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Cast Out: The History of the Jews of Arab Lands: Jewish Quarterly 263
For thousands of years, long before the Arab conquest, the Middle East and North Africa were home to ancient Jewish communities. In cities such as Baghdad, Tunis, Cairo and Casablanca, Jews were a significant presence and constituted as much as a quarter of the population. Yet, today, the Jews of the Arab lands have almost entirely disappeared.
In this groundbreaking essay, Lyn Julius, a journalist who has spent years researching the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, explores what happened to this vast and diverse Jewish diaspora. What was their status under Islam, and how did the creeping rise of nationalism and antisemitism lead to their expulsion and exodus?
Cast Out examines the vanishing of a people and restores an essential but often-forgotten piece to the puzzle that makes up today's Middle East.
In this groundbreaking essay, Lyn Julius, a journalist who has spent years researching the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, explores what happened to this vast and diverse Jewish diaspora. What was their status under Islam, and how did the creeping rise of nationalism and antisemitism lead to their expulsion and exodus?
Cast Out examines the vanishing of a people and restores an essential but often-forgotten piece to the puzzle that makes up today's Middle East.
- GenresJewish
102 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 26, 2026
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April 19, 2026
A highly readable and important extended article.
The centuries-long history of Jews in Arab and Muslim lands has definitely been overlooked in both the West and the East - and is often completely (often deliberately) unknown.
There are clearly many people in Arab and Muslim countries seemingly unaware that they had sizeable Jewish communities until the middle of the twentieth century. And that the descendants of these communities account for half of Jewish Israelis - in contrast to the view that Israel is a white European colonial settlement.
Where this history is known, the narrative often prevails that Jews and Muslims always lived alongside each other in complete harmony, whereas European Jews continually suffered persecution. The truth is far more nuanced than that and the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa eventually fled (or were expelled) to the West and to Israel during the course of the twentieth century.
Julius sheds a bright light on this history and its neglect both within and outside Israel. It does feel a little unbalanced, however, and I am interested in exploring different perspectives and analyses on this history. There are no footnotes or bibliography here, which I would have appreciated.
This was palpably not true, though indeed there were
The centuries-long history of Jews in Arab and Muslim lands has definitely been overlooked in both the West and the East - and is often completely (often deliberately) unknown.
There are clearly many people in Arab and Muslim countries seemingly unaware that they had sizeable Jewish communities until the middle of the twentieth century. And that the descendants of these communities account for half of Jewish Israelis - in contrast to the view that Israel is a white European colonial settlement.
Where this history is known, the narrative often prevails that Jews and Muslims always lived alongside each other in complete harmony, whereas European Jews continually suffered persecution. The truth is far more nuanced than that and the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa eventually fled (or were expelled) to the West and to Israel during the course of the twentieth century.
Julius sheds a bright light on this history and its neglect both within and outside Israel. It does feel a little unbalanced, however, and I am interested in exploring different perspectives and analyses on this history. There are no footnotes or bibliography here, which I would have appreciated.
This was palpably not true, though indeed there were
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review