BETWEEN CIVIC AND ISLAMIC OTTOMANISM: JEWISH IMPERIAL CITIZENSHIP IN THE HAMIDIAN ERA

Int. J. Middle East Stud. 44 (2012), 237–255doi:10.1017/S0020743812000037

Julia Phillips Cohen

B E T W E E N C I V I C A N D I S L A M I C O T T O M A N I S M :

J E W I S H I M P E R I A L C I T I Z E N S H I P

I N T H E H A M I D I A N E R A

AbstractThis article explores the responses of Sephardi Jews to two moments of heightened tensionand politicized violence in the Ottoman Empire during the late 19th century—the massacres ofArmenians in Istanbul in 1896 and the Greco–Ottoman War of 1897. It argues that many of thestrategies of representation that Jewish elites employed during these moments speak to their abilityand willingness to work within a framework of Islamic Ottomanism. Recognizing this patterncomplicates scholarly assumptions about the relationship of religious minorities to the deploymentof state religion in general and about the responses of non-Muslims to the Hamidian regime’smobilization of Islam more specifically. Identifying the pattern is not to celebrate it, however.Sephardi Jews’ relationship with Islamic Ottomanism was in many cases deeply ambivalent.Finding themselves torn between civic and Islamic forms of imperial identification during thisperiod, Ottoman Jews soon learned that both positions could entail uncomfortable choices anddisturbing consequences.

The reign of the Ottoman sultan Abdulhamit II from 1876 to 1909 has long beenconsidered a period of autocratic rule in which censorship was heavy, spies abundant,and public gatherings forbidden.1 Opponents of the regime famously fled to Egyptand Europe to pursue their political activities beyond its reach, while the Hamidiangovernment created an atmosphere of fear, self-censorship, and restriction within theempire.2 Yet even with an eye to such oppressive conditions, recent work has begun tochallenge the assumption that these circumstances necessarily foreclosed the possibilityof public activism within the empire, pointing instead to the emergence of Ottomanpublic spheres that were, in many cases, permitted or encouraged (if also monitored andrestricted) by the Hamidian regime.3

While this research has brought to light new actors and arenas of public activity, ascholarly consensus continues to suggest that the period of Abdulhamit II’s rule wit-nessed the narrowing of political possibilities in a different sense, through its promotion

Julia Phillips Cohen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Program in Jewish Studies,Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.; e-mail: [email protected]

© Cambridge University Press 2012 0020-7438/12 $15.00

238 Julia Phillips Cohen

of a form of state patriotism that employed the vocabulary and symbolism of Islam inorder to win the support of Ottoman and foreign Muslims alike.4 This imperial strategyled to what one scholar has called the “slow whittling down of multiethnic, multicon-fessional variants of Ottoman patriotism to the narrower scope of Ottoman Muslimpatriotism.”5 Gaining momentum following the Russo–Ottoman War (1877–78), whichended in Ottoman defeat and resulted in the loss of most of the empire’s Europeanterritories along with a significant proportion of its Christian subjects, Abdulhamit II’sIslamic politics focused on the Muslims who remained within the empire and nowconstituted approximately three-quarters of the imperial population.6 The Hamidianregime increasingly chose to emphasize the sultan’s role as caliph, or spiritual leader ofMuslims worldwide—including those in territories recently lost to the empire—whilealso seeking to prevent separatist nationalism among Ottoman Muslims.7

Abdulhamit II’s use of religion for statist purposes was not merely an Ottomanresponse to military losses, however: it also found clear parallels in the political programsof other late 19th-century empires. Imperial monarchs such as Russia’s Alexander IIIand the Habsburgs’ Franz Joseph similarly attempted to buttress their rule by creatingan aura of sacredness around themselves and their domains.8 Abdulhamit II’s weeklyprocessions to the Yıldız mosque for Friday prayer can thus be compared to FranzJoseph’s participation in Catholic rituals such as public foot washing and Corpus Christiprocessions.9 The implications of these developments for imperial subjects in each caseshould not be overlooked: not only did 19th-century tsars employ Christian Orthodoxyas a symbol for their own political legitimation but certain bureaucrats in the Russiangovernment also linked conversion to the tsar’s religion with loyalty to the state.10 Theintertwining of state religion and political allegiance in this manner had the potentialto inhibit members of other faiths from claiming a place at the center of state-buildingprojects.

This aspect of modern imperial politics has also drawn the attention of Ottomanhistorians, who have pointed to the exclusionary logic of Islamic Ottomanism. HasanKayalı has noted, for example, that while Abdulhamit II’s Islamism did not “jeopardizethe legal status and rights that the non-Muslims had gained under the secular Ottomanismof the preceding decades . . . clearly Hamidian ideology was exclusionary from a socialand psychological point of view with respect to non-Muslims.”11 Sukru Hanioglu hassuggested that this exclusion helped fuel opposition movements, which drew power fromtheir ability to appeal to non-Muslims alienated by Abdulhamit II’s Islamic Ottomanistproject.12

Other historians have interpreted this exclusion in terms of the shifting and increas-ingly fraught relationship between the Ottoman state and particular Christian communi-ties in the empire more specifically.13 Abdulhamit II’s growing concern over the threatposed to Ottoman territorial integrity by imperialist powers and separatist nationalistmovements was a driving factor behind his decidedly Islamic statecraft, which was in-tended to resist foreign encroachments into Ottoman affairs.14 As different non-Muslimcommunities came to be associated with the expansion of irredentist movements or rivalimperial powers, increasing numbers of Ottoman authors and bureaucrats began to regardthem with suspicion, as “metaphorical foreigners.”15 It was in this climate that negativeportrayals of non-Muslims, especially Armenian and Greek Orthodox Ottomans, madetheir way into the Ottoman-language press.16 Seen in this light, Islamic Ottomanism was

Between Civic and Islamic Ottomanism 239

not only a positive effort to forge ties with Muslims in the empire and beyond but alsoan attempt to separate out the internal outsiders from the rest of the imperial population.

Yet, as much recent scholarship on civic activism in the Hamidian era has demon-strated, moving beyond a focus on the constraints imposed under restrictive regimescan allow new stories to surface. Here too, examples drawn from other contemporaryimperial contexts offer fruitful points of comparison. As Robert Crews has shown for lateimperial Russia, a well-developed body of scholarship on the conflictual relationshipbetween the tsarist regime and the Muslims under its rule has tended to ignore evidenceof extensive cooperation between the two during the same period. Although new legalcodes implemented during the reign of Nicholas I (1825–55) “declared Orthodox Chris-tianity the ‘preeminent and predominant’ faith of the empire,” they “also systematicallybacked other religions on the premise that ‘all peoples inhabiting Russia praise theAlmighty God’ . . . and [pray] for the increase of the prosperity and strengthening of thepower of the Empire.”17 In this context, new conversionary and exclusionary pressurescoexisted with claims that non-Orthodox communities had a defined place in the empire.Scholarship on the history of late Habsburg Jewry sheds further light on the issue. Ratherthan retreating from imperial events that were clearly Catholic in nature, Jews flockedto the center of Vienna during Franz Joseph’s Corpus Christi procession and donatedfunds to the construction of the Votive Church in the capital.18

As these examples suggest, a state’s mobilization and public display of official religiondid not always, or necessarily, prevent members of other faiths from identifying withthat state. Yet this possibility remains largely unexplored. In the scholarship on the lateOttoman period, it has perhaps been obscured by the focus on Islamism’s social andpsychological exclusion of non-Muslims. Whatever the reason, the result is an overlylinear narrative of the place of non-Muslims in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire,proceeding from their inclusion during the Tanzimat era from 1839 to 1876—whichgave birth to a civic definition of imperial belonging—to their gradual exclusion onreligious grounds in the Hamidian era.

