Sea, Shmuel

Sami Muallem was born in 1932 in Baghdad into a wealthy Jewish family. His father was an accountant in a representative office of a British import-export company, and later a real estate dealer, and his mother was a French teacher ^[2] . At first, the boy studied at the prestigious Al-Sadun State School, among whose students were children of the ruling royal house, children of ministers, judges and senior military officers. Sami was one of three Jews attending this school ^[3] .

One of Sami's classmates was Faisal al-Gailani, the son of Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gailani . When the attitude towards Jews began to deteriorate under the influence of pro-Nazi propaganda, the eight-year-old Faisal tried to beat Sami with a stick, but during the ensuing fight, the Jewish boy emerged victorious and was almost expelled from school ^[4] . Shortly afterwards, in June 1941, he witnessed a large Jewish pogrom known as Farhud. During the pogrom, about 180 Iraqi Jews were killed ^[2] , but at the same time, many Baghdad Muslims defended their Jewish neighbors (including the Muallem family ^[2] ); later, Shmuel Sea writes that if there weren’t these manifestations of nobility, the number of those killed could be tens of times larger ^[5] .

After that, Sami Muallem moved to Frank Aini Jewish High School, and in high school to the English-language Jewish school Shamash, which he graduated in mathematics and science ^[2] in 1950 ^[6] . From the age of 16 he published his poems and stories in Arabic in the Iraqi Arab press. However, at this stage, the boy had already begun to be imbued with Jewish identity and, with the help of his friends, was studying conversational Hebrew in clandestine classes ^[2] .

In 1951, at the age of 18, Muallem repatriated to Israel. Other members of his family came there, although the head of the family remained in Baghdad and joined them only ten years later. A family without a main breadwinner struggled to make ends meet, living in ma'abars - resettlement camps - first Shaar Aliyah in Haifa, then Sakiya (in the place of the present city of Or Yehuda ) and, finally, Makor Haim in Jerusalem ^[2] . Sami served in the IDF ^[3] and worked at a construction site as an auxiliary worker; he also continued to publish his works in Arabic already in Israeli magazines ^[2] . When his elder brother entered the Hebrew University in Jerusalem , he also managed to help Shmuel with his admission to this university, where he studied Arabic literature . In 1962-1965, More completed his academic education on a scholarship from the British Council at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London , defending his doctoral dissertation ^[4] . The theme of the dissertation was modern Arabic poetry and the development of its forms and those influenced by Western literature; later, in 1976, it was published in a separate form in London as a separate book ^[5] .

Since the mid-1960s, Shmuel More has taught Arabic language and literature at Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University and Haifa University ^[2] . He was the first to delve into the history of theater in Arab culture, proving that already in the Middle Ages in the Arab countries there was a theater with live actors. Another topic of his research was the prosaic and poetic works of the Jews of the Arab countries, which he regarded as a separate section of Arabic literature. Together with Professor Philip Sadgrove from the University of Manchester, More published a book on the influence of Jews on the development of Arab theater in the 19th century. He also published a study on the Arab historian Abdurrahman al-Jabarti . Already in 1969, two of his articles were translated into Arabic and published in Egypt. In 1986, his dissertation on the influence of European culture on contemporary Arabic poetry was also translated from English into Arabic and published in Cairo. In 1999, Professor More was awarded the Israel Prize in Oriental Studies ^[5] .

In addition to the academic, More also engaged in social activities. He was one of the founders of the Israeli Union of Writers in Arabic and the Society of Scientists - immigrants from Iraq. Under the auspices of this organization, dozens of studies on the Jews of Iraq have been published ^[2] . The sea fought for the civil rights of Jewish repatriates from Arab countries, and later campaigned to include the Baghdad Farhud of 1941 in the Holocaust study programs and recognize June 4 - the day of the Baghdad pogrom - the national day of mourning in Israel ^[4] . He has published several books of autobiographical content ^[5] . In 2009-2010, the London-based Arabic online publication Elaf published over the course of several issues the Sea’s recollections of his childhood spent in Iraq, including the pogrom of 1941, causing a lot of emotional feedback from readers ^[3] .

Shmuel Moret, who lived with his wife Karina ^[3] , died in September 2017 on the day of Rosh Hashanah , leaving behind his wife, three children and five grandchildren ^[2] .