The Last Rich Jew in Damascus

Yossef Laniado:Banker,Businessman and Politician

In the mid-19th century, the Jewish community of Damascus numbered several thousand people, including several families of considerably rich individuals who engaged in money exchange, private banking and tax collection for the Ottoman government. These families: Angel (Angil), Stambouli, Tuby and Lisbona, who lived in luxury palaces in the Jewish quarter in Damascus, lost their property after the economic collapse of the Ottoman government, which was unable to return to them the funds they invested in its bonds.

A new Jewish family arose in Damascus, the Laniado family. Its father, Yahya Laniado, was prominent in the markets of money exchange, trading and real estate. He was the only Jewish member of the provincial council — the most important governing body next to the Ottoman governor of Damascus. Laniado was an important figure in the financial and ruling elite of Damascus at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. His son, Yossef Laniado, was elected in 1919 as the sole Jewish representative in the first Syrian parliament, and held this position until the early 1940s.

Yaron Ran presents the story of Yossef Laniado, the last Jewish rich man in Damascus, who marked an era that will never come again — of a Jew who survived the shifting regimes in Damascus, an Ottoman administration that was replaced by British, Arab and French administrations. A controversial Jew in his community who saw the financial elite and the Syrian government as his natural and social environment. Yossef Laniado lost his assets in the early 1930s — losing his respectable place in the community, and surviving in the Syrian parliament only thanks to the grace of the Syrian politicians. Laniado did not support the Zionist movement, but positioned himself as a mediator between it and the Syrian elite from internal Syrian considerations. The mediating actions he carried out helped the Zionist movement in its fight against Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini and in preventing the infiltration of terrorists and weapons into Palestine in the second phase of the Arab Revolt.

Dr. Yaron Ran is an Orientalist and researcher of the history of Damascus Jewry in the 20th century, as well as, the relationship between the Zionist movement and the Arab world. His third book, “The Last Rich Jew in Damascus” is preceded by his book titled, “The Roots of the Jordanian Option” about the relationship between King Abdallah of Trans-Jordan and the Zionist movement in 1921-1948, and his book “The Arabist,” which describes the figure of Eliyahu Sasson from his youth in Damascus until his appointment to the position of head of the Jewish Agency’s Arab Bureau.

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