Iranian Jews

Based on Wikipedia: Iranian Jews

There's an old Jewish saying: "When you see a Parthian war horse tied to a tombstone in the Land of Israel, the hour of the Messiah will be near." It's a strange image—an enemy's horse at a Jewish grave signaling hope. But it captures something essential about the Iranian Jewish story: a community that survived, and often thrived, by finding unexpected allies in the ancient world.

Iranian Jews are among the oldest continuous Jewish communities on Earth. They've been in Persia—what we now call Iran—for roughly 2,700 years. That's older than most nation-states, older than Christianity, older than Islam. When the pyramids were already ancient, Jews were settling in Persian cities.

How Jews Came to Persia

The story begins with catastrophe.

Around 727 BCE, the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and deported its inhabitants. A century and a half later, the Babylonians did the same to the southern kingdom of Judah, destroying Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem and forcing the Jewish elite into exile. These displaced people ended up scattered across Mesopotamia—modern-day Iraq and Iran.

But what began as exile became home. According to one Jewish legend, the very first Jew to enter Persia was Serah bat Asher, granddaughter of the patriarch Jacob himself. While that's mythology, the reality is nearly as remarkable: Jews put down roots so deep in Persian soil that some scholars believe they comprised up to twenty percent of the Persian Empire's population at its height.

Think about that number. One in five people in the greatest empire the world had yet seen may have been Jewish.

Cyrus the Great: A Pagan Messiah

The turning point came in 539 BCE when Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, conquered Babylon. For the Jews living there in exile, this wasn't just a change of rulers. It was liberation.

Cyrus issued what's become known as the Cyrus Decree, allowing exiled peoples throughout his new empire to return to their homelands and rebuild their temples. For the Jews, this meant they could go back to Jerusalem and reconstruct the Temple that the Babylonians had destroyed.

The Hebrew Bible calls Cyrus "God's anointed"—the same term, messiah, that would later take on such enormous significance in Jewish and Christian thought. A pagan Persian king, anointed by the Jewish God. The prophet Isaiah wrote that God "took Cyrus by the right hand" to accomplish divine purposes.

Now, scholars debate whether the biblical account is entirely accurate. Professor Lester Grabbe argues there was no formal decree, just a general policy allowing exiles to return home. Archaeological evidence suggests the return was more of a trickle than a flood—perhaps 30,000 people over several decades, not the triumphant mass exodus the Bible describes. Other scholars note that Cyrus, like politicians throughout history, was probably motivated by strategic calculation as much as benevolence. He wanted loyal populations near Egypt, which he planned to conquer next.

But here's what matters: most Jews chose to stay in Persia.

Even with permission to return to their ancestral homeland, the majority of Persian Jews remained where they were. They had built lives, businesses, communities. Persia was home now. This pattern—Jews offered the chance to "return" but choosing to stay in diaspora—would repeat throughout Jewish history.

The Book of Esther: A Persian Story

The entire Book of Esther takes place in Persia. It's the only book of the Hebrew Bible set entirely outside the Land of Israel, and it never once mentions God by name. Instead, it tells a story of palace intrigue, identity concealment, and narrow escape from genocide.

The villain is Haman, a high official in the court of King Ahasuerus—generally identified as Xerxes the Great, son of Darius. Haman convinces the king to issue a decree for the extermination of all Jews in the empire. But the king doesn't know that his own queen, Esther, is secretly Jewish. She reveals her identity at a climactic banquet, Haman is hanged on the very gallows he built for the Jews, and the Jewish community is saved.

Jews celebrate this story every year during the holiday of Purim, complete with costumes, noise-makers, and a religious obligation to drink until you can't tell the difference between "blessed be Mordecai" and "cursed be Haman." It's the most carnivalesque of Jewish holidays, and it's entirely Persian in setting.

The Temple Rebuilt

Back in Jerusalem, the Second Temple rose with Persian support. Cyrus ordered its construction but died before completion. His successor Darius the Great finished the job, and the temple was consecrated in 515 BCE—more than twenty years after the first Jews returned from exile.

According to the Bible, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah urged the work along. The Book of Ezra credits the reconstruction to "the decree of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia." Three Persian kings, spanning generations, supporting a Jewish holy site in a distant province of their empire.

Meanwhile, according to tradition, the tomb of the prophet Daniel himself lies in Susa, the Persian capital. The Jews of Persia weren't just surviving in exile. They were woven into the fabric of empire.

