A rabbi in Tashkent, Uzbekistan was mysteriously murdered last Tuesday evening some time after leaving his synagogue. Rabbi Avraham Yegudiyev was found unconscious with a head injury by family members who searched for him after he failed to return home.

He died in the hospital on Saturday night. His funeral was held Sunday in Tashkent.

Yegudiyev, 34, who is survived by his wife and four young children, was originally from Bukhara. The family was poor and had been supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). His brother Nikolai disappeared 12 years ago under mysterious circumstances.

Three-and-a-half years ago, after the death of Yegudiyev's father, who was the synagogue beadle, Yegudiyev became the head of the congregation, considered the oldest of the three active in Tashkent.

The synagogue was located in a primarily Jewish-population neighborhood, however, in recent years, the number of worshippers had dwindled. Yegudiyev also served as a

ritual slaughterer and Bar Mitzvah tutor.

"He was a pleasant man who contributed a great deal to the community," Israel's ambassador to Uzbekistan, Ami Mahal, told Haaretz on Monday. "His death is a great tragedy."

Relatives of Yegudiyev living in Israel told Haaretz they were certain the murder had been motivated by anti-Semitism. His cousin, Ziva Mor, said that she and other relatives had begged the family to come to Israel but they had refused.

Uzbekistan is considered a moderate Muslim country, however fundamentalist Muslims are known to be active. Until 15 years ago, some 200,000 Jews lived there, a number that has now declined to only a few thousand.

The neighborhood where Yegudiyev's synagogue is located is said to be crime-ridden and a focus of extreme Islamic activism.

Mahal said that anti-Semitism was only one of the motives under investigation and that there had been no problem of anti-Semitism "for dozens of years" in Uzbekistan. He said the neighborhood had been the recent scene of an increasing number of murders.