Blood Libel: The Damascus Affair of 1840 Paperback - 2006

Excerpt

Everyone in Damascus knew Father Thomas. The monk had lived at the Capuchin monastery for thirty-two years, long enough for his distinctive black habit with the white cordon, trim white beard, tonsure, and bag of medical instruments to be familiar in every quarter of the city. He had been trained as a pharmacist, and generations of Christians, Muslims, and Jews—some said as many as twelve to fifteen thousand children and adults—had felt the needle of his smallpox vaccinations. The father did not charge his patients, supporting himself on donations, and he had always been quick to post notices and run auctions to support those in need. Many thought him a saint.

The father was originally from Sardinia. Merchants in the suqs and friends in the Christian quarter called him Padre Tomasso, or sometimes il cappuccino. He was a small man, healthy but advancing in age; some found him quick-tempered and overly authoritative. But that was understandable in a man who lived alone in the monastery with only his servant, Ibrahim Amara, for company. When the two of them set off on one of the father’s missions to the outlying villages, they looked like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

At noon on Thursday, February 6, the father had been expected for dinner with a group of European prelates at the Christian quarter home of Dr. Massari, the personal physician to the pasha. Father Thomas was a punctual man, no doubt an inheritance of his offices, and when he did not appear at Dr. Massari's even after the dinner hour passed, the other guests were concerned enough to send out a search party.

One could never be too cautious in Damascus. The city was fraught with dangers, especially for the non-Muslim minorities. Relentless epidemics of bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, and impetigo tookperiodic tolls, and visitors found the streets and suqs a parade of the maimed, the blind, and the crippled—their missing limbs, ulcerated skin lesions, and suppurating sores the scars of what had not been or could not be treated. The fear of contagion was so great that visitors were quarantined for weeks in tiny lazarettes, and every letter was dipped in vinegar and water or punched and smoked. Visitors intrepid enough to undergo the arduous quarantine faced the perils of bandits on the roads, the indignities of the infamous Ottoman bureaucracy, and the seemingly whimsical regulations of the courts and pashas. Even long-term residents lived in constant fear: the Christian and Jewish minorities were restricted to residence in their own quarters, where ancient walls, night watchmen, and locked gates were supposed to provide islands of security amidst the overwhelming sea of the Muslim majority.

Media reviews

Washington Jewish Week

Well-written and researched, [Blood Libel] takes the reader inside a pogrom to see how it developed.

...Blood Libel also shows how Big Power politics and the welfare of Western Jews impinged on the well-being and salvation of a small, beleaguered Jewish community.

This is an important book for American Jews to read to understand what it means to be Jewish in a hostile environment in a non-Western country.

Washington Post
Rachel Hartigan Shea

Ronald Florence's Blood Libel: The Damascus Affair of 1840 narrates how [Damascus] quickly spiraled out of control, with its Jewish leaders accused of ritual murder and the French foreign consul leading the prosecution.

The Providence Journal
Richard J. Ring

There is an ancient accusation, the "blood libel," about a  secret Jewish ritual involving the sacrificial murder of Christians and the use of Christian blood for various rites. It was a common trope of anti-Semitism from the 12th century until the Second World War.

Brown professor Ronald Florence has produced an engaging book on this accusation using what professional historians term "micro-history" — an approach to the past through one exemplary event or person.