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Exposed to All the Currents of the Mediterranean
—A Sixteenth-Century Venetian Rabbi on Muslim
History
Martin Jacobs
AJS Review / Volume 29 / Issue 01 / April 2005, pp 33 - 60
DOI: 10.1017/S0364009405000024, Published online: 07 September 2005
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0364009405000024
How to cite this article:
Martin Jacobs (2005). Exposed to All the Currents of the Mediterranean—A
Sixteenth-Century Venetian Rabbi on Muslim History. AJS Review, 29, pp 33-60
doi:10.1017/S0364009405000024
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AJS Review 29:1 (2005), 33–60
EXPOSED TO ALL THE CURRENTS OF THE
MEDITERRANEAN— A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY
VENETIAN RABBI ON MUSLIM HISTORY*
by
Martin Jacobs
The Western perception of Islam as a belligerent religion owes many of its
stereotypes not only to the Crusades, but also to the early modern rivalry between
the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe. Heated debates about the “Turkish
menace” dominated European political discourse until the (second) Ottoman siege
of Vienna in 1683, as documented by the innumerable Turcica that circulated both
swiftly and widely thanks to revolutionary advances in printing. Sixteenth-century Christian authors provided their eager readers with constantly updated versions
of Ottoman history, as did some of their Jewish contemporaries. Probably the first
Jew to make the Ottomans the major subject matter of his work was Elijah Capsali of Candia in Venetian Crete, who in 1523 completed a Hebrew chronicle titled
Seder HEliyahu Zuta (“Minor Order of Elijah”).1
There was little that was new in Capsali’s way of writing history. Even
though the Candiote rabbi occasionally makes use of contemporary rhetorical devices, his writing style has more in common with that of medieval Jewish chronicles, which ultimately go back to biblical and rabbinic literature, than with humanist historiography.2 What is unprecedented in this Jewish chronicler’s work is
*This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the 36th annual conference of the
Association for Jewish Studies, Chicago, December 19 –21, 2004. I also reconsider and develop some
of the ideas outlined in my shorter article, “Das ambivalente Islambild eines venezianischen Juden des
16. Jahrhunderts: Capsalis Osmanische Chronik,” Judaica 58, no.1 (2002): 2–17. The translations of
Biblical verses are based on TANAKH, A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), but are often modified to accommodate the way these quotes are used within the context of Capsali’s work. All other translations
are mine.
1. While the manuscripts have no headline, this title occurs toward the end of the prologue,
see Seder HEliyahu Zuta (hereafter SEZ), according to the critical edition Seder HEliyahu zuta le-rabbi
HEliyahu Qapsali, ed. Aryeh Shmuelevitz, Shlomo Simonsohn, and Meir Benayahu, 3 vols. ( Jerusalem:
Ben-Zvi Institute, 1975 – 83), 1:20. Capsali’s title alludes to B. Ketuvot, 106a; it is also a captatio benevolentiae, as it can be read too as “Order of the Minor Elijah.” Not until three and a half centuries after
the completion of the manuscript were excerpts of SEZ published by Moses Lattes, Likutim shonim misefer divre HEliyahu (Padua, 1869). The first complete edition did not appear until 1975.
2. Sixteenth-century Jewish historiography in general has been the subject of lively scholarly
debate. In a provocative and highly readable survey, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi relates this literature to
the expulsions from the Iberian Peninsula (gerush Sefarad ), a traumatic experience which—according
33
Martin Jacobs
his subject matter, or to be more precise, the extent to which he writes on non-Jewish history. His lengthy and detailed account of Muslim history in general and Ottoman history in particular have no parallel in earlier Jewish literature—and only
a few among later Jewish historians.3 What is also striking about Seder HEliyahu
Zuta is the contrast between the polemical tone of the introductory chapters on the
early history of Islam and the idealized portrayal of the Ottomans, Venice’s primary Mediterranean rivals, in the chapters that follow. It is these ambivalences and
juxtapositions—medieval writing style and early modern subject matter; distinctively Rabbinic worldviews and contemporary Venetian perspectives; polemical
debates on the origins of Islam and idealized admiration of the current rulers of
the Islamic world—that make Capsali such a fascinating figure of study.
to him—gave rise to a renewed Jewish interest in history, thereby breaking with a centuries-old rabbinic disinterest in historiography. (Y.H. Yerushalmi, “Clio and the Jews: Reflections on Jewish Historiography in the Sixteenth Century,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 46 – 47
[1979–80]: 607–38; idem, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory [Seattle: University of Washington, 1982], 60–75). However, Ivan Marcus (among others) strongly questions the notion that the
trauma of 1492 served as a catalyst for Jews to abandon old traditions and open up to “modern” worldviews in fields like historiography. (I.G. Marcus, “Beyond the Sephardic Mystique,” Orim 1 [1985/86]:
35 –53.) Probably the most outspoken critic of Yerushalmi’s is Robert Bonfil, who questions whether
there was any “rise” in Jewish historiography at all in the “early modern” period. As he points out, the
literary models of the very few extant sixteenth-century Jewish books dealing with historical topics do
not differ from that of medieval ( Jewish or Christian) chronicles. It is for this reason that Bonfil refers
to sixteenth-century Jewish historiography as the “swan song” of the Middle Ages.” (Bonfil, “How
Golden Was the Age of the Renaissance in Jewish Historiography?” in Essays in Jewish Historiography, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert, 2nd ed. [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988]: 78–102, here: 90; cf. idem, “Esiste une storiografia ebraica medioevale?,” in Aspetti della storiografia ebraica, Atti del convegno di
studi giudaici della associazione italiana per lo studio del giudaismo 4 [1983 (Rome, 1987)]: 227–47;
idem, “Jewish Attitudes toward History and Historical Writing in Pre-Modern Times,” Jewish History
11 [1997]: 7–40.) For a survey of Jewish historiography after 1500 with special attention to Jewish
writings on the Ottomans, see my comparative study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jewish
chronicles of Muslim history in which I discuss Capsali among others: Martin Jacobs, Islamische
Geschichte in jüdischen Chroniken: Hebräische Historiographie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 36 – 57.
3. Three decades later, in 1554, Joseph ha-Kohen (1496—after 1577) of Genoa would publish
his Sefer divre ha-yamim le-malkhe Z. arefat u-vet Ot.oman ha-Togar (“Chronicle of the Kings of France
and of the Kings of the Dynasty of gOthmān the Turk”); for a recent study, see Martin Jacobs, “Joseph
ha-Kohen, Paolo Giovio, and Sixteenth-Century Historiography,” in Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish
Intellectuals in Early-Modern Italy, ed. David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2004), 67– 85; idem, Islamische Geschichte, 82–108, 185 –220 (including
additional bibliography). Another Hebrew chronicle comparable to Capsali’s is Yosef Sambari’s Sefer
divre Yosef (“Book of Joseph’s Words”), written in Cairo in 1673; it contains a history of the Jews in
Islamic lands, including an extensive framework on Muslim history; see the critical edition by Shimon Shtober, Sefer divre Yosef le-rabbi Yosef ben rabbi Yiz.h. aq Sambari ( Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute,
1994) (including an introduction); Jacob Lassner, The Middle East Remembered: Forged Identities,
Competing Narratives, Contested Spaces (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2000), 341– 85; Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 109 –27, 221–258; for Shtober’s articles on Sambari, see below notes
88 and 105.
34
Exposed to All the Currents of the Mediterranean
CAPSALI’S CULTURAL BACKGROUND
4
Elijah Capsali (c. 1485–1555) was born in Candia (present-day Iraklion),
the capital of Crete, which in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (1204) had been
incorporated into the Venetian Empire (it would remain under the banner of St.
Mark until the Ottoman conquest of 1669).5 By Capsali’s time, Candia had become
a thriving hub of Venetian trade and commerce in the eastern Mediterranean. Although the Jewish community in Candia profited greatly from this commercial
prosperity, their legal status was, like that of the native Greek Orthodox population (regarded as schismatic by the Roman Catholics), far below that of the Venetian colonialists (to say the least). Unlike the Greeks, the Jews of Candia (and other Cretan towns such as Chania) were confined to a segregated quarter of the city
called Zudecca (i.e., Giudecca) in the Venetian dialect, and were forced to wear a
yellow badge when in public. Despite these discriminatory restrictions, however,
Jews had one significant advantage over other non-Latin local communities in the
Venetian colonies: they enjoyed their own communal organization and institutions,
the autonomy of which saw little interference by the authorities apart from the fact
that the condestabulo (i.e., contestabile, “responsible”), the civil head of the Jewish community of Candia, had to be approved by the signoria. The reason for this
was obvious: the Jewish representatives were “responsible” for the payment of the
collective taxes.
Up to the time of Capsali—to be exact, until 1541—Venetian legislation officially excluded Jews from participation in international trade. Still, they were not
alone in being excluded since all foreigners, as well as most of the population of
the Venetian Empire, were barred from the commerce flowing through the lagoon
city; the Levant trade was regarded as the sole prerogative of Venetian patricians
and upper-class citizens.6 Since the fourteenth century, however, there had been
mention of Cretan Jews in the sources about the commercial intercourse between
Venice and the eastern Mediterranean.7 This was because the legal status and eco4. The name Capsali appears to be of Greek origin (Kapsali): for the etymology, see Meir Benayahu’s, Rabbi HEliyahu Qapsali Hish Qandiah (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1983), 11.
5. For the history of Crete under Venetian rule, see the classic study by Johann W. Zinkeisen,
“Die Insel Candia unter der Herrschaft der Signorie von Venedig,” in Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches in Europa, vol. 4 (Gotha, 1856), 582–729; E. Gerland, “Kveta als venetianische Kolonie,” Historisches Jahrbuch 20 (1899): 1–24; S. Borsari, Il dominio veneziano a Creta nel XIII secolo (Naples,
1963); Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1973), 43, 94, passim; Dionysios Hatzopoulos, “Venice and Crete: Documents from the XVI to XVIII centuries,” Fontanus 4 (1991): 55–68.
6. See Benjamin Ravid, “An Introduction to the Charters of the Jewish Merchants of Venice,”
in The Mediterranean and the Jews II: Society, Culture and Economy in Early Modern Times, ed. E.
Horowitz and M. Orfali (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 2002), 203–46 (reprint in idem, Studies on
the Jews of Venice, 1382–1797 [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003], chap. 4).
7. See David Jacoby, “Les juifs à Venise du XIVe au milieu du XVIe siècle,” in Venezia, centro
di mediazione tra Oriente e Occidente (secoli XV–XVI): Aspetti e problemi, vol. 1, ed. H.G. Beck, M.
Manoussacas, and A. Pertusi (Florence, 1977), 163 –216 (reprint in idem, Recherches sur la Méditerranée orientale du XIIe au XVe siècle [London, 1979], ch. 8); Benjamin Ravid, “Jews in International
Trade: The Emergence of the Levantines and Ponentines,” in The Jews of Early Modern Venice, ed.
Robert C. Davis and Benjamin Ravid (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2001), 73–96.
35
Martin Jacobs
nomic activity of the Jews from Crete differed in many respects from that of their
coreligionists in the metropolis or the Venetian terra firma.8 While the city of
Venice did not issue a charter legalizing the residency of Jews until 1513,9 and only
in 1541 granted Jewish merchants (who were Ottoman subjects) the right to reside
in the città lagunare,10 the Jewish communities of Crete had roots going back to
Byzantine times. Moreover, they actively participated in the regional trade that was
not considered the exclusive domain of Venetian citizens. The multilingual talents
of the Cretan Jews, many of whom were equally fluent in Greek and Italian (as well
as in Hebrew) made them ideal middlemen in the commercial exchange of the eastern Mediterranean. In addition, they enjoyed preferential business relations with
Jewish merchants living under Ottoman rule.11
Although Capsali’s interest in Ottoman affairs was certainly a result of his
living in one of the major port cities through which flowed much of the Levant
trade, the multicultural atmosphere of a commercial hub does not fully explain why
he wrote Seder HEliyahu Zuta. By composing a chronicle of the Ottomans he not
only picked a fashionable topic but also a typical genre of contemporary Italian literature. However, as he never mentions—or admits—to having read any non-Jewish literature (see following discussion),12 one may easily underestimate the extent
to which he was acquainted with the Italian cultural trends of his time.