This narrative is problematic for a number of reasons. First, the new forms of IslamicOttomanism that gained favor in the final decades of the 19th century coexisted in tensionwith the civic version of Ottoman belonging developed during the Tanzimat era. Infact, universal definitions of imperial citizenship were never officially abandoned underAbdulhamit II. The regime as well as representatives of different religious communitiesin the empire continued to endorse the idea that all Ottoman citizens, regardless ofreligion, belonged equally to the imperial polity even when realities on the ground orpolicies adopted by the Porte seemed to suggest otherwise. Recognizing this allowsus to see the competing definitions of Ottoman-ness that existed simultaneously aswell as the choices, challenges, and tensions their coexistence entailed. It can also helpus to understand the ways in which the relationship between universal and exclusivedefinitions of imperial belonging was often cyclical rather than linear: during momentsof heightened tension or violence, civic definitions of imperial belonging might suffer,only to be revived after the immediate source of tensions had passed. Second, theresponses of non-Muslims to Hamidian Islamism were more complex than existingscholarly portrayals suggest. While Abdulhamit II’s use of Islamic rhetoric for politicalpurposes undoubtedly alienated non-Muslim individuals and collectives in ways wehave yet to fully explore, it is also the case that certain non-Muslims employed and


modified the language of Islamic Ottomanism to their own ends during this period.Finally, the relationship of different religious communities and individuals with theOttoman state was transformed in significant ways during the Hamidian era, sometimesat a dizzying pace, sometimes gradually. Thus, to speak of “non-Muslim” responses toIslamic Ottomanism may obscure as much as it illuminates. Such relationships wereoften uneven and complicated by the possibility that particular communities might gainfavor with the government precisely as the position of another group became moretenuous.

Indeed, during the mid-1890s, just as Ottoman Jews were finding new opportunitiesin government positions and public life, relations between the Ottoman state and itsArmenian citizens were strained to a breaking point, after widespread massacres ofArmenians across eastern Anatolia and the Ottoman capital. Tensions also grew betweenimperial authorities and Greek Orthodox citizens in this period, as the conflict over Creteturned into a full-scale war between the Kingdom of Greece and the empire in the springof 1897. As historian Carter Findley has noted, it is likely no coincidence that the positionof Armenian and Greek Orthodox officials in the Ottoman state bureaucracy began todecline during this period—slowly, throughout the decade, in the case of Armenian civilservants, and precipitously, after the war with Greece in 1897, in the case of GreekOrthodox state employees.19

It was within this context that Jews encountered a new flexibility in Ottoman publicspheres and patriotic discourse.20 Much as Robert Crews has argued that the 19th-centuryRussian state’s treatment of Muslim citizens “varied according to the vicissitudes ineducated Russians’ anxieties about . . . other groups,” Ottoman Jews found new favorwith the Porte and with Ottoman Muslim elites during the final years of the 19th century,just as the loyalty of other communities was increasingly questioned.21 Responding tothese developments, many Ottoman Jews attempted to distance themselves from thosenow deemed suspect by the regime, opting to claim their special affinity with Muslimsand with the Islamic politics of the Hamidian regime. Yet, throughout the same period,they also continued to publicly endorse more universal definitions of imperial belongingand a vision of enlightened sociability based on a civic model of Ottomanism, hostingcharitable dances and donating to libraries, schools, and clubs belonging to Ottomansof all faiths.22 As the 19th century came to a close, Sephardi Jews across the empireincreasingly found themselves torn between their investment in the status quo andpeaceful relations with their neighbors on the one hand and the reality of increasingpolitical polarization and violence on the other.23

OT T O M A N J E W S A N D T H E A R M E N I A N M A S S AC R E S I N I S TA N B U L

A report penned by a certain V. Gerson of Istanbul to the President of the Alliance IsraeliteUniverselle in Paris offers an unusually candid picture of the private deliberationsof an Ottoman Jew concerned with assuring that his community remained in goodstanding with his government. In September 1896, Gerson wrote to the French Jewishorganization’s central committee with a report he found troubling: Jewish notables of theOttoman capital intended to circulate a statement to European newspapers in responseto rumors that Jews had been involved in the violence perpetrated against Armenians inthe city a few weeks earlier. The aim of such a statement, Gerson explained, was to offer


incontrovertible proof “that the Jews of our capital behaved bravely and honestly duringthe recent massacres undertaken by Kurds and Lazzes against the poor Armenians ofHaskoy.” Although he believed the intentions of the statement’s writers to be entirelynoble, he wrote: “The most basic caution should counsel the Jews of the empire not to sayor publish anywhere the fact that they aided Armenians, people the Ottomans consider,perhaps with some justification, to be traitors, ingrates and anarchists.”24 Despite hisambivalence toward his Armenian compatriots, whom he described as both unfortunateand unruly, the position Gerson advocated could not have been clearer: whatever Jewshad done to aid the Armenians of the city that summer, announcing those efforts wouldcompromise the position of Jews in the empire. “Aiding traitors is not the work of apatriot,” he warned. If the Jews of the capital had such statements published—even ifthey did so far beyond the reaches of Ottoman territory—the news was bound to upset“the Ottomans” and possibly even spur them to take revenge. Who could know whatmight befall the Jews should a new massacre occur?25

Just one month before Gerson wrote these ominous words, in August 1896, large-scale massacres of Armenians had shaken the capital. The immediate trigger of theseevents was an action by members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (HaiHeghapokhakan Dashnaktsutiun) who placed bombs throughout Istanbul and held upthe Ottoman Bank in an effort to make their demands for Armenian rights known to theworld, killing and wounding dozens in the process. Within hours, large mobs armed withclubs, iron bars, and knives beset the city, murdering Armenian residents and pillagingtheir property. Although official bulletins published in the wake of the violence calledon Ottomans of all classes and religions to get along, warned against vigilantism, andthreatened to punish anyone who dared to disobey, the massacres lasted two days beforethe authorities intervened and put an end to the killing.26 Contemporary commentatorsand historians have attributed the attacks on Istanbul’s Armenian population alternatelyto “angry mobs from the lower classes of the capital,” “Kurds and Lazzes,” or “sof-tas [Islamic theology students] and Mussulman roughs.”27 While some scholars insistthat the mobs were “disorganized and excitable Muslim . . . rowdies” and “religiousextremists,” the suggestion of different sources that the attackers carried uniform clubshas led others to surmise police involvement.28 Although government estimates setthe Armenian death toll at just over 1,000, most foreign accounts suggest that manythousands of Armenians were killed over the two-day period.29 Among the areas hardesthit was the neighborhood of Haskoy, which was also home to large numbers of the city’sJews, including many of its poorest.

Almost immediately, competing claims arose concerning the role Istanbul’s Jews hadplayed in the violence.30 The version of events suggesting that Jews had aided theirArmenian neighbors (the version Moise Gerson hoped to suppress) is corroboratedby various eyewitness accounts. Two separate sources tell of Jews in Istanbul whooffered their tefellin (phylacteries, or leather boxes worn on the arm and head duringprayers) to their Armenian neighbors in order to disguise them as Jews amidst theviolence.31 Another source spoke of a “patriarchal old Jew” of Haskoy who hid thirty-one Armenians in his house while “valiantly refusing admittance to hordes of infuriatedTurks.”32 A Jewish man by the name of Aboab reported from Cairo that the owners ofvarious Jewish-run department stores in the Ottoman capital had helped their Armenianemployees escape on ships bound for Port Said.33 Still others suggested that hundreds


of Jewish families had come to the rescue of the persecuted Armenians during themassacres and that Jewish individuals donated large sums to the ravaged Armeniancommunity after the violence subsided.34

Yet other sources suggest that there were also Jews who helped the attackers findtheir victims and then joined in the pillaging of Armenian homes.35 A report lodgedby the Armenian patriarch to the Ottoman government requested state funds to repairArmenian homes pilfered by Jews following the massacres.36 This version of eventsmade its way not only to Ottoman authorities but also to the New York Times, whichsuggested that in the aftermath of the attacks in Haskoy, “much of the plunder wasfound in Jewish houses.”37 It also appeared in the account of a Jewish woman wholived in Istanbul’s Peri Pasa neighborhood during the massacres and who recalled that“two lower class” Jews from her quarter had taken part in the looting, adding that theywere subsequently “ostracized by their neighbors” and that “no good ever came to thembecause they were cursed by the stolen goods.”38 The stories of Jewish looters who tookpart in the pillaging of Armenian property in the Ottoman capital also surfaced in aneditorial issued by a Ladino serial of Sofia. Unburdened by the pressures of censorshipwithin the empire, the Bulgarian Jewish author critiqued David Fresco, the director ofthe Ottoman Ladino newspaper El Tiempo of Istanbul, writing that when “some derelictJews threw themselves upon the poor Armenians of Istanbul, plundering from them atthe hour when they were being hunted down, [the director] . . . did not open his mouthto condemn this act of barbarism.”39

