 Before 1840, cases of blood libel occurred in Aleppo in 1810 and in Antioch in 1826.In 1840, contemporaneous with the affair in Rhodes, a more famous case of blood libel, known as the Damascus affair, was developing in Damascus, while the city was under the short-lived control of Muhammad Ali of Egypt.On February 5, Capuchin friar Thomas and his servant Ibrahim Amara went missing, and the Jews of Damascus were accused of murdering them to collect their blood for Passover matzos.