Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950 [Hardcover]

Thessalonika, or "Salonica," in this book, is the second city of Greece and-as in Athens, the capital-there has been a self-conscious attempt to bring the classical and Byzantine past to the forefront. In the center of the city is the ancient arch built to honor the Roman Emperor Galerius who defeated the Persians. There is a new museum devoted to the Byzantines and when a traveler departs from the train station, the locals might ask if "Constantinople" is the destination.

There are some hints of a less homogenized past. For example, there are places that serve Anatolian food or Turkish-style ice cream and there is the Ottoman-built White Tower near the waterfront as well as some disused Turkish baths. And, of course, the boyhood home of Mustafa Kemal, or Atatürk, is a great tourist attraction. Still there are few remnants of the Ottoman Turks and even fewer of a Jewish community that was one of the largest in Europe. Today Salonica appears to be purely Greek and Christian. Symbolic of this is the university built on the site of the old Jewish cemetery.

So, it is ironic that in recent years Salonica has been praised for its "multicultural" history. Mark Mazower writes about the period from 1430 to the 1950s when the city really was multicultural; when this historically Christian city was ruled by Muslims and the largest community was Jewish.

Ottoman rule began when Sultan Murad II conquered the city after, legend says, a dream in which Allah told him that Salonica was his to take. Christians watched as the Ottomans changed Byzantine churches into mosques and welcomed in large numbers of Sefardim Jews who were fleeing persecution in Spain. By the 16th century, the city was divided among the Christians, Muslims and Jews, with the last group being the largest in number.

There are many tragic episodes to tell. After the Ottomans arrive, many of the conquered Greeks are sold in the slave market or reduced to begging for alms. Centuries later, after the Ottoman Empire had ended, the Muslims were forced to leave the city and Greece as a condition of the Balkan wars. As the Muslims left, millions of Christian and mainly Greek-speaking refugees arrived: they had also been expelled from their homes in the new republic of Turkey. Finally, the Nazis took away the Salonica Jews in the Second World War.

Most of this book is about the city under Muslim rule. The three communities identified themselves more by religion than by race, yet the Ottomans didn't attempt to extinguish the Christian and Jewish communities. Mazower writes that "for contrary to what our secular notions of a religious state might lead us to believe, the Ottoman authorities were not greatly interested in policing people's private beliefs. In general, they did not care what their subjects thought so long as they preserved the outward forms of piety." So Turks, Greeks, Jews, Albanians, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Vlachs were able to live together.

Often the different faiths shared curious similarities. Salonica became a center of Mevlevis, who followed the ideals of the Muslim teacher Haci Bektasi, and were "always to be found in the company of Greek monks." In fact, among the Albanians who followed the faith, there was the legend that Haci Bektasi had invented Bektashism as a bridge between Christianity and Islam. There was also the Ma'min sect of Judeo-Spanish speaking Muslims. These were followers of Sabbatai Zevi, who proclaimed himself the Messiah for the Jews before converting to Islam in the 18th century. Mazower writes "in short, the city found itself at the intersection of many different creeds."

The book also describes other aspects of the city and its history. How the Ottoman Jannisaries became a law unto themselves in the 18th century. How Greek merchants became wealthy despite Ottoman rule. How a British national and Salonica resident Jackie Abbott became rich selling leeches to the local healers. There is also much about the 19th century rush to excavate and haul away archeological treasures from the city and the effect of the Muslim women on European visitors.

To Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries, Salonica was the orient. However, at the same time, the city residents began to build and dress in "the Frankish style." This period also saw the decline of Ottoman power in the region. In the first part of the 19th century, the new state of Greece was created. The presence of an independent Greek speaking country nearby greatly exacerbated the tensions between Christians and Muslims in Salonica. A wider-spread tension resulted in a series of wars between the Greek state and the Ottomans and eventually brought Salonica into the Greek state. Finally, the new republic of Turkey defeated Greece in the 1922 Balkan War and the two governments agreed on exchange of Muslim and Christian populations. Greece received over a million Orthodox Christians from Asia Minor while Turkey received over 500,000 Muslims. The Muslim presence in Salonica was gone.

