Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950

by Mark Mazower

  3. L. Sciaky, Farewell to Salonica (London, 1946); N. Kokantzis, Gioconda (Athens, 2001); A. E. Yalman, Turkey in My Time (Norman, Oklahoma, 1956), 11.

  4. P. Risal, La ville convoitée: Salonique (Paris, 1914), x.

  5. M. Fischback, Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Columbia UP, 2003).

  1 / Conquest, 1430

  1. The Mosquito, 53 (March 1941).

  2. K. Mertzios, Mnimeia Makedonikis Istorias (1947), 410.

  3. M.A. Walker, Through Macedonia to the Albanian Lakes (1864), 34; J. Murray, Handbook for Travellers in Greece (London, 1854), 415; G. Marindin, ed., The Letters of John B. S. Morritt of Rokeby (London, 1914), 158.

  4. H. F. Tozer, Researches in the Highlands of Turkey (London, 1869), 1, 149.

  5. On Jews converting thanks to St. Dimitrios, see the fifth-century miracle cited by R. Cormack, “Mosaic decoration of S. Demetrios, Thessaloniki,” Annual of the British School at Athens, 64 (1969), 17–52.

  6. Procopius, De bello gothico, iii. 14.22–30, cited in S. Vryonis, “The evolution of Slavic society and the Slavic invasions in Greece: the first major Slavic attack on Thessaloniki, AD 597,” Hesperia: Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 50:4 (Oct.–Dec. 1981), 378–390, quotation from p. 385.

  7. P. Lemerle, Les plus anciens recueils des miracles de Saint Démétrius, 1 Le Texte (Paris, 1979), 134, translated by Vryonis, op. cit., 381–382.

  8. Emphasized by R. Browning, “Byzantine Thessalonike: a unique city?,” Dialogos, 1:2 (1995), 91–104.

  9. P. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1804 (Seattle, 1977), 19–22; M. Balivet, Byzantines et Ottomans: Relations, Interaction, Succession (Istanbul, 1999), 4; H. Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 (London, 1994).

  10. H. Lowry, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State (Albany, NY, 2003).

  11. G. G. Arnakis, “Gregory Palamas among the Turks and documents of his captivity as historical sources,” Speculum, 26:1 (Jan. 1951), 104–118.

  12. Balivet, Byzantines et Ottomans, 33, 65–69.

  13. Ibid., 39.

  14. “The Travels of Bertrandon de la Brocquiere, AD 1432 and 1433,” in T. Wright, ed., Early Travels in Palestine (London, 1848), 346–347; M. Letts, ed., Pero Tafur: Travels and Adventures, 1435–1439 (London, 1926), 126.

  15. G. Tsaras, I teleftaia alosi tis Thessalonikis (1430) (1985), 50–57, 96, 172; K. Mertzios, Mnimeia Makedonikis Istorias (1947), 45–90.

  16. F. Miklosich and J. Müller, Acta et Diplomata Graeca Medii Aevi, iii (Vienna, 1865/1968), 282–283.

  2 / Mosques and Hamams

  1. “Bertrandon de la Brocquiere,” 347; Tsaras, I teleftaia alosi, 62.

  2. M. Kiel, “Notes on some Turkish monuments in Thessaloniki and their founders,” Balkan Studies, 11 (1970), 129–131.

  3. Tsaras, I teleftaia alosi, 66–67.

  4. E. D. Bodnar, ed., Cyriac of Ancona’s Later Travels (Harvard UP, 2003), xi, 12–13; “The travels of Bertrandon de Brocquiere, AD 1432 and 1433,” in T. Wright, ed., Early Travels in Palestine (London, 1848), 349–355.

  5. M. Vickers, “Cyriac of Ancona at Thessaloniki,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 2 (1976), 75–82; Vryonis, “Thessaloniki in 1430,” in A. Bryer and H. Lowry, Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society (Birmingham, 1986), 314–315.

  6. Vryonis, “Thessaloniki in 1430,” 299, 316–317.

  7. Bisani, A Picturesque Tour, 36; H. F. Tozer, Researches in the Highlands of Turkey (London 1869), II, 141.

  8. H. Lowry, “Portrait of a City: The Population and Topography of Ottoman Selanik [Thessaloniki] in the Year 1478,” Diptycha, 2 (1980–81), 254–292.

