Ritual Murder Accusations in Nineteenth-Century Egypt *

Persecution of the Jews in Egypt during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century has not received much attention in historical studies of the Jews of Egypt ¹ or in other books. ² Perhaps the famous Damascus ritual murder accusation of 1840 overshadowed lesser—and equally baseless—ones in the East. From the beginning of the 1870's, the number of ritual murder accusations increased in both European and Asiatic Turkey—in Izmir, Istanbul, Magnesia, Adalya and other towns. From 1884 to 1901 they occurred also at Bayramiç (near the Dardanelles), in Istanbul, Salonika and even as far south as Damascus and Beirut and as far west as Monastir and Kavala. In most of these cases, a Greek mob spread a rumour that a Christian child had been kidnapped and slaughtered —sually around Passover. In some cases, the authorities discovered that the plotters had hidden the child and they were arrested. ³