It was precisely this type of public condemnation that Jewish leaders in the Ottomancapital hoped to combat by circulating refutations in the foreign press of any Jewishinvolvement in the 1896 attacks on Armenians. Some did this by focusing exclusivelyon the stories of the Jews who had sheltered Armenians in their homes and schoolsamidst the attacks, while also trying to explain away any reports of Jewish wrongdoingby suggesting that those Jews who had joined in the plundering of Armenian homeswere impoverished porters forced to carry the goods by the mobs who invaded theirneighborhoods.40 Others took a third position. Suggesting that Jews neither aided theArmenians of the city nor joined the attackers, one letter sent to London’s JewishChronicle denied Jewish involvement in the events altogether. According to the authorof this piece, in Istanbul’s Halıcıoglu district not a single Jew ventured out onto thestreets during the days of the massacres. Any claims to the contrary, the author assertedbaldly, were mere rumors dreamt up by Armenian revolutionaries.41

Against such attempts to create the impression of Jews’ neutrality, more than oneobserver explained Jewish involvement in the massacres as overtly political acts. Theyhad “sided with the Turks against the Christians,” according to a British source.42 Theantisemitic press of Germany, which picked up (and embellished) the story of Jewishinvolvement in the violence with no small dose of satisfaction, claimed that the Jewswho carted off the possessions of the victims had done so in part because of their hatredof Armenians, with whom they were in economic competition, but most of all becausethey had “wanted to make a good impression with the Turks.”43 Even some of those whosought to discredit the rumors spoke in similar terms, trying to deny the Jews’ “supposedsupport of the Turks against the Armenians.”44 Yet, while publicly Jews met with andrefuted claims that they had been on the “side” of the Ottoman Muslims—and thusalso of the government—privately Gerson suggested that the opposite interpretation was


also possible: having sheltered Armenian Ottomans against the wrath of the massacringmobs, Jews might be judged to have placed themselves on the wrong side of the dividingline that increasingly separated “true” Ottomans from the rest.45 Responding to what hebelieved to be the expectations of Ottoman patriotism at this moment, Gerson counseledsilence. Even if Jewish communal leaders could not control how their co-religionistshad acted during the August massacres, they could more carefully craft their positionafter the fact.

Within a matter of months, Jewish communal leaders appeared to revert to positionsmore in line with the civic model of Ottomanism, founded on expectations of cooperationamong Ottomans of all confessions. By late October, Moshe Halevi, the acting chiefrabbi of the empire, announced publicly that “many hundreds of persecuted Armenians”had found refuge in Jewish houses. It was true, he noted, that some Jews had endedup with items pillaged from Armenian homes, but he insisted that they had purchasedthem unknowingly. After learning of the provenance of the stolen goods, the relevantparties had returned the items through his person to the Armenian community.46 Equallynotable was the fact that the Jews who donated to the Armenians of the capital in thewake of the massacres chose to do so publicly, ensuring that Jewish names would holdan important place on the lists of donors. The Jewish-run Allatini firm of Salonica wasprominent among them.47

In early 1897—just half a year after the massacres of Armenians—El Tiempo, Istan-bul’s leading Ladino-language newspaper, reported that Jewish communal figures hadgone to greet the newly appointed Armenian patriarch during his trip to an Armenianorphanage in the neighborhood of Haskoy.48 The paper took this opportunity, as it oftendid on the occasion of an official visit by leaders of one Ottoman community to another, todeclare the meeting as proof of the excellent relations that existed between Armeniansand Jews. Yet the visit was clearly less a reflection of idyllic relations between thetwo communities than an attempt to repair them. Given the meeting’s location in theneighborhood of Haskoy—one of the principal sites of massacres the year before—suchan interpretation would not have been lost on readers.49 Istanbul’s Jewish press gave fewhints of such a possibility, however, instead selecting and publishing stories that couldhelp reinforce a sense of shared Ottoman civic identity among their readership now thatthe “troubles” were over.50

Still, like other inhabitants of the empire, Jews lived with a pronounced fear that politi-cized violence might engulf their neighborhoods. This left them attempting a precariousbalancing act. Over-identification with the state held the prospect of worsening their re-lations with their Christian neighbors and undermining the civic-Ottomanist work theircommunal leaders had undertaken for decades to forge ties of solidarity with imperialcitizens of other faiths. At the same time, evidence of alliances with groups now deemedsuspect by the Ottoman government meant potentially alienating themselves from theauthorities or from the city’s Muslim population, thus jeopardizing their attempts tomake a place for themselves within the Islamic Ottomanist politics of their time.

As much as different Ottoman Jews attempted to prove their loyalty and to adaptthemselves to the changing political landscape of the empire during the late Ottomanera, it was no simple task. Jews across the empire faced the challenge of proving thatthey were not internal outsiders at the very moment when thousands of Jewish pupilswere attending foreign schools in the empire, particularly those of the Alliance Israelite


Universelle.51 They also sought to show that they held no aspirations for nationalseparation as the Zionist movement was preparing to make its international debut in theform of the first World Zionist Congress scheduled for the summer of 1897.52 In theirefforts to navigate these tensions, Ottoman Jewish elites searched for ways to continuetheir public endorsement of the ideal of an all-inclusive Ottoman citizenry while alsoattempting to keep “suspect” groups at arm’s length and to bind their fortunes with thoseof Ottoman Muslims and with the state.

L E S S O N S I N OT T O M A N A L L E G I A N C E I N T H E M I D S T O F WA R

In the spring of 1897, war erupted between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom ofGreece over the status of Crete, where Greeks from the mainland had joined local Chris-tian islanders in revolt against Ottoman rule.53 Reports of clashes on the island appearedin Ottoman Jewish newspapers, driving home a point that would not have appeared asnews to their readers: despite the Ottoman Jewish elite’s efforts to foster harmoniousintercommunal relations, tensions between different religious groups continued to existon the ground and resurfaced now in this time of trouble. Violent confrontations betweenChristians and Muslims were recorded in cities across the empire, from Scutari to Ankarato Izmir.54 Some of these clashes manifested explicitly as religious conflicts, such as inScutari, where rumors spread that Christians had defamed a local mosque, or in Salonica,where Muslims allegedly ripped off the armbands of Red Cross personnel because ofthe cross they bore.55 Participants in these scuffles appeared to be reenacting on theirown streets the war between the Greek and Ottoman armies on the battlefield.

Although much of the violence recorded in the empire during this period occurredbetween Christians and Muslims, Jews were also caught up in the politicized atmosphereof wartime, just as they had been during the massacres of Armenians in Istanbul theyear before. In Crete, the Greek press accused the island’s Jews of identifying thehouses and shops of Christians to Muslim Cretans in search of revenge for the GreekOrthodox uprising against Ottoman rule.56 In Salonica, Jews and Muslims harassed agroup of Greek prisoners of war who passed through the city.57 In Izmir, Urla, and Chios,Jews’ celebrations of Ottoman victories reportedly provoked the ire of the local GreekOrthodox Christians, who boycotted Jewish businesses and threatened Jewish porterswho dared pass through the wrong part of town.58

As the conflict escalated, the focus of Ottoman suspicions turned toward the em-pire’s Greek Orthodox population.59 Ottoman officials expressed concerns that Greekinsurgents from across the border would arm Ottoman Christian populations and provokethem to rise up against the empire.60 Although various Greek Orthodox communities andindividuals publicly pledged their support for the Ottoman war effort, hundreds of GreekOrthodox young men—Hellenic and Ottoman citizens among them—were reported tobe leaving the empire’s shores in order to volunteer for the Greek army.61 The Porte tookmeasures to prevent its nationals from decamping to Greece while ordering individualsholding Greek citizenship to either leave Ottoman realms or renounce their legal status asHellenes.62 According to available population statistics, this measure affected as manyas 25,000 Greek citizens resident in the city of Izmir alone.63 The ecumenical versionof Ottoman belonging was thus put to the test once again: officially, the Hamidian


regime continued to differentiate between its own Greek Orthodox citizens, whom itsuggested remained loyal, and citizens of the Kingdom of Greece, considered as hostilesthroughout the duration of the war. Yet various communications from the time suggestthat this distinction was not always so clear.64 In this context, fraternizing with GreekOrthodox Ottomans—something that might have been interpreted as an expression ofcivic Ottomanism just a few months earlier—now threatened to make the position ofJews suspect. Jewish communal leaders responded to this dilemma with ambivalence.They advocated patriotism by encouraging their co-religionists to support the war effortin myriad ways and to pray for sultan and state.65 Yet at the same time they reactedto, propagated, and attempted to work out subtler messages conveying different andcompeting definitions of Ottomanism.66

