Asia Asia Minor
THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
destined to have far-reaching consequences. As soon as he became victor, Mohammed expelled from Hijaz the greater number of his adversaries (who "went to Syria) issued severe decrees against Jews and Christians declared war without quarter upon those refusing to submit to Islam and Under Mo- ordered a special tax, the " jizyah," to hammedan be imposed on the vanquished. The Rule. inferior position of the Jews resulting from these acts was not regulated till later. To one of the immediate successors of Mohammed, the calif Omar, is generally ascribed the decree ("kanun")— unfavorable to the Jews that precisely defined their status (see Mohammed Omar, Rescript op). The decree is probably of later date. It must be remembered that Islam assured the Jews a " guarantee " (" dhinvma "), conferring the right of free worship. In general, the Moslem conquest of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran was at first advantageous to Judaism. The prohibition against residence in Jerusalem was maintained but a short time. At Bagdad, under the Abbassid califs, who, with rare exception, were not fanatical, the Jewish communities, full of vitality, enjoyed real prosperity. Though troubled by internal religious dissensions that originated and developed out of Karaism in the seventh and eighth centuries; by personal and local dissensions, such as those which in 940 led to the suppression of the exilarchate; by Messianic preachings in Syria in 727, and, four centuries later, by David Alroy in northern Persia yet Asiatic Judaism threw out one last gleam in the epoch of the final efflorescence of the schools at Sura and Pumbedita under the geonim Unlike Islam, the ChrisSaadia, Sherira, and Hai. tianity of this period instigated violent persecutions. In the eighth and ninth centuries the Byzantine emperors forced conversion upon the Jews of Asia Minor and in 1099 the Crusaders, on entering Jerusalem, massacred the Jewish population. From the domains under Abbassid rule various migrations carried Judaism to the confines of Asia. community in India, the Beni-Israel at Bombay,
gensburg it is evident that a part of the Caucasus had been conquered by Judaism toward the end of
The
Caucasus,
—
A
was founded by David Rabban, who India. left Bagdad in 900. Another group, distinct from this one, exists at Bombay and at Cochin. It is divided into blacks and whites, the blacks being the offspring of intermarDespite their assertions to the contrary, these riage. communities do not seem to have been of much earlier date than the Beni-Israel. According to a tradition, the Jews in China emigrated from Palestine, after the fall of the Temple, during the reign of Ming-tse (70-75); but this is Other sources of information highly improbable. more reliable but not altogether trustworthy state that in 879 there were Jews at HanChina, kow, a village no longer to be located with certainty, but probably on the Yang-tse-Kiang. But it is only in the time of the Song dynasty (960-1126) that Jews, coming from India, brought to the Chinese court as a tribute It is to be noted that tissues from the western seas.
whose arrival in China is historicame by sea and not by land. From Benjamin of Tudela and Pethahiah of Re-
the
Jews
(the first
cally established)
210
The Persian orthe twelfth century. igin of the colonies is attested not only by local tradition, but by the Persian dialect preserved to the present day
among Jewish mountaineers
in the
Caucasus.
closing of the academies at Sura and Pumbedita (1040), nearly coincident with the end of the temporal power of tlie Abbassids, marks the point
The
at
which Asia ceased
to be
tional center of Judaism.
an
and nathe Arabs began
intellectual
Among
oppressive and restrictive legislation, summed up in In all countries in the so-called "kanun" of Omar. which Arabic or Persian was spoken, Jews led an obscure, dependent, and humiliating existence. It is of little significance that, at the end End of of the thirteenth century, a Jewish the Middle physician became prime minister to the khan Argun, sovereign of Persia Ages. and Irak, inasmuch as the khan was a Mongol, a stranger to the ideas controlling Islam. The establishment of Ottoman supremacy, however, in regions where the central authority was effective, induced notable improvement in the situation of the Jews: its first result, after the conquest of Asia Minor by the Byzantines, was the permission of the free reconstitution of the ancient communities. This humane and tolerant policy displayed itself most brightly at the time when the expulsion of the Jews from Spain brought to the Orient large numbers of refugees, of whom Asiatic Turkey received her share. In the course of the sixteenth century many communities, with the Modern help of this fresh element, regained Times. some of their old importance, as at Smyrna, Manissa, and other cities in Asia Minor at Damascus, Safed, Tiberias, and Jerusalem, in Syria and in Palestine. Later arrivals from Europe modified further the physiognomy of Judaism in some of these cities. In the eighteenth century began a constant immigraspeaking tion of Jews especially from Poland
—
—
Judseo-German, who superimposed Ashkenazic on Sephardic communities, and in time became numerically preponderant in Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed.
A last wave from
the same source, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, brought to the coast plains of Palestine and to parts of Galilee, Russian, Rumanian, Galician, even Bulgarian, immigrants, who created the villages of Rishon le-Zion, Zikron
Ya'akob, and Rosh Pinah. Formed of diverse elements
—
some native others, the minority, of European origin, and subject to the historic influences of their respective countries Asiatic Judaism presents a wide variety of aspects. The communities of Yemen, of northern Syria, and of the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates employ Arabic as the vulgar tongue. In Kurdistan and around the lakes of Van and Urmiah a NeoAramaic dialect is preserved, spoken especially at Zakho, Urmiah, Salamas, and Bash-Kala. It is a valuable relic of the dialects peculiar to the populations prior to the Arabian conquest. In Asia Minor the chief language is Ladino, or Judeeo-Spanish, which in Palestine is employed along with Judaeo;