Twenty years later, with the Nazi occupation, the Jewish presence would disappear as well. Salonica had been one of the great centers of Jewish culture, Alfred Rosenberg reminded Martin Bormann in a letter; so the Nazis gave the city special attention. (The Nazis were surprised to learn that the city had never had a Jewish ghetto.) The occupiers looted the synagogues and sent the Jews to the concentration camps. This part of the book makes chilling reading.

Mazower's book could be seen as a counterpart to Philip Mansel's book on Istanbul, "Constantinople: City of the World's Desire 1453-1924." That book covers roughly the same period and ends with a lament for the Greeks that once lived in that now almost entirely Muslim city. And many Turks today will express a wish to see Salonica, which was the birthplace of Ataturk, the poet Nazim Hikmet, and very often, their grandparents.

Mazower`s book has some dry pages but also some interesting anecdotes about this once cosmopolitan city. And it is a valuable book because it covers a period of European history that is unknown to many readers. In 2004, many people watching the Olympic games in Athens wondered why "The Greeks" only referred to Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great and what had happened after the classical era. This book will fill in some of that gap.

Salonika was an anachronism. Unlike most of Europe, where nations had been formed around a major city or a capital, and where ethnic and religious minorities had been absorbed, expelled, killed, or at least marginalized in some fashion, in Salonika different groups lived shoulder to shoulder for over 400 years.

Mazower tells the story. First we get Greeks, then Turks, then after 1492 Spanish (and Portugese and Italian) Jews (speaking Ladino, Judeo-Spanish). The first half of the book describes the communities, daily lives, interactions.

More communities developed. Sabbatai Zevi declared himself Messaiah, won a following, converted to Islam, and his followers, well, followed him. "Donme" or "Apostates" (the descendants of these Jewish converts to Islam) remained a distinct part of Salonika's fabric. Albanians arrived. And eventually Bosnians and Bulgarians as well (there is dispute over whether they should be called Bulgarians or Macedonian Slavs).

The first half of the book is jumpy. It is not organized chronologically. Primary document spellings are not followed by modern equivalents. There are insufficient maps. It makes for slow reading. But Mazower hit his stride around 1700. The history begins to flow chronologically. And he tells history as an engaging story. Modern is definitely his period. And the more modern, the better he gets.

He includes details that would be easy to gloss over. The story is complex. Mazower makes it flow, and makes it clear, and makes it engaging.

The book ends with two major chapters: the Nazi extermination of almost the entire Jewish population of the city is told with great detail. The Greek Civil War seems to be strangely tacked on, with little detail, and little of Mazower's flair. But it hardly takes away from the book's overall strength.

Mark Mazower breathes life into a place completely swept away by the conflicts of the 20th century. Masterfully written and eminently readable despite its size, Professor Mazower's work provides depth of detail and real context to all the cross-currents of culture and politics at play, of which he clearly has a profound understanding. While he does show a sympathy toward the much-maligned Ottoman Empire, the effort convincingly argues that the commonly held perception of the Empire in the 18th & 19th century as a decrepit, dysfunctional state was not deserved. He brings to life the lost Turkish presence, as complex as it was often ruthless, the once thriving predominantly-Jewish city the Greeks have willfully buried and forgotten and the substantial Slavic component in the surrounding provinces that dated back to their arrival in the 6th century. He handles the volatile period between the tragic dispossession of the local Turks and the arrival of the horribly tormented Greeks of Asia Minor with great sensitivity by focusing instead on the tragedy of individuals instead of faceless masses. The final chapter is devoted to the Nazi annihilation of the Jews and the city's subsequent metamorphosis into a completely Greek metropolis consciously revising its identity in the older Hellenic context. The singular glaring lapse of this work lies in the author's gratuitous swipes at Greek and Jewish national aspirations, as alluded to by another reviewer below. Somehow, Ottoman hegemony and its destruction of the Classical world it usurped trumps the desires of others who followed it (or more accurately, preceded it). The author seems unable to reasonably reconcile this inconsistency.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 22 reviews  4.1 out of 5 stars