  9. N. Beldiceanu, Recherche sur la ville Ottomane au XVe siècle (Paris, 1973), 159–160.

  10. J. de Hammer, Histoire de l’empire Ottoman depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours (original ed. Paris, 1835, new edition Istanbul, 1994), iii, 112; M. Kiel, “Notes on some Turkish monuments in Thessaloniki and their founders,” Balkan Studies, 11 (1970), 125.

  11. M. Kiel, “Notes on some Turkish monuments in Thessaloniki and their founders,” Balkan Studies, 11 (1970), 132–134.

  12. Ibid., 139–141.

  13. E. Ginio, “ ‘Every soul shall taste death’—Dealing with death and the afterlife in eighteenth century Salonica,” Studia Islamica (2001), 113–132.

  14. But on the dating of the bezesten, see S. Curcic and E. Hadjitrifonos, eds., Secular Medieval Architecture in the Balkans, 1300–1500 (1997), 286–288; T. Stavrides, The Sultan of Vezirs: The Life and Times of the Ottoman Grand Vezier Mahmud Pasha Angelovic (1453–1474) (Brill, 2001), 285–288.

  15. A. Zombou-Asimi, “To Bey Hamami (Loutra Paradeisos) tis Thessalonikis,” Thessaloniki, 1 (1995), 341–376; N. Moschopoulos, “I Ellas kata ton Evlia Tselebi,” Epetiris Etaireias Byzantinon Spoudon, 16 (1940), 348.

  16. N. Moschopoulos, “I Ellas kata ton Evlia Tselebi,” 337.

  17. S. Tzortzaki-Tzaridou, “Ideikotera provlimata efarmogis tou Otho-manikou yaioktitikou sistimatos sti Makedonias,” in KITh., Christianiki Thessaloniki: Othomaniki periodos, 1430–1912 (1994), 259–277, 269–270.

  18. Cited in P. Atreinidou-Kotsaki, “Leitourgia ton bezestenion stin agora tis Othomanikis periodou,” Makedonika, 30 (1995–96), 169; V. Dimitriades, Topografia tis Thessalonikis kata tin tourkratia, 1430–1912 (1983), 180–182; Dimitriades, “Problems of land-owning and population in the area of Gazi Evrenos Bey’s wakf,” Balkan Studies, 22:1 (1981), 43–46; Dimitriades, “Vakifs along the Via Egnatia,” in E. Zahariadou, ed., The Via Egnatia under Ottoman Rule, 1380–1699 (Heraklion 1996), 85–97; H. Pernot, ed., Voyage en Turquie et en Grèce du R.P. Robert de Dreux (Paris, 1925), 35.

  19. I. Vasdravellis, Istorika archeia Makedonias, I (1952), 2–5; N. Beldiceanu, Recherches sur la ville Ottomane au XVe siècle (Paris, 1973), 144–146.

  20. H. Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 (1973), 70–75.

  21. Ibid.; N. Todorov, The Balkan City, 1400–1900 (Seattle, 1983), 98.

  22. E. Ginio, “Aspects of Muslim culture in the Ottoman Balkans,” in D. Tziovas, ed., Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment (Ashgate, 2003), 120.

  23. “Viaggio di un ambasciatore veneziano da Venezia a Constantinopoli nel 1591” in L. Firpo, ed., Relazioni di ambasciatori veneti al Senato, XIII (1984), 201.

  3 / The Arrival of the Sefardim

  1. N. Moschopoulos, “I Ellas kata ton Evlia Tselebi,” Epetiris Etaireias Byzantinon Spoudon, 16 (1940), 321–363.

  2. M. A. Epstein, The Ottoman Jewish Communities and Their Role in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Freiburg, 1980), 178–180; H. Lowry, “Portrait of a City: the Population and Topography of Ottoman Selanik (Thessaloniki) in the Year 1478,” Diptycha, 2 (1980–81), 254–292.

  3. Y. Yerushalmi, “Exile and expulsion in Jewish history,” in B. R. Gampel, ed., Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391–1648 (New York, 1998), 3–22. As Yerushalmi notes, Jews had suffered temporary expulsions in France at the end of the twelfth century.

