Cast Out

"For all the attention that conflict in the Middle East attracts, the casting out of almost a million Jews from what is today the Arab world barely registers." —Lyn Julius

For thousands of years, long before the Arab conquest, the Middle East and North Africa were home to ancient Jewish communities. In cities such as Baghdad, Tunis, Cairo and Casablanca, Jews were a significant presence and constituted as much as a third of the population. Yet, today, the Jews of the Arab lands have almost entirely disappeared.

In this groundbreaking essay, Lyn Julius, a journalist who has spent years researching the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, explores what happened to this vast and diverse Jewish diaspora. What was their status under Islam, and how did the creeping rise of nationalism and antisemitism lead to their expulsion and exodus?

Cast Out examines the vanishing of a people and restores an essential but often forgotten piece to the puzzle that makes up today's Middle East.