Sephardi journalists and communal leaders began to speak less often of harmoniousrelations and more of the hardening line between those they portrayed as the friends andenemies of the empire. Editorials marked the rebels of Crete as “Christian brigands” whodeserved to be treated like “bandits,” while the Muslims who fought against the Chris-tians of the island became noble defenders of the Ottoman cause.67 In other instances,both the Muslim and Jewish inhabitants of the island appeared as victims in the pages ofthe empire’s Ladino press. As had been the case during earlier conflicts, including theRusso–Ottoman War (1877–78), these reports portrayed Ottoman Muslims and Jews asrefugees fleeing the violence of the battle zones and retreating into the Ottoman interiortogether.68 Ottoman Jewish journalists thus pointed their readers toward the confluenceof their own interests and experiences with those of Ottoman Muslims. Without makingthe comparisons explicit, Jewish journalists wrote of how Muslims around the worldfound new opportunities to unite around the figure of the sultan as caliph while notingthat Jews outside of Ottoman territory honored the sultan in remarkably similar ways.During and after the war, Ladino papers reported that Muslims in India and SephardiJews in Vienna held public prayers for the Ottoman state, sending first their donationsfrom afar and then their congratulations to the imperial army as it emerged victoriousfrom the conflict in late May.69 They also told of Bosnian Muslims who had crossedinto Ottoman territory to fight for the cause of the Islamic empire not long after runningarticles on Jews of Ottoman origin who had found their way to the front from Paris andVienna.70

In some accounts, Jews and Muslims came to stand in for the whole of Ottoman soci-ety. A report sent to El Tiempo in Istanbul by a Jewish correspondent from Izmir offersa striking example. Opening with the subtitle “Among the Jews,” the article describedthe various forms of patriotic activities undertaken by the city’s Jewish population thenturned to a description of Ottoman patriotism, subtitled “Among the Muslims,” beforecoming to an abrupt end. “In short,” it concluded, “all of the different communities ofour city are proving that they are at the height of their patriotic devotion.”71 Despite hisassertion that he spoke of “all of the different communities” of Izmir, the author of thearticle neglected to mention any community other than Jews and Muslims—leaving out,among others, the local Greek Orthodox population, which by many accounts representedthe single largest religious community in the city.72 Though it is impossible to know theauthor’s reasons for taking this approach, his discursive erasure of Christians appears tohave been symptomatic of the Ottoman Jewish press’s selective representations of real-ity: he mentioned only those communities whose collective and uninhibited expressions


of patriotism perfectly matched his ideal. This narrative allowed Jews to earn a specialsymbolic place at the side of their Muslim compatriots, but to the exclusion of othercommunities. El Tiempo’s Izmir correspondent was hardly alone in taking this approach.Although Ottoman Jewish leaders and journalists had long expressed their desire for thecamaraderie of all Ottoman religious communities, in wartime they now spoke morefrequently—sometimes exclusively—of Jews and Muslims when discussing Ottomanpatriotism. They also increasingly referred to their “Muslim brothers” as their compa-triots, thus effecting the discursive erasure not only of Ottoman Christians but also ofwomen.73

Both during and after the war of 1897, Ladino publications of the empire employedthe language of Islamic Ottomanism. El Tiempo ran a story on “The Death of a BraveMan,” which honored the life of an Albanian Muslim “religious martyr,” a term thearticle glossed in Turkish as sehid. The man had died fighting the Greeks at Domokos,Jewish readers learned, thus sacrificing his life “for his religion and country” in the finalbattle of the war.74 The paper also issued an article entitled “The Caliphate,” whichexplained to its Jewish audience that the Qur�an obligated Muslim allegiance to thesultan-caliph. The Ottoman state was the only remaining Muslim power in the world,the article continued, and as the seat of the caliphate, the vitality of the Islamic faithdepended on the empire’s continued existence.75

As Jews in the Ottoman capital and beyond read of the empire’s soldiers and martyrson the battlefields, the war intruded into their lives in other, subtler ways as well.Functions and balls boasting guests of all backgrounds were increasingly replaced by“patriotic events” in a narrower sense, such as those dedicated to wounded soldiersand Cretan refugees.76 Reports on these new gatherings now tended to mention onlythat Muslims had been in attendance.77 Another change came as the Ottoman Jewishcommunity of the capital began to shift the focus of its sponsored activities from Jewishcharity to efforts dedicated to the “general good.” Given the political turn toward Islamicdefinitions of Ottoman identity, coupled with the new strains caused by the war withGreece, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that Jewish visions of the “general good”became increasingly entangled with that of Ottoman Muslims specifically.

This was clearly the case with Ottoman Jews’ campaigns to assist the Muslim refugeesof Crete, a cause that also garnered a great deal of attention in Ottoman Muslim circles.78

Although Jews fled the island during the conflict as well, the Ottoman Jewish press didnot announce any parallel program to come to their aid. The task of providing for theCretan Jewish refugees arriving in different cities of the empire fell mostly to foreignJewish philanthropies, especially the Alliance Israelite Universelle, while Ottoman Jewsappear to have focused their energies more on the “common cause” of aiding Muslimrefugees from the island.79 That Jews may have been shifting their philanthropic patternsaway from Jewish charity during the war was suggested obliquely in several noticespublished in the Ladino press, which lamented the sorry state of Jewish institutions andtheir lack of funds at the same time that Jewish communal efforts were being directedtoward aiding Muslims from Crete.80 Although the capital’s Jewish press offered noexplicit discussion of what these choices meant, its pages often brought the potentialslippage between “Ottoman” and “Muslim” into relief.81

Just how entangled religious and imperial categories could become is demonstratedby a series of press reports on an Ottoman women’s organization formed in Istanbul


to provide for soldiers wounded during the war.82 Though articles issued by El Tiempoencouraged Jewish women across the empire to support the new endeavor, they initiallyreferred to the organization as a “Committee of Muslim Ladies” that was “composed ofwomen from the highest ranks of Muslim society.”83 The Ladino press was hardly alonein identifying the society as a Muslim one: the Ottoman-language women’s periodicalHanımlara Mahsus Gazete similarly introduced the organization as an Islamic Ladies’Society (Cemiyet-i Muhtereme-i Muhadderat-ı Islamiye) during the same period.84 Thefact that these reports used the term “Muslim” in the committee’s title did not stop ElTiempo from calling on its female readers to join the group or from praising the effortsof those who did. The paper issued various reports about the activities of “Madame EliasPasha,” the wife of the Jewish military doctor and Sultan Abdulhamit II’s private oph-thalmologist, who figured prominently among the committee’s members; other Ottoman,French, and Ladino papers of the empire similarly recorded the donations she secured forthe organization from celebrated foreign philanthropists.85 There is ample evidence thatscores of other Ottoman Jewish women contributed directly to the society: both duringand after the war, their names regularly appeared among the lists of donors to the commit-tee printed in the Ladino, Ottoman, French, and English press of the imperial capital.86

While the designation of the organization as “Muslim” likely served as a markerof the actual religious identity of the majority of the committee’s founding members,in the pages of El Tiempo it also became a flexible and symbolic term that did notbar Jews’ belonging. Remarkably, Ladino reports continued to refer to the society asMuslim even after articles in the empire’s Ottoman- and French-language press aswell as official reports about the group’s activities all came to define the committee inmore ecumenical terms, as an Ottoman women’s organization (Muhadderat-ı OsmaniyeCemiyet-i Hayriyesi; Comite des dames ottomanes).87 Still, the title of “Muslim” maynot have been an entirely comfortable one for Jewish journalists or their reading publics;after some time, El Tiempo experimented with calling the charitable organization by othernames.88 For a short time, it chose the rather bulky label of “The Society Established byMadame Sukru Bey, Daughter of the Grand Vizier.”89 By late June, it finally exchangedthe term “Muslim” for “Ottoman,” referring to the group as the “Committee of OttomanLadies for the Wounded,” also noting the presence of Ottoman Christian women in thesociety for the first time.90

It would be easy enough to conclude that these changes show how Jewish journalistsreporting on the society had recognized the incongruity of calling the organization—inwhich Jews and Christians had played an active role—a Muslim society and that they hadfinally solved the problem. Easy enough, perhaps, but not wholly accurate: a few weeksafter apparently having “settled” on designating the group as Ottoman, as various otherpress reports from the empire had done, El Tiempo reverted to the original appellationthat marked the society as Muslim.91 The terms, as well as the concepts they represented,remained in flux. Ottoman Jews, like other Ottomans, simply lived with the tension.

