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152-586: By the time the Ottoman Empire rose to power in the 14th and 15th centuries, there had been Jewish communities established throughout the region. The Ottoman Empire lasted from the early 12th century until the end of World War I and covered parts of Southeastern Europe , Anatolia , and much of the Middle East . The experience of Jews in the Ottoman Empire is particularly significant because

304-664: A constitution which was enacted in 1865, Konstitusyon para la nasyon yisraelita de la Turkia or the Hahamname Nizamnamesi , originally written in Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino). Writer M. Franco stated that Ottoman government employee and translator Yehezkel Gabay (1825-96) wrote the Ottoman Turkish version of this constitution. This constitution was the culmination of a struggle between progressive lay bourgeoisie and conservative rabbis over leadership in

456-527: A Jewish colony and encouraged the Ottoman annexation of Cyprus in the war to that end; he was granted a coat of arms by Selim that indicated he would be given viceregal rank in that colony. Nasi's relative Abraham Benveniste ( Abraham Bene , Righetto Marrano ) was arrested in 1570, on charges of having set fire to the Venetian Arsenal on Nasi's instigation. Maintaining contacts with William

608-644: A calamitous end in 1683 when Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha led a huge army to attempt a second Ottoman siege of Vienna in the Great Turkish War of 1683–1699. The final assault being fatally delayed, the Ottoman forces were swept away by allied Habsburg, German, and Polish forces spearheaded by the Polish king John III Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna . The alliance of the Holy League pressed home

760-456: A certain level of prosperity. Compared with other Ottoman subjects, they were the predominant power in commerce and trade as well as diplomacy and other high offices. In the 16th century especially, the Jews rose to prominence under the millets , the apogee of Jewish influence could arguable be the appointment of Joseph Nasi to Sanjak-bey ( governor , a rank usually only bestowed upon Muslims) of

912-591: A constitutional monarchy. However, following the disastrous Balkan Wars , the CUP became increasingly radicalized and nationalistic, leading a coup d'état in 1913 that established a one-party regime. The CUP allied with the German Empire hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation that had contributed to its recent territorial losses; it thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers . While

1064-500: A coup, but he did see the need for military mobilization. In 1883, a German military mission under General Baron Colmar von der Goltz arrived to train the Ottoman Army, leading to the so-called "Goltz generation" of German-trained officers, who played a notable role in the politics of the empire's last years. From 1894 to 1896, between 100,000 and 300,000 Armenians living throughout the empire were killed in what became known as

1216-496: A fairly modern conscripted army , banking system reforms, the decriminalization of homosexuality, the replacement of religious law with secular law, and guilds with modern factories. The Ottoman Ministry of Post was established in Istanbul in 1840. American inventor Samuel Morse received an Ottoman patent for the telegraph in 1847, issued by Sultan Abdülmecid , who personally tested the invention. The reformist period peaked with

1368-549: A figure that vastly exceeded the number of Muslim children in school at the time, who were further hindered by the amount of time spent learning Arabic and Islamic theology. Author Norman Stone suggests that the Arabic alphabet, in which Turkish was written until 1928 , was ill-suited to reflect the sounds of Turkish (which is a Turkic as opposed to Semitic language), which imposed further difficulty on Turkish children. In turn, Christians' higher educational levels allowed them to play

1520-508: A larger role in the economy, with the rise in prominence of groups such as the Sursock family indicative of this. In 1911, of the 654 wholesale companies in Istanbul, 528 were owned by ethnic Greeks. In many cases, Christians and Jews gained protection from European consuls and citizenship, meaning they were protected from Ottoman law and not subject to the same economic regulations as their Muslim counterparts. The Crimean War (1853–1856)

1672-687: A major center for its trade, contributing to its continued prosperity throughout the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth century. Under Ivan IV (1533–1584), the Tsardom of Russia expanded into the Volga and Caspian regions at the expense of the Tatar khanates. In 1571, the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray , commanded by the Ottomans, burned Moscow . The next year, the invasion was repeated but repelled at

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1824-400: A majority of the city's population. In Salonica, Jews lived in communities around synagogues in which "Jewish organizations provided all the religious, legal, educational and social services". The concentration of Jews in the city as well as the binding social capital provided by Jewish organizations allowed Salonica to become an "almost autonomous" zone for Jews to flourish in. The strength of

1976-571: A new Jewish state instead of Palestine before the state of Israel was created. Sephardic Jews did not envision Palestine as the seat of Jewish governance and autonomy in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Sa'adi Levy, who lived in Salonica, owned a printing press in Amsterdam that published newspapers in Ladino and French covering the rival ideological claims and intellectual controversies of

2128-564: A result, he was favored by the Seraglio , and eventually became a high-ranking diplomat and minister. Due to his trading connections in Europe, he was able to exercise great influence on Ottoman foreign policy. Among his achievements were negotiating peace with Poland and influencing the new election of the Polish king . He was awarded the monopoly of the beeswax trade with Poland, and of

2280-457: A sense of Turkish nationalism. In this period, the Ottoman Empire spent only small amounts of public funds on education; for example, in 1860–1861 only 0.2% of the total budget was invested in education. As the Ottoman state attempted to modernize its infrastructure and army in response to outside threats, it opened itself up to a different kind of threat: that of creditors. As the historian Eugene Rogan has written, "the single greatest threat to

2432-459: A victory over the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), off southwestern Greece; Catholic forces killed over 30,000 Turks and destroyed 200 of their ships. It was a startling, if mostly symbolic, blow to the image of Ottoman invincibility, an image which the victory of the Knights of Malta over the Ottoman invaders in the 1565 siege of Malta had recently set about eroding. The battle

2584-801: Is noted for its similarity with the Armenian millet constitution . A key difference was the lack of clergy; The hahambaşı still held absolute spiritual authority over Jews of Istanbul, but provincial Jews were free to organize their local affairs as they wished. Istanbul was also the only city represented in the chamber. Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries. According to Mark Cohen in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies , most scholars conclude that Arab anti-Semitism in

2736-583: The haraç ("head tax") and faced other restrictions in clothing, horse riding, army service, slave ownership, etc. Although many of these restrictions were decreed, they were not always enforced. Jizya collected from Christian and Jewish communities was among the main sources of tax income of the Ottoman treasury. Some Jews who reached high positions in the Ottoman court and administration include Mehmed II 's minister of Finance ("Defterdar") Hekim Yakup Pasha, his Portuguese physician Moses Hamon , Murad II 's physician Is'hak Pasha, and Abraham de Castro , who

2888-639: The Anatolian Beyliks . One of these, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I ( d. 1323/4), a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, with many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along

3040-583: The Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II , which marked the Ottomans' emergence as a major regional power. Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), the empire reached the peak of its power, prosperity, and political development. By

