page_title: History of the Jews in Bessarabia
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Jews in Bessarabia / Early history
caption_attribution_description: Torah scrolls presented by Jewish community of Kishinev to Nicholas II in 1914. Свиток Торы, поднесённый еврейской буржуазией и раввинами г. Кишинева Николаю II в 1914.
context_page_description: The history of the Jews in Bessarabia, a historical region in Eastern Europe, dates back hundreds of years.
context_section_description: Jews are mentioned from very early in the Principality of Moldavia, but they did not represent a significant number. Their main activity in Moldavia was commerce, but they could not compete with Greeks and Armenians, who had knowledge of Levantine commerce and relationships.
  Several times, when Jewish merchants created monopolies in some places in north Moldavia, Moldavian rulers sent them back to Galicia and Podolia. One such example was during the reign of Petru Şchiopul (1583–1591), who favored the English merchants led by William Harborne.
  In the 18th century, more Jews started to settle in Moldavia. Some of them were in charge of the Dniester crossings, replacing Moldavians and Greeks, until the captain of Soroca demanded their expulsion.
  Others traded with spirits (horilka), first brought in from Ukraine, afterward building local velniţas (pre-industrial distilleries) on boyar manors. The number of Jews increased significantly during the Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812), when the Podolia-Moldavia border was open.
  When this war ended, in 1812, Bessarabia (eastern half of the Principality of Moldavia) was annexed by the Russian Empire.
caption: Torah scrolls presented by Jewish community of Kishinev to Nicholas II. 1914.
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