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Exposed to All the Currents of the Mediterranean—A Sixteenth-Century Venetian Rabbi on MuslimHistory

Martin Jacobs

AJS Review / Volume 29 / Issue 01 / April 2005, pp 33 - 60DOI: 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—ASixteenth-Century Venetian Rabbi on Muslim History. AJS Review, 29, pp 33-60doi:10.1017/S0364009405000024

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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 itsstereotypes not only to the Crusades, but also to the early modern rivalry betweenthe Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe. Heated debates about the “Turkishmenace” dominated European political discourse until the (second) Ottoman siegeof Vienna in 1683, as documented by the innumerable Turcica that circulated bothswiftly and widely thanks to revolutionary advances in printing. Sixteenth-centu-ry Christian authors provided their eager readers with constantly updated versionsof Ottoman history, as did some of their Jewish contemporaries. Probably the firstJew to make the Ottomans the major subject matter of his work was Elijah Cap-sali of Candia in Venetian Crete, who in 1523 completed a Hebrew chronicle titledSeder HEliyahu Zuta (“Minor Order of Elijah”).1

There was little that was new in Capsali’s way of writing history. Eventhough the Candiote rabbi occasionally makes use of contemporary rhetorical de-vices, his writing style has more in common with that of medieval Jewish chroni-cles, which ultimately go back to biblical and rabbinic literature, than with hu-manist historiography.2 What is unprecedented in this Jewish chronicler’s work is

AJS Review 29:1 (2005), 33–60

*This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the 36th annual conference of theAssociation for Jewish Studies, Chicago, December 19–21, 2004. I also reconsider and develop someof the ideas outlined in my shorter article, “Das ambivalente Islambild eines venezianischen Juden des16. Jahrhunderts: Capsalis Osmanische Chronik,” Judaica 58, no.1 (2002): 2–17. The translations ofBiblical verses are based on TANAKH, A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the Tra-ditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), but are often modified to ac-commodate the way these quotes are used within the context of Capsali’s work. All other translationsare 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-rabbiHEliyahu 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 benev-olentiae, as it can be read too as “Order of the Minor Elijah.” Not until three and a half centuries afterthe completion of the manuscript were excerpts of SEZ published by Moses Lattes, Likutim shonim mi-sefer 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 scholarlydebate. In a provocative and highly readable survey, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi relates this literature tothe expulsions from the Iberian Peninsula (gerush Sefarad ), a traumatic experience which—according

33

his subject matter, or to be more precise, the extent to which he writes on non-Jew-ish history. His lengthy and detailed account of Muslim history in general and Ot-toman history in particular have no parallel in earlier Jewish literature—and onlya few among later Jewish historians.3 What is also striking about Seder HEliyahuZuta is the contrast between the polemical tone of the introductory chapters on theearly history of Islam and the idealized portrayal of the Ottomans, Venice’s pri-mary Mediterranean rivals, in the chapters that follow. It is these ambivalences andjuxtapositions—medieval writing style and early modern subject matter; distinc-tively Rabbinic worldviews and contemporary Venetian perspectives; polemicaldebates on the origins of Islam and idealized admiration of the current rulers ofthe Islamic world—that make Capsali such a fascinating figure of study.

Martin Jacobs

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to him—gave rise to a renewed Jewish interest in history, thereby breaking with a centuries-old rab-binic disinterest in historiography. (Y.H. Yerushalmi, “Clio and the Jews: Reflections on Jewish Histo-riography 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 Wash-ington, 1982], 60–75). However, Ivan Marcus (among others) strongly questions the notion that thetrauma of 1492 served as a catalyst for Jews to abandon old traditions and open up to “modern” world-views 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 whetherthere was any “rise” in Jewish historiography at all in the “early modern” period. As he points out, theliterary models of the very few extant sixteenth-century Jewish books dealing with historical topics donot differ from that of medieval (Jewish or Christian) chronicles. It is for this reason that Bonfil refersto sixteenth-century Jewish historiography as the “swan song” of the Middle Ages.” (Bonfil, “HowGolden Was the Age of the Renaissance in Jewish Historiography?” in Essays in Jewish Historiogra-phy, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert, 2nd ed. [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988]: 78–102, here: 90; cf. idem, “Es-iste une storiografia ebraica medioevale?,” in Aspetti della storiografia ebraica, Atti del convegno distudi 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 History11 [1997]: 7–40.) For a survey of Jewish historiography after 1500 with special attention to Jewishwritings on the Ottomans, see my comparative study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jewishchronicles of Muslim history in which I discuss Capsali among others: Martin Jacobs, IslamischeGeschichte in jüdischen Chroniken: Hebräische Historiographie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübin-gen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 36–57.

3. Three decades later, in 1554, Joseph ha-Kohen (1496—after 1577) of Genoa would publishhis Sefer divre ha-yamim le-malkhe Z. arefat u-vet Ot.oman ha-Togar (“Chronicle of the Kings of Franceand of the Kings of the Dynasty of gOthman the Turk”); for a recent study, see Martin Jacobs, “Josephha-Kohen, Paolo Giovio, and Sixteenth-Century Historiography,” in Cultural Intermediaries: JewishIntellectuals in Early-Modern Italy, ed. David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (Philadelphia: Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, 2004), 67–85; idem, Islamische Geschichte, 82–108, 185–220 (includingadditional bibliography). Another Hebrew chronicle comparable to Capsali’s is Yosef Sambari’s Seferdivre Yosef (“Book of Joseph’s Words”), written in Cairo in 1673; it contains a history of the Jews inIslamic lands, including an extensive framework on Muslim history; see the critical edition by Shi-mon 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; Ja-cobs, Islamische Geschichte, 109–27, 221–258; for Shtober’s articles on Sambari, see below notes88 and 105.

CAPSALI’S CULTURAL BACKGROUND

Elijah Capsali4 (c. 1485–1555) was born in Candia (present-day Iraklion),the capital of Crete, which in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (1204) had beenincorporated 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 becomea thriving hub of Venetian trade and commerce in the eastern Mediterranean. Al-though the Jewish community in Candia profited greatly from this commercialprosperity, their legal status was, like that of the native Greek Orthodox popula-tion (regarded as schismatic by the Roman Catholics), far below that of the Venet-ian colonialists (to say the least). Unlike the Greeks, the Jews of Candia (and oth-er Cretan towns such as Chania) were confined to a segregated quarter of the citycalled Zudecca (i.e., Giudecca) in the Venetian dialect, and were forced to wear ayellow badge when in public. Despite these discriminatory restrictions, however,Jews had one significant advantage over other non-Latin local communities in theVenetian colonies: they enjoyed their own communal organization and institutions,the autonomy of which saw little interference by the authorities apart from the factthat the condestabulo (i.e., contestabile, “responsible”), the civil head of the Jew-ish community of Candia, had to be approved by the signoria. The reason for thiswas obvious: the Jewish representatives were “responsible” for the payment of thecollective taxes.

Up to the time of Capsali—to be exact, until 1541—Venetian legislation of-ficially excluded Jews from participation in international trade. Still, they were notalone in being excluded since all foreigners, as well as most of the population ofthe Venetian Empire, were barred from the commerce flowing through the lagooncity; the Levant trade was regarded as the sole prerogative of Venetian patriciansand upper-class citizens.6 Since the fourteenth century, however, there had beenmention of Cretan Jews in the sources about the commercial intercourse betweenVenice and the eastern Mediterranean.7 This was because the legal status and eco-

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4. The name Capsali appears to be of Greek origin (Kapsali): for the etymology, see Meir Be-nayahu’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 Rei-ches in Europa, vol. 4 (Gotha, 1856), 582–729; E. Gerland, “Kveta als venetianische Kolonie,” His-torisches 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, pas-sim; Dionysios Hatzopoulos, “Venice and Crete: Documents from the XVI to XVIII centuries,” Fon-tanus 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 onthe 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, centrodi 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 Méditer-ranée orientale du XIIe au XVe siècle [London, 1979], ch. 8); Benjamin Ravid, “Jews in InternationalTrade: 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.

nomic activity of the Jews from Crete differed in many respects from that of theircoreligionists in the metropolis or the Venetian terra firma.8 While the city ofVenice did not issue a charter legalizing the residency of Jews until 1513,9 and onlyin 1541 granted Jewish merchants (who were Ottoman subjects) the right to residein the città lagunare,10 the Jewish communities of Crete had roots going back toByzantine times. Moreover, they actively participated in the regional trade that wasnot considered the exclusive domain of Venetian citizens. The multilingual talentsof the Cretan Jews, many of whom were equally fluent in Greek and Italian (as wellas in Hebrew) made them ideal middlemen in the commercial exchange of the east-ern Mediterranean. In addition, they enjoyed preferential business relations withJewish merchants living under Ottoman rule.11

Although Capsali’s interest in Ottoman affairs was certainly a result of hisliving in one of the major port cities through which flowed much of the Levanttrade, the multicultural atmosphere of a commercial hub does not fully explain whyhe wrote Seder HEliyahu Zuta. By composing a chronicle of the Ottomans he notonly picked a fashionable topic but also a typical genre of contemporary Italian lit-erature. However, as he never mentions—or admits—to having read any non-Jew-ish literature (see following discussion),12 one may easily underestimate the extentto which he was acquainted with the Italian cultural trends of his time.

