1660 destruction of Tiberias

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The 1660 destruction of Tiberias [1] occurred during the Druze power struggle in the Galilee, in the same year as the destruction of Safed. The destruction of Tiberias by the Druze resulted in abandonment of the city by its Jewish community, [2] [3] until it was rebuilt by Zahir al-Umar in early 18th century. Altshuler however attributes the destruction of Tiberias in 1660 to an earthquake. [4] The destruction could have also been a combination of both events.

Contents

Background

As the Ottoman Empire expanded along the southern Mediterranean coast under sultan Selim I, the Catholic Monarchs began establishing Inquisition commissions. Many Conversos, (Marranos and Moriscos) and Sephardic Jews fled to the Ottoman provinces, settling at first in Constantinople, Salonika, Sarajevo, Sofia and in Anatolia. The sultan encouraged them to settle in Palestine. [5] [6]

In 1558, a Portuguese-born marrano, Doña Gracia, was granted tax collecting rights in Tiberias and its surrounding villages by Suleiman the Magnificent. She envisaged the town becoming a refuge for Jews and obtained a permit to establish Jewish autonomy there. [7] In 1561 her nephew Joseph Nasi, the sultan-appointed lord of Tiberias, [8] encouraged Jews to settle in Tiberias. [9] Securing a firman from the sultan, he and Joseph ben Ardut or ibn Adret (converso name: Pomar), whom he sent to Tiberias, rebuilt the city walls and laid the groundwork for a textile (silk) industry, planting mulberry trees and urging craftsmen to move there. [9] [10] [11] [12] In 1624, when the sultan recognized Fakhr-al-Din II as lord of Arabistan (a specially created realm stretching from Aleppo to the borders of Egypt), [13] the Druze leader made Tiberias his capital.

Destruction

The destruction of Tiberias by the Druze resulted in the Jewish community fleeing entirely. [2] [3] Unlike Tiberias, which became desolate for many years, the nearby city of Safed recovered from its destruction by Druze in 1660 relatively quickly, [14] not becoming entirely abandoned, [15] remaining an important Jewish center in the Galilee.

Aftermath

In the 1720s, Zahir al-Umar, a Bedouin ruler of Ottoman Galilee, fortified Tiberias and signed an agreement with the neighboring Bedouin tribes to prevent looting. Richard Pococke, who visited Tiberias in 1738, witnessed the building of a fort to the north of the city, and the strengthening of the old walls, attributing it to a dispute with the pasha (ruler) of Damascus. [16] Under Zahir's patronage, Jewish families were encouraged to settle in Tiberias. [17] He invited Chaim Abulafia of Smyrna to rebuild the Jewish community. [1]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Schwarz, Joseph (1850). A Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine. Translated by Isaac Leeser. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Carey & Hart. p. 409. Retrieved 5 April 2025. Sultan Seliman surrounded it with a wall in 5300 (1540), and it commenced to revive a little, and to be inhabited by the most distinguished Jewish literati; but it was destroyed again in 5420 (1660). Also at Archived 2018-07-20 at the Wayback Machine
  2. 1 2 Rappel, Joel (1980). History of Eretz Israel from Prehistory up to 1882 (in Hebrew). Vol. 2. Tel Aviv: Israel Ministry of Defense Publishing House. p. 531. In 1662 Sabbathai Sevi arrived to Jerusalem. It was the time when the Jewish settlements of Galilee were destroyed by the Druze: Tiberias was completely desolate and only a few of former Safed residents had returned...
  3. 1 2 Barnai, Jacob (1992). The Jews in Palestine in the eighteenth century: under the patronage of the Istanbul Committee of Officials for Palestine. Judaic studies. University of Alabama Press. p. 149. ISBN   0817305726 . Retrieved 5 April 2025.
  4. ↑ Altshuler, Mor (2006). "Redemption begins in the Galilee (part 1, ch. 8)". The Messianic secret of Hasidism. Brill's Series in Jewish Studies, Vol. 39. BRILL. p. 162. ISBN   9047410831 . Retrieved 5 April 2025. Online Hebrew text of original 2002 U. of Haifa/Zmora-Bitan Press edition, Ch. 8, available & Archived 2018-03-14 at the Wayback Machine .
  5. ↑ Green, Toby (2007). Inquisition: The Reign of Fear. Macmillan Press. pp. xv–xix. ISBN   978-1-4050-8873-2.
  6. ↑ Alfassá, Shelomo (27 August 2007). Sephardic Contributions to the Development of the State of Israel Alfassa.com [ usurped ]
  7. ↑ Schaick, Tzvi. "Who is Dona Gracia?" Archived 2011-05-10 at the Wayback Machine , The House of Dona Gracia Museum.
  8. ↑ Pasachoff, Naomi E.; Littman, Robert J. (2005). A Concise History of the Jewish People. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 163. ISBN   0742543668.
  9. 1 2 Gordon, Benjamin Lee (1977) [1919]. New Judea: Jewish Life in Modern Palestine and Egypt. Manchester, New Hampshire: Ayer Publishing. p. 209.
  10. ↑ Executive Committee of the Editorial Board; Ochser, Schulim (1901–1906). "Tiberias". Jewish Encyclopedia . Retrieved 5 April 2025.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. ↑ Singer, Isidore; Schloessinger, Max (1901–1906). "Nasi, Joseph, Duke of Naxos". Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved 5 April 2025.
  12. ↑ Macalister, R. A. Stewart (1911). "Tiberias". Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved 5 April 2025.
  13. ↑ "The Druze of the Levant". angelfire.org. Archived from the original on March 9, 2012.
  14. ↑ Mendelssohn, Sidney (1920). The Jews of Asia: especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. p. 241. Long before the culmination of Sabbathai's mad career, Safed had been destroyed by the Arabs and the Jews had suffered severely, while in the same year (1660) there was a great fire in Constantinople in which they endured heavy losses...
  15. ↑ Scholem, Gershom (2016) [1957]. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676. Princeton University Press. p. 368. ISBN   978-0-691-17209-5 . Retrieved 5 April 2025. In Safed, too, the [Sabbatai] movement gathered strength during the autumn of 1665. The reports about the utter destruction, in 1662 [sic], of the Jewish settlement there seem greatly exaggerated, and the conclusions based on them are false. ... Rosanes' account of the destruction of the Safed community is based on a misunderstanding of his sources; the community declined in numbers but continued to exist.
  16. ↑ Pococke, Richard (1811). "A Description of the East and Some other Countries". In John Pinkerton (ed.). A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World: Many of which are Now First Translated Into English; Digested on a New Plan. Vol. 10. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme. p. 460. Retrieved 5 April 2025. Based on the travelogue published by Pococke in 1743-45.
  17. ↑ Muammar, Tawfiq (1990) [1979]. Zahir al-Omar. Nazareth: Al Hakim Printing Press. p. 70.
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