A blood libel and massacre 187 years ago in northern Iran led to the forced conversion of a small Persian-Jewish community to Islam. For more than a century, however, they continued to keep their faith in secret, maintaining the Jewish traditions as crypto-Jews.

The Allahdad pogrom of March 26, 1839, in the city of Mashhad, is the subject of a new collection of historical objects curated at the National Library of Israel. The library is closed to the broader public due to Home Front Command security regulations during the war with Iran, so the artifacts cannot currently be viewed in person.

However, sharing their story is particularly important during Israel’s war with the Islamic Republic, said Chaim Neria, curator of the Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Collection at the National Library, who put together the collection.

“Many pogroms against Jews have been recorded in history in Islamic countries — and, of course, Christian countries — but stories of forced conversion are very rare,” Neria said. “Fortunately,” he added, “this tragedy has a sort of happy ending, like the Passover story, with the restoration of Jewish life in the land of Israel.”

The Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, believed to be the burial place of a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, is considered a holy site to Shiite Muslims, and Jewish settlement was long forbidden within the city. But in the 18th century, Emperor Nader Shah (1688-1747) sought to turn the city into a commercial hub, and he invited a small Jewish community to live there, according to information provided by the National Library.

He was assassinated shortly afterward, however, and the Jews were permitted to settle only in a small quarter outside the city walls, leading to nearly a century of constant tension.

On March 26, 1839, those tensions erupted into violence. There are different accounts of exactly what sparked the attacks, but they all indicate a misunderstanding regarding the corpse of a dog,........

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