Text Panel
“The King of Spain… takes his treasure and sends it all to me…” – declared Sultan Bayezid II when opening the gates of his country to the exiles from Spain and Portugal in 1492, inviting them to settle in Istanbul . Many of the Iberian Peninsula exiles congregated in the Ottoman Empire, and as time passed the local communities adopted Sephardi customs, including speaking and writing in the Judaeo-Spanish language.
At the end of the 16th century, with the expansion of the empire, nearly half of the entire Jewish people lived under the protection of the Ottoman sultans. Important Jewish centers emerged in Istanbul, Salonika, Izmir, Cairo and Safed.