3192-465: The Battle of Molodi . The Ottoman Empire continued to invade Eastern Europe in a series of slave raids , and remained a significant power in Eastern Europe until the end of the 17th century. The Ottomans decided to conquer Venetian Cyprus and on 22 July 1570, Nicosia was besieged; 50,000 Christians died, and 180,000 were enslaved. On 15 September 1570, the Ottoman cavalry appeared before

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3344-728: The Bosporus Strait made it difficult to conquer. In 1402, the Byzantines were temporarily relieved when the Turco-Mongol leader Timur , founder of the Timurid Empire , invaded Ottoman Anatolia from the east. In the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Timur defeated Ottoman forces and took Sultan Bayezid I as prisoner, throwing the empire into disorder. The ensuing civil war lasted from 1402 to 1413 as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. It ended when Mehmed I emerged as

3496-665: The Bulgarian Tsardom of Vidin in 1396, regarded as the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages , failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottomans. As the Turks expanded into the Balkans, the conquest of Constantinople became a crucial objective. The Ottomans had already wrested control of nearly all former Byzantine lands surrounding the city, but the strong defense of Constantinople's strategic position on

3648-599: The Cape of Good Hope in 1488 initiated a series of Ottoman-Portuguese naval wars in the Indian Ocean throughout the 16th century. Despite the growing European presence in the Indian Ocean, Ottoman trade with the east continued to flourish. Cairo, in particular, benefitted from the rise of Yemeni coffee as a popular consumer commodity. As coffeehouses appeared in cities and towns across the empire, Cairo developed into

3800-545: The Constitution of the Ottoman Empire and brought in multi-party politics with a two-stage electoral system ( electoral law ) under the Ottoman parliament . The constitution offered hope by freeing the empire's citizens to modernise the state's institutions, rejuvenate its strength, and enable it to hold its own against outside powers. Its guarantee of liberties promised to dissolve inter-communal tensions and transform

3952-856: The Great Northern War of 1700–1721). Charles XII persuaded the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III to declare war on Russia, which resulted in an Ottoman victory in the Pruth River Campaign of 1710–1711, in Moldavia. After the Austro-Turkish War , the Treaty of Passarowitz confirmed the loss of the Banat, Serbia, and "Little Walachia" (Oltenia) to Austria. The Treaty also revealed that the Ottoman Empire

4104-545: The Greek revolt (1821–1829) that ultimately ended with the formal independence of Greece in 1830. It was a costly enterprise for Muhammad Ali, who had lost his fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. Thus began the first Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–1833) , during which the French-trained army of Muhammad Ali, under the command of his son Ibrahim Pasha , defeated the Ottoman Army as it marched into Anatolia , reaching

4256-795: The Greeks declared war on the Sultan. A rebellion that originated in Moldavia as a diversion was followed by the main revolution in the Peloponnese , which, along with the northern part of the Gulf of Corinth , became the first parts of the Ottoman Empire to achieve independence (in 1829). In 1830, the French invaded the Deylik of Algiers . The campaign that took 21 days, resulted in over 5,000 Algerian military casualties, and about 2,600 French ones. Before

4408-708: The Habsburg king Charles I of Spain . He escaped to Portugal after Charles decided to confiscate the Mendes fortune, and, after the Holy Inquisition began operating against Portuguese Marranos in 1546, moved to Antwerp , in the Habsburg Netherlands , with his aunt, Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi , whose daughter Ana he later married. He studied at the University of Louvain , but had to flee

4560-521: The Habsburg and Russian empires. The Ottomans consequently suffered severe military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, culminating in the loss of both territory and global prestige . This prompted a comprehensive process of reform and modernization known as the Tanzimat ; over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organized internally, despite suffering further territorial losses, especially in

4712-588: The Hakham Bashi , the Turkish term for the Chief Rabbi. There were no restrictions in the professions Jews could practice, analogous to the restrictions common in Western Christian countries. There were restrictions, however, regarding the areas Jews could live in or work, which were similar to the restrictions placed on Ottoman subjects of other religions. Like all non-Muslims, Jews had to pay

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4864-506: The Hamidian massacres . In 1897 the population was 19   million, of whom 14   million (74%) were Muslim. An additional 20   million lived in provinces that remained under the sultan's nominal suzerainty but were entirely outside his actual power. One by one the Porte lost nominal authority. They included Egypt, Tunisia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Lebanon. As

5016-669: The Iberian Union . The Ottomans were holders of the Caliph title, meaning they were the leaders of Muslims worldwide. The Iberians were leaders of the Christian crusaders, and so the two fought in a worldwide conflict. There were zones of operations in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean , where Iberians circumnavigated Africa to reach India and, on their way, wage war upon the Ottomans and their local Muslim allies. Likewise,

5168-708: The Köprülü era (1656–1703), effective control of the Empire was exercised by a sequence of grand viziers from the Köprülü family. The Köprülü Vizierate saw renewed military success with authority restored in Transylvania, the conquest of Crete completed in 1669, and expansion into Polish southern Ukraine , with the strongholds of Khotyn , and Kamianets-Podilskyi and the territory of Podolia ceding to Ottoman control in 1676. This period of renewed assertiveness came to

5320-591: The Levant passed into Muslim rule, thirty Jewish communities existed in Haifa , Sh’chem , Hebron , Ramleh , Gaza , Jerusalem , as well as many other cities. Safed became a spiritual centre for the Jews and the Shulchan Aruch was compiled there as well as many Kabbalistic texts. In addition to the already existent Jewish population in the lands the Ottomans conquered, many more Jews were given refuge after

5472-641: The Oriental Crisis of 1840 . Muhammad Ali had close relations with France , and the prospect of him becoming the Sultan of Egypt was widely viewed as putting the entire Levant into the French sphere of influence. As the Sublime Porte had proved itself incapable of defeating Muhammad Ali, the British Empire and Austrian Empire provided military assistance, and the second Egyptian–Ottoman War (1839–1841) ended with Ottoman victory and

5624-534: The Sakarya River . A Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Bapheus in 1302 contributed to Osman's rise. It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbors, due to the lack of sources surviving. The Ghaza thesis popular during the 20th century credited their success to rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam , but it is no longer generally accepted. No other hypothesis has attracted broad acceptance. In

5776-689: The Spanish garrison of Castelnuovo on the Adriatic coast ; the successful siege cost the Ottomans 8,000 casualties, but Venice agreed to terms in 1540, surrendering most of its empire in the Aegean and the Morea . France and the Ottoman Empire, united by mutual opposition to Habsburg rule, became allies. The French conquests of Nice (1543) and Corsica (1553) occurred as a joint venture between French king Francis I and Suleiman, and were commanded by