The Parthian Interlude

The Achaemenid Empire eventually fell to Alexander the Great, and after Alexander's death, Persia passed through various hands before the Parthians established control around 250 BCE. Jewish sources barely mention the Parthians—the word "Parthia" doesn't appear in Jewish texts of the era—but the relationship was significant.

The Parthian Empire operated on a loose, decentralized system of vassal kings. This had drawbacks: it allowed, for instance, the rise of a Jewish "robber-state" in Nehardea, where two Jewish brothers named Anilai and Asinai carved out their own little kingdom through banditry and warfare. But the tolerance of Parthian rule was legendary.

Consider this: when the Syrian king Antiochus Sidetes marched against the Parthians in 129 BCE with the Jewish leader Hyrcanus at his side, the allied armies halted for two days after defeating the Parthians at the Great Zab River. Why? The Jewish Sabbath and the Feast of Weeks fell during the campaign, and the king respected his ally's religious obligations.

Some Parthian vassal kings in the region of Adiabene actually converted to Judaism—a remarkable development that shows how integrated Jews had become in Persian society. The Parthians saw themselves as heirs to Cyrus the Great, and they extended that legacy of tolerance to the Jews under their rule.

Rome versus Persia: Choosing Sides

When Rome destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, everything changed. The Jewish homeland was devastated, Jerusalem was sacked, and refugees streamed east into Parthian territory. Babylonia—the region of Mesopotamia that had once been the place of exile—became a bulwark of Judaism.

The Jews had good reason to side with the Parthians against Rome. When the Romans under Trajan invaded Parthia, Babylonian Jews revolted, helping prevent Rome from establishing permanent control. The failed Bar Kokhba revolt against Rome in 135 CE sent another wave of refugees east.

The Parthian kings elevated the Jewish princes of exile to a kind of nobility. They established the office of the Resh Galuta—the "Head of the Exile"—as a central authority over Jewish subjects throughout the empire. This wasn't just tolerance; it was institutional recognition. The House of David, which had once ruled in Jerusalem, now held honorary status in Persia.

The Sassanid Revolution

In the winter of 226 CE, Ardashir I overthrew the last Parthian king and founded the Sassanid dynasty. This was more than a change of rulers—it was a cultural revolution.

While the Parthians had been religiously tolerant and somewhat Hellenized, the Sassanids intensified Persian identity. They favored the Pahlavi language over Greek and restored Zoroastrianism as the official state religion. Zoroastrianism is a dualistic faith—it sees the world as a cosmic battleground between the forces of light (Ahura Mazda) and darkness (Ahriman). This cosmic vision didn't leave much room for other religions.

A priestly inscription from the reign of Bahram II, around 280 CE, boasts of "smashing" Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and Manichaeans. The text claims their "false doctrines of Ahriman and of the idols suffered great blows."

But reality was more complicated than propaganda.

King Shapur I—known in Aramaic as Shvor Malka, "Shapur the King"—was friendly to the Jews. His friendship with the great rabbi Shmuel brought advantages to the Jewish community. Even more remarkably, Shapur II's mother, Ifra Hormizd, was half-Jewish. This gave Persian Jews relative freedom of religion and considerable influence at court.

Shapur II was friends with a Babylonian rabbi named Raba, one of the most important figures in the Talmud. Raba's friendship with the king enabled him to secure relaxation of oppressive laws against Jews. In a lovely detail, Raba sometimes called his brilliant student Abaye "Shvur Malka"—Shapur the King—as a nickname praising his quick intellect.

The Rise of Islam

The Islamic conquest of Persia in the seventh century CE brought another fundamental change. Under Muslim rule, Jews—along with Christians and Zoroastrians—were classified as dhimmis, non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic empire.

The dhimmi system was a mixed blessing. On one hand, dhimmis were allowed to practice their religion. They were viewed as "People of the Book"—fellow monotheists who worshipped the same God, even if imperfectly. Many Jews served as doctors, scholars, and craftsmen, achieving positions of real influence. They were exempt from military service. Compared to the violent persecution Jews faced in medieval Europe—the Crusades, the expulsions, the blood libels—Persian Jews lived in relative security.

On the other hand, dhimmis were second-class subjects. They paid the jizya, a special poll tax, in place of the zakat that Muslims paid. They faced various legal disabilities and social stigmas. Their treatment fluctuated depending on the ruler of the moment—some were tolerant, others oppressive.

The Mongol Upheaval

In 1255, the Mongols arrived.

Hulagu Khan conquered Persia and captured Baghdad in 1258, ending the Abbasid Caliphate that had ruled the Islamic world for five centuries. The Mongols established the Ilkhanate, with their capital at Tabriz in northwestern Persia.

