Local legends identify the city of Bukhara, in the Republic of Uzbekistan, as the biblical Hathor, and even say that numerous Afghan tribal leaders are descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and one of King Saul's wives.
According to the Bible, the city of Medes – probably located in northwestern Persia, in the region called Kurdistan, was one of the places of exile of the Ten Tribes of Israel during the Assyrian period. It would have been in this region of the Caucasian mountains, between the Caspian and Black Seas – which includes the area of Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Daghestan – that the exiled tribes were wandering, later migrating to Uzbekistan, Bukhara, Turkmenistan and, from there , to southern Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and eventually China.
Scholars on the subject state that the use of names such as Yusuf, Yusufzai, Yusufuzi and others was common in tribes who believed that their ancestors had been members of one of the lost tribes. Yusuf means Joseph and Yusufzai, sons of Joseph. The tribes of Joseph, Ephraim and Menasseh are three of those considered lost. These people also usually call themselves Bani-Israel – Children of Israel – and, according to their tradition, their ancestors were taken from their homeland. These would have been shepherds in search of better pastures for their flocks, later exchanging their nomadic life for settlements in small communities.
According to scholars, the Afghan royal family also dates back to the tribes of Israel, being descendants of Benjamin. This version was first published in 1635, in a book entitled Mahsan-I-Afghani. According to the work, King Saul had a son named Jeremiah, father of a boy named Afghana. With the death of Saul and Jeremiah at the same time, Afghana was raised by King David, living at court, among the Hebrews, during the reign of Solomon. According to this report, years later, due to conflicts in the region of Israel, Afghana's family fled to an area called Gur, in the central region of Afghanistan. In 662, Afghana's descendants converted to Islam. The leader of the community was called Kish, like King Saul's father. Still according to this belief, the prophet Muhammad then rewarded Kish for adhering to the new creed and changed his Hebrew name from Kish to the Arabic A-Rashid, giving him the mission of spreading Islam among his people.
There are not many accurate reports about the arrival of Jews in Central Asia, nor about their countries of origin. There is historical evidence, however, dating back to the 45th century, of its presence in eastern Persia and northern Afghanistan. According to the oral tradition of the Jews of Central Asia, their ancestors left Babylon, heading for Persia. Studies regarding the arrival of Jews in the region, however, do not confirm this version, highlighting that this migration must have occurred between the 80th and XNUMXth centuries and also in the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. According to reports by Benjamin of Tudela (see article on pg. XNUMX), however, in the middle of the XNUMXth century there were around XNUMX Jews in the Ghazni region, on the banks of the Gozan River. This community lived isolated without maintaining contact with the outside world.
Middle Ages
In an article about Jews in Afghanistan, published by scholar Guy Matalon in the Afghan scientific magazine Mardom Nama-Ebakther, the author states that there is little work on the origin of communities in the region mainly due to a lack of proven information. “The majority of Jewish communities in the area that today comprises Iran, Afghanistan and surrounding areas believe that their origins date back to the Assyrian (720 BC) and Babylonian (560 BC) exiles. It is difficult to prove or disprove such statements, as there is no archaeological evidence to do so. There is, however, a biblical reference to the exile of a large community that settled along the Gozan River. Therefore, it is possible that the belief about the settlement of Jews in the Fertile Crescent region has historical bases insofar as the exile actually took place”, explains Matalon.
His research, however, centered on the Jewish presence in Afghanistan during the Middle Ages and was based on biblical commentaries, responses written during the Gaonic period, and the ruins of a Jewish cemetery discovered in the city of Gur in 1946. There graves dating from 1198 were found. During his research, the historian found several quotations referring to the “Jews of Khorasan” in the biblical commentaries of Saadia Gaon and Moses Ibn Ezra and the Karaites Al Qumsi and Japheth Ibn Ali. “Khorosan would be the region mentioned in the Bible as 'Land of the North' and the comments of the mentioned authors identify the area to which the exiled Jews went as Khorosan, which would correspond to what is today part of Iran and Afghanistan”, explains the historian.
