|
|
 Re: اليهود في السودان (Re: Hassan Farah)
|
Gabriel WarburgNOTES ON THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN SUDANIN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES JEWISH COMMUNITY IN SUDANIN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIESGabriel R. Warburg, Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern history at the University of Haifa, specializes in themodern history of Egypt and Sudan. He has held research fellowships in several universities, including theUniversity of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, the Annenberg Research Center in Philadelphia, St.Antony’s College, Oxford, and the Wissenschaftkolleg zu Berlin. Professor Warburg is the author of numerousbooks, of which the latest is Historical Discord in the Nile Valley, published in London in 1992. His most recentarticle is “Sectarian Politics in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan: The Emergence of Neo-Mahdism Reconsidered,”which appeared in Sudan Notes and Records, 2000.When Muhammad Ahmad b.‘Abdallah proclaimed himselfMahdi (the Guided One) of theSudan in June 1881, there wereonly eight Jewish families there, allof whom lived in Omdurman andall, except one, of Sephardi origin.The best known is Moses Ben-Sion(Coshti), son of Rabbi MayerBechor Coshti of Hebron. He wasamong the Jews and Christianswho were compelled to convert toIslam during the Mahdiyya – thethirteen-year period of Islamic ruleestablished by the Mahdi’s conquestof Khartoum in 1885. In hisBiographical Dictionary of the Sudan,Richard Hill wrote that Ben-Sion,known as Musa Basiyouni after hisconversion to Islam, was entrustedby the Khalifa ‘Abdullahi, theMahdi’s successor, with variousconfidential missions and becameone of his financial advisers.1Basiyouni was not unique in takingon such a role; severalEuropean Christians who hadserved in the Turco-Egyptianadministration of Sudan, such asRudolf von Slatin Pasha, convertedto Islam and became associatedwith the Mahdist state.As far as we know, this was thebeginning of the small Jewish communityof Sudan. We have hardlyany written sources about thiscommunity, since, unlike theJewish communities in otherMuslim countries, a study of itshistory has not yet been undertaken.We have only scattered informationabout several better-knownSudanese Jewish families. TheBasiyounis, for example, are thesubject of an unpublished paperpresented in 1996 at the SudanStudies Association by ProfessorRobert Kramer.2According to Kramer, MosesBen-Sion, son of a Sephardi rabbi,was born in 1842 in Palestine (analternative source names his birthplaceas Izmir). With his Turkishbornwife, he migrated first toEgypt and later to Sudan, where,by 1880, he was appointed agent ofan Egyptian trading company.After his conversion to Islam, heand his family settled in theMasalma district of Omdurman.Kramer writes:Life for Basiyouni in MahdistOmdurman was not one ofunremitting suffering. A confidantof the Khalifa Abdullahiand a member of the Khalifa’sinformal advisory council (“al-‘Ashara al-Kuram”), he wasentrusted with the importationof Egyptian luxury goodsthrough Sawakin. ... At theurging of the Khalifa, Basiyounitook a Sudanese wife by thename of Manna bt. [bint] Bishara,who bore him six children, fourof whom survived childhood. ...After the Mahdiyya, Basiyouniretained his Ansari name butformally reverted to Judaism. Arabbi was summoned fromAlexandria to convert SittManna, and Basiyouni remarriedher according to Jewishpractice. 3Much more information on theJews of Sudan is to be found in therecent book by Eli Malka, Jacob’sChildren in the Land of the Mahdi:Jews of the Sudan, published in 1997by Syracuse University Press. EliMalka was born in Omdurman in1909 and lived there until his emigrationin 1964, first to Switzerlandand later to the United States. Hisfather, the late Rabbi Solomon(Shlomo) Malka, Chief Rabbi(Hakham) of Sudan from 1906 until1949, left a manuscript in Hebrewon the early history of Sudan’sJews, which unfortunately waslost. However, Eli Malka was ableto gather information for his bookfrom Sudanese Jewish communityleaders whom he interviewed inthe United States, England, Israeland Switzerland, as well as fromhis own recollections. In addition,we now have a collection ofspeeches and memoirs by RabbiSolomon Malka, compiled by hisson David S. Malka and publishedby Book-Mart Press in 1999.Following the Anglo-Egyptianconquest of Sudan in 1896–1898,most of the Jewish families thathad converted to Islam during theMahdiyya returned to Judaism,and the men who had marriednon-Jewish wives had them