Elijah Capsali was first exposed to Italian influences during his youth inVenetian-ruled Candia. His father, Rabbi Elkanah Capsali, served as condestabu-

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8. See David Jacoby, “Venice and the Venetian Jews in the Eastern Mediterranean,” in Gli ebreie Venezia: secoli XIV–XVIII, ed. Gaetano Cozzi (Milano, 1987), 29–58 (reprint in idem, Studies on theCrusader 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 Cam-brai—were admitted to Venice; the first, so-called “new” ghetto was established in 1516. For a recentstudy, see Benjamin Ravid, “The Venetian Government and the Jews,” in Davis and Ravid, Jews of Ear-ly Modern Venice, 3–30; idem, “On Sufferance and Not as of Right: The Status of the Jewish Com-munities 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 sub-sequently let to the permanent establishment of the “old ghetto” (ghetto vecchio) in Venice; see Ben-jamin Ravid, “The Establishment of the Ghetto Vecchio of Venice: Background and Reappraisal,” inProceedings 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 inthe 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 ofOttoman Jewish traders to Venice in 1541 was intended to revive Venetian prospects in the Levantinetrade, which had suffered significantly as a result of changing economic conditions and the Venetian-Ottoman war of 1537–40. See Benjamin D. Cooperman, “Venetian Policy towards Levantine Jews inIts Broader Italian Context,” in Cozzi, Ebrei e Venezia, 65–84.

11. See Benjamin Arbel, “Venice and the Jewish Merchants of Istanbul in the Sixteenth Centu-ry,” in The Mediterranean and the Jews: Banking Finance and International Trade (XVI–XVIII Cen-turies), ed. Ariel Toaff and Simon Schwarzfuchs (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1989), 39–56, up-dated version in idem, Trading Nations: Jews and Venetians in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean(Leiden: Brill, 1995), 13–28.

12. Cf. n. 115.

lo and as such was familiar with the Venetian authorities.13 While the Capsalis hadRomaniote (Greek-Jewish) roots, Elijah was related through his mother to theAshkenazic Delmedigos, who despite residing in Candia maintained strong tieswith Italy and were well known for their great erudition, both Talmudic and philo-sophical.14

Capsali’s Italian “acculturation” was later furthered by his own studies onthe 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 in-corporate some of his experiences in Padua into his first historical work, SipureVenez.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 municipalchronicles.17 In adapting an Italian genre of historiography to Jewish tradition,Caspali made a remarkable cultural transfer, which he was to repeat again in hisOttoman chronicle. Though Capsali was primarily concerned with chronicling thehistory of the yeshivot in Northern Italy,18 he opened his Sipure Venez.ia with a sur-vey of Venetian history from its legendary origins to the year 1516. In so doing, heechoed the widespread “myth of Venice,” aspects of which were articulated by suchsixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jewish intellectuals as Isaac Abravanel, Davidde Pomis, and, most notably, Simone Luzzatto.19

When in 1509 the League of Cambrai overran the Venetian mainland, Cap-sali fled Padua to Venice, which for the first time was allowing Jews to stay in thecity.20 Not long afterwards, however, he returned to Candia where from 1518 heserved as rabbi and was appointed several times as the civil representative—con-destabulo—of the Jews to the Venetian authorities, once again following in the

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13. In this position, Elkanah Capsali oversaw the relief work for Jewish refugees after the ex-pulsions 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 studystudia humaniora in Padua, but rather engaged in Talmudic studies, Capsali reflects on his own youth-ful longing for wisdom in metaphors reminiscent of Humanist self-portraits. See Ann Brenner, “Por-trait 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 ÉtudesJuives 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 inthe 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 LachrymoseConception of Jewish History: The Case of the Jews of Venice,” in The Jews of Italy: Memory and Iden-tity, 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.

footsteps of his father. During the plague of 1523 he was one of the officials incharge of the quarantine regulations. When the epidemic got completely out ofcontrol and the authorities imposed a curfew on the Zudecca,21 Capsali was con-fined to his house for more than three months. It was during this time that Capsaliwrote his Ottoman chronicle “in order to expel the fear of the bitterness of deathand to focus the mind on other things, ‘that we may live and not die, and that theland may not become a waste’ (Genesis 47:19).”22

Capsali’s dramatic account of the circumstances in which he composed hischronicle, however, accords with contemporary literary conventions,23 and mayhave been intended primarily as an apologia auctoris for writing such a detailedaccount of non-Jewish history. In any case, Capsali seems to have felt the need tojustify his choice of subject matter, since even as he writes about non-Jewish his-tory, he explicitly rejects “non-Jewish wisdom” (h.okhmot nokhriyot).24 AlthoughCapsali made use of certain themes and stylistic devices of contemporary Italianliterature, he was no Jewish “Renaissance man.” Unlike his elder relative, ElijahDelmedigo (c. 1460–97),25 Capsali rejected Aristotelian metaphysics and in sodoing reflects the gradual shift among some Jewish thinkers from scholastic phi-losophy towards the study of the Kabbalah, the beginnings of which can be tracedback in Candia to the second half of the fifteenth century.26 Nevertheless, in tack-ling a popular topic of Italian historiography, Capsali could not help but absorb acertain amount of “foreign wisdom.”

We come now to the central question posed by this study: Why and for whataudience would a conservative-minded rabbi living in a Venetian colony composea detailed chronicle of Muslim history? Given that he wrote his Seder HEliyahu Zutain highly stylized Hebrew, interspersed with innumerable allusions to the HebrewBible and rabbinic literature, the work must have been intended for a traditionallytrained Jewish audience. But what benefit could a pious Jew be expected to derive

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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 Flo-

rentine 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.), Novel-la 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-Jewishwisdom (h.okhmat nokhriyot),” (see SEZ, chap. 138, 1:376) thereby alluding to the rabbinic advice notto 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 andThought of Elijah Medigo Based on His Published and Unpublished Works,” Proceedings of the Amer-ican Academy of Jewish Research 41–42 (1974–74): 70–86; Kalman P. Bland, “Elijah del Medigo’sAverroist Response to the Kabbalahs of Fifteenth-Century Jewry and Pico della Mirandola,” Journalof 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: AControversy in Fifteenth-Century Crete,” in History and Faith: Studies in Jewish Philosophy (Amster-dam: Gieben, 1996), 15–53 (English translation from Tarbiz 58 [1989]: 453–82); reprint in JosephDan and Klaus Herrmann, eds., Studies in Jewish Manuscripts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 139–70.

from an Ottoman chronicle—albeit clad in a Jewish garb? In a kind of a prologusde ratione operis (to use the contemporary Latin terminology) in which he outlineshis authorial “intentions” (Hebrew: sibbot kavvanati), Capsali responds to justsuch anticipated objections and argues for the usefulness of his work.27 In prefac-ing his work with a detailed exposition of how and why he came to write it, whichis, as Bonfil has noted, a common feature of medieval Christian chronicles,28 Cap-sali betrays the extent to which he has incorporated “foreign wisdom” into histhinking.

