What happened to Famagusta's Jews following the Ottoman Conquest of 1571?

Abstract

This study is an attempt to follow the fortunes of several members of the Jewish community of Famagusta following the conquest of this town by the Ottomans in 1571. It is firstly based on a comparison between a list of family heads found in Venetian records of the late 1560s and another list included in a census carried out after the Ottoman takeover of the same town. This comparison is completed by Venetian judicial and administrative records of the 1570s and by other contemporary sources of various provenances, which are helpful for tracking down the personal fates of these people. The results of this enquiry finally serve for some tentative conclusions regarding Jewish patterns of migration within and around Venice's overseas empire.

Keywords:

• Cyprus
• Crete
• Chania
• Candia
• Jewish migration
• Ottoman conquests
• Venetian colonies
• Synagogues
• Eli‘ezer Ashkenazi
• Joseph Caro
• responsa
• Elijah of Pesaro

Notes

 1. Arbel, ‘The Jews in Cyprus’.

 2. ASV, X, Lettere ai Capi del Consiglio dei Dieci, busta 290, nos. 268–9 (10 July 1568); Arbel, ‘The Jews in Cyprus’, 28–9. With regard to Zara, Dr Stephen Sander, who has studied Zara's history in this period, has kindly informed me that although there is no mention of the expulsion in the published reports (relazioni) of Venetian governors of Zara, resident Jews remain unmentioned in Zara's notarial acts after 1567.

 3. Arbel, ‘The Jews in Cyprus’, 34–5; in 1563, Elijah of Pesaro wrote that there were some 28 Jewish households in Famagusta: see Eliyahu mi-Pesaro, ‘Mikhtav mi-Eliyahu’, 20. Among the various editions of the same text, I prefer this one.

 4. For the conquest of Cyprus by the Ottomans, see Hill, History of Cyprus, 3, 950–1040 (988–1037 deal with the siege and fall of Famagusta). On Cypriots taken into slavery, see Rudt de Collenberg, ‘Les litterae hortatoriae’; Costantini, ‘L'inventario’.

 5. The order to carry out the census was issued on 9 October 1572. Considering the magnitude of the enterprise, it must have been completed only during the following year. See Arbel and Veinstein, ‘La Fiscalité’, 16–7.

 6. The names are originally written in Arabic script without diacritical marks. We have attempted to reconstruct their corresponding Latin forms on the basis of other contemporary lists, without ignoring, however, what can be considered as the phonetic form behind the spelling of the original document. It should be remembered that in this period, the same name could be spelled in different forms, as can also be seen in this short list. The use of the term ‘community’ (‘cemaat’) and not that of ‘neighbourhood’ (‘mahalle’), which was used in all other cases, probably led Jennings to conclude that Famagusta's six Jewish households recorded in the first Ottoman census did not live any more in a single quarter, but were rather dispersed throughout the town. See Ronald Jennings, Christians and Muslims, 263. In an earlier publication, Jennings was less resolved in this respect, cf. ‘Population, Taxation and Wealth’, 178. On the location of Famagusta's Jewish quarter during the Venetian period, see Arbel, ‘The Jews in Cyprus’, 25–7.

 7. In the first Ottoman census, Famagusta had 1176 ‘normal’ households, 434 bachelors, 90 widows, and 45 more persons belonging to other categories. See Tapu ve Kadatro Müdürlüğü, Ankara, kuyudu kadime, No. 506/64, fols. 62v–72r. I am grateful to Gilles Veinstein for allowing me to use his transcription of this document. On the basis of these data, Jennings estimated the town's population at between 5950 and 6300 (his count of the household is also slightly different from ours). See Jennings, Christians and Muslims, 263. My own estimation, based on a coefficient of 3.5 per family head, is lower, namely ca. 4685. On Famagusta's population before the war, see Arbel, ‘Cypriot population’, 198–201.

 8. ASV, Duca di Candia, Memoriali, busta 37, fasc. 41/1, fols. 222v–223.

 9. Yisra'el Ya‛aqov Khuli the physician appears in 1574 as the representative (presumably the condostabulo, or official head) of the Jewish community of Candia, who presented the capitoli, or ordinances, of the community for confirmation by the Venetian authorities. See Artom and Cassuto, Statuta iuaeorum Candiae eorum que memorabilia, 155–60.

