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Moses Almosnino (1518-1580), arguably the most famous Ottoman Sephardi writer and the only one who was known in Europe to both Jews and Christians, became renowned for his vernacular books that were admired by Ladino readers across many generations. While Almosnino's works were written in a style similar to contemporaneous Castilian, Olga Borovaya makes a strong argument for including them in the corpus of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) literature. Borovaya suggests that the history of Ladino literature begins at least 200 years earlier than previously believed and that Ladino, like most other languages, had more than one functional style. With careful historical work, Borovaya establishes a new framework for thinking about Ladino language and literature and the early history of European print culture.

Acknowledgments
Note on Translations, Transcriptions, Titles, and Proper Names
Introduction
Prologue. Jewish Vernacular Culture in Fifteenth-Century Iberia
1. Ladino in the Sixteenth Century: The Emergence of a New Vernacular Literature
2. Almosnino's Epistles: A New Genre for a New Audience
3. Almosnino's Chronicles: The Ottoman Empire Through the Eyes of Court Jews
4. The First Ladino Travelogue: Almosnino's Treatise on the Extremes of Constantinople
5. Rabbis and Merchants: New Readers, New Educational Projects
Epilogue. Moses Almosnino, a Renaissance Man?
Appendix. The Extremes of Constantinople
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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Publié par	Indiana University Press
Date de parution	13 mars 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780253025845
Langue	English

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The Beginnings of Ladino Literature
Indiana Series in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies
Harvey E. Goldberg and Matthias Lehmann, editors
The Beginnings of
Ladino Literature
Moses Almosnino and his Readers
Olga Borovaya
Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by Olga Borovaya
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Borovaya, O. V. (Ol ga Vol fovna), author.
Title: The beginnings of Ladino literature : Moses Almosnino and his readers / Olga Borovaya.
Description: Bloomington and Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, [2016] | Series: Indiana series in Sephardi and Mizrahi studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016024515 (print) | LCCN 2016026872 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253025524 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253025845 (eb)
Subjects: LCSH: Ladino literature-History and criticism. | Almosnino, Moses ben Baruch, approximately 1515-approximately 1580. | Sephardim -Turkey-Intellectual life.
Classification: LCC PC 4813.5 . B 67 2017 (print) | LCC PC 4813.5 (ebook) | DDC 860.9-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024515
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
To the memory of my mother, Irina Borovaya
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS, TRANSCRIPTIONS, TITLES, AND PROPER NAMES
Introduction
Prologue: Jewish Vernacular Culture in Fifteenth-Century Iberia
1 Ladino in the Sixteenth Century: The Emergence of a New Vernacular Literature
2 Almosnino s Epistles: A New Genre for a New Audience
3 Almosnino s Chronicles: The Ottoman Empire through the Eyes of Court Jews
4 The First Ladino Travelogue: Almosnino s Treatise on the Extremes of Constantinople
5 Rabbis and Merchants: New Readers, New Educational Projects
Epilogue: Moses Almosnino, a Renaissance Man?
APPENDIX: [ The Extremes of Constantinople ]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Acknowledgments
Thirteen years ago, Julia Phillips Cohen gave me an exciting birthday present, Moses Almosnino s Cr nica de los reyes otomanos . I decided that one day I would write about it and perhaps translate it into English. The present book does both. During my work on it, Julia was always very enthusiastic about the project and, until the final version was sent to the press, faithfully looked out for anything I might find useful (including something as unlikely as an ad on a French radio show about Almosnino!). In addition, I am extremely grateful to Julia for her astute comments on the final version of my manuscript.
Still, I might not have finished this project without Aron Rodrigue s unwavering friendship and unconditional support, which kept me going. Furthermore, while constantly reminding me that the sixteenth century is not his period, as he read each chapter he always offered helpful comments and pointed to mistakes. I also thank Aron for making me stop at some point, or this book would have been a lot longer.
I am also indebted to Vincent Barletta, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, David Wasserstein, and John Zemke, who read different chapters of this book and provided insightful suggestions, which often prompted me to go in new directions. I am grateful to Peter Mann for editing my translation of Extremes and Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky for being a most reliable and efficient research assistant. I thank Paula Daccarett for her help with chapter 5 .
I want to thank my friend Becky Bob-Waksberg who, during her visit to Istanbul in February 2016, made a special trip to take a picture of the B y k ekmece Bridge, which I needed for chapter 3 .
