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Hara Kabira, Jewish Quarter, Tripoli, Libya
The Jewish quarters of Tripoli were split into three sizes: large, medium, and small. The name Hara Kabira (ḥaṛa lkbira) means “Big Quarter”.1 This quarter was greatly affected by colonization through the centuries.
Description
Jewish quarters were often separated from other quarters of the city which housed various religious groups.2 When the Italians occupied Libya, many Jews in Tripoli still continued to live mainly in the Jewish Quarter despite the influx of new cultures.3 Jewish women were highly regarded in the home and their opinions were often seen to shape family affairs. Outside of the home, it was mainly men who were running the trades and making business decisions in occupations such as being merchants, physicians or jewelers.4 Jewish women were not allowed to participate in regular synagogue services, but did attend during special days such as Sabbath and major holidays.5
Around 3000 Jewish students attended public schools but just over half this number went to the Talmud Torah schools around the city. More students increasingly attended European-run schools in Tripoli as the city was subjected to Italian rule, until anti-Semitic laws were enforced by the Italian facist government.6 Jewish shops were closed on Saturday for Shabbot, but during the Italian occupation they were forced to remain open.7 The new laws punished Jewish shop-owners who closed their businesses on Saturday.
During Gaddafi’s reign of Libya, Hara Kabira had been neglected. In 2011, David Gerbi, a Jew exiled from Libya, tried to restore the former Jewish quarters in Libya. He along with his team began restoration of Dar Al-Bishi, the best known synagogue in Libya, located in the Hara Kabira region of Tripoli. Gerbi's passion was driven by the fact that many former Jewish sites had been destroyed during the violent history that the Jews endured under the Italian occupation and Gaddafi’s reign in Libya. Unfortunately due to threats on Gerbi's life, he was forced to abandon his projects and leave the country.8
Tripoli's Jewish Community
Roman and Byzantine Tripoli
Jews have inhabited Libya since at least the 3rd century BCE, and potentially as early as the First Temple.9 The first Jews of Libya mostly settled in coastal cities such as Tripoli and Benghazi, which were, at the time, within the larger Roman regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.10 Some Berber tribes, including the Nafusa of the western Tripolitanian mountains, adopted Judaism.11
Arab Tripoli
According to Jewish and Arab traditions, the Jews and Berbers resisted the Islamic Arabs who captured Tripolitania from Byzantine rule in 642.12 In addition to the residential population, Tripoli is mentioned in the records of Jewish merchants as a stop on their trade routes across north Africa.13 Upon the Spanish occupation of Tripoli from 1510-1530 followed by the Knights of Malta from 1530-1551, the Jews of Tripoli fled to other regions, such as Tajura, Gharian, and Italy.14 Some of them returned after 1551, and with them arrived Jewish refugees from Spain and Italy.15
Ottoman Tripoli
The Ottomans government (1551-1911) was relatively tolerant of Jews, although levels of street conflict (e.g robberies and arson) between Jews and Muslims worsened.16 During an interruption in Ottoman rule by the independent Qaramanlis monarchy (1711-1835), the Jews of Tripoli began to distinguish their culture from Tunisian Jewry.17
Italian Tripoli to Gaddafi
By the time of the Italian occupation of Libya in 1911, the Jewish population of Tripoli was 8,509 out of approximately 30,000 people in the city.18 The occupation led to struggles between traditional and modernizing factions in the community; in an effort to defuse the struggle, the colonial authorities invited Italian Rabbi Elia Artomo to serve as chief rabbi of Tripoli.19 Relations between the Jewish community and the colonial government began to deteriorate after the Fascists took power in Italy. In 1942 Mussolini ordered that Jews of foreign nationalities living in Libya be sent to camps in Libya or Europe. Anti-Jewish riots swept the country in 1945 and 1948; between 1949 and 1951 most of the Jewish population emigrated to Europe or Israel.20 Most of the remaining Jews were forcibly expelled in 1967, the year of the Six Day War. At the start of Muammar Gaddafi (Quaddafi)’s regime, the synagogues in Tripoli were destroyed, all Jewish property was confiscated, and all debts to Jews canceled.21
After Gaddafi
Today there are Jews living in Libya. On October 10th, 2003, Rina Debach, an eighty–one year old woman in an elderly home, was the last Jew to leave the country, when her nephew who had left in 1967 finally got permission from the Libyan and Italian authorities for her to be evacuated.22
Sources
Endnotes
1. Sumikazu Yoda, The Arabic Dialect of the Jews in Tripoli (Libya): Grammar, Text and Glossary, ( Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005), 291.
2. Sumikazu, 1.
3. Simon, Rachel, Change Within Tradition Among Jewish Women in Libya, (Seattle & London, University of Washington Press, 1992), 129.
