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Θεσσαλονίκη, πόλη των φαντασμάτων: Χριστιανοί, Μουσουλμάνοι και Εβραίοι, 1430-1950
Τι είναι αυτό που κάνει τη Θεσσαλονίκη μια τόσο μοναδική πόλη; Νέα κι ωστόσο ήδη κλασική, αυτή η μελέτη αναζητεί την απάντηση στα πεντακόσια χρόνια της νεότερης ιστορίας της, κατά τα οποία αναδείχθηκε πρώτα ως οθωμανική και αργότερα ως ελληνική μητρόπολη. Στην ίδια περίοδο ήταν επίσης μια εβραϊκή πόλη, καταφύγιο για χιλιάδες Σεφαραδίτες κυνηγημένους από την ισπανική Ιερά Εξέταση. Χριστιανοί, μουσουλμάνοι και εβραίοι σχημάτιζαν έτσι μια από τις πιο πολύμορφες κοινωνίες της Μεσογείου και της Ευρώπης.
Ξαναζωντανεύοντας αριστοτεχνικά αυτό τον χαμένο κόσμο, ο συγγραφέας μας οδηγεί, ανάμεσα από ερειπωμένες ρωμαϊκές αψίδες, βυζαντινές εκκλησίες και τουρκικά τζαμιά, στα ταβερνεία και τα χαμάμ, τους κήπους, τα παλάτια και τα μπορντέλα της παλιάς πόλης· εκεί όπου αιγύπτιοι έμποροι και ουκρανοί σκλάβοι, τούρκοι πασάδες και ευρωπαίοι ταξιδιώτες διασταυρώνονταν με Ορθόδοξους προσκυνητές, Καθολικούς ιεραπόστολους, ισπανόφωνους ραβίνους και δερβίσηδες Σούφι, αλλά και με αλβανούς ληστές και κατασκόπους των Μεγάλων Δυνάμεων εκεί όπου ακόμα και οι λούστροι, οι χαμάληδες και οι μικροπωλητές μιλούσαν μισή ντουζίνα γλώσσες στην προκυμαία και το παζάρι.
Η καθημερινή ζωή και η εθνοτική και θρησκευτική αλληλεπίδραση είναι θέματα που ερευνά διεξοδικά ο Μαζάουερ, προτού δείξει πώς αλλάζει η τύχη της πόλης στον εικοστό αιώνα, με την κατάρρευση της αυτοκρατορίας και την έλευση των εθνικών κρατών. Πόλεμος, πυρκαγιά, προσφυγιά, γενοκτονία και ολοκαύτωμα αλλάζουν ριζικά τη Θεσσαλονίκη, που χάνει πρώτα τους μουσουλμάνους της, με την ανταλλαγή πληθυσμών, κι έπειτα τους εβραίους, στο δρόμο για το Άουσβιτς. Αυτό που αναδύεται αργά μέσα απ' τις στάχτες είναι μια σύγχρονη, δυναμική ελληνική "συμπρωτεύουσα". Ωστόσο η ατμόσφαιρα της πόλης είναι ακόμα στοιχειωμένη από τα φαντάσματα των μεγάλων ιστορικών κοινοτήτων που τη μοιράστηκαν, από τις περιπέτειες των λαών και των ανθρώπων που συναντήθηκαν στην πολυτάραχη ιστορία της. Στη ζωντανή τους μνήμη είναι αφιερωμένο αυτό το βιβλίο.
Ξαναζωντανεύοντας αριστοτεχνικά αυτό τον χαμένο κόσμο, ο συγγραφέας μας οδηγεί, ανάμεσα από ερειπωμένες ρωμαϊκές αψίδες, βυζαντινές εκκλησίες και τουρκικά τζαμιά, στα ταβερνεία και τα χαμάμ, τους κήπους, τα παλάτια και τα μπορντέλα της παλιάς πόλης· εκεί όπου αιγύπτιοι έμποροι και ουκρανοί σκλάβοι, τούρκοι πασάδες και ευρωπαίοι ταξιδιώτες διασταυρώνονταν με Ορθόδοξους προσκυνητές, Καθολικούς ιεραπόστολους, ισπανόφωνους ραβίνους και δερβίσηδες Σούφι, αλλά και με αλβανούς ληστές και κατασκόπους των Μεγάλων Δυνάμεων εκεί όπου ακόμα και οι λούστροι, οι χαμάληδες και οι μικροπωλητές μιλούσαν μισή ντουζίνα γλώσσες στην προκυμαία και το παζάρι.
Η καθημερινή ζωή και η εθνοτική και θρησκευτική αλληλεπίδραση είναι θέματα που ερευνά διεξοδικά ο Μαζάουερ, προτού δείξει πώς αλλάζει η τύχη της πόλης στον εικοστό αιώνα, με την κατάρρευση της αυτοκρατορίας και την έλευση των εθνικών κρατών. Πόλεμος, πυρκαγιά, προσφυγιά, γενοκτονία και ολοκαύτωμα αλλάζουν ριζικά τη Θεσσαλονίκη, που χάνει πρώτα τους μουσουλμάνους της, με την ανταλλαγή πληθυσμών, κι έπειτα τους εβραίους, στο δρόμο για το Άουσβιτς. Αυτό που αναδύεται αργά μέσα απ' τις στάχτες είναι μια σύγχρονη, δυναμική ελληνική "συμπρωτεύουσα". Ωστόσο η ατμόσφαιρα της πόλης είναι ακόμα στοιχειωμένη από τα φαντάσματα των μεγάλων ιστορικών κοινοτήτων που τη μοιράστηκαν, από τις περιπέτειες των λαών και των ανθρώπων που συναντήθηκαν στην πολυτάραχη ιστορία της. Στη ζωντανή τους μνήμη είναι αφιερωμένο αυτό το βιβλίο.
607 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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3570 people want to read
About the author
Mark Mazower
28 books406 followersMark Mazower is a historian and writer, specializing in modern Greece, twentieth-century Europe, and international history. His books include Salonica City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize; Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, winner of the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History; and Governing the World: The History of an Idea. He is currently the Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University, and his articles and reviews on history and current affairs appear regularly in the Financial Times, the Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, and New Republic.
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July 17, 2025
The historical Hellenistic Age is defined as the period from the death of the Greco-Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great (323 BC) to the conquest of Egypt by Rome (30 BC). However, the influence of Hellenistic religions extended to the time of Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor (d. AD 337); these religions have been confined to those active within the Mediterranean world. Alexander and his successors' empire created a fantastic world community that, whether in Macedonian, Greco-Roman, or its later Christian form, established a cultural unity destined to be broken only 1,000 years later with the advent of Muslim imperialism (beginning in the 7th century AD). This empire was so vast as indeed to stagger the imagination. Extending from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Indus River, it took in an area of some 1.5 million square miles (3.9 million square kilometers. Most of Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Africa, Persia, and the borderlands of India had a total population of more than 54 million.
Hellenistic religions examine the dynamics of religious persistence and change in this vast and culturally diverse region. Every faith in this period occurred in its homeland and diasporic centers—foreign cities where its adherents lived as minority groups. For example, they worshipped Isis (Egypt), Baal (Syria), the Great Mother (Phrygia), Yahweh (Palestine), and Mithra (Kurdistan) in their native lands as well as in Rome and other cosmopolitan centers. With few exceptions, these religions were initially tied to a specific geographic area, and people had traditions extending back centuries before the Hellenistic period. In their homeland, Jews were inextricably tied to local loyalties and ambitions. Each persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements. (Centring on a deliverer figure) seeking to overthrow Greco-Roman political and cultural domination. Indeed, many of these native religions underwent a conscious revival of archaic forms during this period, attempting to recover earlier practices. Old texts in native languages (especially those relevant to themes such as kingship) were recopied, they restored national temples, and they revived ancient and mythic traditions. From Palestine to Persia, concerning the deiancientty's hidden purposes) and apocalyptic traditions. (Referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events) represent these central concerns—i.e., national destiny, the importance of traditional lore, the saving power of kingship, and the revival of mythic images. Likewise, these native traditions underwent Hellenization (modifications based on Greek cultural ideas) but frequently differed from their diasporic counterparts.
These native religions also had diasporic centers that underwent significant changes during the Hellenistic period. There was a noticeable lessening of concern among the dispersed religious group members for the destiny and fortunes of the native land, and a relative severing of the traditional ties between religion and the land. Specific cult centers remained sites of pilgrimage or objects of sentimental attachment. Still, it weakened the old beliefs in national deities and the deity's inextricable relationship to certain sacred places. Rather than a god who dwelt in his temple, the diasporic traditions evolved complicated techniques for achieving visions, epiphanies (manifestations of a god), or sacred journeys to a transcendent god. This case shifted from concern for a religion of national prosperity to individual salvation, from focusing on a particular ethnic group to respecting every human being. The prophet or savior replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure. There were two circles in the diasporic centers, a characteristic feature of immigrant groups. The first (or inner circle) was composed of devout, full-time adherents of the cult. The deity retained a separate and decisive identity (e.g., Yahweh, Zeus, Serapis, and Isis). Its membership grew from the ethnic group for whom the Creator was indigenous, and the group continued to speak the native language.