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 . . . thatwe will tell of the kings of gentiles and the Turks (Togarmim), and especiallyof the wisdom of the great king, Sultan Selım, whose like has never beenamong the kings of the gentiles. Certainly, “The wise man, hearing them, willgain more wisdom; the discerning man will learn to be adroit” (Proverbs1:5).29

The desire to teach his readers “wisdom and understanding” recalls the clas-sical definition of history as magistra vitae (Cicero). In depicting Sultan Selım I(1512–20), under whom the Ottoman Empire had vastly extended in size, as anunparalleled example of wise leadership, Capsali follows the common use in con-temporary non-Jewish historiography of the lives of certain “illustrious men” asmoral exempla.30 In so doing, however, the rabbi of Candia was not expressing hisagreement with the ideals of humanist historiography; Capsali had little in com-mon with the secular tendencies of contemporary Italian historians such as PaoloGiovio (1486–1552), to mention one of the most prominent names.31 That Cap-sali’s understanding of history followed instead the “medieval” tradition is docu-mented by the way he articulates the second ratio of his work:

The second reason is that “all the peoples of the earth shall know” (Joshua4:24) “that the Lord alone is God” (Deuteronomy 4:35.39) and “that there isdivine justice on earth” (Psalm 58:12). For whoever will read my stories, my

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27. See Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 65–67.28. Bonfil, in his “Jewish Attitudes toward History,” 17–18, writes: “Capsali engages in an al-

most 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 inits dedication to Charles V, was intended as a short instruction in preparation of a possible war againstthe Ottomans. (See note 127 for more on the genre of the commentario). In addition, Giovio includedextensive chapters on the Ottomans in his multivolume Historia Sui Temporis (Florence, 1550–52). OnGiovio, see T.C. Price Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-CenturyItaly (Princeton: Princeton University, 1995); Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, 366–77; forhis works on the Ottomans, see Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 23–27; on Joseph ha-Kohen’s use ofGiovio’s commentario, see ibid., 90–91; idem, “Joseph ha-Kohen,” 70–8.

words and my deliberations, will fear (God) and will accept the yoke of heav-en on himself. Then all this (Jewish) people will know that “the eyes of theLord are scanning the whole earth” (Zachariah 4:10), “observing the bad andthe 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 watch-es (mashgiah. ) over the nations to overthrow one people and to raise anotherone.32

In the spirit of medieval historiography, both Christian and Jewish, Capsaliregarded it the task of the historian to teach his readers to fear God and strength-en their belief in divine providence (hashgah.ah). According to Capsali, the histo-ry of non-Jewish peoples, their rulers and their wars, provided evidence for theclaim “that there is divine justice on earth” (Psalm 58:12), and he interpreted thishistory according to Biblical patterns according to which the fall and rise of em-pires follows a divine master plan:

Peruse the chapters of this book . . . , have a look at its stories, pay attentionand see that in His wisdom and understanding the Lord . . . has made theseTurks a strong and mighty people, “He blessed their efforts and spread theirpossessions in the land” (cf. Job 1:10). The Lord brought them from a distantland and blessed them exceptionally. The Turk is the “rod of” His “anger” andthe “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, whosemeasure has been filled. “For the Lord is an all-knowing God; by Him actionsare measured” (1 Samuel 2:3).33

For Capsali, the migration of the Turks and their rise to empire followed thebiblical model of Isaiah 10:5–11: just as the rise of Assyria was a rebuke to theBiblical kingdom of Israel, so were the Turks empowered to punish Christianity.The fact that Capsali replaced “Israel” with Christendom hints at the Christian ori-gin 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 sinthey regarded as having provoked this severe punishment differed depending ontheir particular religious affiliation. Roman Catholics, for example, saw the fall ofByzantium as a divine verdict on the Greek Orthodox “schismatics” and warnedProtestant “heretics” of an even more severe punishment.34 Capsali translated thisChristian interpretation into a Jewish context. In his view, the Ottoman conquestof Constantinople was Christianity’s punishment for the injustice the Jews had suf-fered under its rule, just as the fall of the Byzantine Empire could be attributed tothe persecution of Judaism by the malkhut Yavan, “the kingdom of Greece.” More-

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32. 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 CruellTurke’: The Background of a Renaissance Commonplace,” Studies in Religion 10 (1963): 126–35, esp.129–30.

over, in calling Byzantium “the kingdom of Greece” he evokes the memory of theforced program of Hellenization by the ancient Seleucids that led to the Mac-cabeean revolts of the second century BCE, an event that had a lasting impact onthe Jewish perception of “the Greeks”:

On the 19th day of April of the year 1453 of the Christian calendar . . . “camethe days of punishment, came the days of requital (shilum)” (Hosea 9:7), andpeace (shalom) departed from him (i.e., the Byzantine Emperor); since theLord inspired Sultan Meh.emet to succeed him (i.e., the Byzantine Emperor asthe ruler of Constantinople). For, the measure of the wicked kingdom ofGreece (malkhut Yavan) was full, because of all the evil they had inflicted onJudah and Israel since they (that is, the “Greeks”) had become a people. Thenthe Lord spoke to Himself: . . . “I will blow upon” Constantinople, “with thefire of my wrath” (Ezekiel 21:36) and consume it. “I will march against it andset it on fire” (Isaiah 27:4). Because of the evil that the Greeks inflicted on mypeople, on my nation, I will give it (i.e., Constantinople) into the hand of theexecutor 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 epony-mous founder of the Ottoman dynasty, gOthman I (c. 1300–24):36

In those days, gOthman had an important and powerful dream: The Lord letgOthman see that from his head a small tree began to grow, and it became talleruntil finally it became a very tall and majestic tree that “produced branchesand sent out boughs” (Ezekiel 17:6) . . . . In the morning, gOthman was agi-tated 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 loinsand will ascend to heaven and to the stars.37

The dream vision recounted here echoes one of the famous founding legendsof the Ottoman Empire, well known from official Ottoman chronicles, where it oc-curs in several versions.38 This legend projects the imperial ambitions of the sul-tans back into the time of their origins and depicts their rise as part of a divine planthat was already revealed to the dynasty’s founder. According to the Ottoman ver-

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35. 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 Deathof Bayezid I, 1300–1403 (London, 1916; reprinted 1968), 23–24; V.L. Ménage, “On the Recensionsof 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 (zuGotha, Ms. T. 17/1),” in Wilhelm Pertsch, Orientalist und Bibliothekar, zum 100. Todestag, ed. HansStein (Gotha: Landes—und Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, 1999), 101–22.

sion, however, it was not from gOthman’s head but from his navel or loins that thisgreat tree grew. This discrepancy would suggest that the Jewish chronicler did notdepend on an Ottoman source: apart from the fact that he probably could not readTurkish, his many historical errors39 indicate that Capsali did not make use of Ot-toman historiography.40

It is likely that Capsali was drawn to this well-known Ottoman founding leg-end because it employed literary motifs that could be also found in the HebrewBible: for example, Ezekiel 31:3–9, uses the tree metaphor for the Assyrian Em-pire, and in Daniel 4 Nebuchadnezzar’s dream vision contains imagery that is verysimilar to that of the Ottoman foundation myth.41 In other words, this famous Ot-toman legend fit extremely well into Capsali’s view of history, according to whichall 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 asto claim the divine investiture of the Ottomans for a specific historical mission. Tostrengthen his point, he even allows himself an excursus into the mythical domainwith the description of a heavenly assembly on the New Year,42 at which God re-veals His plans for the Ottomans to the host of angels:

And the angels and the entire heavenly host responded: Praised be the nameof the Lord of the world, “who changes times and seasons, removes kings andinstalls kings” (Daniel 2:21).

At the same time, “a voice came down from heaven: It has been decreed”(Daniel 4:28), gOthman, that a strong, mighty and noble empire will be givento you, that will collect taxes on the land and divide the sea . . . ; it “will be as

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39. For example, Capsali reverses the order of Murad I (1360–89) and Bayazıd 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 ofthe Oxford manuscript (Hebrew E 63) that gives quite an exact Hebrew transcription of the Ottoman-Turkish text (tevarıkh-i al-i Gosman) of the so-called Anonymous Chronicles (Friedrich Giese [ed.], DieAltosmanischen Anonymen Chroniken [Breslau, 1922]). This ms. was first noted by Adolf Neubauer inhis 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 HebräischerUmschrift,” Archiv Orientální 4 (1932): 108–11 (including a facsimile). Babinger dates the Sephardicscript 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 ofthe earth; the tree grew and became mighty; its top reached heaven, and it was visible to the ends ofthe earth. Its foliage was beautiful and its fruit abundant; there was food for all in it. Beneath it thebeasts 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 Islamiccontext, see Annemarie Schimmel, Die Träume des Kalifen: Träume und ihre Deutung in der islami-schen Kultur (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1998); on dreams as literary means of legitimation, see Leah Kin-berg, “Literal Dreams and Prophetic H. adıths in Classical Islam: A Comparison of Two Ways of Legit-imation,” Der Islam 70 (1993): 279–300.

