The scholar and researcher Azaria Levy Azizollahoff, who has died aged 94, dedicated his life to researching his family history and that of the Persian Jews of Mashhad, the Muslim city in north Iran. 
Known as the Crypto Jews of Mashhad because they were forced to convert to Islam, they secretly led a full Jewish life. Azaria’s work is considered one of the most important researches into that community, which left Iran in 1922 and came to former Palestine.                                                                         
Azaria spent six months in London libraries analysing hundreds of reports of British officers, consuls and Foreign Office representatives who were stationed in Iran in general and in Mashhad itself during those years. Thousands of research cards, still kept in the drawers of Azaria’s desk, were the basis of his writings on this chapter of Iranian-Jewish history.
It records how his grandparents Amin-Benjamin and Sarah Azizollahof came to Jerusalem,  using donkeys, carriages, horses, trains and ships, via Afghanistan and India through the Red Sea and Suez Canal to Jaffa, and finally to Jerusalem.  
Azaria’s forefathers used to go on Pilgrimage-Haaj to Mecca, stopping on the way in Jerusalem, to put money aside to build  the two Mashhadi synagogues in the Bukharan Quarter.
Born in Jerusalem, Azaria was the son of Amin-Benjamin and Sarah Levy Azizollahoff, one of eight children. In his book The Jews of Mashad (1998,2006) Azaria describes how his father, on arriving in Jerusalem, started a carpet weaving factory, but lacking skilled workers and markets, he closed it and moved to Bombay, leaving the family in Jerusalem. He regularly returned to ensure they never knew shortage. 
At the time there were already a few Mashhadi Crypto-Jews in India, involved in the pearl, gem, fur, carpet and spice trade. It was essentially the same business they had in Mashhad. -- based on a network of sons, brothers and uncles, scattered in different towns, later countries.
He describes how numerous relatives and extended family lived in the many rooms surrounding the courtyard, where weddings, barmitzvahs and other celebrations took place.“Many of the courtyard dwellers had diverse and useful talents – One played the violin, another sang –  there was never a lack of musicians whenever there was a celebration.”
At home Azaria and his brothers learned Jadidi, Persian in Rashi letters, studied at the Takhkemoni school and later in the Alliance. His sisters studied English and the brothers graduated the Alliance school with perfect Hebrew, English, French, Persian, Arabic and Ladino. They mainly turned to commerce, like their father and uncles, but Azaria was attracted to the academic world. He studied Jewish History and French literature.
He was acknowledged as the first intellectual in the family and ten years ago, he received an award from the Mashhadi community as a token of gratitude and appreciation. 
In 1955 Azaria married Rina Brandies from Antwerp, Belgium, the daughter of a diamond dealer family, who made aliyah to Jerusalem. He became a librarian in the National Library of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and she worked in the Hadassah Hospital laboratories. Together they travelled the world and remained busy with their interests until he became ill last year. He is survived by his wife Rina and his two nephews.
 

Azaria Levy Azizollahoff: born April 1, 1925. Died September 22, 2019