The Jews in the Conquest of Istanbul

One of the first things Sultan Mehmet did in Istanbul was to look after the population of Istanbul and improve the state of misery the city was suffering in 1453. When the city of Constantinople passed to the Ottoman Empire, it had a population of no more than 30,000 souls. Apart from the walls being in ruins, the citizens, having no hope of salvation, had let the city fall into deep poverty. For this reason the Sultan ordered Constantinople to be repopulated, the lamentable state of the city improved, and everything in ruins restored as quickly as possible. By 1480 the population is said to have risen to nearly 200,000. When Ibn Battuta passed through Constantinople in 1330 he said there were 13 quarters in the city apart from Galata, and in 1480 they counted 180 quarters. People were brought from other towns, from the interior of Anatolia and from the Balkans. The criteria for selecting people for Istanbul were good qualities, honesty and culture. The Jews met these criteria. The first Jews came from Edirne, Bursa and Salonika. Of course the Jewish population grew much more with the expulsion from Spain in 1492. We do not have many sources to know this migration in detail. The only sources, apart from the Ottoman books, were the historians Doukas, Kritoboulos, Eliyahu Kapsali, a few of the foundations of Mehmet II, and the writings of Professor Halil İnalcık.

For the Jews before the conquest, Benjamin of Tudela says that all the Jews lived opposite Constantinople, in what we today call Galata or Pera. When he came in 1176 he saw that the Jews had no right to ride on horseback and had to cross the sea (the Golden Horn) by boat to speak with the rulers. Benjamin tells us there were 3 classes of Jews: the Rabbanites, the Karaites and the Romaniotes. They lived in the same quarter but had walls separating them. Another traveller who came to Constantinople before the conquest was Ibn Battuta in 1330. He tells us that the person who taught him how to speak with the emperor was a Jew who knew Arabic. A Russian pilgrim, Zosima, tells us there was a gate in the walls near today's Gülhane Park called the 'Porta Judea'. The name of this same gate appears on Buondelmonti's map in 1422. Another traveller, Bertrandon de la Broquière, in 1430 speaks of the Jews who lived in Galata or Pera (opposite), a quarter that always remained a commercial centre.

Sultan Mehmet II's policy was to bring Jews from other towns to Istanbul. According to Bernard Lewis, it was a way of balancing trade against the Byzantine merchants. Moreover the Jews were known as the People of the Book, capable and trustworthy economically and politically. Eliyahu Kapsali, nephew of Moshe Kapsali, the Chief Rabbi at the time of the conquest, tells us that Sultan Mehmet had allowed the Jews to settle in any town of the Empire. Kapsali says the Sultan even learned Hebrew from a Jewish teacher. The historian Kritoboulos, who witnessed the conquest, tells us how the Jews were settled in Istanbul. In the population register of 1455 it is written that Jews from Yambol, Ohrid, Štip, Trikala, Plovdiv and Sofia — towns of today's Bulgaria — all came to Istanbul. Another population register, of 1485, speaks of 'the Jew Salamon, born in Nikopol and living in Istanbul', 'the Jew Yako, born in Kastoria (today's Greece) and living in Istanbul'. In an edict of Sultan Mehmet it is written thus: 'In Konstantiniye, the quarter of the Jews of Edirne'. From all this we understand that Jews from Edirne came to Istanbul.

We know that certain Jews who were forced into exile from Bursa to Istanbul fled back to Bursa and were imprisoned. Apart from Bursa, Edirne and Salonika, Jews from various parts of the Ottoman Empire came to Istanbul in the same period. The Jews of Salonika lived in Balat. I believe many will remember the 'Selaniko' synagogue, and this is proof that these Jews lived in Balat. Only, we are not very sure whether this synagogue was of the 15th or the 16th century. Avram Galante and Stefanos Yerasimos tell us that Jews from Antalya, Tire, Sinop, Ayasuluk (today Selçuk), Eğridir and Kastamonu came to settle in Istanbul. According to the estimates, the Jewish population of Istanbul at the time of the conquest must have been some 10,000 to 13,000 people. But with the arrival of the Sephardim this population grew by many more souls.

A debate that lasted for years was whether the arrival of the Jews in Istanbul was forced, by order of the Sultan, or voluntary. The case of the Jew who fled to Bursa and was imprisoned makes us think it could have been forced. According to the historian Bernard Lewis, those who came at the conquest must have been forced, while those who came from Spain, Portugal and Italy, and the Ashkenazim, were volunteers. Jews from all over the world now have their Blessed Homeland, with its doors wide open to all who wish to come to the Promised Land of their own free will. Adapted and compiled from a university study.