Jewish Networks Between The Persian Gulf and Palestine, 1820–1914

Thousands of Jews moved from Qajar Iran and Ottoman Iraq to the Persian Gulf ports during the long nineteenth century. Attracted by colonial trade and British patronage, they formed communities on the Gulf littorals and expanded their social and economic networks across the sea. At the same time, modern transportation connected the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, enabling collective long-distance migration. This allowed Gulf Jews to imagine Jerusalem as a worldly and reachable city, making it home to a budding Persian Jewish community from the 1880s. This article traces these migrations between 1820 and 1914 through a reading of the Hebrew travelogues of migrating Persian rabbis alongside imperial records written by British, Ottoman and Qajar officials. By moving through four different cities, Shiraz and Bushehr in Iran, Bahrain off the Gulf’s Arab shore, and Jerusalem in Ottoman Palestine, it shows how Jews settled the Gulf coasts while incorporating Jerusalem into an oceanic Jewish network. Visualized in this way, the migration of Gulf Jews contributes to redefining Middle Eastern Jewish geographies while establishing a dialogue between Jewish history and transregional histories of the Persian Gulf.