The second (or outer) circle was composed of second- and third-generation immigrants or those who had converted from groups whose religion was not native. These individuals tended to speak Greek, which began the lengthy reinterpretation of the archaic religion. Ancient sacred books were translated or paraphrased into Greek—e.g., the 4th–3rd-century-BC Babylonian priest Berosus' version of Babylonian materials, the 4th–3rd-century-BC Egyptian priest Manetho's Egyptian accounts, the Jewish Septuagint (Greek version of the Old Testament), or the 1st-century-AD Jewish historian Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, and the ethnic histories of the 1st-century-BC Greek writer Alexander Polyhistor. In each case, the material is explained in light of common Hellenistic ideals and accords with the diasporic community's unique traditions and needs. The inner and outer circles fostered esotericism (secrets to be known only by initiates)—the former through its use of the native language and oral recollection of traditions from the homeland, and the latter through its use of allegory and other similar methods to radically reinterpret the sacred texts. The difference between these groups was responsible for many shifts in the character of the religion. Most notable was the change from elements characteristic of native faith in its definition of religion. (e.g., local tradition and custom, informal knowledge orally transmitted, and birth) to formulate dogma, creeds, law codes, rules, conversion, and admission characteristics of diasporic religion. It was a shift from "birthright" to "convinced" faith.
The history of Hellenistic religions is rarely the history of genuinely new faiths. Instead, they best understood it as studying archaic Mediterranean beliefs, in their Hellenistic phase within their native and diasporic settings. It is usually by concentrating on the diaspora that the Hellenistic character of a cult is described.
Learn more: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hell...
Hellenistic religions examine the dynamics of religious persistence and change in this vast and culturally diverse region. Every faith in this period occurred in its homeland and diasporic centers—foreign cities where its adherents lived as minority groups. For example, they worshipped Isis (Egypt), Baal (Syria), the Great Mother (Phrygia), Yahweh (Palestine), and Mithra (Kurdistan) in their native lands as well as in Rome and other cosmopolitan centers. With few exceptions, these religions were initially tied to a specific geographic area, and people had traditions extending back centuries before the Hellenistic period. In their homeland, Jews were inextricably tied to local loyalties and ambitions. Each persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements. (Centring on a deliverer figure) seeking to overthrow Greco-Roman political and cultural domination. Indeed, many of these native religions underwent a conscious revival of archaic forms during this period, attempting to recover earlier practices. Old texts in native languages (especially those relevant to themes such as kingship) were recopied, they restored national temples, and they revived ancient and mythic traditions. From Palestine to Persia, concerning the deiancientty's hidden purposes) and apocalyptic traditions. (Referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events) represent these central concerns—i.e., national destiny, the importance of traditional lore, the saving power of kingship, and the revival of mythic images. Likewise, these native traditions underwent Hellenization (modifications based on Greek cultural ideas) but frequently differed from their diasporic counterparts.
These native religions also had diasporic centers that underwent significant changes during the Hellenistic period. There was a noticeable lessening of concern among the dispersed religious group members for the destiny and fortunes of the native land, and a relative severing of the traditional ties between religion and the land. Specific cult centers remained sites of pilgrimage or objects of sentimental attachment. Still, it weakened the old beliefs in national deities and the deity's inextricable relationship to certain sacred places. Rather than a god who dwelt in his temple, the diasporic traditions evolved complicated techniques for achieving visions, epiphanies (manifestations of a god), or sacred journeys to a transcendent god. This case shifted from concern for a religion of national prosperity to individual salvation, from focusing on a particular ethnic group to respecting every human being. The prophet or savior replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure. There were two circles in the diasporic centers, a characteristic feature of immigrant groups. The first (or inner circle) was composed of devout, full-time adherents of the cult. The deity retained a separate and decisive identity (e.g., Yahweh, Zeus, Serapis, and Isis). Its membership grew from the ethnic group for whom the Creator was indigenous, and the group continued to speak the native language.
The second (or outer) circle was composed of second- and third-generation immigrants or those who had converted from groups whose religion was not native. These individuals tended to speak Greek, which began the lengthy reinterpretation of the archaic religion. Ancient sacred books were translated or paraphrased into Greek—e.g., the 4th–3rd-century-BC Babylonian priest Berosus' version of Babylonian materials, the 4th–3rd-century-BC Egyptian priest Manetho's Egyptian accounts, the Jewish Septuagint (Greek version of the Old Testament), or the 1st-century-AD Jewish historian Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, and the ethnic histories of the 1st-century-BC Greek writer Alexander Polyhistor. In each case, the material is explained in light of common Hellenistic ideals and accords with the diasporic community's unique traditions and needs. The inner and outer circles fostered esotericism (secrets to be known only by initiates)—the former through its use of the native language and oral recollection of traditions from the homeland, and the latter through its use of allegory and other similar methods to radically reinterpret the sacred texts. The difference between these groups was responsible for many shifts in the character of the religion. Most notable was the change from elements characteristic of native faith in its definition of religion. (e.g., local tradition and custom, informal knowledge orally transmitted, and birth) to formulate dogma, creeds, law codes, rules, conversion, and admission characteristics of diasporic religion. It was a shift from "birthright" to "convinced" faith.
The history of Hellenistic religions is rarely the history of genuinely new faiths. Instead, they best understood it as studying archaic Mediterranean beliefs, in their Hellenistic phase within their native and diasporic settings. It is usually by concentrating on the diaspora that the Hellenistic character of a cult is described.
Learn more: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hell...
July 15, 2009
The history of this city contains so many of the Big Human Themes. Exile, nostalgia. The course of empire. The maintenance of collective memory. The ways in which religions in close contact melt into each other. Nationalism vs. the Cosmopolis. The limits of tolerance, and the fated vulnerability of coastal, syncretic cities (I’m thinking of St. Petersburg and New Orleans, too). And most infuriatingly, the ludicrous imposture of the scoundrels who believe in tribal purity and uncomplicated cultural continuity. Mazower calls Salonica a “city of ghosts” because the postwar, self-consciously Greek city of high rises sits on the site of other Salonicas, the Ottoman and Jewish Salonicas that aren’t even touristically visible in attenuated but picturesquely restored quarters—these other Salonicas have vanished, either by natural disaster (a fire in 1917 destroyed 75% of the old Jewish neighborhoods in the city center) or by the deliberate dynamiting of mosques and the bulldozing—done with the Nazi’s approval but not at their insistence—of the one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe (it was 35 times larger than that of Prague’s).
Salonica was also nicknamed “City of Refugees,” which could just as easily have been Mazower’s subtitle. Not only was the city a refuge, over many centuries, for millions of the displaced, huge portions of its citizens were driven away, forced to become refugees. The first were the thousands of Byzantine Christians the Ottomans sold into slavery after the 1430 conquest. The city lay barren and depopulated until 1492, when Sephardic Jews expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella in their own homogenizing nation-building project settled in the city. The Ottomans were concerned with taxation and practiced a hands-off kind of governance, the Christians were still a small minority, so Salonica thus became a predominantly Jewish city, and a vibrant center of their learning and commerce. Politically Ottoman, ethnographically Jewish, geographically Bulgarian is how one 19th century observer described it.
With the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire the city’s Muslim population became the refugees. The Greek state, which had taken Salonica in the first Balkan War of 1912, and the now-Turkey, agreed in 1923 to exchange populations: the Greeks would send all the Muslims to Turkey, and Turkey would “repatriate” their Christians. Here is religious-tinged nationalism at its most farcical. The “Greeks” expelled from Turkey thought of themselves as “Eastern Christians”—they had no sense of themselves as Greeks, and didn’t usually speak Greek; they spoke Turkish, as one would expect of communities that had existed for centuries in Anatolia, Thrace, and around the Black Sea. The Muslims expelled from Salonica were in a similar position: they’d been rooted in the city and in the Macedonian and Bulgarian hinterlands for centuries, thought of themselves as Ottoman subjects, and did not understand—and when they did, scarcely approved of—the secularist Kemalist nation state of “Turkey.”
The refugees from Turkey now tipped the balance of power in the city, which hadn’t rebuilt after the 1917 fire and now had trouble housing and employing all the newcomers. This scarcity of resources affected the city’s Jews as well: after the Nazis deported 45,000 to Auschwitz, the new “Greeks” wasted no time expropriating Jewish property and destroying the Jewish cemetery, over which a new university was built (its administrators to this day refuse to erect some kind of acknowledgement). The few thousand Salonican Jews who survived to return found it impossible to get much back. In time, after a few generations, the refugees from Turkey assimilated to Greek culture (Mazower writes that there is some nationalist embarrasment at being of refugee stock--and with understandable reason, as the refugees were not Greeks), and the city is now what the nation-builders of early 20th century Greece had envisioned: an ethnically and religiously homogenous “Greek” city, with its statue of Alexander the Great (he died before the city was founded), its Ottoman and Jewish pasts relegated to a hiccup between the imagined continuity of the Byzantine Empire and Modern Greece.
This is the spine of the book but there is much more, of course. Mazower gives a fascinating account of the functioning of the Ottoman Empire, its policies for the ruling of a polyglot, religiously diverse empire. I really enjoyed the picture of the golden age of Salonican Jewry, and of the community’s durably Hispanic character; the chapter on the Orientalisms that fueled European tourism and amateur archeology was excellent as well. There’s also great stuff on Levantine commerce, and its attendant nuisances, piracy on the seas and brigandage in the hills. Mazower knows his Great Powers diplomacy; he also knows urban planning, the psychology of charismatic false messiahs, Balkan cabaret music, and the intricacies of rabbinic controversy. I learned more about the rise of modern Greece and the two Balkan Wars than I had previously suspected. If Salonica was a crossroads of nations, then it follows that its history will embrace much of the world.
Salonica was also nicknamed “City of Refugees,” which could just as easily have been Mazower’s subtitle. Not only was the city a refuge, over many centuries, for millions of the displaced, huge portions of its citizens were driven away, forced to become refugees. The first were the thousands of Byzantine Christians the Ottomans sold into slavery after the 1430 conquest. The city lay barren and depopulated until 1492, when Sephardic Jews expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella in their own homogenizing nation-building project settled in the city. The Ottomans were concerned with taxation and practiced a hands-off kind of governance, the Christians were still a small minority, so Salonica thus became a predominantly Jewish city, and a vibrant center of their learning and commerce. Politically Ottoman, ethnographically Jewish, geographically Bulgarian is how one 19th century observer described it.
