Ottoman Salonika
Yusuf Kapancı and Faiz Kapancı as factory owners, Ahmet Kapancı as
a manufacturer and fez and cloth merchant, and Mehmet Kapancı and
Namık Kapancı as the owners of banking houses.^60 Comparing these
names with a genealogy provided by the descendant of Yusuf Kapancı,
I found that Namık was Mehmet Kapancı’s son. He had been earlier
listed in the French-language Salonika Chamber of Commerce guide as a
money changer.^61 In 1911 , in celebration of Sultan Mehmet V Reşat’s visit
to the city, the Ottoman Textile and Fez Company erected a large victory
arch on what later became Plateia Eleutherias, illustrating the company’s
wealth, visibility, and importance to the city’s economy.^62
Dönme Networks in Central and Western Europe
Twelve turn-of-the-twentieth-century postcards written in Ottoman
Turkish or French, provided to me by a descendant of the Dönme Yusuf
Kapancı in Istanbul, offer evidence of the Dönme economic and social
networks across early twentieth-century western and central Europe and
show how the Dönme way of life was manifested in family bonds carried
with them on their travels.
A 1905 postcard in French from Yusuf Kapancı to a man in Paris who
was seeking information about a person known as “the one from Homs”
who lived in Aleppo in Syria, then a major Ottoman trading center, said
the name “Homsi” was not enough; Yusuf needed the man’s first name to
locate him. Since the names “Mısırlı” (Cairene / Egyptian) and “Şamlı”
(Damascene / Syrian) were connected to well-known Karakaş Dönme
families, this may be evidence of another Karakaş Dönme family, the
“Homsli.” It is noteworthy that the French businessman sought assistance
from one of the leading Kapancı families, which may suggest trade rela-
tions between Karakaş and Kapancı at the time (the rest of the postcards,
however, indicate the contrary). Another postcard, sent by Osman from
Berlin in 1909 to his brother İbrahim, provides evidence of the Kapancıs’
central European trading relations. “I’d be glad if you could send me the
address of one of your [Frankfurt] contacts,” Osman wrote.
Other postcards, although written to spouses, also provide information
on Dönme trade in western and central Europe. Osman Kapancı, who
had spent three months in central Europe on business, dashed off a post-
card to his pregnant wife Sabite in Salonika from Geneva on May 21 , 1910 ,
for example, saying, “I’ve just arrived.... Since this morning we have