Jews lived in Afghanistan 1000 years ago

Israel's National Library in Jerusalem has acquired 29 documents from Afghanistan providing evidence that Jews lived in the area some 1,000 years ago, the Israeli Ha'aretz daily reported on Friday. The documents, part of a larger cache, include fragments of religious commentaries and letters in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian and Muslim Arabic. They were reportedly found in a cave in eastern Afghanistan, near the Iranian and Uzbeki borders - an area which is now a Taliban stronghold. "This is an extremely important finding, being a unique testimony, both in nature and in volume, of the cultural history of a Jewish community in an area which in the 11th century included highly important political, cultural and economical centres," the library said on its website. "To this day we have not seen Jewish findings of such magnitude and importance from this area. Everything indicates that the findings are authentic." The National Library did not say how much it had paid for the documents, nor how they were acquired. According to Ha'aretz, One Jerusalem antiquities dealer who obtained a small part of the cache offered it for sale to the National Library. The negotiations continued for more than a year, and the documents arrived in Israel last week. The National Library said it places the utmost importance in having all the documents in the cache form part of its collection, and "the present purchase is a first step in this direction."