Baghdadi Jews

Baghdadi Jews

Prominent Bagdadi Jewish patriarch David Sassoon (seated) and his sons Elias David, Albert (Abdullah), and Sassoon David Sassoon
Total population
50,000 in 1900 [1]
Regions with significant populations
India 100 (chiefly Mumbai and Calcutta) Israel, Britain, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United States.
Languages
Traditionally Arabic, Persian, Judeo-Urdu and Bengali. Now mostly English and Hebrew
Religion
Judaism

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.^[2] These flourished under the British Empire in the 19th century, growing to be English-speaking and British oriented.^[2]

These grew into a tight trading and kinship network across Asia with smaller Baghdadi communities being established beyond India in the mid-nineteenth century in Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai.^[3][4] Baghdadi trading outposts were established across Southeast Asia and Oceania with families settling in Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia and Australia.^[5] Until the Second World War, these communities attracted a modest flow of Jewish emigrants from Iraq, with smaller numbers hailing from Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Iran, and Turkey.^[6]

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.^[2] Their old trade routes severed by first Communist victory in China, the ocean trade stifled in India and Burma by postcolonial nationalizations and trade restrictions, the Baghdadi Jews had emigrated almost in their entirety by the 1970s.^[7] 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.^[8][9]