Elijah Capsali was first exposed to Italian influences during his youth in
Venetian-ruled Candia. His father, Rabbi Elkanah Capsali, served as condestabu8. See David Jacoby, “Venice and the Venetian Jews in the Eastern Mediterranean,” in Gli ebrei
e Venezia: secoli XIV–XVIII, ed. Gaetano Cozzi (Milano, 1987), 29–58 (reprint in idem, Studies on the
Crusader States and on Venetian Expansion [Northampton: Variorum, 1989], ch. 10).
9. It was only in 1509 that Jews—in this case refugees from the armies of the League of Cambrai—were admitted to Venice; the first, so-called “new” ghetto was established in 1516. For a recent
study, see Benjamin Ravid, “The Venetian Government and the Jews,” in Davis and Ravid, Jews of Early Modern Venice, 3–30; idem, “On Sufferance and Not as of Right: The Status of the Jewish Communities in Early Modern Venice,” in The Lion Shall Roar: Leon Modena and His World, David Malkiel
(Jerusalem: Magnes, 2003 [Italia, Suppl. 1]), 17– 61.
10. Although the decree restricted the residence of so-called Levantini to limited periods, it subsequently let to the permanent establishment of the “old ghetto” (ghetto vecchio) in Venice; see Benjamin Ravid, “The Establishment of the Ghetto Vecchio of Venice: Background and Reappraisal,” in
Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1975), 267–76; Minna Rozen,
“Strangers in a Strange Land: The Extraterritorial Status of Jews in Italy and the Ottoman Empire in
the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries,” in Ottoman and Turkish Jewry: Community and Leadership,
ed. Aron Rodrigue (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1992), 123–66, esp. 128–34. The admission of
Ottoman Jewish traders to Venice in 1541 was intended to revive Venetian prospects in the Levantine
trade, which had suffered significantly as a result of changing economic conditions and the VenetianOttoman war of 1537–40. See Benjamin D. Cooperman, “Venetian Policy towards Levantine Jews in
Its Broader Italian Context,” in Cozzi, Ebrei e Venezia, 65 – 84.
11. See Benjamin Arbel, “Venice and the Jewish Merchants of Istanbul in the Sixteenth Century,” in The Mediterranean and the Jews: Banking Finance and International Trade (XVI–XVIII Centuries), ed. Ariel Toaff and Simon Schwarzfuchs (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1989), 39–56, updated version in idem, Trading Nations: Jews and Venetians in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean
(Leiden: Brill, 1995), 13–28.
12. Cf. n. 115.
36
Exposed to All the Currents of the Mediterranean
lo and as such was familiar with the Venetian authorities.13 While the Capsalis had
Romaniote (Greek-Jewish) roots, Elijah was related through his mother to the
Ashkenazic Delmedigos, who despite residing in Candia maintained strong ties
with Italy and were well known for their great erudition, both Talmudic and philosophical.14
Capsali’s Italian “acculturation” was later furthered by his own studies on
the Venetian mainland. In 1508, he went to Padua where, like his father before him,
he studied at the famous yeshivah of Judah Minz. .15 Nine years later, he would incorporate some of his experiences in Padua into his first historical work, Sipure
Venez.ia (“Stories of Venice”), also known as Divre ha-yamim le-malkhut Venez.ia
(“Chronicle of the Venetian Empire”),16 a title that echoes Venetian municipal
chronicles.17 In adapting an Italian genre of historiography to Jewish tradition,
Caspali made a remarkable cultural transfer, which he was to repeat again in his
Ottoman chronicle. Though Capsali was primarily concerned with chronicling the
history of the yeshivot in Northern Italy,18 he opened his Sipure Venez.ia with a survey of Venetian history from its legendary origins to the year 1516. In so doing, he
echoed the widespread “myth of Venice,” aspects of which were articulated by such
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jewish intellectuals as Isaac Abravanel, David
de Pomis, and, most notably, Simone Luzzatto.19
When in 1509 the League of Cambrai overran the Venetian mainland, Capsali fled Padua to Venice, which for the first time was allowing Jews to stay in the
city.20 Not long afterwards, however, he returned to Candia where from 1518 he
served as rabbi and was appointed several times as the civil representative—condestabulo—of the Jews to the Venetian authorities, once again following in the
13. In this position, Elkanah Capsali oversaw the relief work for Jewish refugees after the expulsions from the Iberian Peninsula; see Capsali’s description in chapter 73 of SEZ, 1:218.
14. See Benayahu, Qapsali, 17. On the most famous scion of the family, Elijah Delmedigo,
see n. 25.
15. See Capsali’s own account in Sippure Venez.ia, SEZ, 2:249 – 54. Although he did not study
studia humaniora in Padua, but rather engaged in Talmudic studies, Capsali reflects on his own youthful longing for wisdom in metaphors reminiscent of Humanist self-portraits. See Ann Brenner, “Portrait of the Rabbi as Young Humanist: A Reading of Elijah Capsali’s Chronicle of Venice,” Italia 11
(1994): 37–60.
16. First published by N. Porgés, “Élie Capsali et sa Chronique de Venise,” Revue des Études
Juives 77 (1923): 20–40; 78 (1924): 15 – 34; 79 (1924): 28 – 60; new edition in SEZ, 2:215–327; cf.
Shlomo Simonsohn, “Gli ebrei nell’Europa cristiana secondo il Seder Elijahu Zuta di Elijahu Capsali”
(Hebrew), in Scritti in memoria di Leone Carpi: Saggi sull’ebraismo italiano, ed. Daniel Carpi e.a.
(Jerusalem, 1967), Hebrew part, 64 –71; Brenner, “Portrait of the Rabbi,” 37–60.
17. On the Venetian chronicle tradition, see Eric Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in
the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 62–65.
18. For more details, see Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 80 – 82.
19. See Abraham Melamed, “The Myth of Venice in Italian Renaissance Jewish Thought,” Italia
Judaica 1 (Rome, 1983): 401–13; Benjamin Ravid, “Between the Myth of Venice and the Lachrymose
Conception of Jewish History: The Case of the Jews of Venice,” in The Jews of Italy: Memory and Identity, ed. Bernhard Cooperman and Barbara Garvin (Maryland: University of Maryland Press, 2000),
151–92 (reprint in idem, Studies on the Jews of Venice, ch. 9).
20. See Capsali’s account in Sippure Venez.ia, SEZ, 2:284 – 5; cf. n. 9.
37
Martin Jacobs
footsteps of his father. During the plague of 1523 he was one of the officials in
charge of the quarantine regulations. When the epidemic got completely out of
control and the authorities imposed a curfew on the Zudecca,21 Capsali was confined to his house for more than three months. It was during this time that Capsali
wrote his Ottoman chronicle “in order to expel the fear of the bitterness of death
and to focus the mind on other things, ‘that we may live and not die, and that the
land may not become a waste’ (Genesis 47:19).”22
Capsali’s dramatic account of the circumstances in which he composed his
chronicle, however, accords with contemporary literary conventions,23 and may
have been intended primarily as an apologia auctoris for writing such a detailed
account of non-Jewish history. In any case, Capsali seems to have felt the need to
justify his choice of subject matter, since even as he writes about non-Jewish history, he explicitly rejects “non-Jewish wisdom” (h.okhmot nokhriyot).24 Although
Capsali made use of certain themes and stylistic devices of contemporary Italian
literature, he was no Jewish “Renaissance man.” Unlike his elder relative, Elijah
Delmedigo (c. 1460–97),25 Capsali rejected Aristotelian metaphysics and in so
doing reflects the gradual shift among some Jewish thinkers from scholastic philosophy towards the study of the Kabbalah, the beginnings of which can be traced
back in Candia to the second half of the fifteenth century.26 Nevertheless, in tackling a popular topic of Italian historiography, Capsali could not help but absorb a
certain amount of “foreign wisdom.”
We come now to the central question posed by this study: Why and for what
audience would a conservative-minded rabbi living in a Venetian colony compose
a detailed chronicle of Muslim history? Given that he wrote his Seder HEliyahu Zuta
in highly stylized Hebrew, interspersed with innumerable allusions to the Hebrew
Bible and rabbinic literature, the work must have been intended for a traditionally
trained Jewish audience. But what benefit could a pious Jew be expected to derive
21. SEZ, ch. 165, 2:107; see Benayahu, Qapsali, 121.
22. SEZ, ch. 166, 2:109.
23. The closest parallel is Boccaccio, who linked the composition of his Decameron to the Florentine plague of 1348 (although he was out of town at this time); see Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron,
Filocolo, Ameto, Fiammetta, ed. E. Bianchi, C. Salinari, and N. Spegno (Milano, Naples, n.d.), Novella 1, 7–9; for more details, see Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 79 – 80.
24. Capsali complains that “almost all of our contemporaries are inclined towards non-Jewish
wisdom (h.okhmat nokhriyot),” (see SEZ, chap. 138, 1:376) thereby alluding to the rabbinic advice not
to teach ones son “Greek wisdom” (h.okhmah yevanit, B. Sota, 49a).
25. For the life and work of Elijah Delmedigo, see David Geffen, “Insights into the Life and
Thought of Elijah Medigo Based on His Published and Unpublished Works,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 41– 42 (1974 –74): 70 – 86; Kalman P. Bland, “Elijah del Medigo’s
Averroist Response to the Kabbalahs of Fifteenth-Century Jewry and Pico della Mirandola,” Journal
of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 1 (1991/92): 23 – 53; idem, “Elijah del Medigo, Unicity of Intellect,
and Immortality of Soul,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 61 (1995): 1–22.
26. See Aviezer Ravitzky, “The God of the Philosophers versus the God of the Kabbalists: A
Controversy in Fifteenth-Century Crete,” in History and Faith: Studies in Jewish Philosophy (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1996), 15 – 53 (English translation from Tarbiz 58 [1989]: 453–82); reprint in Joseph
Dan and Klaus Herrmann, eds., Studies in Jewish Manuscripts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999),
139–70.
38
Exposed to All the Currents of the Mediterranean
from an Ottoman chronicle—albeit clad in a Jewish garb? In a kind of a prologus
de ratione operis (to use the contemporary Latin terminology) in which he outlines
his authorial “intentions” (Hebrew: sibbot kavvanati), Capsali responds to just
such anticipated objections and argues for the usefulness of his work.27 In prefacing his work with a detailed exposition of how and why he came to write it, which
is, as Bonfil has noted, a common feature of medieval Christian chronicles,28 Capsali betrays the extent to which he has incorporated “foreign wisdom” into his
thinking.