42. In the context of Capsali’s chronicle, this element of fiction is differentiated from the his-torical narrative by its use of Aramaic, including allusions to the book of Daniel, the Targum, and theZohar.

strong as iron; just as iron crushes and shatters everything—and like iron thatsmashes—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‘Othman’s dynasty with the “iron” or “fourth kingdom” of the vision of Daniel,the last world kingdom before the redemption. Medieval Jewish and Christian ex-egetes alike often associated this “iron” kingdom with Rome or the rule of Chris-tendom. In identifying it with the Ottomans, Capsali was, however, following theprecedent set by the twelfth-century Jewish exegete Abraham hIbn gEzra who, hav-ing lived under both Christian and Muslim rule, held that Christendom (malkhutHEdom) was only the “third,” that is, penultimate, empire44 and that the last king-dom of world history was the Islamic empire (malkhut YishmaGel ).45

In 1523, the year Capsali completed his chronicle (almost four hundred yearsafter hIbn gEzra), the Ottoman Empire would certainly seem to fit Daniel’s de-scription of the “iron kingdom” extremely well: it had already conquered much ofthe 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 mostimportant Ottoman wars of expansion, the campaign of Selım I against the Mam-luks (1516–17) that subjected Syria, Palestine, and Egypt to the Sublime Porte.46

According to Capsali, it was God Himself who inspired Selım I to wage war againstthe Mamluk sultan Qans.awh al-Ghawrı (1501–16):

In the year (5)276 (after the creation, i.e., 1516 CE), the Lord called Selım,the king of kings . . . and inspired him to destroy . . . the kingdom of the sul-tan 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 Selım to setup his throne in Egypt; “and he will gain control over treasures of gold and sil-ver and over all the precious things of Egypt” (Daniel 11:43).48

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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 (He-brew), ed. A. Mondshine (M.A. Thesis, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 1977), 12,7–9: “The third em-pire is a western empire, i.e., the empire of Greece (Yavan) and of the Kittim. For Kittim was amongthe sons of Yavan, as it is written: ‘The descendants of Yavan are Elisha und Tarshish und Kittim’ (Gen-esis 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 Universi-ty, 1967), 46–48, and ibid., note 96; Yosef Yahalom, “The Transition of Kingdoms in Eretz Israel (Pales-tine) 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 isthe malkhut YishmaGel.”

46. See Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 171–76.47. SEZ, ch. 109, 1:312–13.48. SEZ, ch. 109, 1:314.

Using yet another quote from Daniel, Capsali then equates Selım I with theprophesized “king of the north,” who “at the time of the end” (Daniel 11:40) wouldconquer Palestine and Egypt.

Capsali went much further than hIbn gEzra, who had simply identified themalkhut YishmaGel with the “fourth kingdom” without engaging in any specific his-torical detail. And unlike his predecessor, the sixteenth-century chronicler com-bined this exegesis with a promise of messianic redemption, as evidenced by hisinterpretation of Isaiah 19:1: “Mounted on a swift cloud, the Lord will come toEgypt; Egypt’s idols shall tremble before Him.” Reading this verse allegorically,Capsali equates the “swift cloud” with Selım I49 and then goes on to explain thesecond half of the biblical quote as follows:

The meaning (kavvanah) herein is that after Sultan Selım 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 hasundoubtedly begun to ingather the exiles of Israel and he will ingather the dis-persed people of Judah from the four corners of the earth.50

For Capsali, Selım’s I campaign against the Mamluks was a prelude to theingathering of the exiles and the coming of the messiah. By making a connectionbetween the Ottoman conquest of Syria-Palestine and the gerush Sefarad, he wasable to interpret the expansion of Ottoman rule over the Middle East as the pavingof the way for the repatriation of the Jews to the Land of Israel. Thus, he includesin his chapters on the reign of Bayazıd II (1481–1512), the contemporary of theSpanish expulsion, a lengthy section on the history of the Jews of Spain (sippurSefarad), and even claims to quote a “copy” (patshegen) of the original expulsionedict “signed with the name of the king and the queen,”51 that is, Ferdinand ofAragon and Isabella of Castile. Capsali’s quotation is so different from its knownSpanish versions, however, that it is doubtful that he had access to any such offi-cial document.52 Rather, his information was based in part on the works of Abra-vanel,53 and in part on the oral histories of Sephardic refugees coming through

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49. SEZ, ch. 134, 1:366. To this aim, he makes use of gimat.ria, arguing that the Hebrew wordfor “swift” (QL � 130) has the same numerical value as the name Selım. This, however, makes it nec-essary for him to claim that Selım is spelled Samekh, Lamed, Mem (� 130) “in Turkish,” while Cap-sali 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: Stud-ies 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, “ASixteenth-Century Hebrew Chronicle of the Ottoman Empire: The Seder Eliyahu Zuta of Elijah Cap-sali and Its Message,” in Studies in Jewish Bibliography, History and Literature in Honor of I. EdwardKiev, ed. Charles Berlin (New York, 1971), 21–44, esp. 23.

Crete, to some of whom Capsali himself gave shelter.54 Despite this demonstrablelack of accuracy, however, Capsali’s chronicle has often been taken to be a reliableaccount of the Iberian expulsions.55 In any case, its highly stylized and tendentiouscharacter should caution against using Seder HEliyahu Zuta as a primary source ofhistory, whether Jewish or Ottoman.

By inserting the story of the expulsion of the Iberian Jews into his descrip-tion of Bayazıd II’s reign, Capsali creates the impression that the two were direct-ly related to each other. Actually, as Henry Kamen shows in his critical reassess-ment of the Sephardic migration,56 most Iberian exiles first went to geographicallycloser places of refuge such as Provence or Italy, and only when expelled fromthese places did they migrate to the East. Therefore there was often a gap of oneor more generations between the Iberian expulsions and the arrival of the sefaradimin the realm of the sultans.57

Moreover, the account of Capsali according to which Bayazıd II explicitlyinvited the Jews to settle in his reign cannot be substantiated by any extant docu-ment.58 Capsali’s wording of this “invitation” is a literary creation made up of bib-lical 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 findmercy with Sultan Bayazıd, the king of Turkey,—so that he received the Jewswith friendship and issued “a proclamation throughout his realm by word ofmouth and in writing as follows” (Ezra 1:1): ‘Whosoever wishes to dwell inMy kingdom and My realm may gladly come and shall not delay’—(if thathad not happened) “We should be like Sodom, another Gomorrah” (Isaiah1:9).59

By linking the Iberian expulsion(s) with the reign of Bayazıd II, Capsaligives the impression that there was a linear development from one to the other, a

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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 chap-ters 66–82 by Simone Sultan-Bohbot, Capsali, Elijahou, Chronique de l’expulsion: Seder ElijahouZouta (Paris: Cerf, 1994), including an introduction; the unpublished dissertation of Yolanda MorenoKoch, El judaísmo español según la crónica de Rabbi Eliyahu Capsali: Traducción y estudio del sederEliyahu zuta (capítulos 40–71) (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1985), offers a Spanish transla-tion of a slightly larger span of chapters; a similar approach is to be found in idem, “Figuras antisemi-tas según las crónicas hebraico-españolas,” Proceedings of the Seventh World Congress of Jewish Stud-ies, 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: Proceedingsof 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.

line that he then extends to include Selım I’s conquest of Syria-Palestine, which(in Capsali’s view) established the political conditions for a return of the Jews tothe Land of Israel.

In his glorification of Selım I, by whose conquests the empire had been vast-ly increased in size, Capsali goes so far as to compare him with Alexander the Greatand other world rulers of antiquity:

If heaven had enabled him to live a little longer . . . , he would have ruled theworld as did Cyrus, Darius, Alexander the Macedon, and other kings, whoruled from one end of the world to the other. But heaven did not help him, andin the prime of his life he left his army to others (to lead).60

In comparing Selım I to Alexander, Capsali is echoing contemporary Chris-tian authors such as Teodoro Spandugino, who often make the same analogy. In hiscollection of short biographies of the Ottoman sultans (Paris, 1519),61 which inmany ways bears some similarity to Capsali’s chronicle, Spandugino claims thatthe sultan “constantly read the works and deeds of Alexander the Macedon and as-pired to surpass him in fame and celebrity.”62 As was typical in sixteenth-centuryhistoriography, Spandugino depicted the sultan as an educated monarch who stud-ied the ancient classics in order to derive from them exempla useful for his ownpolitical strategy.

As Capsali stresses, it was only his premature death that prevented Selım Ifrom ruling “from one end of the world to the other.” But why then did “heavennot help” Selım I, given that his campaign against the Mamluks was for the divinepurpose of enabling the ingathering of the exiled Jews? Capsali draws on theolog-ical arguments to explain this problem, arguing that because Selım had grownhaughty and bloodthirsty as a result of his military successes, he was unfit to ruleduring the time of redemption. For this reason, the coming of the messiah had beenpostponed until the reign of Selım I’s son Süleyman I.63 This kind of argumenta-tion clearly echoes the narrative of the biblical Chronicles, according to whichSolomon (the eponym of Süleyman) was allowed to build the Temple, an honor de-nied his father, David, who had become “a man of battles and bloodshed” (1 Chron-icles 28:3).64

As Capsali completed Seder HEliyahu Zuta in 1523, the last chapters of hischronicle only cover the first years of Süleyman I’s (1520–66) reign: it concludes

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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 prob-ably 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 denOsmanenstaat 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: Societéturque d’histoire, 1991), 124–25; Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte, 20–21.

