Baghdadi Jews

The Baghdadi Jews are one of the main Jewish communities of India.

Despite what their name suggests, the community consists not only of expatriate Mesopotamian Jews, but also Bukharan and Persian Jews. The community developed as a result of Jews fleeing religious persecution in Muslim lands to the northwest of India during the British imperial era. Unlike other Jewish communities in India whose oral tradition attest to a presence in India going back as long as 2000 years, the Baghdadi communities were established relatively recently (in the past few centuries). While the Baghdadi Jews are known primarily from their presence in India, they also established themselves in trading ports further east, notably in Yangon (Rangoon), Singapore, Melaka, Bangkok, and Shanghai.