68 · Ömer Turan
and their economic, cultural, and religious institutions, including schools
and pious foundations, were banned or kept under pressure. Their eco-
nomic and cultural achievements, mosques, synagogues, and cemeteries
were destroyed.
Notes
- Jewish migration to the Ottoman Empire was not limited to the Iberian
Peninsula in the fifteenth century. From the fourteenth century until the end of
the Ottoman Empire, the Jews who were persecuted in Spain, France, Germany,
Ukraine, and Russia came to the Ottoman territories. However, Sephardi migra-
tion to the Ottoman lands was the biggest one. Even though their migration
continued for about a century, 1492 was chosen as a symbolic year of the Sep-
hardi Jews’ arrival. In the Ottoman archives, there is a letter dated 1892 signed
in the name of the Jews of the World to thank the Ottoman sultan for accepting
the Jews four hundred years earlier. Prime Minister Ottoman Archives (hereaf-
ter BOA), Y.MTV, No. 61/51. The Jews of Turkey also established a foundation
to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of their arrival. - Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, Türkiye ve Balkan Yahudileri Tarihi
(14–20. Yüzyıllar), trans. Ayşe Atasoy (Istanbul: Iletişim, 2001), 15. - Stanford Shaw, Turkey: Land of Refuge, conference text given at Ankara
Chamber of Commerce, organized by Altay Foundation in 2005, 7–11. Y. Ercan
claims that even before the Ottomans, Muslim Turks and Jews always had good
relations. Under Seljuki rules, Jews had close relations with the sultans and
good economic positions. For instance, Ibn Samha, a Jew, was the representative
of the Seljuk sultan Meliksah and his vizir, Nizamülmülk. Another Jew, Sadüd-
devle, was vizir of the Anatolian Seljuk State in 1291. The famous Arabic trav-
eler Ibn Batuta wrote that when he visited the palace of Aydinoglu Mehmet Bey
in Birgi, he saw an old Jewish doctor sitting before the Islamic scholars. Yavuz
Ercan, Osmanlı Yönetiminde Gayrimüslimler (Ankara: Turhan Kitabevi, 2001), 31. - Inalcık points out that the cooperation between the Jews and the Otto-
man Turks was a result of a conjunction of historical circumstances. Pragmatic
considerations played an important role. Mutual trust and loyalty were the
characteristics of those close relationships. Halil Inalcık, “Foundation of Otto-
man-Jewish Cooperation,” in Jews, Turks, Ottomans: A Shared History, Fifteenth
through the Twentieth Century, ed. Avigdor Levy (New York: Syracuse University
Press, 2002), 3–14; Halil Inalcık, “Jews in the Ottoman Economy and Finances,
1450–1500,” in Essays in Honor of Bernard Lewis: The Islamic World from Classical to
Modern Times, ed. C. E. Bosworth and Charles Issawi (Princeton: Darwin Press,
1994), 513–55. Regarding the role of the Jews in the Ottoman society, see Walter
F. Weiker, Ottomans, Turks, and the Jewish Polity: A History of the Jews of Turkey
(Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1992); Minna Rozen, A History of
the Jewish Community in Istanbul: The Formative Years, 1453–1566 (Leiden: Brill