MENA • COMMUNITY CHRONICLES

Jewish Communities Across the Middle East & North Africa

Fifteen city chronicles — from Mosul to Tangier, Baghdad to Casablanca — tracing how Jews guarded, copied, and chanted the Masoretic Text the Masoretes perfected in Tiberias.

Illuminated map of Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa
Fifteen cities — from Mosul to Tangier — guarding and chanting the Masoretic Text

I. Cities of Scripture

The Masoretes worked in Galilee, but their achievement belonged to the entire Jewish diaspora. Across the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East, Jewish communities maintained synagogues where the unpointed Torah scroll was read according to vocalization recorded in pointed codices.

Each page links to Grokipedia entries and academic resources, and connects to related notes — the Cairo Genizah, the Crown of Aleppo, and MENA Jewish languages.

II. Levant & Mesopotamia

III. Egypt & the Nile

IV. Iraq, Iran & the Gulf

V. Anatolia, Cyprus & the Mediterranean

VI. The Maghreb

Related Notes