism: dhimmi status and Israel. Earlier version: September 2023 thread.
- ↑ Alliance israélite universelle, “Deux juifs sur bouricot”, catalogue record, dated 1900.
- ↑ Lucette Valensi, “Tunisie : Espaces publics, espaces communautaires”, Plurielles, no. 3 (1994), sections 1.3 and 2.
- ↑ Captain Allen History, thread on compulsory Jewish dress, 22 September 2023; complete nine-post unroll.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Jewish Badge: Origins”.
- ↑ RELMIN/CNRS, Ibn al-Athir, account of the decree of 235 AH/850 CE, with editorial comparisons to al-Tabari and Bar Hebraeus; Muhammad Afdillah, study of al-Mutawakkil’s edict, section on clothing.
- ↑ Flora Cassen, “The Long History of Forcing Jews to Wear Anti-Semitic Badges” (2023); Sydney Jewish Museum, historical context.
- ↑ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Jewish Badge: During the Nazi Era”.
- ↑ Nicolas de Nicolay, Navigations (English edition, 1585), fols. 131v–132r, quoted and discussed in M. Lindsay Kaplan and Dana E. Katz, “Fashioning Racial Materiality in Nicolas de Nicolay’s Representations of Jews”, Seeing Race Before Race (2023), section “Nicolay’s Jews”, figure 2.2 and note 58.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Encyclopaedia Judaica, Morocco survey; Jewish Encyclopedia, “Morocco”.
- ↑ Maimonides, Epistle to Yemen, introduction and text in Boaz Cohen’s translation.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Yosef Yuval Tobi, “The Jews of Yemen”, in Yemen: From Sheba to Jerusalem (Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, 2020), p. 58.
- ↑ Aharon Gaimani, “The ‘Orphans’ Decree’ in Yemen: Two New Episodes”, Middle Eastern Studies 40:4 (2004), pp. 171–184; JIMENA, Yemen: Jewish History.
