‘Sultans as Saviors: Early Modern Mediterranean Jewish Accounts of the Ottoman Rulers’

Professor Marc David Baer, London School of Economics and Political Science

Messianic impulses lie at the core of early modern Mediterranean Jewish accounts of the Ottoman sultans. Jews’ affective disposition compelled them to be grateful to the rulers of the kingdom that allowed them to live as Jews, shaping a utopian image of the Islamic rulers. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Jews focus on the Ottoman sultan, who personifies the empire, depicting him in messianic terms as the one who fulfils God’s plan in the world by punishing the Jews’ Christian oppressors (Byzantine and Catholic). They also credit him for ingathering the Jewish exiles from newly Christian Spain, conquering Jerusalem, and allowing Jews to settle in the Holy Land. In their view, all serve as portents of the dawning of the messianic age. In seventeenth century accounts, the Ottoman savior is replaced by a Jewish one, the messianic claimant Shabbatai Tzevi. However, modern historiography has retained the main claims of these early modern accounts.