Shabtai Zvi imbibed Judaism from birth, and his mother raised him on her eyes while watching him as a great rabbi, but his ambition was overpowered until he claimed that he was the Messiah the Savior who would return the Jews to the “kingdom of God” in Palestine after the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire, which brought him the enmity of the rabbis and the imprisonment of the Sultan.

Shabtai Zvi was born in the Turkish city of Izmir in 1626 to Jewish parents who immigrated from Spain, following the religious persecution of the Jews there.

Izmir - located in western Turkey on the Mediterranean Sea - was a global economic center to which merchants flocked from all sides, and ethnicities came to it from every direction, so it formed from that a mosaic full of ethnicities and religions, including Judaism, which was one of the largest and most important sects during the Ottoman Empire.

At that time, the Jews were suffering from the religious persecution they were subjected to throughout Europe at the hands of Christianity from the Middle Ages until the Inquisition, which was established by the Catholic Church in Spain, which made them live in hardship and torment, until the claim of the Messiah spread among them. Which will save them from humiliation and annihilation, and some of their priests predicted its appearance in 1648 specifically.

Many "mystical" Jewish ideas crystallized at the time, and rumors spread in Jewish communities about an army established in the Arabian Peninsula of Jews, and set out to control Palestine.

In that atmosphere, Shabtai Zvi, or - Sabtay, as in some references - was born and raised, who was passionate about reading religious books from his youth, intelligent and prophetic, aware of and influenced by the events that his family and followers of his religion went through, including persecution and emigration throughout the ages.

Zvi read the Torah and the Talmud and absorbed them. He also excelled in allegorical interpretation, that is, symbols and signs of the meanings of words. He used to give opinions and sayings in them that called for the admiration of those around him and the increasing demand and appreciation for him.

Izmir, the birthplace of Shabtai, was a global economic center during the Ottoman Empire (Shutterstock)

Messiah

After Zvi studied the Torah and became a rabbi as his mother wanted him, he devoted himself to studying the writings of what is known as the Kabbalah (philosophical spiritual beliefs and teachings that depend on the esoteric interpretation of the Torah), and his strong personality helped him attract a number of students around him until he claimed that he was the Messiah in the prime of his youth after he He reached 22 years old.

Zvi declared the invalidity of the laws and the written and oral Jewish law, and asked that the Torah be presented to him as he was married to her only, because she was "the bride of God," as he mentioned.

And just as he was excited by his marriage to the Torah, he was also in his real marriage. He got to know a Polish girl named Sarah, who was notorious, and she claimed that God gave her a license to cohabit with the men she wanted, until “Christ” appears and marries her, and when he heard her claim, he claimed that he had inspired him. By marrying her, his ploy was permissible for many of his simple followers.

His call to be the "awaited Messiah" aroused the rabbis in his hometown of Smyrna, as it was called in the past, so they fought him, accused him of misguidance and stripped him of his religious ranks, so he turned his face towards Thessaloniki (a city located in Greece), which was also hosting a large Jewish community and was a center for the symbols of the Kabbalah.

In Thessaloniki, Zvi continued to invite him and form followers among his sect who had an economic fork there, and once again the rabbis fought him, so he pulled his travels to Istanbul, and it was said that he met there a strong Jewish figure from the followers of the Qabbalah who showed him a false document confirming to him that he was the Messiah who was waiting for him. Jews to save them from their diaspora and return them to the "land of the Lord" in Palestine.

His fate in Istanbul was not better than in Smyrna and Thessaloniki, so he went to Cairo, the goats, and there he found followers especially from some Jewish merchants who believed in him and dirty him with their money. An imminent savior of the Jews.

Zvi entered Jerusalem in 1665, and declared that he was the sole disposer of the fate of the whole world, and despite the opposition of the Jewish rabbis in Jerusalem to him, he declared - in 1666 - his intention to eliminate the Ottoman Empire without war, and to establish the State of Israel after he controlled Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

European extension

The Zvi movement gained a mass momentum that spread to the countries of Europe and North Africa, and the enthusiasm of European Jews increased from this announcement, and some of them sold everything they owned in preparation for traveling to Palestine, and they even put pressure on the major Jewish merchants, so they hired ships to transport their poor people from Europe to Palestine, and some others believed that they They will go to Jerusalem carried by the clouds.

During that period, the Ottoman Empire was experiencing one of its worst stages.

