Mawza Exile
The Mawza Exile (Hebrew: גלות מוזע, ğalūt mawzaʻ; 1679–1680) is considered the single most traumatic event experienced collectively by the Jews of Yemen,[1][2] in which Jews living in nearly all cities and towns throughout Yemen were banished by decree of the king, Imām al-Mahdi Ahmad, and sent to a dry and barren region of the country named Mawzaʻ to withstand their fate or to die.
Only a few communities, viz., those Jewish inhabitants who lived in the far eastern quarters of Yemen (Nihm, al-Jawf, and Khawlan of the east[3]) were spared this fate by virtue of their Arab patrons who refused to obey the king's orders.
[5] With the rise to power of the Qāsimīd Imām, al-Mutawakkil Isma'il (1644–1676), there was a crucial turning point in the condition of Jews living under the imamate kingdom of Yemen.
He endorsed the most hostile policies toward his Jewish subjects, partly due to the claim that the Jews were aiding the Ottoman Turks during the local uprising against them.
[6] The rise of the Shabbathian movement in Yemen in 1666 exacerbated the problems facing the community, calling into question their status as protected wards of the state.
[7] The king initially demanded their conversion to Islam and when they refused, he made them stand out in the sun without apparel for three days, which was later followed by harsher decrees.
It is said that al-Mutawakkil Isma'il consulted with the religious scholars of Islam and sought to determine whether or not the laws concerning Jews in the Arabian Peninsula applied also to Yemen, citing Muhammad who was reported as saying, "There shall not be two religions in Arabia."
Yet, since the king fell ill and was bedridden, he did not presently perform his plan to expel the Jews from his kingdom, but commanded the heir to his throne, al-Mahdi Ahmad, to do so.
[8][9] Al-Mahdi Ahmad of al-Ghirās, who is also known by the epithet Ṣafī al-Din (purity of religion), succeeded al-Mutawakkil Isma'il, but perpetuated the same hostilities toward his Jewish subjects as those made by his predecessor.
[11] The king's words led to no small consternation amongst his Jewish subjects in Yemen, who immediately declared a time of public fasting and prayer, which they did both by night and day.
[16] By late 1679, when the king saw that they were unrelenting in their fathers' religious faith, he then decided to follow through with what he had determined for them and issued a decree, banishing all Jews in his kingdom to the Red Sea outpost known as Zeila'.
On the 2nd day of the lunar month Rajab, in the year 1090 of the Hijri calendar (corresponding with Gregorian calendar, 10 August 1679), his edict was put into effect, and he ordered the Jews of Sana'a to take leave of their places, but gave more space to the provincial governors of Yemen to begin the expulsion of all other Jews in Yemen to Zeila', and which should be accomplished by them in a time period not to exceed twelve months.
[18] Meanwhile, while columns of men, women and children were advancing by foot southward with only bare essentials, along the road leading from Sana'a to Dhamar, Yarim, 'Ibb and Ta'izz, the chiefs of the indigenous Sabaean tribes who had been the patrons of the Jews came together once again and petitioned the king, al-Mahdi, this time requesting that the king rescind his order to expel all Jews unto the Red Sea outpost of Zeila', but to be content with their banishment to the Tihama coastal town of Mawza', a town about 29 kilometres (18 mi) from Mocha, as the crow flies.
We went with shame and with reproach, in hunger and in thirst, and in nakedness and in deprivation of all things, unto that place which the king had decreed over us, for he had no wish for money, but rather in seeing our destruction.The author goes on to explain how that, when they reached their destination, they wept bitterly, since many of them had perished as in a plague, and they were unable to bury them because of the excruciating heat.
In Mawzaʻ they remained for one full year, until 1680, when the king's non-Jewish subjects began to complain about their lack of farm implements which had been exclusively made by Jewish craftsmen.
"[16] Rabbi Yiḥyah Salaḥ (who is known by the acronym Maharitz) gives a most captivating account of these harrowing events borne by the Jews of Sana'a in the years leading up to their expulsion, as also when they left their city, based on a hand-written document preserved and copied down by subsequent generations.
