Tomb of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira

Last crawled date: 2 years ago

The Diarna Geo-Museum (http://www.diarna.org) presents the tomb of a Judeo-Moroccan mystic set amidst the rural pastures of Northern Egypt. In 1879, at an advanced age, the Abir Yaakov left his community to die in Israel, passing through Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, before arriving in Damanhur, a village outside Alexandria. The Jewish community formed in the mid-1800s, numbered in the low hundreds, and faced a series of pogroms in 1871, 1873, and 1877 after false accusations of ritual murder. The Abir Yaakov lodged with local community leader Moshe Sarousi and soon became well-known in villages surrounding Damanhur as a holy man. He died at age 75 on January 4, 1880 (20th of Tevet on the Hebrew calendar), and his grave soon became a pilgrimage destination for Jews and Muslims. By the 1930s, all of Damanhur's Jews had left. #Damanhur #Diarna