Working on this book with Indiana University Press turned out to be an exceptionally smooth and pleasant experience. This was possible thanks to Dee Mortensen, Editorial Director, Paige Rasmussen, Assistant Acquisitions Editor, and Nancy Lightfoot, Project Manager, who were extremely friendly, accommodating, and responsive. In addition, all of them were unusually prompt correspondents. Finally, Nancy amazed me by her outstanding attention to the smallest details in my book, for which I am greatly indebted to her.
My friend Daniela Blei proved to be the most considerate and thoughtful copyeditor I have ever had. In addition to improving my writing and spotting typos even in Ladino words, she showed that working on copyedits does not have to be torture for the author but, instead can be a true pleasure. I am also grateful to her for assembling the index.
Finally, I am profoundly grateful to my father, Volf Borovoy, for preparing the illustrations for this book, which, needless to say, is an infinitesimal part of what he has done for me throughout my life.
Chapter 2 is derived in part from my article published in Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies on 29 Nov 2013, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17546559.2013.857424
Chapter 4 is derived in part from my article published in Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies on 15 July 2016, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17546559.2016.1204555 . I thank the journal s editors and anonymous readers for their help.
Note on Translations, Transcriptions, Titles, and Proper Names
In this book, the term Ladino refers to the Ibero-Romance language used by Sephardim in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean from the sixteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. In rare cases, I call it Judeo-Spanish. Other names of this language appear only in quotations.
All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are mine.
The Bible is quoted either from the King James Version or the New Revised Standard Version, depending on which style better fits the context.
For the sake of consistency, in transcribing original Ladino texts and quoting those already transcribed into Latin characters, I use a single system. Regardless of how they appear in published sources, I follow the system adopted by the periodical Aki Yerushalayim with one difference: the letter Yod representing the consonantal element in diphthongs is rendered here by y (e.g., tyempo , not tiempo ). This also applies to titles of Ladino works, with the exception of quotations and references. (Hence, Rejimyento in my text and Regimiento in references and citations.) (It must be remembered, however, that Cr nica de los reyes otomanos is the Spanish title given to Almosnino s untitled work by Pilar Romeu, who published it in Latin script.)
In the titles of Ladino books and periodicals, I capitalize only the first meaningful word, as is done in other Romance languages. (For instance, La G erta de oro .)
Biblical names commonly used in English appear in their Anglicized form. (Thus, Moses, not Moshe. ) Turkish words and proper names, unless they are widely used in English, follow modern Turkish spelling. (Hence, pasha but Mahmut Pasa, a neighborhood in Istanbul.)
While transliterating Hebrew, I follow the Library of Congress rules with two exceptions: the letter Het is represented by ch, and Ayin is not indicated.
The Beginnings of Ladino Literature
Introduction
I .
Moses Almosnino (1518-1580) was arguably the most famous Ottoman Sephardi writer and the only one known in Europe both to Jews and Christians. The author of a few important Hebrew works appreciated by his colleagues, he became renowned for his vernacular books that were venerated by many rabbis and lay intellectuals in various periods. 1
His name first became known in Europe in 1638, when Jacob Cansino published Extremos y grandezas de Constantinopla (The extremes and great things of Constantinople) in Madrid. 2 It is an abridged adaptation in Latin script of Almosnino s work, which was published by Pilar Romeu as Cr nica de los reyes otomanos (The chronicle of Ottoman kings). 3 Jacob Cansino, a Jew from Oran, like several generations of Cansinos before him, served as an interpreter for Spanish kings whenever there was a need to translate a text from a Semitic language. Yet it was his own idea to translate Cr nica from Hebrew letters in which it was written into the Spanish language. 4 Apparently, this volume, dedicated to the Count-Duke of Olivares, had a large print run (some copies bearing his portrait). In the early twentieth century it was still available in Spain, where some Sephardi visitors bought it.
About two hundred years after its publication, the Cansino volume was used as a source on Ottoman history by the Austrian Orientalist Joseph von Hammer, who cites it a few times in his ten-volume Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (A History of the Ottoman Empire) (Pest, 1827-1835). 5 Hammer notes the only European historian to have noticed that Suleyman had been the tenth sultan was the scholar Rabbi Moses Almosnino of Salonica, in his work Extremos y grandezas de Constantinopla , little known due to its rarity. 6 This book was also cited in 1849 by Eliakim Carmoly, a French Jewish historian and Almosnino s first biographer, in his essay on the Almosnino family. 7
As far as I can tell, the two earliest references to Extremos y grandezas by Ottoman Jews appeared in 1897. David Fresco, editor of the newspaper El Tyempo of Constantinople (Istanbul), refers to Almosnino as the author of a picturesque description of Constantinople later t