According to local traditions Jews began to settle in the area 2,000 years ago after the exile from the kingdom of Israel by the Babylonians. Other traditions focus on Jewish merchants settling in the area of the Silk Road and Jews that came to the area after Persian persecutions some 1,500 years ago. The three major Jewish centers are Tashkent (13,000), Samarkand (3,000), and Bukhara (2,000). The Jews of Uzbekistan can be divided into two categories: the Ashkenazim who came to the region from other parts of the Soviet Union during Soviet rule and sometimes earlier, and the indigenous Bukharan community, which has its own Tajik-Jewish dialect, and which traces its roots back many centuries. Bukharans account for almost the entire community in Samarkand. Nearly all the Ashkenazim live in the capital, Tashkent, as do some 2,000 Bukharan Jews. In recent years, many Jews left Uzbekistan due to economic impoverishment and fear of the nationalistic "Uzbekization" trend of the government. Most Bukharan Jews have settled in Queens, New York, where they have established a well-organized community. The Ashkenazim have largely settled in Israel, Russia, and Germany. Jewish quarters, traditionally called mahalla, still exist in Samarkand, Bukhara, and smaller cities of the Ferghana Valley. There Jews continue to follow a traditional way of life. Bukharan Jewry is an ancient community that claims descent from 5th-century exiles from Persia. Bukharan Jews believe that Bukhara is actually Habor (II Kings 17:6), to which the ten tribes were exiled. Although Soviet authority was imposed on the country, Jews were allowed greater freedoms than those afforded their co-religionists in other parts of the Soviet Union, and they clung to their Judaism tenaciously. Still, the number of synagogues in Samarkand plummeted from 30 in 1917 to 1 in 1935. At this time, many Jews became factory workers or collective farmers. There was also a Jewish influx into the new capital, Tashkent. During World War II, Jews from European Russia were evacuated to Uzbekistan, and many remained there. Samarkand's mahalla, still home to a large number of Bukharan Jews, contains many sites from the Jewish past and present. The regional museum, located in what was once a Jewish-owned mansion, still contains the ornate room which served as the family's private synagogue. The mahalla in Bukhara also contains a number of Jewish relics.