Ottoman Salonika
underground nature, especially after the order was banned throughout
the empire in 1826. It also reflects their desire to live near its main pil-
grimage site, the tomb of Osman Baba, the group’s messianic incarnation
of Shabbatai Tzevi. Yet on the other hand, their location next to the new
seat of local government also positioned them to participate in all of the
local changes occurring in the late nineteenth century, particularly serving
as civil servants and in local administration.
That the Karakaş resided in neighborhoods contiguous to two predom-
inantly occupied by Kapancı, who preferred to remain in the core of the
city, reflects the origins of the Kapancı as an offshoot of the Karakaş.^27 One
of these Kapancı neighborhoods contained the converted St. Demetrius
Church (renamed Kasımiye Mosque), whose shrine was administered by
Mevlevi Sufis, the order Kapancı frequented. Kasimiye was the site of the
Kapancı Terraki school on Pazar Tekkesi street (after 1912 renamed Odos
Kassandrou), where Sabiha Sertel’s father, Nazmi Efendi, had his two-
story timbered home and Duhani Hasan Akif ’s son and daughters lived.^28
Thus in the core of the city, Karakaş and Kapancı resided in adjacent
neighborhoods containing major tombs in the main officially Muslim
district in the city’s north-central area.
The Yakubi mainly lived near their meeting house in Yılan Mermeri, a
Muslim district several neighborhoods west of the main Karakaş cluster,
on the other side of the seat of government, befitting their assimilation
into Islam and local government role. On the eve of the Dönme depar-
ture from the city in 1923 , Safiye, the wife of Osman Said, the mayor of
the city and son of former mayor Hamdi Bey, resided in neighboring
Şehabeddin neighborhood on Saatli Cami street.^29 That the Yakubi are
harder to locate, and were the only group to endow a mosque in the city,
its main benefactors being men who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca,
illustrates Yakubi assimilation into the Muslim community.
The Yakubi mosque was built, and Yakubi Dönme Mayor Hamdi Bey
resided, in Hamidiye (named for Sultan Abdülhamid II), the first suburb
of the city to be built outside the Byzantine walls.^30 It was a religiously di-
verse neighborhood, and the Dönme elite from all three sects lived there.
By 1906 , it had one church (Holy Trinity), one mosque (the New Mosque
built by Yakubi Dönme), and one synagogue (Beyt Şaul).^31 The neighbor-
hood contained wide boulevards, parks, ornate mansions, and cafés and
was built as a planned district, connected to the old city by tramway.^32 Its
main boulevard, likewise called Hamidiye, was also referred to as Seaside