There used to be a sizeable Jewish community in Siahkal with synagogue(s) and neighborhoods. The written historical sources on this community are limited, and mostly lost to history limited, as the Gilan province was largely isolated, and mostly ignored in history, but they might have been present since antiquity given speaking the Judeo-Siahkali dialect, as opposed to other Jewish communities of Gilan and surrounding provinces.[5] The community married among themselves and had a long tradition that they were descendants of King David. Some were descendants of Jews of Dilaman, who were ordered by Nadir Shah Afshar in the year 1746 to relocate to Mashhad.[6][7]
The community faced one or several pogroms and mass conversions in recent history based on their collective memory. Possibly, around 1880, there was a pogrom in Siyāhkal in which many Jews were killed, many were subjected to forceful conversion to Islam, and others left the city to live in Rasht (Netzer, Siyāhkal). In the following years, Many of the remaining members of this isolated community converted to Baháʼí Faith, Islam, or joined the Marxist movement. Others gradually left the town, commenced by events of the pogrom of 1880, the Marxist insurrection of 1921, the Soviet Occupation, and then as well as the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, which prompted immigration of the remaining practicing Jews to either Israel, Rasht, Tehran, or the United States;.[8][9][10]
At the time of the 2006 National Census, the city's population was 15,274 in 4,343 households.[11] The following census in 2011 counted 18,176 people in 5,645 households.[12] The 2016 census measured the population of the city as 19,924 people in 6,796 households.[2]
^Siahkal can be found at GEOnet Names Server, at this link, by opening the Advanced Search box, entering "-3085619" in the "Unique Feature Id" form, and clicking on "Search Database".
^Habibi, Hassan (18 May 1390) [Approved 8 May 1376]. Changes in national divisions in Gilan and Mazandaran provinces. rc.majlis.ir (Report) (in Persian). Ministry of the Interior, Board of Ministers. Proposal 1.4.42.5543. Archived from the original on 9 August 2011. Retrieved 12 December 2023 – via Islamic Parliament Research Center.