Shalom Obadiah Cohen

[4] While some scholars have argued that he left due to the increasingly perilous position of Jews in Aleppo and Baghdad, the main reason for his journey was likely commercial.

One episode from this period is noted in a letter from Cohen to John Griffith (the head of the East India Company in Surat) demanding that he reprimand one of his fellow British nationals.

Apart from a handful of business trips to Baghdad and Basra, Cohen lived in Surat through the end of 1797, when he left for Calcutta via Bombay, Cochin, Madras, and Hooghly.

[6][7][8][9][10] Soon after he settled in Calcutta, he was joined by other Jewish merchants from Aleppo and Baghdad, including his brother Abraham, Aaron Solomon Laniado, Isaac Isaiah Sutton, Jacob Semah, and Moses Simon Duek ha-Cohen.

The first Jew to reside in the city was likely Lyon Prager, a Jewish merchant from London, who came to Calcutta in 1786 to work for the firm Israel Levin Solomons.

[13] In May 1811, he bought a home in Calcutta, which served as the prayer hall for the growing local Jewish community, which at that point still had no synagogue.

[14] Having become particularly well known as an expert in the jewelry trade, he moved to Lucknow as the court jeweler for the Nawab Wazir Ghazi ad-Din Haidar and his son in 1816.

[3] Towards the end of his life, Cohen traveled to the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in Punjab and was asked to appraise the Kohinoor diamond.