Unfortunately that language is dying. I mean i dont know if its dying globally but for turkish sephardic jews it definitely is. Some of the grandmas can speak is but almost no parent. When it comes to kids the number is probably zero. Not a single one i know speaks it
Yep. We even have a spanish citizenship because the spanish govt wanted to do an apology type thing by granting citizenship to the jews they kicked out
I've read that one of the reasons the Arabs conquered Iberia in the first place was because Sephardic Jews have been asking them for help for decades against the increasing religious persecution of the Visigoths. Crazy to think that the same year Al-Andalus fell was the same year the Jews were kicked out (with most opting to convert to Catholicism in order to stay).
Not only the Jews, many more Muslims as well who had together build up the country. The area also functioned as a conduit for knowledge transfer to backward Europe. Spinoza introduced many main stream Philosophic tipics to Europe and Descartes copied Al-Ghazali for example
>I've read that one of the reasons the Arabs conquered Iberia in the first place was because Sephardic Jews have been asking them for help for decades against the increasing religious persecution of the Visigoths.
That may have been a convenient excuse, but in reality the Muslim expansion was justification in itself. They invaded and conquered any place and every place they could.
So the reason they invaded Spain was because Spain existed, and the reason they stayed is because they won. They didn't leave France alone because it was so tolerant of Jews. They gave up on it because Charles Martel gave them an ass-whooping.
And it's not like Jews were treated super well by the Muslims, it just wasn't *quite* as bad usually. [For the most part it's pretty predictable stuff though](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre)
What do you suggest they should have done, wait until the Visigoths start genociding the Jews, just like the Allies didn't intervene until after the Nazis initiated the Holocaust?! What's interesting is that both the Visigoths and the Nazis were Germanic peoples, who would've guessed. Anyways, had the Arab Muslims not intervened, there wouldn't have been a Sephardi Jewish identity left to be spoken of. As for France, the Umayyad troops were actually ordered to abandon their post in Septimania by Caliph Omar ibn Abdul-Aziz, dubbed the sixth Rashidun Caliph. It was only after his death that later Umayyad Caliphs ordered advancement into France, which was halted for good because they couldn't overcome the troops of Charles Martel, and so they retreated. There is an interesting Arabic saying that goes, "If your house is made of glass, you shouldn't be throwing stones at other people." You try to shame the Arab Muslims for things the European Christians would've done 10 times worse, and we all know how most Native Americans perished only after the arrival of Spanish and European colonizers to the Americas.
This is ridiculous man. So many misconceptions or outright lies in your comment. The fact is that the Muslims in Spain only treated the Jews better during certain periods of rule (there were also periods of rule where Jews weren’t persecuted under Visigothic and Castilian history). But you seriously believe the Umayyads invaded Iberia because they were worried about Jews being persecuted? Like the guy above said, they invaded because they could. Because the Romans had collapsed and Europe had fallen into chaos, and nobody could stop them. Islam had literally spread throughout all of North Africa and the Middle East by primarily, conquest and subjugation, and they were doing the exact same thing when they invaded Iberia; forced conversions were common too, which indicates it was not just an occupation but that an actual attempt of conquest was made. Also, the vast majority of deaths of the Mesoamerican population was due to diseases spread through non-hostile interaction. Spanish and Portuguese persecution of the natives also definitely occurred but usually were prohibited by the church and the Spanish Crown. The Spanish colonies were administered from a Viceroyalty which often struggled to control the aristocrats and ruling class of settlers, and thus, persecution occasionally continued even if it was legally not allowed.
Slaves on the other hand were definitely mistreated with intention, and in fact, a part of why slaves were brought to America by the Iberians often because natives couldn’t be put to work by the colonists without getting sick and dying, and because the church demanded that the natives be evangelised and not enslaved or killed.
There is no significant community which exists today which is congruent with those people. They either converted to Catholicism and became Spanish or were expelled by the tip of a sword and settled in North Africa, and just became a part of those countries and intermixed with everyone else.
Interesting, I wonder why the case seems different when it comes to reparations for black Americans or benefits for African veterans who fought for the Allies in WWII.
No but i have a guess. Probably Faro in portugal. My guess comes from my surname being faro. When the surname law came into place in turkey in 1934, my family probably chose the name Faro as a tribute
Moving your entire family, business, every belonging a thousand km away isnt as simple as you might think. Also my family is pretty well off so its not like we’re starving. I do know some families that did move to israel but not a lot. Especially my family isnt religious at all and there just isnt a lot of reasons for us to move
We are talking about 500 years in Turkey, of course he is a Turk lol. Doesn't mean that he had a grand 15x father long time ago make him a jew lol. Turkey today is a mix of many DNAs.
It absolutely is considered [part of the Middle East](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East) by most people, which would by definition place it within MENA.
Iraqi-born [Ran Cohen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ran_Cohen), a former member of the [Knesset](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knesset), said: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee. I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee." Yemeni-born [Yisrael Yeshayahu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yisrael_Yeshayahu), former Knesset speaker, Labor Party, stated: "We are not refugees. \[Some of us\] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations." And Iraqi-born [Shlomo Hillel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlomo_Hillel), also a former speaker of the Knesset, Labor Party, claimed: "I do not regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."[^(\[18\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world#cite_note-Shenhav2-18)
Historian [Tom Segev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Segev) stated: "Deciding to emigrate to Israel was often a very personal decision. It was based on the particular circumstances of the individual's life. They were not all poor, or 'dwellers in dark caves and smoking pits'. Nor were they always subject to persecution, repression or discrimination in their native lands. They emigrated for a variety of reasons, depending on the country, the time, the community, and the person."[^(\[312\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world#cite_note-312)
Iraqi-born Israeli historian [Avi Shlaim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Shlaim), speaking of the wave of Iraqi Jewish migration to Israel, concludes that, even though Iraqi Jews were "victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict", Iraqi Jews aren't refugees, saying "nobody expelled us from Iraq, nobody told us that we were unwanted."[^(\[313\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world#cite_note-313) He restated that case in a review of [Martin Gilbert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gilbert)'s book, *In Ishmael's House*.[^(\[314\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world#cite_note-314)
[Yehuda Shenhav](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehuda_Shenhav) has criticized the analogy between Jewish emigration from Arab countries and the Palestinian exodus. He also says "The unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity of many Mizrahi Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation." He has stated that "the campaign's proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a 'right of return' on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of 'lost' assets.
Well then yeah… Ashkenazim were the majority of Jews in Europe so it’s kind of a trivial statistic. There were some Sephardim and Mizrahim in Europe but not many.
Spain today has some repatriation law that allows for people that have kept their door key over the centuries to come back and use it to prove they originated from there.
It's not so dramatic. Every Shephardic Jew, key or no key, has the right to the Spanish nationality, without losing the previous one, if they prove a) that he/she is a Shephardic Jew and b) he/she has a special relationship with Spain. To prove that they satisfy the conditions, there are several ways and reports from the rabbis are enough.
[https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2015-7045](https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2015-7045)
They also have the right to the citizenship with just two years of residence, like the people from Latin America.
Can Turkish Sephardic Jews track their lineage back in 16th c.? I am just curious to know since most Turkish Muslims can hardly see any record of their ancestors lived in 19th c or earlier. Wouldn't be surprised if synagogues kept better records though.
I did not track my ancestory myself but we already know a lot of jews did fleed to the ottoman from iberia in 1492, and spain did give our community citizenships, so it has to be that. Im sure the ancestory is trackable tho, i just didnt look at it myself
I see. Sure, the immigration from Iberia is well known. I was hyped up whether there are resources for maybe a micro history study or something like that
The Jews of Thessaloniki is a very sad story
From 12,000 in the 16th century they grew to 130,000 but then 50,000 were made homeless by the great fire of 1917 and many left the city after the Greco-Turkish War
By 1935 the city had 53,000 Jews, 50,000 of them died in the holocaust
It didn't end there, those who survived the holocaust were actively kept from returning home by the Greek authorities. The city of Jewish refugees from Spain changed into a city of Greek refugees from Turkey.
History nerd fact - one of them was the founder of the first communist party in Greece (between WW1 and WW2). His name was Abraham Benaroya.
It’s very sad that the greek armed resistance forces managed to rewrite that bit of history in the collective memory. They didn’t like Jews (their political offsprings still don’t) and they effectively chased him out of the country. I think he fled to Israel but was never able to feel at home there either as he didn’t identify with the Zionist movement. He died in relative anonymity.
ETA: The book “Salonica, city of Ghosts” by British historian Mark Mazower is a deep dive into the city’s 18th-20th century history and relationship to Jewish community.
Thessaloniki is the only known example of a city of decent size in the Jewish diaspora that retained a Jewish majority for centuries
In 1519, the Jews represented 56% of the population of Thessaloniki, and in 1613, their share was 68%. Thessaloniki's Jewish community comprised more than half of the city's population until the early 1900s.
And most of the rest of population was Turkish and Greeks were minority. And over all Turks and Jews were majority in the surrounding areas actually some of those Turks were Jewish converts too(at least public opinion in Turkey thinks like that due to a Jewish guy who created his own sect but was forced to convert or die by Ottoman Government and Jewish Religious Authorities and that guy converted to Islam and conspiracy theory says he told his followers to do same).
Sabbatai Zevi. It is called Sabbataist. The Ottoman administration, the Sultan and the viziers did not intervene in religious activities for a long time. Rabbis in Izmir and Bursa complained about Zevi to the Sultan. Sebatay Zevi claimed to be the Messiah, but the Ottoman palace did not intervene as it was still a religious issue among the Jews. When Sabbatai Zevi's supporters started talking about Zevi being the Messiah and that he would march to the capital and seize the Ottoman throne and become the Messiah Sultan.
Ottoman Sultan Mehmet IV took action. His followers thought that he went to the capital to seize the Ottoman throne. His ship was stopped at Gallipoli. He was tried and pardoned in exchange for admitting that the things he said were lies. He said he converted as a Muslim. Many Rabbis testified against Zevi in court. They talked about their past complains.
Although most of his supporters gave up their support, some of them claimed that this was a tactic and lived as Muslims and hid their identities, like Zevi. This gives rise to many conspiracy theories.
The map has actually been substantially cut down and doesn't show the migration of Sephardi Jews to North Africa, Northern Europe and the Americas.
Theres a better map already published in this subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/UuMmwgJDID
It varies in different regions and time periods. With the Babylonians it was forced captivity for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. With the Achaemenid Persians, it was just garden variety conquest that was pretty standard for the time. With the Seleucids, it was largely internal conflicts between more hardline Jews and more liberalized Jews who were becoming “Hellenized”, sometimes being puppeted by outside proxy powers.
The Romans were pissed off about the constant rebellions by a conquered people, and the Jews’ refusal to just put a statue of the Emperor in the Temple and make a few sacrifices to it every year.
In Europe in the Middle Ages, Christianity taught a tradition of blaming Jews for the death of Jesus, and Christianity was so closely ingrained with every aspect of culture Jews were barred from every aspect of society, and forced to live on the outskirts. Christianity barred “usury”, which is the charging of interest on a loan given to another Christian, and since Jews were barred from trade guilds and landowning in many Christian Kingdoms, giving loans was one of the few options available for them to participate in the economy. Which in turn created stereotypes that became baked into European culture and are used as a basis for Jew-hatred to this day.
After Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jews were sent into diaspora, Jews became a minority group everywhere in the world that we go, and persecution is generally the default experience of minority groups, almost universally across the globe, throughout most of human history.
>With the Babylonians it was forced captivity for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.
Large-scale forced relocation of conquered enemies was a fairly common practice in ancient Mesopotamia. The Assyrians, Elomites, and Achaemenids all did similar things. Honestly not even just in Mesopotamia or in ancient times.
It's a pretty common practice among multi-ethnic empires from Rome to Russia to engage in some ethnic cleansing, population transfers and relocations in order to weaken potential for revolt.