Capsali informs us that the first ratio (i.e., Sibbah) of his work is:
That man may learn wisdom and understanding in hearing the stories . . . that
we will tell of the kings of gentiles and the Turks (Togarmim), and especially
of the wisdom of the great king, Sultan Selı̄m, whose like has never been
among the kings of the gentiles. Certainly, “The wise man, hearing them, will
gain more wisdom; the discerning man will learn to be adroit” (Proverbs
1:5).29
The desire to teach his readers “wisdom and understanding” recalls the classical definition of history as magistra vitae (Cicero). In depicting Sultan Selı̄m I
(1512–20), under whom the Ottoman Empire had vastly extended in size, as an
unparalleled example of wise leadership, Capsali follows the common use in contemporary non-Jewish historiography of the lives of certain “illustrious men” as
moral exempla.30 In so doing, however, the rabbi of Candia was not expressing his
agreement with the ideals of humanist historiography; Capsali had little in common with the secular tendencies of contemporary Italian historians such as Paolo
Giovio (1486–1552), to mention one of the most prominent names.31 That Capsali’s understanding of history followed instead the “medieval” tradition is documented by the way he articulates the second ratio of his work:
The second reason is that “all the peoples of the earth shall know” (Joshua
4:24) “that the Lord alone is God” (Deuteronomy 4:35.39) and “that there is
divine justice on earth” (Psalm 58:12). For whoever will read my stories, my
27. See Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 65 – 67.
28. Bonfil, in his “Jewish Attitudes toward History,” 17–18, writes: “Capsali engages in an almost scholastic exposition of the four Aristotelian causes of his work.”
29. Prologue to SEZ, 1:9 –10.
30. Cf. Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, 396 – 98; Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte,
24 –25.
31. The humanist historian Paolo Giovio dealt with the Ottomans in two of his works, one of
which was a “commentary” (Commentario de le cose de’ turchi [Venice, 1531]) that, as can be seen in
its dedication to Charles V, was intended as a short instruction in preparation of a possible war against
the Ottomans. (See note 127 for more on the genre of the commentario). In addition, Giovio included
extensive chapters on the Ottomans in his multivolume Historia Sui Temporis (Florence, 1550–52). On
Giovio, see T.C. Price Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century
Italy (Princeton: Princeton University, 1995); Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, 366–77; for
his works on the Ottomans, see Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 23–27; on Joseph ha-Kohen’s use of
Giovio’s commentario, see ibid., 90 – 91; idem, “Joseph ha-Kohen,” 70–8.
39
Martin Jacobs
words and my deliberations, will fear (God) and will accept the yoke of heaven on himself. Then all this ( Jewish) people will know that “the eyes of the
Lord are scanning the whole earth” (Zachariah 4:10), “observing the bad and
the good” (Proverbs 15:3), “so as to repay every man according to his ways,
and with the proper fruit of his deeds” ( Jeremiah 32:19), and that He watches (mashgiah.) over the nations to overthrow one people and to raise another
one.32
In the spirit of medieval historiography, both Christian and Jewish, Capsali
regarded it the task of the historian to teach his readers to fear God and strengthen their belief in divine providence (hashgah.ah). According to Capsali, the history of non-Jewish peoples, their rulers and their wars, provided evidence for the
claim “that there is divine justice on earth” (Psalm 58:12), and he interpreted this
history according to Biblical patterns according to which the fall and rise of empires follows a divine master plan:
Peruse the chapters of this book . . . , have a look at its stories, pay attention
and see that in His wisdom and understanding the Lord . . . has made these
Turks a strong and mighty people, “He blessed their efforts and spread their
possessions in the land” (cf. Job 1:10). The Lord brought them from a distant
land and blessed them exceptionally. The Turk is the “rod of” His “anger” and
the “staff of” His “fury” is in their (i.e., the Turks’) “hand” (cf. Isaiah 10:5),
so that he may strike with his hand the nations, people, and noble states, whose
measure has been filled. “For the Lord is an all-knowing God; by Him actions
are measured” (1 Samuel 2:3).33
For Capsali, the migration of the Turks and their rise to empire followed the
biblical model of Isaiah 10:5–11: just as the rise of Assyria was a rebuke to the
Biblical kingdom of Israel, so were the Turks empowered to punish Christianity.
The fact that Capsali replaced “Israel” with Christendom hints at the Christian origin of this typology: after the conquest of Constantinople by Meh.emet II (1453),
Christian exegetes often associated Isaiah 10:5 with the Turks, although the sin
they regarded as having provoked this severe punishment differed depending on
their particular religious affiliation. Roman Catholics, for example, saw the fall of
Byzantium as a divine verdict on the Greek Orthodox “schismatics” and warned
Protestant “heretics” of an even more severe punishment.34 Capsali translated this
Christian interpretation into a Jewish context. In his view, the Ottoman conquest
of Constantinople was Christianity’s punishment for the injustice the Jews had suffered under its rule, just as the fall of the Byzantine Empire could be attributed to
the persecution of Judaism by the malkhut Yavan, “the kingdom of Greece.” More32. Prologue to SEZ, 1:10.
33. Ibid.
34. Cf. Robert Schwoebel, The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk
(1453–1517) (Nieuwkoop: de Graaf, 1967), 17–18, 20 –21; C.A. Patrides, “‘The Bloody and Cruell
Turke’: The Background of a Renaissance Commonplace,” Studies in Religion 10 (1963): 126 – 35, esp.
129–30.
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over, in calling Byzantium “the kingdom of Greece” he evokes the memory of the
forced program of Hellenization by the ancient Seleucids that led to the Maccabeean revolts of the second century BCE, an event that had a lasting impact on
the Jewish perception of “the Greeks”:
On the 19th day of April of the year 1453 of the Christian calendar . . . “came
the days of punishment, came the days of requital (shilum)” (Hosea 9:7), and
peace (shalom) departed from him (i.e., the Byzantine Emperor); since the
Lord inspired Sultan Meh.emet to succeed him (i.e., the Byzantine Emperor as
the ruler of Constantinople). For, the measure of the wicked kingdom of
Greece (malkhut Yavan) was full, because of all the evil they had inflicted on
Judah and Israel since they (that is, the “Greeks”) had become a people. Then
the Lord spoke to Himself: . . . “I will blow upon” Constantinople, “with the
fire of my wrath” (Ezekiel 21:36) and consume it. “I will march against it and
set it on fire” (Isaiah 27:4). Because of the evil that the Greeks inflicted on my
people, on my nation, I will give it (i.e., Constantinople) into the hand of the
executor of my ban and will pour out my wrath over them.35
To further legitimate the historical mission he associated with the Turks,
Capsali opens his account of Ottoman history with a dream ascribed to the eponymous founder of the Ottoman dynasty, gOthmān I (c. 1300–24):36
In those days, gOthmān had an important and powerful dream: The Lord let
gOthmān see that from his head a small tree began to grow, and it became taller
until finally it became a very tall and majestic tree that “produced branches
and sent out boughs” (Ezekiel 17:6) . . . . In the morning, gOthmān was agitated and sent for his friends, advisors, and relatives and told them his dream.
They told him: This certainly means that an empire will arise from your loins
and will ascend to heaven and to the stars.37
The dream vision recounted here echoes one of the famous founding legends
of the Ottoman Empire, well known from official Ottoman chronicles, where it occurs in several versions.38 This legend projects the imperial ambitions of the sultans back into the time of their origins and depicts their rise as part of a divine plan
that was already revealed to the dynasty’s founder. According to the Ottoman ver35. SEZ, ch. 11, 1:65; for more details, see Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 153 – 54.
36. Capsali, however, gives no dates for his reign. Indeed, the first date that is mentioned in his
chronicle is 1453—the conquest of Constantinople.
37. SEZ, ch. 5, 1:42.
38. See Joseph Hammer von Purgstall, Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, vol. 1 (Paris, 1835), 67;
Herbert A. Gibbons, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire: A History of the Osmanlis up to the Death
of Bayezid I, 1300–1403 (London, 1916; reprinted 1968), 23 –24; V.L. Ménage, “On the Recensions
of Uruj’s History of the Ottomans,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 30 (1967):
314–22; Colin Imber, “The Ottoman Dynastic Myth,” Turcica 19 (1987): 7–27; Gottfried Hagen,
“Träume als Sinnstiftung: Überlegungen zu Traum und historischem Denken bei den Osmanen (zu
Gotha, Ms. T. 17/1),” in Wilhelm Pertsch, Orientalist und Bibliothekar, zum 100. Todestag, ed. Hans
Stein (Gotha: Landes—und Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, 1999), 101–22.
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Martin Jacobs
sion, however, it was not from gOthman’s head but from his navel or loins that this
great tree grew. This discrepancy would suggest that the Jewish chronicler did not
depend on an Ottoman source: apart from the fact that he probably could not read
Turkish, his many historical errors39 indicate that Capsali did not make use of Ottoman historiography.40
It is likely that Capsali was drawn to this well-known Ottoman founding legend because it employed literary motifs that could be also found in the Hebrew
Bible: for example, Ezekiel 31:3–9, uses the tree metaphor for the Assyrian Empire, and in Daniel 4 Nebuchadnezzar’s dream vision contains imagery that is very
similar to that of the Ottoman foundation myth.41 In other words, this famous Ottoman legend fit extremely well into Capsali’s view of history, according to which
all future historical events are already predicted, if indirectly, in the Hebrew Bible.
The belief in the divine origin of monarchical power is certainly not unique,
and can be found in many cultures and religions. Capsali, however, goes so far as
to claim the divine investiture of the Ottomans for a specific historical mission. To
strengthen his point, he even allows himself an excursus into the mythical domain
with the description of a heavenly assembly on the New Year,42 at which God reveals His plans for the Ottomans to the host of angels:
And the angels and the entire heavenly host responded: Praised be the name
of the Lord of the world, “who changes times and seasons, removes kings and
installs kings” (Daniel 2:21).
At the same time, “a voice came down from heaven: It has been decreed”
(Daniel 4:28), gOthmān, that a strong, mighty and noble empire will be given
to you, that will collect taxes on the land and divide the sea . . . ; it “will be as
39. For example, Capsali reverses the order of Murād I (1360 – 89) and Bāyazı̄d I (1389 –1403),
see Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 146 – 49.
40. It is also doubtful that Capsali was familiar with any Ottoman chronicle written in Hebrew,
as his spelling of Turkish names usually follows the Italian rendering. In contrast, compare the text of
the Oxford manuscript (Hebrew E 63) that gives quite an exact Hebrew transcription of the OttomanTurkish text (tevārı̄kh-i āl-i Gosmān) of the so-called Anonymous Chronicles (Friedrich Giese [ed.], Die
Altosmanischen Anonymen Chroniken [Breslau, 1922]). This ms. was first noted by Adolf Neubauer in
his Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (vol. 2 [Oxford, 1906], col. 357, no.
2866), and later identified by Franz Babinger, “Eine Altosmanische Anonyme Chronik in Hebräischer
Umschrift,” Archiv Orientální 4 (1932): 108 –11 (including a facsimile). Babinger dates the Sephardic
script of the ms. to the sixteenth century.
41. Daniel 4:7–9: “In the visions of my mind in bed I saw a tree of great height in the midst of
the earth; the tree grew and became mighty; its top reached heaven, and it was visible to the ends of
the earth. Its foliage was beautiful and its fruit abundant; there was food for all in it. Beneath it the
beasts of the field found shade, and the birds of the sky dwelt on its branches; all creatures fed on it.”
It is probable that the Ottoman legend indirectly echoes the biblical motif. On dreams in the Islamic
context, see Annemarie Schimmel, Die Träume des Kalifen: Träume und ihre Deutung in der islamischen Kultur (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1998); on dreams as literary means of legitimation, see Leah Kinberg, “Literal Dreams and Prophetic H
. adı̄ths in Classical Islam: A Comparison of Two Ways of Legitimation,” Der Islam 70 (1993): 279 – 300.
42. In the context of Capsali’s chronicle, this element of fiction is differentiated from the historical narrative by its use of Aramaic, including allusions to the book of Daniel, the Targum, and the
Zohar.
