Moslem Albania
Chapter Four
In Moslem Albania During the Ottoman Period
Albania was a part of the Ottoman Empire for more than 400 years ending with Albanian Independence in 1912. From before the Second Wave and before the expulsion from Spain the Jews were under Moslem rule. The result is not what might have been expected.
Anyone who professed a belief in one God and was willing to accept the political supremacy of the Moslems was known as a ‘Dhimmi” and was afforded the protection of the Ottoman Empire and was not subject to persecution. This didn’t mean, however, that the Christian, Armenian or Jew was equal to the Moslem under the law, far from it.
The Moslem had a higher status, paid lower taxes, and had greater opportunities than the non-Moslem. The Dhimmi, be he Jew or Christian, was subject to minor humiliations, but he did not have to fear pogroms or forced conversions.
The status of the Jew was on a par with the Christian and it doesn’t appear that there was a distinction made between the various Dhimmi. In Christian Spain, Jews had been categorized with the Moslem minority. Now in Moslem Albania, and in the great Ottoman Empire the Jew was categorized with the Christian minority. A Jew was in a safer position as a Dhimmi under the Moslem Empire than he was under Christian rule during most of the four hundred years of the Ottoman Empire.
There is little mention of Jews in Albanian Government, military, or politics, although there is a record of a Jewish judge in 1903. During the Ottoman period this was consistent with the Jew’s status as a Dhimmi which didn’t change after the Ottoman period. Whether this was intentional or whether it was just the fact they were so few, the Jews of Albania maintained a very low profile. There is very little mention of Jews in the usual histories of the country.
That there were poor Jews and rich Jews, educated Jews and uneducated Jews, may have contributed to the low profile. The only clustering related to housing, and even there the numbers weren’t large enough to cause envy or resentment.
Independence Movements
The Greek aspirations for independence from Ottoman rule was a noble objective, but as in many other independence movements, the Jews got caught in the middle. The Greeks, in their anti-Turk, anti-Moslem movements, often equated Jews with Moslems with the Jews experiencing murder and mayhem. We can speculate on the reasons.
This could be attributed to the Jews’ close association with the Moslems, a negative feeling towards all non-Greeks, traditional anti-Semitism, or all of the above. In MoslemChristian confrontations in this part of the world Jews fared better under Moslem than under Christian rule. The best example is that during the two centuries of crusades Jews were murdered by the crusaders without reason.
Except for one or two bad periods, and during rebellions that were movements for independence from the Turks, Jews were safe from pogroms. It is paradoxical that it was the periods during which the Albanians were attempting to attain their political freedom from the Ottoman that we find massacre of Jews. Whether or not Jews merely wanted the preservation of the status quo or were loyal to the Ottoman, they were perceived as being pro-Ottoman and therefore was considered the enemy of the national independence movements.
For example, when the Albanians (Greeks) revolted against the Turks in 1911 there were accusations that the Jews sided with the Turks, resulting in the murder of Jews by “Patriots.”
Historically it has been the Jewish practice to accept the political force in power. Jews weren’t revolutionaries by nature, at least not until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. This could be attributed to an attitude of “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know” or to Jewish experience that the Jew remains a persecuted minority regardless of the political administration, so why get involved in something that doesn’t directly concern him? This may have been an attitude of “let the gentiles fight among themselves, the Jew is a Jew regardless of who wins the political fight.” Years of revolutions and changes of government and extreme nationalism have not been good years for Jews.
Jews had been loyal to the Ottoman and appreciated that their status and freedom from fear was greater under the Turk than under most other European governments. The Jews suffered for their support of Ottoman rule. In their unsuccessful rebellions against the Turks the Greeks would often take their frustrations out against the Jews.
The Millet System
Albania was a part of the Ottoman Empire for four hundred years. The full occupation was complete by 1501 and lasted until 1912. The Ottoman used what they called the “Millet System” to administer its far reaching territorial empire.
The Millet was a self governing organization based on religion with the religious leaders having both secular and religious authority. Everything was controlled by the rabbis in Jewish Millet except economics, which was controlled by the merchant and craft guilds.