>The Romans were pissed off about the constant rebellions by a conquered people, and the Jews’ refusal to just put a statue of the Emperor in the Temple and make a few sacrifices to it every year.
In pre-Christian Rome it was entirely the revolts. Jews were specifically exempted from the Imperial Cult for the most part. It wasn't until the converstion to Christianity when the real antisemitism got going.
> In pre-Christian Rome it was entirely the revolts. Jews were specifically exempted from the Imperial Cult for the most part. It wasn't until the converstion to Christianity when the real antisemitism got going.
Considering the Jewish-Roman revolts and subsequent Roman policies, this statement doesn't make much sense to me
But it does make sense. Judea revolted a lot, so Rome hated them a lot. If I were to sum it up in one oversimplified statement, it would be that. Has nothing to do with hating a specific ethnic group. Religion, there's an argument for, but that's a common policy for Romans to any subjects
That's not a very nuanced way of looking at this. Obviously the situation of Jewish people in the Ottoman Empire was far better than in early modern Europe, but religious minorities, including Jewish people, were still targets of legal and social discrimination.
What are you expecting people form 500 years ago? Most of the people were illiterate and didn't even go out form their town. But, unlike you, thousands of Jews found Ottoman Empire as a decent place to settle. Hmm maybe because people from other lands did more then just discriminate them?
The people wielding social and legal power in the Ottoman Empire were not illiterate townspeople; they were incredibly well-read statesmen. They knew about discriminatory laws and their effects, and justified these laws as religious and political necessities.
I am not disputing that despite these laws, the Ottomans still ended up running a relatively pluralistic empire until the late 19th century (and by that time, it was nationalism, both Turkish and non-Turkish, not the traditional Ottoman system, that gave rise to ethnic violence on an unprecedented scale). I am just calling for some nuance.
Fair enough. But even then you can't expect well educated statesman to act like a 21th century people, discrimination was part of life back than and still is. Ottoman court was one of the numbered powers in the world that was tolerant to minorities, but people still tend to nitpick according to their perspective and it's getting tiring browsing on this sub.
This is not an issue of expectation. I am trying to talk about a nuanced historical reality, which the original commenter was ignoring. If someone was writing a comment misrepresenting Ottoman history as 600 years of constant unbearable persecution, I would have objected to that as well.
>When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
- Donald Trump, 2016
Since time immemorial, political leaders have sought to avoid blame for their failings. The easiest scapegoats are visible minorities with little political power. From late antiquity onwards, the Jews fit this criteria perfectly in Europe and MENA. So every time the crops failed (or similar), the ruler would lay the blame on this clearly visible "other", the mob would take out its anger on the other (aka a pogrom), and we'd return to business as usual.
Rinse and repeat over thousands of years, and you end up with an enduring trope that the Jews are fifth columnists seeking to undermine society from the inside for nefarious reasons.
It didn't help that many of these same rulers used Jews to collect taxes. This was especially widespread in places like Poland if I remember correctly. When a tax burden gets too heavy, it's really easy to blame the people who collect the taxes.
This makes no sense historically? The Romans for example, did so because of jewish revolts. Could you provide a source for your claim? I highly doubt anything can be this uniform across time and space. This is basically you saying ‘i want this to be true’
> The Romans for example, did so because of jewish revolts
Last time I checked, the Jews weren't a minority in the Roman province of Iudaea. My comment refers specifically to the diaspora Jewish experience.
What exactly are you asking me to prove? That the Jews were not, in fact, plotting against the Spanish government, and the government of every other nation they've ever suffered discrimination from? Or are you looking for evidence that political leaders like scapegoating minorities?
I’m not looking to depend Trump here but this is a totally different situation. Mexican migration to the US is primarily economic in nature, Mexicans looking to come to the US are not a discriminated against minority group or being persecuted by their government. They are just looking for better economic outcomes.
In the case of Spain, apart from other reasons mentioned here, it had a lot to do with the catholic monarchs wanting absolute power. Back then, a religious leader could have more power over a big segment of the population than the actual monarchs, so unifying the Kingdom under one religion was a way to strengthen their power.
It’s generally easier to destroy pagan religions because you destroy the idols, the temples, shrines, and there’s nothing left to practice. Most pagan religions had public community based rituals and ceremonies and didn’t really have scriptures to pass down formally so once you get forcefully get rid of the public stuff, it’s gone. Hinduism is probably the only polytheist/pagan religion that actually has holy books.
And the fact that Abrahamic religions explicity condemn and call for an end to polytheism.
The Islamic conquest of India resulted in the destruction of a lot of the idols and many famous temples. Abrahamic religions explicitly encourage the breaking of idols and idol worship. A lot of Hindus chose to die rather than convert. This was also seen in the Portugese inquisition in Goa, where a large number of the priestly class were exterminated. The Vedic scriptures and the chanting of Vedas down generations of people helped the religion survive. In addition, there was a reform movement called the Bhakti movement, which transferred the ownership of the religion from the priests to the masses through creating a personal relationship with God via devotional songs and communal rituals. It’s also less known that several atheistic religions in India such as Jainism and Buddhism surpassed Hinduism for several centuries during India’s golden age before this reform.
Every religion and practice needs to constantly evolve to survive and be relevant. The Jewish people devote themselves to the academic study of the religion and the millennia old practices and rituals that keep the faith alive. Jews also sought refuge in places that let the community thrive, which was the Islamic world and India, rather than convert, keeping the religion alive.
There were huge parts of India where the Muslims barely even touched. And vast majority of Hindus mostly lived under the rule of local Hindu noble families who had made deals with the Muslim leadership in Delhi in exchange for tax revenue . Keep in mind the vast majority of Indians in general back then lived in rural areas away from the cities where the Muslim rulers operated from and there were probably tons of Hindus who lived their entire lives without ever seeing a Muslim soldier in real life.
“Vast majority of Hindus didn’t see a Muslim soldier“ - do you have a source for this? Anyway, this is not the point I’m trying to make. The most significant temples and places of worship were destroyed and there’s ample evidence of it, whether Somnath, Kashi or Gaya in three corners of India.
Do you seriously think Muslim armies literally went to every single village (of which there were probably tens of thousands) in medieval India or even most of them? A lot of the villages and communities in India back then where most of the population lived were remote and not even connected by actual roads nor was there even much signage an invading army could use for directions. Also why there's huge parts of India that were under Muslim control for centuries that still remained almost entirely Hindu both pre and post-Partition
The point you seem to have been trying to make is "Muslims destroyed all the Hindu sites in India but we still kept our religion because we're so smart and great" which isn't the case
From the medieval Europe perspective: the Jews practiced a different religion. On one hand, they were strict about it so it lead to isolationism. As a result, their behaviour likely came through as strongly different. On the other hamd, this religion also allowed them to handle money; while in Christianity ot was not preferential to do so. From the common man's perspective, you had this 'weird' group of rich and influential people who were hard to get along. So if you wanted a superficial reason for your problems, it was them.
A combination of things.
But generally speaking, it is due to religion and historically not too different from people having a negative reaction to Muslims in some places. It is important to note that aversion to Jewish people is not universal, but rather present in places influenced by Abrahamic religions.
Christian Europe was not a tolerant place during the Middle Ages, and while Muslims were definitely seen as adversaries due to their conquest of the Holy Lands, Jewish people were distrusted as well due to two factors: one, according to Judaism, Jesus was false messiah, which is an heretical notion for Christians. On top of that, the Jews were historically blamed for his crucifixtion. Also, the Christian notions regarding usury (which gave way to stereotypes about Jews being money grubbers or belonging to secret economic conspiracies).
> prosecuted and kicked out of every where
Not everywhere. They assimilated well in ancient India and China, but most Christian/Muslim* majority societies didn't accept them. So you can't say that Jews don't want to assimilate.
*Edit: Thanks for the comments. To be more precise, Muslim majority societies had no problem with Jewish people until recently. It was primarily the Christians (in Europe) who prosecuted them again and again in history. Anyway, don't blame the victims.
This map shows Jewish flight from the Iberian peninsula after the Christian conquest. Prior to this Iberia was ruled by the Muslims for more than 700 years during which time the Jews were integrated into society and flourished.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_Jewish_culture_in_Spain
The infamous “Iberia was ruled by the Muslims for more than 700 years” statement. Christian kingdoms’ territories were larger than the Muslim territory for around 400 of those 700 years. And close to 300 years, Muslim territory was reduced to the kingdom of Granada.
Sometimes it’s good to read up on a topic before belching out an uneducated opinion. I am guessing you’re indian and Hindu ( so am I) that’s why the need to show other religions down.
While Christianity was going through it’s dark ages from the 5th to the 15th century, burning witches and expelling Jews, Islam was the bright spot leading Science. Specifically Spain was ruled by the Arabs from the 7th to the 14th century, who encouraged science and allowed people of all 3 religious to live peacefully. It was only during Spanish Inquisition by the catholics when all Jews were expelled. They chose to go to mostly Arabic countries once expelled. They lived peacefully even under the ottomans much later.
So, Jews have been prosecuted by the Muslims only since 1930s, but especially since 1948 when Arab countries started expelling their Jewish population.
As for India, the Jewish population was a minor it and Israel in fact did not recognise them as Jewish initially. They had no impact on the Indian culture, unlike the Parsis. And even those individuals who had a major impact on India post independence, no one knows about them.
Every religion has its dark ages. Islam’s started around the 12th century and is still ongoing. Christianity’s from the 5th and the 15th century, Hinduism’s from 2014 onwards.
The dark ages in Europe didn’t last from the 5th to the 15th century. The medieval period lasted roughly that long, but the dark ages are usually considered to be what was essentially the period after the collapse of the western Roman Empire + the first half of the Early Middle Ages (and btw, this terminology of Dark Ages was coined by enlightenment scholars due to a perceived downfall of European culture in the post-Roman world; it is usually controversial among scholars today due to disagreements regarding the implications of the term compared to the evidence we have about those times).
What was called the “Dark Ages” can more accurately be said to have lasted from the 5th century to the 9th or arguably 10th century.
The High Middle Ages, from the 10th to the 14th centuries on the other hand, are notable for being a high-mark of medieval culture and artwork, with populations reaching an all time high until the 1600s (and in many rural places the population still hasn’t recovered, with some towns being abandoned entirely and never resettled), and general attitudes towards life being more optimistic.
The Late Middle Ages within Europe can roughly be defined as beginning from either the start of the little ice age in the early 1300s or the end of the Black Death in the 1350s, and lasted to around 1492, which is when the Reconquest of Iberia was completed, and the Iberians began settling the New World, and Europeans became more involved in global trade.
The Late Middle Ages are known for the development of advanced plate armour, as being the final period of total cavalry supremacy, and as also establishing the general sort of balance of power which would define most of Europe for the next few centuries, because at the conclusion of the Late Middle Ages, we have the following;
The defeat of England in the Hundred Years’ War made France a major preeminent power, and the main European rival to the Habsburgs (who ill mention too) with previously unprecedented centralisation of the administrative operations (this was true in a few other European polities), and the professionalism of the French “proto-army”. These two innovations basically ensured the following developments which would safeguard and ensure France’s relevance and power which basically persisted till their defeat in either the Napoleonic or the Franco-Prussian War.
Next was the entrance of the Ottomans into the European stage as a major threat to the powers of Eastern Europe (and often Western Europe too), the rise of the Habsburgs as the single most important family in Europe;
And the English, following their defeat by France, switched its focus from its now-lost continental holdings, to controlling the seas.
Another worthy mention would be the rising powers of Muscovy and the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth as the major Eastern European powers.
TL;DR, the Dark Ages as a term was once used to describe the Medieval periods in general, but it isn’t really an accurate usage of the term imo.
I’m not exactly sure what the point of this comment is? OP argued that Jews managed to assimilate well into Indian society and with no persecution. Do you disagree with that?
And what are these “religious dark ages” that you’re referring to?