5928-454: The Treaty of Nasuh Pasha , which ceded the entire Caucasus, except westernmost Georgia, back into the possession of Safavid Iran . The treaty ending the Cretan War cost Venice much of Dalmatia , its Aegean island possessions, and Crete . (Losses from the war totalled 30,985 Venetian soldiers and 118,754 Turkish soldiers.) During his brief majority reign, Murad IV (1623–1640) reasserted central authority and recaptured Iraq (1639) from

6080-497: The Turkish Empire , was an imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe , West Asia , and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe , between the early 16th and early 18th centuries. The empire emerged from a beylik , or principality , founded in northwestern Anatolia in c.  1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I . His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into

6232-470: The expulsion of Jews from Spain under the reign of Beyezid II . Although the status of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire may have been exaggerated, it is undeniable that some tolerance was enjoyed. Under the millet system , non-Muslims were organized as autonomous communities on the basis of religion (viz. Orthodox millet , Armenian millet , etc.). In the framework of the millet, Jews had a considerable amount of administrative autonomy and were represented by

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6384-419: The 16th century, the Ottoman Empire saw an increased Jewish influence on the economy and commerce. There is no doubt among historians that "Spanish Jews contributed significantly to the development of the capital in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century". Although many Sephardic Jews had large amounts of political and cultural capital, the Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire was decentralized for most of

6536-407: The 1860s, the Jews of Libya were subjected to what Gilbert calls punitive taxation. In 1864, around 500 Jews were killed in Marrakech and Fezin Morocco . In 1869, 18 Jews were killed in Tunis , and an Arab mob looted Jewish homes and stores, and burned synagogues, on Jerba Island . In 1875, 20 Jews were killed by a mob in Demnat , Morocco; elsewhere in Morocco, Jews were attacked and killed in

6688-406: The Arabic name ʿUthmān ( عثمان ). In Ottoman Turkish , the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿO s mānīye ( دولت عليه عثمانیه ), lit.   ' Sublime Ottoman State ' , or simply Devlet-i ʿO s mānīye ( دولت عثمانيه‎ ), lit.   ' Ottoman State ' . The Turkish word for "Ottoman" ( Osmanlı ) originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in

6840-486: The Balkan Peninsula during the Congress of Berlin , and in return, Britain assumed the administration of Cyprus in 1878. Britain later sent troops to Egypt in 1882 to put down the Urabi Revolt (Sultan Abdul Hamid II was too paranoid to mobilize his own army, fearing this would result in a coup d'état), effectively gaining control in both territories. Abdul Hamid II was so fearful of a coup that he did not allow his army to conduct war games, lest this serve as cover for

6992-445: The Balkans . Osman's son, Orhan , captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326, making it the new capital and supplanting Byzantine control in the region. The important port of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387 and sacked. The Ottoman victory in Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The Battle of Nicopolis for

7144-402: The Balkans, where a number of new states emerged. Beginning in the late 19th century, various Ottoman intellectuals sought to further liberalize society and politics along European lines, culminating in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which established the Second Constitutional Era and introduced competitive multi-party elections under

7296-431: The Chief Rabbi of Edirne and wrote a letter inviting the European Jewry to settle in the Ottoman Empire , in which he stated " Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking" and asked "Is it not better for you to live under Muslims than under Christians?" Many had taken the Rabbi up on his offer, including the Jews who were expelled from the German Duchy of Bavaria by Louis IX, Duke of Bavaria in 1470. Even before then, as

7448-446: The Conqueror , reorganized both state and military, and on 29 May 1453 conquered Constantinople , ending the Byzantine Empire. Mehmed allowed the Eastern Orthodox Church to maintain its autonomy and land in exchange for accepting Ottoman authority. Due to tension between the states of western Europe and the later Byzantine Empire, most of the Orthodox population accepted Ottoman rule, as preferable to Venetian rule. Albanian resistance

7600-408: The Conquerors's successor, Beyazid II (1481–1512), after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal . The expulsion came about as a result of the Alhambra Decree in 1492, declared by the Spanish King and Queen Ferdinand II and Isabelle I as part of a larger trend of antisemitism resurging throughout Europe that the Ottomans would exploit. The Sephardic Jews were allowed to settle in

7752-444: The Constitution, called the Kanûn-u Esâsî . The empire's First Constitutional era was short-lived. The parliament survived for only two years before the sultan suspended it. The empire's Christian population, owing to their higher educational levels, started to pull ahead of the Muslim majority, leading to much resentment. In 1861, there were 571 primary and 94 secondary schools for Ottoman Christians, with 140,000 pupils in total,

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7904-436: The Empire for several decades, until that position would be lost to a wave of new Jewish arrivals . The number of native Jews was soon bolstered by small groups of Ashkenazi Jews that immigrated to the Ottoman Empire between 1421 and 1453. Among these new Ashkenazi immigrants was Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati ( Hebrew : צרפתי , lit.   'French'), a German -born Jew whose family had lived in France. He became

8056-574: The Empire. This was especially true for the Sephardic Jews, who had large amounts of political and cultural influence in the Ottoman Empire. The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire had political and cultural influence because they "were perceived as Westerners who had extensive contacts with Europe, who knew European languages, and brought new knowledge and technologies". Additionally, some Sephardic Jews "were...prominent merchants with European markets" who were even regarded as "potential allies, diplomats, and spies" during times of war against Christians. Throughout

8208-482: The French invasion the total population of Algeria was most likely between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000. By 1873, the population of Algeria (excluding several hundred thousand newly arrived French settlers) had decreased to 2,172,000. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt revolted against Sultan Mahmud II due to the latter's refusal to grant him the governorships of Greater Syria and Crete , which the Sultan had promised him in exchange for sending military assistance to put down

8360-405: The Iberians passed through newly-Christianized Latin America and had sent expeditions that traversed the Pacific to Christianize the formerly Muslim Philippines and use it as a base to attack the Muslims in the Far East . In this case, the Ottomans sent armies to aid its easternmost vassal and territory, the Sultanate of Aceh in Southeast Asia. During the 1600s, the world conflict between

8512-407: The Inquisition in 1547. He then moved to France and later to Venice , before finally leaving for the Ottoman realm in 1554, where he married his cousin Brianda (Reyna) Mendes (the daughter Ana of Gracia Mendes Nasi). When he arrived in Constantinople together with his aunt Gracia Mendes Nasi , Nasi made a fortunate decision in supporting the future sultan Selim II, against his rival Bayezid; as

8664-664: The Islamic clergy successfully objected under the grounds of theodicy . In 1754 the artillery school was reopened on a semi-secret basis. In 1726, Ibrahim Muteferrika convinced the Grand Vizier Nevşehirli Damat Ibrahim Pasha , the Grand Mufti , and the clergy on the efficiency of the printing press, and Muteferrika was later granted by Sultan Ahmed III permission to publish non-religious books (despite opposition from some calligraphers and religious leaders). Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729 and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes, each having between 500 and 1,000 copies. In North Africa, Spain conquered Oran from

