Sassoon David Sassoon (1832 – 1867), was born to a Baghdadi Jewish family of merchants who had settled in British Indian port city of Bombay (now Mumbai, where he was born. His family claimed implausibly that they had settled there since the beginning of the 16th century, adding that they originated from the Saphardi Jews of Spain. He was the eldest son by the second marriage of his father David Sassoon to Farha Hayim of Baghdad. The family name, Sassoon is commonly shared by large Armenian and Kurdish families and tribes who all originate from the district of Sassoon (whence the family and tribal names), west of Lake Van in modern Turkey. The claim to a Spanish, European origins were meant to make the family more acceptable to the European aristocracy and the upper classes.
His father was a leading Baghdad merchant but was driven by repeated anti-Semitic outbreaks to relocate from Baghdad to Bushire, in Persia/Iran. In1832, he once again relocated, this time to Bombay where he founded a large banking and mercantile business. His business acumen soon made him one of the richest men in Bombay.
At an early age, Sassoon David Sassoon was initiated into Biblical and Talmudic lore.
At the age of 18, he married the fourteen-year-old Fahra Reuben of Bombay. After their marriage, they moved to Baghdad but returned to Bombay for the birth of their first child Joseph.
Thence he proceeded to Shanghai, where he conducted the mercantile operations of the China branch of the firm of David Sassoon, Sons & Co. He went to London in 1858 and soon occupied a prominent position among the principal merchants of that city, being elected director of a number of important companies. He spoke several Oriental languages with great fluency.
His wife, who changed her name to Flora, joined him in London in 1860.
Sassoon David Sassoon was president of a committee which had for its object the organization of an expedition to the Jews in China, Abyssinia, and the East; and was a member of the council of Jews' College and of the committee of the Jews' Free School, which two institutions he munificently endowed. He was also a warden of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. For several years, he acted as examiner in Hebrew to the Jews' Free School. He died in 1867 in London, survived by his wife and four children.
Sassoon David Sassoon was the grandfather of the poet Siegfried Sassoon[1]