1660 destruction of Safed

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.Sidney Mendelssohn. ''The Jews of Asia: especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.'' (1920) 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..." The towns of Safed and nearby Tiberias, with substantial Jewish communities, were destroyed in the turmoil. Only a few of the former residents of Safed had returned to the town after the destruction.Joel Rappel. ''History of Eretz Israel from Prehistory up to 1882'' (1980), Vol.2, 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..." Gershom Scholem considers the 1662 reports about the destruction of Safed as "exaggerated". The community, however, recovered within several years, whereas Tiberias lay in waste for decades.

Safed: historical context

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. By the second half of the 17th century Safed still had a majority Jewish community with 200 "houses" and some 4,000 to 5,000 Jewish residents, while about 100 "houses" (multiple family units) in the town were Muslim. 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 new province of Sidon."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." 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. Mulhim's son Ahmad Maʿn emerged victorious among the Druze, but the Maʿnīs lost control of the area and retreated to the Shuf mountains and Kisrawan. In the second half of the 17th century, Safed became the capital of the Ottoman sanjak of the same name.

Year of the destruction

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.

Gershom Scholem places the attack in 1662, 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. A publication by the General Council of the Jewish Community of Eretz Yisrael states that the Druze of Lebanon raided and destroyed both Safed and Tiberias in 1662, "and the inhabitants fled to the adjacent villages, to Sidon or to Jerusalem".

Claims of massacre

Rosanes brings a claim of Safed's Jewish community "utter destruction" in his book "History of the Jews in Turkish realm". Jacob de Haas, in his ''History of Palestine'', asserts the near-total destruction of the Safed Jewish community, claiming that "its community had been massacred in 1660, when the town was destroyed by Arabs, and only one Jew escaped." However, Gershom 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 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'" Scholem wrote that there was definitely a Jewish community in Safed in 1664–1667.Scholem, ''loc. cit.'', p187

Safed's Jewish community in the later years

Only a few of the former residents of Safed had returned to the town after the destruction. 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."Barnai, Jacob. ''The Jews in Palestine in the Eighteenth Century: under the patronage of the Istanbul Committee of Officials for Palestine'' (University of Alabama Press 1992) ; p. 14

See also

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

References

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Jews and Judaism in Ottoman Galilee
History of Safed
1660 in Ottoman Syria
Druze in the Ottoman Empire