  4. Cited in H. Kamen, “The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492,” Past & Present, 119 (May 1988), 53–54.

  5. A. Hess, “The Moriscos: an Ottoman fifth column in sixteenth-century Spain,” American Historical Review, 74:1 (1968), 1–25.

  6. A. Marx, “The expulsion of the Jews from Spain: two new accounts,” in his Studies in Jewish History and Booklore (New York, 1944), 96.

  7. Cited in A. Levy, The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, 1992), 26.

  8. V. Demetriades, “Vakifs along the Via Egnatia,” E. Zahariadou, ed., The Via Egnatia under Ottoman Rule, 1380–1699 (Rethymnon, 1996), 91; M. A. del Bravo, “The expulsion of Spanish Jews as seen by Christian and Jewish chroniclers,” in I. Hassiotis, ed., The Jewish Communities of Southeastern Europe (1997), 70.

  9. H. Lowry, “
Portrait of a city: the population and topography of Ottoman Selanik [Thessaloniki] in the Year 1478,” Diptycha, 2 (1980–81), 293; Epstein, The Ottoman Jewish Communities, 45–46; E. Ginio, “The administration of criminal justice in Ottoman Selanik [Salonica] during the eighteenth century,” Turcica, 30 (1998), 197.

  10. J. Hacker, “Superbe et désespoir: l’existence sociale et spirituelle des Juifs ibériques dans l’empire ottoman,” Revue historique, 578 (April–June 1991), 261–295; Yerushalmi, “Exile and Expulsion,” 21.

  11. A. Danon, “La communauté juive de Salonique au XVIe siècle,” Revue des Etudes Juives, 40 (1900), 207; M. A. Cohen, Samuel Usque’s Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel (New York, 1964), 211–212.

  12. Y. Yerushalmi, “Exile and expulsion in Jewish history,” 8–14; N. Stavroulakis, Cookbook of the Jews of Greece (Athens, 1986).

  13. P.C.I. Zorattini, ed., Processi del S. Uffizio di Venezia contro Ebrei e Giudaizzanti (1608–1632) (Florence, 1991), IX, 76–77.

  14. Danon, “La communauté juive,” 209; Cautiverio y Trabajos de Diego Galan, 1589–1600 (Madrid, 1913), 120; the primary source is J. Nehama, Dictionnaire du Judéo-Espagnol (Madrid, 1977/Gordes, 2003).

  15. A. Hananel and E. Eshkenazi, eds., Fontes Hebraici, 42–43.

  16. M. Rozen, “The corvée of operating the mines in Siderokapisi and its effects on the Jewish community of Thessaloniki in the 16th century,” Balkan Studies, 34:1 (1993), 29–47.

  17. M. Delilbasi, “The Via Egnatia and Selanik in the 16th century,” in E. Zahariadou, ed., The Via Egnatia under Ottoman Rule, 1380–1699 (Heraklion, 1994), 67–85.

  18. S. Andreev, ed., Ottoman Documents on the Balkans: Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries (Sofia, 1990); A. Shmuelevitz, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Leiden, 1984), 110.

  19. B. Braude, “Venture and faith in the commercial life of the Ottoman Balkans, 1500–1650,” International History Review, 7:4 (Nov. 1985), 519–542; R. Segre, “Sephardic settlements in sixteenth-century Italy: a historical and geographical survey,” in A. M. Ginio, ed., Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean World after 1492 (London, 1992); B. Ravid, “A tale of three cities and their raison d’état: Ancona, Venice, Livorno and the competition for Jewish merchants in the sixteenth century,” in ibid.

  20. Epstein, The Ottoman Jewish Communities, 29.

  21. Danon, “La communauté juive,” 223; M. Russo-Katz, “Jewellery,” E. Juhasz, ed., Sephardi Jews in the Ottoman Empire: Aspects of Material Culture (Jerusalem, 1990), 122, 173, 177.

  22. V. Dimitriades, “O kanunname kai oi christianoi katoikoi tis Thessalonikis gyro sta 1525,” Makedonika, 19 (1979), 328–349.

