English transcript

The Dönmeh are perhaps the most mysterious group

in the entire history of the Ottoman Empire.

On the surface, they had Muslim Turkish names,

but internally they would practice a mystical

cult-like religion combining Jewish Kabbalah

and Islamic Sufism. They were essentially Sephardic

Jews who came from Spain and Portugal after

1492 and settled in Salonica. Salonica had a

thriving Jewish population, one of the largest

in the world, and in 1648, a rabbi by the name

of Shabbetai Tzvi, or Sabbatai Zevi, proclaimed

himself the long-awaited Messiah, or Moshiach.

Jews from all across the Ottoman Empire, Ashkenazi

Jews in Europe, and even Arab Jews as far as

Yemen left everything they had to follow their

new Messiah. But in 1666, Sabbatai Zevi's movement

grew so large that he was brought before Sultan

Mehmed IV and given the choice of death or conversion

to Islam. And he converted to Islam and took

the name Mehmed Aziz Efendi. For the next 350

years, these Muslim converts, called the Dönmeh

or the Ma'aminim, would develop a secret underground

cult-like religion. They numbered in the tens

of thousands, refused to marry outside their

sect, and retained the language Judaeo-Español

or Ladino. Eventually, they would establish

themselves in the Young Turk movement and have

influential roles in deposing Sultan Abdul Hamid

and collapsing the Ottoman Empire. But in 1923,

with the Greek-Turkish population exchanges,

they were all moved to Istanbul from Salonica.

But even today, there are still some secretive

networks of practicing Dönmes, roughly three

to four thousand, hiding behind Muslim names

and awaiting the return of Sabbatai Zevi, secretly

uttering their prayers in Judaeo-Español.