History of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire

Paths of Jewish immigration to Salonika

The first major event in Jewish history under Turkish rule took place after the Empire gained control over Constantinople. After Sultan Mehmed II's Conquest of Constantinople he found the city in a state of disarray. After suffering many sieges, a devastating conquest by Catholic Crusaders in 1204 and even a case of the Black Death in 1347,[10] the city was a shade of its former glory. As Mehmed wanted the city as his new capital, he decreed the rebuilding of the city.[11] And in order to revivify Constantinople he ordered that Muslims, Christians and Jews from all over his empire be resettled in the new capital.[11] Within months most of the Empire's Romaniote Jews, from the Balkans and Anatolia, were concentrated in Constantinople, where they made up 10% of the city's population.[12] But at the same time the forced resettlement, though not intended as an anti-Jewish measure, was perceived as an "expulsion" by the Jews.[13] Despite this interpretation however, the Romaniotes would be the most influential community in the Empire for several decades, until that position would be lost to a wave of new Jewish arrivals.[14]

The number of native Jews was soon bolstered by small groups of Ashkenazi Jews that immigrated to the Ottoman Empire between 1421 and 1453.[12] Among these new Ashkenazi immigrants was Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati (Hebrew: צרפתי–Sarfati, meaning: "French"), a German-born Jew whose family had previously lived in France, who became the Chief Rabbi of Edirne and wrote a letter inviting the European Jewry to settle in the Ottoman Empire, in which he stated that: "Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking" and asking: "Is it not better for you to live under Muslims than under Christians?".[15][16] Many had taken the Rabbi up on his offer, including the Jews expelled from the German Duchy of Bavaria by Duke Louis IX in 1470. Even before then, as the Ottomans conquered Anatolia and Greece, they encouraged Jewish immigration from the European lands they were expelled from. These Ashkenazi Jews mixed with the already large Romaniot (Byzantine) Jewish communities that had become part of the Ottoman Empire as they had conquered lands from the Byzantine Empire.[17][18]

Sultan Bayezid II sent Kemal Reis to save the Sephardic Jews of Spain from the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 and granted them permission to settle in the Ottoman Empire.

An influx of Jews into Asia Minor and the Ottoman Empire, occurred during the reign of Mehmed the Conquerors's successor, Beyazid II (1481–1512), after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal. This expulsion came about as a result of the Alhambra Decree in 1492, declared by the King and Queen of Spain Ferdinand II and Isabelle I. This was part of a larger trend of anti-Semitism resurging throughout Europe that the Ottomans would take advantage of. The Spanish Jews (Sephardic Jews) were allowed to settle in the wealthier cities of the empire, especially in the European provinces (cities such as: Istanbul, Sarajevo, Salonica, Adrianople and Nicopolis), Western and Northern Anatolia (Bursa, Aydın, Tokat and Amasya), but also in the Mediterranean coastal regions (for example: Jerusalem, Safed, Damascus, Egypt).[19] Izmir was not settled by Spanish Jews until later.[20] The Jewish population at Jerusalem increased from 70 families in 1488 to 1,500 at the beginning of the 16th century, while that of Safed increased from 300 to 2,000 families. Damascus had a Sephardic congregation of 500 families. Istanbul had a Jewish community of 30,000 individuals with 44 synagogues. Bayezid allowed the Jews to live on the banks of the Golden Horn. Egypt, especially Cairo, received a large number of the exiles, who soon out-numbered the pre-existing Musta'arabi Jews. Gradually, the chief center of the Sephardic Jews became Salonica, where the Spanish Jews soon outnumbered the pre-existing Jewish community.[21] In fact, the Sephardic Jews eclipsed and absorbed the Romaniot Jews, changing the culture and structure of Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire. In the centuries that followed, the Ottomans reaped the benefits of the Jewish communities they adopted. In exchange for Jews contributing their talents for the benefit of the Empire, they would be rewarded well. Compared to European laws that restricted life for all Jews, this was a significant opportunity that drew Jews from across the Mediterranean.[22]

Painting of a Jewish man from the Ottoman Empire, 1779.

