suraiya faroqhi the ottoman empire and i̇t's heitage

8/18/2019 Suraiya Faroqhi the Ottoman Empire and ıṫ's Heitage

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A History of the Jewish Community in IstanbulThe Formative Years, 1453-1566


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The Ottoman Empire

and its Heritage

Politics, Society and Economy

Edited by

Suraiya Faroqhi and Halil Inalcik

Advisory Board

FIKRET ADANIR – ANTONIS ANASTASOPOULOS – IDRIS BOSTAN

PALMIRA BRUMMETT – AMNON COHEN – JANE HATHAWAY – KLAUS KREISER HANS GEORG MAJER – AHMET YAŞAR OCAK – ABDELJELIL TEMIMI

GILLES VEINSTEIN

VOLUME 26


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A History of the Jewish

Community in Istanbul

The Formative Years, 1453-1566

By

Minna Rozen

LEIDEN • BOSTON

2010


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Cover image: Illustrated title page of the Torah, translated into Aramaic (Onkelos translation),

Arabic (Rabbi Sa'adyah Gaon) and Farsi ( Ya'aqov Taus), with Rashi’s commentary; printed

in Istanbul at the Soncino press 1546 (from the collections of the National Library of Israel).

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

ISSN 1380-6076ISBN 978 90 04 18589 0

Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center,222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA.Fees are subject to change.


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Addenda ................................................................................ 419


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Plate

Locations of Jewish settlements ca. 1453-1530.......................... 416...


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ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA 419

ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA

ADDENDA

Since the book first came out, three relevant publications haveappeared. The first is a paper published while the book was alreadyin print written by the late S. Yerasimos, “La fondation d’Istanbulottomane,” in Seven Centuries of Ottoman Architecture, edited by

Nur Akın, Afife Batur, and Selçuk Batur (Istanbul: Yapı EndüstriMerkezi Yayınları, 2001) 195-212. The second is a review of the present book, also by S. Yerasimos (Turcica 35 (2003): 341-346),and the third is a Masters thesis submitted to Sabanci University,Istanbul in 2003 by Akyalçın Dilek, also supervised by S. Yerasimos(digital.sabanciuniv.edu/tezler/tezler/ssbf/master/akyalcind/ana.pdf).Below, I shall discuss issues raised by Dilek Akyalçın and Yerasimosas they relate to my book. Wherever the word chapter appears initalics, it refers to a chapter of the present work. Wherever Yerasimos’

work is referred to, unless specifically written otherwise, the refer-ence is to his review article in Turcica.

Chapter 1, pp. 6-10, cf. Yerasimos, pp. 341-342: Yerasimosdisregards the issue of the proliferation of the Jewish population inByzantine Constantinople, that may be inferred from the variousdescriptions of the siege and conquest of Constantinople. Despitethese descriptions, he totally refutes the existence of a Jewishsettlement in the Vlanga neighborhood at that time. While questioning

Buondelmonete’s siting of the “Jewish Gate” on his map, he ignoresthe doubts I myself cast on this map. Furthermore, he fails to referto the Map I appended to the book in which the “Gate” is situatedin the correct place. Yerasimos fails to solve the question of what Nicolo Barbaro meant, in his description of the Ottoman sailors’ plan to plunder the Giudecca, by asserting that the Ottoman fleetdisembarked outside the harbor, beyond the boom created by theByzantines. This may well have been at Vlanga, and not in front ofthe Porta Iudea (see Map). See also Akyalçın, pp. 2-6.


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ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA420

Chapter 2, pp. 20-21, cf. Akyalçın, p. 2: According to the Jewishsources, usually only houses were considered private property. Land

belonged either to the Sultan, or to a vakıf . Purchase and saletransactions normally applied only to houses, not land. For furthersubstantiation, see M. Rozen, “The Trust of Lady Khrisula ofIstanbul: Urban Reality and Dynastic Continuity,” The TurkishStudies Association Journal , 28.1-2 (2004): 29-79.

