Elijah Capsali

Elijah Capsali (also Elijah ben Elkanah Capsali ; * between 1485 and 1490 in Candia on Crete ; † after 1555 there ) was a Cretan rabbi and historian . He is the author of an Ottoman and a Venetian chronicle .

Life

Elijah Capsali was born in Candia between 1485 and 1490 . He came from a long-established Jewish family. His great uncle Mose Capsali was a rabbi in Constantinople . His father, the rabbi and Kabbalist Elqana Capsali (†> 1523), studied in 1508 at the famous yeshiva of Jehuda Minz in Padua and then returned to Candia, where he married Pothula Capsali. There he helped the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 to settle in Crete.

Elijah also studied in Padua. To do this, he set out on a pilgrimage ship to Venice on November 11, 1508, where he arrived eight days later. From there he went to Padua, which belonged to the Republic of Venice , which was one of the few states in Italy that tolerated Jews. Juda Minz died in 1508, so Elija Capsali learned from Rabbi Iserlen.

When Habsburg troops occupied Verona in 1509 and threatened Padua ( League of Cambrai ), Elijah Capsali fled to Venice on May 24th . Here he resumed his studies for a short time - this time with Israel Ashkenazi, then with Meir Katzenelnbogen († 1565), the son-in-law of Juda Minz, whose son later became the head of the Brest community , and with Menahem Delmedigo - but returned returned to Candia on January 24, 1510 because of the threat of war. He continued his studies in Candia with Rabbi Isaac de Ingelheim, and then went back to Venice, which had in the meantime fended off the attacks of the League of Cambrai. Through his studies and language skills, he belonged to both the Ashkenazi and the Romansh Jews, especially since he spoke Greek and Italian.

From 1518 back in Candia, he took the position of the local rabbi and married the youngest daughter of Rabbi Judah Habib. From 1515 to 1519, 1526 to 1529 and 1538 to 1541 he was also appointed condestabile , a civil representative of the community. In the Venetian sources it appears as "Rebbi" and "dottor condestabile". He was also responsible for the taxation of the Jewish community and the necessary census.

During the plague year of 1523 - an epidemic brought by the refugees from Rhodes , which was conquered by the Ottomans in 1522 - he was responsible for maintaining the quarantine in the Jewish quarter. He himself was not allowed to leave the quarter, like the entire community. Since he was forced to inactivity, he began - according to his own account - to write an Ottoman chronicle ( Seder Elijahu Zuta ). Earlier (1517) he had written a history of Venice ( Sippure Venezia ).

Elijah's older brother David died around 1533. When an Ottoman fleet threatened Candia in 1541, the Greeks accused the Jews of treason and a mob threatened the Jewish streets. Thanks to the intervention of Elijah Capsali with the Venetian authorities, a massacre was averted. Capsali then initiated a memorial service on this day, which he himself records as " Purim of Candia".

As Rabbi of Candia, Capsali had extensive correspondence with rabbinical teaching centers in Padua, Venice and Egypt. In view of the far-reaching conquests of Christian territories - such as Constantinople in 1453, Egypt, Palestine in 1517 and the nearby Rhodes in 1522, and the siege of Vienna in 1529 - Capsali believed in a defeat of Christianity and a coming of the Messiah. He died in Crete after 1555.

In addition to the chronicles, he left a legendary story of his great-uncle Moses Capsali, who died in 1500.

Works

• Divrei ha-Yamim le-Malkhut Venezia ( Sippure Venezia : Chronicle of the Kingdom of Venice) 1517
• Seder Eliyahu Zuta (The Little Order of Elias) 1523
  • Seder Eliyahu Zuta by Rabbi Eliyahu Ben Elqana Capsali 3 vols. (Heb.), A. Shmuelevitz, S. Simonson, M. Benayahu (eds.), Jerusalem 1975-1983.
  • Chronique de l'expulsion. Seder Eliahou Zouta (Chapters 66-82, French), Simone Sultan-Bohbot (ed.), Paris 1994.
• Taqqanot Qandiya: Statutae Iudaorum Candiae
• Teshuvot: Wolves that Savage Benjamin: The Book of Beauty and Bonds , Meir Benayahu (ed.), Tel-Aviv 1990.

literature

• Charles Berlin: A Sixteenth-Century Hebrew Chronicle of the Ottoman Empire: The Seder Elyahu Zuta of Elijah Capsali and its Message. In: Ders .: Studies in Jewish Bibliography, History and Literature in Honor of I. Edward Kiev. KTAV, New York 1971, ISBN 0-87068-143-5 , pp. 21-44.
• Robert Bonfil: Jewish Attitudes Toward History and Historical Writing in Pre-Modern Times. In: Jewish History. Vol. 11 (1997), H. 1, pp. 7-40, doi: 10.1007 / BF02335351 .
• Ann Bremer: Portrait of the Rabbi as a Young Humanist: A Reading of Elijah Capsali's Chronicle of Venice. In: Italia. Studi e ricerche sulla storia, la cultura e la letteratura degli ebrei d'Italia. 21: 37-60 (1994).
• Martin Jacobs: The ambivalent image of Islam of a Venetian Jew of the 16th century: Capsalis Ottoman Chronicle. In: Judaica. Vol. 58 (2002), H. 1, pp. 2-17.
• Martin Jacobs: Islamic History in Jewish Chronicles. Hebrew historiography of the 16th and 17th centuries. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-16-148156-9 , pp. 58–82, 128–184.
• Martin Jacobs: Exposed to all the Currents of the Mediterranean: A Sixteenth-Century Venetian Rabbi on Muslim History. In: Association for Jewish Studies Review. Vol. 29 (2005), H. 1, pp. 33-60, doi: 10.1017 / S0364009405000036 .
• Aleida Paudice: Between several worlds. The life and writings of Elia Capsali. The historical works of a 16th-century Cretan rabbi. Meidenbauer, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-89975-706-4 .
• Aleida Paudice: Elia Capsali . In: Cemal Kafadar, Hakan Karateke, Cornell Fleischer (eds.): Historians of the Ottoman Empire ( http://ottomanhistorians.uchicago.edu ), March 2006. (English)
• Cecil Roth :  Capsali, Elijah. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 4, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865932-9 , pp. 456-457 (English).
• Aryeh Shmuelevitz: Capsali as a Source for Ottoman History, 1450-1523. In: International Journal of Middle East Studies. Vol. 9 (1978), H. 3, pp. 339-344, doi: 10.1017 / S0020743800033614 .

Web links

• Louis Ginzberg :  Elijah ben Elkanah Capsali. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906.

Remarks

1. ↑ ( Historians of the Ottoman Empire , University of Chicago).
2. ↑ On the website of the Chicago University incorrectly named "Meir Katznellebogen" (see below).