  23. A. Shmuelevitz, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Leiden, 1984), 23 n44.

  24. J. Nehama, Histoire des Israélites de Salonique, iii: L’Age d’Or du Séfaradisme Salonicien (1536–1593) (Salonica, 1936), 53; P. Belon, Les Observations de Plusieurs Singularitez et Choses Memorables, trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Iudée, Egypte, Arabie et autres payes estranges (Anvers, 1555), I, 94.

  25. M. Rozen, “Individual and community in the Jewish society of the Ottoman empire: Salonica in the sixteenth century,” in A. Levy, ed., The Jews of the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, 1993), 218.

  26. Ibid., 218.

  27. A. Asher, ed., The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (New York, nd), I, 49; D. Kaufmann, “L’incendie de Salonique du 4 Ab 1545,” Revue des Etudes Juives, 21 (1890), 293–297; Danon, “La communauté juive,” 230.

  28. M. Rozen, “Individual and community,” 222.

  29. M. Goodblatt, Jewish Life in Turkey in the Sixteenth Century as Reflected in the Legal Writings of Samuel de Medina (New York, 1952), 61–68.

  30. J. Hacker, “Jewish autonomy in the Ottoman empire: its scope and limits. Jewish courts from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries,” in A. Levy, ed., The Jews of the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, 1993), 152–202.

  31. Shmuelevitz, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, 45–49.

  32. Epstein, The Ottoman Jewish Communities, 72–73; cf. J. Hacker, “Jewish autonomy in the Ottoman empire,” 161 seq., esp 174.

  33. Ibid., 156.

  34. B. Rivlin, “The Greek peninsula. A haven for Iberian refugees: effects on family-life,” in Hasiotis, ed., Jewish Communities, 443–452.

  35. J. Hacker, “The intellectual activity of the Jews of the Ottoman empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” in I. Twersky and B. Septimus, eds., Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Harvard UP, 1987), 120.

  36. A. Shmuelevitz, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, 34; J. Hacker, “The intellectual activity of the Jews of the Ottoman empire,” 105 n20, 119.

  37. N. Todorov, The Balkan City, 1400–1900 (Seattle, 1983), 86–87, 470–471; A. P. Fernandez, Españoles sin patria: la raza Sefardi (Madrid, 1905).

  4 / Messiahs, Martyrs and Miracles

  1. H. Lenowitz, The Jewish Messiahs (New York, 1998), 179.

  2. N. de Nicolay, Dans l’empire de Soliman le Magnifique (Paris, 1989), 257; Tournefort cited by B. Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton, 1984), 138.

  3. B. Nicolaides, Les Turcs et la Turquie contemporaine (Paris, 1859), ii, 45.

  4. J. de Hammer, Histoire, xii, 28.

  5. E. Ginio, “The administration of criminal justice in Ottoman Selanik,” Turcica, 30 (1998), 185–209.

  6. S. Senyk, “A man between East and West: Philip Orlyk and church life in Thessalonica in the 1720s,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 60 (1994), 159–185.

  7. O. Subtelny, ed., The Diariusz Podrozny of Pylyp Orlyk (1720–1726) (Harvard UP, 1989), 458. My thanks to Maria Wojcicka for her help with the translation.

  8. B. Netanyahu, The Marranos of Spain (Cornell, 1992 ed.).

  9. P.C.I. Zorattini, ed., Processi del S. Uffizio di Venezia contro Ebrei e Guidizzanti, iii [1570–1572] (1984), 38–43; P.C.I. Zorattini, ed., Processi del S. Uffizio di Venezia contro Ebrei e Guidizzanti, x [1633–1637] (1992), 127–128; B. Pullan, “ ‘A ship with two rudders’: Righetto Marrano and the Inquisition in Venice,” Historical Journal, 20:1 (1977), 25–58.

  10. Y. Yerushalmi, “Messianic impulses in Joseph ha-Kohen,” in B. D. Cooperman, ed., Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (Harvard, 1983), 460–487.

  11. S. Sherot, “Jewish millenarianism: a comparison of medieval communities,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (1980), 394–415; G. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: the Mystical Messiah (Princeton, 1973), 562–563.