Its treasuries were disturbed, its Janissaries strengthened, and they interfered in the conduct of the empire’s affairs. They revolted against the Ottoman Sultan Ibrahim Khan I and deposed him, and installed his son Muhammad IV on the throne of power when he was seven years old.

Muhammad IV's mother, Khadija Turhan, assumed the reins of the Sultanate until her son grew up and the matter was level for him, and when he felt the danger of Tsvi and his intention to eliminate the Ottoman Empire and establish the State of Israel, he was arrested and imprisoned, in preparation for his trial.

The prison turned into a palace for Zvi, as it was visited by his followers from all over the world, and he took advantage of that situation and declared new holidays and rituals for the Jews, and canceled others that were at the core of their traditions.

In 1666, the largest Polish rabbi (where Poland and all of eastern Europe was home to the Jews) came to him in prison and discussed his beliefs for 3 days, but after that he made sure that Zvi was not “the Christ.” Rather, he instructed the Ottoman authorities that he incited sedition, and here it was established for him Trial in the presence of the Sultan.

Zvi was not fluent in the Turkish language, and it was said that the Sultan's doctor, who was formerly a Jew, was the translator between them, and when he saw that the trial was moving towards condemning Shabtai Zvi, and then killing him, the (translator) suggested that he declare his conversion to Islam, so he converted to "Christ" and survived Himself from the deadly, and named after Muhammad Aziz Effendi.

Donmeh Jews penetrated the joints of the Ottoman Empire through the Union and Progress Association (Shutterstock)

Some of his followers retreated after his conversion to Islam, but a number of them remained loyal to him, justifying his conversion to Islam as a stage of ridding the Jews, so they embraced Islam with him, and after that Muhammad Azizi Effendi submitted a request to the Mufti to allow him to invite the Jews to Islam, and this was his first step to resume his previous call, and he came to him Jews from everywhere declared their conversion to Islam and concealed their Judaism, until a group of them formed, and they became known as the Dunimah, meaning "the ones who have returned from their religion."

Aziz Effendi devoted himself to organizing and defining the features of his new doctrine, and he wrote that in documents that stipulated in some of its articles that his followers must strictly apply the customs and rituals of Muslim Turks to divert attention from them, and it was also forbidden for them to intermarry with Muslims.

Exile to Albania

The Ottoman authorities knew that Tsvi gathered his supporters on special rituals and beliefs, and that his conversion to Islam was pious, so he was arrested with some of his followers and exiled to Albania, and he remained there for 5 years until he died in 1675.

Shabtai's followers continued their rituals and beliefs, and despite their divisions, they remained loyal to the idea of ​​ridding the Jews and establishing a homeland for them in Palestine, which Shabtai adopted about 3 centuries before Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.

The Donmeh Jews worked through the Association for Union and Progress, which was founded in the late 19th century and became the driving force among what was called "Young Turkey", which emerged as a political reform movement opposed to Ottoman rule in Astana.

The association was a mixture of different races and religions, except that the majority were Turks, and the military were the most influential people in it.

The Association for Union and Progress was able to seize leadership little by little, and it was helped by the succession of serious events in the Ottoman Empire between 1905 and 1908.

In 1907, the association had reorganized its ranks and started from its branches in Thessaloniki - the stronghold of the Donma Jews - preparing to announce a military revolution against Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

In 1908, the Sultan was forced to return the constitution of 1876 and elections were held for the first House of Representatives (the two envoys), and although the parliamentary majority was for the Unionists, they did not take power, until Sultan Abdul Hamid tried in the following year to carry out a counter-revolution to get rid of the Assembly, which he saw as implementing European agenda to overthrow the Ottoman rule.

At that time, the army marched from Thessaloniki to Astana, restored its influence to the Association of Union and Promotion, deposed the Sultan, and exiled him to Thessaloniki. Abdul Hamid was also imprisoned in the home of a wealthy Thessalonian Jew.

The Jews of Donmeh worked - according to historical sources - to spread atheism and Western ideas and destroy Islamic values, and they also contributed to the establishment of Masonic lodges within the Ottoman Empire using slogans of freedom, resistance to tyranny, and the spread of democracy, and some of them sought help in the governments of union and promotion until they reached the position of "the Great Vizier" who was Such as the prime minister at the present time, and they worked to empty the Ottoman Sultanate of its Islamic contents, and they are credited with a major role in contributing to the disintegration and overthrow of the Ottoman Empire in the first quarter of the twentieth century.