62. See Spandugino, “De la origine deli imperatori ottomani,” 180, 184–85 in Documents in-édits 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.

with a detailed description of the fall of Rhodes in 1522,65 which he saw as an im-portant step towards the final Ottoman victory over Christendom (“Rome”). Acloser look at this description can help us understand more fully his theological in-terpretation of history and his sources of information.

Capsali describes the landing of the Ottoman troops on the island of Rhodesfrom the perspective of the Knights of St. John—whom he calls Rhodiani—there-by hinting at the source of his information:

It happened on the 25th of Giugno 1522, on the holy day of the Rhodiani, thefeast of San Giovanni—who among all the saints is the one whom the Rhodi-ani have elevated over themselves: they depicted him on their banner (whichflew) above their troops. On the evening of the aforementioned feast, in thetwentieth hour, the Rhodiani lifted up their eyes and, behold, they saw a con-voy of ships that filled the sea.66

Our chronicler calls attention to the fact that the Ottoman entry into the cityof Rhodes, which had been evacuated by the Knights after a long siege, took placeon the “feast of the Christians (goyim) called natale (N HZL), which is the birthdayof their god.”67 That Capsali viewed Christianity as a form of idolatry is evidencedby 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 theidols of the Christians (z.alme ha-goyim) and crushed them. They also ex-humed all the corpses of the Grand Masters (of St. John) that were therein anddismembered them. They emptied the building of all that was in it, and tookeverything out, sparing neither gold nor silver.

Then came the king (Süleyman), who stood in the city square, the afore-mentioned prayer house behind him, and prostrated before the God of Heav-en, who had given his enemies into his hands.68

The difference in Capsali’s attitudes towards Christianity and Islam ex-pressed here is quite striking: while he regards the religious practices of the Orderof St. John as idolatrous, he portrays the sultan as a pious man thanking the Godof Heaven (that is, the God of the Jews) for granting him victory. The rabbi’s par-tiality stands out even more when compared to another contemporary account, TheWar of Rhodes (La Guerra di Rhodi) by Jacques Fontaine (Iacopo Fontano), whichrelates how after his victory, Süleyman converted the church of San Giovanni

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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’ origineet imperio de turchi2 (Venice, 1568), 234b–273b. On page 248a of the reprint edition, Fontaine reportsthat on the morning of June 24 una grandissima armata came into view; on Fontaine and his work onthe Ottomans, see Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, 333.

67. SEZ, ch. 161, 2:44. The same date is mentioned in Fontaine, Guerra di Rhodi, in Sansovi-no, Historia, 250b (“il dì del natale del Signor nostro”); and Spandugino, “Origine,” in Sathas, Docu-ments inédits, 186, 17–18.

68. SEZ, ch. 161, 2:44.

Battista into a mosque, which he calls tempio di Maometh. Like Capsali, Fontainealso reports that the sultan took away “the relics of the Saints” and ordered theGrand Masters’ tombs to be opened. In contrast to the Jewish chronicler, who por-traits the Muslim ruler as a believer in the “God of Heaven,” Fontaine betrays hisignorance of Islam when he claims that the sultan “prayed to Maometh, whom thebarbarians believe to have been sent by God in Heaven as the most perfect prophetof all times.”69

Capsali no doubt felt confirmed in his pro-Ottoman attitude by the fact thatafter their victory, the conquerors liberated Jews (and Turks) who had been en-slaved 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 (ontheir withdrawal). There were also many enslaved Jews on Rhodes who weresaved by the Lord’s compassion. Also all the Jews who had apostatized,whether voluntarily or forcibly, on occasion of (their) expulsion from Rhodesreturned to their former religion. They reopened the synagogue that the Chris-tians (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 Ottomansallowed Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity to “return to the Lawof Moses.”71 For Capsali, this provided still more proof that the Ottoman conquestwas in the interest of the Jews. He was aware, however, of the possible repercus-sions the fall of Rhodes might have on Venetian Crete. Thus he notes that theKnights of St. John had sent a ship (for which he uses the loanword fusta) to askthe help of Gabriele da Martinengo, who was in Candia executing a Venetian com-mission to strengthen the city’s fortifications.72 He also knew that a Venetian fleethad sailed to Candia under the command of the capitagno general DomenicoTrevezan to protect Crete against a possible Ottoman attack on the Venetian out-post.73 It may seem surprising that Capsali—who served as the Jewish represen-tative to the Venetian authorities—would not only criticize Martinengo for agree-ing to come to the aid of the Knights of St. John, but even more disturbingly, voicesuch enthusiasm over the fall of Rhodes. His jubilant tone is even more problem-atic given the fact that some of the Knights had brought the plague with them whenthey pulled out of Rhodes and took refuge in Candia.74 It is against this gloomybackdrop that Capsali dares to celebrate the fall of Rhodes in rhymed prose, com-

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69. 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, Marti-

nengo 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.

paring the conquest to a lawful “wedding” of a “bride” (Rhodes) and “groom” (Sü-leyman I).75

The only explanation for Capsali’s panegyrics on the Ottomans is that he be-lieved the coming of the messiah to be imminent. Thus, at the beginning of hischapters on Süleyman, he writes:

He is the tenth king (sultan) of the Turks, and “the tenth one shall be holy tothe 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 basedon 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 onlythat he will be able to witness personally the redemption, but that he will also bein 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 wereallowed to write an account of these events, so we may be allowed to writeabout all the good (things to come), that the Lord has foretold through his ser-vants, the prophets, for the Lord has spoken good (tidings) for Israel. “Let oureyes gaze on Zion” (Micah 4:11) and on the rebuilding of Ariel. May all Is-rael take part in the ingathering of the exiles and in the coming of the messi-ah . . . .78

We do not know Capsali’s reaction to the disappointment of his expectationswhether he simply postponed his hopes or was totally disillusioned. As he neitherupdated his chronicle nor revised the computation of the year of redemption, onemay assume the latter.

CAPSALI AS A CHRONICLER OF MUSLIM HISTORY

Seder HEliyahu Zuta does more than simply try to convince its readers thatthe Ottoman dynasty was raised by God to repatriate the Jews in the mid-sixteenthcentury. A closer look at the material assembled by Capsali leads to the conclusionthat, notwithstanding its theologically motivated view on history (a standpoint

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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 “numerousdaughters” 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 theOttomans, 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 JubileeVolume, ed. Salo W. Baron e.a. (Jerusalem, 1960), 216–27, esp. 225.

78. SEZ, ch. 148, 2:7.

shared by many contemporary Christian historiographers), his work has to be re-garded as a serious attempt at writing historiography. His use of the stylistic de-vices of contemporary Italian writing on the Ottomans shows that his messianicexpectations were not the sole reason behind his turn to historiography.

Capsali, like Spandugino and other sixteenth-century Italian writers on theOttomans,79 authored short biographical portraits of the sultans, from the epony-mous founder of the dynasty up to the sultan ruling at the time of his writing. Likeother Italian writers of that genre, he enriched these biographical sketches with bat-tle accounts, descriptions of weapons,80 stories about dynastic intrigues and life inthe harem, as well as many other details which he thought to be either informativeor entertaining. Another indication of Capsali’s historiographical ambitions is hisdecision to open his Ottoman chronicle with an historical overview of the originsof Islam. A close reading of these introductory chapters reveals that in his attemptto write a “serious” chronicle according to contemporary models, Capsali some-times ended up contradicting his own agenda, as exemplified by his chapters onearly Islam.

Capsali’s knowledge of the origins of Islam was based on earlier Jewish andChristian polemical traditions. The Christian background of much of his materialis 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 menor princes of Rome, one of the distinguished cardinals (GRDYNLY) of the Pope(papa). When the Romans saw that he was a courageous and successful war-rior, they sent him out to roam about and wander in the Land of the East in or-der to subject it to their rule (literally: “hands”). And they took an oath andswore that if he succeeded in this, they would make him Pope on his return.82

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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 occidentesull’origine e la potenza dei turchi,” Studi Veneziani 12 (1970): 465–515; Cochrane, Historians andHistoriography, 324–37 (on Italians in the East); for more details and bibliography, see Jacobs, Is-lamische Geschichte, 19–27.