4. Associated Press, “Libya Fighting Stirs Memories of Country’s Jewish Past,” Haaretz, June 18, 2011, http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/libya-fighting-stirs-memories-of-country-s-jewish-past-1.368364.
5. Simon Rachel, Change Within Tradition Among Jewish Women in Libya, (Seattle & London, University of Washington Press, 1992), 154.
6. “Jewish History” Brief Biography, Jimena Libyan Experience, 2016, (accessed July 25, 2016) http://jimenaexperience.org/libya/about-jimena/past-and-present/.
7. Associated Press, “Libya Fighting Stirs Memories of Country’s Jewish Past,” Haaretz, June 18, 2011, http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/libya-fighting-stirs-memories-of-country-s-jewish-past-1.368364.
8. Vivienne Roumani-Denn, "History of Jewish Community in Libya," (accessed July 25, 2016), http://jewsoflibya.com/LibyanJews/thejews.html.
9. Associated Press, “Libya’s ‘revolutionary Jew’ Returns to Restore Tripoli Synagogue,” The Guardian, October 3, 2011, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/03/libyas-revolutionary-jew-restore-synagogue; Jacques Roumani, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, eds., “Introduction,” in Jewish Libya, Memory and Identity in Text and Image (Syracuse University Press, 2018), 17, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.7.
10. Press, “Libya’s ‘revolutionary Jew’ Returns to Restore Tripoli Synagogue”; “Tripolitania - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia,” Alchetron.com, August 18, 2017, https://alchetron.com/Tripolitania.
11. Maurice M. Roumani, “Libyan Jews in the Islamic Arab and Ottoman Periods,” in Jewish Libya, ed. Jacques Roumani, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, Memory and Identity in Text and Image (Syracuse University Press, 2018), 39, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.9.
12. Roumani, 39.
13. Roumani, 40.
14. Roumani, 41.
15. Roumani, 41.
16. Roumani, 42.
17. Roumani, 41.
18. Maurice Roumani, “Tripoli,” in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World (Brill Online), accessed July 23, 2014, http://0-referenceworks.brillonline.com.luna.wellesley.edu/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/tripoli-libya-COM_0021620.
19. Roumani.
20. Roumani.
21. “Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries,” accessed July 14, 2022, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries.
22. Maurice Roumani, “The Final Exodus of the Libyan Jews in 1967,” Jewish Political Studies Review 19, no. 3/4 (2007): 95.
Works Cited
Associated Press. “Libya Fighting Stirs Memories of Country’s Jewish Past.” Haaretz, June 18, 2011. http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/libya-fighting-stirs-memories-of-country-s-jewish-past-1.368364.
Arbib, Jack. “The Vanishing Landscape: A Retrospective Glance at the Topos of Libyan Jews.” In Jewish Libya, edited by Jacques Roumani, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, 107–52. Memory and Identity in Text and Image. Syracuse University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.14.
Cowper, H.S. The Hill of the Graces. London: Methuen & co, 1897. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015049825451&view=1up&seq=37&skin=2021.
“Jewish History.” Brief Biography, Jimena Libyan Experience. 2016. http://jimenaexperience.org/libya/about-jimena/past-and-present/
“Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries.” Accessed July 14, 2022. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries.
Press, Associated. “Libya’s ‘revolutionary Jew’ Returns to Restore Tripoli Synagogue.” The Guardian, October 3, 2011, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/03/libyas-revolutionary-jew-restore-synagogue.
Roumani, Jacques, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, eds. “Introduction.” In Jewish Libya, 17–18. Memory and Identity in Text and Image. Syracuse University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.7.
Roumani, Maurice. “The Final Exodus of the Libyan Jews in 1967.” Jewish Political Studies Review 19, no. 3/4 (2007): 77–100.
———. “Tripoli.” In Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Brill Online. Accessed July 23, 2014. http://0-referenceworks.brillonline.com.luna.wellesley.edu/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/tripoli-libya-COM_0021620.
Roumani, Maurice M. “Libyan Jews in the Islamic Arab and Ottoman Periods.” In Jewish Libya, edited by Jacques Roumani, David Meghnagi, and Judith Roumani, 39–42. Memory and Identity in Text and Image. Syracuse University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20p574k.9.
Roumani-Denn, Vivienne. "History of Jewish Community in Libya." Accessed July 25, 2016. http://jewsoflibya.com/LibyanJews/thejews.html11]
Simon, Rachel. Change Within Tradition Among Jewish Women in Libya. (Seattle & London, University of Washington Press, 1992).
Yoda, Sumikazu. The Arabic Dialect of the Jews in Tripoli (Libya): Grammar, Text and Glossary. ( Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005).
Alchetron.com. “Tripolitania - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia,” August 18, 2017. https://alchetron.com/Tripolitania.