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strong as iron; just as iron crushes and shatters everything—and like iron that
smashes—so will it crush and smash all these” (Daniel 2:40).43
The biblical quotes that Capsali uses in this passage show that he identified
‘Othmān’s dynasty with the “iron” or “fourth kingdom” of the vision of Daniel,
the last world kingdom before the redemption. Medieval Jewish and Christian exegetes alike often associated this “iron” kingdom with Rome or the rule of Christendom. In identifying it with the Ottomans, Capsali was, however, following the
precedent set by the twelfth-century Jewish exegete Abraham hIbn gEzra who, having lived under both Christian and Muslim rule, held that Christendom (malkhut
HEdom) was only the “third,” that is, penultimate, empire44 and that the last kingdom of world history was the Islamic empire (malkhut YishmaGel).45
In 1523, the year Capsali completed his chronicle (almost four hundred years
after hIbn gEzra), the Ottoman Empire would certainly seem to fit Daniel’s description of the “iron kingdom” extremely well: it had already conquered much of
the Islamic world and expanded far into southeastern and central Europe. In fact,
Capsali provides a detailed description in Seder HEliyahu Zuta of one of the most
important Ottoman wars of expansion, the campaign of Selı̄m I against the Mamluks (1516–17) that subjected Syria, Palestine, and Egypt to the Sublime Porte.46
According to Capsali, it was God Himself who inspired Selı̄m I to wage war against
the Mamluk sultan Qāns.awh al-Ghawrı̄ (1501–16):
In the year (5)276 (after the creation, i.e., 1516 CE), the Lord called Selı̄m,
the king of kings . . . and inspired him to destroy . . . the kingdom of the sultan who rules the kingdom of Egypt (i.e., the Mamluk sultan). . . .47
And later, the text continues the same biblical style:
And the Lord spoke to Himself: ‘Behold, I summon my servant Selı̄m to set
up his throne in Egypt; “and he will gain control over treasures of gold and silver and over all the precious things of Egypt” (Daniel 11:43).48
43. SEZ, ch. 6, 1:43.
44. In order to achieve this goal, hIbn gEzra had to unite “Greece” and “Rome” into one empire;
see hIbn gEzra’s commentary to Daniel 2:39, The Short Commentary on Daniel: A Critical Edition (Hebrew), ed. A. Mondshine (M.A. Thesis, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 1977), 12,7–9: “The third empire is a western empire, i.e., the empire of Greece (Yavan) and of the Kittim. For Kittim was among
the sons of Yavan, as it is written: ‘The descendants of Yavan are Elisha und Tarshish und Kittim’ (Genesis 10:4), and Rome is Kittim;” cf. Gerson D. Cohen, “Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought,”
in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1967), 46–48, and ibid., note 96; Yosef Yahalom, “The Transition of Kingdoms in Eretz Israel (Palestine) as Conceived by Poets and Homilists” (Hebrew), Shalem 6 (1992): 1–22, esp. 12.
45. See hIbn gEzra, Short Commentary on Daniel, ed. Mondshine, 13,5: “The fourth empire is
the malkhut YishmaGel.”
46. See Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 171–76.
47. SEZ, ch. 109, 1:312–13.
48. SEZ, ch. 109, 1:314.
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Martin Jacobs
Using yet another quote from Daniel, Capsali then equates Selı̄m I with the
prophesized “king of the north,” who “at the time of the end” (Daniel 11:40) would
conquer Palestine and Egypt.
Capsali went much further than hIbn gEzra, who had simply identified the
malkhut YishmaGel with the “fourth kingdom” without engaging in any specific historical detail. And unlike his predecessor, the sixteenth-century chronicler combined this exegesis with a promise of messianic redemption, as evidenced by his
interpretation of Isaiah 19:1: “Mounted on a swift cloud, the Lord will come to
Egypt; Egypt’s idols shall tremble before Him.” Reading this verse allegorically,
Capsali equates the “swift cloud” with Selı̄m I49 and then goes on to explain the
second half of the biblical quote as follows:
The meaning (kavvanah) herein is that after Sultan Selı̄m has ruled in Egypt
“the idols shall vanish completely” (Isaiah 2:18). The idols that are there (i.e.,
in Egypt) will be destroyed, and this will happen in the time of redemption;
( . . . ) for soon, speedily, our true messiah will come . . . .
Since the time of the expulsion from Spain (gerush Sefarad), the Lord has
undoubtedly begun to ingather the exiles of Israel and he will ingather the dispersed people of Judah from the four corners of the earth.50
For Capsali, Selı̄m’s I campaign against the Mamluks was a prelude to the
ingathering of the exiles and the coming of the messiah. By making a connection
between the Ottoman conquest of Syria-Palestine and the gerush Sefarad, he was
able to interpret the expansion of Ottoman rule over the Middle East as the paving
of the way for the repatriation of the Jews to the Land of Israel. Thus, he includes
in his chapters on the reign of Bāyazı̄d II (1481–1512), the contemporary of the
Spanish expulsion, a lengthy section on the history of the Jews of Spain (sippur
Sefarad), and even claims to quote a “copy” ( patshegen) of the original expulsion
edict “signed with the name of the king and the queen,”51 that is, Ferdinand of
Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Capsali’s quotation is so different from its known
Spanish versions, however, that it is doubtful that he had access to any such official document.52 Rather, his information was based in part on the works of Abravanel,53 and in part on the oral histories of Sephardic refugees coming through
49. SEZ, ch. 134, 1:366. To this aim, he makes use of gimat. ria, arguing that the Hebrew word
for “swift” (QL 130) has the same numerical value as the name Selı̄m. This, however, makes it necessary for him to claim that Selı̄m is spelled Samekh, Lamed, Mem ( 130) “in Turkish,” while Capsali usually transcribes the name with the letters Sin, Lamed, Yud, Mem ( 380).
50. SEZ, ch. 134, 1:367.
51. SEZ, ch. 68, 1:206 – 07.
52. See Haim H. Ben Sasson, “The Generation of the Spanish Exiles on Its Fate” (Hebrew),
Zion 26 (1961): 23– 64, esp. 57–59. See also the English translation in Joseph Dan, ed., Binah: Studies in Jewish History, vol. 1 (New York: Greenwood, 1989), 83 –98.
53. See Ben Sasson, “Generation of the Spanish Exiles,” 23 n. 4; 26, 32–33; Charles Berlin, “A
Sixteenth-Century Hebrew Chronicle of the Ottoman Empire: The Seder Eliyahu Zuta of Elijah Capsali and Its Message,” in Studies in Jewish Bibliography, History and Literature in Honor of I. Edward
Kiev, ed. Charles Berlin (New York, 1971), 21– 44, esp. 23.
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Crete, to some of whom Capsali himself gave shelter.54 Despite this demonstrable
lack of accuracy, however, Capsali’s chronicle has often been taken to be a reliable
account of the Iberian expulsions.55 In any case, its highly stylized and tendentious
character should caution against using Seder HEliyahu Zuta as a primary source of
history, whether Jewish or Ottoman.
By inserting the story of the expulsion of the Iberian Jews into his description of Bāyazı̄d II’s reign, Capsali creates the impression that the two were directly related to each other. Actually, as Henry Kamen shows in his critical reassessment of the Sephardic migration,56 most Iberian exiles first went to geographically
closer places of refuge such as Provence or Italy, and only when expelled from
these places did they migrate to the East. Therefore there was often a gap of one
or more generations between the Iberian expulsions and the arrival of the sefaradim
in the realm of the sultans.57
Moreover, the account of Capsali according to which Bāyazı̄d II explicitly
invited the Jews to settle in his reign cannot be substantiated by any extant document.58 Capsali’s wording of this “invitation” is a literary creation made up of biblical allusions and modeled on the edict of Cyrus according to Ezra 1:1:
“Had not the Lord of Hosts left us some survivors” (Isaiah 1:9), and let us find
mercy with Sultan Bāyazı̄d, the king of Turkey,—so that he received the Jews
with friendship and issued “a proclamation throughout his realm by word of
mouth and in writing as follows” (Ezra 1:1): ‘Whosoever wishes to dwell in
My kingdom and My realm may gladly come and shall not delay’—(if that
had not happened) “We should be like Sodom, another Gomorrah” (Isaiah
1:9).59
By linking the Iberian expulsion(s) with the reign of Bāyazı̄d II, Capsali
gives the impression that there was a linear development from one to the other, a
54. See the prologue to SEZ, 1:11.
55. For this reason, only Capsali’s chapters on Spanish Judaism have been translated so far; see
the English translation of chapters 55 – 60, 67– 83, and 97 of SEZ, in The Expulsion 1492 Chronicles:
An Anthology of Medieval Chronicles Relating to the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal,
ed. David Raphael (North Hollywood: Carmi House, 1992), 1– 50; and the French translation of chapters 66–82 by Simone Sultan-Bohbot, Capsali, Elijahou, Chronique de l’expulsion: Seder Elijahou
Zouta (Paris: Cerf, 1994), including an introduction; the unpublished dissertation of Yolanda Moreno
Koch, El judaísmo español según la crónica de Rabbi Eliyahu Capsali: Traducción y estudio del seder
Eliyahu zuta (capítulos 40 –71) (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1985), offers a Spanish translation of a slightly larger span of chapters; a similar approach is to be found in idem, “Figuras antisemitas según las crónicas hebraico-españolas,” Proceedings of the Seventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. 4 (Jerusalem, 1981): 93 –100 (reprinted in Maguen—Escudo 103 [1997]: 51– 58); idem,
“Sefarad y las narraciones históricas de R. Eliyahu Capsali,” in Society and Community: Proceedings
of the Second International Congress for Research of the Sephardi and Oriental Jewish Heritage 1984,
ed. A. Haim (Jerusalem, 1991), 3 – 9.
56. Henry Kamen, “The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492,” Past &
Present 119 (1988): 30 – 55.
57. For more details and bibliography, see Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 11–18.
58. See ibid., 165 – 66.
59. SEZ, ch. 83, 1:239.
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Martin Jacobs
line that he then extends to include Selı̄m I’s conquest of Syria-Palestine, which
(in Capsali’s view) established the political conditions for a return of the Jews to
the Land of Israel.
In his glorification of Selı̄m I, by whose conquests the empire had been vastly increased in size, Capsali goes so far as to compare him with Alexander the Great
and other world rulers of antiquity:
If heaven had enabled him to live a little longer . . . , he would have ruled the
world as did Cyrus, Darius, Alexander the Macedon, and other kings, who
ruled from one end of the world to the other. But heaven did not help him, and
in the prime of his life he left his army to others (to lead).60
In comparing Selı̄m I to Alexander, Capsali is echoing contemporary Christian authors such as Teodoro Spandugino, who often make the same analogy. In his
collection of short biographies of the Ottoman sultans (Paris, 1519),61 which in
many ways bears some similarity to Capsali’s chronicle, Spandugino claims that
the sultan “constantly read the works and deeds of Alexander the Macedon and aspired to surpass him in fame and celebrity.”62 As was typical in sixteenth-century
historiography, Spandugino depicted the sultan as an educated monarch who studied the ancient classics in order to derive from them exempla useful for his own
political strategy.
As Capsali stresses, it was only his premature death that prevented Selı̄m I
from ruling “from one end of the world to the other.” But why then did “heaven
not help” Selı̄m I, given that his campaign against the Mamluks was for the divine
purpose of enabling the ingathering of the exiled Jews? Capsali draws on theological arguments to explain this problem, arguing that because Selı̄m had grown
haughty and bloodthirsty as a result of his military successes, he was unfit to rule
during the time of redemption. For this reason, the coming of the messiah had been
postponed until the reign of Selı̄m I’s son Süleymān I.63 This kind of argumentation clearly echoes the narrative of the biblical Chronicles, according to which
Solomon (the eponym of Süleymān) was allowed to build the Temple, an honor denied his father, David, who had become “a man of battles and bloodshed” (1 Chronicles 28:3).64
As Capsali completed Seder HEliyahu Zuta in 1523, the last chapters of his
chronicle only cover the first years of Süleymān I’s (1520–66) reign: it concludes
60. SEZ, ch. 93, 1:266.
61. Spandugino, who had a Byzantine-Italian background, authored the first Italian version in
1503 on the occasion of his journey to Constantinople. The French editio princeps of 1519 was probably the first book on the Ottomans to be printed. On Spandugino and the different versions of his work,
see Franz Babinger, Die Aufzeichnungen des Genuesen Iacopo de Promontorio-de Campis über den
Osmanenstaat um 1475 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1957), 14 –18; Schwoebel, Shadow of the Crescent, 209 –
11; Stéphane Yerasimos, Les voyageurs dans l’empire ottoman (XIVe –XVIe siècles) (Ankara: Societé
turque d’histoire, 1991), 124 –25; Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 20 –21.
