From: KELLY@SUVM.BITNET
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Ottoman Jewish Communities in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
           Centuries
Date: 24 Jul 92 04:11:41 GMT


  This is an expanded version of the article I posted yesterday. I just
  finished reading this book and I will give here a few excerpts. I do not
  necessarily agree with everything the author says, but I think the book
  is interesting and informative. The author is apparently Jewish, and
  emphasizes Jewish contributions to the Empire.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Mark Alan Epstein, 'The Ottoman Jewish Communities and their Role
  in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,' Klaus Schwarz Werlag,
  Freiburg (1980).

  page 19:

 <<During the fifteenth century, when the Ottomans were struggling to
  reestablish themselves in the Balkans, there was considerable turmoil
  among the Jewish communities in Central and Western Europe. Even if
  the difficulties of the darker centuries immediately preceding the
  fourteenth are minimized, it is easy to understand the attraction which
  Ottoman life, particularly when compared to life in Europe, held for the
  Jews. There is no way to tell how many Jews left Christendom for the
  realm of the rising Muslim Ottomans, but with each account of persecution
  in or expulsion from Christian countries it is recorded that some Jews
  fled to Ottoman territory. The regularity of these reports suggests that
  the Ottomans were considered reasonably tolerant protectors and that
  there was a regular trickle of Jewish families moving southward and
  eastward from Western and Central Europe. (...) It is evident that the
  effects of plague, late crusades, and the general intolerance and
  persecution of Jews in Christian Europe resulted in the redirection
  of the whole focus of Jewish life which, for more than two centuries,
  was to be oriented toward Muslim East.>>


  page 21:

  <<In the second quarter of the fifteenth century the foremost official
  in the  Edirne Jewish community was Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati the Ashkenazi
  Chief Rabbi of the city. He was the most important rabbi in the city and
  the author of an important letter which tells us something of the situation
  of the Edirne Jewry in the fifteenth century. Sarfati himself was from
  Christian Europe and supposedly wrote this letter at the behest of two
  recent arrivals from there, who, upon seeing the prosperity and freedom
  of the Ottoman Jews, prevailed upon him to write their European
  coreligionists apprising them of the situation and urging them to migrate.
  This remarkable letter advised its recipients not only of the pleasant
  conditions in the Ottoman domains, but described as well the ease of
  travel to Palestine and the holy places, an attraction to those who
  would make a pilgrimage or choose to be buried there.>> (*)


  page 41:

 <<...the impression gained from the Hebrew sources is that the Jews were
 firmly aware of the community of interests which existed between them
 and the Ottomans, especially in comparison to relations with the Christians
 of Europe.

 Confirmation of the commonality of interests between Muslims and Jews is
 also indicated by the fact that European Christians perceived the Jews
 as allies of Islam and were well aware of Muslim-Jewish cooperation.
 Certainly the activity of important Jewish financiers and politicians
 representing the Ottoman government abroad did not pass unnoticed. European
 sources are the basis for much of our knowledge of their careers. In addition
 it appears that Christian pirates plundered ''Turks and Jews,''  their
 sworn enemies, and that Europeans considered the Jews to be agents who
 regularly reported to the Ottomans.

 There are well-known examples of overt Jewish support for the Ottomans
 in the struggle against European powers. The two best known instances
 of Jewish support for the campaigning Ottomans are the frequently cited
 instances of the Jewish contributions to the conquests of Buda, in the
 early sixteenth century, and of Rhodes. We also have reports of sympathy
 for the Ottomans during the siege of Chios. An unpublished Ottoman
 document shows dramatically the mutual interests which existed in some
 Greek towns...>>

 page 43:

  <<It is clear that throughout the sixteenth century it was a generally
 accepted fact that the interests of Jews and Muslims coincided frequently,
 and all parties involved, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, were aware of
 the situation.>>


 page 46:

 <<...it seems that the relations between Greeks and Jews were not
 particularly cordial. The two groups had little in common, few common
 interests, and perceived no common philosophical or religious tradition
 which could serve as the basis for cooperation, rather than enmity. If
 there was any identifiable bond of good will which existed between
 religious communities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was
 that between Muslims and Jews, neither of whom had much in common with
 the Orthodox.>>

 page 46:

 <<The general impression of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman context
 during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is one of community of
 interests. From the earliest times the Ottomans seem to have welcomed
 Jews to their territory and to have found in the communities already
 existing in places which they conquered a cooperative element. The Jewish
 response to this tolerance was a steady flow of Jews from Christian
 countries to Ottoman domains.>>

 page 151:

  <<From the period before 1453 we have only a few indications that the
  Ottoman-Jewish relationship was well on the course of amity which would
  characterize it for years afterward, but the liberality of the Ottomans,
  in contrast to the intolerance of the Byzantines, and the protection and
  the security which the Ottomans offered, in comparison to conditions
  elsewhere, leave little doupt that even then both the Ottomans and the
  Jews recognized their mutual interests...>>

  page 161:

  <<It is impossible to say how fundamental the Jews were in the success
  of the Ottomans in rebuilding Istanbul or in Ottoman mercantile success
  in the sixteenth century. That they played an important role in both
  cannot be doupted. It is also unclear whether they were important enough
  to say that the Ottomans would not have experienced their great success
  without the Jews and that no other group could have been found to serve
  the Ottomans as well as did the Jews. It is, however, unmistakably clear
  that there are few parallels in world history to this remarkable
  partnership between Jews and the non-Jewish society in which they lived.
  We must conclude that the Ottomans could probably not achieved their
  success without a group performing certain tasks for them as well as the
  Jews did. Certainly for the Jews of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
  the Ottoman Empire was a most remarkable and salubrious home.>>


(*) A version of Rabbi Sarfati's [Tzarfati] letter is given by Prof.Shaw:

  page 32:

  <<Your cries and sobs reached us. We have been told of all the troubles
  and persecutions which you have to suffer in the German lands....I hear
  the lamentation of my brethren...The barbarous and cruel nation ruthlessly
  oppresses the faithful children of the chosen people...The priests and
  prelates of Rome have risen. They wish to root out the memory of Jacob
  and erase the name of Israel. They always devise new persecutions. They
  wish to bring you to the stake...Listen my brethren, to the counsel I will
  give you. I too was born in Germany and studied Torah with the German
  rabbis. I was driven out of my native country and came to the Turkish land,
  which is blessed by God and filled with all good things. Here I found rest
  and happiness; Turkey can also become for you the land of peace...If you
  who live in Germany knew even a tenth of what God has blessed us with
  in this land, you would not consider any difficulties; you would set out
  to come to us...Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain
  of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver in our hands. We are
  not oppressed with heavy taxes, and our commerce is free and unhindered.
  Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap, and every one of us
  lives in peace and freedom. Here the Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow
  hat as a badge of shame, as is the case in Germany, where even wealth and
  great fortune are a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy
  among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him
  to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect
  your forces, and come to us. Here you will be free of your enemies, here
  you will find rest...>>[13]

[13] Israel Zinberg, A History Of Jewish Literature. vol.V. The Jewish
     Center of Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Hebrew Union College Press,
     Ktav Publishers, New York, 1974).


Nejat