Baghdadi Jews

Jewish ethnic group from the Middle East

The former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East are traditionally called Baghdadi Jews or Iraqi Jews. They settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Beginning under the Mughal Empire in the 18th century, merchant traders from Baghdad and Aleppo established originally Judeo Arabic speaking Jewish communities in India, then in a trading network across Asia, following Jewish customs. Baghdadi trading outposts were established across Southeast Asia and Oceania with families settling in Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia and Australia. The Second World War brought strife to India, the Japanese occupation of Burma, Hong Kong and Shanghai, then swiftly the end of the British Empire in Asia. Dislocated by war, the violence of the Indian Partition, rising nationalism and the uncertainty of independence in both India and Burma, an exodus began to the newly founded state of Israel, Britain and Australia. Families of Baghdadi Jewish descent continue to play a major role in Jewish life, especially in Great Britain where families such as the Sassoons and Reubens have enjoyed great prominence in business and politics.

Though Jewish traders from the Middle East had crossed the Indian Ocean since ancient Rome, sources from the Mughal Empire first mention Jewish merchants from Baghdad trading with India in the 17th century. India was far from unknown to the Jewish merchants of the Middle East. Since ancient Rome the caravan route from India had ended in Aleppo and the spice trade had tied Basra, Yemen and Cairo to the Malabar Coast. However, it was Persian speaking Jewish merchants, close trading allies of the Jews of Baghdad, Basra and Aleppo Jews who first struck into the Indian heartland. As adventurers, mystics and merchants, they had been venturing to India since the Middle Ages on the back of invasions of the subcontinent launched by Persian speaking rulers from what is now Iran and Afghanistan. Both Persian and Mughal sources record Jewish traders following the 16th century Mughal invasion of India launched by Emperor Babur. In Delhi, the syncretic Jewish mystic Sarmad Khasani was tutor to the Crown Prince Dara Shikoh before both were executed by Aurangzeb. There were sufficient Jews in Mughal lands for British travelers to report that synagogues had been established there, but of which no trace or Jewish record remains. These merchants wandered widely across the subcontinent. Shalom Cohen, who would found the Calcutta community, was the court jeweller to the Nawab of Awadh and travelled to Punjab where he held the same title at the court of Ranjit Singh the leader of the Sikh Empire. Cohen, the Calcutta community would later recall, was even given the honour of riding with the Nawab of Awadh in his personal elephant. The first permanent Baghdadi merchant colony in India was established in 1730 in Surat, after the British East India Company had begun trading with Basra in 1723. In the early 18th century, trade between Basra and Surat grew whilst the Indian port was the main base of the British East India Company until it decamped to Bombay. Joseph Seemah from Baghdad opened the Surat synagogue and cemetery in 1730. The Baghdadi community in Surat grew and by the end of the 18th century, as many as 100 Jews from Baghdad, Aleppo and Basra made up the Judeo Arabic speaking merchant colony of Surat. This was to become the first of a string of Baghdadi communities stretching from Bombay to Kobe be established in Asia. But it was around the early 19th century, in response to the tyrannical rule of Dawud Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Baghdad, who persecuted, extorted and imprisoned the leading Jewish families of the city, that whole clans started crossing the Indian Ocean to seek safety and fortune in Asia. Dawud Pasha's misrule was when Baghdadi immigration towards Bombay and Calcutta became strong with the leading Sassoon, Ezra and Judah families departing for India. 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.

As Jews, primarily from Baghdad, Basra and Aleppo came to India as traders in the wake of the Portuguese, Dutch and British what became known as the Baghdadi communities grew fast. By the middle of the 19th century trade between Baghdad and India was said to be entirely in Jewish hands. Within a generation Baghdadi Jews had established manufacturing and commercial houses of fabulous wealth, most notably the Sassoon, Ezra, Elias, Belilios, Judah and Meyer families. With the rise of British power in India, Surat declined in importance as British controlled Calcutta and Bombay became more important in trade. Unreliable source: date=July 2018

