of the old caravan route running between these cities. There was also migration from the communities of Palestine, the villages of Kurdistan, and it is said that a handful of Jews settled in Baghdad from Germany. Nineteenth century By the early 19th century, Baghdad had been reestablished as a leading Jewish center in the Middle East. There were over 6,000 Jews in city, two synagogues and strong community institutions. This was not a golden age, however. Over time, the centralized Ottoman control over the region deteriorated and the situation of the Jews worsened, but the population continued to grow very rapidly. An example of this deterioration is the persecution of Dawud Pasha, which began in 1814 and lasted until 1831. Many leaders of the Jewish community, such as Solomon Ma’tuk, were forced to flee. One of the foremost leaders of the community, David Sassoon, was forced to flee first to Busher and then to India. By the early 19th century, trade between Baghdad and India was said to be entirely in the hands of the Jewish community. Though Jewish traders from the Middle East had been crossing the Indian Ocean since antiquity, the deteriorating situation in the Ottoman Empire and the rise of commercial opportunities in British India saw many Jews from Iraq establish themselves permanently in India, at first in Surat, then especially in Calcutta and Bombay. This was the beginning of primarily Iraqi Jewish diaspora in Asia known as the Baghdadi Jews, to which David Sassoon and many of the other leading Jewish families in Baghdad fled the persecution of Dawud Pasha. These Judeo-Arabic speaking communities, following mostly Iraqi Jewish customs, would be formed along the so-called opium route between India and China, including in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. These were all led by leading Iraqi Jewish families such as the Sassoons, Ezras, Eliases, Gubbays and Judahs. These families were active sponsors of religious life and charity back in Iraq. Israel Joseph Benjamin, the Ashkenazi Jewish traveller and scholar from Moldova, who conducted extensive journeys to visit even the most furthest flung Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities of Asia between 1845 and 1859, wrote of Baghdad that “in no other place in the east have I found my Israelitish brothers in such perfectly happy circumstances.” One distinguishing feature of the communities of Baghdad and Basra remarked upon by Ashkenazi travelers was the extreme young age of marriage: