Baghdad
as a Jewish city
It
has often been said that New York is a Jewish city. I think
one can safely say the same about Baghdad of the first half
of the twentieth century.
To
have an idea of the city’s demography and the position
of the Jews in those five decades, it is enough to glance
at these few facts of statistics:
In
1904, the French vice-consul in Baghdad gave the number
of Jews in the then Ottoman Baghdad vilayet as 40,000, out
of a total population of 160,000.
In
1910, a British consular report estimated the number of
Jews in Baghdad as ranging from 45,000 to 50,000.
In
October 1921, a British publication quoted these population
figures for the city as given in the last official yearbook
of the Baghdad vilayet: total number of inhabitants, 202,200,
of whom: 80,000 were Jews; 12,000 Christians; 8,000 Kurds,
800 Persians; and 101,400 Arabs, Turks and other Muslims.
A
proclamation issued by the British military Governor in
the early 1919’s fixed the number of sheep to be slaughtered
daily in Baghdad East (al-Risafa, the more populous half
of the city) at 220 for Jewish butchers and 160 for Muslim
and other butchers.
In
the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce most of the members were
Jews and the administrative council consisted of 8 Jews
and 8 Moslems.
Nessim Rejwan
Israel
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