Joseph Rabban

The inscription from the Sasanam outlining the grant of rights to Joseph

Joseph Rabban (Hebrew: Yosef Rabban‎; Judeo-Malayalam: Isuppu Irabbân) was a Jewish merchant, possibly from Yemen, who came to the Malabar Coast (in present-day India) in the mid-8th century. According to the traditions of the Cochin Jews, Joseph was granted the rank of prince over the Jews of Cochin by the Chera ruler Bhaskara Ravivarman II.

He was granted the rulership of a pocket principality referred to as Anjuvannam (for outsiders to the Hindu caste system), near Cranganore, and rights to seventy-two "free houses". These rights were engraved on a set of bronze tablets known as the "Sâsanam", which are still held by the Jewish community of India.^[1] The date of the charter can be fixed at about 750. It cannot, for paleographical reasons, have been much earlier than this, nor later than 774, since a grant made to the Nestorian Assyrians at that time was copied from it.

Joseph's descendants continued to exercise dominion over the Jews of the Malabar coast until a conflict broke out between one of his descendants, Joseph Azar, and his brother in the 1340s. The ensuing strife led to intervention by neighboring potentates and the eradication of Jewish autonomy in southern India.

When Ariel Sharon, prime minister of Israel, visited India in 2003, he was given a copy of the Sasanam by the Tourism minister of Kerala, K. V. Thomas.^[2]

References

• Blady, Ken. Jewish Communities in Exotic Places. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson Inc., 2000. pp. 115–130.

External links

• Israeli Prime Minister Sharon given replica of the Sasanam
• Anjuvannam at Bruce Gordon's Regnal Chronologies
• Am Yisrael India
• Jews of India by Raphael Mayer