Rabbi Abdallah Somekh
Rabbinic scholar and teacher
A leading Baghdad rabbinic scholar whose teaching at Midrash Bet Zilkha trained generations of rabbis and helped make nineteenth-century Baghdad an important center of Jewish learning.
Explore the curated people-and-family network from Discover Jewish Iraq together with the Virtual Embassy’s biographical collection of Iraqi Jewish writers, rabbis, musicians, public figures, scholars and communal leaders.
A leading Baghdad rabbinic scholar whose teaching at Midrash Bet Zilkha trained generations of rabbis and helped make nineteenth-century Baghdad an important center of Jewish learning.
A celebrated Kurdish Jewish scholar associated with the Barzani rabbinic family. Her learning, letters and leadership became a major point of memory in the history of Jewish Kurdistan.
The Tweig name is preserved in Baghdad’s synagogue and school landscape. The Meir Abraham Tweig School was founded in 1946 by his widow, linking family commemoration with modern Jewish education.

His name survives in the Ezra Menahem Daniel Sports Club, a modern communal institution that brought together athletics, youth life, school activity and social organization in Jewish Baghdad.

Born in Baghdad, David Sassoon later built a major commercial network from Bombay. His life illustrates how Iraqi Jewish family, trade and communal networks extended far beyond Iraq while retaining a strong Baghdad origin story.

A Baghdad-born Jewish statesman who served as Iraq’s first finance minister and in parliament. His career places Iraqi Jewish civic participation inside the formation of the modern Iraqi state.
A prominent Jewish businessman in Basra whose 1948 trial and execution became a turning point in Iraqi Jewish memory and contributed to a growing sense of insecurity among the community.

Baghdad rabbi, halakhic authority and prolific author whose influence reached Jewish communities far beyond Iraq.

Chief Rabbi of Baghdad in the 1920s, publisher and communal leader.

Prominent Baghdadi Jewish politician, landowner and philanthropist associated with communal institutions and public life.

Iraqi Jewish poet, writer, journalist and translator who wrote extensively in Arabic.

Writer, economist, poet and communal leader who documented Iraqi public and cultural life.

Baghdad-born engineer, entrepreneur and philanthropist who supported Iraqi Jewish cultural and educational initiatives.

Baghdad-born novelist, translator, journalist and civil-rights advocate whose work frequently engaged Arab-Jewish life.
Baghdad-born writer and public servant whose fiction explores Iraqi Jewish migration, identity and Arab-Jewish relations.

Baghdad-born novelist and scholar who wrote about Iraqi Jewish identity and Arabic-Hebrew cultural worlds.
Baghdad-born scholar of modern Arabic literature, translator and cultural bridge between Arabic and Hebrew literary traditions.
Baghdad-born scholar of Arabic language and literature and a major researcher of modern Arabic and Iraqi Jewish writing.
Baghdad-born Iraqi-British businessman, philanthropist and communal advocate who has worked to preserve Iraqi Jewish heritage, memory and links between Iraq and its displaced Jewish community. Born in 1955, he left Iraq with his family in 1971 and later became active in British Jewish communal leadership.

Baghdad-born poet, painter and author whose work draws on Iraqi, Arabic, Jewish and Israeli cultural memory.
Iraqi Jewish singer celebrated as one of the leading voices of twentieth-century Iraqi music. She remained in Iraq after most of the Jewish community departed and continued to occupy an important place in Iraqi cultural memory.

Violinist and composer who, together with his brother Daoud, helped shape modern Iraqi urban music and worked with many major Iraqi singers.

Oud player and composer who formed a celebrated musical partnership with his brother Saleh and contributed substantially to twentieth-century Iraqi music.
Baghdad-born oud player, composer and singer associated with the professional musical culture of Iraq and later with Iraqi Jewish musical traditions in Israel.

Baghdad-born qanun player and musical director associated with Iraqi radio and the country’s modern musical scene.
Baghdad-trained qanun virtuoso whose musical education included the Jewish school for the blind and whose performances preserved Iraqi musical traditions.

Baghdad-born rabbinic authority who later served as Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel and became one of the most influential Sephardi halakhic figures of the modern era.

Baghdad-born rabbi who later served as Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel and maintained strong intellectual links to Babylonian and Sephardi rabbinic traditions.

Baghdad-born rabbi and kabbalist remembered for his scholarship in traditional Jewish mystical literature.
Baghdad-born rabbi and kabbalist whose life linked Iraqi rabbinic traditions with later Sephardi religious institutions in Jerusalem.
Baghdadi rabbi and communal leader associated with the religious institutions and leadership of Iraq’s Jewish community in the twentieth century.

Baghdad-born rabbi and kabbalist known for religious scholarship that emerged from the rich rabbinic culture of late Ottoman and early modern Baghdad.

Baghdad scholar, communal figure and kabbalist whose writings and family archive provide valuable evidence about Jewish intellectual life in Iraq.

Baghdad rabbi and communal leader who served in senior leadership of the Iraqi Jewish community during a period of profound political change.

Baghdad-born diplomat and politician closely associated with efforts that brought large numbers of Iraqi Jews to Israel during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.

Baghdad-born politician and activist who played a major role in organizing the departure of Iraqi Jews during the mass migration of 1950–1951.

Baghdad-born historian and political thinker whose scholarship examined nationalism, the Middle East and modern political history.
Baghdad-born Arabic-language novelist and short-story writer whose work preserved Iraqi Jewish speech, memory and social worlds in literary form.

Baghdad-born writer and critic who later became a major figure in Canadian literary and cultural life while continuing to write about identity, migration and memory.
Baghdad-born Arabic-language writer and journalist whose fiction and memoir preserved the linguistic and social world of Iraqi Jews.
Baghdad-born writer and visual artist whose work explores Iraqi Jewish childhood, migration, memory and identity.
Zakho-born scholar and linguist renowned for documenting Jewish Neo-Aramaic languages and the oral traditions of Kurdistani Jews.

Baghdad-born actor with a long career in film, television and theatre and a prominent presence in Israeli and international cultural life.

Baghdad-born businessman and philanthropist who succeeded to leadership of the Sassoon commercial enterprise and became a prominent Baghdadi Jewish figure abroad.

Baghdad-born Jewish businessman who rose from modest circumstances to become one of the best-known property and business figures in early twentieth-century Shanghai.

Baghdad-born actor who studied drama in Iraq before building a long career in Israeli theatre and cinema.
Iraqi Jewish-born historian and intellectual whose trajectory, including his conversion to Islam, became part of the complex history of Jewish participation in twentieth-century Iraqi intellectual life.
Iraqi Jewish writer, poet, lawyer and parliamentarian regarded as a pioneer of modern Iraqi literature; he later continued his literary and legal work after leaving Iraq.
Baghdad-born Arabic-language novelist and short-story writer associated with social realism and the development of modern Iraqi prose.

Baghdad-born Arabic poet and scholar who became a specialist in modern Arabic literature and continued to promote Arabic literary culture after migration.
Baghdad-born author, poet and educator whose work addressed Iraqi identity, Judaism and the experience of displacement.
Baghdad businessman and community representative who served in leadership roles among the small Jewish community that remained in Iraq after the mass departure of the early 1950s.

Basra-born Iraqi Jew who later became an Israeli military officer, parliamentarian, Labor Party leader and government minister.
A Baghdad rabbinic family network associated with scholarship and the Bet Zilkha learning tradition.
A Kurdish Jewish rabbinic lineage associated with learning, leadership and the memory of Asenath Barzani.
A Baghdad family memory preserved in synagogue and school institutions carrying the Tweig name.
A Baghdad communal family name connected in the atlas to the Ezra Menahem Daniel Sports Club.
A Baghdad-origin family network that became internationally prominent through commerce, philanthropy and diaspora institutions.
A Baghdad Jewish family context represented here through statesman Sassoon Eskell.
A commercial family network represented here through the Basra businessman Shafiq Ades.