8816-413: The Janissary revolted . Selim's efforts cost him his throne and his life, but were resolved in spectacular and bloody fashion by his successor, the dynamic Mahmud II , who eliminated the Janissary corps in 1826. The Serbian revolution (1804–1815) marked the beginning of an era of national awakening in the Balkans during the Eastern Question . In 1811, the fundamentalist Wahhabis of Arabia, led by

8968-498: The Jewish banking families in the 16th-century Ottoman Empire was the Marrano banking house of Mendès, which moved to and settled in Istanbul in 1552 under the protection of sultan Suleiman the Magnificent . When Alvaro Mendès arrived in Istanbul in 1588, he is reported to have brought with him 85,000 gold ducats. The Mendès family soon acquired a dominating position in the state finances of the Ottoman Empire and in commerce with Europe. Ottoman Jews were obliged to pay special taxes to

9120-486: The Jewish community in Salonica can even be seen after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. After the Ottoman Empire fell, the city of Salonica was not depicted as a Greek or Turkish city, but instead was considered a Jewish city. Additionally, some historians claim Salonica was seen as the "New Jerusalem" and has been named the "Mother of Israel" where the Jewish Sabbath "was most vigorously observed". Also, there were many international organizations that thought about creating

9272-420: The Jewish community, as well as pressure from the Porte to codify Jewish affairs in the empire. The constitution was ultimately a temporary victory for the laity, as the constitution was quickly eroded by renewed rabbinical control and corruption. This state of affairs continued until Abdul Hamid II 's accession. The hahambaşı , or Grand Rabbi, was still the civil and spiritual ethnarch of Ottoman Jews, and he

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9424-402: The Magnificent (1520–1566) captured Belgrade in 1521, conquered the southern and central parts of the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Ottoman–Hungarian Wars , and, after his historic victory in the Battle of Mohács in 1526, he established Ottoman rule in the territory of present-day Hungary and other Central European territories. He then laid siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take

9576-413: The Ottoman Caliphate and Iberian Union was a stalemate since both were at similar population , technology and economic levels. Nevertheless, the success of the Ottoman political and military establishment was compared to the Roman Empire , despite the difference in size, by the likes of contemporary Italian scholar Francesco Sansovino and French political philosopher Jean Bodin . In the second half of

9728-467: The Ottoman Empire gradually shrank, 7–9   million Muslims from its former territories in the Caucasus, Crimea , Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands migrated to Anatolia and Eastern Thrace . After the Empire lost the First Balkan War (1912–1913), it lost all its Balkan territories except East Thrace (European Turkey). This resulted in around 400,000 Muslims fleeing with the retreating Ottoman armies (with many dying from cholera brought by

9880-458: The Ottoman Empire was engaged in a military conflict with the Christian nations at the time, Jews were trusted and regarded "as potential allies, diplomats, and spies". There were also Jews that possessed special skills in a wide range of fields that the Ottomans took advantage of, including David and Samuel ibn Nahmias, who established a printing press in 1493. That was then a new technology and accelerated production of literature and documents, which

10032-406: The Ottoman Empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline after the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, modern academic consensus posits that the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military into much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind those of its chief European rivals,

10184-436: The Ottoman Empire was proclaimed, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha , a high-ranking official observed, "whereas in former times, in the Ottoman State, the communities were ranked, with the Muslims first, then the Greeks, then the Armenians, then the Jews, now all of them were put on the same level. Some Greeks objected to this, saying: 'The government has put us together with the Jews. We were content with the supremacy of Islam.'" Throughout

10336-403: The Ottoman admirals Hayreddin Barbarossa and Dragut . France supported the Ottomans with an artillery unit during the 1543 Ottoman conquest of Esztergom in northern Hungary. After further advances by the Turks, the Habsburg ruler Ferdinand officially recognized Ottoman ascendancy in Hungary in 1547. Suleiman died of natural causes during the siege of Szigetvár in 1566. Following his death,

10488-541: The Ottoman authorities raised the jizya tax burden on Jews and often did not respect Jewish holidays. Starting around 1881, many Yemeni Jews began to move to Jerusalem. In 1881, in response to rising antisemitism in mainland Europe, as well as a number of proposals made by various parties regarding the potential settlement of Jews within the empire, the Council of Ministers declared that "[Jewish] immigrants [would] be able to settle as scattered groups throughout Turkey, excluding Palestine." The Jewish millet agreed upon

10640-493: The Ottoman authorities. These taxes included the cizye , the ispençe , the haraç , and the rav akçesi ("rabbi tax"). Sometimes, local rulers would also levy taxes for themselves, in addition to the taxes sent to the Sublime Porte . The Jews of Salonica were well known for the spinning wool for the manufacture of broadcloth . However, the city was also served by large port, making it easily susceptible to infectious agents from abroad. Incidents of plague often affected

10792-432: The Ottoman economy, and used its position to ensure that European capital continued to penetrate the empire, often to the detriment of local Ottoman interests. The Ottoman bashi-bazouks suppressed the Bulgarian uprising of 1876, massacring up to 100,000 people in the process. The Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) ended with a decisive victory for Russia. As a result, Ottoman holdings in Europe declined sharply: Bulgaria

10944-461: The Ottomans conquered Anatolia and Greece, they encouraged Jewish immigration from the European lands from which they were expelled. The Ashkenazi Jews mixed with the already large Romaniot Jewish communities that had become part of the Ottoman Empire as they had conquered lands from the Byzantine Empire. An influx of Jews into Asia Minor and the Ottoman Empire, occurred during the reign of Mehmed

11096-555: The Ottomans were said to be declining, although this has been rejected by many scholars. By the end of Suleiman's reign, the Empire spanned approximately 877,888 sq mi (2,273,720 km ), extending over three continents. The Empire became a dominant naval force, controlling much of the Mediterranean Sea . The Empire was now a major part of European politics. The Ottomans became involved in multi-continental religious wars when Spain and Portugal were united under

11248-611: The Russian Empire (2 November 1914) and its allies France (5 November 1914) and the British Empire (5 November 1914) declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Also on 5 November 1914, the British government changed the status of the Khedivate of Egypt and Cyprus , which were de jure Ottoman territories prior to the war, to British protectorates . Joseph Nasi A court Jew , he was appointed lord of Tiberias, with

11400-600: The Russian intervention, Sultan Mahmud II could have faced the risk of being overthrown and Muhammad Ali could have even become the new Sultan. These events marked the beginning of a recurring pattern where the Sublime Porte needed the help of foreign powers to protect itself. In 1839, the Sublime Porte attempted to take back what it lost to the de facto autonomous, but de jure still Ottoman Eyalet of Egypt , but its forces were initially defeated, which led to