80. Aryeh Shmuelevitz, “Capsali as a Source for Ottoman History, 1450–1523,” InternationalJournal of Middle East Studies 9 (1978): 339–44, sees in Seder HEliyahu Zuta a source of special im-portance for the history of Ottoman weaponry. According to Shmuelevitz, Capsali acquired specificinformation in this field due to his contacts to Spanish-Jewish refugees. However, the impact of se-faradim on the Ottoman development of weapons has been largely overestimated. See S.O.T. Chris-tensen, “The Marranos as Gunrunners: A Distorted Topos of the Clandestine European Expansion,” inDimensoes da alteridade nas culturas de lingua Portuguesa—o outro, Actas de 1° Simposio Interdis-ciplinar de Estudos Portugueses, vol. 2 (Lisbon, 1987), 111–32; Gilles Veinstein, “Note sur les trans-ferts 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 Westerntopos, according to which the Jews were to blame for the Ottoman conquests, see Jacobs, IslamischeGeschichte, 151, 170, 208–09.

81. Spelled here MH. MYT like the Latin Mahumet, yet another indication of the Christian ori-gin of Capsali’s material. The editor’s claim (SEZ, ch. 4, 1:36 n. 37) that Capsali follows the Turkishusage is misleading, as—contrary to modern Turkish—Ottoman Turkish would read Meh.emed.

82. SEZ, ch. 4, 1:38.

Muh.ammad, having subjected “the entire East to the Romans,” returned vic-torious to Rome only to find that the Romans had no intention of keeping theirpromise to make him Pope. It was for this reason that Muh.ammad went back to thecities he had conquered in the East and became their ruler.

This explanation of the origins of Islam can be traced back to widely circu-lated legends, according to which Muh.ammad was influenced by Christian teach-ers—legends that went so far as to suggest the fantastical idea that he had startedout as an ambitious Catholic cardinal.83 The story first emerges at the end of thethirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century in the Italian versions of Brunet-to Latini’s Tesoro84 and in a collection of legends about Muh.ammad known underthe title Liber Nicolay.85

In depicting Islam as nothing more than a Christian apostasy, Capsali isechoing a viewpoint characteristic of medieval Western polemics against Islam.His interest in this version, however, was primarily that it questioned the revealedcharacter of Islam. We see this as well in some of the other stories he tells aboutMuh.ammad being a charlatan and impostor:

Muh.ammad decided to establish a new religion in the world in order to be seenas important by the uneducated masses (Gam ha-Harez.) and to abrogate the re-ligions that had been in existence prior to him. He was a very shrewd man whoknew to deviously obtain the confidence of people: he was very cunning “andwherever 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 ofthe people and the princes, the dove flew (to him) and came to whisper in hisears in the presence of all the people . . . . And all who saw it were stunned andasked him: “What is that?” And he replied to them: “(Word of him who hearsGod’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 thatit was whispering divine words into his ears. The legend questions the revealedcharacter of Islam and is obviously using Christian imagery, where the dove servesas a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

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83. This motif would appear to go back to the Christian legend, according to which one ofMuh.ammad’s advisors was a monk, who is often called Bah. ıra (on the Bah. ıra legend, see notes 109,112, and 113). In one version of this legend, it is said that Muh.ammad’s advisor was a heretical hermitwho wanted to become Patriarch of Alexandria but was rejected for his unorthodox views. This motifof the ambitious heretic is later transposed onto Muh.ammad himself who, in a Latin context, is repre-sented 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 estoria 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,” Rendicon-ti 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 toIslam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992), 2–3.

86. SEZ, ch. 4, 1:36

The same motif occurs in the Liber Nicolay87 as well as in the Speculum His-toriale by Vincent of Beauvais (died 1264), which contains an extensive collectionof polemic texts against Islam (book 23, chapters 39–67).88 Vincent himself refersto an anonymous libellus de Machometi fallacis (“Booklet on Muh.ammad’s De-ceptions”) said to have circulated in partibus transmarinis (“in the oversea terri-tories”), as the Levant was called by the Crusaders. It is in this booklet that Vin-cent 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 andthat he had surreptitiously trained to this purpose, came and landed on hisshoulder and, pecking at the grain that was hidden in (Muh.ammad’s) ears, ap-peared to be prompting with him words of the Law.89

While Capsali’s way of weaving his text out of biblical quotes and allusionstends to obscure the meaning, here, the alleged trick finds a kind of rationalisticexplanation: 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 drewfrom Jewish polemics against Islam. The following paragraph from Seder HEliyahuZuta 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 werecreated (by) optical illusions, and he would perform these great wonders bymeans of deceit and trickery.”91 In this way was most of the East deceived byhis trickery . . . ; and they believed that he was a prophet of God and His mes-senger 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’spolemical traditions of Christian origin, one can assume that these traditions would

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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 ofhis research on Yosef Sambari; see Shtober, “Muh.ammad and the Beginning of Islam in the ChronicleSefer 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 be-haspeklariyah 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: VincentiusBellovacensis, 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; accord-ing to Jacob Mann, “Une source d’histoire juive au XIIIe siècle: La lettre polémique de Jacob b. Elie àPablo Christiani,” Revue des Études Juives 82 (1926): 363–77, the author was from Spain. Before hisconversion to Christianity, the Dominican friar Pablo Christiani was known as Shahul and belonged tothe disciples of Jacob b. Elijah; see Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of MedievalAnti-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.

have been known to him as part of his Venetian cultural background. As the rise ofVenice had been closely linked to the Crusades,93 and the Fourth Crusade servedVenice as a welcome pretext to expand its commercial activities and colonies inthe eastern Mediterranean, much of the Crusader tradition was preserved in theVenetian Empire. Even after the fall of the Crusader states in the Levant, Venicecontinued to provide for the transportation of Christian pilgrims to the HolyLand.94 Thus, much of the Christian polemics against Islam that had originated inpartibus transmarinis, polemics such as the libellus de Machometi fallacis quotedby Vincent of Beauvais, lived on in the parts of the eastern Mediterranean ruled byVenice.

In this milieu, Capsali will have also learned of Christian traditions regard-ing the composition of the Qurhan, as we can see from the following story from thelife of Muh.ammad that Capsali includes in the Seder HEliyahu Zuta:

A) And he (Muh.ammad) ordered his friend gAlı to write down his laws andinstructions (torotav); he would dictate them and gAlı would write them in abook with ink, while Turzeman would be “standing at his right to admonishhim (lesit.no)” (Zechariah 3:1); “thereby daubing with plaster the flimsy wallthat he was building” (Ezekiel 13:10). In this way was brought to completionthe work produced by Muh.ammad that they call ilfurHan (i.e., al-Qurhan).95

B) In this book, he (i.e., Muh.ammad) proclaimed the unity of God in com-plete unity (yih.ed ha-Hel be-takhlit ha-yih.ud ). He collected from here andthere 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 Qurhan) in their (own)writing and their (own) language.

C) However, this man Muh.ammad did not know how to write. And so, whenhe wanted to write something, he would not sign in his own handwriting butwould dip his whole hand with its five fingers into ink and would make a printinstead of his signature as a sign for the people of Ishmael.96

The tradition according to which Muh.ammad was illiterate is well knownfrom Islamic sources, especially from the biographical (sıra) and exegetical liter-

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93. Whereas during the First Crusade Genoa and Pisa supplied much of the naval power, laterit was the Venetians who were the most successful in securing for themselves specific territorial andcommercial 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 Con-quest 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,” Archi-vo Storico Italiano 143, no. 2 (1985): 197–223; Ugo Tucci, “I servizi marittimi veneziani per il pelle-grinaggio in Terra Santa nel Medioevo,” Studi Veneziani 9 (1985): 43–66; David Jacoby, “Pelerinagemédiévale 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 ilfurHan is probably a corruption of Latin alchoranus.96. SEZ, ch. 4, 1:37.

ature (tafsır).97 In Islam, Muh. ammad’s illiteracy served as an affirmation of thebelief that the Qurhan was not authored by a man but rather revealed by God. Incontrast, Christian polemics used this tradition to question the originality of theQurhan by depicting Muh.ammad as an ignoramus who plagiarized the Bible underthe influence of Jewish or Christian advisers. Similarly, Capsali attributes leadingroles in the composition of the Qurhan to two companions of Muh.ammad calledgAlı and Turzeman(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 gAlı and the other oneTurzemani. gAlı was very clever, and some say that he was (originally) a Jewwho had been baptized98 . . . . 99

Already in the early Judeo-Arabic Qis.s.at as.h.ab Muh. ammad (“Story ofMuh.ammad’s Friends”) preserved in the Cairo Genizah there is mention of ten wiseJewish men who accepted Islam “to prevent evil from Israel” and composed theQurhan on Muh.ammad’s behalf;100 however, this tradition was unknown to the Can-diote rabbi. That Capsali depended on Jewish traditions originating from Christianlands is substantiated by the fact that gAlı (hIbn gAbı T. alib, the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet) is here said to be a baptized Jew. According to this polemicaltradition, gAlı’s (alleged) apostasy is the explanation for his bad influence on Mu-h.ammad.

