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Sabbatai Zevi in 1665

The Dönmeh (Turkish: Dönme) were a group of crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire who converted publicly to Islam, but were said to have retained their beliefs. The movement was centred in Salonica.[1] The group originated during and soon after the era of Sabbatai Zevi, a 17th-century Jewish kabbalist who claimed to be the Messiah and eventually converted to Islam in order to escape punishment by the Sultan Mehmed IV. After Zevi's conversion, a number of Jews followed him into Islam and became the Dönmeh.[2] Since the 20th century, assimilated Dönmeh might have intermarried with other groups and most have assimilated into Turkish society.


The Turkish word dönme is from the verbal root dön- that means 'to turn', i.e., "to convert", but in a pejorative sense. They are also called Selânikli "person from Thessaloniki" or avdetî "religious convert" (Arabic: عودة‎‎ ‘awdah 'return'). Members of the group refer to themselves simply as "the Believers" in Hebrew (Hebrew: המאמיניםha-Ma'aminim),[3] or "sazanikos," Turkish for "carp" in honor of the changing outward nature of the fish.[4] An alternate explanation of this self-nomenclature is the prophecy that Sabbatai Zevi would deliver the Jews under the sign of the fish.[5]


File:Yeni Mosque, Thessaloniki.JPG
New Mosque, built by Dönmeh community of Salonica during the Ottoman period

Despite their conversion to Islam, the Sabbateans secretly remained close to Judaism and continued to practice Jewish rituals covertly. They recognized Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) as the Jewish Messiah, observed certain commandments with similarities to those in Judaism, and prayed in Hebrew and later in Ladino. They also observed rituals celebrating important events in Zevi's life and interpreted Zevi's conversion in a Kabbalistic way.

There are several branches of the Dönmeh group. The first is the İzmirli, formed in İzmir, Turkey (Smyrna). This was the original sect, from which two others eventually split. The first schism created the sect of the Jakubi, founded by Jacob Querido (ca. 1650–1690), the brother of Zevi's last wife.[4] Querido claimed to be Zevi's reincarnation and a messiah in his own right. The second split from the İzmirli was the result of claims that Berechiah Russo, known in Turkish as Osman Baba, was truly the next reincarnation of Zevi's soul. These allegations gained following and gave rise to the Karakashi (Turkish), or Konioso (Ladino), branch, the most numerous and strictest branch of the Dönmeh.[6] Missionaries from the Karakashi were active in Poland in the first part of the 18th century and taught Jacob Frank (1726–1791), the alleged heir of Russo's soul.[citation needed] Frank went on to create the Frankist sect, another non-Dönmeh Sabbatean group in Eastern Europe. Yet another group, the Lechli, of Polish descent, lived in exile in Salonika (modern Thessaloniki, Greece) and Constantinople.[citation needed]

Several leading members of the Young Turk movement, a group of modernist revolutionaries who brought down the Ottoman Empire, were dönmeh.[7] At the time of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, some among the Salonika Dönmeh tried to be recognized as non-Muslims to avoid being forced to leave the city.[citation needed] After the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1922–1923, the Dönmeh strongly supported the Republican, pro-Western reforms of Atatürk that tried to restrict the power of the religious establishment and to modernize society.[citation needed] In particular, the Dönmeh were instrumental in establishing trade, industry, and culture in the emerging Republic of Turkey, which is partially due to the prominence of Rumeli immigrants in general, and of Salonika in particular, in the early Republic years.[citation needed]

An interesting case is the one of Ilgaz Zorlu, a Dönmeh publisher who founded Zvi Publishers in 2000 and sought recognition as a Jew, but a Beth Din refused to recognize his Jewishness without a full conversion.[citation needed] He claimed to have converted in Israel and then filed a lawsuit for changing his religion from Islam to Judaism in his registry records and identification. The court voted in his favor.[citation needed]

Işık University, which is the part of the Feyziye Schools Foundation (Turkish: Feyziye Mektepleri Vakfı, FMV), and Terakkî schools were founded by the Dönmeh community in Thessaloniki in the last quarter of the 19th century and continued their activities in Istanbul after Greeks captured the city on 9 November 1912.[citation needed]

There is a community of Dönmehs living in Yeniköy district of İstanbul.[citation needed]

The independent scholar Rifat Bali defines the term "dönme" as follows:

"The term Donme is a Turkish gerund meaning ‘to turn, revolve or return' and, by extension, “to betray” (i.e., ‘go back on’) and ‘to convert’ to another religion. It has come in popular parlance to refer to religious converts in general, and, more specifically, to the seventeenth century followers of the Jewish false messiah Sabbatai Sevi and their descendants, who outwardly converted to Islam but retained their secretive religious practices over the next several centuries, maintaining close communal and blood ties and practicing strict endogamy. While the great majority of the community’s members abandoned their practices during the first quarter century, their past identity has continued to haunt them within Turkish society, and the term Dönme itself remains one of opprobrium."[8]


