The last mosque built in Salonika, in 1902, the Yeni Tzami, or ‘New Mosque’, is also one of the city’s few Ottoman-era mosques to survive to the present. And it is one of the most unusual mosques in the world. It was built by an Italian architect to serve the city’s Dönmeh, or ‘convert’ community. The Dönmeh were descendants of Jews who had converted to Islam in the 17th century.
They were follows of Sabbatai Zevi, a Jewish mystic from Smyrna, who proclaimed himself the Messiah. He attracted a huge following among the Jews of Europe and the Levant, antagonising the Jewish establishment in the process, and, with his claims of earthly kingship, attracting the wrath of the Sultan. Finally, he was brought before the Sultan in Edirne in 1666. Offered a choice between conversion to Islam and impalement, he chose the former. Many of his followers reverted to Jewish Orthodoxy, while some continued to believe in their Messiah. Still others, the Dönmeh, followed Zevi’s example and converted to Islam.
Salonika became the main centre of the Dönmeh, where some of them were prominent merchants. While outwardly Muslim, they retained many Jewish practices and continued to speak Ladino, the dialect of the Spanish Jews. Disapproved of by both Jews, for whom they were apostates, and strict Muslims who rejected their crypto-Judaism, until the late-19th century they practiced endogamy, marrying only within their own community. They were politically active, and were prominent in the Young Turk revolution of 1908, which originated in Salonika. As Muslims, they were included in the population exchange in 1923. In the early years of the Turkish Republic, they continued to play an important role, as merchants and as supporters of Ataturk’s secular, modernising reforms. However, during the 20th century many of them have gradually assimilated into the broader Turkish society.
Their remarkable, eclectic mosque in Salonika reflects the complex, ambiguous identity of the Dönmeh. A hybrid of European and Islamic styles, fusing Baroque, neoclassical, and Byzantine, it also contains Jewish features. Walking up the road towards it, the initial impression is one of extraordinary oddness. As well as a Mihrab, pointing towards Mecca and the direction of Muslim prayer, the six-pointed Star of David is repeated around the exterior and interior of the mosque. The mosque did not function as such for long. Scarcely 20 years after it was built, its faithful departed for Turkey under the Lausanne Agreement. Some tried to claim they were not in fact Muslims, hoping to be excluded.
The Dönmeh never really fitted. Only in the diverse, cosmopolitan atmosphere that was Salonika before the Balkan Wars did they find their place. Perhaps that was why they supported Ataturk, hoping that they could find a new home in a modern, secular state. They were to be disappointed. Ataturk’s vaunted secularism was in reality a sham. The very core of the new Turkish identity was in fact based on religion. At the start of the new republic, Turks were defined as Muslims, and a Turk could be a Muslim from anywhere in the Balkans, no matter whether he had spoken Turkish or not, so long as he identified with the Turkish nation. A Christian from Turkey, by contrast, even if he spoke only Turkish, could not be accepted as part of the new Turkish nation, and had to be expelled to Greece. The aim of Ataturk’s secularism was to keep religion in its place, out of the sphere of government, so that he could set about building his modern republic unfettered by competition from institutions that had held immense power and importance under the Ottoman order. But within the state, one religious community, Sunni Islam, was given a privileged position, under firm state control, but favoured over any rivals, be they non-Muslim or other branches of Islam. In this world, the Dönmeh, with their esoteric brand of Islam, their fusion of different faiths, were decidedly suspect.
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