Traveling and Trading ing Muharrem and was distributed to friends, relatives, and the poor in
great quantities.”^68 Nicholas Stavroulakis says Aşure was treasured by the
Dönme because they saw Shabbatai Tzevi as the incarnation of the spirit
of prophecy passed from Muhammad to Ali to his sons, Husayn and Has-
san, the Prophet’s grandsons. Ashura means “tenth” in Arabic and repre-
sents the 10 th day of the Muslim month of Muharrem, in which Husayn
and his brother Hassan were martyred at the battle of Karbala in 680 C.E.
( 61 A.H.).^69 Yıldız Sertel notes how the imam of the Dönme mosque
presided over a family engagement ceremony prior to 1913 at which an
animal was sacrificed and Aşure distributed.^70
Dönme customs were also evident at home. Hasan Akif ’s descendant
explains how she was taken out to see the new moon each month and to
recite a prayer that her mother taught her: “O God, I see the Moon, O
God I do believe. Let the Moon be blessed by God.” It is likely that the
custom of greeting the new moon stemmed from the eighteen command-
ments of Shabbatai Tzevi. Number fifteen states: “Each and every month
they should look up and behold the birth of the moon and shall pray that
the moon turn its face opposite the sun, face to face.” Gershom Scholem
explains: “This is the observance of the Sanctification of the (New) Moon
according to the Zoharic interpretation [the Zohar is the most important
medieval Spanish Kabbalist text] of it as an allusion to the hope for a
‘holy union’ between the sun and moon (‘face to face’).”^71
This Kapancı woman related that even in Belgium, at Kandil, nights
when Muslims celebrate events in Muhammad’s life, including his con-
ception, birth, ascent, and the revelation of the Qur’an, “we would
gather together and have special sweets and sing: ‘Butter money, candle
money / This night, festive oil lamp money / Like skewers in a row come
the dervishes / Lacking meat they ask for fish.’”^72 As the descendants of
converts to Islam, Dönme thus also celebrated events in the life of Mu-
hammad, the last (publicly sanctioned) prophet prior to Shabbatai Tzevi,
according to them, and modeled their celebrations of the life of their
prophet Shabbatai Tzevi on these (as well as on those of the Christians).
The Dönme Diaspora
Three overlapping Dönme groupings or networks can be distinguished:
(a) traders dispersed throughout central and western and Ottoman
Europe, functioning mainly in French; (b) imperial officials throughout