Habbani Jews

The Habbani Jews (Hebrew: חַבָּאנִים, Standard: Ḥabbanim) are a Jewish tribal group of Yemenite Jews from the Habban region in eastern Yemen (in modern Shabwah Governorate). The city of Habban had a Jewish community of 450 in 1947, which was considered to possibly be the remains of a larger community which lived in independently in the region before its decline in the 6th century. The Jewish community of Habban disappeared from the map of the Hadramut, in southeast Yemen, with the emigration of all of its members to Israel in the 1950s.

Ancient and medieval history

There are several legends that place Israelites in Arabia as early as the First Commonwealth of Israel. One such legend has three divisions of Israelite soldiers being sent by either King David or King Solomon while another places the earliest migration just prior to the destruction of the First Temple. Yet another legend, shared with northern Yemenite Jews, states that under the prophet Jeremiah some 75,000 Israelites, including priests and Levites, traveled to Yemen. The Jews of southern Yemen have a legend that they are the descendants of Judeans who settled in the area before the destruction of the Second Temple. According to tradition, those Judeans belonged to a brigade dispatched by King Herod to assist the Roman legions fighting in the region (see Aelius Gallus).

Jews

The Jews (/dʒuːz/;Hebrew: יְהוּדִים ISO 259-3 Yehudim, Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation, while its observance varies from strict observance to complete nonobservance.

The Jews trace their ethnogenesis to the part of the Levant known as the Land of Israel. The discovery of the Merneptah Stele confirms the existence of the people of Israel in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. Since then, while maintaining rule over their homeland during certain periods—such as under the Kingdom of Israel, the Kingdom of Judah, the Hasmonean Dynasty, and the Herodian Kingdom—Jews also suffered various exiles and occupations from their homeland—from Ancient Egyptian Occupation of the Levant, to Assyrian Captivity and Exile, to Babylonian Captivity and Exile, to Greek Occupation and Exile, to the Roman Occupation and Exile. These events subjected Jews to slavery, pogroms, cultural assimilation, forced expulsions, genocide, and more, scattering Jews all around the world, in what is known today as the Jewish diaspora.