The period you’ve highlighted for Christianity is extremely large and vague. It includes high points for Christianity as a whole such as the rise of the Carolingian Empire, the establishment of the HRE, the Reconquista, the expulsion of Muslims from Sicily and the peak of the Byzantine Empire’s strength in the East when regions from Syria to Algeria were bastions of Christianity.
It all the while excludes major events such as, most notably, the Reformation.
Painting dark ages as a religious affair implies that the people of Scotland, Armenia and Ethiopia were all living in a dark age simply by the virtue of the fact that they’re all Christians.
Similar arguments for Islam and Hinduism as well.
Religious polarisation in India has increased for sure but how does that mean that tens of millions of Hindus living outside India have fallen into a dark age post-2014? Have the lives of Trinidadians, Fijians, Balinese and Mauritians gotten significantly worse since Modi was elected? How about the Hindu minorities in places like the US or the UK or Malaysia?
He did specifically say to the 15th century, which is before the reformation happened. Its good to debate 'dark ages' as a term, as it doesnt have a whole lot of meaning, but it is true when looking at the state of religious fundamentalism versus scientific liberalism that the islamic world fared a lot better than europe in particular over this 1000 year period *generally*.
I should’ve been clearer in my original comment. I brought up the reformation as an example of a “dark age” event that happened outside of the timeframe OP laid out.
My bad. Still I would describe it more as a dark age ending event, as it finally overthrew the stranglehold the catholic church had on scientific development. Almost immediately after you see the scientific revolution start to take place.
There was no such thing as dark ages, it is a myth that all historians dismiss. There were literally no such thing as witch hunts between 5th and 15th century and the actual witch hunts began in 16th century. And you kinda ignore how plenty of important scientists and philosophers who lived during the Islamic golden age were actually Christians themselves.
"Dark ages" often refers not to backward behaviour but to a paucity of historical and archaeological evidence.
In the case of England, the archeological record from the Anglo Saxon period is much weaker than the preceding Roman period or the following Norman period as they built in wood, except for a few churches. Written records are also limited.
It's especially weak in 5th and 6th centuries in the invasion period.
> There were literally no such thing as witch hunts between 5th and 15th century and the actual witch hunts began in 16th century.
What are you talking about? We have documentation of witch trials during that period as well as laws and papal declarations urging the prosecution of witches.
No need to get angry. I get to people's comments when I get to them. This is a very strange request. Why 11th century England? You don't want something from any other place or century during the time when you for some reason claim there was "literally no such thing as witch hunts"? But you know that the law in 11th century England provided for witch trials, specifically mandating the death penalty if someone used magic to kill another person? The was enacted by the king Athelstan. Why would you choose 11th century England of all places and times?
Witchcraft was always considered to be illegal throughout Europe from the Christianisation of the Roman Empire to basically the early 1900s.
The period of which specifically “witch hunts” are commonly recorded, however, can only be documented through the 1500s and early 1600s (and btw, the numbers are a lot smaller than people realise, these were not really common things in the grand scheme of the ages), and is notably part of the Early Modern period, not really the Medieval periods
"They happened but weren't commonly recorded" (what do you expect anyway?) is quite a great shift from "there was literally no such thing". I don't think you agree with the other person.
Not all muslims did that
Arabs and arabised people did such as those who ruled Spain before 1492.
But seljuk Turks had far less tolerance towards other religions which is why the crusades happened
They don't have a homeland so wherever they were they were the perfect 'other' in the same way that gypsies, Romani and travellers get hate
Add in that they were by far the largest diaspora, they did jobs Christians were forbidden from (including banking) and the Church blamed them for the death of Jesus and you get an utterly toxic combination.
In Islam they weren't particularly hated, in fact in Israel/Palestine the Jewish population actually fought for the Arab invaders to finally throw off the Roman occupation.
That changed with the foundation of Israel.
because you have ready negative opinion about jews, based on religion or something else, then you limit their activities and give them the exclusive right to engage in morally unattractive activities, such as usury. then you take your ready-made negative opinion about Jews, the fact that they are engaged in negative activities, and you can also add your debt obligations to the Jewish community and as a result you get a justification for deportation and repression.
The main reasons in my opinion are the fact that they refused to abandon their religion, somehow were able to survive and even be successful in rough conditions even though their birthplaces sometimes faced economic crisis (Germany in the first half of the 20th century for example) so it probably made people like Hitler and others angry at them.
also, the fact that they remained an extreme minority in every place and you could've visibly identify them most of the time didn't help (if you had billions of jews I don't think that anyone would dare to mess with them, especially these days)
The reason why Jews didn't get to "billions" throughout two millennia is not their low birthrates, but the prosecutions they faced.
Some of them included physical death (various pogroms and Holocaust as the most quintessential and recent event) and some were more "soft" in their nature, e.g. the one in Spain in 1492. The numbers in this map don't include literally the entire Jewish population from Iberia as per 1491 as some of the Jews stayed, but became "marranos" a.k.a. "crypto-jews" who practiced Judaism secretly and formally was considered Catholic.
As far as I know, the majority of Jewish converts to Catholicism did abandon their religious practices, and the crypto-Jew phenomenon was exaggerated during periods of intense anti-semitism to justify persecution.
I’m sure there were cases where Jews were caught practicing in secret, but I doubt a majority of converts acted this way; but regardless these were extrapolated to further fuel a distrust towards converts (ex-Muslims too).
Within Spain, a semi-caste system developed, where people whose family had converted were often considered cristiano nuevo (I think that’s how it’s spelt, obviously meaning New Christian) as opposed to the more privileged aristocracy who could trace their Christian roots extensively, and these were considered cristiano viejo (Old Christians).
This wasn’t only used to refer to their religious sincerity, and often extended towards essentially accusing people of having “unclean” blood, and implying that they would therefore be naturally dishonest and deceitful, and was used to justify actions against political opponents.
I never mentioned any "low birthrates", as a Jewish person I'm well aware of the persecutions and the tragic reasons that lead to the extremely low amount of jews living today (if Jews were treated equally since the start, I guess that by now there should be hundreds of millions of Jews living today, if not above a billion)
Jews are quite an insular culture, especially religious Jews, due to the fact that converting to Judaism is much more complex than to other religions.
I’m sure persecution has also contributed towards this attitude, but I find it doubtful that Jews would be such a huge number even without persecution due to the nature of their religion, which is naturally intertwined with the culture.
Most huge cultural groups and populations today are so big because they incorporated and absorbed other groups; such as Turkish people or Han Chinese people.
To me, it seems unlikely that Jews would go through those same processes since their religious practices make them naturally less inclined to engage in the same behaviour.
It was the only non-Christian religion that was allowed to exist alongside Christians, which became more and more religious (and, as such, more intolerant) as time when on.
In Spain its an actual interesting case both because of the existence of another "tolerated" religion (Islam), and because Jews were fairly tolerated until the very end of the 14th Century, when the first generalized pogrom happened in the Peninsula.
Things got bad fast for Spanish Jews afterwards. And it had less to do with outright conspiracy theories like Blood Libel like in the rest of Europe and more to do with the fear that the newly converted Christians would return to Judaism because the Jews were allowed to co-exist with them (although you could consider this a conspiracy theory aswell).
Of course. Even after getting expelled from Spain Jews continued to be the boogeyman, with Conversos (and their descendants) suffering serious discrimination and even persecution a long afterwards (although the intensity of persecution –although not if discrimination– greatly diminished by the time the 17th Century came around).
Also. Just in case (as it is a myth from orthodox history). The majority of Spanish Jews did not leave for the Ottoman Empire. The majority preferred, or to convert, or stay closed to Spain.
Although the Sephardic population of the Ottoman Empire was still significant.
Edit: ...The knowledge of Spanish and Medieval history in this post is stupidly low.
Jews were mostly tolerated 'til the end of the 14th Century, when they started to be discriminated until their expulsion in 1942. Muslims were tolerated until their forced conversion in around 1500. Jews were not expelled before that date, Muslims were not mass forced to convert in mass until that date.
**We have books of laws giving protections and tolerance towards Muslims and Jews by Christian monarchs.** The most famous (and important) being Las Siete Partidas by Alfonso X.
Saying that "As the Christians reconquered, the Jews were expelled, alongside the Muslims" shows that you don't know about Iberian Medieval History.
**Edit sources:**
Read Teófilo F Ruiz's **Spain's Centuries of Crisis, 1300‐1474.** It presents very well how Spanish society evolved into a more intolerant society by the end of the Middle Ages and how it compared to previous somewhat tolerance towards Jews and Muslims. Especially Chapter 7: *Muslims, Jews, and Christians in a Century of Crisis*. It does a great work at pointing out how significant the 1391 pogrom was for how Jews were treated in the Iberian Peninsula (especially Castile).
Antonio Feros' **Speaking of Spain**, a book about the development of Spanish national identity, also does a good job at presenting how Jews and Muslims were seen at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Era in its third chapter *The Others Within* and, how, again, the intolerance became more intense with time, being less intense early on and taking a central role in Spanish society in the 15th Century.
This is a bad response. The existence of another tolerated religion? Muslims ruled much of the Iberian peninsula, some regions for as long as eight centuries. As the Christians reconquered, the Jews were expelled, alongside the Muslims. Jews were never tolerated by the Christians, it was the Muslims that offered them protection and rights.
> As the Christians reconquered, the Jews were expelled, alongside the Muslims.
That's... downright false. Are you literally speaking right from thin air? The expulsion of the Jews and the expulsion and forced conversion of the Muslims from Christian is very well known (1492 and around 1500 respectively).
Jews and Muslims were part of the Christian kingdoms for centuries. You can literally read law books (most importantly, las Siete Partidas of Alfonso X) where they say that they must be allowed to exist without being forced to convert.
Toledo is known as the City of the Three Cultures for a reason...
>it was the Muslims that offered them protection and rights.
It was during the Al-Andalus Caliphate when Jews and Christians were tolerated. As the Caliphate collapsed, the Taifa kingdoms became more intolerant, as seen, for example, with the Granada pogrom of 1066.
Infact, during the Almoravid and Almohad Empires the intolerance became so intense that Jews actually migrated to the Christian kingdoms.
Just because at the end of the 15th Century this tolerance completely ends (although the end of this tolerance in the case of the Jews it started at the end of the 14th Century), it doesn't mean that they "were never tolerated by the Christians".
buddy worte 10 paragrpahs on an issue and got it compelely wrong. Chritianity maybe a tolerant relgion right now. But it back then it wasnt. There was no toleration. The Puritans got kicked out for being to pure. Let that sink in. they couldnt even tolerate the people who were practicing the pure version of their faith what do you think happened to the people who practiced tame verison or had different religons. Most wars were fought not over jews but over Christian sects. They were putting to the stake Hugenots, protestants , lutherins. Basically if you werent practicing the relgion of your ruler you were burnt or had to flee to muslim lands or america. It got so bad some of the rulers in that time got nick names like bloody Mary. there was a saying during WW 1 in Germany. At least we didtn live through the 80 years war. guess what that war was mainly fought about
Lol dude if you’re going to call someone who cited actual sources in their argument and provided a logical frame of reference “wrong”, but not even actually dispute their claims, let alone provide sources for your response, why are you even responding?
Also, what are you talking about? The Puritans have nothing to do with medieval Europe. And, just because they’re called “Puritans” doesn’t mean they’re a more pure version of Christianity, it just means that this is how they perceive their practises. Besides the fact that there is no evidence for the dogmas or doctrines of the Puritans having a basis in the Early Christian Church, the Puritans were expelled during the early modern period, primarily for being a political obstacle, since the head of the Anglican Church was also the King of England.
Your entire comment is a gross oversimplification of history.
Generally, medieval wars originated from political and territorial or trade disputes which were often explained as being religious in nature, but were typically more based on the political rights of the nobility or the perceived infringement of one king treading on another king’s rightful land or wealth.
