Kermanshah
(Place)Kermanshah
In Farsi: کرمانشاه
Also known as Kermānshāhān
Called Kirmisin by medieval Arab geographers
A city in west Iran the capital of Kermanshah Province, Iran. Kermanshah is situated on the highway from Baghdad to Teheran. Along with Hamadan, Isfahan, and Rai, it formed part of the Persian province of Jibal.
The Jewish community in Kermanshah is prominently mentioned by the tenth-century historian Nathan Ha-Bavli, who reports that due to an internal conflict in Baghdad, the exilarch Mar Ukba was banished to Kermanshah around 912. The community continued in existence throughout the middle ages and is listed in the Judeo-Persian chronicles of Babai ibn Lutf. The Jews of Kermanshah did not suffer from the forced conversions the Safavids during the 17th and 18th centuries.
At the beginning of the 19th century, R. David d'Beth Hillel found there 300 Jewish families with three synagogues. In his report d'Beth Hillel mentions that there were three active synagogues in the city and that the majority of Jews were merchants and peddlers. Later Jewish travelers, such as Josef Benjamin, Kestelman and Ephraim Neumark, describe the economic conditions of the Jews in Kermanshah. According to Neumark, at the time of his visit to Kermanshah (1884-1885) the local Jewish community numbered 250 individuals. Neumark witnessed the public conversion to Islam of seventy members of the family of Ḥakim Naṣir, a local well-known physician. In addition, and as in other communities, the Jews there were also affected by the Bahai movement and Christian missionary activities during the 19th century.
Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) opened a school in Kermanshah in 1904. It provided the younger members of the community with western style education. According to the estimations of AIU, the Jewish population of Kermanshah at the beginning of te 20th century was around 1,400, and along with the surrounding area, almost 4,000 individuals. These numbers included Jewish refugees who fled the persecutions in Mashad as well as Jews from Bukhara who decided to settle in Kermanshah instead of continuing their way to the Land of Israel. The various small villages with Jewish inhabitants in the vicinity of Kermanshah included Gavareh (18 families), Kerrideh (30), Ḳaṣr (12), Zoab (16), and Sarpol (14).
Kermanshah also became, around 1913, the center of a strong Zionist group led by Suleiman (Shmuel el Yehezkel) Haim (1891-1931), first representative of the Iranian Jews in the Majles (parliament) of Teheran in 1925 and editor of the first Jewish periodical "Ha-Haim". He was accused in opposing the shah and was executed in 1931. The Zionist activity was particularly strong in the years following the publication of Balfour Declaration in 1917.
Distinguished members of the community include Moshe Hay Isaac Kohen Yazdi (1896-1957), author of Pardes ha-dat (The orchard of religion, Jerusalem, 1934), who immigrated to Israel in 1950; David Adhami (1916- 2010) author of Be-su-ye kamāl, romantic novel that contains an insight into various aspects of the historical and political life of Jews in Iran; Heshmatollah Kermanshahchi, an industrialist and Zionist leader of the Jews of Iran; and Elyahou Raḥamim Pirnaẓar (1898-1988), a distinguished lawyer.
As a result of both, a general move to the capital and immigration to Israel, the community diminished considerably.