Classification of the Baghdadi Jewish community

By the early 1900s, most prominent Baghdadi Jewish merchants owned satellite   commercial houses in India and Great Britain and had bank accounts in several
countries .On February 27, 1910, Haron Da’ud Shohet, an Iraqi Jew who worked as a dragoman at the British consulate-general in Baghdad wrote a report in which he noted that Jewish merchants, especially, those who resided in Baghdad, personally owned over twenty companies in London and Manchester, in Britain and a comparable number of companies in Kermanshah and Hamadan in Persia. These merchants were able to accumulate enormous wealth by importing  goods from Manchester and re-exporting them to Persia, trading mostly in iron, tin, copper, soft sugar, and coffee, as well as wool, and carpets

However, prosperous they may have been, these Jewish merchants were nevertheless a small minority of the Jewish population in Baghdad, which Shohet estimated the Jewish population to number between 35,000 and 50,000  individuals - by all accounts the largest Jewish community in the country

Shohet classified the Baghdadi Jewish community into four categories: (1) Very wealthy upper class, mostly of merchants and bankers, who represents 5% of the population. (2) Relatively large middle class of petty traders, retail dealers, and  employees (30%).  (3) A majority (60%) who made up a poor class, and (4) Beggars, who made up 5% of the total population

 Wealthy local Jewish resident and emigrant philanthropists purchased property and made financial contributions to establish and maintain communal institutions. According to Shohet, the most prominent Jews of this sort included Meir Elias, a stockholder, who established a school at the East Gate area of Baghdad for children of poor Jewish families. In addition, he financed  the establishment of a charitable hospital, the Meir Elias Hospital, which officially opened on August 27, 1910 at the North Gate area of Baghdad, which offered its  service, free of charge to all  Iraqis regardless of religious affiliation. Menahem Salih Danyel, from the largest landowning family, among the Iraqi Jews with holdings worth 400,000 Turkish Pounds, donated one of the buildings to the Alliance  Israelite Universelle for use as kindergarden  for Jewish infants

Shohet mentions Yusuf  Shemtov, a banker and landowner, and the merchants Sha’ul  Hakham  Ishaq and Hesqel  Yehuda, as other principal philanthropists in the community

Shohet also indentified the location of some of the estates of other prominent  Jewish landowners  to indicate the disproportionate wealth the members of the Jewish upper class possessed and the general tolerance prevalent within Iraqi society at the time that enabled their success

In his report, Shohet concluded that the upper class of Jewish Baghdadi society came to play an integral part in every Jewish communal endeavor.They supervised the work of all charitable institutions, which included the Society for the Consolation of the Blind, the Society for Teaching embroidery, as well as the Rima Kadurie Hospital for eyes, Meir Elias Hospital, and Dar al-Shifa’ Pharmacy. In additions, they helped to establish the clinics in the Jewish schools under the administration, like Midrash and Ta’woun (co-operation) schools 

(*) Chreih, Amerian University of Beirut