by Mark Mazower
Acclaim for Mark Mazower’s
Salonica, City of Ghosts
Winner of
The John Criticos Prize
The Runciman Award
The Duff Cooper Prize
“In a remarkable display of historical craftsmanship, he resurrects the city’s manifold ghosts.… Mazower’s scrupulous witness to the experiences of each major group that made up the fabric of Salonica is an act of compassion for their suffering, a recognition of their gifts and aspirations, an acknowledgment of their common humanity.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Mark Mazower’s new book is a necessary masterpiece; necessary because it fills a gap, and a masterpiece because it fills that gap so well.”
—The Times (London)
“An extraordinary book by a historian with a wonderful appetite for complexity.”
—Newsday
“Enthralling.… Tragic, hopeful and beautifully written, Salonica, City of Ghosts shows how cities, as much as people, can be seduced by the prospect of escaping their own past and remaking themselves in ways unrecognizable to old friends.”
—The Times Literary Supplement (London)
“Mazower … is a champion of the cosmopolitan. He tells his history with sweep but doesn’t neglect the human side.”
—The Miami Herald
“[A] tremendous book about a city unique not just in Europe, but in the entire history of humanity.… What [Mazower] does to perfection is to express the historical meaning of Salonica down the generations, authenticating his story with a multitude of contemporary quotations, from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, and scrupulously explaining it all out of his profound scholarly knowledge.”
—The Guardian (London)
“Mazower has made a major contribution.… A book worth reading by anybody interested in the coexistence of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—and interested in a single small but glorious place.”
—The Weekly Standard
“A brilliant reconstruction of one of Europe’s great meeting places between the three monotheistic faiths.”
—The Economist
“[Mazower] sensitively analyses the internal debates and divisions which could be found within all the major communities.”
—The Sunday Telegraph (London)
“Masterly.… A brilliant and timely reminder that cities have played as important a role as states in the lives of their inhabitants.”
—The Spectator (London)
“Mazower has succeeded so well that scholars of all nationalities and religions will refer to this book as their principal source on the city.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Mazower is a formidable historian. He has produced a majestic work: the biography of a city, complete with soul and ichor.”
—The Independent (London)
“This exploration into the soul of a Balkan city is both evocative and profound, a masterful addition to Mazower’s work.”
—BBC History Magazine
“Salonica, City of Ghosts, is a wonderful evocation of the complex, glorious and tragic history of a city, with lessons both positive and negative for our present age. The author, as always, writes with compelling clarity and penetrating eye for detail. If the past is another country, the author allows us to travel there.”
—“Books of the Year,” The Sunday Telegraph (London)
MARK MAZOWER
Salonica, City of Ghosts
Mark Mazower is professor of history at Columbia University and Birkbeck College, London. His books include Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century and Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–44, winner of the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History and the Longman/History Today Award for Book of the Year. He lives in New York City.
ALSO BY MARK MAZOWER
The Balkans: A Short History
Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–1944
Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MAY 2006
Copyright © 2004 by Mark Mazower
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers, London, in 2004. Subsequently published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2005.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Mazower, Mark.
Salonica, city of ghosts : Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 / Mark Mazower.
p. cm.
1. Thessaloniki (Greece)—History. I. Title.
DF951.T45M39 2005
949.5’65—dc22
2004057690
eISBN: 978-0-307-42757-1
Author photograph © Jerry Bauer
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1_r2
To Marwa
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Introduction
PART I / The Rose of Sultan Murad
1 Conquest, 1430
2 Mosques and Hamams
3 The Arrival of the Sefardim
4 Messiahs, Martyrs and Miracles
5 Janissaries and Other Plagues
6 Commerce and the Greeks
7 Pashas, Beys and Money-lenders
8 Religion in the Age of Reform
PART II / In the Shadow of Europe
9 Travellers and the European Imagination
10 The Possibilities of a Past
11 In the Frankish Style
12 The Macedonia Question, 1878–1908
13 The Young Turk Revolution
PART III / Making the City Greek
14 The Return of Saint Dimitrios
15 The First World War
16 The Great Fire
17 The Muslim Exodus
18 City of Refugees
19 Workers and the State
20 Dressing for the Tango
21 Greeks and Jews
22 Genocide
23 Aftermath
Conclusion: The Memory of the Dead
Notes
Glossary
Acknowledgements
IN THE TWENTY YEARS I have been working on this project, I have been helped by so many people that I fear I may not remember them all. To everyone who has discussed their experiences of the city with me, provided me with documents, advice or support, I am deeply indebted. In particular I would like to thank the following: Miko Alvo, Georgios Angelopoulos, Albertos and Leon Arouch, Efi Avdela, Rika Benveniste, Moise Bourlas, Steve Bowman, Peter Brown, John Campbell, Jean Carasso, Richard Clogg, Erika Counio-Amariglio, the late Nancy Crawshaw, the late Mando Dalianis, Nicholas De Lange, Katy Fleming, Ben Fortna, Norman Gilbertson, Eyal Ginio, Jacqueline Golden, Dimitri Gondicas, Vasilis Gounaris, Ashbel Green, Eleni Haidia, Bill Hamilton, Renée Hirschon, Elliott Horowitz, the late Judith Humphrey, Sukru Ilicak, Cemal Kafadar, Mike Keeley, Nikos Kokantzis, Toga Koker, John Koliopoulos, Basil Kontis, Kostas Kostis, Antonis Liakos, Heath and Demet Lowry, Rena and Meir Molho, Yannis Mourellos, Barbara Politi and Walter Lummerding, Maria Seremetis, Nikos Stavroulakis, Charles Stewart, Alexandre Toumarkine, Karen van Dyck, Maria Vassil
ikou, Mike Vogel, Johanna Weber, Maria Wojnicka, Andrew Wylie and Onur Yildirim.