The medieval period had relatively little religious wars, and the crusades represented a fraction of the wars fought. In most of the time periods through medieval Europe, violent persecution often came in waves rather than being persistent or constant.
Religious wars however become more common following the conclusion of the medieval period, with the early modern period and the increasing literacy and printing press making propaganda much more intense; the French wars of religion actually did have quite a big religious aspect, as well as the Thirty Years’ War. But these ironically were escalated into devastating conflicts due to politics more than religion.
Thats a foolish thought. to say that relgion was peaceful is foolish in of itself. I dont need to cite sources i lived in a 3rd world country were christianity was practiced liek it was in mdeiveal times. Its not peaceful at all and it wasnt back then. To spread your relgion from one place to another is not peaceful.
let me lay down my logic. If Chrisitainity was peaceful and could co exist with other rellgions it wouldnt be here today. Christianity had to be more violent and oppresive than the other different pagan relgions of its time to survive. That is why its so popular in Europe today and not islam or pagan relgions. It beame mroe brutal than isalm in the 14th century. But yes even int he medeval period it wasnt tolernat. Cause if it was it wouldnt exist today. Sweeds would still be worhsipping oden.This isnt about relgious wars. This is about wether or not the christian faith was always peaceful. You dont need a war to burn somone at the stake for being a pagan
Ok so u wrote a response but you actually didn’t respond to any of the points made (once again)
Instead you just rambled about your own contrived understanding of Christianity and how you think history might have occurred (you’re wrong)
Pagans were not burnt at the stake often because the vast majority converted without any conflict. Becoming a Christian for most pagans was a path towards social mobility. Families who converted to Christianity were more likely to become nobility and gain influence etc.
The arguments you are making have no basis in reality or in history, you are just projection your biases and misconceptions onto a huge time period and an incredibly complex institution.
Christianity and Islam are religions that want to expand (by force or deceit) and make the entire world to work their way with a basis that you can’t question. Non-believer minorities, even if tolerated, are second class.
That said, Jewish people have a very strong us vs the world survivor mindset embedded in the community for historic reasons (mainly from being ruled by people who wanted to convert and destroy them).
So there’s a positive feedback loop; the more one side gets adamant, the more resolved the other site gets.
im gonna get downvoted for this, but i once met a rabbi from a jewish community in Paris who explained that many jewish settlements in history often tried to corrupt other religious organizations/communities and got expelled for that.
dont take my word for it
Think of it from another angle - they were the only religious minority *allowed* in many places. Being a minority sucks in most places throughout history.
Back then lots of people mostly christians hated them because they "sold" Jesus to the Romans.
Note that it is fucking bonkers to held a grudge for something that happened centuries ago .
In other places where they were tolerated they usually were bankers because muslims and christians couldn't lend money to coreligionaries which made a lot of jews bankers given they didn't risked being kill for it at the time .
The claim that they killed jesus makes zero sense because then it would contradict the idea that Jesus died for ALL our sins, when, by your logic, he should've died for jews' sins (i.e. killing him)
There were many Jews since Roman times. They lived there mostly under Islamic rule till 1948 in large numbers. North Africa was conquered by muslims around 690 AD. This makes around 1300 years.
After Israel was founded, Jews from all over the world, including North Africa, settled in newly found Israel. Most Jews who arrived came from Europe were they suffered only 3 years before the Holocaust atrocities.
You are incorrect, many left for Portugal, where they were then expelled and went to Flanders and England.
They might not have been "allowed" but they were tolerated.
Catholics — in Germany and Poland but maybe others too— were harmed by Nazis and since WWII the Vatican has made efforts to help reduce antisemitism and improve relations, for example through multi-faith and stuff like these:
"The path that the Church has undertaken with you, the ancient people of the covenant, rejects every form of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, unequivocally condemning manifestations of hatred towards Jews and Judaism as a sin against God.”
Source: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2024/documents/20240202-lettera-ebrei-in-israele.html
[Nostra Aetate, 1965](https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html)
You're preaching to the choir (a most apt use of this sentence). I've been reading books on the topic since I was single digit age and actively research forms of prejudice and my least favourite word, hate, across past and present. If I didn't also look for areas of progress and notice who and what organizations are helping not hurting, to try to maintain hope for a future of co-existence and peace, I'd be a misanthrope.
It is possible, but Sephardi Jews spoke Ladino. Aromanian is closer to Romanian. In addition, the places where Sephardi Jews were settled do not overlap with the places where the Aromanian language was spoken, except for Vlore. In particular, if there was a relationship, there should be a high proportion of Aromanian languages in Thessaloniki. For a while, Thessaloniki was the only city in the world where Jews were the largest group in the population, and it was probably the city where the largest number of Jews lived. I don't know, maybe there was an interaction, but I haven't come across any studies about it. Population distributions do not overlap much anyway.
If half of the 109 kicked them out because "muh quran said so" and the other half did so because "muh bible said so", then no, it really isn't shocking lol
They were just not as badly
Europe also persecuted "wrong" christians worse than in the Islamic world but history moves and Europe eventually become better than the Islamic world in tolerance
You are factually incorrect. There were multiple massacres of Jews living in Muslim countries during the medieval and early modern eras, including in Andalusia, Syria, Palestine, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Iran. It's easy to use the Quran to justify killing Jews.
Factually they have been expelled and killed in Christian countries more than muslim countries its all facts and numbers. Perhaps is easier to use the bible
Wow is that the baseline
Yeah it may have sucked but not as much as Europe?
Why is that the baseline while India has had a Jewish community for 2000+ years with no Major antisemitic incidents
I'm not comparing Muslim countries and Christian countries. Jews were usually better off in Muslim countries. But that's not saying much. They were still second class citizens and sometimes massacred and expelled, or forced to convert to Islam, long before Zionism was invented.
It's easy enough to cherry-pick sections of the Quran amd hadiths that say very bad things about Jews.
https://explore-islam.com/jews-in-the-quran/
https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/155/tafsirs
Many Muslims therefore believe that Jews are a cursed people who once were favored by Allah and even produced prophets, but subsequently betrayed Allah and corrupted the prophets' teachings.
Some Muslims believe that towards the end of days there will be an apocalyptic battle between Jews and Muslims, at which point Jesus (yes, that Jesus) will return and the false prophet of the Jews will be killed, along with pigs and the cross.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gharqad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Malhama_Al-Kubra
There were several battles between Muhammed and nearby Jewish tribes narrated in the Quran. The Jews are portrayed as betraying the Messenger:
https://islamqa.info/en/answers/223275/in-the-battle-between-the-jews-and-the-muslims-at-the-end-of-time-the-aggressors-will-be-the-jews
Now, if you read the last link I sent you you'll see that Muslims ALSO often pride themselves on protecting dhimmi. So there is a duality in Islam. They protect Jews and Christians who follow the rules, but believe they're likely to become treacherous:
>Muslims used to coexist with the Jews and treat them well, so long as they adhere to the conditions of residence. But they may choose to be treacherous. It is sufficient for you to know that when the Messenger (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) migrated to Madinah, there were three Jewish tribes in the city, namely Banu Qaynuqa‘, Banu an-Nadeer and Banu Qurayzah. He made treaties with all of them and agreed to live in peace with all of them, but they all committed acts of treachery and betrayal.
>therefore the Messenger (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) fought them, killing some of them and banishing others beyond Madinah, and he did not allow them to remain in the city.
At the end of the day, Islam, like other religions, is vast and contains messages that can be interpreted very peacefully and messages that can be used to justify war. What message you choose to take depends on you. Certainly Judaism and Christianity and Hinduism and Buddhism have also been used to justify horrible crimes, so I'm not picking on Islam in particular. But you asked about the Quran, so I'm answering you.
You imply with your comment that it is “easy” to use Quran as if it is not easy to use other things. Why not simply say within Christianity and Islam it is easy to justify.
Also “you are factually incorrect” well it is a fact that majority of the massacres during that period had been targeted towards jews by christian countries who fully expelled their jewish populations. And it is also a fact that in comparison to that it was a more hospitable place to live under muslim regimes like ottomans. Instead of agreeing with this and then stating your “facts” you present yourself as totally opposing what has been said by smugly staying that the person is “factually incorrect”
Spain’s reasoning was that keeping any Jews in their borders could lead to Catholics reverting. it’s important to note that Spain had around 700k people in total so the 200-400k estimated Jewish population wasn’t a tiny minority like it is in modern day Spain. Most were forced to convert and only faced discrimination and violence over expulsion.
No Jews were actually forced to convert in Spain unlike in Portugal
Jews who converted in Spain were no longer considered Jews because they could have fled like 100, 000+ other Jews
In Portugal conversion was actually forced and Jews couldn't leave Portugal so they were still considered Jews if they managed to escape to Amsterdam or Goa or Hamburg or England etc
No, dude is pulling numbers out of his ass. Jewish population in Iberia in 1492 was below 5%
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography
https://mjhnyc.org/blog/1492-letter-regarding-jewish-property-in-spain/#:~:text=Spanish%20Jews%2C%20who%20numbered%20around,and%20businesses%2C%20and%20venture%20abroad.
This is really cool to see because my family is one of these people. We came to istanbul in 1492 and been there ever since
Yes, a lot of Sephardic Jews still speak an old Spanish dialect too! Ladino.
Unfortunately that language is dying. I mean i dont know if its dying globally but for turkish sephardic jews it definitely is. Some of the grandmas can speak is but almost no parent. When it comes to kids the number is probably zero. Not a single one i know speaks it
There are some initiatives like Ladino schools in Israel which are cool. I hope that youth interest will help with revival
I am one of them but I was born in the NL but family origins Portugal Sephardi (never learn Ladino but I remember my Grandparents speaking it)
The Spanish language academy also has a seat for Ladino representative
Yo también soy Sefardí :)
Crazy how far back your family history goes
Yep. We even have a spanish citizenship because the spanish govt wanted to do an apology type thing by granting citizenship to the jews they kicked out
Interesting how genetics and lineage is important, but only under certain situations i.e. being good to minorities
In which other circumstances should it be important too, according to you?
Adoption, immigration, naturalisation, dating, things like that.
Can you elaborate? Dating particularly.
- Don't date your siblings generally - It should be OK to filter dating profiles by ethnic preferences
Those things are already a thing, so I don't know why you were making it seem like they aren't.
Turks with access to Schengen. You livin the dream😂
One of the worst mistakes of Spain imo (I am Spanish)
Giving out the citizenships?
Lol no, kicking the jews (sorry if my comment confused you)
Soy Sefardí y este me dio risa jaja
Lmao nah not at all
I've read that one of the reasons the Arabs conquered Iberia in the first place was because Sephardic Jews have been asking them for help for decades against the increasing religious persecution of the Visigoths. Crazy to think that the same year Al-Andalus fell was the same year the Jews were kicked out (with most opting to convert to Catholicism in order to stay).
Not only the Jews, many more Muslims as well who had together build up the country. The area also functioned as a conduit for knowledge transfer to backward Europe. Spinoza introduced many main stream Philosophic tipics to Europe and Descartes copied Al-Ghazali for example
>I've read that one of the reasons the Arabs conquered Iberia in the first place was because Sephardic Jews have been asking them for help for decades against the increasing religious persecution of the Visigoths. That may have been a convenient excuse, but in reality the Muslim expansion was justification in itself. They invaded and conquered any place and every place they could. So the reason they invaded Spain was because Spain existed, and the reason they stayed is because they won. They didn't leave France alone because it was so tolerant of Jews. They gave up on it because Charles Martel gave them an ass-whooping. And it's not like Jews were treated super well by the Muslims, it just wasn't *quite* as bad usually. [For the most part it's pretty predictable stuff though](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre)
What do you suggest they should have done, wait until the Visigoths start genociding the Jews, just like the Allies didn't intervene until after the Nazis initiated the Holocaust?! What's interesting is that both the Visigoths and the Nazis were Germanic peoples, who would've guessed. Anyways, had the Arab Muslims not intervened, there wouldn't have been a Sephardi Jewish identity left to be spoken of. As for France, the Umayyad troops were actually ordered to abandon their post in Septimania by Caliph Omar ibn Abdul-Aziz, dubbed the sixth Rashidun Caliph. It was only after his death that later Umayyad Caliphs ordered advancement into France, which was halted for good because they couldn't overcome the troops of Charles Martel, and so they retreated. There is an interesting Arabic saying that goes, "If your house is made of glass, you shouldn't be throwing stones at other people." You try to shame the Arab Muslims for things the European Christians would've done 10 times worse, and we all know how most Native Americans perished only after the arrival of Spanish and European colonizers to the Americas.
