Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews

Captives of a different kind, fewer in number but equally reliable indicators of far-off troubles were the distinguished guests whom the authorities in Istanbul sent to Salonica as political exiles. The city provided a suitable home where they could live in some style, hunt if they wished and hold court at official expense, remaining all the while under the watchful eye of the authorities. At a time when many were living on the margins, they were treated extremely well. We still have the list of foods provided for Mirza Safi, a Persian pretender, when he was held there in 1731. It includes ‘bread, rice, clarified butter, yoghurt, cumin, sugar, starch, boiled grape-juice, clove, cinnamon, chicken, eggs, almonds, pistachios, pepper, saffron, coffee, coriander, olive oil, flour, honey, bees-wax, grapes, salt, chick peas, vinegar, onions, lemon-juice, black cumin, chestnuts, quinces, tobacco (from Shiraz), soap, meat, barley, straw and vegetables’ – a respectable diet by any standards.31

Patriarchs and grand viziers were parked there when their careers suffered eclipse. Sultan Abdul Hamid II himself was deposed by the Young Turks in 1909 and sent into gilded captivity. Hungarian aristocrats passed through, as did the Pole Jan Potocki, the multi-talented author of that remarkable novel, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, who blew his brains out with a silver bullet a few years later. Following the suppression of the Wahhabi uprising in 1814, the Sherif of Mecca arrived with an entourage of forty and was treated with the greatest honour: he lasted a few years before succumbing to the plague. His son and successor, Abdul Muttalib – ‘a grand old man of sixty, tall, but slender, with the grand manner, distinguished in every way, of very brown colour, almost black, fine skin, a long blue robe, a Kashmir turban’ – eventually followed in his father’s footsteps and even erected a domed tomb in his father’s memory which survived into the early twentieth century.32

Among all these, however, the man who stayed the longest and left the most important record of his experiences was a little-known early eighteenth-century Ukrainian political emigré called Pylyp Orlyk. After years fighting against the Muscovite tsars, Orlyk fled first to Sweden, and then passed through central Europe to the relative safety of the Ottoman lands. On 2 November 1722 – in the month of Moharrem 1135 according to the dating of the imperial firman – the fifty-year-old Orlyk was ordered by the Porte to Salonica. There this cultivated and warm-hearted man spent no less than twelve years in exile, watching the twists and turns of European politics from the sidelines while his impoverished wife remained in Cracow and his eight children were dispersed throughout Europe. Only in March 1734 was he released, thanks to French intervention, and allowed to move north; still trying to organize an uprising in the Ukraine, he died in poverty nine years later.33

Orlyk’s misfortune has proved to be the historian’s gain, for from the day of his arrival he kept a diary which offers a unique insight into the eighteenth-century city. No other journal of comparable detail from Salonica has survived. His urgent scrawl gives access not merely to his voluminous political correspondence, most of which – in Latin, French, Polish and Ukrainian – was duly copied into his journals, but also to the rigours of daily life in his place of exile. The misbehaviour of his loutish servants, the local fare, his bag after a day’s shooting in the plains, stories told him by tailors, interpreters and bodyguards enliven its pages. Jesuits, consuls, doctors, spies and the Turkish judges and governors who ran the city all encountered the busy exile.

Much of the time, he lived well, considering his predicament. He hunted partridge, hogs and hares, which he distributed generously among his acquaintances. There was a lot of drinking, especially among the Christians – the French wandered drunkenly through the streets of the European quarter during Carnival, while parties at the house of the Greek metropolitan apparently went on for days at a time, with chicken, salted olives and lemon jam washed down with copious quantities of vodka, wine and coffee. Orlyk and his entourage were fond of the bottle too and he coped easily enough with his often inebriated Jewish interpreter and his manservant ‘Red’, found more than once sprawled in the gutter after a hard night. But the dangers and risks of urban life hemmed him in. At the minor end of the scale they included frequent indigestion from over-eating, the ‘horrid muck’ of the city streets, and the bribery necessary to smooth relations with Greek and Ottoman officials alike. He was shocked by the corruption of the church and the readiness of Christians to use the Ottoman courts when it served their interests. His diary is also sensitive to disturbing portents – a full moon cleft with deep black fissures, earth tremors and ‘great lights flying in the air like a big lance’. Meanwhile, crimes went unpunished, pirates threatened voyagers by sea, and as the streets echoed with the sounds of gunfire, janissaries and irregulars acted much as they wished. Of all the numerous dangers Orlyk’s diary describes, however, none was more frightening, murderous or unpredictable than what an earlier traveller described as ‘the terrour of horrid Plagues’. Arriving in the city in the aftermath of the epidemic of 1718–1719, Orlyk quickly became familiar with the biggest killer of the early modern Ottoman world.34