Mike Fishwick has been from the outset a wonderfully enthusiastic and supportive editor. Thanks to him, Vera Brice and Kate Hyde, I felt in good hands. Maria Vassilikou, Bea Lewkowicz, Bernard Pierron, Rena Molho, Dimitris Livanios and Iakovos Mihailidis were kind enough to provide me with copies of their unpublished dissertations. In Athens, Aegina and Tinos, Fay Zika, Haris Vlavianos and Katerina Schina have made Greece a home from home. I must also acknowledge a debt to the extraordinary array of devoted scholars—among them Alexandra Karadimou-Yerolympou, Georgios Anastassiadis, Vasilis Colonnas, Vasilis Dimitriades, Evangelos Hekimoglou, Rena Molho, Albertos Nar, Sakis Serefas, and the late Kostas Tomanas—whose writings have done so much to bring the city to life.
I am grateful for their assistance to the librarians of the following institutions: the Institute for Balkan Studies, the Centre for the History of the City of Thessaloniki, the Newspaper Library in the Thessaloniki Municipal Library, the Historical Archives of Macedonia; in Athens, the Greek Literary and Historical Archives (ELIA), the Archive of Contemporary Social History (ASKI), the Newspaper Library, the Gennadios Library, the Jewish Museum of Greece and the Central Board of Jewish Communities of Greece; in London, the Public Record Office, the School of Oriental and African Studies, Birkbeck College London and the Wiener Library; in the USA, the American Joint Distribution Committee and the United Nations, as well as the university librarians at Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia and Harvard. My research was also supported by the Central Research Fund of the University of London.
Among those who read drafts and gave me the benefit of their scholarly expertise, I would like to thank Fred Anscombe, Selim Deringil, Ben Fortna and Heath Lowry for helpful counsel on matters Ottoman and their patience with an interloper. Philip Carabott, Vasilis Gounaris and Dimitris Livanios made many valuable comments, corrections and suggestions and helped me with their deep knowledge of the Balkan context and contemporary Greece: I thank them for the time and attention they generously gave me. Nikos Stavroulakis gave me precious guidance on the complexities of Marrano and Ma’min identities, not to mention food. My parents, Bill and Miriam Mazower, and my grandmother, Ruth Shaffer, read the early chapters closely for style and were both critical and supportive. And I am hugely indebted, not for the first time, to Peter Mandler, for ploughing through the entire manuscript and giving me the benefit of his encouragement, thoughtfulness and invaluable critical eye. Above all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Marwa Elshakry, who, despite living with the subject for much longer than anyone would consider reasonable, never betrayed impatience at hearing yet another story about Salonica, being shown another document or driven down another side-street. Her challenging suggestions and queries opened up exciting new perspectives for me. What is more, she went rigorously through the text line by line, and made innumerable scholarly and stylistic improvements. In this as in everything else, I owe her more than I can put into words. This book is dedicated to her with the author’s love.