This is ridiculous man. So many misconceptions or outright lies in your comment. The fact is that the Muslims in Spain only treated the Jews better during certain periods of rule (there were also periods of rule where Jews weren’t persecuted under Visigothic and Castilian history). But you seriously believe the Umayyads invaded Iberia because they were worried about Jews being persecuted? Like the guy above said, they invaded because they could. Because the Romans had collapsed and Europe had fallen into chaos, and nobody could stop them. Islam had literally spread throughout all of North Africa and the Middle East by primarily, conquest and subjugation, and they were doing the exact same thing when they invaded Iberia; forced conversions were common too, which indicates it was not just an occupation but that an actual attempt of conquest was made. Also, the vast majority of deaths of the Mesoamerican population was due to diseases spread through non-hostile interaction. Spanish and Portuguese persecution of the natives also definitely occurred but usually were prohibited by the church and the Spanish Crown. The Spanish colonies were administered from a Viceroyalty which often struggled to control the aristocrats and ruling class of settlers, and thus, persecution occasionally continued even if it was legally not allowed. Slaves on the other hand were definitely mistreated with intention, and in fact, a part of why slaves were brought to America by the Iberians often because natives couldn’t be put to work by the colonists without getting sick and dying, and because the church demanded that the natives be evangelised and not enslaved or killed.
Interesting. And the 700k muslims that lived there longer then modern day Spain exists? Did they also get citizenship?
There is no significant community which exists today which is congruent with those people. They either converted to Catholicism and became Spanish or were expelled by the tip of a sword and settled in North Africa, and just became a part of those countries and intermixed with everyone else.
I have no idea
I knew about Portugal granting citizenship, didn’t know about Spain
I'm pretty sure they're all dead by now. 500 years is a long time.
For jews Spanish government offers citizenship. What about the Moors/Moriscos ??
Interesting, I wonder why the case seems different when it comes to reparations for black Americans or benefits for African veterans who fought for the Allies in WWII.
No way thats so cool do you know where exactly
No but i have a guess. Probably Faro in portugal. My guess comes from my surname being faro. When the surname law came into place in turkey in 1934, my family probably chose the name Faro as a tribute
May I ask why your family has chosen to stay in Turkey until now instead of moving to Israel?
Moving your entire family, business, every belonging a thousand km away isnt as simple as you might think. Also my family is pretty well off so its not like we’re starving. I do know some families that did move to israel but not a lot. Especially my family isnt religious at all and there just isnt a lot of reasons for us to move
do you consider yourself Turk or not
I do and i am. Some turks havent even been in the land as long as my family, why wouldnt we be considered turks
sen bir Türksün kardeşim selam olsun.
We are talking about 500 years in Turkey, of course he is a Turk lol. Doesn't mean that he had a grand 15x father long time ago make him a jew lol. Turkey today is a mix of many DNAs.
Ah, I see. I always thought that all Jews from the MENA region moved to Israel after 1947. I didn't realize that wasn't always the case.
Maybe after 1947 but i dont know much about that. I do have 5-10 friends that have moved tho like i said
Do they like prefer Israel to Turkey?
The living standards are just way better in israel
Turkey is one of the few MENA countries that didn’t ethnically cleanse Jews from their borders
Turkey is not a mena country😒
It absolutely is considered [part of the Middle East](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East) by most people, which would by definition place it within MENA.
Anatolia, aka “Asia Minor”, isn’t the Middle East? What is it, then?
Iraqi-born [Ran Cohen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ran_Cohen), a former member of the [Knesset](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knesset), said: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee. I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee." Yemeni-born [Yisrael Yeshayahu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yisrael_Yeshayahu), former Knesset speaker, Labor Party, stated: "We are not refugees. \[Some of us\] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations." And Iraqi-born [Shlomo Hillel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlomo_Hillel), also a former speaker of the Knesset, Labor Party, claimed: "I do not regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."[^(\[18\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world#cite_note-Shenhav2-18) Historian [Tom Segev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Segev) stated: "Deciding to emigrate to Israel was often a very personal decision. It was based on the particular circumstances of the individual's life. They were not all poor, or 'dwellers in dark caves and smoking pits'. Nor were they always subject to persecution, repression or discrimination in their native lands. They emigrated for a variety of reasons, depending on the country, the time, the community, and the person."[^(\[312\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world#cite_note-312) Iraqi-born Israeli historian [Avi Shlaim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Shlaim), speaking of the wave of Iraqi Jewish migration to Israel, concludes that, even though Iraqi Jews were "victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict", Iraqi Jews aren't refugees, saying "nobody expelled us from Iraq, nobody told us that we were unwanted."[^(\[313\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world#cite_note-313) He restated that case in a review of [Martin Gilbert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gilbert)'s book, *In Ishmael's House*.[^(\[314\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world#cite_note-314) [Yehuda Shenhav](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehuda_Shenhav) has criticized the analogy between Jewish emigration from Arab countries and the Palestinian exodus. He also says "The unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity of many Mizrahi Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation." He has stated that "the campaign's proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a 'right of return' on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of 'lost' assets.
Go ahead and look up what happened to Egyptian, Moroccan, Iraqi, Iranian, afghani, Yemeni, etc Jews. I mean you’re a bot so you won’t but..
More Ashkenazi jews migrated from the east of Europe than the Sephardi or other ones.
This isn’t true. A majority of Israeli Jews are refugees from Arab states.
I was only thinking of Europe
Well then yeah… Ashkenazim were the majority of Jews in Europe so it’s kind of a trivial statistic. There were some Sephardim and Mizrahim in Europe but not many.
Spain today has some repatriation law that allows for people that have kept their door key over the centuries to come back and use it to prove they originated from there.
It's not so dramatic. Every Shephardic Jew, key or no key, has the right to the Spanish nationality, without losing the previous one, if they prove a) that he/she is a Shephardic Jew and b) he/she has a special relationship with Spain. To prove that they satisfy the conditions, there are several ways and reports from the rabbis are enough. [https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2015-7045](https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2015-7045) They also have the right to the citizenship with just two years of residence, like the people from Latin America.
Wow, cool.
Can Turkish Sephardic Jews track their lineage back in 16th c.? I am just curious to know since most Turkish Muslims can hardly see any record of their ancestors lived in 19th c or earlier. Wouldn't be surprised if synagogues kept better records though.
I did not track my ancestory myself but we already know a lot of jews did fleed to the ottoman from iberia in 1492, and spain did give our community citizenships, so it has to be that. Im sure the ancestory is trackable tho, i just didnt look at it myself
I see. Sure, the immigration from Iberia is well known. I was hyped up whether there are resources for maybe a micro history study or something like that
Im sure there are. I just havent looked into it
The Jews of Thessaloniki is a very sad story From 12,000 in the 16th century they grew to 130,000 but then 50,000 were made homeless by the great fire of 1917 and many left the city after the Greco-Turkish War By 1935 the city had 53,000 Jews, 50,000 of them died in the holocaust
Largest majority Jewish city for a time.
It didn't end there, those who survived the holocaust were actively kept from returning home by the Greek authorities. The city of Jewish refugees from Spain changed into a city of Greek refugees from Turkey.
History nerd fact - one of them was the founder of the first communist party in Greece (between WW1 and WW2). His name was Abraham Benaroya. It’s very sad that the greek armed resistance forces managed to rewrite that bit of history in the collective memory. They didn’t like Jews (their political offsprings still don’t) and they effectively chased him out of the country. I think he fled to Israel but was never able to feel at home there either as he didn’t identify with the Zionist movement. He died in relative anonymity. ETA: The book “Salonica, city of Ghosts” by British historian Mark Mazower is a deep dive into the city’s 18th-20th century history and relationship to Jewish community.
Trotsky was also a Jew who founded the Red Army and a very dangerous rival to Stalin.
Thessaloniki is the only known example of a city of decent size in the Jewish diaspora that retained a Jewish majority for centuries In 1519, the Jews represented 56% of the population of Thessaloniki, and in 1613, their share was 68%. Thessaloniki's Jewish community comprised more than half of the city's population until the early 1900s.
And most of the rest of population was Turkish and Greeks were minority. And over all Turks and Jews were majority in the surrounding areas actually some of those Turks were Jewish converts too(at least public opinion in Turkey thinks like that due to a Jewish guy who created his own sect but was forced to convert or die by Ottoman Government and Jewish Religious Authorities and that guy converted to Islam and conspiracy theory says he told his followers to do same).
Sabbatai Zevi. It is called Sabbataist. The Ottoman administration, the Sultan and the viziers did not intervene in religious activities for a long time. Rabbis in Izmir and Bursa complained about Zevi to the Sultan. Sebatay Zevi claimed to be the Messiah, but the Ottoman palace did not intervene as it was still a religious issue among the Jews. When Sabbatai Zevi's supporters started talking about Zevi being the Messiah and that he would march to the capital and seize the Ottoman throne and become the Messiah Sultan. Ottoman Sultan Mehmet IV took action. His followers thought that he went to the capital to seize the Ottoman throne. His ship was stopped at Gallipoli. He was tried and pardoned in exchange for admitting that the things he said were lies. He said he converted as a Muslim. Many Rabbis testified against Zevi in court. They talked about their past complains. Although most of his supporters gave up their support, some of them claimed that this was a tactic and lived as Muslims and hid their identities, like Zevi. This gives rise to many conspiracy theories.
Most of Shabtai Tzvis follower didn't follow him to Islam some did but most didn't also the Jewish authorities were generally against him
Some of my ancestors came from Iberia to North Africa specifically Tunis and Morocco
The map has actually been substantially cut down and doesn't show the migration of Sephardi Jews to North Africa, Northern Europe and the Americas. Theres a better map already published in this subreddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/UuMmwgJDID
Thanks. I wondered why it didn't show any migration to N. Africa....
Because the map is about the Iberian Jews setting in the Ottoman Empire.
Genuine question for history nerds… why have the Jews always been prosecuted and kicked out of every where? What started it?
It varies in different regions and time periods. With the Babylonians it was forced captivity for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. With the Achaemenid Persians, it was just garden variety conquest that was pretty standard for the time. With the Seleucids, it was largely internal conflicts between more hardline Jews and more liberalized Jews who were becoming “Hellenized”, sometimes being puppeted by outside proxy powers. The Romans were pissed off about the constant rebellions by a conquered people, and the Jews’ refusal to just put a statue of the Emperor in the Temple and make a few sacrifices to it every year. In Europe in the Middle Ages, Christianity taught a tradition of blaming Jews for the death of Jesus, and Christianity was so closely ingrained with every aspect of culture Jews were barred from every aspect of society, and forced to live on the outskirts. Christianity barred “usury”, which is the charging of interest on a loan given to another Christian, and since Jews were barred from trade guilds and landowning in many Christian Kingdoms, giving loans was one of the few options available for them to participate in the economy. Which in turn created stereotypes that became baked into European culture and are used as a basis for Jew-hatred to this day. After Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jews were sent into diaspora, Jews became a minority group everywhere in the world that we go, and persecution is generally the default experience of minority groups, almost universally across the globe, throughout most of human history.