The second companion, Turzeman(i),101 is probably to be identified withgUthman bin al-gAffan, under whose caliphate (644–56 CE) the official version ofthe Qurhan was promulgated. This would explain Capsali’s use of Zechariah 3:1,according to which Turzeman’s job was to supervise gAlı’s writing, which is com-pared to a “flimsy wall” that needs to be plastered (A). Capsali, however, was notinterested in a historical critique of the Qurhan, but in making a polemical state-ment. As a closer look at the quoted verse reveals, the “admonitioner” mentionedin Zechariah 3:1 “standing at his right to admonish him (lesitno)” is none other butsatan. In equating gUthman with Satan, Capsali is declaring the Qurhan to be Sa-tanic verses; and later in the text, he refers to Muh. ammad as the “companion of

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97. See Isaiah Goldfeld, “The Illiterate Prophet (Nabı Ummı): An Inquiry into the Developmentof a Dogma in Islamic Tradition,” Der Islam 57 (1980): 58–67; Norman Calder, “The Ummı in EarlyIslamic Juridic Literature,” Der Islam 67 (1990): 111–23; K. gAthamina, “Al-Nabiyy al-Umiyy: An In-quiry 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. JTSENA 2541, fol. A, is published in Jewish Quarterly Review 16, 402; cf. M. Schwabe, “Mohammed’sTen Jewish Companions” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 2 (1931): 74–89 (with parallels in the works of the Byzan-tine chronicler Theophanus); Jacob Mann, “An Early Theologico-Polemical Work,” Hebrew Union Col-lege Annual 12–13 (1937–38): 411–59.

101. This name may perhaps be explained as a conflation of the Ottoman terjuman (derivingfrom Arabic turjuman, “translator,” “interpreter”), familiar as “dragoman” in European languages, andgUthman.

(the archdemon) Ashmadai.”102 Despite these polemical undertones, Capsali doesacknowledge the monotheistic character of Islam,103 a concession made by Chris-tian polemicists as well.104 However, he explains away the uniqueness of theQurhanic proclamations of the One God with his claim that all of the relevant vers-es were actually compiled from different parts of the Hebrew Bible.

Capsali also retells a polemical version of the Bah. ıra-legend,105 another tra-dition about the life of Muh. ammad that goes back to the classical biographical lit-erature (sıra) of Islam and that had an extensive afterlife in Christian anti-Islamicpolemics:

A) In the chronicle (sefer divre ha-yamim) of Muh. ammad, the deceiver andcompanion of Ashmadai,106 it is written, that Abu Bakr and Hayya wereamong the supporters of Muh. ammad’s covenant and religion and among thosewho observed his commandments and his teaching (torah).

B) Abu 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) hebegan to fear that (Muh. ammad) might come to hate him and remove him fromhis (own) high rank and “drag the dignity” of his office “in the dust” (Psalm89:40). 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 hisfriends, going wherever (Muh. ammad) went and listening to his speeches.

C) This man Hayya who was a Christian (noz.ri) became Muh.ammad’s advi-sor and bosom companion, joining him in his bedroom and on his bed. Be-cause of this, Muh. ammad’s friends became envious of him ( . . . ) and plottedto slay him with the sword.107

The story goes on to relate how Muh.ammad’s Christian friend arranges abanquet in the course of which everyone falls asleep except Abu Bakr, who takes

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102. SEZ, 5, 1:38; there again, Capsali quotes the polemical letter of Jacob of Venice, see be-low. 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 theQurhan to Satan, another topos of Christian polemics, see d’Ancona, “Leggenda,” 262, n. 58; NormanDaniel, 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: “TheseMuslims (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. ıra-

legend, “Muh.ammad and the Beginning of Islam,” 329–31; idem, “The Monk Bahira, the Counselorof Muhammad and the Jews: Between Polemic and Historiography” (Hebrew), Proceedings of theTenth 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.

Muh.ammad’s sword and kills Hayya. The next morning, Muh. ammad wakes froma drunken sleep to discover that his friend has been murdered, and, seeing the bloodon his own sword, believes that he himself was the one who killed him. Heartbro-ken, he then issues a decree prohibiting the drinking of alcohol.

While it is correct that Abu Bakr was among the first supporters of Muh. am-mad, nowhere in the Muslim tradition is he described as having been the son of anexilarch (rosh ha-golah, i.e., the representative of the Jews in Babylonia).108 Thestory that gAlı and Abu Bakr were Jews who had converted to Islam, however, isto 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 toa “chronicle (sefer divre ha-yamim) of Muh. ammad,” the source of his banquet sto-ry is the polemical letter by Jacob of Venice mentioned above.110 It is from thissource as well that he took the name Hayya;111 however, there is no question thatthis figure is to be identified with Bah. ıra, about whom there are many legends inboth Islamic and Christian sources. According to Muslim tradition, Bah. ıra was aChristian monk who had recognized Muh.ammad’s future mission when theprophet was still a youth.112 Whereas in Islamic tradition Bah. ıra serves as a Chris-tian witness to the authenticity of Muh. ammad’s prophethood, in Christian polem-ical literature he is a Christian heretic who exerts considerable influence onMuh.ammad and the composition of the Qurhan.113

The story that connects the Islamic prohibition of alcohol to the murder ofBah. ıra can be traced back to the Crusader states of the Levant, from which it wasbrought to the West in the thirteenth century by William of Tripoli.114 It wouldtherefore have been familiar to Jacob of Venice, whose polemical letter, as we have

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108. The “son of the Rosh ha-Golah” (Arabic: ibn ras al-djalut) is, however, a known figure inMuslim literature; see Moshe Gil, “The Babylonian Encounter and the Exilarchic House in the Lightof Cairo Geniza Documents and Parallel Arab Sources,” in Judaeo-Arabic Studies: Proceedings of theFounding Conference of the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies, ed. Norman Golb (Amsterdam: Har-wood, 1997), 135–73, esp. 157 and n. 47 (Hebrew version in Tarbiz 48 [1979]: 35–73).

109. See Moshe Gil, “The Story of Bah. ıra and Its Jewish Versions” (Hebrew) in Hebrew andArabic Studies in Honour of Joshua Blau, ed. Haggai Ben-Shammai (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem,1993), 193–210, according to whom the Judeo-Arabic Bah. ıra tradition can be traced back to SaGadyahGahon; 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 Cap-sali 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.yra,”

Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 12 (1858): 238–49; Theodor Nöldeke, “Hat-te Muh. ammad christliche Lehrer?,” ibid., 699–708; and the entry “Bah. ıra,” The Encyclopedia of Is-lam, New Edition, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1960), col. 922–23 (A. Abel).

113. See Moritz Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprachezwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden (Leipzig, 1877), 160; C. de Vaux, “La légende de Bahira,” Re-vue de l’Orient Chretien 2 (1897): 439–54; Richard Gottheil, “A Christian Bahira Legend,” Zeitschriftfür 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. ıra: The Cult ofthe 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.

seen, was Capsali’s source. Here again we get an idea how Outremer traditions be-came known to the author of Seder HEliyahu Zuta.