Plague

‘Thank God the plague is not here!’ wrote a relieved traveller arriving in Salonica in 1788. Borne on the trade routes from Central Asia and the Black Sea through to the Mediterranean, it could come by both land and sea. A century before Orlyk, an epidemic in Istanbul had killed one thousand a day, according to the British ambassador there, and forced more than two hundred thousand to flee into the countryside. Izmir lost perhaps one-fifth of its entire population in 1739–41, and as many as a quarter may have died between 1758 and 1762: the historian Daniel Panzac estimates it lost the equivalent of its entire population to the plague in the course of the century. At such times, one saw ‘the Streets … filld with infected bodies as well alive as dead; the living seeking remedies either from the Phisitians or at the Bathes, the Dead lying in open Beers, or else quite naked at theyr dores to be washd before theyr buryalls.’35

In Salonica, athwart the empire’s main carrying routes, warm summers and a humid climate offered the plague bacillus a near-ideal environment in the lethal months from April to July. Compared with Izmir, with 55 plague years in the eighteenth century, and Istanbul [65], Salonica got off lightly: even so plague struck one year in three. Outbreaks in 1679–80, 1687–9, 1697–99, 1708–9, 1712–13 – which supposedly claimed 6,000 victims – 1718–19, 1724 and 1729–30 were just the start. In 1740, a ‘bad plague’ carried off 1337 Christians, 2239 Turks and 3935 Jews. That was not the only really serious outbreak: in 1762 10–12,000 people, roughly 16–20% of the population, died. The figures were similar in 1781 when as a survivor put it, one could ‘die of fright’, and again in 1814. Over the century, roughly 55–65,000 victims were carried off, something close to the mid-century population of the city itself. Only the constant inflow of new, mostly Christian migrants from the countryside and high mostly Jewish local birth rates can account for the lack of a very steep decline in numbers. It is testimony to the resilience of the city’s economy that unlike ports such as Alexandria and Aleppo, its growth was not more seriously checked.36

Through Orlyk’s entries during the epidemic of 1724 – a serious year but not nearly as bad as 1713 or 1762 – we can see the astonishingly rapid trajectory from rumour to full-scale panic and mass death. It all started fairly quietly: ‘On Wednesday morning, after I came back from the Orthodox Church after mass, I was told by my people that the small daughter of a man who lives close by the cemetery at the Orthodox Church is extremely sick with the plague.’ Hearing this, Greeks from the vicinity had already started moving out to villages in the mountains. And there were omens: ‘My people told me they heard an owl on my inn, and this is a fatal bird, which is proven by experience.’37

The next day the girl was dead and the church had closed. Orlyk asked his servant to find lodgings for him in a nearby village, together with the English consul and some other members of the community, in order to escape ‘God’s awful punishment’. But the villagers, as often happened, were understandably reluctant to take in refugees from the city and started arming and erecting barricades to prevent them coming. Reportedly they were being encouraged by the pasha of Salonica who planned to make wealthy foreigners pay handsomely for the privilege of leaving.38

