Misplaced Pages

Damascus affair

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Humus sapiens (talk | contribs) at 05:15, 26 January 2004 (new stub). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 05:15, 26 January 2004 by Humus sapiens (talk | contribs) (new stub)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

1840 February. A Capuchin friar and his servant are found dead in Damascus before Jewish Passover, and the Turkish governor and the French consul believe the blood libel accusations. A fake investigation is staged and Solomon Negrin, a Jewish barber, confesses under torture accusing other Jews. Two die under torture, one converts to Islam to escape it. More arrests and atrocities follow, culminating in the seizure of sixty-three Jewish children held as hostages and mob attacks on Jewish communities throughout the Middle East.

Sir Moses Montefiore, backed by European influentials (British Lord Palmerston, French lawyer Adolphe Cremieux, missonary John Nicolayson, among others), leads a delegation to the ruler of Syria Mehemet_Ali_(Egypt) in Alexandria. He secures the release of the captives and pursuades the Sultan of Turkey to issue a firman (edict) stopping the spread of blood libels in the Ottoman Empire.