num_pages: 525
description: Salonica, City of Ghosts is an evocation of the life of a vanished city and an exploration of how it passed away. Under the rule of the Ottoman sultans, one of the most extraordinary and diverse societies in Europe lived for five centuries amid its minarets and cypresses on the shore of the Aegean, alongside its Roman ruins and Byzantine monasteries. Egyptian merchants and Ukrainian slaves, Spanish-speaking rabbis - refugees from the Iberian Inquisition - and Turkish pashas rubbed shoulders with Orthodox shopkeepers, Sufi dervishes and Albanian brigands. Creeds clashed and mingled in an atmosphere of shared piety and messianic mysticism. How this bustling, cosmopolitan and tolerant world emerged and then disappeared under the pressure of modern nationalism is the subject of this book.
language: English
title: Salonica. City Of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews
titlecomplete: Salonica. City Of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews
genres: Historical, Religion, Cities, Greece, European History, Nonfiction, Jewish, Travel, Islam, History
ratings_count: 1319
places: Thessaloniki
awards: awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Duff Cooper Prize, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: John D. Criticos Prize, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Hessell-Tiltman Prize, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Runciman Book Prize
publisher: HarperCollins