With the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire the city’s Muslim population became the refugees. The Greek state, which had taken Salonica in the first Balkan War of 1912, and the now-Turkey, agreed in 1923 to exchange populations: the Greeks would send all the Muslims to Turkey, and Turkey would “repatriate” their Christians. Here is religious-tinged nationalism at its most farcical. The “Greeks” expelled from Turkey thought of themselves as “Eastern Christians”—they had no sense of themselves as Greeks, and didn’t usually speak Greek; they spoke Turkish, as one would expect of communities that had existed for centuries in Anatolia, Thrace, and around the Black Sea. The Muslims expelled from Salonica were in a similar position: they’d been rooted in the city and in the Macedonian and Bulgarian hinterlands for centuries, thought of themselves as Ottoman subjects, and did not understand—and when they did, scarcely approved of—the secularist Kemalist nation state of “Turkey.”
The refugees from Turkey now tipped the balance of power in the city, which hadn’t rebuilt after the 1917 fire and now had trouble housing and employing all the newcomers. This scarcity of resources affected the city’s Jews as well: after the Nazis deported 45,000 to Auschwitz, the new “Greeks” wasted no time expropriating Jewish property and destroying the Jewish cemetery, over which a new university was built (its administrators to this day refuse to erect some kind of acknowledgement). The few thousand Salonican Jews who survived to return found it impossible to get much back. In time, after a few generations, the refugees from Turkey assimilated to Greek culture (Mazower writes that there is some nationalist embarrasment at being of refugee stock--and with understandable reason, as the refugees were not Greeks), and the city is now what the nation-builders of early 20th century Greece had envisioned: an ethnically and religiously homogenous “Greek” city, with its statue of Alexander the Great (he died before the city was founded), its Ottoman and Jewish pasts relegated to a hiccup between the imagined continuity of the Byzantine Empire and Modern Greece.
This is the spine of the book but there is much more, of course. Mazower gives a fascinating account of the functioning of the Ottoman Empire, its policies for the ruling of a polyglot, religiously diverse empire. I really enjoyed the picture of the golden age of Salonican Jewry, and of the community’s durably Hispanic character; the chapter on the Orientalisms that fueled European tourism and amateur archeology was excellent as well. There’s also great stuff on Levantine commerce, and its attendant nuisances, piracy on the seas and brigandage in the hills. Mazower knows his Great Powers diplomacy; he also knows urban planning, the psychology of charismatic false messiahs, Balkan cabaret music, and the intricacies of rabbinic controversy. I learned more about the rise of modern Greece and the two Balkan Wars than I had previously suspected. If Salonica was a crossroads of nations, then it follows that its history will embrace much of the world.
December 24, 2017
Συγκλονιστικό βιβλίο. Μεγάλος ιστορικός ο Mazower.
January 30, 2020
Το βιβλίο αυτό που λέτε το είχα αγοράσει πριν δέκα χρόνια από την Θεσσαλονίκη. Όλα καλά μέχρι εδώ. Η αλήθεια είναι ότι το πήρα κατά λάθος, γιατί είχα πιει 2-3 καραφάκια τσίπουρο παραπάνω και νόμιζα ότι ήταν ένα άλλο βιβλίο που αναφερόταν σε μεταφυσικές ιστορίες της πόλης. Αμ δε. Αυτό βέβαια θα είχε αποφευχθεί αν έβλεπα προσεκτικά το εξώφυλλο και διάβαζα ότι ο υπότιτλος αναγράφει «Χριστιανοί, Μουσουλμάνοι και Εβραίοι 1430 – 1950».
(ΗΘΙΚΟ ΔΙΔΑΓΜΑ: ΜΗΝ ΑΓΟΡΑΖΕΤΕ ΒΙΒΛΙΑ ΥΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΕΠΗΡΕΙΑ ΑΛΚΟΟΛ.)
Τα χρόνια πέρασαν, άλλαξα διάφορες πόλεις και το βιβλίο με συντρόφευε πιστά. ΧΩΡΙΣ ΝΑ ΔΙΑΒΑΣΤΕΙ. Μέχρι που ήρθε ο καιρός του και μπορώ να πω ότι είναι ένα από τα ωραιότερα (και πιο αντικειμενικά) ιστορικά βιβλία που κυκλοφορούν. Ή, πιο σωστά, ένα από τα καλύτερα βιβλία γ ε ν ι κ ά. Αν δεν ξέρετε την ιστορία της Θεσσαλονίκης, θα εκπλαγείτε ευχάριστα και θα κρατήσετε π ο λ λ έ ς σημειώσεις. Αν ξέρετε, θα συνειδητοποιήσετε πόσο είναι αυτά που δεν ξέρατε (ναι, θα κρατήσετε και εσείς με τη σειρά σας π ο λ λ έ ς σημειώσεις. Δεν γλιτώνετε έτσι απλά).
Ο Mazower αφουγκράστηκε τους ήχους της πόλης και τους ψιθύρους των φαντασμάτων διαφορετικών εθνικοτήτων, θρησκευτικών/πολιτικών πεποιθήσεων και τους έδωσε φωνή. Και έδειξε σε τι βαθμό αλλάζει μια πόλη όταν αλλάζουν και οι άνθρωποί της. (Εν τέλει, πόσο και πώς αλλάζει κάθε πόλη εξαρτάται από εμάς.)
(ΤΕΛΙΚΟ ΗΘΙΚΟ ΔΙΔΑΓΜΑ: ΟΙ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΕΠΙΛΟΓΕΣ ΥΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΕΠΗΡΕΙΑ ΑΛΚΟΟΛ ΜΠΟΡΕΙ ΝΑ ΒΓΟΥΝ ΣΕ ΚΑΛΟ.)
(ΗΘΙΚΟ ΔΙΔΑΓΜΑ: ΜΗΝ ΑΓΟΡΑΖΕΤΕ ΒΙΒΛΙΑ ΥΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΕΠΗΡΕΙΑ ΑΛΚΟΟΛ.)
Τα χρόνια πέρασαν, άλλαξα διάφορες πόλεις και το βιβλίο με συντρόφευε πιστά. ΧΩΡΙΣ ΝΑ ΔΙΑΒΑΣΤΕΙ. Μέχρι που ήρθε ο καιρός του και μπορώ να πω ότι είναι ένα από τα ωραιότερα (και πιο αντικειμενικά) ιστορικά βιβλία που κυκλοφορούν. Ή, πιο σωστά, ένα από τα καλύτερα βιβλία γ ε ν ι κ ά. Αν δεν ξέρετε την ιστορία της Θεσσαλονίκης, θα εκπλαγείτε ευχάριστα και θα κρατήσετε π ο λ λ έ ς σημειώσεις. Αν ξέρετε, θα συνειδητοποιήσετε πόσο είναι αυτά που δεν ξέρατε (ναι, θα κρατήσετε και εσείς με τη σειρά σας π ο λ λ έ ς σημειώσεις. Δεν γλιτώνετε έτσι απλά).
Ο Mazower αφουγκράστηκε τους ήχους της πόλης και τους ψιθύρους των φαντασμάτων διαφορετικών εθνικοτήτων, θρησκευτικών/πολιτικών πεποιθήσεων και τους έδωσε φωνή. Και έδειξε σε τι βαθμό αλλάζει μια πόλη όταν αλλάζουν και οι άνθρωποί της. (Εν τέλει, πόσο και πώς αλλάζει κάθε πόλη εξαρτάται από εμάς.)
(ΤΕΛΙΚΟ ΗΘΙΚΟ ΔΙΔΑΓΜΑ: ΟΙ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΕΠΙΛΟΓΕΣ ΥΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΕΠΗΡΕΙΑ ΑΛΚΟΟΛ ΜΠΟΡΕΙ ΝΑ ΒΓΟΥΝ ΣΕ ΚΑΛΟ.)
August 30, 2018
I've been wanting to write a proper review of Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950 since I finished it some weeks ago, but have been so sidetracked by other reading that I'm not going to achieve that goal.
Here are some notes:
Salonika’s central paradox – its 2000 years of continuous urban life has been marked by sharp discontinuities and breaks. The Ottoman city has effectively vanished from sight. So has the Jewish presence in the city, whose life, Mazower says, they had dominated for centuries and Jews were still the largest ethnic group in 1912. Some were wealthy business men but many more were poor. Here, as elsewhere, it was the Nazis who brought centuries of Jewish life to an abrupt end.
Although Greeks, Jews and Muslims lived in Salonika simultaneously for centuries, the historians of each community have ignored the other groups, and they have taken sharply different views of the same events, reflecting ethnic and national divisions.
The real challenge, Mazower says, is ‘not merely to tell the story of this remarkable place as one of cultural and religious co-existence - … - but to see the experiences of Christians, Jews and Muslims within the terms of a single encompassing narrative’, to include all what he calls ‘the radical discontinuities – the deportations, evictons, forced resettlements and genocide’ as well the long continuities.
He traces arrival and collapse of empires, the shift from identities based on religion into those based on ‘nation’ – Muslims turned into Turks, Christians into Greeks, and in the end the Greeks won the territory. The book ends in 1950, by when Salonica’s Muslims had been deported to Turkey, Turkish Christians had been deported to Greece, and the Jews had been deported by the Germans to their deaths.
I have also read Mazower's The Balkans: A Short History in the last couple of weeks, and will review that as it is much shorter, easier to read and deals with all the main themes that set the history of Salonica apart from most histories of individual cities.
I was fascinated most by beginning to see what it meant to be an Ottoman city, with the Ottoman system of government delivered through religious communities as well as the central government.
I was also fascinated to learn of the late rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, in which people identified themselves as Muslims, Christians or Jews rather than Turks or Greeks, until the final collapse of the Empire, with many re-drawing of borders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and forced expulsions of religious groups between territories in the old Ottoman lands.
Mazower pays a lot of attention to the rise of Greek nationalism. I was astonished to learn, for instance, that the Greeks invaded Turkey in 1921, with great notions of reclaiming territories of ancient Greece and the Byzantine empire. Far from winning, they were utterly defeated and the Orthodox Christians who had lived for hundred of years in Anatolia or Thrace were forced to flee to Greece, from which Muslims were expelled in turn.
It's a fascinating book, and one I'm likely to revisit.
August 30 2018 Update
I've just finished reading Mazower's The Balkans: A Short History and would have got more out of the history of Salonika if I'd read the wider, much shorter, history of the region first.
Here are some notes:
Salonika’s central paradox – its 2000 years of continuous urban life has been marked by sharp discontinuities and breaks. The Ottoman city has effectively vanished from sight. So has the Jewish presence in the city, whose life, Mazower says, they had dominated for centuries and Jews were still the largest ethnic group in 1912. Some were wealthy business men but many more were poor. Here, as elsewhere, it was the Nazis who brought centuries of Jewish life to an abrupt end.
Although Greeks, Jews and Muslims lived in Salonika simultaneously for centuries, the historians of each community have ignored the other groups, and they have taken sharply different views of the same events, reflecting ethnic and national divisions.
The real challenge, Mazower says, is ‘not merely to tell the story of this remarkable place as one of cultural and religious co-existence - … - but to see the experiences of Christians, Jews and Muslims within the terms of a single encompassing narrative’, to include all what he calls ‘the radical discontinuities – the deportations, evictons, forced resettlements and genocide’ as well the long continuities.
He traces arrival and collapse of empires, the shift from identities based on religion into those based on ‘nation’ – Muslims turned into Turks, Christians into Greeks, and in the end the Greeks won the territory. The book ends in 1950, by when Salonica’s Muslims had been deported to Turkey, Turkish Christians had been deported to Greece, and the Jews had been deported by the Germans to their deaths.
I have also read Mazower's The Balkans: A Short History in the last couple of weeks, and will review that as it is much shorter, easier to read and deals with all the main themes that set the history of Salonica apart from most histories of individual cities.
I was fascinated most by beginning to see what it meant to be an Ottoman city, with the Ottoman system of government delivered through religious communities as well as the central government.
I was also fascinated to learn of the late rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, in which people identified themselves as Muslims, Christians or Jews rather than Turks or Greeks, until the final collapse of the Empire, with many re-drawing of borders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and forced expulsions of religious groups between territories in the old Ottoman lands.
Mazower pays a lot of attention to the rise of Greek nationalism. I was astonished to learn, for instance, that the Greeks invaded Turkey in 1921, with great notions of reclaiming territories of ancient Greece and the Byzantine empire. Far from winning, they were utterly defeated and the Orthodox Christians who had lived for hundred of years in Anatolia or Thrace were forced to flee to Greece, from which Muslims were expelled in turn.
It's a fascinating book, and one I'm likely to revisit.
August 30 2018 Update
I've just finished reading Mazower's The Balkans: A Short History and would have got more out of the history of Salonika if I'd read the wider, much shorter, history of the region first.
November 22, 2016
Mazower writes in the introduction that this book is the product of nigh on 20 years of research and writing after a trip to Salonica with the army. His passion for and knowledge of seemingly every aspect of the city’s history was breath-taking. The city’s changing architecture was explored in the same loving detail as the changes in the city’s religious communities.
This wealth of knowledge and detail is even more fascinating when taking into account the fact that parts of the city and their respective histories have been obliterated by successive conquerors and natural disasters (the conquering Greeks back in 1912, a fire in 1917 that wiped out three-quarters of the city, the Nazis who approved of the destruction of mosques and one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe to name but a few).
But Salonica, City of Ghosts, does not just confine itself to the early to mid-20th century (although the 20th century is the era in which Mazower specialises). Instead it encompasses the city’s early years, even straying back to pay homage to a certain memorable Roman before working its way up until (and including) the Balkan conflicts. Mazower brought up issues that the current administration would probably prefer to be swept under the carpet. The destruction of the Jewish cemetery, mentioned above, has still not been acknowledged or apologised for. Ironically a university, a building that should be a beacon of light and knowledge and of truth has been built over it, without a word written about the building’s foundations.
With knowledge like that ringing in my ears, it is at times hard to imagine this now thoroughly Greek place as being the ethnically and culturally diverse place of refuge for groups hounded in other parts of Europe.
To paraphrase Mazower, only ghosts keep the memories now. But in reading this book, the ghosts of the past- of the truth- stirred and walked with me for a while down the streets of memory in a city I may never walk through. Soupy as that may sound, it feels true.
This wealth of knowledge and detail is even more fascinating when taking into account the fact that parts of the city and their respective histories have been obliterated by successive conquerors and natural disasters (the conquering Greeks back in 1912, a fire in 1917 that wiped out three-quarters of the city, the Nazis who approved of the destruction of mosques and one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe to name but a few).
But Salonica, City of Ghosts, does not just confine itself to the early to mid-20th century (although the 20th century is the era in which Mazower specialises). Instead it encompasses the city’s early years, even straying back to pay homage to a certain memorable Roman before working its way up until (and including) the Balkan conflicts. Mazower brought up issues that the current administration would probably prefer to be swept under the carpet. The destruction of the Jewish cemetery, mentioned above, has still not been acknowledged or apologised for. Ironically a university, a building that should be a beacon of light and knowledge and of truth has been built over it, without a word written about the building’s foundations.
With knowledge like that ringing in my ears, it is at times hard to imagine this now thoroughly Greek place as being the ethnically and culturally diverse place of refuge for groups hounded in other parts of Europe.
To paraphrase Mazower, only ghosts keep the memories now. But in reading this book, the ghosts of the past- of the truth- stirred and walked with me for a while down the streets of memory in a city I may never walk through. Soupy as that may sound, it feels true.
June 7, 2025
(revised to read better, but not changed, just angrier - October 2024)
I can't pretend that reading this book is enough to bring tears to the eyes of even the most stony hearted, indifferent or deterministic reader of history - not for what was done - history everywhere is is Via Delarosa - but what should make even the most phlegmatic of us weep, and made me weep, was for what we lost in Salonica, the Thessolinka of today, and for what has been lost all over so much of Europe and elsewhere and which will never be reborn (among them that brief shining moment when it seemed that the collapse of Cold War boundaries promised the coming together of Europe, another long lost moment to weep over. Division is in, proud and celebrated, and by nowhere more viciously nastily than by politicians of all strips in the UK).
Salonica was part of the complex, multi-cultural Balkans that started tearing itself apart in the 19th century and continued to do so with increasing viciousness throughout the 20th. Triumphantly captured by the kingdom of Greece in 1912, more or less physically destroyed in the horrific fire of 1917 which, if not deliberate started was welcomed by 'Greeks' as it made the final expulsion of the Muslim population all that much easier. By the time the Nazis stripped the city of its last Jews in 1943 the city was a husk - purged, purified, Greek, but at the end of a history of such complexity that any real attempt to claim it for any national identity was an obscenity because it meant denying so many other of its identities.
But that denial of subtlety, nuance, complexity has been the curse of the Balkan countries - they made aliens of Muslims and Jews then of each other - what difference was there between Bulgar, Greek or Serb? Not religion, language maybe, but in most of the vastly mixed lands people spoke more than one, or at least parts of many languages what did that matter? Once there were no Muslims to blame or hate or vilify they started killing each other - and they continued to do so.
That Salonica is a city of ghosts is just about apparent when you look deeply amongst its sanitised citycape. No one dreams there anymore, no one will sit amongst the toppled glories of Rome, Greece or Byzantium and write poems, books, or think of the past or of anything.
Weep for Salonica and weep for Europe and what we threw away and which we continue to throw away. This is a superb tale of what was and reproach to what happened. I can't think of a 19th or 20th century politician or country that comes out of this tale with honour.
We should remember how easy it is to destroy and how impossible to create. This is a brilliant but painful book in which dreams are tread upon with violence.
I can't pretend that reading this book is enough to bring tears to the eyes of even the most stony hearted, indifferent or deterministic reader of history - not for what was done - history everywhere is is Via Delarosa - but what should make even the most phlegmatic of us weep, and made me weep, was for what we lost in Salonica, the Thessolinka of today, and for what has been lost all over so much of Europe and elsewhere and which will never be reborn (among them that brief shining moment when it seemed that the collapse of Cold War boundaries promised the coming together of Europe, another long lost moment to weep over. Division is in, proud and celebrated, and by nowhere more viciously nastily than by politicians of all strips in the UK).
Salonica was part of the complex, multi-cultural Balkans that started tearing itself apart in the 19th century and continued to do so with increasing viciousness throughout the 20th. Triumphantly captured by the kingdom of Greece in 1912, more or less physically destroyed in the horrific fire of 1917 which, if not deliberate started was welcomed by 'Greeks' as it made the final expulsion of the Muslim population all that much easier. By the time the Nazis stripped the city of its last Jews in 1943 the city was a husk - purged, purified, Greek, but at the end of a history of such complexity that any real attempt to claim it for any national identity was an obscenity because it meant denying so many other of its identities.
