|
Introduction
Sometimes historical research is not well balanced, and if even unfair. Incidents of secondary importance are sometimes blown out of proportion, and important historical facts are on the verge of oblivion. One typical example of forgetfulness is the Jewish history of the city of Valona (Vlor, Valora, and in Hebrew documents Avilona).
Except for the Archives of Dubrovnik, research by the Turkish professor Inalçik, and the Bulgarian Jewish researchers, Salomon Rosanes in the beginning of the twentieth century and Chief Haham (Rabbi) Asher Hananel of Sofia (1960), Valona's Jews are hardly mentioned in history.
The historian Bogumil Hrabak writes that in the sixteenth century Valona was preponderantly a Jewish town as the Jews constituted more than half of the population. Confirmation comes from the "History of Albania" published in Tirana in 1959.1
Having delved into Jewish documents concerning the city and studying them, I will now try to present the Jewish history of Valona.
The Composition of the Jewish Community
The Jewish community of Valona is one of the most ancient in Europe. Its beginning is garbed in legend which, when analyzed, contains a grain of truth. The story tells us that a ship heading for Rome with a cargo of Jewish slaves, captured after the Roman occupation of Palestine some 2,000 years ago, was blown off course and landed on the coast of Albania, in the vicinity of Valona. The local population, fighting the Romans, helped the slaves that had escaped the ship and welcomed them. From then on, various travelers' narratives note the existence of Jews on the Albanian coast. Their presence is also proven by documents mentioning Jews selling salt originating in Albania to Dubrovnik during the fourteenth century as well as by Venetian documents from the same period concerning trading with Jews from Albania. The assumption is that these Jews were the so-called Romaniotes--Byzantine Jews who had come to Valona and Dureº (Durazzo) from Corfu, Saloniki, and the Corinth.2
With the Imperial decrees by Justinian (527-565) came a series of anti-Jewish rules which were reinforced by the emperor Basil. The Romaniot Jews were, therefore, victims of persecution and poverty, a situation that ended only when the Ottomans captured Valona in 1417.3
Notwithstanding, Jews conti-nued to arrive in Valona. For example, we know that in 1290, when the Dominican monk Bartolomeo di Capua, who was in charge of Apulia, denounced the Jews as if guilty of a so-called "blood libel"--torturing and killing a Christian boy--he decided to convert the Jews to Christianity by force. As a result many Jews fled and found refuge in Valona.4
Thus, at the time of the Ottoman occupation, Valona had two Jewish communities: the Romaniotes, called in Sephardi history Griegos; and the Pugliese, called Italianos.
The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and the exodus of Jews from Portugal, beginning in 1497 resulted in the arrival in Valona of Jews from Castilla and Catalunia and, later on, from Portugal.
External events caused the number of Jews in Valona to grow. After the burning at the stake in Ancona of 24 conversos from Portugal who had returned to Judaism and the intervention of the Ottoman fleet in 1555 to prevent the execution of other condemned conversos, Duke Guido of Urbino ordered the expulsion of conversos from Ancona. A ship with 70 conversos left Pesaro for Valona--15 of them disembarked at Dubrovnik and the others were captured by marauders and sold as slaves in Apulia. In April 1557, a second ship reached Valona and the majority disembarked there. Few landed in Dubrovnik, among them Amatus Lusitanos.5 Don Yosef Nassi, nephew of Dona Gracia Mendes, Portuguese Jewess very influential in the Sultan's court, received permission from the Ottoman sultan to prepare Tiberias to receive those expelled from Ancona. The Dona Gracia arranged that the Valona and other Adriatic Jewish communities boycott the port of Ancona.6 The boycott did not succeed since Pesaro made a poor substitute for a good port.
From Turkish documents found by Nicolai Todorov in Sofia,7 and the official history of Albania published in Tirana,8
(Suite page 15)
|
|
