HERAT

HERAT, city in N.W. Afghanistan. Jewish settlement there goes back to early Islamic times. The recent discovery in Firuzkuh, near Herat, of 20 Judeo-Persian tombstone inscriptions covering the years 1115–1215 indicates the existence of a Jewish settlement with a cemetery. Firuzkuh was destroyed by the mongol invasion (1221), and the Jewish survivors may have fled further east, perhaps to China. From 1839 the community in Herat absorbed many refugees from meshed across the Persian border, victims of a forced conversion decree. The outbreak of Anglo-Persian hostilities in the second part of the 19th century caused many of these Meshed Conversos to be expelled from Herat, forcing them to settle in the vicinity of Baba Qudrat. ephraim neumark found in Herat in 1884 about 300 Jewish families, engaged in commerce, handicrafts, and trade with India and Central Asia. In 1898 E.N. Adler discovered in the city some Hebrew manuscripts written in 1773. Many Jews from Herat emigrated to Palestine in the early decades of the 20th century, among them R. Garji and his family, and the Shauloff family. They brought with them manuscripts of Judeo-Persian literature which they printed in Jerusalem. In the late 1960s the Jewish community in Herat had dwindled to only a few families. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: W.J. Fischel, in: JAOS, 85 (1965), 148–53; I. Ben Zvi, Mehkarim u-Mekorot (1966), 325, 331–3. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: R.N. Frye, "Harāt," in: EIS2, 3 (1971), 177–78. (Walter Joseph Fischel)