Re: Abstract of this Book, entitled “
The
Jews of Iran in the Nineteenth Century: Sources and Investigations
Related to the History, Community and Culture of Iranian
Jewry in the Nineteenth Century”
Consisting of approximately fifty archival and published sources
annotated and discussed in detail, this book (in English) deals
with some of the important aspects of life among the Jews of
Iran in the course of the nineteenth century. The book
is conceived and structured to serve two closely related academic
and research purpose. First and foremost, it aims to
acquaint the English readers, and particularly those who are
interested in the heritage Iranian Jews, with some of the major
areas, aspects and issues of the life among the Jews of Iran
in the course of the nineteenth-century and earlier. Secondly,
it is designed to provide both the general and specialized
reader with an extensive body of primary sources as well as
testimonies, reports and studies (in Persian, Judeo-Persian,
Hebrew, as well as in European languages) that provide valuable
information and insight with regard to Iran’s Jewish
communities and settlements during the period under discussion.
Estimated at some fifteen to twenty thousand souls in the
1850s, and approximately forty to forty-five thousand in the
1890s, Iran’s Jewish population was highly dispersed
and, for the most part, poorly protected and subjected to diverse
forms of legal, socio-economic, physical and cultural restrictions
and hardships. The latter restrictions and disabilities
had far-reaching negative impact on the material, communal,
demographic, and socio-cultural lives of the vast majority
of Iranian Jews in the nineteenth century and earlier. The
book attempts to present a realistic and (as much as possible)
an objective and concrete picture of Iranian Jewry prior to
its accelerated modernization in the course of the twentieth
century. The various notes, extensive bibliographical
references and discussions that accompany each of the original
sources and selections in the book strive to explain and clarify
the respective content of the source and point to its broader
relevance and meaning in the context of the general history,
society, culture and religion of Iranian Jewry in the course
of the 18th-19th centuries.