An Ambivalent Coexistence: Jews and Christians in Late Ottoman Edirne

Abstract This article discusses the relations between Jews and Christians in Edirne during the late Ottoman period. At the time, approximately half the city’s inhabitants were Greeks, and at least ten percent were Jews. The Jewish quarter of the city was surrounded by areas with a Greek majority, while a few Armenians also lived alongside the Greeks and Jews. Drawing on diverse sources from the Ladino, Hebrew, French, English, and Greek press, I argue that an ambivalent coexistence prevailed between Jews and Christians in Edirne, where hostility and enmity acted as catalysts for, rather than obstacles to, transculturation. Analysis of two case studies illustrate this ambivalent coexistence. The first concerns the reflection of the blood libel waged by Greeks in Istanbul in 1874 in Jewish and Armenian discourse in Edirne. The second is the discourse on the historical symbiosis between Jews and Greeks embodied in lectures by the maskil Abraham Danon in 1892 to a Greek audience in the city. Both issues sparked considerable interest among Jews and Christians, not only within the Ottoman Empire but also throughout the global Jewish and Greek diasporas.