2 74 Jacoby
Rural Jewries and Jewish Landholding in Latin Greece
Kosher food and wine were among the basic requirements of Jewish life.
Their supply could be ensured in three different ways: complete dependence
upon the mechanisms of the general economic system, yet under close Jewish
supervision over production, transportation, and distribution; reduced depen-
dence linked to Jewish holding or owning of land and domestic animals, which
enabled stricter control; finally, self-sufficiency. None of these options excluded
the others, and the three clearly cohabited in Byzantium and Latin-ruled ter-
ritories. Not surprisingly, therefore, Jews were eager to own or hold land and
engage in agricultural and pastoral production or, alternatively, to obtain land
and a workforce, whether for self-consumption or for the supply of the internal
economic network geared to Jewish customers.110
The evidence regarding Jewish rural settlements or rural sites inhabited,
owned, or rented by Jews in Byzantium and the Latin-occupied territories has
been largely overlooked so far. It is rather meagre and sporadic, and for many
sites does not reveal how long they were exploited by Jews. Still, these sites
were presumably more numerous than it would seem at first glance. The plant-
ing or acquisition of vineyards must have been considered a priority, in view of
the ritual function of wine. However, it is rather unlikely that the Jewish rural
sector ever covered all the demand for kosher commodities of any community
in the empire or in Latin-ruled territories. As a result, the internal Jewish sup-
ply network heavily relied on closely supervised external labour and produce.
A few Jewish rural communities and Jewish farmers are securely docu-
mented in the Byzantine Empire in the three centuries preceding the Fourth
Crusade. There is no such evidence after 1204. So far we know only of a single
Jew living in 1352 with his family in a village of central Crete. A Cretan village
called Avriaki and Evreaki situated south-east of Candia is attested in 1235.
The first component of these names seems to derive from “Evraios” or “Jew”.
It may imply an exclusively Jewish population or a majority of Jews among
the inhabitants, yet it is unclear in what period.111 Place names with a compo-
nent suggesting Jewish rural settlement are also recorded in other Latin-ruled
territories, in Mytilene, Corfu, Andros, Tenos, Lemnos, Attica, and Byzantine
Thasos.112 Several of these place-names only survive in folk traditions, are
110 On the operation of that network: Jacoby, “The Jews in Byzantium,” pp. 26–28, 31–32.
111 Jacoby, “Jews and Christians,” pp. 253–54. Incidentally, the Jewish quarter of Candia was
called “Ovraki” in the local Greek dialect: Chryssa A. Maltezou, “From Crete to Jerusalem:
The Will of a Cretan Jew (1626),” in Intercultural Contacts, pp. 191, 194.
112 The transcription of the names adopted here reflects Greek pronunciation.