C O N C L U S I O N

Responding to the Hamidian regime’s emphasis on the Islamic nature of the empire,various Jewish individuals, from male journalists and rabbis to charitable women, found


ways of announcing their imperial belonging by emphasizing their special alliancewith Ottoman Muslims. The different symbols and values associated with Islam in lateOttoman public spheres also made their way into the patriotic repertoire of Ottoman Jews,who repeatedly emphasized their identification with their “Muslim brothers” in speechesand the press and attempted to make such links concrete through their participationin projects clearly marked as Muslim. Indeed, alignment with local and even distantOttoman Muslims became an integral way for Ottoman Jews to express their loyalty to theempire during the war. While the all-inclusive Ottomanist vision of harmony between allreligious groups of the empire was never lost, whether in the midst of the 1896 massacresof Armenians or during the war, proclamations of this type were deemphasized and otherforms of allegiance prioritized, at least temporarily. Yet, just as had been the case afterthe massacres, once the war with Greece had concluded, the Ottoman chief rabbi alongwith members of his staff paid an official visit to the Orthodox patriarch’s headquartersin the Fener district of Istanbul. There he was “received with every honor,” while thehead of the Greek Orthodox Church reportedly assured him that he considered it hisfirst duty to “aid in maintaining cordial relations between the two peoples.” A few dayslater, the patriarch made his way to the residence of the chief rabbi in Kuzguncuk.92

Exploring the varied responses of Ottoman Jews to the Armenian massacres of 1896and to the Greco–Ottoman War of 1897 shows how Jews in the empire engaged—bothwittingly and unwittingly—with two parallel discourses of what it meant to be Ottoman.One of these focused on the multiethnic and multireligious make-up of the empire andincluded Jewish communal leaders’ attempts to distance themselves from attacks onArmenians in Istanbul and to emphasize the aid Jews had given to those fleeing themassacre, their conciliatory visits with Armenian and Greek Orthodox leaders, and theregular balls they orchestrated and attended alongside members of various Ottomancommunities. The other version of Ottoman belonging, which emphasized the Islamicidentity of the empire and its predominantly Muslim subjects, often excluded groupsthat appeared to fall on the wrong side of the dividing line demarcating imperial identityduring times of heightened tensions.

Taking this position allowed Jews to attempt to create a place for themselves in therapidly changing political landscape of the empire, but it could have negative con-sequences. Even years later, observers suggested that the massacres of Armenians inIstanbul in 1896 had drawn a wedge between Armenians and Jews in the city and thatJews’ enthusiastic demonstrations of support for the empire during the war with Greecehad soured relations between Jews and Greek Orthodox Christians in both Salonicaand Izmir.93 Some of these observers counseled a more cautious approach to patrioticpositions and attempted to repair Jews’ relations with their Christian neighbors, thusreturning to the civic Ottomanism that many members of their community had largelyrelegated to the sidelines during moments of violence.

Despite the challenges posed by the Islamic version of Ottomanism to non-Muslims,the new options Jews found for imperial identification within an Islamic frameworkclearly suggest that the Hamidian turn toward Islamic politics did not categoricallyforeclose non-Muslim participation. As Mustafa Aksakal writes, even discussions ofjihad—potentially “hostile towards non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire”—could some-times “explicitly include non-Muslims in the Ottoman fold.”94 As an ideology of statepatriotism, Abdulhamit II’s Islamic politics were not simply the domain of Muslims but


also of those willing to express their allegiance to the state by engaging with Islamicsymbols and rhetoric. Just as the Jews of Vienna poured into the streets of the city tofollow the imperial Corpus Christi procession during Franz Joseph’s reign, Ottoman Jewstold each other stories about the caliphate and of the glory of Islamic martyrs becausethese were formal elements of the Islamic Ottomanism of their day. And while theirposition within this new framework was not always clear, the actions they undertook atthese moments shed light on their search for a place for themselves in imperial politics,even as the ground beneath their feet was shifting.

N OT E S

Author’s note: I thank the participants in the “Symposium on Modern Jewish History” led by LeoraAuslander and Orit Bashkin at the University of Chicago and the “Jews and Empire” symposium convokedby Sarah Abrevaya Stein at UCLA for valuable feedback on earlier versions of this essay. I am also gratefulto Olga Borovaya and Michelle Campos as well as the four anonymous reviewers and the editors of IJMESfor their incisive comments.

1Sir Edwin Pears, Life of Abdul Hamid (London: Constable & Company, 1917), 195, 199–200; EnverZiya Karal, Osmanlı tarihi: Birinci mesrutiyet ve istibdat devirleri (1876–1907) vol. VIII (Ankara: Turk TarihKurumu, 1988), 264; Francois Georgeon, Abdulhamid II: Le sultan calife (Paris: Fayard, 2003), 159–64;Ipek Yosmaoglu, “Chasing the Written Word: Press Censorship in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1913,” TurkishStudies Association Journal 27 (2003): 15–49.

2Sukru Hanioglu, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). On self-censorship under Abdulhamit II, see Yosmaoglu, “Chasing,” 22–23.

3See, for example, Elizabeth Frierson, “Gender, Consumption and Patriotism: The Emergence of anOttoman Public Sphere,” in Public Islam and the Common Good, ed. Armando Salvatore and Dale F. Eickelman(Boston: E. J. Brill, 2004), 99–125; and Nadir Ozbek, “Philanthropic Activity, Ottoman Patriotism and theHamidian Regime, 1876–1909,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (2005): 59–81.

4On state patriotism, see Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990).

5Elizabeth Frierson, “Women in Late Ottoman Intellectual History,” in Late Ottoman Society: The Intel-lectual Legacy, ed. Elisabeth Ozdalga (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), 154.

6Georgeon, Abdulhamid II, 197, suggests that Ottoman Muslims constituted 75 percent of the empire’stotal population by 1880, up from 66 percent in 1875.

7Georgeon, Abdulhamid, 192–212. On Abdulhamit II’s Islamic politics, see also Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimization of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998); and Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

8On “Holy Russia” see Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New Haven,Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), passim; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 49; Robert Crews, ForProphet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,2009), 1. On the sacred and even Christ-like image attributed to Franz Joseph, see James Shedel, “Emperor,Church, and People: Religion and Dynastic Loyalty during the Golden Jubilee of Franz Joseph,” CatholicHistorical Review 76 (1990): 71–92; and Daniel Unowksy, The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism: ImperialCelebrations in Habsburg Austria, 1848–1916 (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2005). OnNicholas I as “blessed tsar” see Cherniavsky, Tsar and People, 156, 193. Abdulhamit II, for his part, adoptedof the title of “the holy personage” (zat-ı akdes-i humayun). Deringil, Well-Protected Domains, 17.

9Unowsky, Pomp and Politics, 97.10Robert Crews, “Empire and the Confessional State: Islam and Religious Politics in Nineteenth-Century

Russia,” American Historical Review 108 (2003): 50–83, 57.11Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997), 31. Kemal

Karpat has also argued that Islamist politics alienated Ottoman non-Muslims. See Karpat, Politicization, 320,392, 402.

12Sukru Hanioglu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,2008), 143.


13Deringil, Well-Protected Domains, 11; Karpat, Politicization, 12, 317.14Frierson, “Women,” 144.15For Christians as “metaphorical foreigners” in Meiji Japan, see Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 135.16For negative portrayals of Armenian and Greek Orthodox communities in the Ottoman press and ad-

ministration, see Elizabeth Frierson, “Mirrors Out, Mirrors In: Domestication and Rejection of the Foreign inLate-Ottoman Women’s Magazines (1875–1908),” in Women, Patronage and Self-Representation in IslamicSocieties, ed. D. Fairchild Ruggles (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2000), 197; and ResatKasaba, “Izmir 1922: A Port City Unravels,” in Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the IndianOcean, ed. Leila Fawaz and C. A. Bayly (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 222.

17Crews, “Empire,” 58.18Unowsky, Pomp and Politics, 141.19Carter Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 316.20Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman

Empires (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2004), 64. For a contemporary claim to this effect, see“Be-H. uts le-Artsenu,” Ha-Melits, 5 November 1895, 5.

21Crews, For Prophet, 303.22On such events in 1897 alone, see “Gran balo de benefezensia en Kadi Koy,” El Tiempo, 25 February

1897, 4; “El balo del espital Or Ahaim,” El Tiempo, 29 February 1897, 2–3; “El balo del espital Or Ahaim,”El Tiempo, 22 March 1897, 3; “El balo del espital Or Ahaim,” El Tiempo, 1 April 1897, 3.

