Stateless Central Asian Merchant: The Life of Haim Aghajan Abraham Based on his Journal 1897-1986
Stateless Central Asian Merchant: The Life of Haim Aghajan Abraham Based on his Journal 1897-1986
Stateless Central Asian Merchant: The Life of Haim Aghajan Abraham Based on his Journal 1897-1986
Description
Description
Haim Abraham, born in 1897 in Turkmenistan, wrote out his memoir in a spiral-bound notebook covering a period of ninety years. After he passed away in 1999, the journal was discovered in his home, written in an ancient language: Judeo-Farsi. Years later, the journals were translated, unearthing a time capsule nearly lost.
The former years of Abraham's life had a recurrent theme of Russian Tsarist, Bolshevik, and Soviet violence, which heavily affected his family's viability. Abraham's family were not nationals anywhere. They were forced to move from country to country in search of religious freedom and the economic opportunities that often went hand in hand as merchant class Jews. What Abraham did have, which was central to his endurance, was a community of relatives and friends in every city he traveled. The mutual responsibility inherent within the Jewish community was essential to establishing worldwide business ties and mobility.
Abraham came from an enclave called the Jewish Triangle, which stretched across large parts of Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia. Due to continued persecution and spotty educational access, much of their history is not written down and barely part of the Jewish historical lexicon. Presented is an invaluable memoir into a fascinating time period.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
The Stateless Central Asian Merchant is the fascinating life story of a Persian-speaking Jew who was born in 1897 in Marv (today's Turkmenistan) in Russian Turkestan, relocated to Afghanistan in the mid-1930s, and to Japan in the 1960s, and passed away in New York in 1999.
Haim Abraham's journal is a unique document that gives us an insight into the hitherto little-known history, culture, and everyday life of the Jews of Central Asia and Afghanistan. It allows us a more nuanced understanding of Jewish life and pluralism in modern Afghan and Central Asian history.
Haim Abraham's memories, which he wrote down into a small notebook at the end of his long life, have only reached us through fortunate circumstances. Dahlia Abraham Klein deserves the greatest thanks for taking on her grandfather's forgotten story and making it accessible to a broader readership.
Dr. Thomas Loy-Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Jewish communities have been living in the regions of today's Central Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan for almost 3000 years. How did they fare as minorities in Islamic societies throughout the 19th and 20th century? This book gives unique first-hand insights into the life of a Jewish merchant, Haim Abraham, who was born in Marv (today Turkmenistan), which at the time was a central hub for different communities of Persian Jews. Today, no traces of these communities remain in cities like Marv. Haim's memoir reveals how Jews dealt with the rapidly changing political circumstances: the Russian conquest of Central Asia, the establishment of Soviet Republics, and the ensuing creation of borders, which deeply affected possibilities of mobility and livelihood. Most importantly, we learn about these transformations not from the perspective of governments or diplomats, but from the people who experienced them, how they built lives and families across regions ranging from Moscow to Samarkand, from Kabul to Tehran and Tokyo, in exchange with a variety of actors, as "indigenous cosmopolitans."
Ariane Sadjed-Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Iranian Studies
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
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