Bursa (ancient Prousa), in northwestern Anatolia, was the first capital of the Ottoman Empire, between 1326 and 1365. When the Ottomans captured the city from the Byzantines, it had a small Romaniot Jewish presence. In the first half of the sixteenth century, newly arriving Spanish exiles were soon in the majority. Culturally and numerically dominant, the Sephardim fairly quickly assimilated the Romaniots, and Judeo-Spanish became the day-to-day spoken and written language of  the city’s Jews.  The community paid its poll tax (jizya) through its representative to authorities, the k…