Baghdadi Jews, also known as Iraqi Jews, are Jewish emigrants from Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, which not only includes Jews from the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad, but from other areas of Iraq, as well as Jews from Syrian and Yemenite origin. Many of them were merchant traders settled on trade routes, who fled religious persecution and formed immigrant communities in their new homelands. Baghdad and Iraq in general used to have one of the largest, if not the largest Jewish community in the Middle East and Central Asia, and these new immigrant communities also included Jews as part of the Mughal courtiers. Records of Jewish tradesmen traveling from Baghdad can be found from the early 17th century, and around the mid-19th century a large portion of the community started immigrating to South and Southeast Asia as well as to the west, creating new communities while preserving their unique traditions.