Spurred by the immigration of some the leading Jewish families of Baghdad fleeing the persecution of Dawud Pasha, the first synagogue, replacing a small prayer room, was opened in 1823, and with the community expanding quickly a second followed in 1856. By the end of the 19th century, more than 1,800 Baghdadi Jews were living in Calcutta. Baghdadi Jews were also living and trading in Chinsura and Chandernagore outside Calcutta. Baghdadi Jewish merchants dominated the opium trade with a majority of opium chests auctioned from the colonial authorities being exported to China by Baghdadi Jewish merchants, who competed with Marwari and Parsee merchants for the trade. Sponsored by the Sassoon family, the first synagogue opened in 1861 and the second in 1888. Distinct from Calcutta, whose settlement was principally Iraqi Jews and Syrian Jews, the Baghdadi Jewish community in Bombay drew significant Jewish immigration from Persian speaking communities in Afghanistan, Bukhara and Iran as well Jewish families from Yemen. Jewish migrant were attracted from across the Middle East to work in the factories and business concerns of the Sassoon family. In Singapore the elders of the community were initially the sons of Ezekiel Judah of Calcutta. Meanwhile, the earliest Baghdadi Jew to settle in Burma was Azariah Samuel who arrived in the port of Sittwe on the Bay of Bengal in 1841. Around the same time two brothers Judah and Abraham Raphael Ezekiel settled in Mandalay and worked as bookkeepers for the Burmese royal court. At their heights, the communities of Bombay and Calcutta were at the heart of a communal kinship network linked by the ports of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. One observer described the Baghdadi Jews communities as being "almost as familiar with each other as the Jews of Manchester are with Liverpool." The engines of the Baghdadi Jewish trading network were tightly knit family firms such as David Sassoon and Co or the Meyer Brothers, founded by Sir Manasseh Meyer, with offices and agents established by family members in the each port of the network. On the eve of war the Baghdadi population in Calcutta had reached 3500 and in Bombay 3000. Across the Bay of Bengal in Burma, both Rangoon and Pathein elected Baghdadi Jewish mayors and the Baghdadi Jewish population peaked at 2500 Jews in the 1930s. On the route between India and Singapore, a tiny Baghdadi community was in Penang, with a synagogue and Jewish cemetery, was established in the 1870s, but for most of its history never exceeded 50 families. Further south from Singapore, in Indonesia, then the Dutch East Indies, a tiny Baghdadi community of spice merchants was established in Surabaya in Java in the 1880s. The most far flung Baghdadi outposts, never numbering more than fifty families, were established in Japan at the furthest reaches of the opium route. Baghdadi Jews from Iraq, Syria and Egypt, initially drawn to man the concessions of David Sassoon established tiny footholds in Nagasaki, Yokohama and Kobe. Initially established in Nagasaki and Yokohama, the Baghdadi traders relocated to Kobe, which became its focal point, after an earthquake in 1923. As imperial jurisdictions consolidated, the Baghdadi Jews found themselves in a liminal situation in colonial Asia. They were considered neither Indian nor Western, Asian nor European and partnered with both Western and Indian interests. Legally they lived in limbo, their citizenship often unclear, having inherited what was an early modern political order. Prior to the First World War the Baghdadi Jews were for the most part notionally subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Starting from 1870 the communal leaders began aggressive lobbying with British colonial authorities to registered as European. This was never granted to them. Nor was admittance, with few exceptions, to the European only clubs that were the center of life in the European colonial societies throughout Asia. Baghdadi Jews were denied access to European electoral rolls in India. Outsiders, and insiders, they clung fiercely to their Jewish identity. Both the Sassoon family, which settled in Bombay no later than 1832, and the Judah family, which left for Calcutta in 1825, were seen as the leading Jewish families of Baghdad. Ezekiel Judah, who founded two synagogues in Calcutta, was a descendant of Solomon Ma'tuk. These great Baghdadi Jewish fortunes are deceptive, however, when it comes to what life was like for the overwhelming majority of the community. Far from wealthy, they lived on the edge of poverty, as peddlers, stall holders, mill workers, rickshaw men and other such jobs. The middle class Jews speculated in opium and acted as brokers. Politically, the