11552-563: The Russians. After this treaty the Ottoman Empire was able to enjoy a generation of peace in Europe, as Austria and Russia were forced to deal with the rise of Prussia . Educational and technological reforms came about, including the establishment of higher education institutions such as the Istanbul Technical University . In 1734 an artillery school was established to impart Western-style artillery methods, but

11704-682: The Safavids. The resulting Treaty of Zuhab of that same year decisively divided the Caucasus and adjacent regions between the two neighbouring empires as it had already been defined in the 1555 Peace of Amasya. The Sultanate of Women (1533–1656) was a period in which the mothers of young sultans exercised power on behalf of their sons. The most prominent women of this period were Kösem Sultan and her daughter-in-law Turhan Hatice , whose political rivalry culminated in Kösem's murder in 1651. During

11856-883: The Silent , Nasi encouraged the Netherlands to revolt against Spain, a major adversary of the Ottoman Empire (the rebellion was ultimately carried out by the Union of Utrecht , as the start of the Eighty Years' War ). For this and other achievements, he was appointed by Selim to become the Duke of Naxos . Represented locally by one Francesco Coronello, Nasi mainly ruled the Duchy from his palace of Belvedere near Constantinople, where he also maintained his own Hebrew printing press , founded by his aunt, Gracia Mendes Nasi , which

12008-521: The Turks, but was again defeated at the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448. According to modern historiography, there is a direct connection between the rapid Ottoman military advance and the consequences of the Black Death from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. Byzantine territories, where the initial Ottoman conquests were carried out, were exhausted demographically and militarily due to

12160-592: The advantage of the defeat at Vienna, culminating in the Treaty of Karlowitz (26 January 1699), which ended the Great Turkish War. The Ottomans surrendered control of significant territories, many permanently. Mustafa II (1695–1703) led the counterattack of 1695–1696 against the Habsburgs in Hungary, but was undone at the disastrous defeat at Zenta (in modern Serbia), 11 September 1697. Aside from

12312-578: The al-Saud family, revolted against the Ottomans. Unable to defeat the Wahhabi rebels, the Sublime Porte had Muhammad Ali Pasha of Kavala , the vali (governor) of the Eyalet of Egypt , tasked with retaking Arabia, which ended with the destruction of the Emirate of Diriyah in 1818. The suzerainty of Serbia as a hereditary monarchy under its own dynasty was acknowledged de jure in 1830. In 1821,

12464-489: The autonomous Deylik of Algiers . The Bey of Oran received an army from Algiers, but it failed to recapture Oran ; the siege caused the deaths of 1,500 Spaniards, and even more Algerians. The Spanish also massacred many Muslim soldiers. In 1792, Spain abandoned Oran, selling it to the Deylik of Algiers. In 1768 Russian-backed Ukrainian Haidamakas , pursuing Polish confederates, entered Balta , an Ottoman-controlled town on

12616-483: The beginning of the 16th century, and that of Safed increased from 300 to 2,000 families. Damascus had a Sephardic congregation of 500 families. Istanbul had a Jewish community of 30,000 individuals with 44 synagogues . Bayezid allowed the Jews to live on the banks of the Golden Horn . Egypt, especially Cairo , received a large number of the exiles, who soon outnumbered the pre-existing Musta'arabi Jews . Gradually,

12768-444: The benefit of the empire, they would be rewarded well. Compared to European laws, which restricted life for all Jews, that was a significant opportunity, which drew Jews from across the Mediterranean. The Jews satisfied various needs in the Ottoman Empire. The Muslim population of the Empire was largely uninterested in business enterprises and accordingly left commercial occupations to members of minority religions. Additionally, since

12920-600: The border of Bessarabia in Ukraine, massacred its citizens, and burned the town to the ground. This action provoked the Ottoman Empire into the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 . The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 ended the war and provided freedom of worship for the Christian citizens of the Ottoman-controlled provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. By the late 18th century, after a number of defeats in

13072-642: The century after Osman I, Ottoman rule had begun to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans . The earliest conflicts began during the Byzantine–Ottoman wars , waged in Anatolia in the late 13th century before entering Europe in the mid-14th century, followed by the Bulgarian–Ottoman wars and the Serbian–Ottoman wars in the mid-14th century. Much of this period was characterised by Ottoman expansion into

13224-629: The chief centre of the Sephardic Jews became Salonica , where they soon outnumbered the pre-existing Romaniote Jewish community. In fact, the Sephardic Jews eclipsed and absorbed the Romaniot Jews and changed the culture and the structure of Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire. In the centuries that followed, the Ottomans reaped the benefits of the Jewish communities that they adopted. In exchange for Jews contributing their talents for

13376-432: The city in a state of disarray. After suffering many sieges , a devastating conquest by Catholic Crusaders in 1204, and the outbreak of the Black Death in 1347, the city was a shadow of its former glory. As Mehmed wanted the city as his new capital, he decreed the rebuilding of the city. And in order to revivify Constantinople he ordered that Muslims , Christians and Jews from all over his empire be resettled in

13528-448: The city of Kütahya within 320 km (200 mi) of the capital, Constantinople. In desperation, Sultan Mahmud II appealed to the empire's traditional arch-rival Russia for help, asking Emperor Nicholas I to send an expeditionary force to assist him. In return for signing the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi , the Russians sent the expeditionary force which deterred Ibrahim Pasha from marching any further towards Constantinople. Under

13680-634: The city. In 1532, he made another attack on Vienna, but was repulsed in the siege of Güns . Transylvania , Wallachia and, intermittently, Moldavia , became tributary principalities of the Empire. In the east, the Ottoman Turks took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, gaining control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf . In 1555, the Caucasus became partitioned for

13832-689: The civil strife, Austria-Hungary officially annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. The last of the Ottoman censuses was performed in 1914 . Despite military reforms which reconstituted the Ottoman Modern Army , the Empire lost its North African territories and the Dodecanese in the Italo-Turkish War (1911) and almost all of its European territories in the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). The Empire faced continuous unrest in

13984-641: The creation of the Yemen Vilayet in 1872, the Zaydi Imam of Yemen had implemented more restrictions on Jews than had been present in the Ottoman Empire, such as the Orphans' Decree , which required orphans of Jewish parents to be raised as Muslims. Once Ottoman rule began, the Orphan's Decree was revoked, although a "Dung-Gatherers' Decree," which tasked Jews with cleaning sewers, remained in effect. Also,

14136-506: The day: Ottoman nationalism , Zionism and socialism. The family were merchants and central figures in the textile trade between Salonica and Manchester, England . In 1919, one of his sons proposed Jewish autonomy and self-governance in Salonica to the League of Nations . During the Ottoman Empire, the following newspapers served Jewish communities: Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire ( / ˈ ɒ t ə m ə n / ), also called

