Medal Honoring Moses Montefiore: The 1840 Damascus Affair

In 1840, thirteen Jewish leaders in Damascus were arrested after local Christians and the French consul made a blood libel accusation based on the false, antisemetic myth that Jews murder children to use their blood for ritualistic purposes. Appeals from the local Jewish community reached Jews worldwide. Public meetings followed, and the lawyer Adolphe Crémieux of France and philanthropist Moses Montefiore of England traveled as a delegation to meet Ottoman leaders in Alexandria and Constantinople. They secured the release of nine surviving prisoners and a formal declaration from the sultan rejecting the blood libel. A medal struck in Berlin commemorated their success. Decades later, Crémieux advanced a decree granting French citizenship to most Algerian Jews.