SURAT

SURAT , port N. of Bombay. In the 17^th century, Portuguese, Dutch, and English trading companies arrived in Surat, for centuries the main trading center between Europe and Asia. A few Jews were among them, often diamond merchants; Anglo-Portuguese Jews in London developed a flourishing trade with Surat though they were not allowed to settle there. A permanent Jewish settlement came into existence in the last decades of the 17^th century. First to settle were Dutch-Portuguese merchants from Amsterdam, headed by Pedro Pereira who conducted widespread commercial transactions associated with both the Dutch and the English East India companies. Around 1740, they were followed by Anglo-Ashkenazi Jews, such as Abraham Elias and then, toward the end of the 18^th century, by Arabic-speaking Jews from *Aleppo, *Baghdad, and *Basra. One of Surat's leading merchants was Moses *Tobias, who played a prominent role in the affairs of the city. When *Bombay became the British administrative center and *Calcutta rose to prominence, the Jewish settlement in Surat declined and most of its inhabitants moved to one of these two cities. In the 19^th century a few individual Jews in government service settled in Surat. Some Jewish tombstones of the 17^th and 18^th centuries are still preserved.

bibliography:

Fischel, in: paajr, 33 (1965), 1–20.

[Walter Joseph Fischel]

surat designating cotton goods orig. made in Surat, a town and district in India. XVII.