Illustrations
COLOUR
1.1 Sixteenth-century icon of Saint Dimitrios and his city (8th Eforate of Byzantine Antiquities, Jannina)
1.2 Seventh-century mosaic from Church of Ayios Dimitrios
1.3 Byzantine forces drive Bulgarian army away from the city in a miniature from the chronicle of Ioannis Skylitzes, eleventh–twelfth century ad
1.4 Ottoman miniature of child levy in a Balkan town (By permission of the Topkapi Palace Museum)
1.5 Portrait of Sultan Murad II (By permission of the Topkapi Palace Museum)
1.6 A Jewish merchant and doctor in Ottoman dress, Istanbul, 1574 (Gennadius Library, American School of Classical Studies at Athens)
1.7 Visitors arrive at the home of a Jewish merchant to examine Las Incantadas. Sketch from 1754
1.8 The Arch of Galerius at the end of the main street as drawn by Edward Lear, 1848 (Houghton Library, Harvard University)
1.9 Jewish singers and musicians, late nineteenth century
1.10 Jewish marriage contract, 1790
1.11 Watercolours of a Jewish wet-nurse and a Bulgarian peasant bride, c. 1860
1.12 Panorama of Salonica, by Edward Lear, 1848 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
1.13 Prince Constantine takes the Ottoman surrender of the city in 1912
1.14 A backstreet near the Rotonda, 1913 (Musée Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine)
BLACK AND WHITE
2.1 The sea approach from the south-west, c. 1860
2.2 The sea approach from the south-east, c. 1860
2.3 The eastern walls in the early twentieth century
2.4 A Muslim graveyard in open country outside the fortress in the early twentieth century
2.5 Mosque and minaret in the Upper Town in the early twentieth century
2.6 The Aladja Imaret
2.7 An Ottoman tribunal in session
2.8 Women collecting water from a street fountain in the Upper Town
2.9 Sabbatai Zevi, 1666
2.10 Sabbatians performing penitential exercises
2.11 Ma’min boy in the robes of a Mevlevi oblate in the late nineteenth century
2.12 The Yeni Djami
2.13 The courtyard of the Mevlevi tekke, c. 1917
2.14 Mevlevi dervishes, c. 1900
2.15 Young Jewish man, c. 1900
2.16 Leading the mourners at a grave in the Jewish cemetery, c. 1916
2.17 Ottoman café in the Upper Town
2.18 European officers witness the hanging of the alleged murderers of the two consuls following the disturbances of 1876, by Pierre Loti
2.19 Ottoman street life: hamal or porter, vendor of lemonade, and sellers of leeches
2.20 The old konaki
2.21 The new konaki
2.22 The municipal hospital, built outside the eastern walls
2.23 A classroom in one of the city’s new state schools
2.24 The staff of the Greek consulate, 1905
2.25 Greek and Albanian band members, c. 1904
2.26 Yane Sandanski
2.27 Hilmi Pacha
2.28 Ioacheim III
2.29 Albanian Ottoman irregulars
2.30 Regular Ottoman infantry arrive in Macedonia
2.31 Cretan gendarmes (Imperial War Museum)
2.32 Venizelos arrives by sea to lead Greece into the First World War, 9 October 1916 (Imperial War Museum)
2.33 A German biplane attracts crowds along the front
2.34 A refugee camp inside the city, 1916 (Imperial War Museum)
2.35 Devastation in the town centre following the 1917 fire (Imperial War Museum)
2.36 First meeting of the town planners, 1917
2.37 Ernest Hebrard leads a dig in the precinct of the Rotonda (Courtesy of Mr. H. Yiakoumis and Editions Potamos)
2.38 The new city
2.39 Huts of Asia Minor refugees beneath the old walls, c. 1960
2.40 The Upper Town, c. 1960
2.41 Rosa Eskenazi, Dimitrios Semsis and Tombol, c. 1930
2.42 An interwar dandy
2.43 The Hamza Bey mosque in its postwar incarnation as the Alcazar Cinema, c. 1960
2.44 The round-up of Jewish men by German troops, July 1942
2.45 University buildings going up on the site of the old Jewish cemetery, 1950s
2.46 Salonica 1910
2.47 Salonica, fifty years later in 1960 (Reproduced from A. Karadimou-Yerolympou, I anoikodomisi tis Thessalonikis meta tin pyrkaia tou 1917, by permission of University Studio Press and the author)
2.48 1962 parades to mark half a century of Greek rule
2.49 The planned city centre: Plateia Aristotelous and the seafront (Reproduced from A. Karadimou-Yerolympou, I anoikodomisi tis Thessalonikis meta tin pyrkaia tou 1917, by permission of University Studio Press and the author)
2.50 All reasonable efforts have been made by the author and the publisher to trace copyright holders of the images feature
d in this book. In the event that the author or publisher is contacted by any of the untraceable copyright holders after the publication of this book, the author and the publisher will endeavour to rectify the position accordingly.
Maps
The topography of the Balkans
Salonica’s sacred geographies
Inside the Ottoman city
The first map of the Ottoman city, 1882, showing the new sea frontage
The late Ottoman city and its surroundings, c. 1910
The late Ottoman Balkan peninsula
Area destroyed by the 1917 fire
After the fire: the 1918 plan
The Balkans after 1918
The 1929 municipal city plan
Introduction
Beware of saying to them that sometimes cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communicating among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices’ accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place.
ITALO CALVINO, Invisible Cities1
THE FIRST TIME I visited Salonica, one summer more than twenty years ago, I stepped off the Athens train, shouldered my rucksack, and left the station in search of the town. Down a petrol-choked road, I passed a string of seedy hotels, and arrived at a busy crossroads: beyond lay the city centre. The unremitting heat and the din of the traffic reminded me of what I had left several hours away in Athens but despite this I knew I had been transported into another world. A mere hour or so to the north lay Tito’s Yugoslavia and the checkpoints at Gevgeli or Florina; to the east were the Rhodope forests barring the way to Bulgaria, the forgotten Muslim towns and villages of Thrace and the border with Turkey. From the moment I crossed the hectic confusion of Vardar Square—“Piccadilly Circus” for British soldiers in the First World War—ignoring the signposts that urged me out of the city in the direction of the Iron Curtain, I sensed the presence of a different Greece, less in thrall to an ancient past, more intimately linked to neighbouring peoples, languages and cultures.