Chapter 3, p. 45, cf. Akyalçın, p. 1: Akyalçın states that most of theJewish deportees to Istanbul were Romaniots and Karaites. TheJewish sources, however, do not allude to any other Jewish group

being deported to the city at that stage. The Romaniots and Karaiteswere the only deportees.

Chapter 4, pp. 50-54, cf. Yerasimos, pp. 342-343: As the bibliographyindicates, I consulted all the defters from the Maliyeden Mudevver .Information from defters referred to by other scholars wasappropriately accredited. Yerasimos’ long explanation (publishedelsewhere) regarding the inflated number of Jews (8070 households)cited by Ö.L. Barkan and corroborated by Halil İnalcık for the year

1535 is redundant in view of my own statement on page 52 castingdoubt on the validity of my whole discussion, precisely because thesource of this number is nowhere to be found. The Ottoman sources,however, are not the only ones. The Hebrew sources of this period place the number of Jews in Istanbul for the years 1500-1520 at18,000. Yerasimos’ estimation that there were 3-3.5 members perhousehold is very low in view of the data from the Hebrew sources.Although, as a rule, the same demographic factors applied to allethnic groups in Ottoman Istanbul, two factors were specific to theJews. The first was that the members of the Judeo-Spanish diasporawere under immense pressure to repair the demographic lossescreated by the Expulsion. The fact that they themselves regardedtheir efforts in this respect as inadequate does not invalidate the viewthat their natural growth was higher than other ethnic groups, at leastin the first generation after the Expulsion, as has been the case inother post-catastrophic societies. All the same, there is no way ofsubstantiating the mean size of their families. The second, and moreimportant, factor is that Istanbul served as a way station for thousandsof refugees en route for other destinations in the Ottoman Empire,especially Asia Minor and Arabistan, as documented in the refugees’


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itineraries (contrary to Avigdor Levi’s opinion in The Sephardim inthe Ottoman Empire, [Princeton NJ: The Darwin Press, 1992], p. 4,

and corroborated by Akyalçın, p .4). Thus, in the years followingthe Expulsion from Spain and the large-scale emigration fromPortugal (1492-1540), the actual number of Jews in Istanbul was farhigher than the figures brought by the Ottoman sources. Consequently,Yerasimos’ estimation that there were only 4,000 Jews in Istanbulin 1535 is a gross underestimation. Indeed, in the sixteenth centurythese were the years in which the Jewish population of Istanbul was probably the highest (cf. Rozen, Chapter 4, p. 51, note 14). Akyalçın(pp. 14-15) agrees with Yerasimos concerning the number of Jews

in Istanbul, adding that only 900 families from Spain and Portugalsettled in the capital following the Expulsion. Although she citeshigher estimates by scholars who referred to sources other than theOttoman ones, she makes no attempt to resolve the discrepancy between them. She raises the interesting question (pp. 57-58) of howthe overall number of Istanbul Jews did not decline toward the endof the sixteenth century, while the number of Romaniot Jews did.She solves this conundrum by stating that the Sephardi immigrationoffset the decline in local Jews. However, this is not by any means

the whole picture. The Sephardim outnumbered the Romaniots inthe 1688 survey only (Rozen, Chapter 4, p. 51).

It was not only the result of the Judeo-Spanish immigration, butalso of the assimilation of the Romaniot Jews. This assimilation wasa consequence of the disintegration of old neighborhoods due torecurring fires, the Romaniots’ higher cultural level, Judeo-Spanishculture simply superseded Romaniot culture and with the passage oftime, this tendency became even more marked. Mixed marriages between the Romaniots and Spanish Jews, were not a major factor,since until the end of the seventeenth century these were not frequent(see my new article “Jews in Constantinople [Modern period])”,Chart 1: Inter-ethnic Marriages among the Jews of Istanbul, p. 30, published in the Encyclopedia of Hellenism [Athens: The Foundationof the Hellenic World] Εγκυκλοπαίδεια Μείζονος Ελληνισµού,Κωνσταντινούπολη URL: ).Last but not least, I believe that the high percentage of endogamousmarriages among the Romaniots was a major factor in their demo-graphic deterioration. Whereas the Sephardim intermarried with Jewsfrom Sicily, southern Italy, southern France, and Ashkenazi Jews,until end of the seventeenth century, the Romaniots married almost


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only among themselves, probably because of their sürgün status thataffected anyone who intermarried with them. The great fires elimi-

nated the administrative difference between the sürgün and kendi gelen as far as their legal status was concerned, as attested by theOttoman survey of 1691 conducted already only according to neighborhoods shows (TCBA Maliyeden Mudevver 3661).

