Kushta (Constantinople) קושטא
In the sixteenth century the largest Jewish city in the world. Romaniotes, Sephardim, Ashkenazim and Karaites in one city, each with its own rite and its own rules.
There have been Jews at Constantinople since Roman times; under the Byzantines the community was Romaniote and Greek-speaking. In 1453 the Ottomans took the city, and Mehmed II began resettling people there from everywhere to raise up an emptied capital—Jews among them.
After 1492 the exiles from Spain and Portugal came, and the city changed. By the middle of the sixteenth century it held more Jews than any other city in the world. They were organised not as one community but as dozens: each kahal by place of origin—from Cordova, from Toledo, from Apulia, from Germany—with its own synagogue, its own rite and its own ordinances. Hence the whole knot of questions: whose custom governs, whom to pay, whose court to obey.
A separate Karaite community lived here too, and relations with it were settled by both of the city's chief rabbis—Moses Capsali and Elijah Mizrahi.
Printing began early: the press of the Nahmias brothers was at work from 1493—one of the first in the Ottoman Empire at all.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Istanbul" — the resettlement under Mehmed II, the organisation by communities of origin, the size of the community
Basis: documents and evidence.