Talk:Abboud and Khajawa

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This article contains a translation of عبود وخجاوة from ar.wikipedia.

Lack of Reliable Sources and overall untrustworthyness.

I feel like discussing this here is a good first step before a submitting of an AFD.

My overall complaints of this article are numerous, first, the image used is not a real photo of the couple, its from a now dead blog site.

Another complaint is every source is unreliable. They are all blog pages or tabloid sites, and the earliest web mention of the case I can find is either from a Wattpad story or a Facebook group. I found 2 semi-related Sources that are a slight bit more trustworthy that I will link in a few hours, but both mention only the name "Khajawa" (in Arabic) as the name of the "Antagonist" in a local kids song to serve as a warning. Fin 16:04, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your research! I can't say I'm totally confident of the content here, but I'd think that at least Al-Watan (Qatar) (website: al-watan.com) should be a sufficiently reliable source? About the others I'm less sure. I had considered them acceptable newspapers too, but I don't speak Arabic and can't really judge how trustworthy they are. Gawaon (talk) 17:38, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Also relevant, though now unfortunately already archived, is this talk page discussion. @Auttheum mentioned there that he had found "a collection of postcards dated 1920 that confirm Abboud & Khajawa were real people who were publicly executed in Mosul in 1917 after being caught selling human meat as animal meat, so that part at least is real." Of course postcards aren't particularly reliable sources either, but at least that seems to confirm that reports of the case circulated already a century ago, making a modern creepypasta unlikely. Gawaon (talk) 17:59, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

The article mentioned above seems to copy almost exactly this Facebook post from a year earlier. Also is there any photo's of the postcards? As those could lead us to an actual primary source. Fin 20:24, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

I found the postcards with a description here: [Serial Killers] Photos Documenting Fate of Cannibalistic Iraqi Couple in Mosul 1917 Famine. The description on the page seems unreliable, as it refers to "wiki", so quite possibly an earlier version of this page, but the postcards themselves seem genuine. Handwritten text on the backsides, as far as I could read it:

Top-left postcard (front: standing man): "This picture shows the man who ate meet of men in the famine time in mossoul at 1917 & he has kild many peoples & sell their meet in the market. this picture shows when he was in prison"
Top-right postcard (front: hanged man, with a crowd in the back): "This is the man only hanging up".
Bottom postcard (front: about eight skulls and some human bones): "This is a view of armenian skulls".

The text printed on the backsides only seems to identify them as postcards ("TARJETA POSTAL / POST CARD" etc.), without any details on where they were made or what they depict. They all seem to be credited to "Issac Amso Photographer Ninevay[?] Mosul, Iraq" and are all stamped in the same fashion, "carrying '1920 Mosul' (northern Iraq) cancels [postmarks] and '1/2 An. Iraq in British Occupation' overprinted stamp" (according to the description).

The handwriting on the backsides also seems the same, further indicating that they are connected. But since the bottom one talks about "armenian skulls", I'm not so confident that it shows victims of the hanged man – it could refer to the Armenian genocide instead.

So the top photos seem to show a man hanged for murdering people and selling human flesh during a severe famine in Mosul in 1917. The source doesn't mention children as victims; neither is a wife/woman mentioned. The skulls in the bottom postcard could well be unrelated.

One more crucial question in this regard: Was there a famine in Mosul at that time? We have an article on the Persian famine of 1917–1919, but Mosul is not in Persia/Iran. However, there is indeed evidence of famine in Mosul. Our article on the Mesopotamian campaign (1914–1918) cites a source saying: "By 1918 the city of Mosul was in a state of famine." And a paper I found describes the situation in Mosul province in 1918 as so bad that people even turned to cannibalism: "The people were starving, and in their desperation they were eating dogs, cats, and even human corpses."^[1] It gives several sources. While this only mentions corpse eating, not killing people to eat them, it is at least an independent confirmation that there was a famine so bad it made some people eat human flesh.

Now what about the Facebook post you mention? I think it's not surprising that it's very similar to the Al-Watan article since both seem to cite an old newspaper article published after the couple was executed. The Al-Ain article has further details: "The late historian Ahmad al-Sufi recounted this story in his manuscript History and Customs of Mosul in the Late Ottoman Era, citing the Turkish magazine Al-Amdar from that time." The Masreiat article also cites that Turkish magazine. I suppose this may be a reference to Alemdar, which was published from 1912 to 1922 in Istanbul.

Very interestingly, the Al-Ain article includes a picture of two people hanging from tripod-style gallows – one of them seems to be another view of the hanged man from the postcards, while the second person looks like a woman, suggesting that they were indeed hanged together.

As another sign that this is a genuine story from that time I would regard the question asked near the end of the Al-Watan article, which likewise seems to be copied or paraphrased from that old article: "Are they the guilty ones, or is it the state? Who actually deserved the death penalty? The ruler of Iraq at the time, who failed to provide them with food, or the two starving people?" – To me that rather sounds like something someone may have asked (somewhat rhetorically) shortly after the famine, not likely a modern invention.

So while the source situation could be better, I think the couple is historical, with the postcards and the Alemdar article being the major primary evidence.

Pinging @Haunted Spy, who has created this article and written most of its content. Gawaon (talk) 09:30, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

I missed that there are three more photographs – click the right arrow after opening the enlarged picture of the first three to see them. Again clearly from the same set and with the same handwriting on the back. Per my attempts to decipher it, it says:

Top-left (front: showing two people hanging from tripod-like gallows, just like the Al-Ain picture): "This picture shows the man & his wife whome has kild peaples & sold their meet in famine time 1917 & they also kild [or 'child'?]"
Top-right (front: standing woman/person in a long garment) : "This is the wife of the man who has kild the people. she is also in prison"
Bottom (front: cluster of human skulls and bones): "This picture shows the heads of peoples kild by that man"

So there's more evidence that the wife was indeed implicated too and that they were executed together, though only the man is explicitly described as killer. And in contrast to the skulls shown on the third postcard, these are explicitly described as belonging to his victims. Gawaon (talk) 10:02, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

References

[1]
Kaiser, Hilmar. "Ottoman Rule and Genocide in Mosul Province". In Armenians of Iraq, edited by Antranik Dakessian, p. 105. Beirut: Haigazian University Press, 2021.

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