The town of Hasköy is located at the upper part of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, facing the Balat quarter. Its history dates back to the early Byzantine period. Over the centuries, a number of Jewish communities are known to have resided there. Karaites seem to have been the first Jewish settlers, and their old underground synagogue still functions as the only Karaite synagogue in Istanbul. The town’s Jewish presence grew significantly in the Ottoman period with the arrival of Sephardi expellees after 1492. By the seventeenth century, Hasköy had the larg…