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JewishHistoryעברית

Execution of Shafiq Ades

Date
23 September 1948Hebrew date: 19th of Elul, 5708
Location
Basra (Al-Ashar)Iraq
Then part of
Kingdom of Iraq
Perpetrators
  • Iraqi military court and government (State)
Killed (estimate)
1[1]Shafiq Ades, an Iraqi Jewish businessman and Ford agent, hanged in front of his house. Source 3 estimates more than 15,000 spectators; source 4 reports the body left hanging for two hours.
Locality

0.0095% – 0.01% of the Jewish population of Basra (Al-Ashar)[5]

Country

0.00074% of the Jewish population of Kingdom of Iraq (c. 1948)[39]

Worldwide

0.0000087% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1948)[16]

Category
Persecution
Confidence
High

Summary

On 23 September 1948 the Iraqi Jewish businessman Shafiq Ades was hanged in front of his house in the Al-Ashar quarter of Basra after a military court sentenced him to death for allegedly buying surplus British military material and supplying it to Israel, and imposed a large fine. The sentence was confirmed by the palace; contemporary reports name the king, while later accounts name the regent Abd al-Ilah. His Muslim partners in the surplus deals were not charged. A crowd estimated at more than 15,000 watched, and the body was left hanging for about two hours.

Sources

  1. Iraqi Jew Accused of Aiding Israeli War Effort Hanged Despite Plea of U.S. Minister. Jewish Telegraphic Agency (1948)
  2. Iraq Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library (Encyclopaedia Judaica)
  3. Adi Schwartz, The Adas Affair. Tablet Magazine (2022)
  4. Lawrence Resner (quoting an Iraqi press account), Hanging of an Iraqi Jew, Eternal Stranger by Lawrence Resner, Country Life Press, NY, 1951 p.141-143. Center for Online Judaic Studies (1951)
  5. The Jewish minority in Basra in the royal era. College of Arts, University of Baghdad

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 11,500,000[16]c. 1948DellaPergola's Fundamentals Table 2 gives 11.5 million Jews worldwide in 1948.
  • Kingdom of Iraq: 135,000[39]c. 1948Same USHMM 1940s community size; the article adds that by 1951 about 124,000 of 135,000 Iraqi Jews had immigrated to Israel. No separate opened census total for 1948 alone.
  • Basra (Al-Ashar): 9,921 – 10,537[5]The 1947 Iraqi census, the year before the 23 September 1948 hanging in Al-Ashar, counted 9,921 Jews in the Basra district center and 10,537 in Basra province.

Sources for population estimates

  1. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2025)
  2. Sergio DellaPergola, Notes toward a Demographic History of the Jews. Genealogy 8(1) (2024)
  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  4. Jewish Population of the World. American Jewish Year Book 1948–1949, via Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1949)
  5. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History. American Economic Association annual meeting paper (2007)
  6. Jews in the USSR (1926–1959). Demographic Changes. JewishGen Belarus SIG (table compiled from the 1939 All-Union census)
  7. Mandate for Palestine. Report of the Mandatory to the League of Nations (Palestine Administration, 1922). United Nations UNISPAL (British mandatory report) (1922)
  8. José Hinojosa Montalvo, La sociedad y la economía de los judíos en Castilla y la Corona de Aragón durante la Baja Edad Media. Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval (1993)
  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
  10. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History. Handbook chapter PDF via zvi-eckstein.com
  11. Sergio DellaPergola, Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History. Berman Jewish Policy Archive (PDF) (2001)
  12. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, THE CHOSEN FEW: HOW EDUCATION SHAPED JEWISH HISTORY, 70–1492 (book summary). Bar-Ilan University Economics seminar PDF (Princeton University Press forthcoming summary)
  13. Joseph Jacobs, Statistics. Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
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  20. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank / Israel CBS host (2025)
  21. Sergio DellaPergola, Demographic Trends in Israel and Palestine: Prospects and Policy Implications. American Jewish Year Book 2003, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2003)
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  32. Kirsten E. Schulze, The Jews of Lebanon between Coexistence and Conflict. Internet Archive full text
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  37. Davis Trietsch, Die Juden der Türkei. Länder und Völker der Türkei, Heft 8 (Leipzig) (1915)
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  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
  55. Lebanon Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
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  57. Algeria (Vital Statistics). Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
  58. Archives juives n°45/2 — Les Juifs d'Algérie. Archives Juives / Les Belles Lettres (2012)
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