Baghdadi Jewish resembled an oligarchy, with all power and authority to represent the community towards colonial authorities being vested in the leading families, as it had been traditionally in the Middle East. retained close cultural and religious links to Baghdad. Intellectual life was strong enough in the mid to late 19th century to sustain a printed press in India of the Baghdad Jewish dialect of Judeo Arabic. Centered on Calcutta small Baghdadi Jewish publishing houses translated literary, historical, religious and anti missionary tracts into Judeo Arabic whilst religious texts were also printed in Hebrew. Baghdadi newspapers and periodicals in Judeo Arabic, with some Hebrew portions, were also published in India. This Baghdadi printed press began in 1855: with the support of David Sassoon a periodical started in Bombay catering to the merchant elite of the community. Sermons up until the First World War were given in Judeo Arabic, after which the use of English became predominant. Throughout this period, the leading Baghdadi Jewish families set themselves up as sponsors of Jewish religious life in the Middle East. As the war ended, it was miraculously revealed to the rest of the Baghdadi world that in Japan itself, Rahmo Sassoon, leader of the tiny Baghdadi Jewish community of Kobe, had skillfully negotiated with Japanese authorities to ensure no Jews were harmed during World War II. Despite this, the one Baghdadi synagogue of Japan, in Kobe was burnt down during an American air raid. Meanwhile, in the Middle East the establishment of the state of Israel and the outbreak of the Arab–Israeli conflict saw the start of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim lands. In Iraq, pushed by official intimidation persecution, almost the entirety of the ancient Iraqi Jewish community had left for Israel by 1950. Bombay and Calcutta were the heart of the Baghdadi world, the centers of trade, culture and communal life. Once these had fallen into decline, the outlying communities followed. Postwar the imperial system and open borders that had made the transnational Baghdadi world possible disappeared. In Shanghai, communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 closed the trading links community depended upon. Those that has fled the Japanese occupation chose not to return. By 1950, the community had all but vanished. Meanwhile, In Hong Kong, despite the benign conditions of British rule, emigration saw Baghdadi Jewish numbers fall to less than 70 by the 1960s. In Burma, independence in 1947 similarly imposed trade barrier and a nationalistic regime in which the Baghdadi Jews felt they had little place. Despite this precipitous decline and dispersal of the Baghdadi Jewish communities, a handful of individual Baghdadi Jews would play pivotal roles in Asia's newly independent states. The first First Minister of Singapore David Marshall was a Baghdadi Jew. In India, Lieutenant General J. F. R. Jacob, a Baghdadi Jew from Calcutta, won national fame as Major General and chief of staff of the Indian army that defeated the Pakistan Army in East Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, later serving as governor of the Indian states of Goa and Punjab. The Baghdadi community, however, never saw their exodus as a tragedy. Memoirs written by Baghdadi Jewish authors spoke fondly Burma, Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong and of the fact in India they had never experienced antisemitism, which was viewed as a unique treasure. The network of Baghdadi Jewish schools, both English, Jewish and aspirational in orientation had primed them for life in Britain or Israel, not in post colonial Asia. Rather that focus on what pushed, these memoirs focus on what pulled the Baghdadi Jews to leave Asia, chiefly a sense that the opportunities that had drawn their ancestors there had dried up, and new glittering prizes lay in the West. Families of Baghdadi Jewish descent continue to play a major role in Jewish life particularly in Great Britain, to which the leading families were drawn after the Second World War. Established in London, the Sassoon family enjoyed the friendship of Edward VII, established a baronetcy and saw Philip Sasson became a minister.

Traditional Baghdadi Jewish cuisine is a hybrid cuisine, with many Arab, Turkish, Persian and Indian influences. Famous Baghdadi dishes include beef curry, Baghdadi biryani and Baghdadi Jewish parathas. A Baghdadi version of tandoori chicken is also popular (using lemon juice to cook the chicken instead of the cream used in the usual Indian recipe). Other Baghdadi Jewish communities in Southeast Asia mixed their original Iraqi Jewish dishes with influences from the local cuisine.