converting the jewish prophet and jewish physicians 123Shabbatai Tzevi’s messianic calling could not have come at a worse time
for the Jewish elite in Istanbul. It confi rmed for the Ottomans that Jews were
untrustworthy and helped convince them to turn to the Jews’ rivals, Orthodox
Christians, as the two groups struggled for positions of power and infl uence.
Jews appeared to be a volatile and untrustworthy group because they so whole-
heartedly endorsed Shabbatai Tzevi. Their actions threatened to undermine the
social order and directly challenged the sultan’s uncontested rule when he was
facing serious military and fi nancial problems, including the siege of Venetian
Crete, a fact noted by a late Ottoman historian.^3 Shabbatai Tzevi’s attempt to
dethrone the sultan and his inciting Jews to sedition worsened already nega-
tive palace opinion of Jews. The decade of the 1 660s was thus a crucial turning
point for the fortunes of Istanbul Jewry. Shabbatai Tzevi’s mission to the city,
initially met with such hope and even cockiness on the part of some Jews who
felt their persecutors would soon taste their just reward, ended with most of the
rabbi’s original followers in despair and many eventually converted to Islam. It
benefi ted Orthodox Christian physicians, translators, diplomats, and advisors,
to whom Ottomans would thereafter entrust their lives and political affairs.
Due to the dissemination of prophecies concerning Shabbatai Tzevi, many
Jews in Istanbul expected a “quick transfer of the sultan’s power” to the rabbi.^4
Especially those from Iberia believed Shabbatai Tzevi would dethrone the sul-
tan and crown himself king sometime in the autumn of 1 665 or winter of
1 666: “Jews printed prophecies of rescue from the tyranny of the Turk, and
leading the Grand Signior [the sultan] himself captive in Chains.” He referred
to himself as “the High King, above all the kings of the Earth,” and told the Jews
not to fear, “for you shall have Dominion over the Nations.”^5 According to the
Frenchman Chevalier De La Croix, Jews expected “the imminent establishment
of the kingdom of Israel” and the subsequent “fall of the Crescent and of all
the royal crowns in Christendom.”^6 Christians such as the Armenian historian
and priest Arakel of Tabriz feared the Jews would then destroy other peoples.^7 AFrench Catholic priest wrote that Jews threatened Christians “with dire disaster
if we failed to join them as soon as possible, and of our own good and free
will walked in front of the king who would rule over them, acknowledging his
kingdom and submitting to the religion and the laws which he would establish
in the world.” As a result of this fervor, Jews exhibited a “peculiar atmosphere
of feverish expectation” that was a “psychological and social reality.”^8
The man who created such expectations was born in 1 626 to a Jewish
family of Greek origins in the new, bustling Ottoman port city of Izmir. His
parents had immigrated to this relatively new city, a rough-and-tumble town of
Armenians, Jews, Muslims, Orthodox Christians, English, French, and Dutch
that began to rival Istanbul as international entrepôt.^9 In this brash, diverse