Ottoman Salonika
nation-state, where those of “Jewish blood” were not welcome. Since they
chose to marry one another, it is not surprising that the Dönme also pre-
ferred to reside together as neighbors in family groups.
Self-Segregation
Where did the great interrelated merchant families live and conduct
their business? How does the spatial distribution of the Dönme within
Salonika provide evidence of their way of being? Did members of the
three different sects live together as neighbors, or did they reside in dif-
ferent neighborhoods? Why did they live in the neighborhoods in which
they lived? Did they live among Jews, or Muslims? Did the Dönme form
self-chosen ghettoes? Where did they build their schools and mosque?
What does their spatial location in the city say about them?
It is inappropriate to speak of ghettos in the Ottoman Empire, be-
cause in most Ottoman cities, although there were neighborhoods that
were referred to as Christian or Jewish, and despite a great deal of self-
segregation, no neighborhood was exclusive to any one group. No group
was forced by law to reside in a particular district. This was also the case
in Salonika. According to the first Greek census of the city in 1913 , fewer
than one-third of the city’s inhabitants lived in neighborhoods where
80 percent belonged to a single religion.^20 While different groups pre-
dominated in different districts of the city—Christians in the east, Jews
in the south, Muslims in the north—one could still find Jews in Muslim
neighborhoods and vice versa. The term “ghetto” is troublesome, more-
over, because it is too loaded to use objectively.
Since they were officially Muslim and lived ostensibly as Muslims, the
Dönme established themselves in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods
of the city, not in Jewish ones, inasmuch as neither they nor Jews con-
sidered themselves to belong to that people or to their religion. In the
process, they converted apparently Muslim neighborhoods into Dönme
ones. The Dönme tended to own businesses in the neighborhoods where
they resided, as well as in the central business district, like members of
all other groups. Thus Karakaş primarily owned businesses in predomi-
nantly Karakaş areas. Again, this fits the depiction of the Dönme as a
closed group, not only marrying only other members of the same Dönme
sect, and residing together, but also doing business with partners from the
same sect and establishing economic concerns in the same neighborhoods.