Sunday, December 29, 2013

a little something for my Serbian followers....

One intriguing story from the early nineteenth century involves
the fate of a Jew from Travnik, Moses Chavijo, who converted to
Islam, took the name of Dervish Ahmed, and began to rouse the
local Muslims against the Jews. In 1817 the leaders of the Bosnian
Jews complained of his attacks, and had him tried and executed.
Some of his followers later complained to the next governor of
Bosnia, Ruzdi pasa, who seized the opportunity to squeeze some
money out of the Jews: he demanded that they pay a recompense of
500,000 groschen, and seized ten leading Sarajevo Jews, including
the rabbi, threatening to kill them if the payment were not made.
The end of the story, however, is that a crowd of 3000 Muslims
took up arms and demanded the Jews' release - which was promptly
done.

Levy, M., Die Sephardim in Bosnien: ein Beitragzur Gcschichte der Juden auf
der Balkan-Halbinsel
(Sarajevo, 1911 ) pp. 62 - 63, apud Malcolm, Noel.
Bosnia, a Short History.  NYC:  NYU  Press, 1994, p. 112

No comments:

Post a Comment