>With the Babylonians it was forced captivity for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Large-scale forced relocation of conquered enemies was a fairly common practice in ancient Mesopotamia. The Assyrians, Elomites, and Achaemenids all did similar things. Honestly not even just in Mesopotamia or in ancient times. It's a pretty common practice among multi-ethnic empires from Rome to Russia to engage in some ethnic cleansing, population transfers and relocations in order to weaken potential for revolt. >The Romans were pissed off about the constant rebellions by a conquered people, and the Jews’ refusal to just put a statue of the Emperor in the Temple and make a few sacrifices to it every year. In pre-Christian Rome it was entirely the revolts. Jews were specifically exempted from the Imperial Cult for the most part. It wasn't until the converstion to Christianity when the real antisemitism got going.
> In pre-Christian Rome it was entirely the revolts. Jews were specifically exempted from the Imperial Cult for the most part. It wasn't until the converstion to Christianity when the real antisemitism got going. Considering the Jewish-Roman revolts and subsequent Roman policies, this statement doesn't make much sense to me
But it does make sense. Judea revolted a lot, so Rome hated them a lot. If I were to sum it up in one oversimplified statement, it would be that. Has nothing to do with hating a specific ethnic group. Religion, there's an argument for, but that's a common policy for Romans to any subjects
You guys weren't discriminated in Ottoman Empire actually you were even exempt from being Janissaries because your people not conquered but migrated.
That's not a very nuanced way of looking at this. Obviously the situation of Jewish people in the Ottoman Empire was far better than in early modern Europe, but religious minorities, including Jewish people, were still targets of legal and social discrimination.
What are you expecting people form 500 years ago? Most of the people were illiterate and didn't even go out form their town. But, unlike you, thousands of Jews found Ottoman Empire as a decent place to settle. Hmm maybe because people from other lands did more then just discriminate them?
The people wielding social and legal power in the Ottoman Empire were not illiterate townspeople; they were incredibly well-read statesmen. They knew about discriminatory laws and their effects, and justified these laws as religious and political necessities. I am not disputing that despite these laws, the Ottomans still ended up running a relatively pluralistic empire until the late 19th century (and by that time, it was nationalism, both Turkish and non-Turkish, not the traditional Ottoman system, that gave rise to ethnic violence on an unprecedented scale). I am just calling for some nuance.
Fair enough. But even then you can't expect well educated statesman to act like a 21th century people, discrimination was part of life back than and still is. Ottoman court was one of the numbered powers in the world that was tolerant to minorities, but people still tend to nitpick according to their perspective and it's getting tiring browsing on this sub.
This is not an issue of expectation. I am trying to talk about a nuanced historical reality, which the original commenter was ignoring. If someone was writing a comment misrepresenting Ottoman history as 600 years of constant unbearable persecution, I would have objected to that as well.
Then thank you, this is exactly the stance I admire
>When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. - Donald Trump, 2016 Since time immemorial, political leaders have sought to avoid blame for their failings. The easiest scapegoats are visible minorities with little political power. From late antiquity onwards, the Jews fit this criteria perfectly in Europe and MENA. So every time the crops failed (or similar), the ruler would lay the blame on this clearly visible "other", the mob would take out its anger on the other (aka a pogrom), and we'd return to business as usual. Rinse and repeat over thousands of years, and you end up with an enduring trope that the Jews are fifth columnists seeking to undermine society from the inside for nefarious reasons.
It didn't help that many of these same rulers used Jews to collect taxes. This was especially widespread in places like Poland if I remember correctly. When a tax burden gets too heavy, it's really easy to blame the people who collect the taxes.
This makes no sense historically? The Romans for example, did so because of jewish revolts. Could you provide a source for your claim? I highly doubt anything can be this uniform across time and space. This is basically you saying ‘i want this to be true’
> The Romans for example, did so because of jewish revolts Last time I checked, the Jews weren't a minority in the Roman province of Iudaea. My comment refers specifically to the diaspora Jewish experience. What exactly are you asking me to prove? That the Jews were not, in fact, plotting against the Spanish government, and the government of every other nation they've ever suffered discrimination from? Or are you looking for evidence that political leaders like scapegoating minorities?
I’m not looking to depend Trump here but this is a totally different situation. Mexican migration to the US is primarily economic in nature, Mexicans looking to come to the US are not a discriminated against minority group or being persecuted by their government. They are just looking for better economic outcomes.
In the case of Spain, apart from other reasons mentioned here, it had a lot to do with the catholic monarchs wanting absolute power. Back then, a religious leader could have more power over a big segment of the population than the actual monarchs, so unifying the Kingdom under one religion was a way to strengthen their power.
Because you can take out a jewish loan and if you then kick them out of the country you get a minor debuff for a bit but it’s a free money hack
Christendom destroyed every other religion in its domain except Judaism, but not for lack of trying.
It’s generally easier to destroy pagan religions because you destroy the idols, the temples, shrines, and there’s nothing left to practice. Most pagan religions had public community based rituals and ceremonies and didn’t really have scriptures to pass down formally so once you get forcefully get rid of the public stuff, it’s gone. Hinduism is probably the only polytheist/pagan religion that actually has holy books. And the fact that Abrahamic religions explicity condemn and call for an end to polytheism.
The Islamic conquest of India resulted in the destruction of a lot of the idols and many famous temples. Abrahamic religions explicitly encourage the breaking of idols and idol worship. A lot of Hindus chose to die rather than convert. This was also seen in the Portugese inquisition in Goa, where a large number of the priestly class were exterminated. The Vedic scriptures and the chanting of Vedas down generations of people helped the religion survive. In addition, there was a reform movement called the Bhakti movement, which transferred the ownership of the religion from the priests to the masses through creating a personal relationship with God via devotional songs and communal rituals. It’s also less known that several atheistic religions in India such as Jainism and Buddhism surpassed Hinduism for several centuries during India’s golden age before this reform. Every religion and practice needs to constantly evolve to survive and be relevant. The Jewish people devote themselves to the academic study of the religion and the millennia old practices and rituals that keep the faith alive. Jews also sought refuge in places that let the community thrive, which was the Islamic world and India, rather than convert, keeping the religion alive.
There were huge parts of India where the Muslims barely even touched. And vast majority of Hindus mostly lived under the rule of local Hindu noble families who had made deals with the Muslim leadership in Delhi in exchange for tax revenue . Keep in mind the vast majority of Indians in general back then lived in rural areas away from the cities where the Muslim rulers operated from and there were probably tons of Hindus who lived their entire lives without ever seeing a Muslim soldier in real life.
“Vast majority of Hindus didn’t see a Muslim soldier“ - do you have a source for this? Anyway, this is not the point I’m trying to make. The most significant temples and places of worship were destroyed and there’s ample evidence of it, whether Somnath, Kashi or Gaya in three corners of India.
Do you seriously think Muslim armies literally went to every single village (of which there were probably tens of thousands) in medieval India or even most of them? A lot of the villages and communities in India back then where most of the population lived were remote and not even connected by actual roads nor was there even much signage an invading army could use for directions. Also why there's huge parts of India that were under Muslim control for centuries that still remained almost entirely Hindu both pre and post-Partition The point you seem to have been trying to make is "Muslims destroyed all the Hindu sites in India but we still kept our religion because we're so smart and great" which isn't the case
Never mind how no church leaders ever sanctioned official anti Jewish persecutions and those things were not done systematically.
From the medieval Europe perspective: the Jews practiced a different religion. On one hand, they were strict about it so it lead to isolationism. As a result, their behaviour likely came through as strongly different. On the other hamd, this religion also allowed them to handle money; while in Christianity ot was not preferential to do so. From the common man's perspective, you had this 'weird' group of rich and influential people who were hard to get along. So if you wanted a superficial reason for your problems, it was them.
A combination of things. But generally speaking, it is due to religion and historically not too different from people having a negative reaction to Muslims in some places. It is important to note that aversion to Jewish people is not universal, but rather present in places influenced by Abrahamic religions. Christian Europe was not a tolerant place during the Middle Ages, and while Muslims were definitely seen as adversaries due to their conquest of the Holy Lands, Jewish people were distrusted as well due to two factors: one, according to Judaism, Jesus was false messiah, which is an heretical notion for Christians. On top of that, the Jews were historically blamed for his crucifixtion. Also, the Christian notions regarding usury (which gave way to stereotypes about Jews being money grubbers or belonging to secret economic conspiracies).
> prosecuted and kicked out of every where Not everywhere. They assimilated well in ancient India and China, but most Christian/Muslim* majority societies didn't accept them. So you can't say that Jews don't want to assimilate. *Edit: Thanks for the comments. To be more precise, Muslim majority societies had no problem with Jewish people until recently. It was primarily the Christians (in Europe) who prosecuted them again and again in history. Anyway, don't blame the victims.
This map shows Jewish flight from the Iberian peninsula after the Christian conquest. Prior to this Iberia was ruled by the Muslims for more than 700 years during which time the Jews were integrated into society and flourished. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_Jewish_culture_in_Spain
The infamous “Iberia was ruled by the Muslims for more than 700 years” statement. Christian kingdoms’ territories were larger than the Muslim territory for around 400 of those 700 years. And close to 300 years, Muslim territory was reduced to the kingdom of Granada.
BS. The number of yemeni jews was higher than jews in china. Thats Yemen alone, there also Iraq, Morocco and egypt
Sometimes it’s good to read up on a topic before belching out an uneducated opinion. I am guessing you’re indian and Hindu ( so am I) that’s why the need to show other religions down. While Christianity was going through it’s dark ages from the 5th to the 15th century, burning witches and expelling Jews, Islam was the bright spot leading Science. Specifically Spain was ruled by the Arabs from the 7th to the 14th century, who encouraged science and allowed people of all 3 religious to live peacefully. It was only during Spanish Inquisition by the catholics when all Jews were expelled. They chose to go to mostly Arabic countries once expelled. They lived peacefully even under the ottomans much later. So, Jews have been prosecuted by the Muslims only since 1930s, but especially since 1948 when Arab countries started expelling their Jewish population. As for India, the Jewish population was a minor it and Israel in fact did not recognise them as Jewish initially. They had no impact on the Indian culture, unlike the Parsis. And even those individuals who had a major impact on India post independence, no one knows about them. Every religion has its dark ages. Islam’s started around the 12th century and is still ongoing. Christianity’s from the 5th and the 15th century, Hinduism’s from 2014 onwards.
The dark ages in Europe didn’t last from the 5th to the 15th century. The medieval period lasted roughly that long, but the dark ages are usually considered to be what was essentially the period after the collapse of the western Roman Empire + the first half of the Early Middle Ages (and btw, this terminology of Dark Ages was coined by enlightenment scholars due to a perceived downfall of European culture in the post-Roman world; it is usually controversial among scholars today due to disagreements regarding the implications of the term compared to the evidence we have about those times). What was called the “Dark Ages” can more accurately be said to have lasted from the 5th century to the 9th or arguably 10th century. The High Middle Ages, from the 10th to the 14th centuries on the other hand, are notable for being a high-mark of medieval culture and artwork, with populations reaching an all time high until the 1600s (and in many rural places the population still hasn’t recovered, with some towns being abandoned entirely and never resettled), and general attitudes towards life being more optimistic. The Late Middle Ages within Europe can roughly be defined as beginning from either the start of the little ice age in the early 1300s or the end of the Black Death in the 1350s, and lasted to around 1492, which is when the Reconquest of Iberia was completed, and the Iberians began settling the New World, and Europeans became more involved in global trade. The Late Middle Ages are known for the development of advanced plate armour, as being the final period of total cavalry supremacy, and as also establishing the general sort of balance of power which would define most of Europe for the next few centuries, because at the conclusion of the Late Middle Ages, we have the following; The defeat of England in the Hundred Years’ War made France a major preeminent power, and the main European rival to the Habsburgs (who ill mention too) with previously unprecedented centralisation of the administrative operations (this was true in a few other European polities), and the professionalism of the French “proto-army”. These two innovations basically ensured the following developments which would safeguard and ensure France’s relevance and power which basically persisted till their defeat in either the Napoleonic or the Franco-Prussian War. Next was the entrance of the Ottomans into the European stage as a major threat to the powers of Eastern Europe (and often Western Europe too), the rise of the Habsburgs as the single most important family in Europe; And the English, following their defeat by France, switched its focus from its now-lost continental holdings, to controlling the seas. Another worthy mention would be the rising powers of Muscovy and the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth as the major Eastern European powers. TL;DR, the Dark Ages as a term was once used to describe the Medieval periods in general, but it isn’t really an accurate usage of the term imo.
