Memory, Community, and the Mashhadi Jews During the Underground Period

The "converted" Jewish community of Mashhad, one of Shi'a Islam's holiest cities, has a unique history. Evidence is scarce and inaccessible except for one type: the memories embedded in folklore and traditions. Nevertheless, its story has been told several times and from different angles, depending on the tellers' memories, which are sometimes unnervingly silent, sometimes bafflingly conflicting. The need for research regarding these memories, and thus their uses in constructing a community's particular identity, is self-evident. As Anthony D. Smith put it: "[L]ater generations of a particular community are formed in their collective life through the memories, myths and traditions of the community into which they are born and educated." He also asserts that "traditions, myths, history and symbols must all grow out of the existing, living memories and beliefs of the people who are to compose the nation." ¹ This is true of any community, of course. Thus, an interaction of building and rebuilding exists between a community and its collective memory. An examination of one promises valuable insights into the other.

The most intriguing questions in research on nationalism and ethnicity concern how they actually work. Imagined or real, the formation and perpetuation of a national or ethnic unit is a baffling process. The Mashhadi community is a pertinent example. When did the Jewish families in Mashhad become a community? What made them into one?

In answer to these questions, this article will utilize the concept of collective memory in the context originally formulated by Maurice Halbwachs, the well-known, pioneering explorer of the "social framework of memory" in the 1920s, who stated that only social groups determine what is worth remembering and how it will be remembered. It is today acceptable to see collective memory as a social construct. Conversely, what social groups choose to remember not only determines them as a group by creating a common memory for its members but also defines them. ² It is the purpose of the article to explain how this happened in the Mashhadi community by outlining the modes of transmission, the uses of these memories, and what was consigned to oblivion. ³

The Mashhadis in Time and Space

The uniqueness of the Jewish community of Mashhad derives mainly from the subjective feeling of its inhabitants. This feeling of cohesion was complemented by factors derived from its place in time and space. The vicissitudes of the Jewish community of Mashhad are interwoven in the history of the city and indeed the entire northern region of Khorasan. Two vectors determined their position: the political instability in the area and their economic situation—the former fraught with precariousness yet opportunity, the latter promising wealth and, with it, envy.

The economic well-being of the community derived from Mashhad's being an important intermediary center of trade. In the early nineteenth century, the prosperity of the town depended on trade from Tehran and northern Iran with Europe, on the one hand, and Central Asia, on the other. ⁴ The Jews of Mashhad engaged in this traffic of goods and had outposts of commercial colonies all over the north of Iran as well as in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. ⁵ This was an important factor in the attraction of Jews from other cities to Mashhad, who settled there and added to its natural growth. Within a century of its inception until the early 1800s, the Jewish population is reported to have grown to between 100 and 300 families in the city. So, the community grew between two and a half to ten times its original number. ⁶ Later in the century, after the conversion, this trade allowed the Mashhadis constant contact with other Jewish communities, providing spiritual encouragement and teaching centers. It also brought them into contact with and subjected them to the political turmoil of the entire region, whether the powers were the local people of Iran and Turkmenistan or the Russians and the British...