Really, the worst situation I ever heard of in the Arab world was when the Etheiopian Christians came and finished off the Jewish King of Yemen for burning up all those Najran Christians.
Jews living in the Middle East and North Africa after the onset of Islam were dhimmized, persecuted, murdered treated with contempt, their property and lands confiscated, etc. Your Arab Islamic brethren had a lot of practice in massacring Jews. The following are some small quotes from Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial (1984): (Chapter 3 exerpts, footnotes not included)
The Jewish community of Syria became a refuge for Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. For centuries under Ottoman rule, it has been maintained, the Jews were allowed to live "relatively secure", often prosperous lives--chiefly as merchants--in the mellahs. Spanish exiles were responsible for establishing many Jewish religious schools in DAmascus and Aleppo, and more than one Jew held the post of Finance Minister.
But in Syria, as elsewhere in the Arab world, the "position of Jews was in many ways precarious."
A thirteenth century Syrian Arab writer provided a classic example of the durability and consistency of the Muslims' traditional Koran-inspired demoniacal image of "the Jew" -- the image through which the Prophet Muhammed and his followers sought to avenge Jews for favoring Judaism over the "new", seventh century religion. The Syrian wrote that:
......this [Jewish] group is the most cursed of all God's creation, the most evil-natured
and the most deeply rooted in infidelity and accursedness. They are the most evil inten-
tioned of mankind in their deeds, even they are the most ostentations in humility and
sel-abasement...When they manage to be alone with man, they bring him to destruction
they introduce, by trickery, a stupefying drug into his food, and then they kill him.
As dhimmis they paid the special tax, and their testimony against Muslims was invalid in the Syrian Courts. Jews bore many traditional dhimma discriminatory burdens:forbidden to carry arms; and "usually" prohibited from building or repairing places of worship. To those consistent humiliations were added the intermittent "oppression, extortion and violence by both local authorities and the Muslim population....One Jew who rose to the post of "treasury manager", at the end of the eighteenth century, ran the gamut of the schizoid Jewish existence under Muslim rule. In the first stage of his ascendancy, he was arrested, an eye was gouged out, and his nose and ears cut. In the second stage, he gained prominence "unique" for Jews, under the tolerant reign of a new pasha.....These people are always taken off in the last moment of their greatest apparent glory. True to this..."Hayyim the Jew" was executed in 1820 and his property was confiscated by yet another successor to the Syrian reign.
....According to reports from the Jewish community in 1839, however, it was the European consuls who insisted on the protection of the Jews---not entirely the beneficence of the occupying Arab government.
Libya...The seventh-century Arab conquest, taking fifty years to subjugate all of North Africa, brought Libyan Jews under the same fluctuating oppressive dhimma restrictions as elsewhere in the Maghreb...From that period forward, the Jewish population was, in one city or another, sacked cheated, and pillaged alternatively by nomads and Bedouins, with sterner penalties and banishment meted out arbitrarily, according to the whim of whichever Muslim tribal leader had at the moment defeated his rival...The twelfth century brought the barbarity of the Almohads to the eastern plains, and the Jews were severely persecuted "for the purpose of conversion" about 1140, "the blood of sons and daughters was spilt on a sabbath day...There is not a Jew, not a single one, in Dajayya or al-Mahdiya, and for Sabrat and Tura my eye always weeps".275 ....and the following mid-twelfth century description from another:
....years of distress, oppression and persecution to Israel, and they were exiled from their localities:
such as were for death, to death and such as were for the sword, to the sword, and...to the famine,
and...to the captivity...and such as were destined to leave the community left because the sword
of Ibn Tumart, who went forth into the world in the year 4902 (1141/2) and who had decided
to eliminate Israel...And so he left no name of them in the whole of his kingdom nor
remnant...from the end of the world to the city of al-Mahdiya.276
....In the late sixteenth century many of the Libyan Jews whose ancestors had fled the forced conversion of Spain ironically were faced with the choice of death---or conversion to Islam. "Hundreds" of Jews were murdered during the persecutions of Ali Gurzi Pasha's reign.281 ....Jews in other regions of Tripolitania did not benefit from the Turkish rule;they were subjected to forced conversion and anti-Jewish pogroms, and they shared the ghetto miseries suffered in other parts of North Africa.....Another plea came from the entire Jewish community of Tripoli----
....The situation of the Jews in all parts of Tripolitania is very dangerous. >From all
the rights....we are unfortunately excluded by reason of extreme ill-treatment and
persecution at the hands of the Muslims in our country, under the...present [Governor]
....who does not wish to...protect us against the cruel and inhumane Muslim population
....Last Thursday, a Jew on the way to his village was killed by Arabs and his companion
was injured...the authorities have not attempted to find the criminals...to the Muslims
the Jews are of no account, and our personal safety is in jeopardy and our belongings
are not our own.285
Tunisian Jewry...an authenticated and respected document of that period [fifteenth century], written by a Flemish nobleman, describes Tunisian Jews as "despised and hated"....
The Jews, on the other hand have no freedom. They must all pay a heavy...tax. They wear
special clothes, different from those of the Moors. If they did not do so, they would be stoned,
and they therefore put a yellow cloth on their heads or necks;their women dare not even
wear shoes. They are much despised and hated, more than even the Latin Christians.193
....From the seventh-century Arab conquest down through the Almohad atrocities, Tunisia fared little better than its neighbors.196 The "complete expulsion" of Jews from Kairouan, near Tunis, occurredafter years of hardship, in the thirteenth century, when Kairouan was anointed as a holy city of Islam.197 In thesixteenth century, the "hated and despised" Jews of Tunis were periodically attacked by violence, and they were subjected to "vehement anti-Jewish policy" during the various political struggles of the period.
Algeria....the fate of Algeria's Jewish community was harsh....At the end of the fourteenth century, the Jews of the town of Tlemcen were persecuted to such extremes that one eminent historian states that there is no indication of "how indigenous Jews managed to survive the period of tribulations."170....Even on the edge of the Sahara Desert, the Jews were plundered and murdered. In late fifteenth-century Tu'-at, an "oasis" town, a sheikh incited the Muslims by accusing the Jews of "sorcery" and of arrogance of their failing to conform to the "discriminatory" codes; many Jews were killed and others forced to wear conspicuous and peculiar garb. This took place, ironically, in 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain and were wearily arriving in North Africa in search of respite from persecution.171 ....The Algerian Jewish community continued to bear the outrages of local "protectors" even after Algeria came under Turkish domination. In 1801 a would-be ruler promised, in return for assisting the overthrow of a rival, to give the soldiers "8 times their pay, white bread and the right to sack the Jews for three days."173 In the next fifteen years, hundreds of Jews were massacred; during one episode three hundred Jews were slaughtered within a few hours, while as the result of another carnage, the Algerian Chief Rabbi was decapitated. The murder of a Jew by a soldier sparked yet another bloodletting; while desecrating a synagogue, it claimed among its victims more than a dozen Jews who were at prayer.
Morocco...The history of the Jews under Arab rule in North Africa is turbulent and erratic. The conditions of their lives as infidels under the Charter of Omar might have been bearable under a more tolerant Arab caliph of one region, while at the same time, in another, Jews would have been under siege, or massacred.136 Practically from the beginning of the seventh-century Arab conquest, Jews were forced to live separately---in Morocco the ghetto was called mellah, while in Tunisia the Jewish area was hara. Some "Jewish tribes" had lived separately for "reasons of convenience", in some pre-Islamic periods, but now Jewish Quarters were imposed by the Arab conquerors of North Africa, with their "special Maghrebi" type of Islam---the "Malakite madhhab school most intolerant of non-Muslims," and "the establishment of the tariqas, mystical fraternities headed by religious fanatics."137 ....Because most of the Christian minority fled---those who had not been massacred or converted to Islam by the twelfth century 138 ---restrictions became increasingly harsh toward the Jew....Despite their general misery and deprivation, some Jews managed to accumulate wealth.141
However, most Jews were outcasts who suffered not only the traditional contempt of the dhimma code, but were subjected to imaginative interpretations thereof. Slaps in the face upon payment of the head tax, bullying, and insults were everyday occurrences. Rapes and looting, burning of synagogues, ripping of sacred Torah scrolls, even murder---all were "so frequent that it is impossible to list them."142 .....In 1032, 6,000 Jews of Fez were murdered, and still others were "robbed of their women and their property."143 In 1146, Fez was attacked by the Almohads [Arab Islamic], leaving "one hundred thousand persons killed." Marrakesh suffered similarly, when an unbelievable "one hundred twenty thousand" were slaughtered. According to an account of "eye-witness" reports, "On entering...the Almohads tried to convert the Jews to Islam by debate and persuasion..." until "a new commandment...solved the problem by a more efficient method. One hundred and fifty were killed...the remainder converted...."144 ....Those few Christians still in the region were "completely wiped out" by the Almohads, leaving the Jews as lone infidel survivors to suffer "the spite of the second Almohad generation."145 Forced conversion to Islam, death, or exile were the choices of the survivors of the Almohad massacres...In the latter part of the thirteenth century, "immediately before the founding of the New City [of Fez], the Muslims in the Old City rioted against the Jews."150 ....The "fierce persecution of 1640, called the al-Khada," was described by a victim of another assault, in a rare ancient manuscript; this report illustrates the rare instances of Jew insulting Muslim, the Muslims reaped vengeance upon the entire Jewish community with utter disregard for individual innocence or guilt....Down through the nineteenth century, the Jews' existence in Morocco remained insecure and tenuous, their misery often recorded by foreigners. The Jews were subjected at various times under Islam to "such repression, restriction and humiliation as to exceed anything in Europe."163
Egypt....Jews in Egypt, as in other Arab countries, lived at the whim of erratic Arab sovereignty. One Arab caliph invoked sunna (the "Muslim term for customs ascribed to Mohammed') to tyrannize the Jews and Christians in Cairo in the ninth and tenth centuries.101 One caliph, al-Hakim of the Fatimids, devised particularly insidious humiliation for the Jews in his attempt to perform what he deemed his role as "Redeemer of Mankind." First the Jews were forced to wear miniature golden calf images around their necks, as though they still worshipped the Golden Calf. But the Jews refused to convert. Next they wore bells, and after that, six-pound wooden blocks were hung around their necks. In fury at his failure, the caliph had the Cairo Jewish Quarter destroyed along with its Jewish residents, in 1012.103 The rule of the Ayyubids (1171-1250) continued the demeaning dhimma laws 104 and during the thirteenth-century reign of the Burji Mamluks, the Jews were particularly sought out for attack, with the result that the Jewish population "greatly declined".105 At the end of the thirteenth century, the poll tax, or head tax, was "reintroduced in Egypt, where it had fallen into oblivion,"106 and in the fourteenth century Jews were subject to "anti-dhimmi" mob "riots." With the reign of "mainly" Circassian-born Mamluks, "the prevailing attitude....was more severe than ever."107 In the sixteenth century, a religious fanatic wreaked terror among the Jews in Cairo. ".....From even those scholars who have documented the Arab persecution of Jews, there are accounts of a "flourishing" Jewish community in Egypt under the Ottoman rule. Yet Edward Lane's definitive report of the first half of the nineteenth century, which asserts that the "Jews...are under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish empire,"110 puts the Jews role in general, and the relatively "flourishing" Egyptian Jewry, into a somewhat more realistic perspective by that report's description of Egypt's "less oppressed' Jews:
They [the Jews] are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims
in general...the Jews are detested by the Muslims far more than are the Christians.
Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes
beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are
less oppressed; but still they are scarcely ever dare utter a word of abuse when
reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been
put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful
words against the Ku-ran or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse
his jaded ass, and after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by
calling the beast a Jew...A Jew has often been sacrificed to save a Muslim.
...One historian has documented persistent blood libel persecutions throughout nineteenth-century Egypt--six separate instances between 1870 and 1892 alone, preceded by others---in 1844 in Cairo, where "Muslims....despised and sometimes abused the Jews," and even in such cosmopolitan communities as in Alexandria, in 1869.....Among the populous Muslim (fellahin) community, the Jews were not better off. A Britisher long connected with the fellahin through his Egyptian government jod, reported in 1888 that "....I think it would be difficult to discover which particular race is most hated (by the Egyptian fallahin) but I fancy that the Jew or Armenian would take the palm"...In 1890 an Egyptian version of the false charge "documenting" the "Human Sacrifices in the Talmud" was published in Cairo.114 Anti-Jewish "agitation" and persecution of the Jews in Port Sa was frequent between the 1880s and 1908...In 1926 the first Egyptian Nationality Code established that Egyptian citizenship would be offered only to those who belonged "racially to the majority of the population of a country is Arabic or whose religion is Islam."116 From the late 1930's, Egyptian nationalism, Arab unity against Zionists, and Nazi propaganda fused with traditional prejudice to ignite violently against the Jews.117 Often the destruction victimized other infidels. One such major incident was the burning of synagogues and churches, and other communal buildings belonging to non-Muslims.118
Iraq...The Iraqi Jews took pride in their distinguished Jewish community, with its history of scholarship and dignity. Jews had prospered in what was then Babylonia for twelve hundred years BEFORE the Muslim conquest in A.D. 634;75 it was not until the ninth century that dhimma laws such as the yellow patch, heavy head tax, and residence restrictions were enforced. Capricious and extreme oppression under some Arab caliphs and Mamluks brought taxation amounting to expropriation in A.D. 1000, and in 1333 the persecution culminated in pillage and destruction of the Baghdad synagogues. In 1776, there was a slaughter of Jews at Basra, and the bitterness of anti-Jewish measures taken by Turkish-Muslim rulers in the eighteenth century caused many Jews to flee.76
Aden....the general quality of life for Aden's Jews during the Arab reign was hardly "golden." The proximity of Yemen and the same dominating power indicate that Jews of Aden suffered conditions of humiliation under Muslim rule similar to those of the Yemenite Jews "until Aden was conquered by the British in 1839."59 ....
Yemen...Persecution was constant and extreme---stoning Jews, and "age-old" custom, according to "an old doctor of Muslim law,"37 was still common tradition at the time of the 1948 exodus...The Yemenite Jews' situation changed drastically for the worse in the seventh century with the Arab conquest. After the Jews who lived in what is now part of Saudi Arabia were either expelled by the Prophet Muhammad or obliterated, Jewish communities in the rest of the conquered Muslim territory fell under the new infidel status. The Jews of Yemen were subjected to the severest possible interpretation of the Charter of Omar, plus carefully devised brutal improvisations on the dhimmi theme. For about four centuries, the Jews suffered under the fierce fanatical edict of the most tolerant of all Islamic sects.40 .....In the twelfth century the conditions were so punishing, and formerly repugnant forced conversion to Islam was so sought by terrified Jews, that the "Great Rambam"----the venerated Rabbi Moses Maimonides---was prompted to write the famous "Yemen Epistle",41 in which he commiserated with Yemen's Jewry and besought them to keep the faith.....The eighteenth century was one of almost unbearable burden, bringing the 1724 famine, in addition to insidiously varied humiliations and violence. Fanatical rulers ordered synagogues destroyed, and public prayers were forbidden. Many thousands attempted to follow "false messiah" Shabbetai Zevi on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but they were attacked on the way, and the Chief Rabbi of San'a was "tortured to death."42 ....One overlord decided to rid the Arabian peninsula of Jews by offering them a choice of religious conversion or banishment'the overwhelming number chose to leave the capitals and head for the Red Sea coast. Those who had not died of starvation, thirst, or illness during the torturous journey---for many, on foot----were allowed to settle down in a town called Mauza', where more casualties were caused by the cruelties of the climate. The Jews' exile was terminated by decree in 1781, according to one report, because the exiled Jews had been the only craftsmen in the country and the work was keenly missed.....Throughout the nineteenth century Jews were victims of hunger and of Arab attacks on the ghetto, which resulted in murder and pillage.
.....Contrary to the myth that Jews lived in harmony with the Arabs before the Zionist state, innumerable authoritative works document decisively the subjugation, oppression, and spasmodic anti-Jewish eruptions of violence that darkened the existence of the Jews in Muslim Arab countries...The Prophet Muhammad's original plan had been to induce the Jews to adopt Islam;4 when Muhammad began his rule at Medina in A.D. 622 he counted few supporters [Medina had a large Jewish population], so he adopted several Jewish practices----including daily prayer facing towards Jerusalem and the fast of Yom Kippur--in the hope of wooing the Jews. But the Jewish community rejected the Prophet Muhammad's religion, preferring to adhere to its own beliefs, whereupon Muhammad subsequently substituted Mecca for Jerusalem, and dropped many of the Jewish practices...Three years later, Arab hostility against the Jews commenced, when the Meccan army exterminated the Jewish tribe of Quraiza.5 As a result of the Prophet Muhammad's resentment, the Holy Koran itself contains many of his hostile denunciations of Jews6 and bitter attacks upon the Jewish tradition, which undoubtedly have colored the beliefs of religious Muslims down to the present.