1660 destruction of Safed

Destruction of a Jewish community

The 1660 destruction of Safed occurred during the Druze power struggle in Mount Lebanon, at the time of the rule of  Ottoman sultan Mehmed IV.[1][2][3][4] The towns of Safed and nearby Tiberias, with substantial Jewish communities, were destroyed in the turmoil, a small Jewish community surviving in Safed, but Tiberias, a Jewish town at the time, losing almost its entire population.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Only a few of the former residents of Safed returned to the town after the destruction.[6][7] Gershom Scholem considers the 1662 reports about the destruction of Safed as "exaggerated".[8] The community, however, recovered within several years, whereas Tiberias lay in waste for decades.

## Background

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Safed's central role in Jewish life in Galilee declined after the late 16th century, when it had been a major city with a population of 15,000 Jews.[9] By the second half of the 17th century Safed still had a majority Jewish community with 200 "houses" (multiple family units) and some 4,000 to 5,000 Jewish residents, while about 100 "houses" in the town were Muslim.[10] The district was under control of Druze emirs from the Maan family until 1660, when the Ottomans sought to regain local control by reorganizing the sanjaks of Safed and Sidon-Beirut into the  province of Sidon.[11] From the 1658 death of Emir Mulhim Ma'n to 1667, a struggle for power between his sons and other Ottoman-backed Druze rulers took place in the region.[12] Mulhim's son Ahmad Maʿn emerged victorious among the Druze, but the Maʿnīs lost control of the area[11][12] and retreated to the Shuf mountains and Kisrawan.[13] In the 2nd half of the 17th century, Safed became the capital of the Ottoman sanjak of the same name.

## Destruction and displacement

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Adler, Franco and Mendelssohn claim that the destruction of Safed took place in 1660, Mendelssohn writing that the Jews of Safed "had suffered severely" when the city had been destroyed by the Arabs.[1][3][4] Gershom Scholem places the attack in 1662,[8] and Rappel writes that by 1662 both Safed and Tiberias were destroyed, with only a few of former Safed's Jewish residents to return to the town.[7] A publication by the General Council of the Jewish Community of Eretz Yisrael states that the Druze raided and destroyed both Safed and Tiberias in 1662, "and the inhabitants fled to the adjacent villages, to Sidon or to Jerusalem".[14]

Rosanes brings an account of Safed's Jewish community "utter destruction" in his book "History of the Jews in Turkish realm".[citation needed] However, Scholem writes that the reports of the "utter destruction" of the Jewish community in Safed in this time period "seem greatly exaggerated, and the conclusions based on them are false." He points out that Sabbatai Sevi's mystical movement was active in Safed in 1665. Scholem also attributes to the French trader Laurent d'Arvieux who visited Safed in 1660 an understanding of "the religious factor which enabled the community to survive," a belief "'that the Messiah who will be born in Galilee, will make Safed the capital of his new kingdom on earth'"[8] Scholem writes that there was definitely a Jewish community in Safed in 1664–1667.[15]

## Aftermath

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Only a few of the former residents of Safed had returned to the town after the destruction.[7] Altogether, the town's Jewish community kept existing despite the events, with Barnai saying that "in the second half of the 17th century the Jewish presence in Palestine dwindled, and the Jewish presence in the Galilee also shrank. Only in Safed was there a small community."[6]

## See also

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* Ottoman Syria
* Timeline of Jewish History
* 1517 Safed pogrom
* 1834 Safed Plunder
* 1838 Druze attack on Safed