As a political exile Orlyk had particular difficulties getting out. When he presented himself to the mollah, ‘this heathen made me more annoyed, telling me there is nothing written down in the emperor’s order that I can go wherever I want and choose inns, but that it is written down that I shall stay at the inn in this town and have to stay here. I discussed it a long time with him and put forward lots of arguments; he promised to speak about it with the aghas tomorrow and to tell me what they decide at their stupid council.’ Despite Orlyk’s efforts, the mollah stuck to his guns, perhaps fearing the consequences if he absconded. Meanwhile, the younger son of his landlord fell ill as well, which scared the household so much ‘that all of us ran away from the inn, and left our stuff and also the carriage on the street, at which the servants slept the whole night in the rain, and I slept over in some monastery house … where I slept in great fear.’ Two days later, Orlyk tried again and this time he informed the mollah that the entire street where he lived was infected, including the house next door, and that he had given up sleeping in the inn. Even this had little effect. Only when the English consul intervened, and promised to be responsible for his eventual return, was he allowed to depart.

After the usual difficulties with the janissaries guarding the gates, who blocked his way until they received payment, he and his party set off, their carriages loaded down with clothes, provisions, guns, books, and tents. They had left the walls far behind and were heading for the prosperous little town of Galatista in the wooded hills to the southeast when they heard that its inhabitants were threatening to burn down their own houses and retreat to the mountains if they came. Neither Orlyk nor the British merchants he was travelling with took the threats seriously. Desperate to put the infected city behind them, they travelled together to protect themselves against robbers and sent their Jewish interpreter to deal with the village headman. Eventually they arrived, settled into an inn, and over the coming weeks got used to the scanty rations – olives, salted fish – which made up the local diet, passing the time teaching country children phrases in French.

In an effort to stem the plague’s progress, the mollah had ordered all the inhabitants of the city who had left for the villages to stay where they were. No one appears to have obeyed, however, and into their mountain refuge trickled word of developments eight hours’ ride away down in the plain. ‘A young English merchant who went yesterday to Thessalonica, came back from there this evening and told me that the plague spreads more and more, that every day thirty people die and even more leave the town.’ The next day they heard of the death of a Jesuit monk who had recently arrived from Smyrna. Even more alarmingly, a local peasant had been stricken while in the city and had died since returning to the village. ‘Others say also that he was carried out of the village while he was still alive so that he doesn’t infect the rest.’ Down in the city ‘the plague spreads more and more and especially among the Turks and Jews; just yesterday they carried 250 dead out of the town.’ One could see the sense of the Islamic injunction – derived from a hadith of the Prophet, but only partially obeyed by Salonica’s own Muslim population – that those living in a place afflicted by the plague should accept whatever their fate held in store for them and not budge. Constant movement between the villages and the city extended the range of the epidemic, for as Orlyk himself noted – ‘people from here incessantly go to the city to sell their wares, and another village, very close by, is also infected.’

There were several reports that it had eased off or abated entirely before Orlyk and his party judged it safe to return. Having escaped the worst, a final frisson of terror awaited him back in Salonica. He had spent the summer months wearing a light coat made for him by his Jewish tailors. Now, as they brought him his new winter furs, they confessed that one of them had already been plague-stricken – the tell-tale swellings had appeared under the arm – when he had delivered Orlyk’s summer coat: ‘He could hardly finish his job for the pain, which tormented him and as soon as he got back home he laid down on his bed. I was thrilled when I heard this and thanked God that he kept me and my son alive. I wore this coat through the whole summer and September too, without knowing about the plague-ridden Jews. When I asked them today why they hadn’t told me, these heathens answered that if I had known about it, I wouldn’t have wanted the coat.’

