Educational Oases in the Desert

A history of the French schools that pioneered female education in Ottoman Iraq's Jewish communities. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU), a Paris-based Jewish organization, founded dozens of primary schools throughout the Middle East. Many were the first formal educational institutions for local Jewish children. In addition to providing secular education, the schools attempted to change local customs and "regenerate" or "uplift" com