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11. A Moment in Sephardi History: The Reestablishment of the Jewish Community of Oran, 1792–1831
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11 • A Moment in Sephardi History The Reestablishment of the Jewish Community of Oran, 1792–1831 Saddek Benkada Translated by Allan MacVicar On 27 February 1792, the Algerian regency reconquered Oran and took it from the Spanish for the sec ond time, an unprecedented event for that era and one that was closely related to the extraordinary figure of the bey, Muhammad al- Kabir. The bey’s experience was unique in the Ottoman era in Algeria. His was not any ordinary military victory; rather, the war against the Spanish was undertaken under the banner of jihad, making it clearly religious in nature. It could be said that his was a countercrusade. Despite the religious overtones of the victory, the eighteenth-and nineteenth- century Algerian historians/scribes who acted as Muhammad al- Kabir’s chroniclers make virtually no mention of the bey’s relationship to the non- Muslims with whom he was engaged, namely the Jewish communities in the main cities of the west ern beylik (Beylik al- Gharb), in clud ing Tlemcen, Nedroma, Mostaganem, Mascara, Mazouna, and Oran. As a result, our principal sources regarding the situation of the Jewish community in Oran after the Spanish withdrawal from the city in 1792 come entirely from historians of the colonial period, from the writings of local historians, and from traveling Jewish historians who were particularly interested in the history of the Jewish community of Oran during this time.1 The Oranian Jewish Community under Muslim Dynasties Because of Oran’s proximity to the Iberian Peninsula, it was long a preferred destination for Jewish refugees and exiles fleeing that region. It is highly likely that some of the Jews fleeing persecutions by Sisebot, king of the Goths, in 612– 168 A Moment in Sephardi History 169 613 landed on the North African coast and intermixed with the indigenous population , in clud ing the Azdaja and Ajissa Berber tribes of the Maghrawa confederation who lived in the area that would eventually become the city of Oran in 903. In any event, from the Islamic period onward, a native Jewish community clearly existed in Oran and was economically active. This community was less known for its intellectual activity than that of the west ern Algerian town of Tlemcen, where several rabbinical schools were founded in the tenth century. Talmudic studies experienced a period of significant expansion in the eleventh century, though this period of stability and development among Jewish communities in the main cities of the central Maghrib was soon followed by persecution at the hands of the Almohads beginning in 1132. Persecution of the Jews in Tlemcen and Oran began in 1145. Oranian Jews were subject to relatively greater violence, perhaps because the Almoravid garrison , supported by the local population, fiercely resisted the Almohad siege of the city by "Abd al- Mu’min b. "Ali for a lengthy period of time. As was the case everywhere, those Jews who had somehow miraculously survived the massacre were faced with the choice of emigrating or converting to Islam.2 Once Almohad rule was established, however, Oran enjoyed a period of prosperity. "Abd al- Mu’min constructed shipyards where he built approximately thirty vessels so he could maintain his connection to Andalusia, which he had just conquered and with which he had developed intimate commercial ties. The port quickly became one of the four main ports of the empire, along with Ceuta, Bejaïa, and Tunis. Oran became the central port of the Maghrib and the one most visited on a regular basis by European merchant ships from Barcelona, Marseille, and several Italian cities. The return to a certain measure of po liti cal stability as well as the development of commercial exchanges with Christian nations made the presence of Jews in Oran all the more necessary. Economic and intellectual ties between Andalusian Jews and their counterparts in Oran were strengthened during the Almohad period, to the extent that after the horrific massacres of the Jewish communities in Castile in 1391, Oran became one of the destinations for Jewish refugees fleeing Spain. The demographic, economic, and intellectual importance of numerous Jewish communities in central North African cities was established at this time. The arrival of the megorashim (those who had been exiled from Spain) ensured that Algiers would become one of the principal centers of Judaism in North Africa , and the reconstitution of the Jewish community in Tlemcen in particular was made possible by the arrival of certain eminent rabbis from Spain.3 A century later...