ABSTRACT
The Ottoman Empire was not a “multicultural heaven,” as Turkish nationalist nostalgia often portrays it. According to the Sharia law, non-Muslims were second-class subjects, and this did not change until the Tanzimat years. The very existence of the millet system as an organizational principle and founding block of the Ottoman Empire has sparked considerable controversy among historians.2 On the other hand, without being tolerant in the contemporary meaning, the Ottoman Empire was more tolerant toward religious minorities than Christian empires and states contemporary with it. It is worth remembering that refugee waves were crossing the Mediterranean in both directions. While a part of the Byzantine Greek elite fled to Western Europe following the collapse of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, thousands of Sephardic Jews of the Iberian peninsula found safe haven in the Ottoman Empire, following their expulsion in the late fifteenth century. Certain segments of Ottoman administration and trade were open to non-Muslims. For generations, Phanariot (prominent Istanbul) Greeks manned key positions in the Danubian provinces and the foreign service of the Ottoman Empire. Greeks, Armenians, and Jews controlled large parts of Ottoman trade.