Within the Millet, Jews could worship in their own way and speak their own language and pretty much control their own lives as long as they kept the peace and paid their taxes. There is the argument that the Millet system fostered hostility among the ethnic groups isolating them to keep them from joining together against the ruling Turks. That’s probably true, which made Millits even more desirable from the Ottoman point of view.
The Millet system was used throughout the Ottoman Empire for non-Moslems. The most important minorities under this system were Greek Orthodox, Armenians, and Jews (Palestine). The Millet was an expression of Turk tolerance, but it was also an expedient way to administer a large empire. The system didn’t break up until the end of the Second World War, although it ended in Albania in 1912.
Jews in the Ottoman Army.
In the period from 1855 onward Jews paid a “Military Substitution Tax” instead of serving in the Ottoman army. The tax was abolished in 1910 and Jews became subject to the draft. Most Jews served willingly in the Albanian army although some fled to Greece to avoid military service. The army provided kosher food and permitted the Jewish soldiers to observe their holidays.
We know of at least one Albanian Jewish doctor who served in the Ottoman army. Dr. Solomon Efendi was a military doctor who began his career in 1896-97.
Corfu
Iberian and Italian Jews have lived on the island of Corfu since the 12th century, under the Venetians and Ottoman. Jewish life had evolved into separate Italian and Greek Jewish communities. Jews lived in peace and prosperity on Corfu in these two rival communities until the Greek revolutions.
It was only when the Greeks, during their anti-Turk revolutions, threatened the entire Jewish population that the two groups of Jews banded together out of absolute necessity.
Large numbers of Jews on Corfu and elsewhere were massacred by the Greeks in their revolution of 1821, even though Jews had no significant part in Turkish rule and were bystanders in Moslem-Christian confrontations. The records of the massacres read like the 20th century Holocaust: 5,000 Jews were murdered in Morea, hundreds were killed in Wallachia, 1200 Jews were murdered in Tripoliza. The Jews living on the Islands of Sparta, Patras, Corinthos, Mistra, and Argos were wiped out. The same was true of the Jews of Thebes, Vrachori, Attica, and Epirus.
At first Corfu was the objective for Jews fleeing from the bands of Greek rebels, but this island proved to be anything except a safe haven. Gangs of Greeks massacred large numbers of Jews on Corfu. The sanctuary for the Jews was Izmir in Turkey where a new Jewish community was formed.
Only in northern Greece, in the areas of Janina and Salonika, were Jews and Turks able to resist the Greeks and avoid the massacres. At this time (1820) Janina was the capitol of the Vilayet of Janina, one of the four provinces created by the Turks that constituted Greater Albania.
In 1891 the “Blood Libel” raised its ugly head in Corfu and there were anti-Jewish riots, so many Jews moved to Janina.(1)
During the Greek-Turkish war of 1897 the Jews of Corfu and the Greek mainland were subject to persecutions and murder, causing additional migrations to Ottoman controlled Salonika and Izmir. It didn’t help the Jews in their relation with the Greeks that in the prior year there was a newspaper report that the Sultan honored the chief rabbi of Janina.
In 1909, a band of Greek-Albanians killed four Jews and wounded several others. They cut off the ears of their victims and sent them to the synagogue. (2) This was said to be revenge for Jews carrying out espionage against the Greek revolutionaries.
In the 1911 Albanian revolt, the Jews were accused of collaborating with the Turks to suppress the revolution which ultimately brought independence to Albania.
In 1912 the Ottoman Empire was falling apart. The Balkans were a series of small nations, each suspicious of the others. The Serbs wanted access to the sea, something which Austria opposed. The Austrians felt that an independent Albania was preferable as it would block Serbia from the sea. From this was born a liberated Albania. Independence served the Albanians well, as they were able to remain neutral during the First World War, even though a portion of the country was occupied by Italian, Austro-Hungarian, and French troops.
Footnotes:
1. Jewish Chronicle, May 29,1891, p.7. The “Blood Libel” is an ancient fiction that the Jews killed gentile children to get their blood for some religious purposes.
2. Jewish ch ronicle, January 29, 1909, p.8