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Cochin Synagogue

The first Jews probably arrived on the Malabar Coast with Solomon's merchant fleet, but the first settlement appeared in the early centuries of the first millennium. A copper plate from 390 AD grants property and rights to a certain Joseph Rabban and his family and descendants for "so long as the world and moon exist".

The community thrived until the Portuguese arrived with the Inquisition in the 16th century. Things picked up for them later with the arrival of the more tolerant Dutch and British. There are very few Jews left in Cochin - the last families left for Israel in the early 1950s.