The 1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople under Sultan Mehmet al-Fatih (the Conqueror, who ruled from 1444-1446 and again from 1451-1481) left a profound impact on Jewish history and genealogy in the region. As I explain in my presentation In the Lands of Osman: Jewish Genealogy in the Former Ottoman Empire, this marked a pivotal moment. The Sultan ordered much of the Jewish community in his realm to relocate to Constantinople, making Istanbul the largest community of Romaniote Jews in the Empire.
In the generations that followed, while the Romaniote population remained centered in Constantinople, many individuals and families returned to Greece, re-establishing communities in places such as Arta, Chalkida, Ioannina, Larissa, Trikkala, and Volos, and rejoining existing communities like Chania and Corfu.
The most dramatic demographic shift was still on the horizon: the arrival of the Sepharadim, the Jews of Iberia. While it is widely believed that Sultan Bayezit II (1481-1512), who succeeded his father Mehmet al-Fatih, supposedly stated upon the issuance of the Alhambra Decree:
“You venture to call Ferdinand a wise ruler,” he said to his courtiers, “he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine!”
in actuality, there is no evidence of this and the story likely originated in the mythmaking of the 400th anniversary of the Decree. In 1892, the Jews of the Empire marked the anniversary by honoring the ancestors of Sultan Abdulhamit II (who reigned from 1876 to 1909) for their role in providing sanctuary to the refugees during their time of desperation.
The truth, as reality often is, is far more complex. It was shaped by a period of cultural development during the 16th and early 17th centuries. Many diverse Jewish communities either migrated or were absorbed into the growing Ottoman Empire. These groups included Italian Jews (Italkim), Sepharadim (1492 refugees), Portuguese/New Christians, Jews from Sicily and Calabria, Jews from the Eastern or Arab world (Mustarabim), as well as the aforementioned Romaniote and Ashkenazi communities. Later, Jews of the Caucasus (Kavkazim), Yemenite Jews (Temanim), and Persian Jews (Parsim) would also be absorbed or emigrate to the Empire. During this time, these disparate communities would come to form a Judeo-Spanish, or Ladino, speaking community in the Ottoman heartland (Balkans, Anatolia, Syria, and the Holy Land) with a shared origin story of 1492.
Jewish Genealogy in Greece
Pursuing Jewish Genealogy in Greece is rewarding but difficult. Unlike in Christian Europe where a modern civil registration dates to the early 19th century in most cases, civil registration in the Ottoman Empire really only dates to the Hamidian period (1876-1909), with standardization achieved more or less in the early 20th century. In modern Greece, outside of some exceptions, civil registration generally dates from 1925 onward (as per Gregory Kontos of Greek Ancestry). Prior to civil registration, the responsibility of maintaining any records fell on the Jewish community. Unfortunately, many of these archives were lost, destroyed, or fragmented during the Nazi Occupation or, in the case of Salonika, heavily damaged in the Great Fire of 1917.
Jewish genealogy in Greece can appear positively daunting. However, a lot more exists and is just waiting to be uncovered in your journey. Many communities have manuscripts or archives that have survived in places like the Jewish Museum in Athens, the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP), Yad Ben Zvi, or countless libraries and private archives globally. Additionally there are the Ottoman Archives in Turkey and the State Archives System of Greece, both of which hold extensive documentation of Jewish history in Greece, spanning from the 15th century to the present day. There are also secondary archives like the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris, diplomatic archives all across Europe, and, of course, records and documents produced by individuals from the communities globally that record names and information seemingly lost over time. Finally, DNA testing for genealogy (Y-DNA, Mitochondrial DNA, and Autosomal DNA) which can reconnect families and strengthen construction of family trees where the documentation no longer exists or is heavily fragmented.
In the next section, I'll dive into a fascinating case study utilizing my own family history to demonstrate the incredible potential of working with diverse archives, languages, and data sources in Greece.
The Mijan Family of Larissa
In order to grasp the full scope of this research journey, we must begin at the beginning. As a teenager, my great-uncle Morris told me that his mother, my great-grandmother Rebecca Angel, was born in Larissa, Greece. She was the only daughter of her mother, Mazaltov Mijan, and third child of her father, Moise Angel (whose family I will discuss in a future article about Jewish Genealogy in Greece). Rebecca, as I would come to discover, was named for her father’s first wife, Rebecca Sami, who had passed away. Mazaltov and Rebecca arrived in America on August 21, 1910 aboard the Martha Washington. Their arrival contact was their brother-in-law and uncle, respectively, Moise Kabeli.