For Persian Jews, this was initially good news. The Mongol rulers abolished the dhimmi system entirely. All religions were deemed equal—a revolutionary concept in the medieval Middle East. One Ilkhanate ruler, Arghun Khan, actively preferred Jews for administrative positions and appointed a Jew named Sa'd al-Daula as his vizier, effectively the prime minister of the empire.

But this prominence bred resentment. When Arghun died in 1291, al-Daula was murdered, and the Jews of Tabriz suffered violent persecution from Muslim mobs incited by the clergy. The Syriac Orthodox historian Bar Hebraeus, writing at the time, said the violence was beyond what "tongue can utter, nor pen write down."

When Ghazan Khan converted to Islam in 1295, Persian Jews were relegated back to dhimmi status. His successor Öljeitü destroyed synagogues and decreed that Jews had to wear a distinctive mark on their heads—a precursor to similar requirements that would later be imposed in Europe.

Under this pressure, many Jews converted to Islam. The most famous convert was Rashid al-Din Hamadani, a physician, historian, and statesman who adopted Islam to advance his career at court. But even conversion couldn't save him. In 1318, he was executed on charges of poisoning the previous khan. His severed head was carried through the streets of Tabriz while crowds chanted, "This is the head of the Jew who abused the name of God." A century later, Timur Lenk's son Miranshah destroyed Rashid al-Din's tomb, and his remains were reburied in the Jewish cemetery—a final return, in death, to the community he had left.

Timur and After

In 1383, Timur Lenk—known in the West as Tamerlane—began his conquest of Persia. He captured Herat, Khorasan, and all of eastern Persia by 1385, massacring populations wholesale. For Jews, as for everyone else in his path, this was catastrophe.

The centuries that followed brought more turbulence. Persia passed through the hands of various dynasties—the Timurids, the Safavids, the Qajars—and Jewish fortunes rose and fell with each regime change. The Safavids, who established Shia Islam as the state religion in the sixteenth century, imposed new restrictions on non-Muslims. The Qajars, who ruled from the late eighteenth century until 1925, maintained Jews in a subordinate but generally tolerable position.

The Modern Era

The twentieth century brought the Pahlavi dynasty and a period of relative prosperity for Iranian Jews. Under Reza Shah and his son Mohammad Reza Shah, Iran modernized rapidly. Jews participated in commerce, the professions, and public life. By the 1970s, the Iranian Jewish community numbered around 80,000, living primarily in Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz.

Then came 1979.

The Islamic Revolution that overthrew the Shah transformed Iran into a theocratic state. The new regime was officially hostile to Zionism—Israel had been a close ally of the Shah—and Iranian Jews found themselves in an increasingly difficult position. Emigration surged. Today, the vast majority of Iranian Jews live in Israel and the United States. A small community remains in Iran, perhaps 10,000 to 15,000 people, making it still the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside Israel.

What's in a Name?

In Iran today, Jews are referred to by several terms. The most respectful is Kalimi, derived from the name of Moses (Kalim Allah, "the one who spoke with God"). Yahudi is less formal but acceptable. Jews call themselves Yisrael, Children of Israel. The term Johud carries strong negative connotations and is considered offensive.

In Israel, Iranian Jewish immigrants are called Parsim—Persians. They maintain distinct traditions, foods, and pronunciations of Hebrew that mark them as a community within the larger Israeli mosaic.

A Community of Survivors

The story of Iranian Jews is, in many ways, the story of Jewish survival itself. They outlasted the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Parthians, the Sassanids, the Arabs, the Mongols, the Timurids, the Safavids, the Qajars, and the Pahlavis. They adapted to Zoroastrian Persia, Islamic Persia, and modern Iran. They produced scholars of the Talmud and viziers of empires. They were protected and persecuted, elevated and suppressed, welcomed and expelled.

Through it all, they remained distinctly Jewish and distinctly Persian at the same time. The Encyclopædia Britannica notes that they "retained their ethnic, linguistic, and religious identity" across twenty-seven centuries. Yet the Library of Congress observes that "over the centuries the Jews of Iran became physically, culturally, and linguistically indistinguishable from the non-Jewish population."

Both statements are true. Iranian Jews kept their faith while becoming fully Persian in culture and language. They were separate and integrated at once. This paradox—belonging without quite belonging, insider and outsider simultaneously—is perhaps the defining experience of diaspora Jewish life everywhere. The Iranian Jewish community simply has more practice at it than almost anyone else on Earth.