Classification
of the Baghdadi Jewish community
By the early
1900s, most prominent Baghdadi Jewish merchants owned satellite commercial
houses in India and Great Britain and had bank accounts in several
countries .On February 27, 1910, Haron Da’ud Shohet, an Iraqi Jew who worked as a dragoman at the British consulate-general in Baghdad wrote a report in which he noted that Jewish merchants, especially, those who resided in Baghdad, personally owned over twenty companies in London and Manchester, in Britain and a comparable number of companies in Kermanshah and Hamadan in Persia. These merchants were able to accumulate enormous wealth by importing goods from Manchester and re-exporting them to Persia, trading mostly in iron, tin, copper, soft sugar, and coffee, as well as wool, and carpets
countries .On February 27, 1910, Haron Da’ud Shohet, an Iraqi Jew who worked as a dragoman at the British consulate-general in Baghdad wrote a report in which he noted that Jewish merchants, especially, those who resided in Baghdad, personally owned over twenty companies in London and Manchester, in Britain and a comparable number of companies in Kermanshah and Hamadan in Persia. These merchants were able to accumulate enormous wealth by importing goods from Manchester and re-exporting them to Persia, trading mostly in iron, tin, copper, soft sugar, and coffee, as well as wool, and carpets
However,
prosperous they may have been, these Jewish merchants were nevertheless a small
minority of the Jewish population in Baghdad, which Shohet estimated the Jewish
population to number between 35,000 and 50,000 individuals - by all accounts the largest
Jewish community in the country
Shohet
classified the Baghdadi Jewish community into four categories: (1) Very wealthy upper class, mostly of
merchants and bankers, who represents 5% of the population. (2) Relatively
large middle class of petty traders, retail dealers, and employees (30%). (3) A majority (60%) who made up a poor
class, and (4) Beggars, who made up 5% of the total population
Wealthy local Jewish resident and emigrant
philanthropists purchased property and made financial contributions to
establish and maintain communal institutions. According to Shohet, the most
prominent Jews of this sort included Meir Elias, a stockholder, who established a school at the
East Gate area of Baghdad for children of poor Jewish families. In addition, he
financed the establishment of a
charitable hospital, the Meir Elias Hospital, which officially
opened on August 27, 1910 at the North Gate area of Baghdad, which offered
its service, free of charge to all Iraqis regardless of religious affiliation. Menahem
Salih Danyel, from the largest landowning family, among the Iraqi
Jews with holdings worth 400,000 Turkish Pounds, donated one of the buildings
to the Alliance Israelite
Universelle for use as kindergarden
for Jewish infants
Shohet
mentions Yusuf Shemtov, a
banker and landowner, and the merchants Sha’ul Hakham
Ishaq and Hesqel Yehuda,
as other principal philanthropists in the community
Shohet also
indentified the location of some of the estates of other prominent Jewish landowners to indicate the disproportionate wealth the
members of the Jewish upper class possessed and the general tolerance
prevalent within Iraqi society at the time that enabled their
success
In his
report, Shohet concluded that the upper class of Jewish Baghdadi society came
to play an integral part in every Jewish communal endeavor.They supervised the
work of all charitable institutions, which included the Society for
the Consolation of the Blind, the Society
for Teaching embroidery, as well as the Rima Kadurie
Hospital for eyes, Meir Elias Hospital,
and Dar al-Shifa’ Pharmacy. In additions, they
helped to establish the clinics in the Jewish schools under the administration,
like Midrash and Ta’woun (co-operation) schools
(*) Chreih,
Amerian University of Beirut
