Sassoon family

Sassoon (of Sason = " joy ") is the name of a famous merchant family.

History

The Sassoon can trace their origins as " ibn Shoshone " to the Moorish Spain in the late Middle Ages. As a result of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by the Catholic rulers in the 16th century they fled to Baghdad.

There the family well 200 years lived largely undisturbed, before it came to the early 19th century under Ottoman rule also there to pogroms. 1833 finally fled David Sassoon with his family first to Persia, shortly after Bombay. There, David established the trading house of David Sassoon & Co., ascended its owner soon became a successful and respected merchant family. But a name they went by the construction of synagogues, schools and social institutions.

After the opening of China to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, the family was also active there and took it, not least through the opium trade to great wealth.

Instrumental in the rise next to David in particular his two eldest sons Albert Abdullah and Elias were involved. The former led his father's legacy, especially in northern India, moved in the 1870s to England, and crowned his social advancement, finally in 1887 with the marriage of his son Edward Anthony with the Baroness Aline Caroline from the House of Rothschild. Elias, however, was the progenitor of the Chinese branch of the Sassoon family. Today there are descendants of the dynasty, especially in England and the USA.

Famous Family Members

• David Sassoon (1792-1864)
• Albert Abdullah David Sassoon (1818-1896)
• Elias David Sassoon (1820-1880)
• David Sassoon Sassoon (1832-1867)
• Solomon David Sassoon (1841-1894)
• Jacob Elias Sassoon (1843-1916)
• Anthony Edward Albert Sassoon (1856-1912), Trent Park
• Flora Sassoon (1859-1936)
• Victor Sassoon (1881-1961)
• Ellice Victor Sassoon (1881-1961)
• Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886-1967)
• Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon (1888-1939), Trent Park
• Sybil Sassoon, Marchioness of Cholmondeley (1894-1989)
• David Sassoon (1910-1991)
• Andre Gabriel Sassoon ( b. 1936 )
• James Meyer Sassoon, Baron Sassoon ( born 1955 ), Trade Secretary at HM Treasury

The hairdresser Vidal Sassoon does not belong to this family.