Photograph: Armenian Jew.

Jews

Erivan Guberniya

1866

Museum of the Peoples of the USSR

Salt paper print

19,7 x 16; 28,5 x 23,6

РЭМ 8764-6401

From 1840, the Jews of Erivan Province were represented by two communities, an Ashkenazim and a Sephardim one. The former had a praying house (shul), while the latter had a Sheik Mordecai synagogue active from 1860 where the Iranian language was in use along with Hebrew, and worshippers sat “the Iranian style” during prayers. The Jews in Armenia were actively occupied in commerce and various crafts. The photograph was displayed at the Russian Ethnographic Exhibition of 1867 in Moscow.