From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.greek,soc.history
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: In Corfu Jews were subjected to constant persecution by the...
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 19:19:59 EST
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <9301272121.AA13830@kocrsw06.delcoelect.com> c23st@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com (Spiros Triantafyllopoulos) writes:

>> First of all the Greeks were taught by the Egyptians the science of 
>> agriculture. 

>So what the hell were the Greeks eating until then? Dinosaurs? Rocks?

"sipa" and "tamtam" and "kova" and "gav*0"...

  <<In Corfu Jews were subjected to violent attacks and almost constant
   persecution by its Greek population. They had to row in the galleys
   even when they had committed no crime. They had to provide food and
   lodging for soldiers on demand, were required to go to Greek law courts
   on the Sabbath as well as during Jewish festivals, and as elsewhere in
   the Byzantine empire they were compelled to act as public executioners,
   adding to the public wrath to which they were normally subjected. After
   Venice took control of the island in 1386, conditions became even worse.>>

  <<There had been thousands of Jews living in Byzantium following the
   exodus from the Holy Land, but in consequence of all this persecution
   many were forcibly converted and massacred, and most of the remainder
   fled.....(...) As a result by the time the Ottomans conquered Anatolia
   during fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, hardly any Jews remained.>>

  <<Byzantium, however, was breaking up, fortunately for the few Jews
  who remained under its dominion. As the Turkomans invaded Anatolia
  starting with their rout of the Byzantine army at the Battle of
  Menzikert (1071) [Malazgirt] and formed Turkoman principalities
  throughout the peninsula, and as the Seljuk Turks established a more
  settled state centered, first in defense of the Abbasid Empire of
  Baghdad, and later in Konya and Central Anatolia starting the twelfth
  century (the Seljuks of Rum, 1077-1246), Byzantine Jewry sprang rapidly
  to their assistance, welcoming the tolerance and prosperity which the
  rule of Islam was offering them once again, as it had done previously
  both in the Middle East and Spain, with thousands of Jews fleeing from
  Byzantine persecution to Seljuk protection even before the Ottoman
  state was born.>>

  <<...Ottoman conquests marked a very substantial change for the Jews
  of the Middle East and Europe. They meant instant liberation, not only
  from subjugation, persecution, and humiliation but often from actual
  slavery in Christian hands. As a result, Jews contributed significantly
  to the Ottoman conquests.>>

  <<When the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II FATIH (The Conquerer) captured
  Constantinople and brought the Byzantine Empire to its inglorious end
  in 1453, his armies broke into the city through one of the Jewish
  quarters and with the assistance of the local Jewish population who,
  as at Bursa and Edirne, were overjoyed at the opportunity to throw off
  their Greek oppressors. So also at Buda and Pest in 1526, on the island
  of Rhodes in 1522, at Belgrade (1526), in Azerbaijan (1534), Iraq and
  Iran (1534-35, 1638), Yemen (1628) and elsewhere, Jews welcomed the
  conquering forces of Suleyman the Magnificent,...>>

Serdar Argic

                           'We closed the roads and mountain passes that 
                            might serve as ways of escape for the Turks 
                            and then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
                                                  (Ohanus Appressian - 1919)
                           'In Soviet Armenia today there no longer exists 
                            a single Turkish soul.' (Sahak Melkonian - 1920)