But that denial of subtlety, nuance, complexity has been the curse of the Balkan countries - they made aliens of Muslims and Jews then of each other - what difference was there between Bulgar, Greek or Serb? Not religion, language maybe, but in most of the vastly mixed lands people spoke more than one, or at least parts of many languages what did that matter? Once there were no Muslims to blame or hate or vilify they started killing each other - and they continued to do so.
That Salonica is a city of ghosts is just about apparent when you look deeply amongst its sanitised citycape. No one dreams there anymore, no one will sit amongst the toppled glories of Rome, Greece or Byzantium and write poems, books, or think of the past or of anything.
Weep for Salonica and weep for Europe and what we threw away and which we continue to throw away. This is a superb tale of what was and reproach to what happened. I can't think of a 19th or 20th century politician or country that comes out of this tale with honour.
We should remember how easy it is to destroy and how impossible to create. This is a brilliant but painful book in which dreams are tread upon with violence.
June 1, 2010
And here I thought that Los Angeles was a city that flew in the face of history! In its thousand plus year history, Salonica was a Roman city, a Byzantine city, a Muslim city, a Jewish city, and finally a Greek Orthodox city. At several points over the last hundred years or so, a deliberate attempt was made to pave over the past and pretend it did not exist:
This cannot have been an easy book to write. For some half a millenium, Salonica was part of the Ottoman Empire, and the concept of Ottoman historian is something of an oxymoron. (Partly, this is because books were not printed in the empire, according to Lord Kinross's The Ottoman Centuries, until the late 18th century.) Still, Mazower has put together hundreds of sources from European travelers who dropped in and wrote about the strange multicultural city that is now only known as Thessaloniki.
The history of the nationalists is all about false continuities and convenient silences, the fictions necessary to tell the story of a rendezvous of a chosen people with the land marked out for them by destiny. It is an odd and implausible version of the past, especially for a city like Salonica, most of whose inhabitants cannot trace their connection to the place back more than three or four generations. They know that whatever they are taught at school, their own family experiences suggest a very different kind of story -- a saga of turbulence, upheaval, abandonment and recovery in which chance, not destiny, played the greater role.Mark Mazower has dealt lovingly and in detail with all the pasts of Salonica, even when, like the current official Hellenic version, they represent a wishful falsification.
This cannot have been an easy book to write. For some half a millenium, Salonica was part of the Ottoman Empire, and the concept of Ottoman historian is something of an oxymoron. (Partly, this is because books were not printed in the empire, according to Lord Kinross's The Ottoman Centuries, until the late 18th century.) Still, Mazower has put together hundreds of sources from European travelers who dropped in and wrote about the strange multicultural city that is now only known as Thessaloniki.
September 8, 2020
Στην ιστοριογραφία θα μπορούσε κανείς να διακρίνει ανάμεσα σε δύο μεγάλες κατηγορίες γραφής. Από τη μια τις αυστηρά ακαδημαϊκές εργασίες που αν και χωρισμένες σε δεκάδες (υπό)κατηγορίες και ειδικότητες μοιράζονται κοινά μεθοδολογικά και τεχνικά εργαλεία προκείμενου να προσθέσουν στο διαρκώς διογκούμενο corpus της έρευνας. Δεν διακρίνονται για ούτε επιδιώκουν την αναγνωσιμότητα από ευρύτερα του "επαγγέλματος" κοινά.
Από την άλλη, υπάρχει η εμπορικά επιτυχημένη popular history, δηλαδή μια ιστορική γραφή που απευθύνεται στον όχι απαραίτητα ειδικευμένο αναγνώστη και που διαβάζεται εύκολα, χωρίς όμως πάντα να σέβεται την ιστορική ακρίβεια ή την ανάγκη η ιστορική έρευνα να θέτει νέα ερωτήματα αντί να αναμασάει βολικά procut συμπεράσματα.
Θα έλεγα ότι μεγάλοι ιστορικοί (για παράδειγμα οι E. Hobsnawm, E.P. Thompson, F. Braudel κ.λ.π) είναι αυτοί που κατορθώνουν να μεταγράψουν μια μεθοδολογικά ενημερωμένη ιστορία σε ένα συναρπαστικό, ευανάγνωστο και κυρίως χρήσιμο κείμενο που μπορεί να διαβαστεί κριτικά από όλους.
Θεωρώ ότι ο Mark Mazower ανήκει σε αυτήν την χαρισματική κατηγορία ιστορικών - συγγραφέων. Η Θεσσαλονίκη του θα ξεβολέψει, ίσως και να εκνευρίσει πολλούς από τους εγχώριους αναγνώστες. Είναι μια πόλη παλίμψηστο, όπου μπλέκονται μυρωδιές, χρώματα, επιθυμίες και γλώσσες πολλών και διαφορετικών πολιτισμών, είναι ένα χαρμάνι αψύ, συχνά επικίνδυνο, αλλά σίγουρα ερωτεύσιμο. Και είναι επίσης μια πόλη - φάντασμα που κάτω από τις σύγχρονες πολυκατοικίες της σίγουρα κρύβει τους τάφους θαυματουργών αγίων, μουφτήδων, Ελλήνων πειρατών και εβραϊκών φαντασμάτων, απομεινάρια μιας εποχής που οι ατομικές και συλλογικές ταυτότητες ήταν ρευστές, διαπραγματεύσιμες και πήγαζαν από την εντοπιότητα. Μια εποχή δηλαδή που εκτός ή ακόμα και πριν από Χριστιανός, Εβραίος ή Μουσουλμάνος ένιωθε κανείς Σαλονικιός!
Από την άλλη, υπάρχει η εμπορικά επιτυχημένη popular history, δηλαδή μια ιστορική γραφή που απευθύνεται στον όχι απαραίτητα ειδικευμένο αναγνώστη και που διαβάζεται εύκολα, χωρίς όμως πάντα να σέβεται την ιστορική ακρίβεια ή την ανάγκη η ιστορική έρευνα να θέτει νέα ερωτήματα αντί να αναμασάει βολικά procut συμπεράσματα.
Θα έλεγα ότι μεγάλοι ιστορικοί (για παράδειγμα οι E. Hobsnawm, E.P. Thompson, F. Braudel κ.λ.π) είναι αυτοί που κατορθώνουν να μεταγράψουν μια μεθοδολογικά ενημερωμένη ιστορία σε ένα συναρπαστικό, ευανάγνωστο και κυρίως χρήσιμο κείμενο που μπορεί να διαβαστεί κριτικά από όλους.
Θεωρώ ότι ο Mark Mazower ανήκει σε αυτήν την χαρισματική κατηγορία ιστορικών - συγγραφέων. Η Θεσσαλονίκη του θα ξεβολέψει, ίσως και να εκνευρίσει πολλούς από τους εγχώριους αναγνώστες. Είναι μια πόλη παλίμψηστο, όπου μπλέκονται μυρωδιές, χρώματα, επιθυμίες και γλώσσες πολλών και διαφορετικών πολιτισμών, είναι ένα χαρμάνι αψύ, συχνά επικίνδυνο, αλλά σίγουρα ερωτεύσιμο. Και είναι επίσης μια πόλη - φάντασμα που κάτω από τις σύγχρονες πολυκατοικίες της σίγουρα κρύβει τους τάφους θαυματουργών αγίων, μουφτήδων, Ελλήνων πειρατών και εβραϊκών φαντασμάτων, απομεινάρια μιας εποχής που οι ατομικές και συλλογικές ταυτότητες ήταν ρευστές, διαπραγματεύσιμες και πήγαζαν από την εντοπιότητα. Μια εποχή δηλαδή που εκτός ή ακόμα και πριν από Χριστιανός, Εβραίος ή Μουσουλμάνος ένιωθε κανείς Σαλονικιός!
February 8, 2017
In his introduction Mark Mazower writes that he wants to do more than tell the story of Salonica as a remarkable place of cultural and religious co-existence, but to see the experiences of Christians, Jews and Muslims who competed and cooperated with each other over the centuries "within the terms of a single encompassing historical narrative” essentially narrating from no particular point of view except that of the empathetic observer. His history of Salonica evokes the voices of political and religious leaders, peasants and laborers, generals and conscripts. It is an absorbing chronicle, beautifully written and meticulously researched (Mazower seems to have read everything and mastered the sources in three languages) he illustrates the physical, economic and even spiritual aspects of the city over five centuries.
Salonica was a Byzantine city initially, a synthesis of imperial Rome, the Greek language and Orthodox Christianity. Its people called themselves Romans, claiming a lineage that extended back through the Eastern Roman Empire. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, were disdainfully called “Franks”, barely civilized semi-barbarian crusaders who sacked Constantinople in 1204, set up the Crusader State of Thessalonica and then retreated back to Rome, Venice and Paris.
With the final defeat of Byzantium at Constantinople in 1453 the Ottoman Empire controlled the Greek mainland including Salonica and its hinterlands. The Ottoman sultans belonged to the Hanafi school, the most tolerant and flexible in its attitudes toward non-Muslims. They married Greek and Serbian princesses, built new synagogues, and governed their multi-confessional city lightly so long as tax collectors were regularly paid. The Sultan provided a haven for Jews fleeing the Reconquista and Inquisition in Spain—they were happy to take it and prospered. While there were no Jews on the population register in 1478, by the early 1500's they were Salonika's largest religious group. If the Christians and Jews chafed under the vassalage of the Ottoman they were slow to express it—with freedom to exercise their religion, various niches in the economic life of the Empire and even high positions in the courts of various sultans, Jews and Christians were not unhappy as suzerains of the Sublime Porte.