## References

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1. ^ a b c Singer, Isidore; Adler, Cyrus (1912). "Turkey: Seventeenth Century". The Jewish Encyclopedia. Funk and Wagnalls. p. 283. Retrieved 5 April 2025. "In 1660, under Mohammed IV. (1649-87), Safed was destroyed by the Arabs."
2. ^ a b De Haas, Jacob (1934). History of Palestine. p. 345. Retrieved 5 April 2025. "Safed, hotbed of mystics, is not mentioned in the Zebi adventure. Its community had been displaced in 1660, when the town was destroyed by Arabs, and only one Jew escaped."
3. ^ a b c Mendelssohn, Sidney (1920). The Jews of Asia: especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. p. 241\. "Long before the culmination of Sabbathai's mad career, Safed had been destroyed by the Arabs and the Jews had suffered severely, while in the same year (1660) there was a great fire in Constantinople in which they endured heavy losses..."
4. ^ a b c Franco, Moïse (1897). Essai sur l'histoire des Israélites de l'Empire ottoman: depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours (in French). Librairie A. Durlacher. p. 88. Retrieved 13 July 2011. "Moins de douze ans après, en 1660, sous Mohammed IV, la ville de Safed, si importante autrefois dans les annales juives parce qu'elle était habitée exclusivement par les Israélites, fut détruite par les Arabes, au point qu'il n' y resta, dit une chroniquer une seule ame juive."
5. ^ Schwarz, Joseph (1850). A Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine. Translated by Isaac Leeser. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Carey & Hart. p. 409. Retrieved 5 April 2025. "Sultan Seliman surrounded it with a wall in 5300 (1540), and it commenced to revive a little, and to be inhabited bythe most distinguished Jewish literati; but it was destroyed again in 5420 (1660)." Also Archived 2018-07-20 at the Wayback Machine
6. ^ a b c Barnai, Jacob (1992). The Jews in Palestine in the eighteenth century: under the patronage of the Istanbul Committee of Officials for Palestine. Judaic studies. University of Alabama Press. p. 14\. ISBN 0817305726. Retrieved 5 April 2025.
7. ^ a b c d Rappel, Joel (1980). History of Eretz Israel from Prehistory up to 1882 (in Hebrew). Vol. 2\. Tel Aviv: Israel Ministry of Defense Publishing House. p. 531\. "In 1662 Sabbathai Sevi arrived to Jerusalem. It was the time when the Jewish settlements of Galilee were destroyed by the Druze: Tiberias was completely desolate and only a few of former Safed residents had returned..."
8. ^ a b c Scholem, Gershom (2016) [1957]. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676. Princeton University Press. p. 368\. ISBN 978-0-691-17209-5. Retrieved 5 April 2025. "In Safed, too, the [Sabbatai] movement gathered strength during the autumn of 1665. The reports about the utter destruction, in 1662 [sic], of the Jewish settlement there seem greatly exaggerated, and the conclusions based on them are false. ... Rosanes' account of the destruction of the Safed community is based on a misunderstanding of his sources; the community declined in numbers but continued to exist ... A very lively account of the Jewish community is given by French trader d'Arvieux who visited Safed in 1660."
9. ^ Altshuler, Mor (2006). "Redemption begins in the Galilee (part 1, ch. 8)". The Messianic secret of Hasidism. Brill's Series in Jewish Studies, Vol. 39. BRILL. p. 157\. ISBN 9047410831. Retrieved 5 April 2025. "The golden age of Kabbalah in Safed, as well as its economic efflorescence continued through the sixteenth century. At its height, the city wad home to more than 15,000 Jews. - Section "The messianic immigrations (aliyyot) in the Land of Israel"" Online Hebrew text of original 2002 U. of Haifa/Zmora-Bitan Press edition, Ch. 8, available & Archived 2018-03-14 at the Wayback Machine.
10. ^ Historical Memoranda. Vol. 3: The Waves of Jewish Migration into Palestine (640-1882). Jerusalem: General Council (Vaad Leumi) of the Jewish Community of Palestine. 1947. p. 62\. "… thirty to forty years later, the French traveller Roger mentions 200 Jewish and 100 Moslem houses, elsewhere in his book putting the number of Jews at 4,000 persons. According to the Turkish traveller Evlia Chelebi there were about 1,300 Jewish houses, although he probably meant families. It seems, therefore, that at about the middle of the XVIIth century there were some 4,000 to 5,000 Jews in Safed."
11. ^ a b Firro, Kais (1992). A history of the Druzes. Vol. 1\. BRILL. p. 45\. ISBN 9004094377. Retrieved 5 April 2025. "the sanjaq of Ṣafad, which was part of this province, remained under the suzerainty of Druze amīrs until 1660, when the Ottomans reorganized the province. The Maʿnīs, however were unable to preserve their control of the sanjaq, and the Druze villages in the area lost their protection."
12. ^ a b Abu-Husayn, Abdul-Rahim (2004). The view from Istanbul: Lebanon and the Druze Emirate in the Ottoman chancery documents, 1546-1711. I.B.Tauris. pp. 22–23. ISBN 978-1-86064-856-4.
13. ^ Salibi, Kamal S. (2005). A house of many mansions: the history of Lebanon reconsidered. I.B.Tauris. p. 66\. ISBN 978-1-86064-912-7.
14. ^ Historical Memoranda (1947), p. 62: "In 1662, Safed and Tiberias were destroyed in a raid by Druzes from the Lebanon, and the inhabitants fled to the adjacent villages, to Sidon or to Jerusalem."
15. ^ Scholem, loc. cit., p. 187.

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