Pakistani Jews

The history of Jews (Urdu: یہودیوں) in Pakistan dates at least as far back as 1839. Various estimates suggest that there were about 1,000 Jews living in Karachi at the beginning of the twentieth century, mostly Bene Israel Jews from Maharashtra, India. A substantial community lived in Rawalpindi. A smaller community of Jews also lived in Peshawar. The Bene Israel Jews of were concentrated in Karachi.

Today, the majority of Pakistani Jews live in Israel, while modern-day Pakistan continues to host a modest Jewish population. According to the National Database and Registration Authority, there are 745 registered Jewish families in Pakistan.

A community of Jews fleeing persecution in Mashhad, Persia, settled in Rawalpindi in the Punjab in 1839. The elaborate early 20th century synagogue they built still stands on Nishtar Street in Rawalpindi's Babu Mohallah neighborhood, between the Bohra Mosque and a large and elaborate Victorian era church.

According to the 1881 census, there were 153 Jews in Sindh province. In the Sindh Gazetteer of 1907,Edward Hamilton Aitken mentions that according to the 1901 census, the total population of Jews [in Sindh] was 482 and almost all of them lived in Karachi. By 1919, this figure had risen to about 650. By 1947, there were about 1,500 Jews living in Sindh with the majority residing in Karachi. Most of these Jews were Bene Israel and they lived as tradesmen, artisans, poets, philosophers and civil servants.

In 1911, Jews constituted 0.3 percent of Karachi’s population and at the time of independence from the British Empire their number had reached 2,500. In her 1947 book ‘Malika-e-Mashriq’ (Queen of the East), Mehmooda Rizwiya has written about the Jewish presence in Karachi. Jews used to live in Karachi. In a paper titled "Karachi Ke Yahudi” (Karachi's Jews), Gul Hasan Kalmatti indicates that Jews arrived in Karachi from Maharashtra in the 19th century.

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Wikipedia