Chapter 4, p. 53, ref. 6: Neither Akyalçın, nor Yerasimos refer tothe fact that the last names were erased in the 1603 and 1623 regis-ters, casting serious doubt on the reality they reflected.

Chapter 5, pp. 55-56, cf. Yerasimos, p. 344: Yerasimos argues thatthe fact per se that the vakıf registers of Mehmet II do not refer tolanded property belonging to the Jews of Galata does not imply thatthere were no Jews in Galata until the second half of the sixteenthcentury. The Jewish sources ascertain that there were no Jews inGalata until around 1550, when a few Jews settled there (cf. Chapter5, p. 60). See also Minna Rozen and Benjamin Arbel, “Great Firein the Metropolis: The Case of the Istanbul Conflagration of 1569and its Description by Marcantonio Barbaro,” in Mamluk and Otto-man Societies: Studies in Honour of Michael Winter , edited by DavidWasserstein and Ami Ayalon (New York: Routledge, 2005) p.157.

Chapter 5, p. 57, cf. Yerasimos, pp. 344-345: Yerasimos disagreeswith my identification of the fire cited in Selaniki Mustafa Efendi’s

History as the 1569 fire, and claims it was the 1588 one. However,a careful reading of Selaniki shows that his History was based on papers and notes he amassed during his bureaucratic career, some

of which were carelessly organized, and some of which ascribeddetails of one event to another, as was the case here (cf. MinnaRozen and Benjamin Arbel, “Great Fire in the Metropolis: The Caseof the Istanbul Conflagration of 1569 and its Description by Mar-cantonio Barbaro” in Mamluk and Ottoman Societies: Studies in

Honour of Michael Winter , edited by David Wasserstein and AmiAyalon (New York: Routledge, 2005) pp. 138-139. Moreover, Yera-simos’ dating of the fire – which I allegedly confused with the 1569fire – to 19 April 1588 is erroneous. The fire actually erupted on

Friday 7 April, 1589 (21,cumâdaelûlâ sene 997).


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Chapter 5, pp. 55-61: For a detailed description of the Jewish settle-ment in the city based on the Ottoman registers, see Akyalçın,

pp. 70-71.

Chapter 6 , pp. 62-63, cf. Akyalçın, p. 2: Akyalçın’s query as to whatthe Ottomans meant by “a Jewish quarter” is explained here. See,also, Rozen, p. 130, ref.121, and ibid, Chapter 9, pp. 214-15, as wellas the document on p. 321.

Chapter 6 , pp. 64-65: For the list of Romaniot congregations in 1540and 1544, see S. Yerasimos, “La fondation d’Istanbul ottomane,” in

Seven Centuries of Ottoman Architecture, edited by N. Akın, A.Batur, and S. Batur (Istanbul: Yapı Endüstri Merkezi Yayınları,2001), p. 207 (based on the Tapu ve Tahrir registers, # 210 and 240).On the sequence of their transfer to Istanbul, see Yerasimos, op. cit., p. 212.

Chapter 10: For information on the status of Jewish ownership ofreal estate, and on the occupational breakdown of the Jewish com-munity according to the Ottoman sources, surprisingly drab, seeAkyalçın, pp. 64-81.

Map: A larger version can be downloaded from the Brill websitesee: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=18&pid=41403

CORRIGENDA

1. P. 61, ref. 27, line 6: the words “(doc. 12 below)” should be

erased.2. Pp. 1-5, 14, and 378: The name of the Greek chronicler Krito-

voulos the Islander

was misspelled throughout the book (butmiraculously not in the index…) as Kristovolous, and should beamended accordingly.