It was not until a century later – well after quarantine restrictions had become customary in Europe, and imposed upon travellers from Ottoman lands – that the city’s vulnerability to plague, cholera and other epidemics began to diminish. Until then, nothing so clearly marked man’s vulnerability to the external world. The rabbis often managed to isolate the houses of victims, sometimes barricading them up, at others setting guards at the doors, but since such measures were not implemented comprehensively, those who could leave did. In 1719 two-thirds of the population escaped, and the city was abandoned. The pashas, beys and notables fled into the villages; the poor remained behind and were disproportionately afflicted, especially in the densely packed Jewish quarters of the lower town. ‘The only prey of the epidemic left are the poor most of whom are dying,’ writes the Venetian consul in 1781. Many tried prayer, seeing in their sufferings the signs of God’s vengeance for their sins. An English merchant reported that some Greek peasants opened up the graves of the victims, and stabbed and mangled the corpses ‘in a fearful manner’ in the belief that the Devil had entered them. Others took a kind of revenge of their own, seizing the opportunity offered by the empty mansions, locked stores and shuttered shops in the markets to loot and steal: ‘More than a few villains have stayed here and there are fears lest they set fires to create the opportunity for looting the abandoned houses.’ Orlyk’s translator turned out to head a gang of Jewish thieves which plundered unguarded warehouses, and stole jewels and cloth. The first Orlyk heard about it was when he was contacted by his former employee from prison, promising to work free for a year for him if he got him out. Wisely, no doubt, he refused. Meanwhile the cemeteries expanded on the slopes of the Upper Town where the thousands of plague victims were usually buried.39

Managing the City

One of the questions raised by the Ottoman experience of plague is what it tells us about the attitude of local officials to the management of the city. Although soldiers returning from wars, pilgrims and merchants all carried the deadly disease into the unprotected port, preventative measures were more or less non-existent. Infected houses were sometimes sprinkled with vinegar, limed or even occasionally demolished. But each community took its own measures and there was no overall governmental response. According to the reformer John Howard, who visited Salonica in 1786, the Greeks and the Jews each ran a small hospital, the former enclosed by high walls, the latter ‘lightsome and airy, and better accommodated for its purpose than any I had seen’, situated in the midst of the cemetery, and utilising tombs as tables and seats. But the small European community was far less well equipped than in Izmir, and evidently relied on flight into the countryside. And with no public health service, at least before the administrative reforms of the mid-nineteenth century, Ottoman officials were no better informed than anyone else about where and when the epidemic struck. In 1744 when rumours of plague ran through the town, the only way the Venetian consul could establish their veracity was by approaching the chief rabbi who got the Jewish grave-diggers to say on oath whether they had observed signs of illness among the deceased. The Ottoman town officials themselves had no idea.40

Here as in so many areas, they approached municipal governance in a spirit of extreme disengagement. The plague – like the other risks of urban life such as fire and violent crime – highlighted the limited resources and ambitions of the eighteenth-century Ottoman state. The truth was that the kadi and the pasha of the city had few means at their disposal, for the city and its interests were often squeezed between the demands of the capital, on the one hand, and the powerful regional land-owners on the other. Criminal justice was generally solved through mediation and fines, and imprisonment was limited for many years by the lack of a proper prison in the town. The so-called Tower of the Janissaries was usually used for this but rarely had many inmates and was not designed for large numbers. A considerable amount of alcohol, coffee and opium was being consumed. The city was notorious for its dozens of taverns, coffee-houses and drinking shops – Evliya had been astonished at the brazenness of the unbelievers who would openly get drunk on wine or boza [a drink made from fermented millet] – but they too were largely outside official control, and frequented by janissaries who did much as they pleased. Taxes and the setting of market prices did concern the authorities. But even there, as we have seen, the resources they commanded were limited.

In general, whilst not quite as anarchic as some other Ottoman cities – Aleppo, for example, seems to have been in a state of virtual civil war as notable families and local power-brokers fought out their differences – eighteenth-century Salonica was a place where the authority of the central state could only be enforced sporadically and intermittently. When events threatened to spiral into large-scale violence, the strangulation of janissary ringleaders or the expulsion of troublemakers restored order for a time. But so long as the city fulfilled its role as provider of grain and wool for the capital, the Porte was prepared to tolerate high levels of street violence, and substantial power remaining within the hands of local elites. Food riots were the townspeople’s way of signalling that local land-owners and merchants needed to remember the poor. Controlling the janissaries themselves was almost impossible, and together with the Albanians, they were the main internal challenge to imperial rule. As soldiers rampaged through Salonica’s streets, and the plague carried off thousands a year, it could seem as if this was a city on the verge of chaos. Yet this was a chaos of vitality, not decline.

6 Commerce and the Greeks

The Routes of Trade

ACCORDING TO THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis, Salonica’s harbour could hold at least three hundred vessels. A hundred years later ships were calling from ‘the Black Sea, the White Sea [the Aegean], the Persian Gulf, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Suez, Tripolis, France, Portugal, Denmark, England, Holland and Genoa’, while the languages used by the city’s traders and shopkeepers included Italian, French, Spanish, Vlach, Russian, Latin, Arabic, Albanian and Bulgarian as well as Greek and Turkish. None of this sounds like a city in the doldrums. And indeed, despite plague, war and the janissaries, the population rose steadily – after stagnating throughout much of the seventeenth century, it was up to 50,000 by 1723 and around 70,000–80,000 by the 1790s. The motor of trade was humming, and even with the decline of the traditional cloth manufacturing industry, and the emigration of some Jewish weavers and businessmen, it was bringing new prosperity.

The Russian monk Barskii, who visited in 1726, was impressed. ‘They come to Salonica from Constantinople, Egypt, Venice, France, by English trading vessels, and by land,’ he wrote. ‘Germans, Vlachs, Bulgarians, Serbs, Dalmatians, people from the whole of Macedonia and the Ukraine, traders in wholesale and retail visit here to import grain and every kind of good.’1 The bazaars themselves were extensive, well-stocked and ‘perpetually crowded with buyers and sellers’ and the shops contained abundant manufactured goods and colonial produce. The city’s inland trade flourished, there was a carrying trade to the thriving regional fairs in the hinterland, and increasingly, a longer-range overland traffic to the expanding markets of Germany and central Europe. Once Catherine the Great conquered the Tatar lands and founded Odessa, the Black Sea grain trade took off as well, passing through Salonica on its way to southern Europe.2

By the century’s end, the old, small wooden landing stage, unable to handle more than two or three vessels a day, was clearly insufficient for the volume of traffic. Goods lay for days in the open, quickly ruined by winter rains, the customs officials were notoriously corrupt, and the Jewish and Albanian hamals had a reputation for helping themselves to goods. Yet despite these obstacles, some merchants amassed substantial fortunes; they were, wrote one observer, the ‘possessors of the treasures of Egypt’. The city could not compete with Izmir, still less Naples or Genoa. Nevertheless, when one Ottoman official compiled a geography of Europe, he mentioned Salonica as one of the three key ports of the northern Mediterranean, along with Venice and Marseille. Henry Holland visited in 1812 and was impressed by the ‘general air of splendour of the place’: ‘We passed among the numerous vessels which afforded proof of its growing commerce,’ he wrote, ‘and at six in the evening came up one of the principal quays, the avenues of which were still crowded with porters, boatmen and sailors, and covered with goods of various descriptions.’3

Intra-imperial trade – with north Africa, the Black Sea and the Middle East – still overshadowed the markets of Europe. The Ottoman economy was a closed circuit, efficient and prosperous on its own terms, only gradually becoming linked to the wider, global economy. Macedonian tobacco went to Egypt and the Barbary coast, even though demand was growing in Italy and central Europe. Armenian merchants travelled to and from Persia with jewellery and other precious goods. Thick woollen capots from the Zagora went mostly to the islands, Syria and Egypt, though some were exported as far afield as the French West Indies. In addition, the obligatory grain shipments to Istanbul were often accompanied by other orders – for silver and metal tools. In return, the city was importing blades and spices from Damascus and further east, coffee, slaves and headgear from the Barbary coast, flax, linens, gum and sugar from Egypt, soap, wood, pepper, arsenic and salted fish from Izmir. From the islands came lemons and oil from Andros, and wine from Evvia. Much of this trade remained in the hands of Muslim merchants and the demand was so substantial that the city ran a deficit on its trade with the rest of the empire. Perhaps we can understand why a well-travelled Ottoman diplomat, Ahmed Resmi Effendi, was so scathing about commerce in Europe. ‘In most of the provinces, poverty is widespread, as a punishment for being infidels,’ he wrote: ‘Anyone who travels in these areas must confess that goodness and abundance are reserved for the Ottoman realms.’4