Mazower sticks with his formula of telling the history of the people of Salonica from various, often competing points of view and in bringing it down to 1950 introduces other players: the Hapsburgs with their own sprawling, multi-ethnic and polyglot empire that was not unlike their deadly and constant rivals in Constantinople. The rise of the Young Turks and the Greek nationalists as well as the rumblings of mono-ethnic nation states throughout the Balkans and the deadly warfare among all three groups before and after World War I had a substantial impact on Salonica. Muslim refugees were followed by Christian refugees into the slums and warrens of the city creating unstable populations who were easily inflamed and prepared to seize what they considered theirs. The discipline of empire that had held the city together--an empire that specifically recognized the right of the three religions to coexist under its aegis –collapsed.
The end came when the Wehrmacht swept all before it during World War II with the Gestapo in its wake. They first imposed restrictions on the Jewish population—loss of property and livelihood, forced into ghettos, wearing the yellow Star of David—and then carried out the Final Solution for Greece. The deportation to death camps of Salonica’s Jews—by far the largest Jewish community in Greece began in March, 1943.
Over the centuries Salonica was beset by bandits, plagues, wicked janissaries, apostates in one direction or another, calamitous fires, floods of impoverished refugees, massacres, famines, vagabond monks little more than bands of criminals, false messiahs, murders and assassination, endemic and open corruption and more than one failed city plan. It was a thriving seaport, an essential way station on the roads that linked Asia and Europe, a center of Jewish learning, the home of fresco laden Greek Orthodox churches that had been turned into mosques and then back again to Christian churches. Mazower does a masterful job in describing the soul of the city.
Highly recommended.
Salonica was a Byzantine city initially, a synthesis of imperial Rome, the Greek language and Orthodox Christianity. Its people called themselves Romans, claiming a lineage that extended back through the Eastern Roman Empire. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, were disdainfully called “Franks”, barely civilized semi-barbarian crusaders who sacked Constantinople in 1204, set up the Crusader State of Thessalonica and then retreated back to Rome, Venice and Paris.
With the final defeat of Byzantium at Constantinople in 1453 the Ottoman Empire controlled the Greek mainland including Salonica and its hinterlands. The Ottoman sultans belonged to the Hanafi school, the most tolerant and flexible in its attitudes toward non-Muslims. They married Greek and Serbian princesses, built new synagogues, and governed their multi-confessional city lightly so long as tax collectors were regularly paid. The Sultan provided a haven for Jews fleeing the Reconquista and Inquisition in Spain—they were happy to take it and prospered. While there were no Jews on the population register in 1478, by the early 1500's they were Salonika's largest religious group. If the Christians and Jews chafed under the vassalage of the Ottoman they were slow to express it—with freedom to exercise their religion, various niches in the economic life of the Empire and even high positions in the courts of various sultans, Jews and Christians were not unhappy as suzerains of the Sublime Porte.
Mazower sticks with his formula of telling the history of the people of Salonica from various, often competing points of view and in bringing it down to 1950 introduces other players: the Hapsburgs with their own sprawling, multi-ethnic and polyglot empire that was not unlike their deadly and constant rivals in Constantinople. The rise of the Young Turks and the Greek nationalists as well as the rumblings of mono-ethnic nation states throughout the Balkans and the deadly warfare among all three groups before and after World War I had a substantial impact on Salonica. Muslim refugees were followed by Christian refugees into the slums and warrens of the city creating unstable populations who were easily inflamed and prepared to seize what they considered theirs. The discipline of empire that had held the city together--an empire that specifically recognized the right of the three religions to coexist under its aegis –collapsed.
The end came when the Wehrmacht swept all before it during World War II with the Gestapo in its wake. They first imposed restrictions on the Jewish population—loss of property and livelihood, forced into ghettos, wearing the yellow Star of David—and then carried out the Final Solution for Greece. The deportation to death camps of Salonica’s Jews—by far the largest Jewish community in Greece began in March, 1943.
Over the centuries Salonica was beset by bandits, plagues, wicked janissaries, apostates in one direction or another, calamitous fires, floods of impoverished refugees, massacres, famines, vagabond monks little more than bands of criminals, false messiahs, murders and assassination, endemic and open corruption and more than one failed city plan. It was a thriving seaport, an essential way station on the roads that linked Asia and Europe, a center of Jewish learning, the home of fresco laden Greek Orthodox churches that had been turned into mosques and then back again to Christian churches. Mazower does a masterful job in describing the soul of the city.
Highly recommended.
November 11, 2016
The author claims that this book was 20 years in the making, and you have to believe him. It is a powerful masterpiece. For a week of my life it has transported me to the Salonica of 1430 to 1949. I can close my eyes and pretend I was there.
As a Greek of Orthodox Christian Vlach provenance I can also attest to the fact that the author's account of my very narrow ethnic group is fair, accurate and sympathetic. My great grandfather moved from the mountains of Pindos and maintained a restaurant in Salonica, though to this day many Vlachs remain nomads and move with their flocks. I do indeed have an uncle Themistocles, just like the author surmises I might, what with Vlachs going out of their way to be truly Hellenized. And my dad learned Greek properly in school, but spoke a Romance-language dialect, Vlach, at home, just like the author describes.
I consider myself conversant with Greek history (it is mandatory back home, and you are taught each period three times) but I learned tons from this book. Incidentally, every fact that I can adjudicate on checks 100%. I picked up the book with some reservations, because I'd been told the author is too harsh on us Greeks, but quite to the contrary I found him to be, if anything, a bit too lenient on us, always giving us the benefit of the doubt and trying to see things from our angle.
Overall, this book was a masterpiece. It's most evidently a labour of love.
The ending is extremely sad, of course. It had me crying. And, of course, it's shameful. But that's history for you.
I think I might read it again.
As a Greek of Orthodox Christian Vlach provenance I can also attest to the fact that the author's account of my very narrow ethnic group is fair, accurate and sympathetic. My great grandfather moved from the mountains of Pindos and maintained a restaurant in Salonica, though to this day many Vlachs remain nomads and move with their flocks. I do indeed have an uncle Themistocles, just like the author surmises I might, what with Vlachs going out of their way to be truly Hellenized. And my dad learned Greek properly in school, but spoke a Romance-language dialect, Vlach, at home, just like the author describes.
I consider myself conversant with Greek history (it is mandatory back home, and you are taught each period three times) but I learned tons from this book. Incidentally, every fact that I can adjudicate on checks 100%. I picked up the book with some reservations, because I'd been told the author is too harsh on us Greeks, but quite to the contrary I found him to be, if anything, a bit too lenient on us, always giving us the benefit of the doubt and trying to see things from our angle.
Overall, this book was a masterpiece. It's most evidently a labour of love.
The ending is extremely sad, of course. It had me crying. And, of course, it's shameful. But that's history for you.
I think I might read it again.
March 10, 2016
Ο συγγραφέας κάνει μία ανασκόπηση της ιστορίας της Θεσσαλονίκης για την περίοδο 1430-1950 και οδηγείται σε συμπεράσματα αγνοώντας την προ του 1430 περίοδο. Επιλέγει να δώσει έμφαση σε κάποια γεγονότα και να υποβαθμήσει κάποια άλλα χωρίς να στηρίζεται σε στοιχεία ή μη αναφέροντας τις πηγές του. Βρίσκει κανείς ενδιαφέροντα στοιχεία για την ιστορία της Θεσσαλονίκης αλλά του δημιουργούνται και πολλές απορίες και ερωτηματικά. Είναι ένα βιβλίο που πρέπει να διαβάσει κανείς με κριτική σκέψη και να ανατρέξει και σε άλλες πηγές για να μπορέσει να βγάλει τα δικά του συμπεράσματα. Είναι γνωστό εξ άλλου σε όλους ότι η ιστορία μπορεί να γραφτεί με διαφορετικούς τρόπους και ανάλογα από ποιά σκοπιά την βλέπει κανείς.
August 5, 2016
A history of Salonica that might be forever lost in the bloody mists of nationalism in the Balkans. A unique and very pleasurable combination of historical writing and prose, it makes imagining life in Salonica of yesteryear, a feeling almost unimaginable if looking at the city today, this much more enticing. It is an ode to a historical period that every country involved seems all too willing to forget.
Salonica City of Ghosts invites us to remember.
Salonica City of Ghosts invites us to remember.
August 22, 2012
It is a great book, in fact it is how I consider history books should be written especially when dealing with areas of the world plagued by nationalist hate. Personally, combining it with my knowledge of history and other books I 've read, I think that this book is as close to the truth as one can get. And as it is always the case with the truth it's not always pleasant for everyone and it tends to dispel various self-assuring myths. The book is about Salonica and its history but the ideas, acts and ideologies it examines, apply to the whole region of Balkans and serve to explain much to the modern reader about how and why things are shaped today.
December 29, 2011
Powerful narration of a true story, that the greek governments really tried to hide. Living in the city of Thessaloniki, i discovered that few people know its history and its great importance. As Mark Mazower pointed that up nicely, only ghosts are left behind to restore these memories..
December 14, 2024
oh no, dneska som po polroku musela vrátiť do knižnice a ostalo mi 70 strán ale aj tak si dám do prečítaných lebo tých 400 strán histórie bol the single most serious literary undertaking môjho roka a hrozne dobrá kniha to bola, keď vás z nejakého nepochopiteľného dôvodu zaujíma late ottoman period (i just loooove ataturk conspiracy theories from 19th century) tak je to kniha jak vínko
July 6, 2019
Przyznaję się, długo zeszło mi na przeczytaniu tego dzieła. Było warto! Chyba nie czytałem tak wnikliwego portretu miasta jak Saloniki Mazowera.