andtheir children converted to Judaism.However, according to theevidence presented to Kramer,many of these Jews remained inthe Massalma district of Omdurmanand retained their Muslimnames. Some of them, such as theMandeels, the Isra’ilis and theHakims, remained Muslims. Thisdid not prevent them from maintainingclose, friendly relationswith Jews like the Basiyounis, whohad reverted to Judaism followingthe end of the Mahdiyya.According to Yusuf Bedri, a wellknownSudanese intellectual andeducator, “people didn’t stronglydistinguish between Muslims,Christians and Jews, since alldressed alike and visited and atetogether on Fridays.”4After the re-conquest of theSudan by the Anglo-Egyptianarmy, these early “MahdiyyaJews,” as they were known inSudan, were joined by additionalJewish families who arrived primarilyfrom Egypt and Palestine,laying the foundation for Sudan’sJewish community. In 1908 thecommunity elected Musa Basiyounias its president for life, a post heheld until his death in 1917. TheBasiyouni family remained inSudan and its members continuedto play an important role in thecountry’s educational and intellectuallife until the early 1970s, whenthe Jewish community ceased toexist.There was no synagogue in theearly years, and Jewish serviceswere held in rented premises until1926. During the presidency ofJoseph Forti (1921–1926), the communitypurchased a small plot ofland on Victoria Avenue, laterrenamed Kasr Avenue, and built aspacious synagogue there. TheJewish community reached itspeak in the 1930s and 1940s, whenit numbered some 800–1,000 members.This still made it a very smacommunity compared with thoseof Egypt, Iraq or North Africa.However, as offers of governmentand other posts attracted youngJews to Sudan, primarily fromEgypt, the newly built synagoguewas filled to capacity. Jews arrivedin Khartoum from all over Sudanfor High Holiday services, makingthe synagogue the center of thecountry’s Jewish communal andreligious life.5 The community alsobuilt a Jewish recreation and sportscenter. The young Jews ofKhartoum and Omdurman sooncompeted at soccer, tennis andother sports and established theSudan Maccabi sports club.The Jews enjoyed a peaceful andprosperous life. Many of the moreprominent ones, together withwell-to-do members of otherminorities, lived in Khartoum’sluxurious neighborhoods, wherethey owned spacious villas andfrequented their neighborhoodclubs. Most had Sudanese-Muslimfriends with whom they socializedon a regular basis. Jews filled anumber of important positions inthe Sudanese administration andeconomy. Among the many institutionsmentioned by Eli Malka ashaving Jewish officials are theKhedival Mail Line, which had aJewish manager, the SudanGovernment Post Office, theNational Bank of Egypt and theSudan Government PassportOffice.6 Jews owned or wereagents of important Sudanese,Egyptian, or European commercialcompanies. They also excelled asdoctors, lawyers, opticians anduniversity lecturers. For example,Dr. Suleiman Basiyouni, son ofBen-Sion Koshti, was chief surgeonat the Sudan GovernmentKhartoum Hospital and professorat the Khartoum University Schoolof Medicine. Even the owners ofthe popular Gordon Music Hall inKhartoum, Jimmy and Trudy Kane,were Jewish refugees from NaziGermany. What is especially surprisingis the number of prominentJews, such as Nissim Gaon, LeonTammam, and the Dweik andMalka families, who started theircareers rather humbly in Sudanand subsequently achieved worldrenown as businessmen and philanthropists(Malka, pp. 134–146).Jews started leaving Sudan afterits independence in 1956. Accordingto Malka, this was primarily aresult of the 1956 Suez war and theArab–Israeli conflict and had littleto do with the policy of Sudan’sindependent governments, whichshowed no special animositytowards the Jews (Malka, p. 125).The last president of the JewishCommunity in Sudan was IshagMousa El-Eini, the Sudan-born sonof Mousa Israel El-Eini. He waselected to the post in 1965 andserved until 1970, when he departedfor England. By then, in theaftermath of the Six Day War,hardly any Jews remained inSudan (Malka, p. 60).Eli Malka’s account is devoted primarilyto his own life and that ofhis family and thus relies mainlyon his own recollections, as one ofthe few surviving eyewitnesses ofthe community’s history. Hisfather, Rabbi Solomon Malka, wasborn in Morocco in 1878 and immigratedto Palestine when he wastwenty years old. He studied inSafed and Tiberias, where hereceived his rabbinic ordination. In1906 he was sent to Omdurman byRabbi Eliahu Chazan, then HakhamBashi of Alexandria. Rabbi Solomonregularly