14288-731: The early 16th century. Salonica was considered the main center of Jewish life in the Ottoman Empire. Jewish people maintained a strong presence in Salonica until the outbreak of World War II and the Holocaust, when "there were around 56,000 Jews living in" the city. Salonica became the Jewish center of the Ottoman Empire after 1492. At this time, the Spanish Inquisition began in Spain and Portugal and Jews were forced to convert to Christianity or emigrate. Religious persecution caused many Sephardic Jews to immigrate to Salonica and make up

14440-655: The eastern and southern frontiers by defeating Shah Ismail of Safavid Iran , in the Battle of Chaldiran . Selim I established Ottoman rule in Egypt by defeating and annexing the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and created a naval presence on the Red Sea . After this Ottoman expansion, competition began between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottomans to become the dominant power in the region. Suleiman

14592-534: The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is principally a chronicle of decline in influence and power. They lost their influential positions in trade mainly to the Greeks , who were able to "capitalize on their religio-cultural ties with the West and their trading diaspora ". An exception to this is Daniel de Fonseca , who was chief court physician and played a political role. He is mentioned by Voltaire , who speaks of him as an acquaintance whom he esteemed highly. Fonseca

14744-514: The empire into a more harmonious place. Instead, this period became the story of the twilight struggle of the Empire. Members of Young Turks movement who had once gone underground now established their parties. Among them " Committee of Union and Progress ", and " Freedom and Accord Party " were major parties. On the other end of the spectrum were ethnic parties, which included Poale Zion , Al-Fatat , and Armenian national movement organised under Armenian Revolutionary Federation . Profiting from

14896-637: The empire was able to largely hold its own during the conflict, it struggled with internal dissent, especially the Arab Revolt . During this period, the Ottoman government engaged in genocide against Armenians , Assyrians , and Greeks . In the aftermath of World War I , the victorious Allied Powers occupied and partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which lost its southern territories to the United Kingdom and France . The successful Turkish War of Independence , led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk against

15048-544: The end of the Caucasian Wars , 90% of the Circassians were ethnically cleansed and exiled from their homelands in the Caucasus, fleeing to the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the settlement of 500,000 to 700,000 Circassians in the Ottoman Empire. Crimean Tatar refugees in the late 19th century played an especially notable role in seeking to modernise Ottoman education and in first promoting both Pan-Turkism and

15200-523: The end of the seventeenth century, and instead the word increasingly became associated with the Greek population of the empire, a meaning that it still bears in Turkey today. In Western Europe, the names Ottoman Empire, Turkish Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–1923, when

15352-574: The expressed aim of resettling Jews in Palestine and encouraging industry there; the attempt failed, and, later, he was appointed Duke of Naxos . Nasi also supported a war with the Republic of Venice , at the end of which Venice lost the island of Cyprus to the Ottomans. After the death of Selim, he lost influence in the Ottoman Court , but was allowed to keep his titles and pension for

15504-484: The first time between the Safavids and the Ottomans, a status quo that remained until the end of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) . By this partitioning as signed in the Peace of Amasya , Western Armenia , western Kurdistan , and Western Georgia fell into Ottoman hands, while southern Dagestan , Eastern Armenia , Eastern Georgia , and Azerbaijan remained Persian. In 1539, a 60,000-strong Ottoman army besieged

15656-461: The fourteenth century. The word subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" ( Türk ) was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population and was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period , an educated, urban-dwelling Turkish speaker who was not a member of

15808-648: The independence of the Middle East" in the 19th century "was not the armies of Europe but its banks". The Ottoman state, which had begun taking on debt with the Crimean War, was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1875. By 1881, the Ottoman Empire agreed to have its debt controlled by the Ottoman Public Debt Administration , a council of European men with presidency alternating between France and Britain. The body controlled swaths of

15960-513: The island of Naxos . Also in the first half of the 17th century the Jews were distinct in winning Tax farms , Haim Gerber describes it as: "My impression is that no pressure existed, that it was merely performαnce that counted." An additional problem was the lack of unity among the Jews themselves. They had come to the Ottoman Empire from many lands, bringing with them their own customs and opinions, to which they clung tenaciously, and had founded separate congregations. Another tremendous upheaval

16112-643: The large array of connections to other Jewish communities across the Mediterranean. Two violent incidences took place in Safed and Hebron after the Ottomans had ousted the Mamluks and taken Levant during the Ottoman–Mamluk War in 1517. Accounts of the attack against the Jews in Safed were recorded by historian Rabbi Elijah Capsali of Candia , ( Crete ) and Rabbi Joseph Garson, who was living in Damascus at

16264-402: The largest Jewish population in the world, with 150,000 compared to Poland 's and non-Ottoman Ukraine 's combined figure of 75,000. The First and Second Aliyah brought an increased Jewish presence to Ottoman Palestine . The Ottoman successor state of modern Turkey continues to be home to a small Jewish population today . At the time of the Battle of Yarmuk , on 15–20 August 636, when

16416-515: The last Venetian stronghold in Cyprus, Famagusta. The Venetian defenders held out for 11 months against a force that at its peak numbered 200,000 men with 145 cannons; 163,000 cannonballs struck the walls of Famagusta before it fell to the Ottomans in August 1571. The Siege of Famagusta claimed 50,000 Ottoman casualties. Meanwhile, the Holy League consisting of mostly Spanish and Venetian fleets won

16568-545: The late 16th and early 17th centuries. With the Empire's population reaching 30 million people by 1600, the shortage of land placed further pressure on the government. In spite of these problems, the Ottoman state remained strong, and its army did not collapse or suffer crushing defeats. The only exceptions were campaigns against the Safavid dynasty of Persia, where many of the Ottoman eastern provinces were lost, some permanently. This 1603–1618 war eventually resulted in

16720-475: The leadership of Muhammad Ali of Egypt ) were arrested after being accused of murdering the Christian Father Thomas and his servant in an instance of blood libel . While the authorities under Sharif Pasha, Egyptian governor of Damascus, tortured the accused until they confessed to the crime, and killed two Jews who refused to confess, prominent European Jews such as Adolphe Crémieux demanded

16872-526: The loss of the Banat and the temporary loss of Belgrade (1717–1739), the Ottoman border on the Danube and Sava remained stable during the eighteenth century. Russian expansion , however, presented a large and growing threat. Accordingly, King Charles XII of Sweden was welcomed as an ally in the Ottoman Empire following his defeat by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava of 1709 in central Ukraine (part of

17024-677: The man and literally spit upon his Jewish gaberdine . To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mohammedan. The overwhelming majority of the Ottoman Jews lived in the European provinces of the Empire. As the empire lost control over its European provinces in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these Jewish communities found themselves under Christian rule. The Bosnian Jews for example came under Austro-Hungarian rule after

17176-459: The military-administrative class typically referred to themselves neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk , but rather as a Rūmī ( رومى ), or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia. The term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. As applied to Ottoman Turkish speakers, this term began to fall out of use at

