ABSTRACT
Information regarding the Sabetaists is not usually to be found in official records. The Sabetaists were Muslim, or accepted as Muslim, so not liable for the taxes paid by nonMuslims but liable for military service, which was extended after 1909. There is thus no mention of any category such as Dönme or Sabetaist in official records such as the population census or the Ottoman fiscal survey. It is also interesting to note that these names are not normally mentioned in memoirs. Nor is this community referred to in memoranda and reports regarding the political and social state of the country. A distinguishing feature of the Ottoman bureaucracy is that no reports describing the country were penned until a relatively late period. There were very few works such as the Halât-i Kahîre of the 16th century writer Gelibolulu Mustafa Ali or the Seyahatname of Evliya Çelebi. Memoranda and reform projects belong principally to the reign of Abdülhamid II in the 19th century. For example, the fact that prior to the Reform period, the Ottoman Administration received no official information concerning the qat leaf consumed in such large quantities in the Yemen4 demonstrates how long it took for interest to be awakened in an item of staple consumption in a province that had for three centuries formed part of the Ottoman Empire. Although a few brief references to the Sabetaists are to be found during Mithat Pasha’s period of office as Governor of Salonica, these are not treated in the literature. Nor has a systematic evaluation been carried out on consular reports regarding Salonica, as for example those presented by the Austrian-Hungarian Consul-General August von Kral.
