Blood libel

A history of the Damascus ritual murder affair. Covers events from the disappearance in February 1840 of the monk Father Thomas and his servant (widely believed to have been killed) and the arrest of local Jews accused of their murder, to the release of the incarcerated Jews in September due to international pressure on Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt. The affair occurred at a time when the ritual murder myth penetrated from Europe into the Muslim world. Describes the investigation of the affair by Sherif Pasha of Damascus, the repercussions of the affair in Europe, French attempts to investigate the event, and the mission of Adolphe Crémieux and Moses Montefiore to Muhammad Ali to release the accused Jews. Dwells on international political aspects of the affair, including French-British rivalry over the Ottoman Empire and Egypt; the role of France, Britain, Austria, and the Rothschild clan in the Damascus affair; and the role of the Crémieux-Montefiore mission. The arrested Jews were liberated, but the seed of ethnic conflict in the Middle East was sown. Moreover, the Damascus affair gave a lease of life to the myth of Jewish ritual murder in the Middle East and galvanized it in Europe. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)