17328-564: The modern world arose in the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized"). There was a massacre of Jews in Baghdad in 1828. There was a massacre of Jews in Barfurush in 1867. In 1865, when the equality of all subjects of

17480-546: The need for greater numbers of Ottoman infantry equipped with firearms, resulting in a relaxation of recruitment policy. This contributed to problems of indiscipline and outright rebelliousness within the corps, which were never fully solved. Irregular sharpshooters ( Sekban ) were also recruited, and on demobilisation turned to brigandage in the Celali rebellions (1590–1610), which engendered widespread anarchy in Anatolia in

17632-549: The new capital. Within months most of the Empire's Romaniote Jews , from the Balkans and Anatolia , were concentrated in Constantinople , where they made up 10% of the city's population. But at the same time the forced resettlement, though not intended as an anti-Jewish measure , was perceived as an "expulsion" by the Jews. Despite this interpretation however, the Romaniotes would be the most influential community in

17784-421: The new conditions of the seventeenth century and remain powerful, both militarily and economically. Historians of the mid-twentieth century once characterised this period as one of stagnation and decline, but this view is now rejected by the majority of academics. The discovery of new maritime trade routes by Western European states allowed them to avoid the Ottoman trade monopoly. The Portuguese discovery of

17936-466: The newly established Ankara -based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. At present, most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", and "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character. As the Rum Sultanate declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as

18088-473: The occupation of the region in 1878. The independence of Greece , Bulgaria and Serbia further lowered the number of Jews within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. In the Ottoman Empire, Jews and Christians were considered dhimmi by the majority Muslim population. Muslims in the Ottoman Empire used the Qur'anic concept of dhimmi to place certain restrictions on Jews living in the region. For example, some of

18240-408: The occupying Allies, led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy in 1922, formally ending the Ottoman Empire. The word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I , the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman (also known as the Ottoman dynasty). Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of

18392-406: The onslaught was initiated by Turkish troops led by Murad Bey, the deputy of the Sultan from Jerusalem. In the sixteenth century, the leading financiers in Istanbul were Greeks and Jews. Many of the Jewish financiers were originally from Iberia and had fled during the period leading up to the expulsion of Jews from Spain . Many of these families brought great fortunes with them. The most notable of

18544-406: The plague, which facilitated Ottoman expansion. In addition, slave hunting was the main economic driving force behind Ottoman conquest. Some 21st-century authors re-periodize conquest of the Balkans into the akıncı phase , which spanned 8 to 13 decades, characterized by continuous slave hunting and destruction, followed by administrative integration into the Empire. The son of Murad II, Mehmed

18696-408: The production of broadcloth as residents of Salonica repeatedly became ill, died or fled during outbreaks. Friction between Jews and Turks was less common than in the Arab territories. Some examples: In 1660 or 1662, under Mehmet IV (1649–87), the city of Safed , with a substantial Jewish community, was destroyed by Druzes over a struggle for power. The history of Jews in the Ottoman Empire in

18848-587: The proposal. During the war between the Ottomans and the Republic of Venice , Nasi's negotiations with the Jewish community in Venetian-ruled Cyprus were uncovered, and, as a result, the Jewish population of Famagusta (with the exception of Jews who were natives of the city) was expelled in June, 1568 ( see History of the Jews in Cyprus ). It is believed that he intended parts of Cyprus to be

19000-470: The region "provided a principal place of refuge for Jews driven out of Western Europe by massacres and persecution." At the time of the Ottoman conquests , Anatolia had already been home to communities of Byzantine Jews . The Ottoman Empire became a safe haven for Jews from the Iberian Peninsula fleeing persecution (see Alhambra Decree ). By the end of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire had

19152-515: The region's history. This changed, however, when the Sultan appointed a Hakham-bashi or a chief rabbi to exercise jurisdiction in the community regarding issues of "marriage, divorce, engagement, and inheritance" in addition to delivering "his community's share of the taxes and keeping order" in the community. Although Jews were spread throughout the Ottoman Empire, the cities of Constantinople (Istanbul) and Salonica , also called Thessaloniki , had Jewish populations of about 20,000 Jewish people by

19304-408: The release of the condemned. Benny Morris writes that one symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th-century traveler: I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up to

19456-590: The remainder of his life. Also known as João Miques/Micas and Dom João Migas Mendes in a Portuguese variant, Giuseppe Nasi in Italian, and Yasef Nassi in Ottoman Turkish . Joseph Nasi was born in Portugal as a marrano (practicing Judaism in secret), a son of the doctor Agostinho Micas (d. 1525), a well-known physician and professor at the University of Lisbon . A friend of Maximilian , nephew of

19608-411: The restoration of Ottoman suzerainty over Egypt Eyalet and the Levant . By the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire was called the " sick man of Europe ". Three suzerain states – the Principality of Serbia , Wallachia and Moldavia – moved towards de jure independence during the 1860s and 1870s. During the Tanzimat period (1839–1876), the government's series of constitutional reforms led to

19760-422: The restrictions placed on Jews in the Ottoman Empire were included, but not limited to, a special tax, a requirement to wear special clothing, and a ban on carrying guns, riding horses, building or repairing places of worship, and having public processions or public worship. Even though Jews were placed under special restrictions in the Ottoman Empire, there was still a vibrant Jewish culture in certain regions of

19912-467: The sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire came under increasing strain from inflation and the rapidly rising costs of warfare that were impacting both Europe and the Middle East. These pressures led to a series of crises around the year 1600, placing great strain upon the Ottoman system of government. The empire underwent a series of transformations of its political and military institutions in response to these challenges, enabling it to successfully adapt to

20064-427: The soldiers), and 400,000 non-Muslims fled territory still under Ottoman rule. Justin McCarthy estimates that from 1821 to 1922, 5.5   million Muslims died in southeastern Europe, with the expulsion of 5   million. The defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908—1922) began with the Second Constitutional Era , a moment of hope and promise established with the Young Turk Revolution . It restored

20216-443: The start of the 17th century, the Ottomans presided over 32 provinces and numerous vassal states , which over time were either absorbed into the Empire or granted various degrees of autonomy. With its capital at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin , the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries. While

20368-411: The streets in broad daylight. In 1891, the leading Muslims in Jerusalem asked the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from Russia . In 1867, 1870, and 1897, synagogues were ransacked and Jews were murdered in Tripolitania . An important instance of anti-Semitism around this time was the Damascus affair , in which many Jews in Damascus (which was then under

20520-562: The sultan and restored Ottoman power. The Balkan territories lost by the Ottomans after 1402, including Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and Kosovo, were later recovered by Murad II between the 1430s and 1450s. On 10 November 1444, Murad repelled the Crusade of Varna by defeating the Hungarian, Polish, and Wallachian armies under Władysław III of Poland and John Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna , although Albanians under Skanderbeg continued to resist. Four years later, John Hunyadi prepared another army of Hungarian and Wallachian forces to attack