October 16, 2022
"Η ιστορία των εθνικιστών είναι φτιαγμένη από πλαστές συνέχειες και βολικές αποσιωπήσεις, από φανταστικές κατασκευές, αναγκαίες ώστε να αφηγηθούν τη ιστορία του ραντεβού ενός περιούσιου λαού με τη γη που του επεφύλαξε το πεπρωμένο. Είναι μια παράδοξη και μη αληθοφανής εκδοχή του παρελθόντος, ιδίως για μια πόλη σαν τη Θεσσαλονίκη, που οι περισσότεροι κάτοικοί της δεν μπορούν να ανιχνεύσουν τη σύνδεσή τους με τον τόπο περισσότερο από τρεις με τέσσερις γενιές πίσω. Ξέρουν πως, ανεξάρτητα από το τι τους μαθαίνουν στο σχολείο, οι δικές τους οικογενειακές ιστορίες υποβάλουν μια πολύ διαφορετική ιστορία: ένα έπος γεμάτο αναταράξεις, αναστατώσεις, ξεριζωμούς και ξαναριζώματα, στα οποία τον μεγαλύτερο ρόλο τον έπαιξε η τύχη και όχι το πεπρωμένο".
August 28, 2014
Para quem gosta de História, um livro imperdível! Fascinante e de leitura verdadeiramente compulsiva.
August 20, 2024
Un llibre molt interessant, "La ciudad de los espíritus. Salonica desde Suleimán el Magnánifico hasta la ocupación nazi". No sols és una història d'aquesta ciutat portuària de Macedònia sinó també una història de l'imperi otomà, dels Balcans i de la Grècia moderna.
De l'historiador Mark Mazower havia llegit fins ara "La Europa negra" (2001, Ediciones B, reeditat per Barlin Libros) i "Gobernar el mundo. Historia de una idea desde 1815" (Barlin), que m'agradaren prou (tinc pendent "Lo que no me contaste"). Este m'ha interessat i m'ha colpit alhora perquè la història que conta, en especial, la del segle XX és molt dura. La ciutat és presa per l'exèrcit grec el 1912, pateix un gran incendi el 1917, expulsa la població musulmana (exotomana, majoritàriament turca), acull bona part dels expulsats cristians orientals (grecs), ja que el 1923 Grècia i Turquia acordaren una neteja ètnica recíproca brutal, de desenes de milers de persones, i el 1943 durant l'ocupació nazi, expulsa i assassina desenes de milers de jueus. A les neteges ètniques precediren o continuaren destruccions patrimonials (mezquites, sinagogues, cementeris, etc.).
Als espanyols nazis o filonazis estaria bé recordar-los que els seus amics assassinaren desenes de milers de castellanòfons (de judeocastellà, en concret, un castellà antic amb influències de l'hebreu), ja que molts dels jueus sefardites expulsats s'establiren en Tessalònica per cinc llargs segles i formaven un dels tres grans grups ètnico-religiosos de la ciutat. Què feu l'Espanya de Franco per a evitar el genocidi dels jueus sefardites? Hui, però, pràcticament han desaparegut. Només un 5% de la comunitat jueva de la ciutat es lliurà de la deportació nazi de 1943 i una part ínfima hi sobrevisqué.
Una llàstima un excés d'errades ortotipogràfiques i algunes de traducció en un llibre de l'editorial Crítica (que fa temps que està exhaurit i que jo vaig comprar el darrer exemplar barat que en quedava). Si teniu ocasió, llegiu-lo!
#elsmeusllibres
De l'historiador Mark Mazower havia llegit fins ara "La Europa negra" (2001, Ediciones B, reeditat per Barlin Libros) i "Gobernar el mundo. Historia de una idea desde 1815" (Barlin), que m'agradaren prou (tinc pendent "Lo que no me contaste"). Este m'ha interessat i m'ha colpit alhora perquè la història que conta, en especial, la del segle XX és molt dura. La ciutat és presa per l'exèrcit grec el 1912, pateix un gran incendi el 1917, expulsa la població musulmana (exotomana, majoritàriament turca), acull bona part dels expulsats cristians orientals (grecs), ja que el 1923 Grècia i Turquia acordaren una neteja ètnica recíproca brutal, de desenes de milers de persones, i el 1943 durant l'ocupació nazi, expulsa i assassina desenes de milers de jueus. A les neteges ètniques precediren o continuaren destruccions patrimonials (mezquites, sinagogues, cementeris, etc.).
Als espanyols nazis o filonazis estaria bé recordar-los que els seus amics assassinaren desenes de milers de castellanòfons (de judeocastellà, en concret, un castellà antic amb influències de l'hebreu), ja que molts dels jueus sefardites expulsats s'establiren en Tessalònica per cinc llargs segles i formaven un dels tres grans grups ètnico-religiosos de la ciutat. Què feu l'Espanya de Franco per a evitar el genocidi dels jueus sefardites? Hui, però, pràcticament han desaparegut. Només un 5% de la comunitat jueva de la ciutat es lliurà de la deportació nazi de 1943 i una part ínfima hi sobrevisqué.
Una llàstima un excés d'errades ortotipogràfiques i algunes de traducció en un llibre de l'editorial Crítica (que fa temps que està exhaurit i que jo vaig comprar el darrer exemplar barat que en quedava). Si teniu ocasió, llegiu-lo!
#elsmeusllibres
December 18, 2021
Μια βουτιά σε 500 χρόνια του παρελθόντος της Θεσσαλονίκης, που εξηγεί πολλά και για το παρόν. Δεν είναι το κλασικό "ακαδημαϊκό" βιβλίο ιστορίας, η αφήγηση έχει καλή ροή και παρά το μέγεθος κάνει κοιλιά σε ελάχιστα σημεία.
June 26, 2017
A moving narration of the history of my hometown. It describes how three major communities (Ottomans, Greek Christians and the exiled Iberian Jewish) ended up living together and created one of the major cities in East Europe. The rise of nationalism in the Balkans, two World Wars, two Balkan Wars, the muslim-christian population exchange and the Holocaust put a huge burden on all three communities and brought the city to its knees.
This was both an exciting and a difficult read for me. Born and raised in Thessaloniki, I recognize names and locations mentioned in the book, I have a visual reference of the city and now this book connects all of them to the spectacular history of the city and the tragic stories of its people.
The book itself is a pleasure to read, easy and welcoming. It is clearly written from a Jewish perspective - a very interesting point for me, given that the history of the Salonica Jewish community is not something that is well known, even in Greece. The population exchange of '23 is also approached from a different angle, more humanistic than the regular nationalistic approach you hear about in school.
Eye-opening read. Highly recommended, especially for Greeks and neighbors.
This was both an exciting and a difficult read for me. Born and raised in Thessaloniki, I recognize names and locations mentioned in the book, I have a visual reference of the city and now this book connects all of them to the spectacular history of the city and the tragic stories of its people.
The book itself is a pleasure to read, easy and welcoming. It is clearly written from a Jewish perspective - a very interesting point for me, given that the history of the Salonica Jewish community is not something that is well known, even in Greece. The population exchange of '23 is also approached from a different angle, more humanistic than the regular nationalistic approach you hear about in school.
Eye-opening read. Highly recommended, especially for Greeks and neighbors.
December 24, 2022
Πέντε αιώνες ιστορίας της Θεσσαλονίκης, άρτια συμπυκνωμένοι σε μία αριστουργηματική μελέτη που διαπραγματεύεται τον τρόπο ζωής των κατοίκων της πολυεθνικής Θεσσαλονίκης, τις σχέσεις μεταξύ των κοινοτήτων με την Οθωμανική και έπειτα την Ελληνική διακυβέρνηση, την επιρροή των πολιτικών εξελίξεων στην ευρύτερη περιοχή και τελικά την ίδια την εξέλιξη της Θεσσαλονίκης μέσα στους αιώνες.
Ο Μαρκ Μαζάουερ, ιστορικός του πανεπιστημίου Κολούμπια της Νέας Υόρκης, με επιστημονική αμεροληψία αλλά και με μία ανεξήγητη(ή μπορεί και όχι) στοργή, προσφέρει ένα έργο το οποίο θεωρώ πως κάθε φίλος της τοπικής ιστορίας θα πρέπει να το διαβάσει καθώς αποδεικνύει πως παρόλες τις στενάχωρες στιγμές και τα δυσάρεστα γεγονότα, η Θεσσαλονίκη είναι μία πόλη με διαχρονική και ιδιαίτερη σημασία που αξίζει τη δέουσα προσοχή.
Και σαν Θεσσαλονικιός και εγώ ο ίδιος, που λατρεύω την ιδιαίτερη πατρίδα μου, πιστεύω πως ο ιστορικός πλούτος που περιέχεται μέσα σε αυτό το εγχείρημα μπορεί να επιτελέσει για μένα και τους συντοπίτες μου, το βασικό ρόλο που θα έπρεπε να έχει το παρελθόν στη ζωή μας και στις κοινωνίες μας.
Να μας διδάξει και να μας εμπνεύσει για το μέλλον.
Ο Μαρκ Μαζάουερ, ιστορικός του πανεπιστημίου Κολούμπια της Νέας Υόρκης, με επιστημονική αμεροληψία αλλά και με μία ανεξήγητη(ή μπορεί και όχι) στοργή, προσφέρει ένα έργο το οποίο θεωρώ πως κάθε φίλος της τοπικής ιστορίας θα πρέπει να το διαβάσει καθώς αποδεικνύει πως παρόλες τις στενάχωρες στιγμές και τα δυσάρεστα γεγονότα, η Θεσσαλονίκη είναι μία πόλη με διαχρονική και ιδιαίτερη σημασία που αξίζει τη δέουσα προσοχή.
