by Mehrdad Kia
In 1517, when the Ottomans defeated the ruling Mamluk dynasty and conquered Egypt, Selim I decreed new laws for the Jews. At the time, the Egyptian Jews were led by their nagid, or reis, a rabbi and prince-judge whose authority was similar to that conferred on the hahambaşi in Istanbul. Selim abolished the office of nagid “to prevent his becoming a rival to the chief rabbi in Istanbul,” and Selim’s son, Süleyman the Magnificent, reasserted the authority of the hahambaşi as the representative of all Jews in the empire. Süleyman also appointed an officer (kahya), a Jew himself, who enjoyed direct access to the sultan, the grand vizier, and his cabinet, and “to whose notice he could bring cases of injustice” suffered by the members of the Jewish community “at the hands of either provincial governors or of fanatical Christians.”
The Sephardic Jewish population played important roles in the everyday life of the Ottoman state as merchants, artisans, and physicians. Determined to preserve their traditions, they organized their social activities around synagogues and community centers, where Hebrew was taught and the Torah and Talmud studied. Ottoman tolerance allowed them to emerge as one of the most educated and literate population groups in the empire. Rabbinical schools such as the one founded in Sarajevo in 1786 by Rabbi David Pardo, played an important role in preserving Jewish religious and cultural traditions and customs. In these schools, the students learned classical Hebrew, though in their day-to-day life they continued to use Ladino, the Jewish-Spanish language they had brought with them from Spain.
The massive migration of Spanish Jewry to the Ottoman Empire included many Jewish merchants who were active in transatlantic trade and introduced to the empire New World plants and fruits such as chili peppers. Thus, the Turkish name for the hot peppers, biber aci, derives from the Caribbean ají. The Ottoman sultans welcomed the arrival of the new immigrants, particularly the artisans, merchants, and scholars, as men of enterprise and energy who knew precisely those arts and crafts that were in highest demand in the empire, such as “medical knowledge, woolen industry, metalworking, glassmaking, the secrets of the manufacture of arms, the import and export trade, retail trade and distribution, and so on.” Each Jewish immigrant community was known for excellence in a unique profession, trade, or craft. The Maranos (Muranos) were respected as manufacturers of weapons of war, while those of the medical school of Salamanca were much in demand as doctors. Many were also recruited as translators and interpreters because of their international connections and knowledge of Europe.
It was in trade and commerce, however, that the Jewish community, particularly those who resided in the Balkans, excelled. Their prominent role in the economic life of the empire was observed by an 18th-century English visitor who wrote that most of the wealthy merchants in the empire were Jews and they enjoyed many privileges that ordinary Turks did not. They had “drawn the whole trade of the empire into their hands,” and every Ottoman high official had his Jewish “homme d’affaires” to whom he entrusted all his business affairs and interactions. By the beginning of the 18th century, the Jewish presence and participation in the commercial life of the empire was so central and critical that the English, French, and Venetian merchants negotiated with the Ottomans through their intercession. The economic power of the Jewish merchants allowed the community to form a strong commonwealth, which was ruled by its own laws.
Both the Ashkenazim and Sephardim produced numerous statesmen, physicians, merchants, and craftsmen. The most influential Sephardic Jew in the Ottoman Empire was Joseph Nasi (1515–1579), the product of a Marano family, who had arrived in Istanbul from Portugal in 1554. Before reaching Istanbul, he had lived for a time in Antwerp, modern-day Belgium, where he joined his aunt Gracia Nasi Mendes. The Mendes family was one of the most powerful and influential banking families in Europe. When Nasi’s aunt moved to Istanbul in 1553, Joseph decided to leave Antwerp and settle with her in the Ottoman capital. Both “aunt and nephew shed their identity as Marranos” and “openly embraced the practice of Judaism,” emerging as “important supporters of Jewish charities and scholarship.” Nasi also befriended the Ottoman sultan Selim II (1566–1574) and the sultan’s powerful grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed, who appointed Nasi as the Duke of Naxos, the largest island in the Cyclades island group in the Aegean. As an advocate of war against Venice, Nasi encouraged an invasion of the island of Cyprus, which was attacked and captured by the Ottoman forces in 1570. When “he died in 1579, Joseph Nasi was probably one of the wealthiest men in the Ottoman Empire.” Another Sephardic Jew, Solomon Abenayish (1520–1603) was appointed the Duke of the Greek island of Lesbos.
The best-known Ashkenazic Jew in the Ottoman state was the Italian-born Solomon Ashkenazi (1520–1603), who served as the physician and confidant of the grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed. Since Ashkenazi had lived both in various Italian states and Poland before his arrival in the Ottoman Empire, the grand vizier sought his advice on Polish- and Venetian-related matters. Sokollu Mehmed demonstrated his trust and confidence in the Jewish physician when he appointed him as the Ottoman ambassador to Venice.