62. See Spandugino, “De la origine deli imperatori ottomani,” 180, 184–85 in Documents inédits relatifs à l’histoire de la Grèce au moyen âge, ed. C.N. Sathas (Paris, 1890), 9:138–261.
63. See SEZ, ch. 145, 1:397– 98.
64. For more details, see Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 177–78.
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with a detailed description of the fall of Rhodes in 1522,65 which he saw as an important step towards the final Ottoman victory over Christendom (“Rome”). A
closer look at this description can help us understand more fully his theological interpretation of history and his sources of information.
Capsali describes the landing of the Ottoman troops on the island of Rhodes
from the perspective of the Knights of St. John—whom he calls Rhodiani—thereby hinting at the source of his information:
It happened on the 25th of Giugno 1522, on the holy day of the Rhodiani, the
feast of San Giovanni—who among all the saints is the one whom the Rhodiani have elevated over themselves: they depicted him on their banner (which
flew) above their troops. On the evening of the aforementioned feast, in the
twentieth hour, the Rhodiani lifted up their eyes and, behold, they saw a convoy of ships that filled the sea.66
Our chronicler calls attention to the fact that the Ottoman entry into the city
of Rhodes, which had been evacuated by the Knights after a long siege, took place
on the “feast of the Christians (goyim) called natale (NHZL), which is the birthday
of their god.”67 That Capsali viewed Christianity as a form of idolatry is evidenced
by his expressions of joy over the pillage of the Church of St. John:
Then the Turks entered the prayer house of San Giovanni and smashed all the
idols of the Christians (z.alme ha-goyim) and crushed them. They also exhumed all the corpses of the Grand Masters (of St. John) that were therein and
dismembered them. They emptied the building of all that was in it, and took
everything out, sparing neither gold nor silver.
Then came the king (Süleymān), who stood in the city square, the aforementioned prayer house behind him, and prostrated before the God of Heaven, who had given his enemies into his hands.68
The difference in Capsali’s attitudes towards Christianity and Islam expressed here is quite striking: while he regards the religious practices of the Order
of St. John as idolatrous, he portrays the sultan as a pious man thanking the God
of Heaven (that is, the God of the Jews) for granting him victory. The rabbi’s partiality stands out even more when compared to another contemporary account, The
War of Rhodes (La Guerra di Rhodi) by Jacques Fontaine (Iacopo Fontano), which
relates how after his victory, Süleymān converted the church of San Giovanni
65. It stretches over SEZ, ch. 154 –162, 2:25 – 45.
66. SEZ, ch. 158, 2:35. Cf. the description of the fall of Rhodes by Jacqes Fontaine (Iacopo
Fontano), La guerra di Rhodi, reprinted in Francesco Sansovino, ed., Historia universale dell’ origine
et imperio de turchi2 (Venice, 1568), 234b –273b. On page 248a of the reprint edition, Fontaine reports
that on the morning of June 24 una grandissima armata came into view; on Fontaine and his work on
the Ottomans, see Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, 333.
67. SEZ, ch. 161, 2:44. The same date is mentioned in Fontaine, Guerra di Rhodi, in Sansovino, Historia, 250b (“il dì del natale del Signor nostro”); and Spandugino, “Origine,” in Sathas, Documents inédits, 186, 17–18.
68. SEZ, ch. 161, 2:44.
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Martin Jacobs
Battista into a mosque, which he calls tempio di Maometh. Like Capsali, Fontaine
also reports that the sultan took away “the relics of the Saints” and ordered the
Grand Masters’ tombs to be opened. In contrast to the Jewish chronicler, who portraits the Muslim ruler as a believer in the “God of Heaven,” Fontaine betrays his
ignorance of Islam when he claims that the sultan “prayed to Maometh, whom the
barbarians believe to have been sent by God in Heaven as the most perfect prophet
of all times.”69
Capsali no doubt felt confirmed in his pro-Ottoman attitude by the fact that
after their victory, the conquerors liberated Jews (and Turks) who had been enslaved by the Knights on their Mediterranean raids:
On this day, all the Turkish slaves on Rhodes were rescued, for the king (i.e.,
the sultan) had come to an agreement with the Rhodiani not to kill them (on
their withdrawal). There were also many enslaved Jews on Rhodes who were
saved by the Lord’s compassion. Also all the Jews who had apostatized,
whether voluntarily or forcibly, on occasion of (their) expulsion from Rhodes
returned to their former religion. They reopened the synagogue that the Christians (goyim) had closed, and entering it, gave thanks, praised the Lord and
“sang hymns to the Lord the God of Israel” ( Judges 5:3).70
In Fontaine’s chronicle, there is also mention of the fact that the Ottomans
allowed Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity to “return to the Law
of Moses.”71 For Capsali, this provided still more proof that the Ottoman conquest
was in the interest of the Jews. He was aware, however, of the possible repercussions the fall of Rhodes might have on Venetian Crete. Thus he notes that the
Knights of St. John had sent a ship (for which he uses the loanword fusta) to ask
the help of Gabriele da Martinengo, who was in Candia executing a Venetian commission to strengthen the city’s fortifications.72 He also knew that a Venetian fleet
had sailed to Candia under the command of the capitagno general Domenico
Trevezan to protect Crete against a possible Ottoman attack on the Venetian outpost.73 It may seem surprising that Capsali—who served as the Jewish representative to the Venetian authorities—would not only criticize Martinengo for agreeing to come to the aid of the Knights of St. John, but even more disturbingly, voice
such enthusiasm over the fall of Rhodes. His jubilant tone is even more problematic given the fact that some of the Knights had brought the plague with them when
they pulled out of Rhodes and took refuge in Candia.74 It is against this gloomy
backdrop that Capsali dares to celebrate the fall of Rhodes in rhymed prose, com69. Guerra di Rhodi, in Sansovino, Historia, 262b.
70. SEZ, ch. 161, 2:45.
71. Fontaine, Guerra di Rhodi, in Sansovino, Historia, 262b–263a (defective pagination). In
the following, however, Fontaine claims that “the slaves were forced to sacrifice to Maometh” (sic!).
72. SEZ, ch. 159, 2:38; the name is spelled Mart.ilengo. According to Marino Sanuto, Martinengo served in Candia as “governor of the infantry” (governador di le fantarie) in 1521; see, I Diarii,
vol. 30, ed. F. Stefani (repr. Bologna, 1969/70), 372.
73. SEZ, chap. 159, 2:39; Capsali’s spelling reflects the Venetian pronunciation “Domenego.”
74. Capsali mentions this in SEZ, chap. 165, 2:106 –107.
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paring the conquest to a lawful “wedding” of a “bride” (Rhodes) and “groom” (Süleymān I).75
The only explanation for Capsali’s panegyrics on the Ottomans is that he believed the coming of the messiah to be imminent. Thus, at the beginning of his
chapters on Süleymān, he writes:
He is the tenth king (sultan) of the Turks, and “the tenth one shall be holy to
the Lord” (Leviticus 27:32). “In his days Judah shall be delivered and Israel
(shall dwell secure” [ Jeremiah 23:6]) “and a redeemer shall come to Zion”
(Isaiah 59:20).76
Capsali’s conviction that the coming of the messiah was imminent was based
on the speculations of the Sephardic Kabbalist Abraham ben hEligezer ha-Levi,
who had predicted that the messiah would appear in the Jewish year 5290 (1529/
30).77 At the conclusion of his chronicle, Capsali even expresses the wish not only
that he will be able to witness personally the redemption, but that he will also be
in the position to make a written account of it (sic!):
“One thing I ask of the Lord, only that do I seek” (Psalm 27:4): As we were
allowed to write an account of these events, so we may be allowed to write
about all the good (things to come), that the Lord has foretold through his servants, the prophets, for the Lord has spoken good (tidings) for Israel. “Let our
eyes gaze on Zion” (Micah 4:11) and on the rebuilding of Ariel. May all Israel take part in the ingathering of the exiles and in the coming of the messiah . . . .78
We do not know Capsali’s reaction to the disappointment of his expectations
whether he simply postponed his hopes or was totally disillusioned. As he neither
updated his chronicle nor revised the computation of the year of redemption, one
may assume the latter.
CAPSALI AS A CHRONICLER OF MUSLIM HISTORY
Seder HEliyahu Zuta does more than simply try to convince its readers that
the Ottoman dynasty was raised by God to repatriate the Jews in the mid-sixteenth
century. A closer look at the material assembled by Capsali leads to the conclusion
that, notwithstanding its theologically motivated view on history (a standpoint
75. These allegorical pieces have been added to SEZ as ch. 162– 64, 2:46 –106. SEZ, ch. 163,
2:67–86, deals with the handing over of the Dodecanese islands that Capsali calls the “numerous
daughters” of Rhodes.
76. SEZ, ch. 148, 2:7.
77. Meshare kitrin (Constantinople, 1510; reprint as facsimile, Jerusalem, 1977), 16b–17a; cf.
the introduction by Gershom Scholem, 26; on ha-Levi’s messianic speculations and their relation to the
Ottomans, see idem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1941), 247; Haim H. Ben Sasson,
“Exile and Redemption through the Eyes of the Spanish Exiles” (Hebrew), in Yitzhak F. Baer Jubilee
Volume, ed. Salo W. Baron e.a. ( Jerusalem, 1960), 216 –27, esp. 225.
78. SEZ, ch. 148, 2:7.
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Martin Jacobs
shared by many contemporary Christian historiographers), his work has to be regarded as a serious attempt at writing historiography. His use of the stylistic devices of contemporary Italian writing on the Ottomans shows that his messianic
expectations were not the sole reason behind his turn to historiography.
Capsali, like Spandugino and other sixteenth-century Italian writers on the
Ottomans,79 authored short biographical portraits of the sultans, from the eponymous founder of the dynasty up to the sultan ruling at the time of his writing. Like
other Italian writers of that genre, he enriched these biographical sketches with battle accounts, descriptions of weapons,80 stories about dynastic intrigues and life in
the harem, as well as many other details which he thought to be either informative
or entertaining. Another indication of Capsali’s historiographical ambitions is his
decision to open his Ottoman chronicle with an historical overview of the origins
of Islam. A close reading of these introductory chapters reveals that in his attempt
to write a “serious” chronicle according to contemporary models, Capsali sometimes ended up contradicting his own agenda, as exemplified by his chapters on
early Islam.
Capsali’s knowledge of the origins of Islam was based on earlier Jewish and
Christian polemical traditions. The Christian background of much of his material
is best illustrated by the version of the life of Muh.ammad that he offers his readers:
Many say that Muh.ammad81 was a Christian (goy), one of the important men
or princes of Rome, one of the distinguished cardinals (GRDYNLY) of the Pope
(papa). When the Romans saw that he was a courageous and successful warrior, they sent him out to roam about and wander in the Land of the East in order to subject it to their rule (literally: “hands”). And they took an oath and
swore that if he succeeded in this, they would make him Pope on his return.82
79. See V.J. Parry, “Renaissance Historical Literature in Relation to the Near and Middle East,”
in Historians of the Middle East, ed. Bernard Lewis and P.M. Holt (Oxford: Oxford University, 1962),
277–89; Schwoebel, Shadow of the Crescent, 147–75; Agostino Pertusi, “I primi studi in occidente
sull’origine e la potenza dei turchi,” Studi Veneziani 12 (1970): 465–515; Cochrane, Historians and
Historiography, 324–37 (on Italians in the East); for more details and bibliography, see Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 19 –27.
80. Aryeh Shmuelevitz, “Capsali as a Source for Ottoman History, 1450–1523,” International
Journal of Middle East Studies 9 (1978): 339–44, sees in Seder HEliyahu Zuta a source of special importance for the history of Ottoman weaponry. According to Shmuelevitz, Capsali acquired specific
information in this field due to his contacts to Spanish-Jewish refugees. However, the impact of sefaradim on the Ottoman development of weapons has been largely overestimated. See S.O.T. Christensen, “The Marranos as Gunrunners: A Distorted Topos of the Clandestine European Expansion,” in
Dimensoes da alteridade nas culturas de lingua Portuguesa—o outro, Actas de 1° Simposio Interdisciplinar de Estudos Portugueses, vol. 2 (Lisbon, 1987), 111– 32; Gilles Veinstein, “Note sur les transferts technologiques des séfarades dans l’empire ottoman,” in 1492: L’expulsion des juifs d’Espagne,
ed. Roland Goetschel (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1996), 83–92; Capsali seems to echo a Western
topos, according to which the Jews were to blame for the Ottoman conquests, see Jacobs, Islamische
Geschichte, 151, 170, 208 – 09.
81. Spelled here MH
. MYT like the Latin Mahumet, yet another indication of the Christian origin of Capsali’s material. The editor’s claim (SEZ, ch. 4, 1:36 n. 37) that Capsali follows the Turkish
usage is misleading, as—contrary to modern Turkish—Ottoman Turkish would read Meh.emed.
82. SEZ, ch. 4, 1:38.
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Muh.ammad, having subjected “the entire East to the Romans,” returned victorious to Rome only to find that the Romans had no intention of keeping their
promise to make him Pope. It was for this reason that Muh.ammad went back to the
cities he had conquered in the East and became their ruler.
This explanation of the origins of Islam can be traced back to widely circulated legends, according to which Muh.ammad was influenced by Christian teachers—legends that went so far as to suggest the fantastical idea that he had started
out as an ambitious Catholic cardinal.83 The story first emerges at the end of the
thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century in the Italian versions of Brunetto Latini’s Tesoro84 and in a collection of legends about Muh.ammad known under
the title Liber Nicolay.85
In depicting Islam as nothing more than a Christian apostasy, Capsali is
echoing a viewpoint characteristic of medieval Western polemics against Islam.
His interest in this version, however, was primarily that it questioned the revealed
character of Islam. We see this as well in some of the other stories he tells about
Muh.ammad being a charlatan and impostor:
Muh.ammad decided to establish a new religion in the world in order to be seen
as important by the uneducated masses (Gam ha-Harez.) and to abrogate the religions that had been in existence prior to him. He was a very shrewd man who
knew to deviously obtain the confidence of people: he was very cunning “and
wherever he turned he worsted” (things) [1 Samuel 14:47]).
In any event, he took a dove and “guided” it “in knowledge and showed” it
“the path of wisdom” (Isaiah 40:14). When Muh.ammad was sitting in front of
the people and the princes, the dove flew (to him) and came to whisper in his
ears in the presence of all the people . . . . And all who saw it were stunned and
asked him: “What is that?” And he replied to them: “(Word of him who hears
God’s speech), who beholds visions from the Almighty” (Numbers 24:4).86
According to this story, Muh.ammad had trained a dove to make it appear that
it was whispering divine words into his ears. The legend questions the revealed
character of Islam and is obviously using Christian imagery, where the dove serves
as a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
83. This motif would appear to go back to the Christian legend, according to which one of
Muh.ammad’s advisors was a monk, who is often called Bah.ı̄rā (on the Bah.ı̄rā legend, see notes 109,
112, and 113). In one version of this legend, it is said that Muh.ammad’s advisor was a heretical hermit
who wanted to become Patriarch of Alexandria but was rejected for his unorthodox views. This motif
of the ambitious heretic is later transposed onto Muh.ammad himself who, in a Latin context, is represented as a cardinal rather than a hermit.
84. According to both versions of the Tesoro, the original name of the cardinal was Pela(s)gio;
see the quotes in Alessandro d’Ancona, “La leggenda di Maometto in occidente,” in Studi di critica e
storia letteraria di Alessandro d’Ancona2, vol. 2 (Bologna, 1912), 165 – 306, esp, 168 – 69.
85. See Augusto Mancini, “Per lo studio della leggenda di Maometto in occidente,” Rendiconti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filogiche, Ser. 6, 10 (1934):
325 – 49, esp. 327–28, n. 4; d’Ancona, “Leggenda,” 210–15; Kenneth M. Setton, Western Hostility to
Islam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992), 2–3.
86. SEZ, ch. 4, 1:36
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Martin Jacobs
The same motif occurs in the Liber Nicolay87 as well as in the Speculum Historiale by Vincent of Beauvais (died 1264), which contains an extensive collection
of polemic texts against Islam (book 23, chapters 39–67).88 Vincent himself refers
to an anonymous libellus de Machometi fallacis (“Booklet on Muh.ammad’s Deceptions”) said to have circulated in partibus transmarinis (“in the oversea territories”), as the Levant was called by the Crusaders. It is in this booklet that Vincent claims to have found the following version of the legend of the trained dove:
As he (Muh.ammad) was speaking to the people, a dove that was nearby and
that he had surreptitiously trained to this purpose, came and landed on his
shoulder and, pecking at the grain that was hidden in (Muh.ammad’s) ears, appeared to be prompting with him words of the Law.89
While Capsali’s way of weaving his text out of biblical quotes and allusions
tends to obscure the meaning, here, the alleged trick finds a kind of rationalistic
explanation: the dove is pecking grains of wheat tucked away in Muh.ammad’s ears.
Whereas the above-quoted legends are of Christian origin, Capsali also drew
from Jewish polemics against Islam. The following paragraph from Seder HEliyahu
Zuta is based on Jacob of Venice’s letter against the apostate Pablo Christiani90
(dating from the thirteenth century):
“Muh.ammad did many things like this; but the miracles he performed were
created (by) optical illusions, and he would perform these great wonders by
means of deceit and trickery.”91 In this way was most of the East deceived by
his trickery . . . ; and they believed that he was a prophet of God and His messenger and that he had been sent by the spirit of God and His power.92
Although it is difficult to pinpoint any one particular source for Capsali’s
polemical traditions of Christian origin, one can assume that these traditions would
87. See the Latin text in Mancini, “Studio della leggenda,” 343.
88. See d’Ancona, “Leggenda,” 198, 269 –70 n. 71. The parallel between Capsali and Vincent
of Beauvais has already been recognized by Shimon Shtober, who refers to Capsali in the context of
his research on Yosef Sambari; see Shtober, “Muh.ammad and the Beginning of Islam in the Chronicle
Sefer Divrey Yoseph,” in Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Prof. David Ayalon,
ed. Moshe Sharon (Jerusalem, Leiden: Brill, 1986), 319 – 52, esp. 334; idem, “Reshit ha-Islam behaspeklariyah yehudit: sippuro shel Yosef Sambari bagal sefer divre Yosef,” PeGamim 61 (1994): 83–108,
esp. 94.
89. Speculum historiale 23, 39. My translation is based on the edition Douai, 1624: Vincentius
Bellovacensis, Speculum quadruplex sive speculum maius (facsimile reprint; Graz, 1964), 912b.
90. Published by J. Kobak as Iggeret vikkuah, Jeschurun 6 (1868): Hebrew part, 1–34; according to Jacob Mann, “Une source d’histoire juive au XIIIe siècle: La lettre polémique de Jacob b. Elie à
Pablo Christiani,” Revue des Études Juives 82 (1926): 363 –77, the author was from Spain. Before his
conversion to Christianity, the Dominican friar Pablo Christiani was known as Shahul and belonged to
the disciples of Jacob b. Elijah; see Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval
Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1986), 108 –109.
91. Up to this point, Capsali is quoting Jacob of Venice; cf. Iggeret vikkuah, ed. Kobak, 13.
92. SEZ, chap. 5, 1:41.
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have been known to him as part of his Venetian cultural background. As the rise of
Venice had been closely linked to the Crusades,93 and the Fourth Crusade served
Venice as a welcome pretext to expand its commercial activities and colonies in
the eastern Mediterranean, much of the Crusader tradition was preserved in the
Venetian Empire. Even after the fall of the Crusader states in the Levant, Venice
continued to provide for the transportation of Christian pilgrims to the Holy
Land.94 Thus, much of the Christian polemics against Islam that had originated in
partibus transmarinis, polemics such as the libellus de Machometi fallacis quoted
by Vincent of Beauvais, lived on in the parts of the eastern Mediterranean ruled by
Venice.
In this milieu, Capsali will have also learned of Christian traditions regarding the composition of the Qurhān, as we can see from the following story from the
life of Muh.ammad that Capsali includes in the Seder HEliyahu Zuta:
A) And he (Muh.ammad) ordered his friend gAlı̄ to write down his laws and
instructions (torotav); he would dictate them and gAlı̄ would write them in a
book with ink, while Turzemān would be “standing at his right to admonish
him (lesit.no)” (Zechariah 3:1); “thereby daubing with plaster the flimsy wall
that he was building” (Ezekiel 13:10). In this way was brought to completion
the work produced by Muh.ammad that they call ilfurHān (i.e., al-Qurhān).95
B) In this book, he (i.e., Muh.ammad) proclaimed the unity of God in complete unity ( yih.ed ha-Hel be-takhlit ha-yih.ud ). He collected from here and
there all the verses that speak about the unity of God in the twenty-four books
(of the Hebrew Bible) and transferred them into it (the Qurhān) in their (own)
writing and their (own) language.
C) However, this man Muh.ammad did not know how to write. And so, when
he wanted to write something, he would not sign in his own handwriting but
would dip his whole hand with its five fingers into ink and would make a print
instead of his signature as a sign for the people of Ishmael.96
The tradition according to which Muh.ammad was illiterate is well known
from Islamic sources, especially from the biographical (sı̄ra) and exegetical liter-
93. Whereas during the First Crusade Genoa and Pisa supplied much of the naval power, later
it was the Venetians who were the most successful in securing for themselves specific territorial and
commercial grants; see L.B. Robert, “Venice and the Crusades,” in A History of the Crusades, vol. 5:
The Impact of the Crusades on the Near East, ed. Norman P. Zacour and Harry W. Hazard (Madison:
University of Wisconsin, 1985), 379 – 451; Donald E. Queller and Irene B. Katele, “Venice and the Conquest of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” Studi Veneziani 12 (1986): 15–43.
94. See Eliyahu Ashtor, “Venezia e il pellegrinaggio in Terra Santa nel basso medioevo,” Archivo Storico Italiano 143, no. 2 (1985): 197–223; Ugo Tucci, “I servizi marittimi veneziani per il pellegrinaggio in Terra Santa nel Medioevo,” Studi Veneziani 9 (1985): 43–66; David Jacoby, “Pelerinage
médiévale et sanctuaires de Terre Sainte: la perpective vénetienne,” Ateneo Veneto 24 (1986): 27–58
(reprint in idem, Studies on the Crusader States, ch. 4).
