The Jewish Diaspora

Expulsion

Sephardim to the Ottoman Empire

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1492–1550 CEChristian Iberia (Castile & Aragon) → Salonika (Thessaloniki)

Why it happened

On 31 March 1492 the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I issued the Alhambra Decree, ordering all unconverted Jews out of Castile and Aragon by 31 July, primarily to stop them drawing 'New Christians' back to Judaism.12

The migration

Of Spain's Jews, over 200,000 accepted baptism while 40,000–100,000 chose exile.1 They scattered to North Africa, Italy, Portugal—where the majority fled first but won only a few years' respite3—and above all the Ottoman Empire.4 Sultan Bayezid II proclaimed the refugees welcome5 and dispatched Kemal Reis's fleet to evacuate them to Ottoman lands,6 reportedly scoffing that Ferdinand had 'impoverished his own country and enriched mine.'7 The newcomers settled in Istanbul, Salonika, Adrianople, Safed and across the Balkans and Anatolia,5 and by 1600 the empire held the world's largest Jewish population, roughly 150,000.8 Salonika became a predominantly city—Jews formed 56% of its people by 15199—where (Ladino) survived for centuries10 and wool-spinning grew into the community's renowned export trade.9

Genetic corroboration

  • autosomalAmong the populations sampled, Greek and Turkish Jews were each other's closest genetic relatives and were also close to Italian, Syrian, and Jews.11 The study did not identify the 1492 migrants directly or date these relationships to the expulsion.

Sources

  1. BPérez J. 2007. History of a Tragedy: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. University of Illinois Press link
  2. BHaim Beinart. 2002. The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
  3. BGerber, Jane S.. 1994. The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience. Free Press link
  4. AKamen H. 1988. The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492. Past & Present 119 30–55. doi:10.1093/past/119.1.30
  5. BStanford J. Shaw. 1991. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. New York University Press
  6. CWikipedia contributors. 2026. Bayezid II. Wikipedia link
  7. BBernard Lewis. 1984. The Jews of Islam. Princeton University Press
  8. BLevy, Avigdor. 1992. The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire. The Darwin Press, Princeton, NJ
  9. BMark Mazower. 2004. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950. HarperCollins
  10. BEsther Benbassa, Aron Rodrigue. 2000. Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th–20th Centuries. University of California Press
  11. AAtzmon G, Hao L, Pe'er I, et al.. 2010. Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry. The American Journal of Human Genetics 86 850–859. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.04.015