20672-403: The terms of the Convention of Kütahya , signed on 5 May 1833, Muhammad Ali agreed to abandon his campaign against the Sultan, in exchange for which he was made the vali (governor) of the vilayets (provinces) of Crete , Aleppo , Tripoli , Damascus and Sidon (the latter four comprising modern Syria and Lebanon ), and given the right to collect taxes in Adana . Had it not been for

20824-413: The time. The Safed attack may have been initiated by retreating Mamluk soldiers who accused the Jews of treacherously aiding the Turkish invaders, with Arabs from the surrounding villages joining the melee. In Hebron, Jews were attacked, beaten and raped, and many were killed as their homes and businesses were looted and pillaged. An account of the event, recorded by Japheth ben Manasseh in 1518, mentions how

20976-466: The wars with Russia, some people in the Ottoman Empire began to conclude that the reforms of Peter the Great had given the Russians an edge, and the Ottomans would have to keep up with Western technology in order to avoid further defeats. Selim III (1789–1807) made the first major attempts to modernise the army , but his reforms were hampered by the religious leadership and the Janissary corps. Jealous of their privileges and firmly opposed to change,

21128-469: The wealthier cities of the empire, especially in the European provinces (cities such as Istanbul , Sarajevo , Salonica , Adrianople and Nicopolis ), Western and Northern Anatolia ( Bursa , Aydın , Tokat and Amasya ) but also in the Mediterranean coastal regions (such as Jerusalem , Safed , Damascus and Egypt ). İzmir was not settled by Spanish Jews until later. The Jewish population at Jerusalem increased from 70 families in 1488 to 1,500 at

21280-461: The wine trade with Moldavia , and maneuvered in the latter country to keep princes favorable to his policies in power. In 1561, Nasi backed Ioan Iacob Heraclid to rule as despot , supported Alexandru Lăpușneanu 's return to the throne in place of Ștefan Tomșa (1564), and ultimately endorsed Ion Vodă cel Cumplit (1572); he was himself considered a suitable choice for hospodar of either Moldavia or Wallachia in 1571, but Selim II rejected

21432-410: The years leading up to World War I , including the 31 March Incident and two further coups in 1912 and 1913 . The Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. The Ottoman participation in the war began with the combined German-Ottoman surprise attack on the Black Sea coast of the Russian Empire on 29 October 1914. Following the attack,

21584-400: Was a major obstacle to Ottoman expansion on the Italian peninsula. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ottoman Empire entered a period of expansion . The Empire prospered under the rule of a line of committed and effective Sultans . It flourished economically due to its control of the major overland trade routes between Europe and Asia. Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) dramatically expanded

21736-499: Was caused when Sabbatai Zevi proclaimed himself to be the Messiah . He was eventually caught by the Ottoman authorities and when given the choice between death and conversion , he opted for the latter. His remaining disciples also converted to Islam. Their descendants are today known as Donmeh . The first major event in Jewish history under Ottoman rule took place after the Empire gained control over Constantinople . After Sultan Mehmed II 's conquest of Constantinople , he found

21888-808: Was especially important for religious texts and bureaucratic documents. Other Jewish specialists employed by the empire included physicians and diplomats that emigrated from their homelands. Some of them were granted landed titles for their work, including Joseph Nasi, who was named Duke of Naxos. Although the Ottomans did not treat Jews differently from other minorities in the country, the policies seemed to align well with Jewish traditions, which allowed communities to flourish. The Jewish people were allowed to establish their own autonomous communities, which included their own schools and courts. Those rights were extremely controversial in other regions in Muslim North Africa and absolutely unrealistic in Europe. The communities would prove to be centers of education and trade because of

22040-414: Was established as an independent principality inside the Ottoman Empire; Romania achieved full independence; and Serbia and Montenegro finally gained complete independence, but with smaller territories. In 1878, Austria-Hungary unilaterally occupied the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Novi Pazar . British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli advocated restoring the Ottoman territories on

22192-484: Was far more damaging to the Ottoman navy in sapping experienced manpower than the loss of ships, which were rapidly replaced. The Ottoman navy recovered quickly, persuading Venice to sign a peace treaty in 1573, allowing the Ottomans to expand and consolidate their position in North Africa. By contrast, the Habsburg frontier had settled somewhat, a stalemate caused by a stiffening of the Habsburg defenses. The Long Turkish War against Habsburg Austria (1593–1606) created

22344-441: Was involved in negotiations with Charles XII of Sweden . Ottoman Jews held a variety of views on the role of Jews in the Ottoman Empire, from loyal Ottomanism to Zionism . Emanuel Karasu of Salonika , for example, a Young Turk , and believed that the Jews of the Empire should be Turks first, and Jews second. Some Jews thrived in Baghdad , performing critical commercial functions such as money-lending and banking. Prior to

22496-434: Was kept by his wife, Doña Reyna, after Joseph's death. Nasi is best known for his attempt to resettle the towns of Tiberias and Safed in 1561. He was the first person to attempt to settle Jews in the cities of what was then Ottoman Palestine by practical means, as opposed to waiting for the Messiah . Nasi secured a grant giving ruling authority from the Sultan, and, with the assistance of Joseph ben Adruth , rebuilt

22648-421: Was now constrained by the creation of two councils, one spiritual ( meclis-i umumi-ruhani ) and one civil. These councils were elected by a general assembly ( meclis-i cismani ) of 80 deputies, composed of 20 rabbis and 60 laymen, themselves elected by Istanbul Jews. The hahambaşı was now an elected position, whereupon 40 extra deputies from the provinces were added to the assembly. The Jewish millet constitution

22800-409: Was on the defensive and unlikely to present any further aggression in Europe. The Austro-Russian–Turkish War (1735–1739), which was ended by the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739, resulted in the Ottoman recovery of northern Bosnia , Habsburg Serbia (including Belgrade), Oltenia and the southern parts of the Banat of Temeswar ; but the Empire lost the port of Azov , north of the Crimean Peninsula, to

22952-423: Was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. The financial burden of the war led the Ottoman state to issue foreign loans amounting to 5   million pounds sterling on 4 August 1854. The war caused an exodus of the Crimean Tatars , about 200,000 of whom moved to the Ottoman Empire in continuing waves of emigration. Toward

23104-409: Was the master of the mint in Egypt. The first Jewish synagogue linked to Ottoman rule is Etz ha-Hayyim ( Hebrew : עץ החיים ) in Bursa which passed to Ottoman authority in 1324. The synagogue is still in use, although the modern Jewish population of Bursa has shrunk to about 140 people. During the Classical Ottoman period, the Jews, together with most other communities of the empire, enjoyed

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