Jewish life in the ancient communities of the Middle East, had taken a turn for the worse in the mid 19th century.[22] The pogrom and forced conversion of the Jews of Mashhad in 1839, the fear sown by three blood libels in Aleppo between 1841 and 1860, and the outbreak of plague, first striking Baghdad in 1831, then returning with vengeance to Basra and Baghdad in 1841, encouraged Jewish clans in the declining Ottoman Empire to seek their fortunes elsewhere.[23][24][25][26]