Now, it has been told to us that about eighty souls died in one short period of time during one single journey in the desert, near the village of Mawzaʻ, on account of iniquities.
26:41), and when he had then finished his reading, he began to expound [on that portion of the Law], and the spirit of God moved him, and he said that the present decree had been given from the start since ancient times, and is alluded to and is cleverly arranged and has been preserved in the acrostic at the end of each word [in the Hebrew verse], oyyaveihem 'o 'az yikana = אויביהם או אז יכנע (Lev.
Now, in those days they appointed over themselves a Prince (Nagid), even the teacher and rabbi, Yiḥya Halevi, of blessed memory.Those Jews who survived, who returned either to Sana'a or to the other towns and villages, were mostly ill from being exposed to the changes in climate and from the poor quality of drinking water.
[31] This place attracted other migrant Jews from the other towns and villages from which they had been expelled and soon grew into a suburb, situate about one kilometer beyond the walls which then existed on the extreme west-side of the city.
[37] In the words of the Jewish chronicler who wrote Dofi Hazeman (Vicissitudes of Time), being one of the earliest Jewish accounts of the expulsion (initially compiled by Yaḥyā ben Judah Ṣa'di in 1725) [39] and which work has since undergone several recensions by later chroniclers, we read the following testimony:[40] He (i.e. the king) then commanded to give license unto the Jews to return unto the country and to build for themselves tents, although set apart from the houses of the Muslims so that they will not defile them.
Neither had there remained any of them, save ten people for every hundred [who were driven out into exile], while the majority of them did not return to settle in their former place, but were scattered in all the districts of Yemen.
In every place, the gentiles have given to them a parcel of ground, on a rental basis, in order that they may construct shelters in which to live, set apart from them, seeing that their enemies had already taken [from them] their own towns and houses and vineyards and fields.
[46] Rabbi Amram Qorah, in the same work, brings down Rabbi Pinheas ben Gad Hacohen's account of events, whose testimony he found written in the margin of the first page of a Prayer Book (Siddur), written in 1710:[47] Now I shall inform you, my brethren, about what has happened to us at this time, since the beginning of anno 1,990 of the Seleucid Era (1678 CE) and in 1,991 [of the same] (1679 CE), how that the king made a decree and demolished all the synagogues of all the towns of Yemen, and there were some of the books and sacred writings that were desecrated at the hand of the gentiles, on account of our great iniquities, so that we could no longer make our [public] prayers, save only a very few [men] secretly within their houses.
And if one had need of going out into the marketplace, he could not avoid being the object of hatred and spite, while there were those who even attacked him or called him by abusive language, so that there was fulfilled in this, our generation, the scripture that says, Who will raise up Jacob, for he is too small (Amos 7: 2, 5) to bear all the afflictions.
In the following poem of the subgenre known as qiṣṣa (poetic tale), composed mostly in Judeo-Arabic with only two stanzas written in Hebrew, the author gives a long testimony about the events which transpired during that year of exile.
In 1859, Lithuanian Jew, Jacob Saphir, visited the Jewish community in Yemen, less than 200 years after the Exile of Mawza', but still heard vivid accounts from the people about the things that befell their ancestors during that fateful event.
(Here, J. Saphir brings down a poem written about the event by Rabbi Shalom Shabazi, and which has already been quoted above) Now during the time of this exile and perdition, they had lost all of their precious belongings, and their handwritten books, as well as their peculiar compositions which they possessed of old.
(They say that this was on account of the virtue of that pious Rabbi, the kabbalist, even our teacher and Rabbi, Mori Sālim al-Shabazi, may the memory of the righteous be blessed, who brought about multiple forms of distempers upon that cruel king, who then regretted the evil [that he caused them] and sent [messengers] to call out unto them [with] a conciliatory message, [requesting] that they return to their place – with the one exception that they not dwell with them in the royal city built as a fortress.
Maharitz (d. 1805) mentions in his Responsa[62] that before the Exile of Mawza the Jews of Sana'a had an old custom to say the seven benedictions for the bridegroom and bride on a Friday morning, following the couple's wedding the day before.