Although (so far) it has not been possible to identify a specific non-Jewishsource used by Capsali, the legends he included into his account on the origins ofIslam point at Crusader traditions that were still accessible in the Venetian Empireof the sixteenth century. His depiction of Ottoman history, which to some extentresembles Spandugino’s account, has to be understood in the context of the con-temporary Venetian-Ottoman rivalry. However, it is still an open question whetherCapsali drew on written sources for his descriptions of the dynastic and militaryhistory of the Ottomans, given that he himself, like a good classical historian,115

firmly believed that oral sources constituted the most reliable material of histori-ography:

Amongst the tribes of Israel, I firmly announced that my tongue will tell thetruth: In all the stories I will tell, I will not take the path of liars. Behold, I havereceived the stories (sippurim) about the kings of Turkey from the mouth ofvenerable (zekenim) and knowledgeable Turks.116

Like Spandugino, who claimed to have entered into conversation with “twogentlemen who were close to Bayazıd II,”117 Capsali, however, does not disclosethe names of his informants, the “venerable and knowledgeable Turks”—a fact thatmay cause the modern reader to question his honesty.118 Yet, in the case of his ac-count of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, Capsali does mention a specific eyewit-ness:

For the stories of Egypt (sippure Miz.rayim), I relied on the testimony of manybeloved and honorable (people) who were there at that time, especially on thetrustworthy and most courageous Rabbi Yiz.h.aq al-H. akım who was there dur-ing the period of the war, from its inception until the end . . . . I wrote with inkin a book what he related to me . . . .119

Capsali also tells us that he learned about the “war of Constantinople” fromhis father’s uncle, Moses Capsali.120 Born in Candia about 1410, Moses Capsalimust have settled in Constantinople sometime around 1445, after which he served

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115. According to Bonfil (“Jewish Attitudes,” 19–20, and 30), Capsali made use of stories con-tained in written sources but purposefully attributed them to oral eyewitnesses, especially Jews, in or-der to “Judaize” his subject matter. However, Bonfil makes no suggestion which sources Capsali mighthave 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. akım) or merchant, who accompanied thesultan 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.

as the rabbi of the city’s Jewish community both before and after the Ottoman con-quest of 1453. Given the generational gap, however, Elijah Capsali could only havelearned about his great-uncle’s life from his father, Elkanah. Family pride, more-over, led him to exaggerate Moses Capsali’s standing at the Ottoman court, a factthat puts into questions the reliability of the relevant sections.121 In any case, Cap-sali’s repeated reference to Doges and other Venetian dignitaries as well as his useof Italian loanwords122 would indicate that he probably drew on Venetian knowl-edge of Ottoman affairs. This is not surprising, given that Crete was one of themain hubs of Venetian-Ottoman intercourse.

In Candia and other major centers of the eastern Mediterranean, the Mar-itime Republic maintained a network of permanent representatives (baili) and con-suls, all of whom reported back to and kept in constant touch with the governmentof the Serenissima.123 Capsali explicitly mentions the bailo Antonio Giustiniani,who in 1513 had traveled to Istanbul to renew Venetian-Ottoman agreements afterSelım I’s accession (1512). On his way back, Giustiniani stopped over in Candiawhere Capsali had the chance to listen to the bailo’s report.124 Capsali also refersto the Venetian emissary Marco Minio, who passed through Candia on his way toConstantinople where, after the fall of Belgrad (1521), he was sent to renew thepeace agreement between the Ottomans and Venice.125 Capsali’s acquaintancewith these diplomats can be explained by his position as condestabulo, which madeit necessary for him to be in close contact with the Venetian authorities.

Given that there are very few historical dates in Seder HEliyahu Zuta—thefirst date mentioned is that of the beginning of the siege of Constantinople126—itis 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, heomitted certain dates and other details in his own account) or a few of the battledescriptions (avvisi) that circulated widely in the form of leaflets. It seems much

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121. On the basis of Seder HEliyahu Zuta, previous scholarship assumed that Moses Capsali wasthe 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 Valen-

si, Venise et la Sublime Porte: La naissance du despote (Paris: Hachette, 1987); Palmira Brummet, Ot-toman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (Albany: State University of NewYork, 1994); Maria P. Pedani-Fabris, “Ottoman Envoys to Venice (1384–1644),” Arab Historical Re-view 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 ac-

cording to the Jewish computation “after the creation”; this may hint at Capsali’s respective sources ofinformation.

127. On Giovio’s Commentario (which was certainly unknown to Capsali), see n. 31. On thedifference between the two genres of historiography, the short commentario and the more elaborate his-toria, see A. Pirnát, “Gattungen der humanistischen Geschichtsschreibung: Historia et Commentarii,”in Geschichtsbewußtsein und Geschichtsschreibung in der Renaissance, ed. August Buck, Tibor Klan-iczai, and S.K. Németh (Budapest, Leiden: Brill, 1989), 57–64.

more likely that his major source of information was diplomatic reports, storiestold by Jewish merchants, and other oral accounts that were readily available in theport city of Candia.

CONCLUSIONS

As the previous discussion has shown, Capsali is a figure not easily catego-rized. Serving as a rabbi on the island of Crete, which was then a Venetian outpostin the eastern Mediterranean, he was exposed to multiple influences. By upbring-ing, he was both multilingual (fluent in Greek, Italian, and Hebrew at least) andmulticultural (his family was of Romaniote origin, he studied at a famous Ashke-nazic yeshivah in Padua, and he corresponded with Sephardic rabbis in Egypt128).Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of his historical work is the fact that althoughCrete (as most of the Venetian overseas territories) lay within the area of Ottomanexpansion, Capsali glorified the Ottoman conquests—an even bolder partisanshipwhen keeping in mind that he was also serving as the representative of the CretanJews to the Venetian authorities. A closer look at Capsali’s chronicle reveals thathis work is full of contradictions and ambiguities. On the one hand, he was deeplyrooted in the cultural and social world of the Venetian Empire; on the other, hewrote eulogies on the Ottomans, Venice’s primary Mediterranean rival.

This partisanship was certainly not without any risk given that Capsali com-posed his work after the fall of Rhodes (1522), when an Ottoman attack on Creteseemed to be imminent.129 Whereas Capsali had expressed his admiration forVenice in an earlier chronicle he had written, his later (intellectual) siding with theenemy may reflect the lack of integration Jews experienced under a governmentthat subjected them to residential segregation and other restrictions.130 The de-mographic pressure created in the Jewish segregated area during the plague of1523 had been disastrous, a fact that may well have contributed to Capsali’s readi-ness to place all his hopes in the rival of the Maritime Republic.

Despite his idealization of the sultans, however, Capsali did not hesitate toadopt polemical traditions about the rise of Islam that are of Christian origin andcan be traced back to the Crusader states of the Levant. To some extent, this canbe explained by his historiographical ambition: like certain Christian writers of histime, Capsali felt that it was necessary to introduce his chronicle of Ottoman his-tory with an account of the origins of Islam. This made even more sense to him

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128. See Benayahu, Capsali, 88 n. 10; Haim H. Ben-Sasson, “Kavvim li-temunat golamo ha-ruh.ani ve-ha-h. evrati shel khronist.on yehudi be-shalhe yeme ha-benayim,” in Essays in Jewish Historyand Philology in Memory of Gedaliahu Alon, ed. M. Dorman and S. Safrai (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibuts 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-ges-reh,” Sinai 88 (1981): 48–59.

129. When the Ottoman fleet under Khayr al-Dın Barbarossa threatened Candia in 1538, theChristian population accused the Jews of hiding Turks and the mob looted the Jewish quarter; seeJoshua Starr, “Jewish Life in Crete under the Rule of Venice,” Proceedings of the American Academyof 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.

given that he regarded Muh.ammad and the Ottomans as representatives of one andthe same empire, the malkhut YishmaGel.

The highly polemical tone of Capsali’s chapters on early Islam is partly tobe explained by the material he used. Moreover, a sixteenth-century rabbi couldnot 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 attitudetowards 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 todefeat Christendom. As we have seen, Capsali determined, on the basis of Isaiah10:5–11, that although Assyria had been chosen as God’s “rod of anger,” there wasnothing positive to say about Assyria’s religion. In the same way, he interpreted thevisions 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 thestage for the return of the Jewish exiles to their land.

Ambiguity marks not only Capsali’s attitude towards Islam, but his historio-graphical 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 his-toriography, a fact that in itself reflects the author’s awareness of contemporarytrends. In addition, his treatment of primarily non-Jewish history can be said to haveopened up new horizons in Jewish literature. However, neither Capsali’s views onhistory nor his writing style had very much in common with contemporary hu-manist historiography. Although he occasionally makes use of contemporary rhetor-ical devices, in most of his text, he models himself after medieval chronicles, whichultimately go back to biblical and rabbinic literary patterns. In his detailed accountsof the Ottoman conquests, he combines a keen interest in contemporary events withhis 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 con-tinued reliance on the stylistic devices of religiously founded historiography. In fact,there were quite a few Christian chronicles composed in cinquecento-Italy that con-tinued in form and concept the medieval tradition.131 When it came to descriptionsof the Turks or Islam, there was a general tendency to reappropriate clichés goingback to the time of the Crusades, and causal explanations for momentous eventssuch as the fall of Constantinople quite frequently reverted to God’s wrath.

Like many of his Christian contemporaries, Capsali was obliged to a religion-defined worldview; yet, in expanding the historical horizon to include other peo-ples and cultures he followed an impulse characteristic of early modern times. Cap-sali’s ambivalent attitude towards Islam—oscillating between polemics against the“false” prophet Muh.ammad and panegyrics to the Ottoman sultans—mirrors theambiguous situation of a Jewish author living at an eastern outpost of the Christianworld and facing the Muslim world on the other shore.

Martin JacobsWashington University in St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

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131. See Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, 382–89.