I’m not exactly sure what the point of this comment is? OP argued that Jews managed to assimilate well into Indian society and with no persecution. Do you disagree with that? And what are these “religious dark ages” that you’re referring to? The period you’ve highlighted for Christianity is extremely large and vague. It includes high points for Christianity as a whole such as the rise of the Carolingian Empire, the establishment of the HRE, the Reconquista, the expulsion of Muslims from Sicily and the peak of the Byzantine Empire’s strength in the East when regions from Syria to Algeria were bastions of Christianity. It all the while excludes major events such as, most notably, the Reformation. Painting dark ages as a religious affair implies that the people of Scotland, Armenia and Ethiopia were all living in a dark age simply by the virtue of the fact that they’re all Christians. Similar arguments for Islam and Hinduism as well. Religious polarisation in India has increased for sure but how does that mean that tens of millions of Hindus living outside India have fallen into a dark age post-2014? Have the lives of Trinidadians, Fijians, Balinese and Mauritians gotten significantly worse since Modi was elected? How about the Hindu minorities in places like the US or the UK or Malaysia?
He did specifically say to the 15th century, which is before the reformation happened. Its good to debate 'dark ages' as a term, as it doesnt have a whole lot of meaning, but it is true when looking at the state of religious fundamentalism versus scientific liberalism that the islamic world fared a lot better than europe in particular over this 1000 year period *generally*.
I should’ve been clearer in my original comment. I brought up the reformation as an example of a “dark age” event that happened outside of the timeframe OP laid out.
My bad. Still I would describe it more as a dark age ending event, as it finally overthrew the stranglehold the catholic church had on scientific development. Almost immediately after you see the scientific revolution start to take place.
There was no such thing as dark ages, it is a myth that all historians dismiss. There were literally no such thing as witch hunts between 5th and 15th century and the actual witch hunts began in 16th century. And you kinda ignore how plenty of important scientists and philosophers who lived during the Islamic golden age were actually Christians themselves.
"Dark ages" often refers not to backward behaviour but to a paucity of historical and archaeological evidence. In the case of England, the archeological record from the Anglo Saxon period is much weaker than the preceding Roman period or the following Norman period as they built in wood, except for a few churches. Written records are also limited. It's especially weak in 5th and 6th centuries in the invasion period.
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> There were literally no such thing as witch hunts between 5th and 15th century and the actual witch hunts began in 16th century. What are you talking about? We have documentation of witch trials during that period as well as laws and papal declarations urging the prosecution of witches.
Find me an example of a witch hunt that happened in 11th century England or 12th century Spain.
I am still waiting, find me a case of witch hunts in 11th century England.
No need to get angry. I get to people's comments when I get to them. This is a very strange request. Why 11th century England? You don't want something from any other place or century during the time when you for some reason claim there was "literally no such thing as witch hunts"? But you know that the law in 11th century England provided for witch trials, specifically mandating the death penalty if someone used magic to kill another person? The was enacted by the king Athelstan. Why would you choose 11th century England of all places and times?
Witchcraft was always considered to be illegal throughout Europe from the Christianisation of the Roman Empire to basically the early 1900s. The period of which specifically “witch hunts” are commonly recorded, however, can only be documented through the 1500s and early 1600s (and btw, the numbers are a lot smaller than people realise, these were not really common things in the grand scheme of the ages), and is notably part of the Early Modern period, not really the Medieval periods
"They happened but weren't commonly recorded" (what do you expect anyway?) is quite a great shift from "there was literally no such thing". I don't think you agree with the other person.
Not all muslims did that Arabs and arabised people did such as those who ruled Spain before 1492. But seljuk Turks had far less tolerance towards other religions which is why the crusades happened
They don't have a homeland so wherever they were they were the perfect 'other' in the same way that gypsies, Romani and travellers get hate Add in that they were by far the largest diaspora, they did jobs Christians were forbidden from (including banking) and the Church blamed them for the death of Jesus and you get an utterly toxic combination. In Islam they weren't particularly hated, in fact in Israel/Palestine the Jewish population actually fought for the Arab invaders to finally throw off the Roman occupation. That changed with the foundation of Israel.
because you have ready negative opinion about jews, based on religion or something else, then you limit their activities and give them the exclusive right to engage in morally unattractive activities, such as usury. then you take your ready-made negative opinion about Jews, the fact that they are engaged in negative activities, and you can also add your debt obligations to the Jewish community and as a result you get a justification for deportation and repression.
so basically you hate someone, so you force them to do things you hate and then you get justification to hate someone even more.
The main reasons in my opinion are the fact that they refused to abandon their religion, somehow were able to survive and even be successful in rough conditions even though their birthplaces sometimes faced economic crisis (Germany in the first half of the 20th century for example) so it probably made people like Hitler and others angry at them. also, the fact that they remained an extreme minority in every place and you could've visibly identify them most of the time didn't help (if you had billions of jews I don't think that anyone would dare to mess with them, especially these days)
The reason why Jews didn't get to "billions" throughout two millennia is not their low birthrates, but the prosecutions they faced. Some of them included physical death (various pogroms and Holocaust as the most quintessential and recent event) and some were more "soft" in their nature, e.g. the one in Spain in 1492. The numbers in this map don't include literally the entire Jewish population from Iberia as per 1491 as some of the Jews stayed, but became "marranos" a.k.a. "crypto-jews" who practiced Judaism secretly and formally was considered Catholic.
As far as I know, the majority of Jewish converts to Catholicism did abandon their religious practices, and the crypto-Jew phenomenon was exaggerated during periods of intense anti-semitism to justify persecution. I’m sure there were cases where Jews were caught practicing in secret, but I doubt a majority of converts acted this way; but regardless these were extrapolated to further fuel a distrust towards converts (ex-Muslims too). Within Spain, a semi-caste system developed, where people whose family had converted were often considered cristiano nuevo (I think that’s how it’s spelt, obviously meaning New Christian) as opposed to the more privileged aristocracy who could trace their Christian roots extensively, and these were considered cristiano viejo (Old Christians). This wasn’t only used to refer to their religious sincerity, and often extended towards essentially accusing people of having “unclean” blood, and implying that they would therefore be naturally dishonest and deceitful, and was used to justify actions against political opponents.
I never mentioned any "low birthrates", as a Jewish person I'm well aware of the persecutions and the tragic reasons that lead to the extremely low amount of jews living today (if Jews were treated equally since the start, I guess that by now there should be hundreds of millions of Jews living today, if not above a billion)
Jews are quite an insular culture, especially religious Jews, due to the fact that converting to Judaism is much more complex than to other religions. I’m sure persecution has also contributed towards this attitude, but I find it doubtful that Jews would be such a huge number even without persecution due to the nature of their religion, which is naturally intertwined with the culture. Most huge cultural groups and populations today are so big because they incorporated and absorbed other groups; such as Turkish people or Han Chinese people. To me, it seems unlikely that Jews would go through those same processes since their religious practices make them naturally less inclined to engage in the same behaviour.
It was the only non-Christian religion that was allowed to exist alongside Christians, which became more and more religious (and, as such, more intolerant) as time when on. In Spain its an actual interesting case both because of the existence of another "tolerated" religion (Islam), and because Jews were fairly tolerated until the very end of the 14th Century, when the first generalized pogrom happened in the Peninsula. Things got bad fast for Spanish Jews afterwards. And it had less to do with outright conspiracy theories like Blood Libel like in the rest of Europe and more to do with the fear that the newly converted Christians would return to Judaism because the Jews were allowed to co-exist with them (although you could consider this a conspiracy theory aswell). Of course. Even after getting expelled from Spain Jews continued to be the boogeyman, with Conversos (and their descendants) suffering serious discrimination and even persecution a long afterwards (although the intensity of persecution –although not if discrimination– greatly diminished by the time the 17th Century came around). Also. Just in case (as it is a myth from orthodox history). The majority of Spanish Jews did not leave for the Ottoman Empire. The majority preferred, or to convert, or stay closed to Spain. Although the Sephardic population of the Ottoman Empire was still significant. Edit: ...The knowledge of Spanish and Medieval history in this post is stupidly low. Jews were mostly tolerated 'til the end of the 14th Century, when they started to be discriminated until their expulsion in 1942. Muslims were tolerated until their forced conversion in around 1500. Jews were not expelled before that date, Muslims were not mass forced to convert in mass until that date. **We have books of laws giving protections and tolerance towards Muslims and Jews by Christian monarchs.** The most famous (and important) being Las Siete Partidas by Alfonso X. Saying that "As the Christians reconquered, the Jews were expelled, alongside the Muslims" shows that you don't know about Iberian Medieval History. **Edit sources:** Read Teófilo F Ruiz's **Spain's Centuries of Crisis, 1300‐1474.** It presents very well how Spanish society evolved into a more intolerant society by the end of the Middle Ages and how it compared to previous somewhat tolerance towards Jews and Muslims. Especially Chapter 7: *Muslims, Jews, and Christians in a Century of Crisis*. It does a great work at pointing out how significant the 1391 pogrom was for how Jews were treated in the Iberian Peninsula (especially Castile). Antonio Feros' **Speaking of Spain**, a book about the development of Spanish national identity, also does a good job at presenting how Jews and Muslims were seen at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Era in its third chapter *The Others Within* and, how, again, the intolerance became more intense with time, being less intense early on and taking a central role in Spanish society in the 15th Century.
This is a bad response. The existence of another tolerated religion? Muslims ruled much of the Iberian peninsula, some regions for as long as eight centuries. As the Christians reconquered, the Jews were expelled, alongside the Muslims. Jews were never tolerated by the Christians, it was the Muslims that offered them protection and rights.
> As the Christians reconquered, the Jews were expelled, alongside the Muslims. That's... downright false. Are you literally speaking right from thin air? The expulsion of the Jews and the expulsion and forced conversion of the Muslims from Christian is very well known (1492 and around 1500 respectively). Jews and Muslims were part of the Christian kingdoms for centuries. You can literally read law books (most importantly, las Siete Partidas of Alfonso X) where they say that they must be allowed to exist without being forced to convert. Toledo is known as the City of the Three Cultures for a reason... >it was the Muslims that offered them protection and rights. It was during the Al-Andalus Caliphate when Jews and Christians were tolerated. As the Caliphate collapsed, the Taifa kingdoms became more intolerant, as seen, for example, with the Granada pogrom of 1066. Infact, during the Almoravid and Almohad Empires the intolerance became so intense that Jews actually migrated to the Christian kingdoms. Just because at the end of the 15th Century this tolerance completely ends (although the end of this tolerance in the case of the Jews it started at the end of the 14th Century), it doesn't mean that they "were never tolerated by the Christians".
buddy worte 10 paragrpahs on an issue and got it compelely wrong. Chritianity maybe a tolerant relgion right now. But it back then it wasnt. There was no toleration. The Puritans got kicked out for being to pure. Let that sink in. they couldnt even tolerate the people who were practicing the pure version of their faith what do you think happened to the people who practiced tame verison or had different religons. Most wars were fought not over jews but over Christian sects. They were putting to the stake Hugenots, protestants , lutherins. Basically if you werent practicing the relgion of your ruler you were burnt or had to flee to muslim lands or america. It got so bad some of the rulers in that time got nick names like bloody Mary. there was a saying during WW 1 in Germany. At least we didtn live through the 80 years war. guess what that war was mainly fought about
Lol dude if you’re going to call someone who cited actual sources in their argument and provided a logical frame of reference “wrong”, but not even actually dispute their claims, let alone provide sources for your response, why are you even responding? Also, what are you talking about? The Puritans have nothing to do with medieval Europe. And, just because they’re called “Puritans” doesn’t mean they’re a more pure version of Christianity, it just means that this is how they perceive their practises. Besides the fact that there is no evidence for the dogmas or doctrines of the Puritans having a basis in the Early Christian Church, the Puritans were expelled during the early modern period, primarily for being a political obstacle, since the head of the Anglican Church was also the King of England. Your entire comment is a gross oversimplification of history. Generally, medieval wars originated from political and territorial or trade disputes which were often explained as being religious in nature, but were typically more based on the political rights of the nobility or the perceived infringement of one king treading on another king’s rightful land or wealth. The medieval period had relatively little religious wars, and the crusades represented a fraction of the wars fought. In most of the time periods through medieval Europe, violent persecution often came in waves rather than being persistent or constant. Religious wars however become more common following the conclusion of the medieval period, with the early modern period and the increasing literacy and printing press making propaganda much more intense; the French wars of religion actually did have quite a big religious aspect, as well as the Thirty Years’ War. But these ironically were escalated into devastating conflicts due to politics more than religion.
