By Mike King
There once was a wealthy Jew named David Sassoon --- who, like his father, had served as treasurer to the pashas (governors) of Ottoman-ruled Baghdad (in modern day Iraq). Eventually, the people and a new pasha turned against the Jewish money manipulators (surprise surprise). In the early 1830's -- as the result of a corruption scandal -- David and his brother Joseph left "anti-Semitic" Baghdad to seek new scams in new lands.
Joseph Sassoon settled in the city of Aleppo (modern day Syria) where he established a merchant house. Later on, his business interests spread to Alexandria, Thessaloniki, and Athens, which included a shipping company and a money exchange house. His five sons later branched out in different directions.
But it was David -- who led the community's exodus to Bombay (now known as Mumbai, India) -- that established the branch of the Sassoon Family which was to rank among the wealthiest and most respected and influential dynasties in the world. David Sassoon and his eight sons profited handsomely from several different types of businesses. They made a fortune in textiles; but the trade which really raked in the shekels for the new "Indians" later dubbed "the Rothschilds of the East" was in selling opium, aka narcotics, aka "dope" in China.
1. The ancestors of the Jewish Sassoon Family had been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain / Portugal) 300 years before David had been born. The Ottoman Turkish Empire welcomed the banished Jews. But when the Sassoons became embroiled in a corruption scandal, it was time for David and Joseph to pack up and leave again -- this time, for India and Syria respectively.
2 & 3. David Sassoon later founded Sassoon & Sons -- a mighty financial and political operation which later expanded to the trafficking of opium to China.
*
1. Massive synagogue in Mumbai, India --- built by the Sassoon Crime Family.
