Iraq: Timeline

Following the Assyrian conquest of the Kingdom of Israel and the fall of Samaria in 722–721 BCE, thousands of Israelites from the ten northern tribes were forcibly uprooted from their ancestral homeland and deported to distant regions of the Assyrian Empire, devastating their communities and marking the beginning of their dispersal.

In 597 BCE, Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II conquered Jerusalem, deposed King Jehoiachin, and forcibly deported the king and thousands of Judeans, including members of the royal court, military leaders, and skilled craftsmen, from their ancestral homeland to Babylonia, marking the first major wave of the Babylonian Exile. “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, as we remembered Zion.” — Psalm 137:1

Babylonia (modern-day Iraq) emerges as a leading center of Jewish religious and intellectual life, with renowned academies in Sura, Pumbedita, and Nehardea fostering generations of rabbinic scholars whose teachings and debates would form the Babylonian Talmud, one of the most influential texts in Jewish history.

Under Umayyad Muslim rule, Jewish communities in Babylonia (modern-day Iraq) face increasing religious restrictions, including prohibitions on constructing new synagogues, while persecution and political instability disrupt Jewish religious institutions and reportedly force rabbinic scholars to flee Sura, one of the region’s leading centers of Jewish learning.

Over centuries of successive conquests and shifting rule by Seljuk Turks, Mongols, Persians, and Ottoman Turks, Iraq's ancient Jewish communities endure periods of warfare, persecution, and political instability while maintaining their religious traditions, communal institutions, and cultural life, with Jewish populations fluctuating significantly across the centuries.

Sassoon Eskell, a prominent Iraqi Jewish statesman and one of the founders of modern Iraq, becomes the country's first Minister of Finance, playing a pivotal role in establishing its financial institutions and economic policies while exemplifying the significant contributions of Iraqi Jews to the nation's political and economic development.

On June 1–2, 1941, violent mobs unleash a devastating pogrom against Baghdad’s Jewish community, murdering at least 180 Jews, injuring hundreds, and looting and destroying Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues, marking a turning point in the history of Iraq’s ancient Jewish community and shattering its sense of security in its ancestral homeland.

Following Israel’s establishment and Iraq’s participation in the Arab-Israeli War, the Iraqi government criminalizes Zionist activity, making it punishable by death, while thousands of Jews face arrests, imprisonment, torture, confiscation of property, economic boycotts, and escalating antisemitic incitement, threatening the safety and future of Iraq’s approximately 130,000 Jews.

Following the mass exodus of Iraqi Jews, approximately 6,000 Jews remain in Iraq as the government once again prohibits Jewish emigration, leaving the remnants of one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities increasingly isolated and vulnerable to state surveillance, discrimination, and persecution.

Following decades of persecution, imprisonment, and state-sponsored violence, Iraq quietly permits many of its remaining Jews to leave the country, prompting another wave of emigration that further diminishes one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities and brings more than 2,500 years of continuous Jewish life in Iraq close to an end.