95. The spelling ilfurHān is probably a corruption of Latin alchoranus.
96. SEZ, ch. 4, 1:37.
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ature (tafsı̄r).97 In Islam, Muh.ammad’s illiteracy served as an affirmation of the
belief that the Qurhān was not authored by a man but rather revealed by God. In
contrast, Christian polemics used this tradition to question the originality of the
Qurhān by depicting Muh.ammad as an ignoramus who plagiarized the Bible under
the influence of Jewish or Christian advisers. Similarly, Capsali attributes leading
roles in the composition of the Qurhān to two companions of Muh.ammad called
gAlı̄ and Turzemān(i), whom he characterizes in the following way:
D) He (Muh.ammad) was joined by two men, who were “clever at doing wrong,
but unable to do right” ( Jeremiah 4:22); one was called gAlı̄ and the other one
Turzemāni. gAlı̄ was very clever, and some say that he was (originally) a Jew
who had been baptized98 . . . . 99
Already in the early Judeo-Arabic Qis.s.at as.h.āb Muh.ammad (“Story of
Muh.ammad’s Friends”) preserved in the Cairo Genizah there is mention of ten wise
Jewish men who accepted Islam “to prevent evil from Israel” and composed the
Qurhān on Muh.ammad’s behalf;100 however, this tradition was unknown to the Candiote rabbi. That Capsali depended on Jewish traditions originating from Christian
lands is substantiated by the fact that gAlı̄ (hIbn gAbı̄ T.ālib, the cousin and sonin-law of the prophet) is here said to be a baptized Jew. According to this polemical
tradition, gAlı̄’s (alleged) apostasy is the explanation for his bad influence on Muh.ammad.
The second companion, Turzemān(i),101 is probably to be identified with
gUthmān bin al-gAffan, under whose caliphate (644–56 CE) the official version of
the Qurhān was promulgated. This would explain Capsali’s use of Zechariah 3:1,
according to which Turzemān’s job was to supervise gAlı̄’s writing, which is compared to a “flimsy wall” that needs to be plastered (A). Capsali, however, was not
interested in a historical critique of the Qurhān, but in making a polemical statement. As a closer look at the quoted verse reveals, the “admonitioner” mentioned
in Zechariah 3:1 “standing at his right to admonish him (lesitno)” is none other but
satan. In equating gUthmān with Satan, Capsali is declaring the Qurhān to be Satanic verses; and later in the text, he refers to Muh.ammad as the “companion of
97. See Isaiah Goldfeld, “The Illiterate Prophet (Nabı̄ Ummı̄): An Inquiry into the Development
of a Dogma in Islamic Tradition,” Der Islam 57 (1980): 58 – 67; Norman Calder, “The Ummı̄ in Early
Islamic Juridic Literature,” Der Islam 67 (1990): 111–23; K. gAthamina, “Al-Nabiyy al-Umiyy: An Inquiry into the Meaning of a Qurhanic Verse,” Der Islam 69 (1992): 61–80.
98. Literally: “he brought about himself the malicious (or: stormy) waters.”
99. SEZ, ch. 4, 1:36.
100. See Jacob Leveen, “Mohammed and His Jewish Friends,” Jewish Quarterly Review 16
(1925/26): 399–406; Jewish Quarterly Review 17 (1926/27): 237; the Genizah fragment, Ms. JTS
ENA 2541, fol. A, is published in Jewish Quarterly Review 16, 402; cf. M. Schwabe, “Mohammed’s
Ten Jewish Companions” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 2 (1931): 74 – 89 (with parallels in the works of the Byzantine chronicler Theophanus); Jacob Mann, “An Early Theologico-Polemical Work,” Hebrew Union College Annual 12–13 (1937– 38): 411– 59.
101. This name may perhaps be explained as a conflation of the Ottoman terjumān (deriving
from Arabic turjumān, “translator,” “interpreter”), familiar as “dragoman” in European languages, and
gUthmān.
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(the archdemon) Ashmadai.”102 Despite these polemical undertones, Capsali does
acknowledge the monotheistic character of Islam,103 a concession made by Christian polemicists as well.104 However, he explains away the uniqueness of the
Qurhānic proclamations of the One God with his claim that all of the relevant verses were actually compiled from different parts of the Hebrew Bible.
Capsali also retells a polemical version of the Bah.ı̄rā-legend,105 another tradition about the life of Muh.ammad that goes back to the classical biographical literature (sı̄ra) of Islam and that had an extensive afterlife in Christian anti-Islamic
polemics:
A) In the chronicle (sefer divre ha-yamim) of Muh.ammad, the deceiver and
companion of Ashmadai,106 it is written, that Abū Bakr and Hayya were
among the supporters of Muh.ammad’s covenant and religion and among those
who observed his commandments and his teaching (torah).
B) Abū Bakr was of Jewish origin, the son of the exilarch (rosh ha-golah).
When he saw that Muh.ammad was rising higher and higher (in the ranks) he
began to fear that (Muh.ammad) might come to hate him and remove him from
his (own) high rank and “drag the dignity” of his office “in the dust” (Psalm
89:40). And so he took off his clean clothes and put on dirty ones, adopted the
“conduct of sinful men” (Numbers 32:14), and joined Muh.ammad and his
friends, going wherever (Muh.ammad) went and listening to his speeches.
C) This man Hayya who was a Christian (noz. ri) became Muh.ammad’s advisor and bosom companion, joining him in his bedroom and on his bed. Because of this, Muh.ammad’s friends became envious of him ( . . . ) and plotted
to slay him with the sword.107
The story goes on to relate how Muh.ammad’s Christian friend arranges a
banquet in the course of which everyone falls asleep except Abū Bakr, who takes
102. SEZ, 5, 1:38; there again, Capsali quotes the polemical letter of Jacob of Venice, see below. On Ashmadai as inspirator of Muh.ammad’s Jewish teachers, see a source published by B. Cohen,
“Une légende juive de Mahomet,” Revue des Études Juives 88 (1929): 1–17. For the attribution of the
Qurhān to Satan, another topos of Christian polemics, see d’Ancona, “Leggenda,” 262, n. 58; Norman
Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of Image, 2nd ed. (Oxford: One World, 1993), 362, n. 86.
103. Capsali echoes here Maimonides’ wording in his response to the proselyte gOvadya;
see Teshuvot ha-Rambam, ed. Jehoshua Blau, vol. 2, 2nd ed. ( Jerusalem, 1986), 726, No. 448: “These
Muslims (YishmaGelim) are no idolaters at all . . . and they proclaim the unity of God (meyah.edim
la-Hel . . . yih.ud) . . . properly.”
104. See Daniel, Islam and the West, 60 – 62.
105. On the following, cf. Shimon Shtober’s articles on Yosef Sambari’s use of the Bah.ı̄rālegend, “Muh.ammad and the Beginning of Islam,” 329 – 31; idem, “The Monk Bahira, the Counselor
of Muhammad and the Jews: Between Polemic and Historiography” (Hebrew), Proceedings of the
Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. 2, 1 ( Jerusalem, 1990), 69–76; idem, “Reshit ha-Islam,”
92–94.
106. Here again, Capsali quotes the polemical letter of Jacob of Venice, see Iggeret vikkuah., ed.
Kobak, 13.
107. SEZ, ch. 5, 1:38 – 9.
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Muh.ammad’s sword and kills Hayya. The next morning, Muh.ammad wakes from
a drunken sleep to discover that his friend has been murdered, and, seeing the blood
on his own sword, believes that he himself was the one who killed him. Heartbroken, he then issues a decree prohibiting the drinking of alcohol.
While it is correct that Abū Bakr was among the first supporters of Muh.ammad, nowhere in the Muslim tradition is he described as having been the son of an
exilarch (rosh ha-golah, i.e., the representative of the Jews in Babylonia).108 The
story that gAlı̄ and Abū Bakr were Jews who had converted to Islam, however, is
to be found in the Judeo-Arabic tradition originating from the Lands of Islam109 —
although, again, Capsali could not have been aware of this. Although he refers to
a “chronicle (sefer divre ha-yamim) of Muh.ammad,” the source of his banquet story is the polemical letter by Jacob of Venice mentioned above.110 It is from this
source as well that he took the name Hayya;111 however, there is no question that
this figure is to be identified with Bah.ı̄rā, about whom there are many legends in
both Islamic and Christian sources. According to Muslim tradition, Bah.ı̄rā was a
Christian monk who had recognized Muh.ammad’s future mission when the
prophet was still a youth.112 Whereas in Islamic tradition Bah.ı̄rā serves as a Christian witness to the authenticity of Muh.ammad’s prophethood, in Christian polemical literature he is a Christian heretic who exerts considerable influence on
Muh.ammad and the composition of the Qurhān.113
The story that connects the Islamic prohibition of alcohol to the murder of
Bah.ı̄rā can be traced back to the Crusader states of the Levant, from which it was
brought to the West in the thirteenth century by William of Tripoli.114 It would
therefore have been familiar to Jacob of Venice, whose polemical letter, as we have
108. The “son of the Rosh ha-Golah” (Arabic: ibn rās al-djālūt) is, however, a known figure in
Muslim literature; see Moshe Gil, “The Babylonian Encounter and the Exilarchic House in the Light
of Cairo Geniza Documents and Parallel Arab Sources,” in Judaeo-Arabic Studies: Proceedings of the
Founding Conference of the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies, ed. Norman Golb (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1997), 135–73, esp. 157 and n. 47 (Hebrew version in Tarbiz 48 [1979]: 35–73).
109. See Moshe Gil, “The Story of Bah.ı̄rā and Its Jewish Versions” (Hebrew) in Hebrew and
Arabic Studies in Honour of Joshua Blau, ed. Haggai Ben-Shammai (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem,
1993), 193–210, according to whom the Judeo-Arabic Bah.ı̄rā tradition can be traced back to SaGadyah
Gahon; see also the selected sources translated by Shtober, “Reshit ha-Islam,” 347–52.
110. This source has been identified by Shtober, “Reshit ha-Islam,” 332, where he refers to Capsali as a source of Sambari’s work.
111. Iggeret vikkuah., ed. Kobak, 13: H
. ayya.
112. See Alois Sprenger, “Moh.ammads Zusammenkunft mit dem Einsiedler Bah.yrā,”
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 12 (1858): 238–49; Theodor Nöldeke, “Hatte Muh.ammad christliche Lehrer?,” ibid., 699 –708; and the entry “Bah.ı̄rā,” The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1960), col. 922–23 (A. Abel).
113. See Moritz Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache
zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden (Leipzig, 1877), 160; C. de Vaux, “La légende de Bahira,” Revue de l’Orient Chretien 2 (1897): 439 – 54; Richard Gottheil, “A Christian Bahira Legend,” Zeitschrift
für Assyriologie 13 (1898): 189 –242; 14 (1898): 203 – 68; 15 (1900): 56 –102; 17 (1903): 125 – 66;
Daniel, Islam and the West, 109 –10, 262– 64; S. Gero, “The Legend of the Monk Bah.ı̄rā: The Cult of
the Cross, and Iconoclasm,” in La Syrie de Byzance a l’Islam, VIIe –VIIIe siècle, ed. P. Canivet and J.P.
Rey-Coqais (Damascus, 1992), 47– 58.
114. See d’Ancona, “Leggenda,” 200 – 04; cf. Daniel, Islam and the West, 110, 373 n. 33.
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seen, was Capsali’s source. Here again we get an idea how Outremer traditions became known to the author of Seder HEliyahu Zuta.
