Generously funded by the KC Shasha Charitable Foundation, this project focuses on the cultural and social implications of musical encounters between Jewish, Muslim, and Christian neighbors in historical Iraq and Syria. It examines how the role of music and musical performance created a sense of communal belonging in the past and may continue to create a sense of commonality among various faith communities in diaspora. In other words, how interactions through shared musical traditions have influenced Jewish, Muslim, and Christian relations in the past and how the consideration of music and musical encounters can facilitate interfaith dialogue in the present and in the future.

The investigation centers on two cities: Aleppo in Syria and Baghdad in Iraq. Aleppo and Baghdad were chosen because of their historic cosmopolitanism, as seen in the evidence of close association among Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities. Can a reminder of this shared past, especially through music and the Arabic language, contribute toward shaping an intercommunal present within Baghdadi and Aleppian, more properly known as Halabi, communities in diaspora?

Source: Woolf Institute