10. Ibid.: para tre de pomi d'arzento che soleno metter sopra la scrittura del testamento vechio, et altri due pomi de christallo, si meteno come di sopra, et coperte nuove de ormesin et raso tisati, che si copra il testamento nel locco dove lo tengono, et appresso coltrine tre, le due de ormesin ligato in arzento. The use of the term ‘Old Testament’ to denote the Pentateuch scroll seems to reflect the scribe's ignorance of Jewish religious customs. Crystal Tora ‘apples’ (more commonly known as rimonim, or ‘pomegranates’) are also mentioned in Aragonese synagogue inventories prepared in the course of the expulsion of the Jews from that kingdom in 1492. See Motis Dolader, La expulsión de los judíos del reino de Aragón, II, 84–86 (manzanas de cristal, manzanas cristalinas).

11. Joseph Caro, She'elot u-teshuvot Beit Yoseph [Responsa Beit Yoseph], Dinei Yibum Vehalitza, no. 5.

12. This obligation is based on Deuteronomy 25:5.

13. Arbel, ‘The List’.

14. On the synagogues of Famagusta, see Ya‘akov Beyrav, Sefer she'elot u-teshuvot [Responsa], no. 5. According to an unpublished sixteenth-century manuscript, the Jews in Famagusta had to pay a rent for the synagogue to the Famagusta Cathedral, as well as a ‘pension’ to the foundling's house (the Pietà). See Biblioteca del Museo Civico Correr, Venice, MS. Venier IV/2, fasc. 8, fol. 23r. I am grateful to Gilles Grivaud for passing this information to me.

15. On Rabbi Eli‛ezer, son of Elijah Ashkenazi, see Ben-Sasson, ‘Ashkenazi, Eliezer ben Elijah the Physician’. According to Elijah of Pesaro, Eli‛ezer Ashkenazi was 50 years of age in 1563. See Eliyahu mi-Pesaro, ‘Mikhtav mi-Eliyahu’, 21. See also Ashkenazi's own reference to his dwelling in Famagusta in the introduction to his Josef Lekach [sic], n.p.

16. Ben-Sasson, ‘Ashkenazi, Eliezer ben Elijah the Physician’.

17. Arbel, ‘The Jews of Cyprus’, 40 n.82.

18. For Elijah's children accompanying him to Cyprus, see Eliyahu mi-Pesaro, ‘Mikhtav mi-Eliyahu’, 7, 12. For the new evidence, see below.

19. On loans taken by the authorities of Famagusta on the eve of the war, see Valderio, La guerra di Cipro, 65.

20. ASV, Consiglio dei Dieci, Secreti, filza 17 (1573). These ‘post-mortem debits’ of the martyred governor of Famagusta probably result from the double-entry accounting of bills of exchange drawn by Bragadin, to be repaid in Venice.

21. Ibid. ASV, Giudici del Proprio, Successioni, busta 5, reg.13, f. 80v (15 Oct. 1571). On the Jews of Pesaro in this period, see Segre, ‘Gli ebrei a Pesaro’.

22. Ventura, ‘Bragadin, Marcantonio’, 686–9. On 5 October 1569, Bragadin had already signed an official dispatch from Famagusta in his capacity as captain of this town, see ASV, Dispacci al Senato, filza 4 (blue numbering).

23. Only 26 heads of households were registered in the Ottoman census after the conquest of Candia. In 1699, a new synagogue, called Kretiki sinagogi (‘the Cretan Synagogue’), was founded in Zakynthos. See, Rivlin, Pinkas Hakehillot [sic], 99. Surnames typical of Cretan Jews, such as Mavrogonato and Del Medigo, can be found in Corfu from the late seventeenth century onwards.

24. ASV, X, Lettere ai Capi del Consiglio dei Dieci, busta 290, nos. 268–9 (10 July 1568); Arbel, ‘The Jews in Cyprus’, 34–5.

25. Tapu ve Kadastro Müdürlüğü, Ankara, kuyudu kadime, No. 506/64, fols. 62v–72r.