published his sermonsin al-Shams, an Arabic-languageJewish newspaper published inCairo. They were later collectedinto a volume and published underthe title Al-mukhtar fi tafsir althawrabi-kalam al-hakham SalmonMalka (Cairo 1949).Eli Malka received his early educationin the Catholic Missionaryschools in Omdurman andKhartoum. He completed hissecondary education at the ChurchMissionary Society English BoysBoarding School in Cairo andreceived degrees in commerce andmercantile law from ComboniCollege in Khartoum and WolseyHall, Oxford University. He wasthus primarily a product of EnglishChristian education, and it is notsurprising that he joined theBritish-founded Sudan CulturalCenter upon his graduation fromOxford. However, he remained anobservant Jew and a leader of theSudan Jewish community, both inSudan and in exile.Malka’s business career, whichbegan in 1928, was centered on thefamous Gellatly Hankey Company,the leading British internationalcompany in Sudan and the surroundingregions. Established inLondon in 1862, it opened its firstbranches on the Red Sea duringthe Mahdiyya, in the 1880s, inSawakin on the Sudan side andJedda on the Arabian side. In 1953Eli Malka became head of thenewly founded Gellatly TradingCompany of Sudan, with branchesin many Sudanese towns as well asin Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti andCairo. It became one of the mostimportant import-export tradingcompanies in the Sudan, withdepartments covering every aspectof Sudan’s foreign trade (Malka, p.158). The Gellatly Group of companiesin Sudan was nationalized byPresident Ja‘far al-Numeiri in 1972,during the period of “SudaneseSocialism,” and was renamed the“May Trading Company” in commemorationof the revolution thatswept Numeiri and his FreeOfficers to power in May 1969.Malka had left the company fiveyears earlier, when his wife’s medicaltreatment in London requiredthe family to leave Khartoum.In his capacity as director ofGellatly Trading Company, Malkatravelled all over Sudan and tomany neighboring countries,where he visited the company’sbranches and trading associates.He describes one of his visits toJuba in southern Sudan, where“most of the shopkeepers wereNorthern Sudanese Muslim Arabs,but the population ... was primarilyAfrican Negro Blacks.” Onanother occasion, in 1933, Malkatraveled to the Nuba Mountains insouthern Kordofan to meet hisBritish managing director, Mr.Mcfarlane, and his wife. ThoughMalka went there especially inorder to host the Mcfarlanes, thelatter became the guests of theBritish District Commissioner,who took them to his house for thenight. “In classic British style,”Malka tells us, “we were excludedfrom the Nuba General Assembly,which was held early in the morningentirely for the benefit of theBritish Community.”Thus, even the Anglophile EliMalka, educated and brought upon English traditions and cultureand a senior manager in a Britishownedfirm, could not fail to noticethat he, like all other “natives,”was excluded from associatingwith his British superiors on suchoccasions. This is reminiscent of anaccount by Edward Atiyah, aMaster at Gordon College in the1920s and 1930s. In his memoir, AnArab Tells His Story, Atiyah relateshow he was excluded from associatingwith British Masters at thecollege, though he was both aChristian and an Oxford graduate.He had lived with an English familyat Oxford, but he could not mixwith his colleagues in Sudan. Hewas especially embittered when,during a visit by the GovernorGeneral, all “native” staff memberswere ordered to remain in theirCommon Room and were excludedfrom the ceremony. Malkarelates, however, that his father,the Hakham Bashi SolomonMalka, was invited to mix withBritish officialdom, along with fellowMuslim and Christian notables,on those occasions when theGovernor General invited “native”community leaders to his palace.Malka’s description of a 1946trip with his wife Dora to Erkowit,a summer resort built in the RedSea Hills to enable British officialsto escape the summer heat, illustratesthe difference in this regardbetween British officialdom andSudanese notables. At Erkowit, theMalkas were invited together withtheir Greek friend and family doc-tor, John Papadam, to join Sayyid‘Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, leaderof the Ansar sect, for his afternoontea. Sayyid ‘Abd al-Rahman, theonly surviving son of the Mahdiand at the time one of Sudan’sleading entrepreneurs, had reassembledthe Mahdist supportersin the Ansar movement afterWorld War I. In 1945 he establishedthe Umma party, which hasremained a dominant element inSudanese politics ever