Baghdadi came to refer to all Jews from Iraq, Syria, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, as well as Jews from Aden, Yemen, and even Persia and Afghanistan. Baghdad, on the other hand, was always viewed as their spiritual center, and when Jews immigrated to India, their proud rituals were preserved. After the city’s cession to the Portuguese in the mid-sixteenth century, when it was still just a fishing town, Bombay began to enter Jewish history. Some affluent Portuguese merchants arrived to do business and eventually settle in Surat, then a profitable and important trade post north of Bombay. A colony was founded there under the guidance of Shalom Obadiah Ha-Kohen, an Aleppo businessman. Surat had roughly ninety-five Jewish merchants, a synagogue, and a cemetery by the time he relocated to Calcutta in 1797.
The affluent businessman Soliman ben Yaakob Soliman was one of the first Baghdadis to move from Surat to Bombay and make a name for himself. As Surat’s dominance as a port began to wane, Jewish merchants began to flee to Bombay and Calcutta. The Baghdadis were the only permanent Jews in Calcutta, therefore they had to establish all Jewish institutions, beginning with a synagogue and cemetery, as they had done in Surat. Those Baghdadis who eventually chose to move in Bombay – a city of 200,000 people in 1832 – discovered the Bene Israel had already established themselves with functioning Jewish institutions. One can image the amazement these Baghdadis felt when they saw Indian-Jews worshiping in a synagogue for the first time, dressed in Indian garb and following Indian practices.
Source: http://www.maviboncuk.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-baghdadi-jews-in-india.html
