Search

The rav akçesi (rabbi’s tax) , also known as cizye-i rav and maktu, was an annual tax levied on Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire in return for official recognition of the principle of Jewish autonomy and the Jews’ right to elect their own rabbis and religious judges. The first Ottoman record of the payment of this tax is dated July 4, 1480, when it was paid by Moses Capsali, who had been appointed chief rabbi of Istanbul by Sultan Mehmed II shortly after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (1453). At the time the tax was listed as cizye-i rav (the Heb. term rav for rabbi, used by Roman…

Until the second half of the nineteenth century, as was common in other traditional communities, Jewish girls and women had no opportunity to obtain a formal education.As a result, the life experiences of most of them were limited to the realm of home and family. Girls usually spent their childhood years being trained by their mothers to be good wives and mothers. Once they reached the age of twelve, they were considered suitable for marriage, usually pre-arranged by their families years in advance. Nevertheless, many Jewish girls received some informal education at home by family me…

The Hebrew word yaḥid (pl. yeḥidim) has multiple meanings, of which the most common are single, individual, and unique. Sephardi Jews also use the term in the sense of a worshiper in a synagogue. In Sephardi congregations in the Ottoman Empire, it more specifically indicated a tax-paying member of the qahal (congregation) who had the right to vote on congregational matters.The yeḥidim of the congregation elected the maʿamad, an executive committee consisting of several aldermen (Heb. parnasim) who administered the affairs of the congregation. The executive committee was…

see MoreaAvigdor Levy

1.  From 1300 to 1492 BackgroundThe Ottoman Empire (Ott. Tur. Devlet-i Âliye-yi Osmâniyye; Tur. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu; Ar. al-Dawla al-ʿUthmānīyya) emerged from a group of Turkic principalities in western Anatolia. The conventional date for the foundation of the Ottoman state is 1299, when one Osman (r. 1299–1324), the son of Ertuğrul, made the town of Söğüt his capital and embarked on a series of raids against neighboring villages and towns. In 1302, the Ottomans faced and defeated the Byzantines for the first time in the Battle of Nicaea, whence Osman’s forces moved on to capture most…

see Bosnia, Bosnia-HerzegovinaAvigdor Levy

see Romania (Ottoman)Avigdor Levy

see MoreaAvigdor Levy

Haham başı, also spelled hahambaşı, has been the title of a government-appointed chief rabbi in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey since 1835. The title, of Ottoman Turkish provenance, combines haham, the Turkish form of Hebrew ḥakham (wise man, sage), used by Sephardi Jews as a title for their rabbis, and Turkish baş (head, chief) in the qualifying relationship construct başı. The Hebrew counterpart of haham başı is ḥakham bashi.The Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire were under the religious and civil leadership of their ecclesiastical heads, the patri…

The Turkish term millet (from Ar. milla; Ott. Tur. pl. milel; mod. Tur. pl. milletler) originally meant both a religion and a religious community. In the nineteenth century, while retaining its original meanings, it also came to denote such modern concepts as nation and nationality. The term “ millet system” is used in reference to the set of administrative arrangements that allowed non-Muslim religious communities in the Ottoman Empire to enjoy a wide measure of religious and cultural freedom, as well as considerable administrative, fiscal, and legal auto…

see Romania (Ottoman)Avigdor Levy