Damascus affair was a notorious blood libel in 1840 in which Christian antisemitism and popular Muslim anti-Jewish feelings came to a head and were aggravated by the political struggle of the European powers for influence in the Middle East. Syria was then ruled by Muhammad Ali of Egypt, who had rebelled against Turkey. France supported Muhammad Ali, while the other powers, especially Austria and Great Britain, were interested in preserving Turkish power and in preventing the extention of French influence. On February 5, 1840, the Capuchin friar Thomas, an Italian who had long resided in Damascus, disappeared together with his Muslim servant Ibrahim ‘Amāra. The monk had been involved in shady business, and the two men were probably murdered by tradesmen with whom Thomas had quarreled. Nonetheless, the Capuchins immediately circulated the news that the Jews had murdered both men in order to use their blood for Passover. As Catholics in Syria were officially under French protection, the investigation should have been conducted, according to local law, by the French consul. But the latter, Ratti-Menton, allied himself with the accusers, and supervised the investigation jointly with the governor-general Sherif Padia; it was conducted in the most barbarous fashion. A barber, Solomon Negrin, was arbitrarily arrested and tortured until a "confession" was extorted from him, according to which the monk had been killed in the house of David Harari by seven Jews. The men whom he named were subsequently arrested; two of them died under torture, one of them converted to Islam in order to be spared, and the others were made to "confess." A Muslim servant in the service of David Harari related under duress that Ibrahim ‘Amāra was killed in the house of Meir Farhi, in the presence of the latter and other Jewish notables. Most of those mentioned were arrested, but one of them, Isaac Levi Picciotto, was an Austrian citizen and thus under the protection of the Austrian consul; this eventually led to the intervention of Austria, England, and the United States in the affair. When some bones were found in a sewer in the Jewish quarter, the accusers proclaimed that they were those of Thomas, and buried them accordingly. An inscription on the tombstone stated that it was the grave of a saint tortured by the Jews. Then more bones were found, alleged to be those of Ibrahim ‘Amāra. But a well-known physician in Damascus, Dr. Lograso, refused to certify that they were human bones, and requested that they be sent to a European university for examination. This, however, met with the opposition of the French consul. The authorities then announced that, on the strength of the confessions of the accused and the remains found of the victims, the guilt of the Jews in the double murder was proved beyond doubt. They also seized 63Jewish children so as to extort the hiding place of the victims' blood from their mothers. The news of the atrocities in Damascus aroused the concern of the Jewish world. The first Jewish attempt to intervene in the tragic situation came from Alexandria in the form of a petition addressed to Muhammad Ali, as a result of the initiative of Israel Bak, the Jerusalem printer. At the same time, the Austrian consul general in Egypt, A. Laurin, received a report from the Austrian consul in Damascus and also petitioned Muhammad Ali to stop the torture methods used by the investigators. Muhammad Ali agreed, and instructions were accordingly issued to Damascus by express courier. As a result, the use of torture came to an end on April 25, 1840. However, the accusation itself was not rescinded and the investigation against the Jews continued. Laurin tried to influence the consul general of France in Egypt to restrain Ratti-Menton, who was his subordinate, but he was unsuccessful. He then acted in a manner contrary to diplomatic practice by sending the report he had received from Damascus to James de Rothschild, the honorary Austrian consul in Paris. He also requested Rothschild to intervene with the French government. This did not bring any result. In order to alert public opinion in France and in the civilized world, James de Rothschild, without the authorization of Chancellor Metternich in Vienna, published the report in the press. In Vienna, his brother Solomon Rothschild approached Metternich on the issue. The latter reprimanded Laurin, but nevertheless consented to his activity, as it caused embarrassment to the representatives of France in Egypt and Syria. Laurin was then joined by the British consul general in Egypt, as well as by other European consuls, who supported him in his dispute with the French. As a result of his efforts, an order was sent to Damascus on May 3, 1840, requesting protection for the Jews from the violence of Muslim and Christian mobs. R. Judah ben Solomon Hai Alkalai (1798–1878), Sephardi rabbi and precursor of modern Zionism. R. Alkalai was born in Sarajevo (then Bosnia) and brought up in Jerusalem, where he was strongly influenced by Sarajevo-born R. Eliezer Papo. From 1825 until he again moved to Jerusalem in 1874, Alkalai was rabbi of Semlin (Zemun), near Belgrade. He taught Hebrew to the young men of the congregation, whose mother tongue was Ladino. As a young man, Alkalai was introduced to the concept of the Jewish nation by the rabbi of Corfu, R. Judah b. Samuel Bibas, one of the originators of the idea of Hibbat Zion and settlement in Erez Israel. The struggle of three nations – Turkey, Austria, and Serbia – for the domination of the town of Semlin also directed his thoughts to a modern political conception of the destiny and aspirations of the Jewish people.

על עלילת הדם של דמשק. דף ב,ב: "מנחת תודה" מאת משה מונטיפיורי. נכנס ל"כתבי הרב יהודה אלקלעי", ספר א, כרך א, עמ' [קעז]-רלח.