| Jeddah massacre of 1858 | |
| Location: | Jeddah, Ottoman Empire (Present-day Saudi Arabia) |
| Date: | 15 June 1858 |
| Target: | Christians |
| Type: | Massacre |
| Fatalities: | 21 Christian residents |
| Injuries: | 24 mostly Greeks |
| Perpetrators: | Hadhramites |
The Jeddah massacre of 1858 as a massacre that took place in Jeddah in the then Ottoman Province of Hejaz on 15 June 1858. The massacre targeted Christians and resulted in the death of 21 people.
The Province of Hejaz had been in a tense situation since the Hejaz rebellion of 1855-1856, during which the sharif and ulema of Mecca had oposed the new anti-slavery policy of the Ottoman Governor as influenced by Westerners and contrary to Islamic law. [1] The anti-slavery policy, which had been introduced after Western pressure, caused hostility toward Westerners in Hejaz, and during the rebellion houses beloning to French and British protegees had been attacked during riots in Jeddah and Mecka. [2]
On 15 June 1858, 21 Christian residents of Jeddah, which was then an Ottoman town of 5,000 predominantly Muslim inhabitants, were massacred, including the French consul M. Eveillard and his wife, and the British vice-consul Stephen Page, by "some hundreds of Hadramites, inhabitants of Southern Arabia". 24 others, mostly Greeks, some "under British protection" plus the daughter of the French consul Elise Eveillard and the French interpreter M. Emerat, both badly wounded, escaped and took refuge, some by swimming to it, in the steam paddle wheel frigate .[3] [4] [5] [6]
Whereas The Church of England quarterly review (1858) suggested there could be a vague connection to the British suppression of the Indian Rebellion of 1857–1859, and The Spectator wrote that "A Sheik from Delhi is said to have instigated the massacre",[7] the Perth Gazette of 22 October 1858 extensively quoted an interview in the Moniteur of M. Emerat, the French dragoman (interpreter) and chancellor. According to him, the events were provoked by a commercial dispute which ended by the rehoisting of the British flag on an Indian ship and the hauling down of the Ottoman one, which provoked a riot. He added that the "agitators" actually resented the presence of non-Muslims "whose presence, in their eyes, defiled the sacred soil of the Hejaz".[3] [8]
The massacre was discussed in the British House of Commons on 12 and 22 July 1858.[9] [10]
According to The Church Review (1859), the Jeddah population of about 5,000 was "often much increased by the influx of strangers", "the inhabitants are nearly all foreigners, or settlers from other parts of Arabia".[4]