Creator Bio
Salman Shina
1898–1978
Born in Baghdad, Salman Shina attended an Alliance school there. During World War I, he was an officer in the Ottoman army, eventually taken prisoner by the British. After the war, he returned to Baghdad and became a lawyer. In the 1920s, he founded, edited, and wrote for an Arabic-language Jewish literary journal called al-Misbaḥ. Shina served as a member of the Iraqi parliament from 1947 to 1951, when he immigrated to Israel along with the rest of the Jewish community. He died in Ramat Gan.
Content by Salman Shina
Primary Source
Babylonia to Zion: Salman Shina on Iraqi Jews in Early Israel
Salman Shina’s 1955 memoir recounts how Iraqi Jews adapted to new realities in Israel amid loss, struggle, and renewal.