In the 17th, and increasingly, in the 18th century, during the decline of the Ottoman power and the rise of Islamic conservatism, Jews began to suffer at the hands of Muslim religious authorities. After “the great fire of 1660, in which large swathes of Istanbul were destroyed, Jews in the city were not given permission to rebuild” some of their synagogues “as Muslim judges ruled that the permission they had originally received to build them was illegal.” A strict interpretation of Islamic law also influenced the outcome of the case of Shabbatai Zvi when the self-proclaimed Jewish messiah was forced to convert to Islam or face death for treason. Additionally, relations between Jewish and Christian communities began to deteriorate as attacks by Christian mobs against Jewish businesses and neighborhoods increased. During the Damascus Incident of 1840, for example, authorities arrested and tortured prominent Damascus Jews after Christians accused them of murdering a Roman Catholic priest.
In the 19th century as nationalist uprisings erupted in the Balkans, links between the empire’s Jewish communities and the Ottoman sultans grew stronger. Most Jews feared that any new state formed on the basis of one nation, one language, and one church would be far less tolerant than the Ottoman imperial rule. The nationalist ideologies propagated by various separatist movements in the Balkans espoused Orthodox Christianity as essential to national identity and characterized the Jews as outsiders. The worst fears of the Jews were realized when at the start of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, Greek nationalists massacred both Muslim and Jewish civilians.
6 – MUSLIMS
The defense, protection, and expansion of Islam served as the ideological foundation and unifying principle for the Ottoman ruling elite. From its inception, the Ottoman Empire acted as an Islamic state dedicated to the defense and expansion of Islam against infidels. In the parlance of government officials and writers, the Ottoman sultan was “the sovereign of Islam, its armies were armies of Islam, its laws were the laws of Islam, which it was the sultan’s duty to uphold and administer.”
Islam was the dominant religion among Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Albanians, and Bosnians. During the long period when the Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans, the Muslims constituted the second-largest religious community in the empire, after Orthodox Christians. With the loss of European provinces in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, however, Muslims emerged as the majority religious group, particularly after the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and the loss of Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria.
FIVE PILLARS OF ISLAM
Turks converted to Islam as they entered Central Asia and swept through Iran on their way to Anatolia. For them, Islam represented a simple faith that provided daily structure and discipline through a set of beliefs, rules, and practices. The religion is based on six articles of belief, namely: belief in God, belief in all messengers of God, belief in the angels, belief in holy books sent by God, belief in the day of judgment and resurrection, and belief in destiny. In ad
dition to adhering to these six fundamentals of belief, every Muslim is also required to perform the five pillars of Islam.
Declaration of Faith
The first pillar, declaration of faith, requires Muslims to reaffirm their belief daily by stating; “I bear witness that there is no god but God, I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.” Far from a merely ritualistic and obligatory utterance, the first part of the declaration reminds the Muslim that Allah (God) is the creator of the universe and all living beings and, therefore, the only majesty to be obeyed and worshipped. The second part reaffirms the principle that Muhammad is the messenger through whom God (Allah) revealed the holy Quran. He also serves as a model and exemplar for all Muslims.
Prayer
The second pillar of Islam is prayer, or namaz (Arabic: salat), which is performed five times a day at set hours while facing in the direction of the holy city of Mecca in western Arabia (modern-day Saudi Arabia). These five prayers impose a structure and discipline on the daily life of a Muslim. They are performed in the early morning after dawn, in the afternoon after mid-day, in the late afternoon before sunset, after the sunset, and at night before sleeping. Ezan (Arabic: adhan), or the call to prayer, summons believers by means of a repeated announcement. The muezzin, who utters the call to prayer, ascends the minaret of a mosque five times a day to recite the call: “God is great” (repeated four times), “I bear witness that there is no god but God” (repeated twice), “I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God” (repeated twice), “Come to worship/prayer” (repeated twice), “Come to success” (repeated twice), “Prayer is better than sleep” (repeated twice; only for the dawn prayer), “God is great” (repeated twice), and “I bear witness that there is no god but God. “
Each prayer is preceded by ablution since a Muslim can not stand before God with a dirty body. In front of every mosque there are a number of taps and cisterns of water where the worshipper has to wash before he can perform his prayer. The ablution begins with the person declaring the intention that his self-cleansing is for the purpose of worship and purity. He then washes his hands up to the wrists three times, followed by rinsing the mouth three times with water, cleansing his nostrils by sniffing water into them three times, washing the whole face three times with both hands or at times with the right hand only, washing the right and then the left arm up to the far end of the elbow three times, wiping the head with a wet hand once, wiping the inner section of the ears with the forefingers and the outer section with wet thumbs, wiping the neck with wet hands, and finally washing both feet up to the ankles three times starting with the right foot. The cleanliness of the average Muslim in the Ottoman Empire was mentioned repeatedly by European travelers, who observed that Islam was a “hygienic religion” and that in the eyes of the faithful, cleanliness was part of godliness.
The ablution is nullified by natural discharges such as urine, stools, gas, or vomiting, falling asleep, and becoming intoxicated. When the person is sick or does not have access to water or the water is contaminated and its usage can harm the worshipper, it is permissible to perform tayammum, or substitute ablution, which involves putting one’s hands into earth or sand or on a stone, shaking the hands off and wiping the face with them once and touching the earth or sand again and wiping the right arm to the elbow with the left hand and the left arm with the right hand.