Και σαν Θεσσαλονικιός και εγώ ο ίδιος, που λατρεύω την ιδιαίτερη πατρίδα μου, πιστεύω πως ο ιστορικός πλούτος που περιέχεται μέσα σε αυτό το εγχείρημα μπορεί να επιτελέσει για μένα και τους συντοπίτες μου, το βασικό ρόλο που θα έπρεπε να έχει το παρελθόν στη ζωή μας και στις κοινωνίες μας.
Να μας διδάξει και να μας εμπνεύσει για το μέλλον.
August 30, 2014
Salonica, City of Ghosts, which won the 2004 Duff Cooper Prize, is a wonderful history book especially for readers who are not history buffs but who are interested in European culture in a broad sense.
Salonica (currently Thessaloniki) has legendary status in many cultures. It is the birth-place of Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. It is the city whose Christian community received two extremely important epistles from St. Paul Thessalon was also the home of the Ladino language and had the largest Jewish population of any Jewish city on the Mediterranean at the beginning of World War II.
Mazower follows the city through all its many transformations explaining which winds blew away the old and which ones brought in the new. Salonica, City of Ghosts is a great reflection on the course of European history and how cultural, linguistic, political and religious boundaries have shifted over the centuries.
The mood is profoundly elegiac as Mazower finds that the current city is simply not worthy of its great past. This is a good book and a great lamentation.
Salonica (currently Thessaloniki) has legendary status in many cultures. It is the birth-place of Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. It is the city whose Christian community received two extremely important epistles from St. Paul Thessalon was also the home of the Ladino language and had the largest Jewish population of any Jewish city on the Mediterranean at the beginning of World War II.
Mazower follows the city through all its many transformations explaining which winds blew away the old and which ones brought in the new. Salonica, City of Ghosts is a great reflection on the course of European history and how cultural, linguistic, political and religious boundaries have shifted over the centuries.
The mood is profoundly elegiac as Mazower finds that the current city is simply not worthy of its great past. This is a good book and a great lamentation.
April 1, 2009
The city now called Thessaloniki already had me completely fascinated before I read this book. I'd visited once in 1994 and still dream of going back. When I do make it there again, it will be a hundred times more interesting to me for having read this book. The subtitle "City of Ghosts" will feel especially apt if you ever go there to experience the modern, thoroughly Greek, city, and consider that until the 20th century it was hardly Greek at all. A cosmopolitan mix of religion and nationality that bears little relation to what one sees now. You'd have been as likely to hear Spanish or Ladhino on the street as you would Greek, or maybe Turkish. The book is readable and fascinating throughout, with some great pics. I had the wildly unexpected pleasure of meeting the author (and his charming Egyptian wife, also a scholar) at a party in Boston. A nice, normal guy, in case an author's niceness matters to you.
Want to read
July 15, 2009Yes yes yes yes, this sounds right up my alley, I must read this!
August 22, 2016
Εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον! Απέκτησα καινούργιες πληροφορίες για την πόλη και άρχισα να προσέχω περισσότερο τα κτίρια γύρω μου! Ήταν πολύ όμορφο να παρατηρώ από την αρχή πράγματα που πριν αγνοούσα.
December 27, 2025
Thessaloniki is a city with a fascinating and unique history, yet this is one of the only books about it that I could find (in English). Mazower did a very good job explaining the complex story of the city that has seen so many changes since its founding. He looks at the city from around the time of the Ottoman conquest of the city in around 1430 until a little bit after the destructive Second World War and the Holocaust, giving quite a dense and detailed description of the many events and themes. It’s religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity was something I did not know about at all.
While it’s true that I’ve been quite busy last months, it is still remarkable that I almost spent two months on this book, probably the longest time I haven’t finished a book since I actively started reading in 2021. But don’t let that discourage you, it is an extremely well-researched and well-written work! Maybe not recommendable for the average person, but for the history enthusiast who loves or lives in Thessaloniki, this belongs on your shelf.
I currently have the privilege to live in the great city that is Thessaloniki, and reading this book has made me understand the city that I have grown to like much better. Including even the very neighbourhood I live in or the university campus I go to! I wish the book would’ve talked about the city’s ancient, medieval or post-ww2 history, but I can imagine that the book would’ve been to thick then. Four stars!
While it’s true that I’ve been quite busy last months, it is still remarkable that I almost spent two months on this book, probably the longest time I haven’t finished a book since I actively started reading in 2021. But don’t let that discourage you, it is an extremely well-researched and well-written work! Maybe not recommendable for the average person, but for the history enthusiast who loves or lives in Thessaloniki, this belongs on your shelf.
I currently have the privilege to live in the great city that is Thessaloniki, and reading this book has made me understand the city that I have grown to like much better. Including even the very neighbourhood I live in or the university campus I go to! I wish the book would’ve talked about the city’s ancient, medieval or post-ww2 history, but I can imagine that the book would’ve been to thick then. Four stars!
November 24, 2011
Mazower's research here across languages and centuries and sources is a wonder and this book is a dense and elaborate delight. In Salonica, he follows the city from its Muslim conquest from the Byzantines in 1430 through the end of WWII. The Byzantine city was remade as Ottoman, but heavily flavored by Sefardic Jews around 1500, so that they were the largest group in the city in the 17th century. Mazower reconstructs this city of competing and cooperating religious and ethnic groups revealing details of more than oriental splendor. The task of reconstruction is difficult because after the city was captured by the Greeks in 1912, its entire Ottoman culture was eliminated. In part by deliberate destruction, but also by fire in 1917, the effective ethnic cleansing of Macedonia and Western Anatolia after World War I (removing most Muslims and adding Turkish-speaking Eastern Christian refugees), and the deportation of most of the large Jewish population to Auschwitz in 1943. He points to the complicity of the city's leadership in the Holocaust and the lack of any repurcussions for that complicity. Mazower does not glorify the Ottoman past, but despite its impotence and crime it seems much more alive than the 20th century state. As in his other books, he finds much to fault in the creation of the modern nation-state, coming as it did in Greece and throughout the Balkans with ethnic-cleansing and the reappropriation of the past. These paragraphs come at the end of the book:
"And yet that older city may turn out to serve the living in new ways only now coming into view. Nation-states construct their own image of the past to shore up their ambitions for the future: forgetting the Ottomans was part of Greece's claim to modernity. But today the old delusions of grandeur are being replaced by a more sober sense of what individual countries can achieve alone. As small states integrate themselves into a wider world, and even the largest learn how much they need their neighbor's help to tackle the problems that face them all, the stringently patrolled and narrow-minded conception of history which they once nurtured and which gave them a kind of justification starts to look less plausible and less necessary. Other futures may require other pasts.
The history of the nationalists is all about false continuities and convenient silences, the fictions necessary to tell the story of the rendezvous of a chosen people with the land marked out for them by destiny. It is an odd and implausible version of the past, especially for a city like Salonica, most of whose inhabitants cannot trace their connection to the place back more than three or four generations. They know that whatever they are taught at school, their own family experiences suggest a very different kind of story - a saga of turbulence, upheaval, abandonment and recovery in which chance, not destiny, played the greater role." (439)
Overall, an absolutely marvelous book.
"And yet that older city may turn out to serve the living in new ways only now coming into view. Nation-states construct their own image of the past to shore up their ambitions for the future: forgetting the Ottomans was part of Greece's claim to modernity. But today the old delusions of grandeur are being replaced by a more sober sense of what individual countries can achieve alone. As small states integrate themselves into a wider world, and even the largest learn how much they need their neighbor's help to tackle the problems that face them all, the stringently patrolled and narrow-minded conception of history which they once nurtured and which gave them a kind of justification starts to look less plausible and less necessary. Other futures may require other pasts.
The history of the nationalists is all about false continuities and convenient silences, the fictions necessary to tell the story of the rendezvous of a chosen people with the land marked out for them by destiny. It is an odd and implausible version of the past, especially for a city like Salonica, most of whose inhabitants cannot trace their connection to the place back more than three or four generations. They know that whatever they are taught at school, their own family experiences suggest a very different kind of story - a saga of turbulence, upheaval, abandonment and recovery in which chance, not destiny, played the greater role." (439)
Overall, an absolutely marvelous book.
January 22, 2016
"They all claimed the city for themselves in God's name. But is it not said: Where God is, there is everything?"
Nearly five hundred years of history for a city I had never heard of in a land I knew next to nothing about could have been overwhelming, but the book is so well-written and the story so colorful. Three things that struck me:
1. The residents of Salonica lived a remarkably ungoverned life. The Ottoman state simply did not interfere all that much in the lives of its citizens. The benign neglect described seems benign indeed compared to the all-encompassing modern states we live in.
2. The Jews of Salonica fled the ethnic cleansing of Christian Spain, lived 450 years untroubled under Muslim rule only to be wiped out within 45 years of falling under the Christians again.
3. The 20th century rise of the nation-state and the ideal of separate pure homelands for each group of people on earth was and is such a huge ugly disaster.
Our pasts are so long and our futures so short. I hope I live to see the post-nationalist future emerge.
Nearly five hundred years of history for a city I had never heard of in a land I knew next to nothing about could have been overwhelming, but the book is so well-written and the story so colorful. Three things that struck me:
1. The residents of Salonica lived a remarkably ungoverned life. The Ottoman state simply did not interfere all that much in the lives of its citizens. The benign neglect described seems benign indeed compared to the all-encompassing modern states we live in.
2. The Jews of Salonica fled the ethnic cleansing of Christian Spain, lived 450 years untroubled under Muslim rule only to be wiped out within 45 years of falling under the Christians again.
3. The 20th century rise of the nation-state and the ideal of separate pure homelands for each group of people on earth was and is such a huge ugly disaster.
Our pasts are so long and our futures so short. I hope I live to see the post-nationalist future emerge.
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