Ottoman Salonika
able to build seaside villas in the poshest district of the city also attests
to their ability to take advantage of nineteenth-century economic devel-
opments. Like other Ottoman cities’ new outlying suburbs, the quarter
“attracted wealthy merchants to move out of the old city” and build man-
sions where they could display and stage their social status.^42 Their choice
of residential segregation, however, confirms their continued closed na-
ture. The two impulses competed in them.
The Kapancı’s other reasons for choosing Hamidiye are less apparent.
Among these were the absence there of mosques, and the opportunity
for family and sect members to live side by side. In his autobiography,
the Karakaş Reşat Tesal, son of a parliamentarian in Salonika, relates how
his father had wanted to move after he married from a densely crowded
predominantly Muslim quarter of the city, most likely one of the six men-
tioned above, to Hamidiye, but his parents refused to let him do so, in
part because they didn’t want him to move out, but more because they
did not want him living so far from a mosque.^43
Most Dönme lived in neighborhoods in the center of Salonika, between
the predominantly Muslim and Jewish sections of the city (Karakaş and
Yakubi). This reflects the fact that they were seen as in between Jews and
Muslims in both a religious sense and a social sense (an understanding
manifested in the 1942 wealth tax in Turkey, discussed in Chapter 9 ). And
while living in between does not always mean having a mediating or in-
between role, we know that residential patterns in Salonika at the turn of
the twentieth century mapped onto and symbolized identities.
The Dönme Mosque
The Dönme lived apart, but did their buildings look like those built by
others? How does their distinct architecture illustrate the Dönme way?
Syncretistic Dönme tastes were inscribed in the visual language of their
buildings.^44 Dönme architecture displayed an experimental boldness and
synthesis of western European and Ottoman forms. As we have seen,
the Dönme chose to build their seaside mansions, mosque, and schools
in the new suburb of Hamidiye. Ahmet Kapancı’s 1900 villa contains
Corinthian capitals, Moorish arches, bands of multicolored Spanish tile,
and baroque touches, as I observed on several visits (see fig. 1.1). The
monogram “AK” is prominently etched in Latin letters on the front of
the building. The architect, Pierro Arigoni, was influenced by the Danish