23I use the term “Sephardi” here to refer to the Judeo-Spanish or Ladino-speaking Jews of Iberian originwho settled in the empire after their expulsion from Spain in the late 15th century. From that time on,Sephardim constituted the overwhelming majority of Jews in Ottoman southeastern Europe and westernAnatolia, including the imperial capital. Despite the absence of reliable statistics, Sephardi Jews are generallythought to have comprised approximately half of the empire’s Jewish population, which numbered between250,000 and 500,000 souls by the early 20th century. Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, Sephardi Jewry:A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th–20th Centuries (Berkeley, Calif.: University of CaliforniaPress, 2000), 70.

24Alliance Israelite Universelle Archives (hereafter AIU), Serie Turquie, IC 7.3h, Gerson to Paris, 27September 1896.

25Gerson’s use of “Ottomans” is ambiguous, as it might refer to the imperial authorities specifically orOttoman Muslims more generally. His concerns were echoed by an author who wrote to London’s JewishChronicle claiming to be “informed by those in a position to know” that public expressions of “pro-Armenian”sympathies by Jews anywhere in the world could have a deleterious effect on the position of Jews withinOttoman realms. “Jews and the Armenian Cause,” Jewish Chronicle, 24 January 1896, 8.

26“Ilan-ı Resmi,” Tercuman-ı Hakikat, 19 Rebiulevvel 1314, 1 (28 August 1896); “Los azhitadores—ofisial,” El Tiempo, 1 September 1896, 2–3.

27Donald Quataert, “Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720–1829,” InternationalJournal of Middle East Studies 29 (1997): 420; AIU Serie Turquie, IC 7.3h, Gerson to Paris, 27 September1896; Edhem Eldem, “26 Agustos 1896 ‘Banka Vakası’ ve 1896 ‘Ermeni Olaylari,’” Tarih ve Toplum 5 (2007):113–46, 121, citing Osmanlı Bankası Arsivi, LA 23, 999, Sir Edgar Vincent to London Committee, 28 August1896. Different authors have attributed Kurdish involvement in the massacres to Kurdish migrants as well asto a Hamidiye light cavalry unit composed of Kurds from southeastern Anatolia stationed in Istanbul at thetime. For more on the Hamidiye institution, see Janet Klein, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in theOttoman Tribal Zone (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011).

28For the first quote, see Salahi Ramsdam Sonyel, The Ottoman Armenians (London: K. Rustem & Brother,1987), 215. On uniform clubs and police involvement, see Herbert to Marquess of Salisbury, 7 September1896, in Turkey No 1 (1897), Correspondence Respecting the Disturbances at Constantinople in August 1896presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty January 1897, 18, 27–29; Victor Berard,La politique du sultan (Paris: Calmann Levy, 1897), 11, 30; Loius Rambert, Notes et impressions de Turquie(Geneva: Atar, 1926), 18; Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, My Diaries (New York: Knopf, 1932), 186; and ChristopherWalker, Armenia: The Survival of a Nation (Chatham, U.K.: Mackays of Chatham, 1991), 167. On this debate,and other aspects of the massacres, see Eldem, “26 Agustos.”

29Eldem, “26 Agustos,” 116.


30Claims about the varied responses of Greek Orthodox Ottomans to the massacres of Armenians in themid-1890s also surfaced during these years. See J. K. Hassiotis, “The Greeks and the Armenian Massacres(1890–1896),” Neo-Hellenika 4 (1981): 69–109.

31Albert Adatto, “Sephardim and the Seattle Sephardic Community” (master’s thesis, University of Wash-ington, 1939), 262.

32“Our Ambassadors Abroad: The Legation Near the Sublime Porte,” Harper’s Weekly, 24 February 1900,180. On Jews who aided Armenians, see also Adatto, “Sephardim,” 259–62.

33“False Accusations against the Jews of Crete and Constantinople,” Jewish Chronicle, 2 October 1896,5–6.

34AIU Serie Turquie, IC 5, Fresco to Paris, 4 September 1896; “Jews and the Massacres in Constantinople,”Jewish Chronicle, 18 September 1896, 8; “Die Woche,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 60 (1896):519.

35See Turkey No 1 (1897), 18, 34; Richard Davey, The Sultan and His Subjects, vol. 2 (London: Chapmanand Hall, 1897), 215; AIU Serie Turquie, IC 5, Fresco to Paris, 4 September 1896; “The ConstantinopleMassacre,” Contemporary Review 70 (1896): 462; Documents diplomatiques. Affairs Armeniennes. Projets deReformes dans l’Empire Ottoman 1893–1897 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1897), 276; Berard, La politique,14, 20; and, most recently, Yair Auron, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 150–52.

36Basbakanlık Osmanlı Arsivi (hereafter BOA) I HUS 49, 19 Rebiulevvel 1314 (28 August 1896).37“Peace in Constantinople,” New York Times, 2 September 1896.38Adatto, “Sephardim,” 260.39Aaron Menahem, “Un skandal sin eshemplo,” El Amigo del Puevlo, 29 May 1897, 645.40“Die Woche,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 60, no. 37 (11 September 1896): 435; “Jews and the

Massacres in Constantinople,” Jewish Chronicle, 18 September 1896, 8.41“The Riots in Constantinople,” Jewish Chronicle, 4 September 1896, 8.42Turkey No. 1 (1897), 18.43“Die Woche,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 60, no. 39 (25 September 1896): 459.44“Die Woche,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 60 (1896): 519.45Gerson’s view of Jews’ structural vulnerability in this context is worth noting: although Muslims also

helped protect Armenians during the Istanbul massacres, Gerson feared that exposing the actions of the Jewswho had done so might shift Ottoman perceptions of the loyalty of the Jewish community as a whole. Thiswas a predicament peculiar to non-Muslims. On Muslims who sheltered Armenians in 1896, see “Havadis-iDahiliye,” Tercuman-ı Hakikat, 8 Rebiulahir 1314, 1 (16 September 1896); Berard, La politique, 25, 27; andEldem, “26 Agustos.”

46“Die Woche,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 60 (30 October 1896): 519.47“Jews and the Massacres in Constantinople,” Jewish Chronicle, 18 September 1896, 8; “Echos de la

ville,” Journal de Salonique, 25 January 1897, 1.48“Monsinyor Ormanian en Haskoy,” El Tiempo, 14 January 1897, 2. See also “Turkey,” Jewish Chronicle,

19 February 1897, 27; and “News,” Jewish Missionary Intelligence. Monthly Record of the London Societyfor Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews (1897): 79. On El Tiempo, see Stein, Making Jews Modern. PaulFesch, Constantinople aux derniers jours d’Abdul-Hamid (Paris: Riviere,1907), 68, suggests it had a printrun of 900 issues, while its competitor, El Telegrafo, produced only 500. Since such papers were passed fromhand to hand, read in cafes and libraries, and read aloud to groups of listeners, their audience can be assumedto have been many times the number of paying subscribers. A Jewish journalist from late Ottoman Salonicasuggested a figure of as many as eight to ten readers and listeners for every subscriber, a reckoning whichwould imply a reach of 7,200 to 9,000 for El Tiempo. Sam Levy, Salonique a la fin du XIXe siecle (Istanbul:Isis, 2000), 101.

49Children orphaned as a result of the massacres of Armenians in Istanbul and on a much greater scale ineastern Anatolia were flooding the Ottoman capital by 1897. See Nazan Maksudyan, “‘Being Saved to Serve’:Armenian Orphans of 1894–1896 and Interested Relief in Missionary Orphanages,” Turcica 42 (2010): 47–88.Their resettlement was also mentioned in the Ladino press; see, for example, “Novedades del interior,” ElTiempo, 25 March 1897, 1.

50The chief rabbi soon visited the new Armenian patriarch as well. “Novedades del interior,” El Tiempo,28 January 1897, 2.


51Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews. The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of JewishSchooling in Turkey, 1860–1925 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1990).

52For attacks on the newly formed Zionist organization in the Ottoman Ladino press, see “El kongreso de lautopia,” El Tiempo, 19 July 1897, 6. Although Ottoman Jewish leaders vociferously opposed the new “utopian”movement, Zionism made inroads among the Sephardi Jewish communities of Bulgaria, a troubling prospectfor the empire’s Sephardi Jewish leaders, as the Jewish inhabitants of that principality (autonomous since1878) maintained close contacts with their co-religionists in the empire. Benbassa and Rodrigue, SephardiJewry, 116–17.

