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Jacob's Children in the Land of the Mahdi: Jews of the Sudan by Eli S. Malka. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997. Pp.xiii + 262, bibliography, index, illustrations. $29.95.
When Muhammad Ahmad b. `Abdallah proclaimed himself mahdi of Sudan, in June 1881, there were only eight Jewish families, all living in Omdurman and all, except one, of Sephardic origin. Of these the best known was Ben-Sion Coshti, the son of Rabbi Mayer Bechor Coshti from Hebron, who converted to Islam during the Mahdiyya along with other fellow-prisoners, both Christians and Jews. Richard Hill, in his Biographical Dictionary of the Sudan, wrote that Ben-Sion, known as Bassiouni since his forced conversion to Islam, was entrusted by the Khalifa `Abdullahi with various confidential missions and became one of his financial advisers.' This was, as far as we know, the beginning of the small Jewish community of Sudan, whose story is told by Eli Malka. Malka was born in Omdurman in 1909 and lived there until his migration in 1964, first to Switzerland and later to the United States. His father, Rabbi Salomon Malka, came from Tiberias and was Hakham (Chief Rabbi) of Sudan from 1906 until 1949. He left behind a manuscript, written in Hebrew, on the early history of Sudan's Jews which was unfortunately lost.2 However, the author managed to gather the information for his `Jacob's Children in the Land of the Mahdi', from Sudanese Jewish community leaders who survived their exile and lived primarily in the United States, England, Israel and Switzerland, as well as from his own memoirs.
Following the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan, in 1896-98, the few Jewish families, who had been forced to become Muslims during the Mahdiyya, returned to Judaism and those of them who had married Muslim wives had them and their children converted. The sole exception was Suleiman Mandeel (probably Mendel, an Ashkenazi Jewish name), who refused to return to Judaism and became a prominent Arab-Muslim journalist. These early `Mahdiyya Jews', as they were known in Sudan, were soon joined by additional Jewish families, who arrived primarily from Egypt and Palestine and thus laid the foundation for the Sudan's Jewish community. In 1908 Bassiouni was elected President for life by the community, a post he held until his death...