since. Hewas the most important Muslimleader in Sudan, and his gesturetoward Papadam and the Malkastypifies the tolerant attitude ofprominent Sudanese Muslim leaderstoward the Jews and otherminorities in northern Sudan. Hewent out of his way to be hospitableto non-Muslims, while theAnglo-Sudanese officials and businessmenhad no inclination tosocialize with them and snubbedthem whenever possible.The Jewish community in Sudanmaintained close relations with theJewish community in Egypt,where most of them had familyties. Since Malka’s father was chiefrabbi of Sudan, he was closelyassociated with Haim NahumEffendi, Hakham Bashi of Egyptand the Sudan from 1925 to 1960,who had appointed him to hispost. The Sudanese Jewish elitealso had close connections with theCattawi family, which presidedover the Jewish community inCairo until 1946, and with theMosseri family, whose memberswere vice-presidents. The sons ofSudanese Jews were often sent tostudy in Egypt, both to furthertheir Jewish education and to graduatefrom Victoria College.Finally, a few words on theneighboring Jewish communities,with whom the Sudanese Jewscommunicated on a regular basis.As director of Gellatly, Malkaoften visited Eritrea, Aden andEthiopia. During these visits hebecame friendly with local Jewishfamilies and always attended synagogueservices. Upon attendingprayers at the Asmara Synagogueon a Friday night, he was amusedto find three Orthodox AshkenaziJews from Israel taking part in theSephardi services and enthusiasticallyjoining with other membersof the congregation in singing theAdenese Yemenite melody for thehymn Lekha Dodi. He was alsostruck by the close relationsbetween the Jewish communitiesin Addis Abbaba and Asmara andtheir non-Jewish neighbors. Jewsfrom both Eritrea and Yemen usedto pass through Khartoum en routeto Jerusalem, where they werebound either as pilgrims or as settlers.By the early 1970s, the formermembers of the small but flourishingJewish community of Sudanwere scattered in Europe, theUnited States and Israel. Thesources we have at our disposal,including Eli Malka’s book, completedin his 87th year, do notamount to a history of theSudanese Jewish community.Rather, they constitute an indispensablesource for historians ofJewish communities in Muslimstates and for those interested inthe role and fate of non-Muslimminorities under Muslim rule. Thehistory of Sudan’s small Jewishcommunity has yet to beresearched and written.1. Richard Hill, A Biographical Dictionary ofthe Sudan2, London 1967, p. 782. Robert S. Kramer, “The Death ofBasiyouni: A Meditation on Race,Religion, and Identity in the Sudan,”paper presented to the 15th AnnualMeeting of the Sudan Studies Association,May 1996, Alexandria, Virginia.The following paragraphs, unlessotherwise noted, are based on Dr.Kramer’s paper with his kindpermission.3. Ibid., p. 5. Rudolf von Slatin, who wasalso a confidante of the Khalifafollowing his surrender, did notmention his womenfolk in his memoirs.However, one of his fellow-prisonerstold the story of Slatin’s two wives, thefirst a Fur girl whom he brought withhim when he surrendered to the Mahdiin December 1883, and the second anAbyssinian who bore him a childshortly after his escape fromOmdurman in 1895 (Charles Neufeld, APrisoner of the Khaleefa, London 1899, pp.206–207).4. Kramer, “The Death of Basiyouni”(above, note 2), p. 11, quoting hisinterview with Yusuf Bedri on June 30,1987. According to Eli Malka, all theJews reverted to Judaism after the endof the Mahdiyya and had their Muslimwives and children converted as well,with the exception of the Mandeelfamily, whose founder became aprominent Sudanese journalist. See EliMalka, Jacob’s Children in the Land of theMahdi: Jews of the Sudan, White Plains,NY, 1997, pp. 16,19–22.5. In 1986, the few remaining Jews inKhartoum sold the synagogue to acommercial bank, and it was replacedby an office building (ibid., p. 50).6. It is of interest to note that Malkaworked in the supply department of theSudan Defence Force shortly after itwas founded in 1925. However, thoughhe mentions the assassination of Sir LeeStack in November 1924 and theAllenby Ultimatum that followed, hedoes not associate these events with thefounding of the SDF (ibid., pp. 111 and157).26Bhttp://www.academy.ac.il/SystemFiles/21077.pdfhttp://www.academy.ac.il/SystemFiles/21077.pdfhttp://www.academy.ac.il/SystemFiles/21077.pdfhttp://www.academy.ac.il/SystemFiles/21077.pdf
(عدل بواسطة Hassan Farah on 07-27-2017, 12:26 PM)
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
Hassan Farah
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست