Places of memory across Iraq.

Jewish tradition identifies this shrine in al-Kifl with the prophet Ezekiel, whose book is rooted in the experience of the Babylonian exile. The present sacred complex developed over centuries around the tomb, a synagogue and a covered market. Iraqi Jews made organized pilgrimages here, especially around Shavuot, travelling from Baghdad, Hilla and other communities. Muslim tradition also reveres the place through the figure of Dhu al-Kifl, making the site an important example of overlapping sacred geography in Iraq.

On the western bank of the Tigris at al-ʿUzair, local Jewish and Muslim traditions identify this shrine with Ezra the Scribe. The Hebrew Bible does not record Ezra’s burial in Iraq, and early sources preserve other traditions, so the attribution should be understood as devotional memory rather than established archaeology. Over many generations the place nevertheless became one of the best-known Jewish pilgrimage destinations in southern Iraq and gave its name to the surrounding settlement.

The Jewish shrine of Nahum in Alqosh stands inside a former synagogue complex traditionally associated with the biblical prophet Nahum, whose book concerns Nineveh. The compound also preserves traditions connected with a tomb attributed to Sarah, described locally as Nahum’s sister, together with spaces used for study and communal functions. For generations Kurdish Jews made pilgrimages to Alqosh, embedding the shrine within the religious geography of northern Iraq.

Inside Kirkuk Citadel, a religious complex is locally associated with the prophet Daniel and with other biblical figures. The attribution belongs to a wider network of competing Daniel tomb traditions across the Middle East, so it should not be read as a proven burial site. What is historically important is the long-standing local memory of the citadel as a place where Jewish, Christian and Muslim sacred traditions overlapped.

The Meir Taweig Synagogue was built in the 1940s in Baghdad’s Bataween district and became one of the city’s important modern Jewish institutions. The complex included more than a prayer hall: historical descriptions refer to educational, library and community functions. During the period of mass Jewish departure around 1950–1951 it was also connected with the registration process for Jews leaving Iraq, making the building a witness to both communal continuity and rupture.

The Great Synagogue of Baghdad, often associated with the name Shaf ve-Yativ, occupies an important place in the religious memory of Baghdadi Jews. Tradition connects the congregation to the era of the Babylonian exile and King Jeconiah, although such an ancient foundation cannot be treated as archaeologically established for the surviving building. Across later centuries the synagogue functioned as a major communal reference point and was rebuilt or altered more than once.

Al-Habibiyah became Baghdad’s principal modern Jewish cemetery after older burial grounds were affected by twentieth-century urban development. Historical accounts describe the transfer and reburial of remains from the earlier cemetery as Baghdad expanded. The site contains thousands of graves and therefore preserves names, family relationships, dates, languages and communal histories that are often absent from surviving buildings.

Founded in 1928, the Shamash School became one of Baghdad’s leading Jewish secondary schools. Supported by the Shamash family and connected with the Anglo-Jewish Association, it combined Jewish studies with a modern curriculum and placed particular emphasis on English. By the late 1930s enrollment had grown to hundreds of students, and the school helped prepare young Baghdadi Jews for university, commerce and professional life.

The Masuda Salman (Sliman) School was founded in 1931 as an elementary school for boys, replacing an earlier school known as Karem Ha-Yeladim. Diarna’s documentation records it as more than a weekday classroom building: the premises also hosted Jewish prayer services on Shabbat and holidays, illustrating how educational and religious functions could share the same urban space.

The Rachel Shahmon School formed part of Baghdad’s expanding network of modern Jewish community schools in the interwar period. Historical descriptions place a synagogue on the first floor and the school above it, showing the close relationship between worship, philanthropy and education. Accounts of the school emphasize modern classrooms and communal investment in facilities for a new generation of Jewish students.

The Menashe Saleh School was founded in 1935 as a boys’ elementary school serving children from underprivileged backgrounds. Heritage and scholarly sources describe a curriculum that combined traditional Jewish religious instruction with secular subjects aligned with the Iraqi national educational system. The school therefore represents both communal solidarity and Jewish participation in modern Iraqi civic life.

The shrine of Rabbi Isaac Gaon in Baghdad’s Qanbar Ali/al-Kifah area preserves a medieval Jewish saintly tradition, but the biography of the figure buried there is historically uncertain. Older travel accounts recorded a tomb complex and associated synagogue. After decades of abandonment and deterioration, the site became the focus of a major restoration initiated by Iraq’s tiny remaining Jewish community with official approval.

The Farha Synagogue is remembered within Baghdad’s historic Shorja Jewish quarter and is associated in heritage sources with the prominent Sassoon family. Its importance lies less in a securely documented construction chronology than in what it reveals about the dense synagogue landscape of commercial Baghdad, where family patronage, neighborhood worship and mercantile networks overlapped.

The Masuda Synagogue belonged to the crowded network of Jewish institutions in Baghdad’s former Jewish quarter. It is remembered especially in connection with the violent 1950–1951 period, when Jewish targets in Baghdad were attacked amid accelerating registration for departure from Iraq. The history of who was responsible for the Baghdad bombings remains politically and historiographically contested, so this atlas records the attack history without assigning responsibility.

Midrash Bet Zilkha grew from the rabbinic school established around 1840 under Hakham Abdallah Somekh. Expanded in the mid-nineteenth century, it became one of the most influential centers of Torah and halakhic study in the eastern Jewish world. Students came from Iraq and neighboring regions, and graduates later served communities across the Middle East and the Baghdadi commercial diaspora, including India.

This shrine in the Sheikh Maʿruf cemetery landscape is traditionally associated with Joshua (Jeshua) son of Jehozadak, the high priest connected in biblical texts with the return from Babylonian exile—not with Joshua son of Nun. Historic Jewish travel accounts describe pilgrimage, Hebrew inscriptions and prayer at the site, while Muslim visitors also revered the tomb under overlapping identifications.

Diarna records the Tweig Synagogue in Basra’s al-ʿAshar district as a family-founded synagogue built in 1936. It served a Jewish community deeply integrated into Basra’s commercial and port economy. Documentation indicates that the synagogue was used especially on Shabbat and the High Holidays before closing as the local Jewish population dwindled in the decades after the mass emigration from Iraq.

Basra’s Jewish cemetery preserves the burial record of a community that played a significant role in the city’s commercial and social history. Unlike a synagogue that may represent one congregation or neighborhood, a cemetery gathers many generations into one landscape through names, dates, family ties and inscriptions. Reports have documented encroachment and construction on parts of the cemetery as well as local efforts to clean and protect the site.

Mosul sustained a Jewish community for many centuries, with historical references to a distinct Mahallat al-Yahud, or Jewish Quarter. The district contained homes, synagogues, schools, workshops and market activity rather than functioning as a single monument. By the mid-twentieth century the quarter emptied as Mosul’s Jews left Iraq, and later urban change and conflict altered much of the historic fabric.

The Sassoon Synagogue stood in the heart of Mosul’s Jewish quarter beside another prayer/study institution. Sources describe an early-twentieth-century building distinguished by pointed arches, decorative brickwork and blue-toned Hebrew inscriptional details. It served a community of several thousand Jews before the mid-century departure and later became one of the last major physical remnants of Jewish Mosul.

Zakho was one of the most important centers of Kurdish Jewish life and was remembered in some sources as a “Jerusalem of Kurdistan.” Its Jewish residents spoke a distinctive Neo-Aramaic dialect often called Lishana Deni, alongside Kurdish languages, and maintained rich oral traditions of biblical storytelling, songs, proverbs and folklore. The community’s heritage therefore extends far beyond surviving buildings into language and performance.

Diarna documents a Jewish cemetery associated with Erbil but explicitly notes that its precise location is unknown. That uncertainty is itself historically meaningful: a community can be well attested while its physical burial landscape becomes difficult to recover after migration, urban transformation and the loss of local custodians. Erbil’s Jews belonged to the wider Neo-Aramaic-speaking Jewish cultures of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Asenath Barzani (c. 1590–1670) was a renowned Kurdish Jewish scholar from a rabbinic family whose network of yeshivot served communities in northern Iraq. She became a leading teacher after the death of her husband and left Hebrew letters that display deep mastery of rabbinic literature. Later Kurdish Jewish tradition turned her grave in Amediye, where her father was also remembered as buried, into a pilgrimage site associated with blessing and healing.

Koy Sanjaq supported a small but established Kurdish Jewish community documented in historical sources from at least the late eighteenth century. The community maintained its own cemetery and participated in the distinctive multilingual culture of Iraqi Kurdistan, using Jewish Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish. Because documentation is comparatively sparse, the cemetery is one of the most important anchors for reconstructing the community’s physical presence.

Frank Iny School became the final functioning Jewish school in Baghdad after other communal schools closed or were consolidated. Its survival into the 1970s makes it an unusually late institutional witness to the shrinking but still organized Jewish community of the city.

The Meir Abraham Tweig School was founded by the widow of Meir Abraham Tweig in his memory. Diarna describes a boys’ elementary school that also contained a kindergarten, placing it within the dense network of Jewish educational philanthropy in mid-century Baghdad.

Alliance Israélite Universelle schools helped introduce modern language instruction, secular subjects and new educational pathways into Jewish communal life in Baghdad. The separate boys’ and girls’ records also show the scale and institutional diversity of this educational project.

Alliance Israélite Universelle schools helped introduce modern language instruction, secular subjects and new educational pathways into Jewish communal life in Baghdad. The separate boys’ and girls’ records also show the scale and institutional diversity of this educational project.

The Ezra Menahem Daniel Sports Ground was a communal space rather than a synagogue or school. Archival financial records show a committee linked to several Jewish schools and used by both students and the wider community.

Tatran appears in heritage documentation as one of Baghdad’s Jewish residential areas. Neighborhood records are especially important because Jewish life was not contained inside synagogues and schools: homes, lanes, markets and neighborly networks formed the everyday geography of the community.

Diarna records an Alliance primary school in Basra established in 1903 for 152 students, with a high school added around 1940–1941. The school demonstrates that Basra’s Jewish community was not only commercial but also institutionally invested in modern education.

Jewlakan—literally associated with “the Jews” in local usage—was a major Jewish residential quarter in Sulaymaniyah. Diarna notes roughly 2,256 Jews in the city in 1947, making the quarter a significant center of Kurdish Jewish urban life.

The cemetery served the Jewish community of Sulaymaniyah and preserves the burial dimension of Jewlakan’s history. Heritage reporting describes later urban development, including a road cutting through the cemetery area.

Diarna documents a former Jewish cemetery in Mosul near the Um Tisa’ Mosque. It belongs to the same urban heritage landscape as the old Jewish quarter, synagogues and schools.

Akre supported a substantial Jewish community at different periods. Diarna’s Waterfall Synagogue record adds a specific place of worship to the broader map of Kurdish Jewish towns and villages between Mosul, Barzan and Duhok.

Diarna records Nerem, also called Gundik, west of Akre. The village had an old synagogue known as Elijah the Prophet and about fifteen Jewish families in the 1930s; the community moved toward Akre in the 1940s.

Diarna preserves a synagogue record for Dohuk, a city positioned among the Jewish communities of Zakho, Sandur, Akre and Amediye. Even where documentation is sparse, the record is important evidence of organized Jewish religious life in the city.

Sandur was an unusual rural Jewish settlement near Duhok. Historical accounts describe a largely or entirely Jewish agricultural village whose residents worked vineyards and orchards and maintained their own communal institutions.

Because Sandur was a predominantly Jewish village, its synagogue was a central communal building rather than one religious structure among many. It anchored prayer, study and the calendar of collective life.

Diarna records a mikveh or “Jewish Well” in Sandur. This small-scale feature is important because heritage is not only monumental: ritual purity, water access and domestic religious practice depended on infrastructure embedded in everyday landscape.

Before the Al-Habibiyah cemetery became the best-known surviving Jewish burial ground of Baghdad, the city had older cemetery landscapes connected to generations of communal life. Diarna preserves a separate record for the old Jewish cemetery, helping distinguish successive burial grounds rather than collapsing them into one site.

Menahem Daniel School belonged to the dense network of Jewish educational institutions that shaped modern Baghdad. Its name also illustrates the close relationship between communal philanthropy, family commemoration and schooling.

Diarna records a Kadouri girls’ school associated with clothing design. The record adds vocational and gender history to the atlas, showing that modern Jewish education in Baghdad included practical training as well as academic study.

Diarna documents Jewish homes along Basra’s Seef River among the old shanasheel architecture of the city. The record shifts attention from formal institutions to domestic space and the river-facing urban fabric in which families lived.

Diarna records a place called Al-Yahhudi in Abu Al-Khasib, an agricultural and riverine district south of Basra. The name itself preserves a geographic trace of Jewish presence beyond the central city.

Koy Sanjaq supported a long-standing Jewish community that spoke Jewish Neo-Aramaic and Sorani Kurdish. Diarna’s neighborhood record complements the cemetery by restoring the everyday residential setting of the community.

Diarna documents Awena as part of the dense network of Jewish villages in northern Iraq. The record describes about 20 Jewish families before the mass migration, placing Jewish history in a rural mountain landscape rather than only in Baghdad and Basra.

Diarna documents Nerwa Jewish Community as part of the dense network of Jewish villages in northern Iraq. The record describes a village community remembered with a Jewish cemetery even when no synagogue functioned in a former resident’s time, placing Jewish history in a rural mountain landscape rather than only in Baghdad and Basra.

Diarna documents Zanganan as part of the dense network of Jewish villages in northern Iraq. The record describes a village with a synagogue, nearby cemetery and spring-water landscape, placing Jewish history in a rural mountain landscape rather than only in Baghdad and Basra.

Diarna documents Barashe as part of the dense network of Jewish villages in northern Iraq. The record describes a northern settlement described by Diarna as mainly inhabited by Jews, placing Jewish history in a rural mountain landscape rather than only in Baghdad and Basra.