The Jewish Communities Of Baghdad In The19^th And20^thCentunies

The Middle East city is an important carrier of the Jewish culture. Jewish civilization take this space to spread diffusion. Historically, the Jews have made an invaluable contribution to the development of urban civilization in the Middle East.The Jewish community in Baghdad have the longest time, the largest scale and the most influential in the history. This community has been existing as the world Judaism Center.It is an important historical period of the development of Baghdad Jewish community in the19th and20th centuries. With the development of the modernization of the Ottoman Empire; the deepened influence of British Empire;and the closest contaction with Jews in other parts of the world, the ancient Baghdad Jewish community experienced dramatic social change. After the British Mandate, the Baghdad community ushered in a rare golden period in the history of nearly a thousand years. The natural population growth rate soared; career choices were more extensive; educational degree rapidly increased. However, at the end of1940s, the wave of Iraq anti-Semitic upsurges continuously. Baghdad Jewish community which has over1,300years of history withdrew from the stage of history. Because the period in the history of the Baghdad Jewish community is very important, this paper recalling the history of Baghdad Jewish community for nearly a thousand years discussed the huge change under the West civilization from three aspects of political, economic and cultural. Finally, reveal the reasons for the decline of the Baghdad Jewish community. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the article is divided into five parts.The introduction mainly instructs the value of this paper and the research situation of domestic and overseas scholars about this paper. The paper pointed out that the foreign academia early start the research of the Jewish community in Middle East Islamic world, especially after the Iraq war in2003. The Western academia is opening a wave of "Iraqi Jews" research. Many other related topics works have been brought forth, but these works mainly focus on the macro-historical research. Domestic scholars have not yet related the research works of the Baghdad Jewish community.The body is divided into five parts.The first part mainly discusses the establishment and development of Baghdad Jewish community in19th century, and reviewed the organizational structure, population and occupational distribution of the Baghdad Jewish community in the19th-20th centuries. The paper pointed out that the Baghdad Jewish community has been established as early as AD245years. When the Abbas dynasty moved its capital into Baghdad in762AD, the historical destiny of the community is closely linked with the rise and fall of Baghdad. After the reform of Tanzimat in the19th century, the Ottoman Empire restored the direct rule to the Iraq. The stable urban environment made the Baghdad Jewish community revived and moves towards prosperity.The community leadership, charities, synagogues together constituted the basic operation of the Baghdad Jewish community in this period. During this period, the community population rapidly increased, the occupational structure of Jews become more widespread, class differentiation has become more obvious.The second part mainly discussed the political situation of the Baghdad Jews in the19th-20th century. The paper pointed out that with the strengthening of Western influence, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the establishment of British Mandate and the Kingdom, the political status of the Baghdad Jews had been greatly improved. Some public office of Iraqi government began to open to the Jews. In addition, the Baghdad Jews like the other Jews in the world carried out the Zionism movement to rebuild the country, established variety of organizations and struggled to achieve their political goals. At the same time, since the1940s, the Iraqi Communist Party provided a political platform for many young Baghdad Jewish.The third part discussed the business, finance and international trade status of the Baghdad Jews. The paper pointed out that under the impact of Western colonialism, the Islamic businessmen in the commercial, financial and international trade had general decline, but the economic activities of the Baghdad Jews was still very active. The paper analyzes the Baghdad Jews in the economic field suffered less impact than the other ethnic groups in the city mainly due to two factors:firstly, the advantage of language and education made the Baghdad Jews soon became the agent of the West to exploited economic in the Middle East; secondly, the Baghdad Jews has a close business ties with the Jews in other parts of the world, especially the Far East Jews.The paper points out that the inheritance of the nation’s commercial tradition; the reconstruction of international business network and the identify Western colonizers of the local Jewish are important reasons to promote the Baghdad Jewish community economic prosperity of this period.The fourth part introduces the cultural activities of the Baghdad Jews. Facing with the impact of Western civilization, the Baghdad Jewish community had shown its great adaptability. This feature benefits from the introduction of modern education, prosperous of printing and publishing business and a strong folk culture. These all ensure the Baghdad Jewish community accepting the baptism of Western civilization, at the same time, avoid the loss of their own "Jewish traits".The fifth part analyzes the reasons of the Diaspora of Baghdad Jewish community at the late1940s, the paper points out that the rising nationalist movement in Iraq, the negative impact of Zionism as well as the change of the Iraqi government’s attitude to Jewish immigrants were important reasons to contributed to the anti-Semitic activities frequently appear, Jews moved overseas until the community decline.The last part makes a brief review of each of these chapters, at the same time, and points out that as an organic part of the Baghdad city, the Jewish community strongly depend on urban safety and stability. Urban safety is of great significance on the development of minority community.