Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (21 page)

The Sephardic Jewish population played important roles in
the everyday life of the Ottoman state as merchants, artisans, and physicians.
Determined to preserve their traditions, they organized their social activities
around synagogues and community centers, where Hebrew was taught and the Torah
and Talmud studied. Ottoman tolerance allowed them to emerge as one of the most
educated and literate population groups in the empire. Rabbinical schools such
as the one founded in Sarajevo in 1786 by Rabbi David Pardo, played an
important role in preserving Jewish religious and cultural traditions and
customs. In these schools, the students learned classical Hebrew, though in
their day-to-day life they continued to use Ladino, the Jewish-Spanish language
they had brought with them from Spain.

The massive migration of Spanish Jewry to the Ottoman
Empire included many Jewish merchants who were active in transatlantic trade
and introduced to the empire New World plants and fruits such as chili peppers.
Thus, the Turkish name for the hot peppers,
biber aci,
derives from the
Caribbean
ají.
The Ottoman sultans welcomed the arrival of the new
immigrants, particularly the artisans, merchants, and scholars, as men of
enterprise and energy who knew precisely those arts and crafts that were in
highest demand in the empire, such as “medical knowledge, woolen industry,
metalworking, glassmaking, the secrets of the manufacture of arms, the import
and export trade, retail trade and distribution, and so on.” Each Jewish
immigrant community was known for excellence in a unique profession, trade, or
craft. The
Maranos
(Muranos) were respected as manufacturers of weapons
of war, while those of the medical school of Salamanca were much in demand as
doctors. Many were also recruited as translators and interpreters because of
their international connections and knowledge of Europe.

It was in trade and commerce, however, that the Jewish
community, particularly those who resided in the Balkans, excelled. Their
prominent role in the economic life of the empire was observed by an
18th-century English visitor who wrote that most of the wealthy merchants in the
empire were Jews and they enjoyed many privileges that ordinary Turks did not.
They had “drawn the whole trade of the empire into their hands,” and every
Ottoman high official had his Jewish “homme d’affaires” to whom he entrusted
all his business affairs and interactions. By the beginning of the 18th
century, the Jewish presence and participation in the commercial life of the
empire was so central and critical that the English, French, and Venetian
merchants negotiated with the Ottomans through their intercession. The economic
power of the Jewish merchants allowed the community to form a strong
commonwealth, which was ruled by its own laws.

Both the Ashkenazim and Sephardim produced numerous
statesmen, physicians, merchants, and craftsmen. The most influential Sephardic
Jew in the Ottoman Empire was Joseph Nasi (1515–1579), the product of a
Marano
family, who had arrived in Istanbul from Portugal in 1554. Before reaching
Istanbul, he had lived for a time in Antwerp, modern-day Belgium, where he
joined his aunt Gracia Nasi Mendes. The Mendes family was one of the most
powerful and influential banking families in Europe. When Nasi’s aunt moved to
Istanbul in 1553, Joseph decided to leave Antwerp and settle with her in the
Ottoman capital. Both “aunt and nephew shed their identity as Marranos” and “openly
embraced the practice of Judaism,” emerging as “important supporters of Jewish
charities and scholarship.” Nasi also befriended the Ottoman sultan Selim II
(1566–1574) and the sultan’s powerful grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed, who
appointed Nasi as the Duke of Naxos, the largest island in the Cyclades island
group in the Aegean. As an advocate of war against Venice, Nasi encouraged an
invasion of the island of Cyprus, which was attacked and captured by the Ottoman
forces in 1570. When “he died in 1579, Joseph Nasi was probably one of the
wealthiest men in the Ottoman Empire.” Another Sephardic Jew, Solomon Abenayish
(1520–1603) was appointed the Duke of the Greek island of Lesbos.

The best-known Ashkenazic Jew in the Ottoman state was the
Italian-born Solomon Ashkenazi (1520–1603), who served as the physician and
confidant of the grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed. Since Ashkenazi had lived both in
various Italian states and Poland before his arrival in the Ottoman Empire, the
grand vizier sought his advice on Polish- and Venetian-related matters. Sokollu
Mehmed demonstrated his trust and confidence in the Jewish physician when he
appointed him as the Ottoman ambassador to Venice.