53On the Greco–Ottoman War, see Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, Der thessalische Krieg und die turkischeArmee (Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1898). Pears, Life of Abdul Hamid, 205–13; Edouard Driault and MichelLheritier, Histoire diplomatique de la Grece de 1821 a nos jours, IV (Paris: PUF, 1926), 301–456; Selim Sun,1897 Osmanlı-Yunan Harbi (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1965); T. G. Tatsios, The Megali Idea andthe Greek-Turkish War of 1897: The Impact of the Cretan Problem on Greek Irredentism 1866–1897 (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1984); Bayram Kodaman, 1897 Turk-Yunan Savası (Ankara: Turk TarihKurumu Basımevi, 1993); Metin Hulagu, 1897 Osmanlı-Yunan Savası (Kayseri, Turkey: Erciyes UniversitesiMatbaası, 2001); and Mehmet Ugur Ekinci, “The Origins of the 1897 Ottoman–Greek War: A DiplomaticHistory” (master’s thesis, Bilkent University, Turkey, 2006).

54For tensions in Izmir, see Archives du ministere des Affaires etrangeres de Nantes (hereafter AMAEF-Nantes), Ambassade Constantinople, E 241, 4 April 1897; Henri Nahum, Juifs de Smyrne, XIXe - XXe siecle(Paris: Aubier, 1997), 21; and Noemi Levy, “Salonique et la Guerre Greco-Turque de 1897: Le fragile equilibred’une ville Ottomane” (Memoire de maıtrise, Universite Paris 1, 2002), 72–74, which additionally mentionsconflicts in Ankara and Scutari. On Scutari (also Iskodra or Shkoder), Albania, see also “Desordres a Scutari,”L’Independance belge, 29 March 1897, 1 and 31 March 1891, 1.

55Documents diplomatiques Affaires d’Orient. Affaire de Crete. Conflit greco-turc. Situation de l’empireOttoman, fevrier-mai 1897 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1897), 237; AMAEF-Nantes, Ambassade d’Athenes,A 218, 11 May 1897, also mentioned in Levy, “Salonique et la Guerre,” 72–73.

56“False Accusations,” Jewish Chronicle, 2 October 1896, 5. The report’s author questioned these alle-gations, suggesting they were suspiciously similar to claims being made about Jewish involvement in themassacres of Armenians in Istanbul during the same period. Whether fact or fiction, however, the circulationof stories about Jews’ cooperation with Muslims was often a powerful force in shifting relations betweendifferent Ottoman communities.

57AMAEF-Nantes, Ambassade d’Athenes, A 218, 11 May 1897; National Archives, U.K., Public RecordOffice (hereafter PRO), FO 78/4828, 9 June 1897, J. E. Blunt to British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs;AIU, Serie Grece IC 40, 25 June 1897; Rena Molho, “The Zionist Movement in Thessaloniki, 1899–1919,” inThe Jewish Communities of Southeastern Europe: From the Fifteenth Century to the End of World War II, ed.I. K. Hassiotis (Thessaloniki, Greece: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1997), 330; Levy, “Salonique et la Guerre,”70–72; K. E. Fleming, Greece: A Jewish History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), 57–58.

58“Novedades lokales,” La Buena Esperansa, 11 May 1897, 3; AIU, Serie Turquie, IC 4, Eskenazi to Paris,5 July 1897; Abraham Galante, Histoire des Juifs d’Anatolie, vol. 2 (Istanbul: Babok, 1939), 107.

59War was declared on 18 April 1897 and a peace treaty signed on 18 December. The treaty is reproducedin Ekinci, “The Origins.”

60BOA, A.MKT.MHM., 612/10; BOA, Y.A.RES., 86/20; Ekinci, “Origins,” 61, 69. European observersstationed in the empire at the time also suggested that the Ottoman government restricted the movements ofits Greek Orthodox citizens near the border and prevented them from leaving their hometowns or from joiningthe Ottoman army on the front. PRO/FO 195/1988, 24 March 1897; Henry W. Nevinson, Scenes in the ThirtyDays War (London: J. M. Dent, 1898), 13.

61Ottoman Greek Orthodox contributions to the imperial army in 1897 included donations made bythe employees of the Istanbul Patriarchate, Jerusalem’s patriarch, and members of the Greek Orthodoxcommunities of Salonica, Istanbul, and Izmir. See “Havadis-i Dahiliye,” Tercuman-ı Hakikat, 11 Saban 1314(15 January 1897), 1; 8 Ramazan 1314 (10 February 1897), 1; 24 Zilkade 1314 (26 April 1897), 2; 25 Muharrem1315 (26 June 1897), 2; Nadir Ozbek, “Philanthropic Activity, Ottoman Patriotism and the Hamidian Regime,1876–1909,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (2005): 74; Levy, “Salonique et la Guerre,”53. On volunteers for Greece, see Richard Clogg, “The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire,” in Christiansand Jews in the Ottoman Empire, vol. 1, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York: Holmes andMeier, 1982), 199; AMAEF-Nantes, Ambassade Constantinople, E 241, 4 April 1897; Sabri Surgevil, “1897


Osmanlı-Yunan Savası ve Izmir,” in Tarih Boyunca Turk-Yunan Iliskileri (Ankara: Genelkurmay ATASEBaskanlıgı, 1986), 303; Levy, “Salonique et la Guerre,” 78; Hulagu, 1897 Osmanlı-Yunan Savası, 48; EllisAshmead Bartlett, The Battlefields of Thessaly (London: John Murray, 1897), 299; BOA Y.PRK.HR., 23/68;BOA, Y.A.HUS., 369/4; Ekinci, “Origins,” 52–53.

62Vangelis Kechriotis, “The Greeks of Izmir at the End of the Empire: A Non-Muslim Ottoman Communitybetween Autonomy and Patriotism” (PhD diss., University of Leiden, 2005), 59–60, cites an announcementof this regulation published in Izmir’s Greek-language periodical Aktis but suggests that the regulation wasdesigned less to make local Greeks flee than to “incorporate them into the tax system,” an idea echoed inthe correspondence of the British consul of Salonica at the time; see PRO FO 195/1989, 12 May 1897 and19 May 1897. The measure is also mentioned in Suleyman Tevfik and Abdullah Zuhdi, Devlet-i Aliyye-iOsmaniye ve Yunan Muharebesi (Istanbul: Mihran Matbaası, 1315 [1897/1898]); and Ekinci, “Origins,” 74.Announcements calling for Greek citizens to take Ottoman citizenship or leave the empire were also posted inLadino- and French-language Jewish newspapers of the empire: see Journal de Salonique, 19 April 1897, 1;El Meseret, 30 April 1897, 3; and La Epoka, 7 May 1897, 5. By late May, large numbers of Greek citizens inIzmir had reportedly applied for Ottoman nationality in order to stay in the empire. See Tercuman-ı Hakikat,26 Zilhicce 1314 (28 May 1897), 2; and “Havadis-i Dahiliye,” Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete, 2 Muharrem 1315(3 June 1897), 7.

63Kechriotis, “The Greeks of Izmir,” 54. The majority of Izmir’s Hellenic subjects were long-time residentsof the city, many having come in search of a livelihood from the Aegean Islands in previous decades.Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830–1914 (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985),46.

64See, for example, BOA, A.MKT.MHM., 612/10; BOA, Y.A.RES., 86/20; and “Novedades del interior,”El Tiempo, 10 August 1896, 2.

65On prayers for the state, see “Gran rabinato de Turkia,” El Tiempo, 29 April 1897, 3.66Important work has also been done on Jewish political mobilization in peacetime and at war during the

Second Constitutional Era. For some of the most recent examples, see Eyal Ginio, “‘Yehudim ‘Otmanim!H. ushu le-Hatsel et Moledatenu!’: Yehudim ‘Otmanim be-Milh. emot ha-Balkan (1912–1913),” Pe’amim 105–106 (2005/2006): 5–28; and Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in EarlyTwentieth-Century Palestine (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010).

67“Los echos de Kreta,” El Tiempo, 22 March 1897, 3; “Politika i estranzher,” El Meseret, 2 April, 1897,1; El Telegrafo, 30 July 1897, 2.

68On the coincidence of Jewish and Muslim refugee patterns during this period, see Kemal Karpat, “JewishPopulation Movements in the Ottoman Empire, 1862–1914,” in Studies on Ottoman Social and PoliticalHistory (Boston: E. J. Brill, 2002), 153.

69On Indian Muslim support for the Ottoman cause, see “Los musulmanos delas indias i las viktoriasdelas armadas,” El Tiempo, 31 May 1897, 1–2. On Viennese Jews’ patriotic mobilization see the same issue,p. 3, and “Vitman ve Avrupa’dan Mecruhin-i Askeriyeye Muayenet,” Tercuman-ı Hakikat, 1 Zilhicce 1314(3 May 1897), 2.