The Jews satisfied various needs in the Ottoman Empire: the Muslim Turks were largely uninterested in business enterprises and accordingly left commercial occupations to members of minority religions. Additionally, since the Ottoman Empire was engaged in a military conflict with Christians at the time, Jews were trusted and regarded "as potential allies, diplomats, and spies".[23] There were also Jews that possessed special skills in a wide range of fields that the Ottomans took advantage of. This includes David & Samuel ibn Nahmias, who established a printing press in 1493. This had been a new technology at the time and accelerated production of literature and documents, especially important for religious texts as well as bureaucratic documents. Other Jewish specialists employed by the Empire included physicians and diplomats that emigrated from their homelands. Some of them were granted landed titles for their work, including Joseph Nasi who was named Duke of Naxos.[24]

Although the Ottomans did not treat Jews differently from other minorities in the country, their policies seemed to align well with Jewish traditions which allowed communities to flourish. The Jewish people were allowed to establish their own autonomous communities which included their own schools and courts. These rights were extremely controversial in other regions in Muslim North Africa or absolutely unrealistic in Europe. These communities would prove to be centers of education as well as trade due to the large array of connections to other Jewish communities across the Mediterranean.[25]

In the sixteenth century, the leading financiers in Istanbul were Greeks and Jews. Many of the Jewish financiers were originally from Iberia and had fled during the period leading up to the expulsion of Jews from Spain. Many of these families brought great fortunes with them.[26] The most notable of the Jewish banking families in the 16th-century Ottoman Empire was the Marrano banking house of Mendès, which moved to and settled in Istanbul in 1552 under the protection of sultan Suleiman I the Magnificent. When Alvaro Mendès arrived in Istanbul in 1588, he is reported to have brought with him 85,000 gold ducats.[27] The Mendès family soon acquired a dominating position in the state finances of the Ottoman Empire and in commerce with Europe.[28]

Ottoman Jews were obliged to pay special taxes to the Ottoman authorities. These taxes included the Cizye, the İspençe, the Haraç, and the Rav akçesi ("rabbi tax"). Sometimes, local rulers would also levy taxes for themselves, in addition to the taxes sent to the central authorities in Constantinople.

Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries.[36] According to Mark Cohen in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars conclude that Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose in the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized").[37]

There was a massacre of Jews in Baghdad in 1828.[38] There was a massacre of Jews in Barfurush in 1867.[38]

In 1865, when the equality of all subjects of the Ottoman Empire was proclaimed, Cevdet Pasha, a high-ranking official observed: "whereas in former times, in the Ottoman State, the communities were ranked, with the Muslims first, then the Greeks, then the Armenians, then the Jews, now all of them were put on the same level. Some Greeks objected to this, saying: 'The government has put us together with the Jews. We were content with the supremacy of Islam.'"[39]

Throughout the 1860s, the Jews of Libya were subjected to what Gilbert calls punitive taxation. In 1864, around 500 Jews were killed in Marrakech and Fezin Morocco. In 1869, 18 Jews were killed in Tunis, and an Arab mob looted Jewish homes and stores, and burned synagogues, on Jerba Island. In 1875, 20 Jews were killed by a mob in Demnat, Morocco; elsewhere in Morocco, Jews were attacked and killed in the streets in broad daylight. In 1891, the leading Muslims in Jerusalem asked the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from Russia. In 1897, synagogues were ransacked and Jews were murdered in Tripolitania.[36]

Benny Morris writes that one symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th-century traveler:

I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish gaberdine. To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan.[40]

The overwhelming majority of the Ottoman Jews lived in the European-provinces of the Empire. As the empire lost control over its European provinces in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these Jewish communities found themselves under Christian rule. The Bosnian Jews for example came under Austro-Hungarian rule after the occupation of the region in 1878, the independence of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia further lowered the number of Jews within the borders of the Ottoman Empire.

Jewish family of Salonica in 1917

Although Jews were spread throughout the Ottoman Empire, the cities of Constantinople and Salonica, also called Thessaloniki, had Jewish populations of about 20,000 Jewish people by the early 16^thcentury.[14] Even though each of these cities had Jewish communities of about 20,000 people, Salonica was considered the main center of Jewish life in the Ottoman Empire. Jewish people maintained a strong presence in Salonica until the outbreak of World War II and the Holocaust, when “there were around 56,000 Jews living in” the city.[20]

Salonica became the Jewish center of the Ottoman Empire after 1492. At this time, the Spanish Inquisition began in Spain and Portugal and Jews were forced to convert to Christianity or emigrate. Religious persecution caused many Sephardic Jews to immigrate to Salonica and make up a majority of the city's population. In Salonica, Jews lived in communities around Synagogues in which, “Jewish organizations provided all the religious, legal, educational and social services”.[14] The concentration of Jews in the city as well as the binding social capital[44] provided by Jewish organizations allowed Salonica to become an “almost autonomous” zone for Jews to flourish in.[14]

The strength of the Jewish community in Salonica can even be seen after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. After the Ottoman Empire fell, the city of Salonica was not depicted as a Bulgarian or Turkish city, but instead was considered a Jewish city.[21] Additionally, some historians claim that Salonica was seen as the “New Jerusalem” and has been named the “Mother of Israel”[45] where the Jewish Sabbath “was most vigorously observed”.[21] Also, there were many international organizations that thought about creating a new Jewish state instead of Palestine before the state of Israel was created.[21]

See also: History of the Jews in Thessaloniki