Although (so far) it has not been possible to identify a specific non-Jewish
source used by Capsali, the legends he included into his account on the origins of
Islam point at Crusader traditions that were still accessible in the Venetian Empire
of the sixteenth century. His depiction of Ottoman history, which to some extent
resembles Spandugino’s account, has to be understood in the context of the contemporary Venetian-Ottoman rivalry. However, it is still an open question whether
Capsali drew on written sources for his descriptions of the dynastic and military
history of the Ottomans, given that he himself, like a good classical historian,115
firmly believed that oral sources constituted the most reliable material of historiography:
Amongst the tribes of Israel, I firmly announced that my tongue will tell the
truth: In all the stories I will tell, I will not take the path of liars. Behold, I have
received the stories (sippurim) about the kings of Turkey from the mouth of
venerable (zekenim) and knowledgeable Turks.116
Like Spandugino, who claimed to have entered into conversation with “two
gentlemen who were close to Bāyazı̄d II,”117 Capsali, however, does not disclose
the names of his informants, the “venerable and knowledgeable Turks”—a fact that
may cause the modern reader to question his honesty.118 Yet, in the case of his account of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, Capsali does mention a specific eyewitness:
For the stories of Egypt (sippure Miz.rayim), I relied on the testimony of many
beloved and honorable (people) who were there at that time, especially on the
trustworthy and most courageous Rabbi Yiz.h.aq al-H.akı̄m who was there during the period of the war, from its inception until the end . . . . I wrote with ink
in a book what he related to me . . . .119
Capsali also tells us that he learned about the “war of Constantinople” from
his father’s uncle, Moses Capsali.120 Born in Candia about 1410, Moses Capsali
must have settled in Constantinople sometime around 1445, after which he served
115. According to Bonfil (“Jewish Attitudes,” 19 –20, and 30), Capsali made use of stories contained in written sources but purposefully attributed them to oral eyewitnesses, especially Jews, in order to “Judaize” his subject matter. However, Bonfil makes no suggestion which sources Capsali might
have used. For a detailed discussion of this, see Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 72– 80.
116. Prologue to SEZ, 1:11.
117. Spandugino, “Origine,” in Sathas, Documents inédits, 138,4 – 6: Dui gentilhuomini molto
intimi dello imperatore de turchi.
118. See n. 115.
119. Prologue to SEZ, 1:11. Shmuelevitz, “Capsali,” 340 (cf. SEZ, 1:11 n. 114), assumes that
he was a physician (as suggested by his Arabic surname, al-H.akı̄m) or merchant, who accompanied the
sultan throughout his campaign through Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Judging from Capsali’s words,
however, it seems more likely that, because of the war, he had to remain the whole time in Egypt.
120. Prologue to SEZ, 1:11.
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as the rabbi of the city’s Jewish community both before and after the Ottoman conquest of 1453. Given the generational gap, however, Elijah Capsali could only have
learned about his great-uncle’s life from his father, Elkanah. Family pride, moreover, led him to exaggerate Moses Capsali’s standing at the Ottoman court, a fact
that puts into questions the reliability of the relevant sections.121 In any case, Capsali’s repeated reference to Doges and other Venetian dignitaries as well as his use
of Italian loanwords122 would indicate that he probably drew on Venetian knowledge of Ottoman affairs. This is not surprising, given that Crete was one of the
main hubs of Venetian-Ottoman intercourse.
In Candia and other major centers of the eastern Mediterranean, the Maritime Republic maintained a network of permanent representatives (baili) and consuls, all of whom reported back to and kept in constant touch with the government
of the Serenissima.123 Capsali explicitly mentions the bailo Antonio Giustiniani,
who in 1513 had traveled to Istanbul to renew Venetian-Ottoman agreements after
Selı̄m I’s accession (1512). On his way back, Giustiniani stopped over in Candia
where Capsali had the chance to listen to the bailo’s report.124 Capsali also refers
to the Venetian emissary Marco Minio, who passed through Candia on his way to
Constantinople where, after the fall of Belgrad (1521), he was sent to renew the
peace agreement between the Ottomans and Venice.125 Capsali’s acquaintance
with these diplomats can be explained by his position as condestabulo, which made
it necessary for him to be in close contact with the Venetian authorities.
Given that there are very few historical dates in Seder HEliyahu Zuta—the
first date mentioned is that of the beginning of the siege of Constantinople126 —it
is unlikely that he had access to any comprehensive account of Ottoman history.
He may have read a short commentario on the origin of the Turks127 (but if so, he
omitted certain dates and other details in his own account) or a few of the battle
descriptions (avvisi) that circulated widely in the form of leaflets. It seems much
121. On the basis of Seder HEliyahu Zuta, previous scholarship assumed that Moses Capsali was
the first “Chief Rabbi” of the Ottoman Empire, a claim that can no longer be supported; see Joseph
(R.) Hacker, “The Chief Rabbinate in the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th Centuries” (Hebrew),
Zion 49 (1984): 225–63; on Capsali’s portrait of his great-uncle, see also Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte,
138, 156–57, 163–64.
122. For examples, see ibid., 144, 159 – 61, 169, and 174.
123. On the diplomatic relations between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, see Lucette Valensi, Venise et la Sublime Porte: La naissance du despote (Paris: Hachette, 1987); Palmira Brummet, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (Albany: State University of New
York, 1994); Maria P. Pedani-Fabris, “Ottoman Envoys to Venice (1384–1644),” Arab Historical Review for Ottoman Studies 13 –14 (1996): 111–15.
124. SEZ, ch. 100, 1:282– 83.
125. SEZ, ch. 152, 2:19 –20.
126. Some of the succeeding chapters have a date according to the Christian calendar others according to the Jewish computation “after the creation”; this may hint at Capsali’s respective sources of
information.
127. On Giovio’s Commentario (which was certainly unknown to Capsali), see n. 31. On the
difference between the two genres of historiography, the short commentario and the more elaborate historia, see A. Pirnát, “Gattungen der humanistischen Geschichtsschreibung: Historia et Commentarii,”
in Geschichtsbewußtsein und Geschichtsschreibung in der Renaissance, ed. August Buck, Tibor Klaniczai, and S.K. Németh (Budapest, Leiden: Brill, 1989), 57– 64.
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more likely that his major source of information was diplomatic reports, stories
told by Jewish merchants, and other oral accounts that were readily available in the
port city of Candia.
CONCLUSIONS
As the previous discussion has shown, Capsali is a figure not easily categorized. Serving as a rabbi on the island of Crete, which was then a Venetian outpost
in the eastern Mediterranean, he was exposed to multiple influences. By upbringing, he was both multilingual (fluent in Greek, Italian, and Hebrew at least) and
multicultural (his family was of Romaniote origin, he studied at a famous Ashkenazic yeshivah in Padua, and he corresponded with Sephardic rabbis in Egypt128).
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of his historical work is the fact that although
Crete (as most of the Venetian overseas territories) lay within the area of Ottoman
expansion, Capsali glorified the Ottoman conquests—an even bolder partisanship
when keeping in mind that he was also serving as the representative of the Cretan
Jews to the Venetian authorities. A closer look at Capsali’s chronicle reveals that
his work is full of contradictions and ambiguities. On the one hand, he was deeply
rooted in the cultural and social world of the Venetian Empire; on the other, he
wrote eulogies on the Ottomans, Venice’s primary Mediterranean rival.
This partisanship was certainly not without any risk given that Capsali composed his work after the fall of Rhodes (1522), when an Ottoman attack on Crete
seemed to be imminent.129 Whereas Capsali had expressed his admiration for
Venice in an earlier chronicle he had written, his later (intellectual) siding with the
enemy may reflect the lack of integration Jews experienced under a government
that subjected them to residential segregation and other restrictions.130 The demographic pressure created in the Jewish segregated area during the plague of
1523 had been disastrous, a fact that may well have contributed to Capsali’s readiness to place all his hopes in the rival of the Maritime Republic.
Despite his idealization of the sultans, however, Capsali did not hesitate to
adopt polemical traditions about the rise of Islam that are of Christian origin and
can be traced back to the Crusader states of the Levant. To some extent, this can
be explained by his historiographical ambition: like certain Christian writers of his
time, Capsali felt that it was necessary to introduce his chronicle of Ottoman history with an account of the origins of Islam. This made even more sense to him
128. See Benayahu, Capsali, 88 n. 10; Haim H. Ben-Sasson, “Kavvim li-temunat golamo haruh.ani ve-ha-h.evrati shel khronist.on yehudi be-shalhe yeme ha-benayim,” in Essays in Jewish History
and Philology in Memory of Gedaliahu Alon, ed. M. Dorman and S. Safrai (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Hakibuts Hameuchad, 1970), 276 – 91, esp. 277, 290 – 91. On the connections between Candia and Egypt,
see M. Littman, “Ha-kesharim she-ben Miz.rayim le-Kandiya ba-mehot ha-sheshgesreh ve-ha-sheva-gesreh,” Sinai 88 (1981): 48 – 59.
129. When the Ottoman fleet under Khayr al-Dı̄n Barbarossa threatened Candia in 1538, the
Christian population accused the Jews of hiding Turks and the mob looted the Jewish quarter; see
Joshua Starr, “Jewish Life in Crete under the Rule of Venice,” Proceedings of the American Academy
of Jewish Research 12 (1942): 59 –114, esp. 111–12.
130. On residential segregation of the Jews of Crete and other Venetian colonies, see Jacoby,
“Venice and the Venetian Jews,” 37.
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given that he regarded Muh.ammad and the Ottomans as representatives of one and
the same empire, the malkhut YishmaGel.
The highly polemical tone of Capsali’s chapters on early Islam is partly to
be explained by the material he used. Moreover, a sixteenth-century rabbi could
not be expected to take a sympathetic approach to Muh.ammad’s prophetic claim.
Last but not least, the Jewish chronicler did not have to adopt a positive attitude
towards Islam—or to “turn Turk” as Christian polemicists would have put it—
since his primary aim was to show that the Ottomans were being used by God to
defeat Christendom. As we have seen, Capsali determined, on the basis of Isaiah
10:5–11, that although Assyria had been chosen as God’s “rod of anger,” there was
nothing positive to say about Assyria’s religion. In the same way, he interpreted the
visions of Daniel as prophetic proof that the Ottomans were in fact the “fourth”
empire, whose sole purpose was to overthrow the rule of Christianity and to set the
stage for the return of the Jewish exiles to their land.
Ambiguity marks not only Capsali’s attitude towards Islam, but his historiographical approach as well. In choosing to write about the history of the Ottomans,
he was selecting one of the most fashionable topics of sixteenth-century Italian historiography, a fact that in itself reflects the author’s awareness of contemporary
trends. In addition, his treatment of primarily non-Jewish history can be said to have
opened up new horizons in Jewish literature. However, neither Capsali’s views on
history nor his writing style had very much in common with contemporary humanist historiography. Although he occasionally makes use of contemporary rhetorical devices, in most of his text, he models himself after medieval chronicles, which
ultimately go back to biblical and rabbinic literary patterns. In his detailed accounts
of the Ottoman conquests, he combines a keen interest in contemporary events with
his rabbinic training in reading scriptures as a key to the understanding of history.
However, it would be wrong to conclude that Capsali was unusual in his continued reliance on the stylistic devices of religiously founded historiography. In fact,
there were quite a few Christian chronicles composed in cinquecento-Italy that continued in form and concept the medieval tradition.131 When it came to descriptions
of the Turks or Islam, there was a general tendency to reappropriate clichés going
back to the time of the Crusades, and causal explanations for momentous events
such as the fall of Constantinople quite frequently reverted to God’s wrath.
Like many of his Christian contemporaries, Capsali was obliged to a religiondefined worldview; yet, in expanding the historical horizon to include other peoples and cultures he followed an impulse characteristic of early modern times. Capsali’s ambivalent attitude towards Islam—oscillating between polemics against the
“false” prophet Muh.ammad and panegyrics to the Ottoman sultans—mirrors the
ambiguous situation of a Jewish author living at an eastern outpost of the Christian
world and facing the Muslim world on the other shore.
Martin Jacobs
Washington University in St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
131. See Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, 382– 89.
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