[5] During the 17th and 18th century the head of the Mat’uk family, as leaders of the Jewish community held the post of Sarraf-Bashi, or treasurer to the governor of Anah.
[3] The Ma'tuk family fled from 'Ana to Baghdad under threats and suffering from the persecution of a tyrannical Ottoman governor in the first quarter of the 17th century.
[2] Also in the library was the Kabbalistic work Ha Kanah, the poem Mi Khamokhah and miscellany written by Abraham ben Hayyeem ha-Sefaradi in the 15th century that had previously belonged to Simeon Mizrahi.
[10] One of his most famous poems, recount how he was forced to hide in a turkish bath, to escape persecution, after which he left Baghdad with his family for Basra.
[5] The recorded contents of the famed Ma'tuk library offer an insight into how the Jews of Baghdad were linked into a Mediterranean community of Sephardic rabbis and of the place of scientific learning in the culture of 18th century Iraqi Jewry.
[5] Fleeing Baghdad, the family moved to India, when Ezekiel Judah, crossed the Indian Ocean in 1825 and was to become one of the founders of the Jewish community of Calcutta and one of the leaders of the Baghdadi Jews of Asia.
[13][14][1] In the 19th century the commercial branch of the family would stay in British India, eventually migrating to Britain, whilst the Rabbinical line moved to Jerusalem, building up Iraqi and Sephardi Judaism in the community and helping to establishing the first modern Jewish agricultural colony in Palestine, at Motza, outside Jerusalem.