The majority of the Syrian community of Brazil come from Beirut, Lebanon, where most have settled between the late XIX century and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. A lot of the Halabi merchant traders maintained links and resided between Aleppo and Beirut a far back as the XVIII century. A later arrival of Syrian Jews to Lebanon took place due to their expulsion from Syria following the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent violent anti-Jewish pogroms perpetrated by their Muslim neighbours.