Rabban, Joseph

State of India, within the Madras Presidency. The Jews in Cochin numbered 1,142 in 1891, and are divided into two classes: the Whites, whose complexion is almost as fair as that of European Jews, and the Blacks, who, though darker than the former, are not so black as negroes, and are of the same complexion as the Jews of Yemen or Kurdistan.

The White Jews number at present about fifty families, and these are divided into six stocks: the Zakkai, who are the oldest, and are said to have come from Cranganore in 1219; the Castillia, exiles from Spain in 1492, who arrived at Cochin in 1511; the Ashkenazi and Rothenburg, who came from Germany in the sixteenth century; and the Rahabi and Haligua families, who came from Aleppo about 1680. There are three hundred families of the Blacks.

Earliest Mention—the "Sâsanam."

The earliest trace of the Cochin Jews is to be found in two bronze tablets known as the "Sâsanam" (Burnell, "Indian Antiquary," 3:333-334), which are now in the possession of one of the elders and contain a charter given by Cheramal Perumal, King of Malabar, to Isuppu Irabbân (Joseph Rabban), probably a Jew of Yemen who led an expedition of Jews to Cranganore about the year 750. By the terms of the charter, engraved in Vaṭṭeluttu characters on the plate, Rabban, who is referred to as the prince of Ansuvannam, was granted seventy-two "free houses" and feudal rights in Ansuvannam, near Cranganore. The date of the charter can be fixed at about 750; it can not, for paleographical reasons, have been much earlier than this, nor later than 774, since a grant made to the Nestorian Christians at that time was copied from it.