70On the Bosnian Muslims who came to fight: “Novedades del interior,” El Tiempo, 26 July 1897, 2. OnJewish volunteers from Vienna: “Los medicos israelitas enel kresiente kolorado,” El Tiempo, 1 July 1897, 3.On young Jewish doctors arriving from Paris: Journal de Salonique, 10 May 1897, 1; and “Medikos voluntariosisraelitas,” El Tiempo, 14 June 1897, 3.

71“Ismirna,” El Tiempo, 6 May 1897, 5.72According to Kechriotis, “The Greeks of Izmir,” 54, there were 52,000 Ottoman Greeks and 25,000

Greek citizens living in Izmir in 1890 out of a total population of 200,000.73“Ofisiales zhudios en la flota ofisial,” El Meseret, 2 April 1897, 4.74“La muerte de un bravo,” El Tiempo, 8 July 1897, 5–6.75“El halifato,” El Tiempo, 16 August 1897, 2–3.76“La communaute israelite,” Le Moniteur oriental, 1 May 1897, 3; “Las sosiedades Tzaror and Makor

Ahaim,” El Tiempo, 20 May 1897, 4.77“La fiesta patriotika de alhad ultimo,” El Tiempo, 1 July 1897, 4.78Projects supporting the needy Muslims of Crete were reported regularly in the Ottoman Jewish press and

included Jewish names among the lists of donors. See “Novedades del interior,” El Tiempo, 1 April 1897,2; “Patriozmo,” La Buena Esperansa, 27 April 1897, 1; “Los nesesitozos de Kreta,” El Tiempo, 10 June1897, 4; and “Echos de la ville,” Journal de Salonique, 8 April 1897, 1. For an Ottoman booklet issued to


raise money for Muslim refugees from the island, see Girid Ahali-i Islamiyesi Muhtacini Menfaatine MahsusResimli Gazete Nusha-i-Fevka�l-adesi (Istanbul: Mahmud Bey Matbaası 1315 [1897/1898]).

79In Izmir, the Alliance directed efforts to absorb and care for Cretan Jews. El Meseret, 5 March 1897, 4.In the capital, Salomon Isaac Fernandez eventually requested support for Crete’s Jewish refugees from thecentral Alliance committee in Paris. AIU, Serie Turquie, IC 5, Fernandez to Bigart, 18 March 1897.

80During this time calls were made to reopen Jewish schools that had been closed due to lack of funds.“La eskuela de izhos dela aliansa en Ortakoy,” El Tiempo, 21 June 1897, 3. The chief rabbinate also issued anotice announcing financial troubles and noting that many of its employees had gone without pay for months.“El gran rabinato de Konstantinopla,” El Tiempo, 24 June 1897, 3.

81For the conflation of the terms “Muslim” and “Ottoman” during this period, see Karpat, Politicization,143, which suggests that after 1878, the term milli, or national, became “synonymous with the faith.” Relatedly,Benjamin Fortna mentions an imperial decree of 1887 that referred to Ottoman state schools as “Muslim”schools. See his “Islamic Morality in Late Ottoman ‘Secular’ Schools,” International Journal of Middle EastStudies 32 (2000): 369–93, 376.

82The society is identified as the Cemiyet-i Imdadiye by Serpil Cakır, “Fatma Aliye,” in BiographicalDictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms. Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and20th Centuries, ed. Francisca de Haan, Krassimira Daskalova, and Anna Loutfi (Budapest: Central EuropeanUniversity Press, 2006), 23. Its activities are noted but no name provided in Nezihe Muhiddin, Turk Kadını(Istanbul: Numune Matbaası, 1931), 82. Contemporary Ottoman-language reports suggest other names mayhave been used, including Muhadderat-ı Osmaniye Cemiyeti, Nisvan-ı Osmaniye, and Cemiyet-i Muhtereme-iMuhadderat-ı Islamiye.

83“Sokoros en favor delos feridos dela armada imperial,” El Tiempo, 10 May 1897, 3; “Sokoros en favordelos feridos,” El Tiempo, 13 May 1897, 4.

84“Havadis-i Dahiliye,” Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete, 18 Zilhicce 1314 (20 May 1897), 7.85Madame Elias Pasha (Esther Cohen), decorated by the sultan for her philanthropy in the 1880s, was

an active public figure in the Ottoman capital and president of a Jewish women’s charitable society formedin Pera in 1892. “Sokoros en favor delos feridos,” El Tiempo, 17 May 1897, 3; “Constantinople,” JewishChronicle, 29 August 1884, 12; “Una sosiedad interesante,” El Tiempo, 10 March 1892, 2–3; “Une fete decharite israelite a Constantinople,” Archives israelites, 20 April 1894, 133–34; “The Jews in Constantinople,”Jewish Chronicle, 11 May 1894, 9. For reports on her activities in 1897, see “Sokoros en favor delos feridosdela armada imperial,” El Tiempo, 24 May 1897, 4; “Muhadderat-ı Osmaniye Cemiyet-i Hayriyesi,” Sabah,21 Zilhicce 1314 (23 May 1897), 2; “Les blesses,” Le Moniteur oriental, 24 May 1897, 3; “La guerre turco-hellene,” Le Moniteur oriental, 10 June 1897, 3; “Decorations,” Le Moniteur oriental, 28 July 1897, 3; and“Elias Pasha,” El Telegrafo, 29 July 1897, 563.

86El Tiempo issued donors’ lists on 13 May, 17 May, 24 May, 3 June, 10 June, and 24 June 1897. For donors’lists including Jewish names in the Ottoman-language press see the series of articles entitled “Muhadderat-ıOsmaniye Cemiyet-i Hayriyesi ve Mecruhin Gazilerimize Iane,” Sabah, 21 Zilhicce 1314 (23 May 1897), 2;3 Muharrem 1315 (4 June 1897), 2; 5 Muharrem 1315 (6 June 1897), 2; 7 Muharrem 1315 (8 June 1897), 2;12 Muharrem 1315 (13 June 1897), 2. In Le Moniteur oriental/Oriental Advertiser, Jewish donations to thecommittee were mentioned on 12 May 1897, 3; 21 May 1897, 3; 24 May 1897, 3; 28 May 1897, 3; 29 May1897, 3; 1 June 1897, 3; 3 June 1897, 3; 5 June 1897, 3; 7 June 1897, 3; 10 June 1897, 3; 19 June 1897, 3.

87Fatmya Aliye, “Yaralılara Imdad,” Tercuman-ı Hakikat, 25 Zilkade 1314 (27 April 1897), 2; “Muhadderat-ı Osmaniye Cemiyet-i Hayriyesi ve Mecruhin Gazilerimize Iane,” Sabah, 3 Muharrem 1315 (4 June 1897),2; “Comite des dames ottomanes,” Le Moniteur oriental, 21 May 1897, 3; BOA BEO 958/71794, 29 Zilhicce1314 (31 May 1897); BOA Y. PRK. ASK 128/12, 24 Muharrem 1315 (25 June 1897).

88The names given to the society in other publications also varied. From Salonica one author referred to itas the “Ladies’ Relief Committee,” while the Istanbul correspondent for the London-based Jewish Chroniclesimply called it a “Ladies’ Committee.” Sam, “Turquie,” Archives israelites, 10 June 1897, 183; “Turkey,”Jewish Chronicle, 4 June 1897, 26.

89“Sokoros en favor delos feridos dela armada imperial,” El Tiempo, 3 and 10 June 1897, 3. “MadameSukru” was married to Ibrahim Sukru Pasha and the eldest daughter of the grand vizier of the time, Halil RıfatPasha.

90“Komite delas damas otomanas por los eridos,” El Tiempo, 24 June 1897, 4. Reports in Ottoman, French,and English publications of the empire noted Christian women’s donations to the committee much earlier thanthe Jewish press did. One such report even labeled the society a “Muslim and Christian Women’s Committee,”


indicating that the type of discursive erasure employed by Jewish journalists during the war could cut bothways: “Les blesses,” Le Moniteur oriental, 14 May 1897, 3.

91“Madam Elias Pasha,” El Tiempo, 1 July 1897, 3.92“Turkey,” Jewish Chronicle, 4 June 1897, 26.93AIU, Serie Turquie, IC 1, Nahum to Paris, 15 May 1908; AIU, Serie Grece, IC 40, 25 June 1897; Galante,

Histoire, 216.94Mustafa Aksakal, “Holy War Made in Germany? Ottoman Origins of the 1914 Jihad,” War in History 18

(2011): 184–99, 199.

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