Prayers can be performed anywhere, for God is believed to be present everywhere. While the daily prayers can be performed alone, the Friday prayer is always a group ritual, that includes the members of the community at a local mosque. Women did not usually pray at a mosque. Instead, they performed their prayers at home, but they underwent the same preparation and the wuzu, or the ablution, without which it would be improper to pray.
The call to prayer is made a short time before the prayer starts, providing the faithful ample time to perform ablutions and arrive at the mosque. When all worshippers have converged and the prayer is about to begin, the iqamah is called to make all in attendance aware that the prayer is getting underway. The content of the iqamah is similar to the ezan, but it is often recited at a faster pace: “God is great, I bear witness that there is no god but God, I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God, Come to worship/prayer, Come to success, Prayer is better than sleep.” The Friday prayer is led by an imam (leader) who also reads the hutbe (Arabic: khutbah), or sermon. During the Ottoman era, the name of the reigning Ottoman sultan was mentioned in the hutbe. During the communal prayer, the worshippers stand, kneel, and prostrate themselves in straight parallel rows behind the imam. They face the kibla (Arabic: qibla) or the direction of prayer towards Mecca. Those standing at prayer represent the equality of all Muslims before God and their solidarity as a unified community.
Zakat
The third pillar of Islam is zakat (giving alms to the poor or the act of sharing wealth), which requires Muslims to pay a percentage of their income as religious tax to the poor, orphans, debtors, travelers, slaves, and beggars. In the Ottoman era, the tax was payable at different rates on harvests and merchandise, but for gold and silver that was included in an individual’s personal assets, the rate was two and a half percent. Islam views all wealth as emanating from God and therefore belonging to him. This does not prohibit Muslims from producing wealth and using it to obtain their own goods as long as the wealth is not gained through coercion, cheating, and theft. Islam teaches, however, that human beings descend to the level of animals if they hoard wealth and do not share it with fellow Muslims. Zakat is often given by the believer to the recipients of his choice.
Fasting
The fourth pillar of Islam is fasting during the month of Ramazan (Arabic: Ramadan), the ninth month in the Islamic calendar, and requires that Muslims abstain from food, drink, smoke, snuff, and sexual activities every day from sunrise to sunset. Fasting is not obligatory for children before the onset of puberty, people with an illness or medical condition, nursing and pregnant women, travelers, and those fighting on the battlefield. Despite these rules, children, pregnant women, travelers, and soldiers in the Ottoman era fasted during the entire month.
Though the duties of the holy month are arduous, members of all social classes in the Ottoman era observed them with exceeding devotion and zeal, and they condemned any open and public infraction with uncommon severity. The Venetian ambassador to Istanbul, Ottaviano Bon, reported that on one occasion the grand vizier, Nasuh Paşa (1611–1614), who was riding on the street, detected a drunken man who was immediately detained, and subsequently tortured and killed when the paşa’s men poured boiling lead down his throat.
Most shops remained either shut or bereft of shopkeepers. Merchants did not buy and students did not study as the faithful chose to sleep during the daylight hours. The mosques were brilliantly illuminated, and they were crowded with worshippers. Cords were “slung from minaret to minaret,” to which lamps were attached and “the rising or lowering of these cords,” produced magical transitions. As a European visitor to the Ottoman capital observed, these unique lamps rendered “the illuminations of Istanbul unlike those of any European capital.” Ramazan is a month of self-cleansing and meditation, and the faithful are expected to refrain from waging warfare, becoming angry, lusting for money and sex, and making offensive or sarcastic gestures and utterances. Purifying one’s thoughts and actions means treating fellow Muslims with added kindness, compassion, and generosity.
As the hour of sunset approaches, people prepare themselves for the sound of the cannon and the cry of the muezzin, calling the faithful to prayer. The second cannon discharge signals iftar, or breaking of the fast, with an evening meal that includes family and friends. The poor often ate a large meal at once, while the rich broke the fast with a light meal — a morsel of bread with yogurt, dates, fresh or dried fruit, especially watermelon, sweetmeats, and muhallabi, “a thin jelly of milk, starch, and rice flour,” washed down with water or lemonade. The evening prayer is performed after breaking the fa
st. At times, the faithful smoked a pipe, drank a cup of coffee or a glass of sherbet before performing the evening prayer. Then he sat down with family and friends to the main meal.
After the meal, streets became crowded with throngs of people. Some spent their time in a coffeehouse smoking water-pipes filled with tobacco and listening to storytellers and singers, while others walked through gardens, sitting in the moonlight and enjoying cakes, toasted grains, coffee, and sugared drinks as they watched the performance of the Karagöz shadow puppet theater. Many walked to a mosque and listened to prayers and recitations from the local imam, while others spent part of the evening with local dervişes at a Sufi lodge (tekke) although during the holy month, zikrs (literally remembrance of God), or ecstatic worship through devotional singing, were rarely performed. The rich spent the entire night in festivities, while the poor tried to get as much food, drink, and rest as possible because they were obliged to work at daybreak.