The world has been transfixed this week by speculation that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a self-proclaimed devout Shiite Muslim infamous for his frequent anti-Semitic and anti-Israel remarks, may be of Jewish heritage. Jews may not be eager to claim him, but his family's religious history -- or even just the rumors surrounding it -- could have serious implications for Iranian foreign policy nonetheless.
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Ahmadinejad has admitted that his family changed its name when he was young, but has provided few details. According to Iranian government documents and family members, his original family name was Sabourjian or "cloth-weavers." That name, although present among Muslim Iranians, often indicates a minority background. Despite the official position, another former family name alleged by Ahmadinejad watchers has been Sabaghian, or "cloth-dyers." It doesn't matter much which name it was, given the similarity of the jobs they describe: Traditionally in Iran, both the coloring and weaving of cloth were professions left to non-Muslims as religiously unclean activities.
Generally among Iranian Muslim family names, the ending -ian or -yan signifies a relationship to a profession or location. But this can also indicate an Armenian or even an Assyrian (Nestorian-Chaldean) background and, therefore, identify Muslims with a Christian family heritage -- something other observers have picked up on. However, Jewish cloth weavers and dyers were more common during the past century in the region around the family's hometown of Aradan than were Armenian and Assyrian weavers and dyers. Ahmadinejad's hometown of Aradan had a Jewish minority into modern times, the remnants of a community dating back to Silk Road traders during the 3rd to 6th centuries B.C. Likewise, both Sabour and Sabagh (or Sabbagh) were uncommon last names for Muslim cloth weavers and dyers.
As Ahmadinejad claims to be from a multigenerational Shiite family, the name change in the 1950s was unusual. It is true that, as Ahmadinejad's relatives have noted, there was steady migration from villages to Tehran during the late 19th and 20th centuries. But urbanizing families did not tend to change their names so radically -- not even to conceal humble backgrounds.
If Ahmadinejad is indeed of Jewish descent, his family's story represents a classic pattern for religious converts: Adopt Islam, leave the hometown where people might know you as a Jew, move to a new location where blending into the Muslim population is easier, take up different occupations, and, just in case anyone were to question their confessional fidelity, demonstrate zeal for Islam by attacking their former religion and other minority faiths.
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