Baghdadi Jews

Uncommon card · No. 168141

Baghdadi Jews (Hebrew: יהודים בגדדים, romanized: Yehudim Bagdadim; Arabic: اليهود البغداد, romanized: al-Yahūd al-Baghdadi) is an umbrella term which covers the former communities of Jewish migrants who emigrated from various parts of the Middle East to India in the 18th and 19th century, up until the Second World War. Beginning under the Mughal Empire, they settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian Ocean. While the main representatives of the community were Iraqi Jews, the Baghdadi Jewish community of India attracted a modest flow of Jewish emigrants from Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Iran, Central Asia and Turkey. They flourished under the British Empire in the 19th century, growing to be English-speaking and British oriented. These Jewish groups 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. Baghdadi trading outposts...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Unknown photographer, mid-19th century, Public domain