CHRISTIAN ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Prof. Stanford Shaw
"Blood libel accusations were made against Jews by Ottoman Christian subjects starting in the sixteenth century, most frequently in the Arab provinces, first at Jerusalem in 1546. The most famous Christian assault on Ottoman Jews in medieval times came in the central Anatolian town of Amasya some time between 1530 and 1540, when a blood-libel accusation against local Jews was spread by local Armenians who said that an Armenian woman had seen Jews slaughter a young Armenian boy and use his blood at the feast of Passover. Several days of rioting and pillaging and attacks on Jews followed...Later, however, the Armenian boy who supposedly had been murdered was found and the Ottoman governor punished the Armenian accusers, though nothing could be done about the Jews who had suffered."[1]
"There were literally thousands of incidents in subsequent years, invariably resulting from accusations spread among Greeks and Armenians by word of mouth, or published in their newspapers, often by Christian financiers and merchants who were anxious to get the Jews out of the way, resulting in isolated and mob attacks on Jews, and burning of their shops and homes [2]. The attacks were brutal and without mercy. Women, children, and aged Jewish men were frequently attacked, beaten and often killed."[3]
[1] Stanford J. Shaw, "Christian Anti-Semitism in the Ottoman Empire", Belleten C. LIV, 68, p.1103 (1991).
[2] Abraham Ben-Yakob (Jerusalem), "The Immigration of Iraki Jews to the Holy Land in the 19th Century", paper delivered to the First International Congress for the Study of Sephardic and Oriental Judaism, 27 June 1978.
[3] Stanford J. Shaw, "Christian Anti-Semitism in the Ottoman Empire", Belleten C. LIV, 68, p.1129 (1991)
Prof. Stanford Shaw: "Armenians of 1535 accused Jews for slaughtering a young Armenian boy and using his blood at the feast of Passover"
