Violence in Ottoman-Jewish society: Izmir as a case study

For an insight into the vast fields of the social and cultural history of the Ottoman Empire that still await research, this article examines violence among Jews in Izmir during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. After relating a wide range of phenomena among Ottoman Jewish subjects in general, it zooms in on Izmir to show more particular violence, mostly on political grounds, that corresponds well with what we know about the way the mob in Ottoman cities behaved on certain occasions. The work thus is part of the author's ongoing efforts to refute common stereotypes concerning traditional Jewish society and to shed light on non-normative behavioral patterns that have received very little attention in Jewish historiography.