Qāyfengi

The Kaifeng Jews are the Jewish community that took root in the Song capital of Kaifeng, in Henan, probably formed from Persian Jewish merchants who travelled the Silk Road. Their synagogue, the Qingzhensi, was built in 1163, and four stelae erected between 1489 and 1679 record the community's history.

Ming laws barring endogamy pushed the seven Jewish clans into marriage with Han neighbours. In 1605 the examiner Ai Tian told Matteo Ricci in Beijing that his people called themselves men of Israel and were known to neighbours as the sect that plucks the sinews.

The Kaifeng flood of 1642 destroyed the synagogue and killed some three thousand Jews, after which the clans restored the thirteen Torah scrolls. Cut off from world Jewry and lacking rabbis, the community's distinct practices had largely faded by the nineteenth century.