  12. H. C. Lukach, “The False Messiah,” in his The City of Dancing Dervishes and Other Sketches and Studies from the Near East (London, 1914), 189–190.

  13. G. Saban, “Sabbatai Sevi as seen by a contemporary traveller,” 112.

  14. Lukach, 191.

  15. Ibid., 200; Pernot, ed., Voyage en Turquie et en Grèce de R.P. Robert de Dreux (Paris, 1925), 42.

  16. J. Freely, The Lost Messiah (London 2002), 120–122.

  17. Freely, 135–137.

  18. J. Nehama, Histoire des Israelites de Salonique, v: Période de Stagnation—la Tourmente Sabbatéenne (1593–1669), (1959), 144–145.

  19. E. Eden and N. Stavroulakis, Salonika: A Family Cookbook (Athens, 1997), 42–43.

  20. G. Scholem, “The crypto-Jewish sect of the Dönmeh (Sabbatians) in Turkey,” in his The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays in Jewish Spirituality (New York, 1995), 142–167.

  21. A. Danon, “Une secte Judeo-Musulmane en Turquie,” Revue des Etudes Juives, 35 (1897), 271.

  22. S. Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London, 1999), 81.

  23. A.E. Yalman, Turkey in My Time (Norman, Okl., 1956), 11–13; See also F. Gorgeon, “I ‘Selanik’ ton Mousoulanon kai ton donmedon,” in G. Veinstein et al., eds., Thessaloniki, 1850–1918 (1994), 129–130.

  24. E. Eden and N. Stavroulakis, Salonika, 20–53. My thanks to Nikos Stavroulakis for his guidance on t
his subject.

  25. Freely, The Lost Messiah, 239.

  26. V. Kolonas and P. Papamalthaiakis, O architektonas Vitaliano Poselli (1980).

  27. I. Melikoff, “Les voies de pénétration de l’hétérodoxie islamique en Thrace et dans les Balkans aux XIV–XVe siècles,” Zahariadou, ed., The Via Egnatia under Ottoman Rule, 1380–1699 (1994), 158–170.

  28. J. Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism (New York, 2000).

  29. A. Little, “Salonica,” Fortnightly Review, 100 (July/Dec. 1916), 426–435; N. Clayer et al., eds., Melamis-Bayramis (Istanbul 1998), 180.

  30. A. Bisani, A Picturesque Tour through Part of Europe, Asia and Africa (London, 1793), 48; “Odysseus,” Turkey in Europe (London, 1900), 200–201.

  31. F. W. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans, ii (Oxford, 1929), 500–551.

  32. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans, ii, 493; W. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, I, 495; E. Zengini, Yenitsaroi kai Bektasismos (2002), 269–271.

  33. N. Moschopoulos, “I Ellas kata ton Evliya Tselebi,” EEBS, 16 (1940), 360; L. de Launay, Chez les Grecs de Turquie (Paris, nd), 183–184.

  34. Cited in A. Dimitriades, “Phoinix Agiros”: I Thessaloniki tou 1925–1935 (1994), 205–206.

  35. G. F. Abbott, Macedonian Folklore (Cambridge, 1903), 211.

  36. F. J. Blunt, The People of Turkey: Twenty Years’ Residence among Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, Turks, and Armenians, by a Consul’s Daughter and Wife (London, 1878), ii, 224; M. Molho, Usos y Custombres de los Sefardies de Salonica (Madrid, 1959), ch. 6.

  37. M. M. Bourlas, Ellinas, Evraios kai aristeros (2000), 25.

  38. “Description de la ville de Salonique, par le père Jean-Baptiste Souciet,” in Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses écrites des Missions Étrangères, Mémoires du Levant, i (Lyon, 1819), 501.

  39. G. Tsaras, I teleftaia alosi tis Thessalonikis (1430) (1985), 150; A. Vacalopoulos, The Greek Nation, 1453–1669 (Rutgers, 1976), 141.

  40. G. Ziakas, “Pnevmatikos vios kai politismos tis Thessalonikis kata tin periodo tis Othomanikis kyriarchias,” Christianiki Thessaloniki: Othomaniki periodos, 1430–1912 (1994), 89–167.