According to him, the Gaonic responses, which address situations and facts relating to the Afghan Jewish communities, indicate that they are related to the Talmudic schools of Babylon, then considered the spiritual center of the diaspora. The main early medieval communities were in the cities of Merv, Balkh, Ghazni, Herat, Kabul and Nishapur, as well as some smaller ones in the villages of Khush-Khak and Ferozkoh-Jam.
The first community of Merv would have been created by the prophet Ezra, who would have built a synagogue that survived until 1092. According to a Muslim source, the community was relatively large and its leader was a rabbi named Akiva. The rabbi was responsible for collecting taxes, handing them over to the representative of the authorities. He was ordained in a Talmudic institution in Babylon.
In the Book of Isaiah, Rabbi Saadia Gaon makes a comment about the Balkh community, which was divided into two distinct groups – the Jews and those he referred to as “people who were called Jews”. According to documents found in a geniza, the Jews of Balkh had economic relations with the Jewish kingdom of Khasar. Saadia Gaon wrote a text against a heretic Jew from Balkh named Hiwi.
The city of Kabul also had a large Jewish community. According to Al Idris, the Jews of Kabul lived separately from the Muslims, in a kind of ghetto. The author, however, does not clarify whether isolation was a Jewish option or a Muslim imposition. The city of Ghazni also appears in several biblical commentaries and in the texts of Benjamin of Tudela, who stated that there were more than eight thousand Jews in the area, many of whom were economic advisors to their rulers. The origins of the Nishapur community are attributed to exiles during the Assyrian period and, according to one of the sources, it was led by Rabbi Joseph Amarkala. “The sources researched indicate that part of the community converted to Islam and part left for Jerusalem at the beginning of the XNUMXth century”, says Matalon.
Stones that speak
The discovery of the Jewish cemetery in the city of Gur in 1946 provided more detailed information about the Jews of Afghanistan. “In fact, the inscriptions found on the tombstones allowed scholars to assume that other communities had similar structures and lifestyles”, highlights the historian. The first tombstone found had an inscription in Judeo-Persian and was dated 1198. In 1956, three more stones were found, from the years 752 and 753. In 1962, more than 20 tombstones were discovered and bore inscriptions in Hebrew, Aramaic and Jewry. -Persian. They all dated from the period between 1012 and 1249. Many scholars believe that, after the Mongol invasion, part of the Jews fled to China, as the influence on the Chinese Jewish community of Jews from Khorosan who spoke the Persian language is clear.
Matalon reports that the tombstones bore not only names and dates, but also community titles and functions. Some bore the title of Alut which, according to the hierarchy of Talmudic schools in Babylon, was granted to five members of the community who acted as judges. Other tombstones had the title of Chacham next to the person's name and it appears that it was reserved for those who had the role of rabbis and teachers; Melamed's title is also present on some tombstones, in addition to others such as Yashish and Zaken, as well as identifying whether the individual was Cohen or Levi.
The titles of community leader – Rosh Kahal – and congregation leader – Rosh Kanesa – were found on two nearby stones in the Gur cemetery. The term Kanesa in Judeo-Persian means synagogue. Words such as Tagar, merchant, and Pakid, government official, were also found. The information obtained from the tombstones, according to Matalon, reveals that the Gur community had a complete structure, with rabbinical courts, schools for children and young people, as well as a synagogue.
Matalon ends his article by stating that research carried out by numerous scholars reveals that, probably, the origins of the Afghan Jewish communities are Persian and that, in general, they maintained religious and commercial links with the Jewish centers of Babylon. Its members spoke Judeo-Persian, Hebrew and some Aramaic.
XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries
The trajectory of the Jews towards the far north of Persia – the city of Mashad – intensified in 1740, when they established a vibrant and very well-structured community. The expansion of Islam in the region, however, limited Jewish life, often leading to explosions of violence, such as the pogrom of 1839. The synagogue was burned down and numerous properties belonging to Jews were destroyed. The community escaped being completely massacred because the population promised to convert, which they did only in appearance. Faced with this situation, the Jews began to leave towards more tolerant lands, especially Afghanistan, where there were already other centers. In 1951, after the creation of Israel, almost all of the five thousand Jews who were still in the country emigrated to the new state. It is believed that when the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, only 200 people remained there. In 2001, there are only one or two Jews.
