Jews have lived in Syria for over 3,000 years. Most lived in one of the two main centers along the caravan routes, Damascus or Aleppo (Aleppo is also known as Aram Soba or, in Arabic, Haleb). Please click here for more information and a history on the Jews of Aleppo.

The records that may be searched with the search engine below consist of marriages and deaths in Aleppo, Syria, covering a portion of the 19th century. As is typical of other regiions of the Ottoman Empire, Aleppo had no official birth, marriage, or death records. Deaths are often mentioned in manuscripts of Eulogies that have survived (see list below). Some marriage and brit milah records were kept by various rabbis and a few of these have survived and are located either in manuscript or on microfiche in the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. To examine these records, please visit or contact:

Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts
Jewish National and University Library
POB 34165
Jerusalem 91341
tel 972-2-6586233
fax 972-2-6511771

These records have been translated and transliterated as part of the Sephardic Heritage Project, with donations from members of Brooklyn's Syrian Community, under the supervision of Sarina Roffe (Brooklyn, NY). The records, which use Hebrew cursive script in Hebrew as well as Judeo-Arabic documents, have been translated by Rabbi Abraham Ades. Then under the supervision of Gallit Mizrahi (Jerusalem, Israel), the records were translated into English. The records are from the following sources:

• The collection of Prof. Meir Benayahu. (We thank Prof. Benayahu for his kind permission to copy, translate, and make searchable on the web the Aleppo marriage records marked in the search results as "National Library and Benayahu Library, 43737-43739.")

• "Names in Aram Soba" (Aram Soba refers to Aleppo, Syria) from Questions and Answers Bet Din of Shel Shmuel; Manuscripts 12858-43726-32251.

• National School Manuscript 72038: Sermons and Eulogies of Rabbi Yeshaya Dabbah from Aleppo.

• Register 43741, 43751, and 43752, from the registers of the Haleb Community.

• List of Marriage Records in Jerusalem.

• Eulogies from Hedaya's Collection.

• Manuscript 72024: Historical List from Haleb (in Arabic), Leaf 3-16.

• "Names in Aram Soba," from manuscript of Eulogies by Rabbi Rahamim Mizrahi-Manfichi, director of the Haleb orphanage.

• Manuscript 43766: notes from various Eulogies.

Many thanks to Daniel Kazez for helping to make these records publicly available in a searchable format.

Sarina Roffe
Brooklyn, NY

Many of these records lack surnames. For this reason, we have designed this search engine to cover both surnames and given names.

Search advice
• The Sounds Like option may produce results with surnames that are not sufficiently similar to the surname for which you are searching. You can use square brackets to force one or more letters to appear (example: [Al]hadef). But use this option only if you are completely sure of the letter(s) you put in brackets.
• You can enter two surnames separated by a comma (example: Alhadef, Hadef) to see results for both surnames at the same time (the comma means "and"). This is especially useful when you know that your family used two fairly different versions of the same surname.