In the 17th, and increasingly, in the 18th century, during
the decline of the Ottoman power and the rise of Islamic conservatism, Jews
began to suffer at the hands of Muslim religious authorities. After “the great
fire of 1660, in which large swathes of Istanbul were destroyed, Jews in the
city were not given permission to rebuild” some of their synagogues “as Muslim
judges ruled that the permission they had originally received to build them was
illegal.” A strict interpretation of Islamic law also influenced the outcome of
the case of Shabbatai Zvi when the self-proclaimed Jewish messiah was forced to
convert to Islam or face death for treason. Additionally, relations between
Jewish and Christian communities began to deteriorate as attacks by Christian
mobs against Jewish businesses and neighborhoods increased. During the Damascus
Incident of 1840, for example, authorities arrested and tortured prominent
Damascus Jews after Christians accused them of murdering a Roman Catholic
priest.

In the 19th century as nationalist uprisings erupted in the
Balkans, links between the empire’s Jewish communities and the Ottoman sultans
grew stronger. Most Jews feared that any new state formed on the basis of one
nation, one language, and one church would be far less tolerant than the
Ottoman imperial rule. The nationalist ideologies propagated by various
separatist movements in the Balkans espoused Orthodox Christianity as essential
to national identity and characterized the Jews as outsiders. The worst fears
of the Jews were realized when at the start of the Greek War of Independence in
1821, Greek nationalists massacred both Muslim and Jewish civilians.

6 – MUSLIMS

The
defense, protection, and expansion of Islam served as the ideological
foundation and unifying principle for the Ottoman ruling elite. From its
inception, the Ottoman Empire acted as an Islamic state dedicated to the
defense and expansion of Islam against infidels. In the parlance of government
officials and writers, the Ottoman sultan was “the sovereign of Islam, its
armies were armies of Islam, its laws were the laws of Islam, which it was the
sultan’s duty to uphold and administer.”

Islam was the dominant religion among Turks, Arabs, Kurds,
Albanians, and Bosnians. During the long period when the Ottoman Empire ruled
the Balkans, the Muslims constituted the second-largest religious community in
the empire, after Orthodox Christians. With the loss of European provinces in
the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, however, Muslims emerged as the majority
religious group, particularly after the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and the loss
of Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria.

FIVE PILLARS OF ISLAM

Turks converted to Islam as they entered Central Asia and
swept through Iran on their way to Anatolia. For them, Islam represented a
simple faith that provided daily structure and discipline through a set of
beliefs, rules, and practices. The religion is based on six articles of belief,
namely: belief in God, belief in all messengers of God, belief in the angels,
belief in holy books sent by God, belief in the day of judgment and
resurrection, and belief in destiny. In addition to adhering to these six fundamentals
of belief, every Muslim is also required to perform the five pillars of Islam.

Declaration of Faith

The first pillar, declaration of faith, requires Muslims to
reaffirm their belief daily by stating; “I bear witness that there is no god
but God, I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.” Far from a
merely ritualistic and obligatory utterance, the first part of the declaration
reminds the Muslim that Allah (God) is the creator of the universe and all
living beings and, therefore, the only majesty to be obeyed and worshipped. The
second part reaffirms the principle that Muhammad is the messenger through whom
God (Allah) revealed the holy Quran. He also serves as a model and exemplar for
all Muslims.

Prayer

The second pillar of Islam is prayer, or
namaz
(Arabic:
salat
), which is performed five times a day at set hours while facing in
the direction of the holy city of Mecca in western Arabia (modern-day Saudi
Arabia). These five prayers impose a structure and discipline on the daily life
of a Muslim. They are performed in the early morning after dawn, in the
afternoon after mid-day, in the late afternoon before sunset, after the sunset,
and at night before sleeping.
Ezan
(Arabic:
adhan)
, or the call
to prayer, summons believers by means of a repeated announcement. The muezzin,
who utters the call to prayer, ascends the minaret of a mosque five times a day
to recite the call: “God is great” (repeated four times), “I bear witness that
there is no god but God” (repeated twice), “I bear witness that Muhammad is the
messenger of God” (repeated twice), “Come to worship/prayer” (repeated twice), “Come
to success” (repeated twice), “Prayer is better than sleep” (repeated twice;
only for the dawn prayer), “God is great” (repeated twice), and “I bear witness
that there is no god but God. “

Each prayer is preceded by ablution since a Muslim can not
stand before God with a dirty body. In front of every mosque there are a number
of taps and cisterns of water where the worshipper has to wash before he can
perform his prayer. The ablution begins with the person declaring the intention
that his self-cleansing is for the purpose of worship and purity. He then
washes his hands up to the wrists three times, followed by rinsing the mouth
three times with water, cleansing his nostrils by sniffing water into them
three times, washing the whole face three times with both hands or at times
with the right hand only, washing the right and then the left arm up to the far
end of the elbow three times, wiping the head with a wet hand once, wiping the
inner section of the ears with the forefingers and the outer section with wet
thumbs, wiping the neck with wet hands, and finally washing both feet up to the
ankles three times starting with the right foot. The cleanliness of the average
Muslim in the Ottoman Empire was mentioned repeatedly by European travelers,
who observed that Islam was a “hygienic religion” and that in the eyes of the
faithful, cleanliness was part of godliness.

The ablution is nullified by natural discharges such as
urine, stools, gas, or vomiting, falling asleep, and becoming intoxicated. When
the person is sick or does not have access to water or the water is
contaminated and its usage can harm the worshipper, it is permissible to
perform
tayammum,
or substitute ablution, which involves putting one’s
hands into earth or sand or on a stone, shaking the hands off and wiping the
face with them once and touching the earth or sand again and wiping the right
arm to the elbow with the left hand and the left arm with the right hand.

Prayers can be performed anywhere, for God is believed to
be present everywhere. While the daily prayers can be performed alone, the
Friday prayer is always a group ritual, that includes the members of the community
at a local mosque. Women did not usually pray at a mosque. Instead, they
performed their prayers at home, but they underwent the same preparation and
the
wuzu,
or the ablution, without which it would be improper to pray.

The call to prayer is made a short time before the prayer
starts, providing the faithful ample time to perform ablutions and arrive at
the mosque. When all worshippers have converged and the prayer is about to
begin, the
iqamah
is called to make all in attendance aware that the prayer
is getting underway. The content of the
iqamah
is similar to the
ezan,
but it is often recited at a faster pace: “God is great, I bear witness
that there is no god but God, I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of
God, Come to worship/prayer, Come to success, Prayer is better than sleep.” The
Friday prayer is led by an
imam
(leader) who also reads the
hutbe
(Arabic:
khutbah)
, or sermon. During the Ottoman era, the name of the
reigning Ottoman sultan was mentioned in the
hutbe.
During the communal
prayer, the worshippers stand, kneel, and prostrate themselves in straight
parallel rows behind the imam. They face the
kibla
(Arabic:
qibla)
or the direction of prayer towards Mecca. Those standing at prayer represent
the equality of all Muslims before God and their solidarity as a unified
community.

Zakat

The third pillar of Islam is
zakat
(giving alms to
the poor or the act of sharing wealth), which requires Muslims to pay a
percentage of their income as religious tax to the poor, orphans, debtors,
travelers, slaves, and beggars. In the Ottoman era, the tax was payable at
different rates on harvests and merchandise, but for gold and silver that was
included in an individual’s personal assets, the rate was two and a half
percent. Islam views all wealth as emanating from God and therefore belonging
to him. This does not prohibit Muslims from producing wealth and using it to
obtain their own goods as long as the wealth is not gained through coercion,
cheating, and theft. Islam teaches, however, that human beings descend to the
level of animals if they hoard wealth and do not share it with fellow Muslims.
Zakat
is often given by the believer to the recipients of his choice.