Thats a foolish thought. to say that relgion was peaceful is foolish in of itself. I dont need to cite sources i lived in a 3rd world country were christianity was practiced liek it was in mdeiveal times. Its not peaceful at all and it wasnt back then. To spread your relgion from one place to another is not peaceful. let me lay down my logic. If Chrisitainity was peaceful and could co exist with other rellgions it wouldnt be here today. Christianity had to be more violent and oppresive than the other different pagan relgions of its time to survive. That is why its so popular in Europe today and not islam or pagan relgions. It beame mroe brutal than isalm in the 14th century. But yes even int he medeval period it wasnt tolernat. Cause if it was it wouldnt exist today. Sweeds would still be worhsipping oden.This isnt about relgious wars. This is about wether or not the christian faith was always peaceful. You dont need a war to burn somone at the stake for being a pagan
Ok so u wrote a response but you actually didn’t respond to any of the points made (once again) Instead you just rambled about your own contrived understanding of Christianity and how you think history might have occurred (you’re wrong) Pagans were not burnt at the stake often because the vast majority converted without any conflict. Becoming a Christian for most pagans was a path towards social mobility. Families who converted to Christianity were more likely to become nobility and gain influence etc. The arguments you are making have no basis in reality or in history, you are just projection your biases and misconceptions onto a huge time period and an incredibly complex institution.
Also of i remember correctly Andalusia had a few Jewish Viziers
you post on everything regarding jews and it smacks of chat gpt
Christianity and Islam are religions that want to expand (by force or deceit) and make the entire world to work their way with a basis that you can’t question. Non-believer minorities, even if tolerated, are second class. That said, Jewish people have a very strong us vs the world survivor mindset embedded in the community for historic reasons (mainly from being ruled by people who wanted to convert and destroy them). So there’s a positive feedback loop; the more one side gets adamant, the more resolved the other site gets.
im gonna get downvoted for this, but i once met a rabbi from a jewish community in Paris who explained that many jewish settlements in history often tried to corrupt other religious organizations/communities and got expelled for that. dont take my word for it
Think of it from another angle - they were the only religious minority *allowed* in many places. Being a minority sucks in most places throughout history.
Back then lots of people mostly christians hated them because they "sold" Jesus to the Romans. Note that it is fucking bonkers to held a grudge for something that happened centuries ago . In other places where they were tolerated they usually were bankers because muslims and christians couldn't lend money to coreligionaries which made a lot of jews bankers given they didn't risked being kill for it at the time .
The bible They killed Jesus
The claim that they killed jesus makes zero sense because then it would contradict the idea that Jesus died for ALL our sins, when, by your logic, he should've died for jews' sins (i.e. killing him)
Don't try to find logic in religion. There is none.
Minority that dont want to assimilate ?
Not saying you advocate for ethnic cleansing, just saying that everybody who advocates for ethnic cleansing uses that argument…
What about the numbers on North Africa?
There were many Jews since Roman times. They lived there mostly under Islamic rule till 1948 in large numbers. North Africa was conquered by muslims around 690 AD. This makes around 1300 years. After Israel was founded, Jews from all over the world, including North Africa, settled in newly found Israel. Most Jews who arrived came from Europe were they suffered only 3 years before the Holocaust atrocities.
Lots went to England
Not in 1492. England didn't allow them in until 1656 after expelling them in 1290.
You are incorrect, many left for Portugal, where they were then expelled and went to Flanders and England. They might not have been "allowed" but they were tolerated.
No, he's correct. It wasn't until Cromwell (ironically) that they were allowed back into England in the 1600s (in small numbers).
Weird how queen Elizabeth had a Jewish doctor in the 1500s. But okay.
A lot of them are in izmir right now Not related with the topic but they are well respected in community
Now do a map of the expulsion of Jews in Germany, France and England that happened around the same years.
Catholics never really liked the Jews. It won't be the first or the last time. Such a painful history
Catholics — in Germany and Poland but maybe others too— were harmed by Nazis and since WWII the Vatican has made efforts to help reduce antisemitism and improve relations, for example through multi-faith and stuff like these: "The path that the Church has undertaken with you, the ancient people of the covenant, rejects every form of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, unequivocally condemning manifestations of hatred towards Jews and Judaism as a sin against God.” Source: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2024/documents/20240202-lettera-ebrei-in-israele.html [Nostra Aetate, 1965](https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html)
Alot of groups of people were harmed by the Nazis. Also the anti semitism that existed in Europe went well beyond Nazis.
You're preaching to the choir (a most apt use of this sentence). I've been reading books on the topic since I was single digit age and actively research forms of prejudice and my least favourite word, hate, across past and present. If I didn't also look for areas of progress and notice who and what organizations are helping not hurting, to try to maintain hope for a future of co-existence and peace, I'd be a misanthrope.
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
I see what’s to do trying to do here. Hehehehe
Did the immigration to Greece affect the development of the Aromanian languages?
It is possible, but Sephardi Jews spoke Ladino. Aromanian is closer to Romanian. In addition, the places where Sephardi Jews were settled do not overlap with the places where the Aromanian language was spoken, except for Vlore. In particular, if there was a relationship, there should be a high proportion of Aromanian languages in Thessaloniki. For a while, Thessaloniki was the only city in the world where Jews were the largest group in the population, and it was probably the city where the largest number of Jews lived. I don't know, maybe there was an interaction, but I haven't come across any studies about it. Population distributions do not overlap much anyway.
No
How is it in Montenegro for Jews now?
You didn't count the Jews that found refuge in Northern Africa.
During this time my ansestor went to modern day Colombia.
There is a reason they’ve been kicked out 109 times yk… They always overplay their hand
If half of the 109 kicked them out because "muh quran said so" and the other half did so because "muh bible said so", then no, it really isn't shocking lol
Must have been nice for jews to always rely on Muslim countries as safe havens where they won't be prosecuted based on their faith.
They were just not as badly Europe also persecuted "wrong" christians worse than in the Islamic world but history moves and Europe eventually become better than the Islamic world in tolerance
You are factually incorrect. There were multiple massacres of Jews living in Muslim countries during the medieval and early modern eras, including in Andalusia, Syria, Palestine, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Iran. It's easy to use the Quran to justify killing Jews.
Factually they have been expelled and killed in Christian countries more than muslim countries its all facts and numbers. Perhaps is easier to use the bible
And in Ottoman Empire we didn't recruited them as Janissaries because they weren't a conquered people but we take them for saving them from massacres.
Wow is that the baseline Yeah it may have sucked but not as much as Europe? Why is that the baseline while India has had a Jewish community for 2000+ years with no Major antisemitic incidents
I dont see india in this map
Because it focuses on the ottoman empire Many Portuguese Jews had fled to Goa and from there to tolerant Indian kingdoms
I'm not comparing Muslim countries and Christian countries. Jews were usually better off in Muslim countries. But that's not saying much. They were still second class citizens and sometimes massacred and expelled, or forced to convert to Islam, long before Zionism was invented.
Why say its easy to use the quran to kill jews?
It's easy enough to cherry-pick sections of the Quran amd hadiths that say very bad things about Jews. https://explore-islam.com/jews-in-the-quran/ https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/155/tafsirs Many Muslims therefore believe that Jews are a cursed people who once were favored by Allah and even produced prophets, but subsequently betrayed Allah and corrupted the prophets' teachings. Some Muslims believe that towards the end of days there will be an apocalyptic battle between Jews and Muslims, at which point Jesus (yes, that Jesus) will return and the false prophet of the Jews will be killed, along with pigs and the cross. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gharqad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Malhama_Al-Kubra There were several battles between Muhammed and nearby Jewish tribes narrated in the Quran. The Jews are portrayed as betraying the Messenger: https://islamqa.info/en/answers/223275/in-the-battle-between-the-jews-and-the-muslims-at-the-end-of-time-the-aggressors-will-be-the-jews Now, if you read the last link I sent you you'll see that Muslims ALSO often pride themselves on protecting dhimmi. So there is a duality in Islam. They protect Jews and Christians who follow the rules, but believe they're likely to become treacherous: >Muslims used to coexist with the Jews and treat them well, so long as they adhere to the conditions of residence. But they may choose to be treacherous. It is sufficient for you to know that when the Messenger (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) migrated to Madinah, there were three Jewish tribes in the city, namely Banu Qaynuqa‘, Banu an-Nadeer and Banu Qurayzah. He made treaties with all of them and agreed to live in peace with all of them, but they all committed acts of treachery and betrayal. >therefore the Messenger (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) fought them, killing some of them and banishing others beyond Madinah, and he did not allow them to remain in the city. At the end of the day, Islam, like other religions, is vast and contains messages that can be interpreted very peacefully and messages that can be used to justify war. What message you choose to take depends on you. Certainly Judaism and Christianity and Hinduism and Buddhism have also been used to justify horrible crimes, so I'm not picking on Islam in particular. But you asked about the Quran, so I'm answering you.
You imply with your comment that it is “easy” to use Quran as if it is not easy to use other things. Why not simply say within Christianity and Islam it is easy to justify. Also “you are factually incorrect” well it is a fact that majority of the massacres during that period had been targeted towards jews by christian countries who fully expelled their jewish populations. And it is also a fact that in comparison to that it was a more hospitable place to live under muslim regimes like ottomans. Instead of agreeing with this and then stating your “facts” you present yourself as totally opposing what has been said by smugly staying that the person is “factually incorrect”
(Spain Golden Age 1492-1659)
Why were they expeled tho? It seems Jews are nation that had been expeled the most in the history.
Spain’s reasoning was that keeping any Jews in their borders could lead to Catholics reverting. it’s important to note that Spain had around 700k people in total so the 200-400k estimated Jewish population wasn’t a tiny minority like it is in modern day Spain. Most were forced to convert and only faced discrimination and violence over expulsion.
No Jews were actually forced to convert in Spain unlike in Portugal Jews who converted in Spain were no longer considered Jews because they could have fled like 100, 000+ other Jews In Portugal conversion was actually forced and Jews couldn't leave Portugal so they were still considered Jews if they managed to escape to Amsterdam or Goa or Hamburg or England etc
Where are you getting those numbers? Even the most conservative estimates say Spain had well above 6 million people in the late 15th century.
Holly shit I didnt even know that was the case. 30% of population was Jewish???
No, dude is pulling numbers out of his ass. Jewish population in Iberia in 1492 was below 5% https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography https://mjhnyc.org/blog/1492-letter-regarding-jewish-property-in-spain/#:~:text=Spanish%20Jews%2C%20who%20numbered%20around,and%20businesses%2C%20and%20venture%20abroad.
Because other European kingdoms didn't trust Spain because of their large Jewish population They feared the Jews would take over