There was a :Jewish presence in

Oman Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of ...

for many centuries, however, the Jewish community of the country is no longer in existence.

Early Jewish history

Some of the earliest Jewish history in what is now Oman is associated with the Biblical/Quranic figure Job/Iyov/Ayyoub. The Tomb of Job is located in Jabal Dohfar 45 miles from the port city of

Salalah Salalah ( ar, صَلَالَة, Ṣalālah) is the capital and largest city of the southern Omani governorate of Dhofar. Its population in 2009 was about 197,169. Salalah is the third-largest city in the Sultanate of Oman, and the largest city ...

Ishaq bin Yahuda

The subsequent, more documented Omani Jewish community was made famous by Ishaq bin Yahuda, a merchant who lived in the 9th century. Bin Yahuda lived in

Sohar Sohar ( ar, صُحَار, also Romanized as Suḥār) is the capital and largest city of the Al Batinah North Governorate in Oman. An ancient capital of the country that once served as an important Islamic port town, Suhar has also been credited ...

, and sailed for China between the years of 882 and 912 after an argument with a Jewish colleague, where he made a great fortune. He returned to Sohar and sailed for China again, but his ship was seized and bin Yahuda was murdered at the port of

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

Benjamin of Tudela visits Muscat

A historical journey to visit far-flung Jewish communities was undertaken by Rabbi

Benjamin of Tudela Benjamin of Tudela ( he, בִּנְיָמִין מִטּוּדֶלָה, ; ar, بنيامين التطيلي ''Binyamin al-Tutayli'';‎ Tudela, Kingdom of Navarre, 1130 Castile, 1173) was a medieval Jewish traveler who visited Europe, Asia, an ...

from 1165 to 1173 that crossed and tracked some of the areas that are today in the geographic area of Oman. His trek began as a pilgrimage to the

Holy Land The Holy Land; Arabic: or is an area roughly located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Eastern Bank of the Jordan River, traditionally synonymous both with the biblical Land of Israel and with the region of Palestine. The term "Holy ...

. He may have hoped to settle there, but there is controversy about the reasons for his travels. It has been suggested he may have had a commercial motive as well as a religious one. On the other hand, he may have intended to catalogue the Jewish communities on the route to the Holy Land so as to provide a guide to where hospitality may have been found for Jews travelling to the Holy Land. He took the "long road" stopping frequently, meeting people, visiting places, describing occupations and giving a demographic count of Jews in every town and country. One of the known towns that Benjamin of Tudela reported as having a Jewish community was

Muscat Muscat ( ar, مَسْقَط, ) is the capital and most populated city in Oman. It is the seat of the Governorate of Muscat. According to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), the total population of Muscat Governorate was ...

located in the area of

in the northern part of the

Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plat ...

Later community

In the mid-19th century, the British Lieutenant

James Raymond Wellsted James Raymond Wellsted (1805–1842) was a lieutenant in the Indian navy who travelled extensively on the Arabian Peninsula in the 1830s. Travels As second lieutenant on the East India Company's survey brig ''Palinurus'' under Captain Robert Mo ...

documented the Jews of

in his memoirs ''Travels in Arabia, vol. 1''. He mentions that there are ''"a few Jews in Muskat (sic), who mostly arrived there in 1828, being driven from

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

. . .by the cruelties and extortions of the Pacha Daud."'' He also notes that Jews were not discriminated against at all in Oman, which was not the case in other Arab countries (they did not have to live in Ghettos, nor identify themselves as Jews, not walk in the road if a

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

was walking on the same street, as was the case in Yemen). The Jews of Muscat were employed mostly in the making of silver ornaments, banking, and liquor sale. Despite the lack of persecution in Oman, the community is believed to have disappeared before 1900. During World War II, a

Jewish American American Jews or Jewish Americans are American citizens who are Jewish, whether by religion, ethnicity, culture, or nationality. Today the Jewish community in the United States consists primarily of Ashkenazi Jews, who descend from diaspora Je ...

Army enlisted man, Emanuel Glick, encountered a small community of Omani Jews in Muscat, but this community consisted mostly of recent migrants from

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast and ...

Modern politics

Omani officials have begun to reach out to

and Israeli leaders. The

American Jewish Committee The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is a Jewish advocacy group established on November 11, 1906. It is one of the oldest Jewish advocacy organizations and, according to ''The New York Times'', is "widely regarded as the dean of American Jewish o ...

recently hosted a meeting at which: "Israeli and Omani leaders gathered at AJC to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Middle East Desalination Research Center, one of the success stories of efforts to deepen Arab-Israeli cooperation. Speakers include Sayyid Badr, secretary-general of the Foreign Ministry of Oman; Israeli Foreign Minister

Tzipi Livni Tziporah Malka "Tzipi" Livni ( he, ציפי (ציפורה) מלכה לבני, ; born 8 July 1958) is an Israeli politician, diplomat, and lawyer. A former member of the Knesset and leader in the center-left political camp, Livni is a former fore ...

; and Charles Lawson of the

U.S. State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other n ...

. (Video: ''Israeli, Omani Leaders Celebrate''.)

Jews in the Arabian Peninsula

History of the Jews in Iraq The history of the Jews in Iraq ( he, יְהוּדִים בָּבְלִים, ', ; ar, اليهود العراقيون, ) is documented from the time of the Babylonian captivity c. 586 BC. Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and mos ...

* History of the Jews in Jordan * History of the Jews in Bahrain * History of the Jews in Kuwait * History of the Jews in Qatar *

History of the Jews in Saudi Arabia The history of the Jews in the territory of modern Saudi Arabia begins in Biblical times, at least as early as the First Temple period. Some have estimated that there are about 3,000 Jews currently residing in the country. Early history Th ...

* History of the Jews in the United Arab Emirates *

Yemenite Jews Yemenite Jews or Yemeni Jews or Teimanim (from ''Yehudei Teman''; ar, اليهود اليمنيون) are those Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen, and their descendants maintaining their customs. Between June 1949 and September 1950, th ...

References

Tomb of Job
(jewishvirtuallibrary.org)

History and travels of Benjamin of Tudela

*Benjamin of Tudela. ''The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: Travels in the Middle Ages''. trans. Joseph Simon. Pangloss Press, 1993.
''The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela''.
trans. Marcus Nathan Adler. 1907: includes map of route (p. 2) and commentary. * *Shatzmiller, Joseph. "Jews, Pilgrimage, and the Christian Cult of Saints: Benjamin of Tudela and His Contemporaries." ''After Rome's Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History''. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1998. *

Jewish Virtual Library Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

: Benjamin of Tudela. {{DEFAULTSORT:History Of The Jews In Oman

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...