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JewishHistoryעברית

Shiraz blood libel and pogrom

Date
30 October 1910Hebrew date: 27th of Tishrei, 5671
Location
Shiraz (Jewish quarter)Iran
Then part of
Qajar Iran
Perpetrators
  • Rioters in the Shiraz Jewish quarter (Mob)
Killed (estimate)
12[2]Jews killed; about 50 injured. Jewish Currents and Diarna, both following Alliance Israélite Universelle reports, also state that about 6,000 residents of the quarter were stripped of their possessions.
Locality

0.2% of the Jewish population of Shiraz (Jewish quarter)[2]

Country

0.024% – 0.03% of the Jewish population of Qajar Iran (c. 1935)[41]

Worldwide

0.00011% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1900)[4]

Category
Pogrom, Blood libel
Confidence
DisputedJewish Currents, following the Alliance account, identifies the body found near the cemetery as a disinterred Jewish boy buried a week earlier. Diarna, citing a later summary, calls the body a young Jewish girl. Encyclopaedia Iranica confirms a major attack in 1910 but does not give the death toll or the blood-libel details, which come from Alliance-based reports.

Summary

On 30 October 1910 a crowd attacked the Jewish quarter of Shiraz after a ritual-murder rumour that Jews had killed a Muslim girl, together with a claim that a Quran had been found damaged near a Jewish house. Encyclopaedia Iranica calls the episode a major onslaught on the Jews of Shiraz in 1910. Jewish Currents, quoting an Alliance Israélite Universelle witness, states that 12 Jews were killed and 50 injured and that the roughly 6,000 residents of the quarter were stripped of their possessions, with about 260 households looted. The body found near the Jewish cemetery was later identified as that of a Jewish child who had already been buried. Relief was organised by the Alliance, with help from some Muslim officials and private citizens.

Sources

  1. Daniel Tsadik, JUDEO-PERSIAN COMMUNITIES v. QAJAR PERIOD (1). Encyclopaedia Iranica
  2. Lawrence Bush, October 30: The Shiraz Blood Libel. Jewish Currents (2013)
  3. Mahaleh (Jewish Quarter), Shiraz, Iran. Diarna

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 10,600,000[4]c. 1900DellaPergola's revised core-population figure for 1 January 1900 (original published estimate 10,728,500).
  • Qajar Iran: 40,000 – 50,000[41]c. 1935AJYB 1940–41 lists 40,000 for Persia. AJYB 1946–47 lists 50,000 for Iran in 1939 and 1945. These are late-Qajar / early-Pahlavi Year Book labels for the Iranian state; no opened page gave a verified countrywide Jewish total for Mashhad 1839 or Shiraz 1910. Use only as a late Qajar/early Pahlavi polity snapshot, not as an 1839/1910 figure.
  • Shiraz (Jewish quarter): 6,000[2]About 6,000 residents of the Jewish quarter of Shiraz at the pogrom on 30 October 1910. An Alliance count for 1903/4, in source 1, gives 7,080 for Shiraz and its surroundings, a wider area six years earlier.

Sources for population estimates

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