Honored by the Glory of Islam. Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe

88 honored by the glory of islam

Ottoman dynasty and administration. Jews were losing their struggle with

Orthodox Christian competitors. The Kadızadeli struggle for positions within

the religious hierarchy mirrored the competition between Jews and Orthodox

Christians for palace favor. In the early 1 660s, Kadızadelis and Orthodox Chris-

tians were in the ascendancy. Without a patriarch or European support or even

the economic wherewithal of the Orthodox Christian elite to counter any move

against them, Jews were easy to deport without facing backlash.

Of an estimated forty synagogues in the city, the Shariah court records of

Istanbul reveal that at least seven burned in the great fi re, representing diverse

groups of Jews who had originated in central and southeastern Europe, the

Crimea, Anatolia, and Iberia.^35 These synagogues included that of the German

congregation of Ashkenazi Jews who had voluntarily migrated to the city in the

fi fteenth century; the synagogues of the Antalya and Borlu, Dimetoka, Borlu,

and Zeitouni/İzdin congregations of Anatolian and Rumelian Romaniot Jews

deported to the city by Sultan Mehmed II; the synagogue of the Istanbul con-

gregation of Karaites deported from Kaffa in the Crimea; and the synagogue of

the Aragon congregation of Jews who voluntarily migrated to the city follow-

ing their expulsion from Spain in the fi fteenth century.^36 The plots of land on

which the synagogues were located and the properties the congregations pos-

sessed accrued to the state treasury and became state-owned land, and Muslim

foundations purchased them at auction.

Once the synagogue lands were purchased, Jews were also expelled from

the area so that they would not rebuild their homes, houses of worship, and

shops. Uriel Heyd notes that the Jewish communities of ten neighborhoods in

Istanbul, including Zeyrek, Balkapanı, and Hoja Pasha, which had appeared

in a population register early in the seventeenth century, were not recorded

in a register of 1691 –92. He concludes that the Jews must have abandoned

these areas since fi res had destroyed their neighborhoods.^37 Fire alone, how-

ever, did not chase them away. Soon after the blaze an imperial decree copied

into the Shariah court record ordered “that after the fi re Jews not reside in

Istanbul from Hoja Pasha [bordering the walls of Topkapı Palace in the east] to

Zeyrek [or Saraçhane in the west].” Another commanded that “the households

in which Jews resided located in Istanbul in the neighborhoods of Hoja Pasha

and its vicinity that burned in the great fi re of the sixteenth of Dhu al-Qa‘da

1 070 [ July 24, 1 660] that are private property are to be sold to Muslims, and

those that are owned by endowments are to be entrusted to Muslims.”^38 Silah-

dar confi rms that the area from Tahtakale (near the Rüstem Pasha Mosque)

to Hoja Pasha had been fi lled with apartment buildings rented out to Jews,

which, after burning in the fi re, were prohibited by imperial decree from being

rebuilt.^39 Authorities also expelled Jews from rented rooms in apartments