From: kutluk@ccl.umist.ac.uk (Kutluk Ozguven)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,soc.culture.arabic,talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: Excerpts From Epstein's Book
Date: 28 Jul 92 12:31:46 GMT
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre


This may be of general interest.

In <9207230800.AA10818@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU> KELLY@SUVM.BITNET writes:


>  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 sixteenth 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:

> <<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.>>


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

>  <<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
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish