Category: Middle East History

• The Blood Libel Resurgence

  This theory concerns the modern revival of the medieval blood libel through the 1840 Damascus Affair, when Jews in Ottoman Syria were accused of ritual murder after the disappearance of a Catholic friar and his servant. The affair revived one of Europe’s oldest conspiracy theories in a new age of diplomacy, journalism, and imperial rivalry. In later retellings, the Damascus case became proof that secret Jewish rituals were not a dead medieval myth but a hidden transnational reality. The documented record clearly shows that the accusation was real, that it triggered arrests and torture, and that it became an international scandal. What remains false is the underlying ritual-murder claim itself.