3. P. 280 paragraph 2 line 2, instead of “bitten” should be “beaten”.


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he Ottoman Empireand Its Heritage

Politics, Society and Economy

1. İslamoglu-İnan, H. State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire. Agrarian PowerRelations and Regional Economic Development in Ottoman Anatolia during theSixteenth Century. 1994. ISBN 90 04 10028 8

2. Leeuwen, R. van. Notables and Clergy in Mount Lebanon. he Khāzin Sheikhsand the Maronite Church (1736-1840). 1994. ISBN 90 04 09978 6

3. Aksan, V.H. An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace. Ahmed Resmi Efendi(1700-1783). 1995. ISBN 90 04 10116 0

4. Har-El, S. Struggle for Dominiation. he Ottoman-Mamluk War, 1485-91. 1995.ISBN 90 04 10180 2

5. Abu Shouk, A.I. & A. Bjørkelo (eds. & trs.). he Public reasury of the Mus-lims.Monthly Budgets of the Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1897. 1996.ISBN 90 04 10358 9

6. Darling, L.. Revenue Raising and Legitimacy . ax Collection and FinanceAdministration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560-1660. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10289 2

7. Kırımlı, H. National Movements and National Identity Among the Crimean atars

(1905-1916). 1996. ISBN 90 04 10509 3

8. Çizakça, M. A Comparative Evolution of Business Partnerships. he Islamic Worldand Europe, with Specific Reference to the Ottoman Archives. 1996.ISBN 90 04 10601 4

9. Veinstein, G. (ed.). Les Ottomans et la mort . Permanences et mutations. 1996.ISBN 90 04 10505 0

10. Zilfi, M.C. (ed.). Women in the Ottoman Empire. Middle Eastern Women in theEarly Modern Era. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10804 1

11. Anastassiadou, M. Salonique, 1830-1912. Une ville ottomane à l’âge des Réfor-mes. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10798 3

12. Özcan, A. Pan-Islamism. Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain (1877-1924). 1997. ISBN 90 04 10632 4

13. Hickok, M.R. Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia.1997. ISBN 90 04 10689 8

14. Barlas, D. Etatism and Diplomacy in urkey . Economic and Foreign PolicyStrategies in an Uncertain World, 1929-1939. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10855 6

15. ogan, İ. Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations. he Kerait Khanate andChinggis Khan. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10802 5

16. Yazbak, M. Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period, 1864-1914. A Muslim own inransition. 1998. ISBN 90 04 11051 8


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17. Criss, N.B. Istanbul under Allied Occupation, 1918-1923. 1999.ISBN 90 04 11259 6

18. Kołodziejczyk, D. Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic Relations (15th-18th Century). AnAnnotated Edition of ‘ Adhnames and Other Documents. 1999.

ISBN 90 04 11280 419. Eldem, E. French rade in Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century . 1999.

ISBN 90 04 11353 3

20. Dávid G. & P. Fodor (eds.). Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in CentralEurope. he Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest. 2000.ISBN 90 04 11907 8

21. Cohen, A. he Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11918 3

22. Somel, S.A. he Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire 1839-

1908. Islamization, Autocracy and Discipline. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11903 523. Peri, O. Christianity under Islam in Jerusalem. he Question of the Holy Sites in

Early Ottoman times. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12042 4

24. Stavrides, . he Sultan of Vezirs. he Life and imes of the Ottoman GrandVezir Mahmud Pasha Angelovic (1453-1474). 2001. ISBN 90 04 12106 4

25. Adanır, F. & S. Faroqhi (eds.). he Ottomans and the Balkans. A Discussion ofHistoriography. 2002. ISBN 90 04 11902 7

26. Rozen, M. A History of the Jewish Community in Istanbul the Formative Years,

1453-1566 . 2002. ISBN 90 04 12530 227. Yi, E. Guild Dynamics in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul . 2004.

ISBN 90 04 12944 8

28. Salzmann, A. ocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State.2004. ISBN 90 04 10887 3

29. Panzac, D. Barbary Corsairs. he End of a Legend 1800-1820. 2005.ISBN 90 04 12594 9