The Dönmeh ideology of the 17th century revolved primarily around the Eighteen Precepts, an abridged version of the Ten Commandments in which the admonition against adultery is explained as more of a precautionary measure than a ban, likely included to explain the antinomian sexual activities of the Sabbateans. The additional commandments are concerned with defining the kinds of interactions that may occur between the Dönmeh and the Jewish and Muslim communities. The most basic of these laws of interaction was to avoid marriage with either Jews or Muslims and to prefer relations within the sect to those outside of it. In spite of this, they maintained ties with Sabbateans who had not converted and even with Jewish rabbis, who secretly settled disputes within the Dönmeh concerning Jewish law.[6]

As far as ritual was concerned, the Dönmeh followed both Jewish and Muslim traditions, shifting between one and the other as necessary for integration into Ottoman society.[9] Outwardly Muslims and secretly Jewish Sabbateans, the Dönmeh observed traditional Muslim holidays like Ramadan but also kept the Jewish Sabbath, Brit milah and major holidays.[10] Much of Dönmeh ritual is a combination of various elements of Kabbalah, Sabbateanism, Jewish traditional law, and Sufism.[11]

Dönmeh liturgy evolved as the sect grew and spread. At first, much of the Dönmeh literature was written in Hebrew. Later, as the group developed, Ladino replaced Hebrew as the prominent language and became not only the vernacular language, but also the liturgical language. Though the Dönmeh had branched into several sects, all of them held the view that Zevi was the divine messiah and that he had revealed the true "spiritual Torah"[6] which was superior to the practical earthly Torah. The Dönmeh created and celebrated holidays pertaining to various points in Zevi's life and their own history of conversion. Based at least partially in the Kabbalistic understanding of divinity, the Dönmeh believed that there was a three-way connection of the emanations of the divine, which engendered much conflict with Muslim and Jewish communities alike. The most notable source of opposition from other contemporary religions was the common practice of exchanging wives between members of the Dönmeh.[6]

The hierarchy of the Dönmeh was based in branch divisions. The Ismirli lay at the top of the hierarchy, composed of merchant classes and intelligentsia. Artisans tended to be mostly Karakashi while lower classes were mostly Jakubi. Each branch had its own prayer community, organized into a "Kahal," or congregation (Hebrew).[6] An extensive internal economic network provided support for lower class Dönmeh in spite of ideological differences between branches.[12]

Mehmet Karakaşzade Rüştü

In 1924, Mehmet Karakaşzade Rüştü, a Karakash Dönmeh,[clarification needed] made allegations about Dönmehs, branches and wife-swapping rituals to Vakit newspaper. He also accused Donmehs of lacking patriotism and not having been assimilated. Discussions spread into other newspapers including the ones owned by Dönmeh groups. Ahmet Emin Yalman, in the newspaper (Vatan) he owned, accepted the existence of such groups, but claimed that those groups were no longer following their traditions. Then Karakaşzade Rüştü petitioned the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to request the abolition of some Dönmehs' ongoing immigration from Macedonia by population exchange.[13][14][15]

See also


  1. Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express p.75
  2. [1] Turkay Salim Nefes (2015) British Journal of Sociology
  3. Waiting for the Messiah
  4. 4.0 4.1 Maciejko, Pavel (2011). The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  5. "Dönmeh" in Singer, Isidore, ed. (1906). "Jewish Encyclopedia." Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Publishing House. s.v. (accessed 10 March 2013).
  6. 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Scholem, Gershom (1974). Kabbalah. New York, NY: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Company.
  7. Kirsch, Adam (15 February 2010). "The Other Secret Jews". The New Republic. Archived from the original on 5 December 2010. Retrieved 5 December 2010. Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (help)<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  8. Bali, Rifat (2012). Model Citizens of the State: The Jews of Turkey During the Multi-party Period. Lexington Books. p. 18.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  9. Baer, Marc. "Globalization, Cosmopolitanism, and the Dönme in Ottoman Salonica and Turkish Istanbul." Journal of World History. 18. no. 2 (2007): 141–170. doi: 10.1353/jwh.2007.0009 (accessed 6 March 2013). [2]
  10. [3]
  11. Marc Baer, "Dönme (Ma'aminim, Minim, Shabbetaim)," Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online, 2013. Reference. University of Maryland. 7 March 2013
  12. Weiker, Walter F. (1992). "Ottomans, Turks, and the Jewish Polity: A History of the Jews of Turkey." Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
  14. Link text, Turkay Salim Nefes (2012) Journal of Historical Sociology Volume 25, Issue 3, pages 413–439, September 2012.
  15. Cengiz Sisman, "The History of naming the Ottoman/Turkish Sabbatians", in Studies on Istanbul and Beyond ed. by Robert G. Ousterhout (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

Further reading