Sassoon
Sassoon (from Śāśōn = "joy") is the name of a famous merchant family.
history
The Sassoons can trace their origins as "ibn Schoschon" back to Moorish Spain in the late Middle Ages . As a result of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by the Catholic rulers , they fled to Baghdad in the 16th century .
The family lived there largely undisturbed for a good 200 years before pogroms broke out there under Ottoman rule at the beginning of the 19th century . In 1833 David Sassoon and his family fled first to Persia and shortly afterwards to Bombay . There David founded the trading company David Sassoon & Co. , the owners of which soon rose to become a successful and respected family of merchants. But they also made a name for themselves by building synagogues, schools and social institutions.
After the opening of China to foreign trade through the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, the family also became active there and made great wealth , not least through the opium trade .
In addition to David, his two eldest sons Albert Abdullah and Elias played a key role in the rise . The former continued his father's legacy mainly in India , moved to England in the 1870s and finally crowned his social advancement in 1887 with the marriage of his son Edward Anthony to the baroness Aline Caroline from the Rothschild family . Elias, however, became the progenitor of the Chinese branch of the Sassoon family. Today descendants of the dynasty live mainly in England and the USA .
Famous family members
- Sasson ben Saleh (1750-1830)
- David Sassoon (1792–1864)
- Albert Abdullah David Sassoon (1818-1896)
- Elias David Sassoon (1820-1880)
- David Sassoon Sassoon (1832-1867)
- Solomon David Sassoon (1841-1894)
- Jacob Elias Sassoon (1843-1916)
- Edward Anthony Albert Sassoon (1856-1912), Trent Park
- Flora Sassoon (1859-1936)
- Heskel Sassoon (also: Sassoon Eskell, Sassoon Effendi) (1860–1932), Iraqi banker, finance minister and statesman
- Victor Sassoon (1881–1961)
- Ellice Victor Sassoon (1881-1961)
- Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886–1967)
- Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon (1888-1939), Trent Park
- Sybil Sassoon, Marchioness of Cholmondeley (1894-1989)
- David Sassoon (1910-1991)
- Agnes Sassoon (1933-2020), British fashion journalist and author
- Andre Gabriel Sassoon (* 1936)
- James Meyer Sassoon, Baron Sassoon (* 1955), Trade Secretary in the UK Treasury
The hairdresser Vidal Sassoon does not belong to this family.
literature
- Egon Erwin Kisch : Capitalist Romance of the Baghdad Jews. In: China secret! z. B. Berlin 1993, ISBN 3885206048 .
- Itamar Livni: Jews in China. In Jakob Hessing Ed .: Jüdischer Almanach des Leo-Baeck-Institut 1997, p. 37ff., ISBN 3633541195 .
- Katja Behling: Jewish merchant families. The Sassoons: From Baghdad to Shanghai. In: Structure . Main topic: The myth of the Silk Road. Searching for traces: the beginning of globalization. No. 7/8, July / Aug. 2010. p. 11f. - With another article about Benjamin von Tudela , silk weaving , Jacob d'Ancona (allegedly from the 13th century), a pseudo figure according to the assertion of David Selbourne et al. In German, abstract in English.