Solomon was an angel of deliverance to his fellow-believers in Venice. Their joy at the honor shown by the authorities to one of their race was mingled with anxiety and sorrow on account of threatened expulsion. The doge Mocenigo had insisted upon the fulfillment of the decree of banishment previously issued against the Jews. Many Jewish families had already departed without waiting for the term to expire. Solomon had arranged with Jacopo Soranzo, the Venetian agent in Constantinople, to receive these unfortunates. On his return to Venice, Soranzo at once brought the question of the Jews to the consideration of the council of the doge and the Ten. He made them understand the injury to the republic which would arise by the expulsion of the Jews. Those driven out of Spain and Portugal had manufactured guns and other arms for the Turks, and it would be a serious matter to make enemies of a people who constituted a power in Turkey. To maintain friendship with this country would be the surest guarantee of peace, as neither the pope nor Spain could be trusted. This earnest appeal of Soranzo in favor of the Jews effected a change in the disposition of the doge and the Dieci (ten) towards them. The decree of banishment was revoked (July 19th, 1573), and Solomon's presence in Venice served to increase the joy of his fellow-believers, as he obtained for them the promise that they should never again be threatened with expulsion. Loaded with honors and enriched by a gift of ten pounds (weight) of gold, Solomon returned to Constantinople, where his position became more assured and his importance greater than ever. His son, who was residing in Venice for his education, was treated by the doge with the greatest consideration.
In consequence of the influence of Joseph of Naxos over Sultan Selim and of Solomon Ashkenazi over the prime minister, Mahomet Sokolli, the foreign Christian courts strove yet more earnestly to obtain the favor of the Turkish Jews in Stambul. If one of them wished to effect any object with the Porte, it first of all sought a Jewish negotiator, because without this aid there was no prospect of success. Even the morose Philip II of Spain, that incarnate hater of Jews and heretics, was obliged to turn to Jewish mediators in order to obtain peace with the Turks. The position of the Jews in Turkey, and above all in the capital, under the very eyes of their powerful protectors, was, therefore, extraordinarily favorable. They were able to put forth all their powers freely, and thus earned the wealth which then meant power, as it does now. The wholesale trade and customs dues were mostly in their hands; they also carried on wholesale shipping, and emulated the Venetians. They owned the largest and best houses, with gardens and kiosks, in Constantinople, equal to those of the grand vizir.
This prosperity, freedom, and security of the Turkish Jews could not fail to produce an exalted frame of mind, to open a prospect beyond the actual present, and to stir up their minds to activity. The mental fertility of the Spanish Jews, which brought so much that is beautiful and true to the light of day, was not exhausted or extinct in Turkey. The taste for history and events outside the Jewish world was not yet lost to them. Moses Almosnino, a favorite preacher at Salonica, while on a visit to Constantinople to procure privileges for the community of Salonica, described life in the Turkish capital, with its contrasts of glowing heat and benumbing cold, its astonishing wealth and terrible poverty, its enervating luxury and severe privations, its extravagant generosity and heartless greed, exaggerated piety and callous indifference, which followed one another abruptly, without any gradual transition. In his Spanish work on the "Contrasts and Greatness of Constantinople," Almosnino described the power and development of the Turkish empire with the pen of a master. He had a taste for the sciences and philosophy, and worked out his sermons as well as his expositions of the Scriptures in a scientific shape.
The physician, Samuel Shulam, likewise a Spaniard by birth, also had a great taste for history. He led a life of adventure until he was taken up by a Jewish woman in Constantinople, named Esther Kiera, in high favor with the sultana. He published Zacuto's poor but useful chronicle at her expense (1566–1567). This favorite of the court-Jewess also translated from the Latin the interesting work of the old Jewish historian Josephus against the attacks of Apion, the Alexandrine enemy of the Jews, being the first Jewish writer to make use of it. The dark side of Jewish history, the thousand years' martyrdom of the Jewish race, was at the same time described by a more competent historian, the now venerable Joseph Cohen, of Spanish descent. His "Vale of Weeping" presents a long series of mournful scenes, tortures, death, and distress in every form, but he was enabled to conclude his history with the joyful tidings that the Venetians were eager, if only from policy, to pay honor to and distinguish a Jew, the Turkish ambassador Solomon Ashkenazi.
Even Hebrew poetry bore some blossoms at this period in Turkey, and although but autumn flowers, showing traces of damp mists and a pale sun, they form an agreeable contrast to the joyless wintry waste of other regions and times. But we are more interested in the originator of these efforts than in the productions themselves. He was a certain Ibn-Yachya of the Turkish branch of this widespread family. This family preserved nobility of heart and mind throughout a long line of generations. The great-grandfather Jacob Tam, the grandfather Gedalya Ibn-Yachya, the grandson Moses, and the great-grandson Gedalya Ibn-Yachya II, with all collateral branches, were without exception friends of learning, and shared their property with the poor. Moses Ibn-Yachya not only spent thousands of ducats on sufferers at the time of the plague, but even exposed himself to the risk of death in his attendance upon the sick. His son Gedalya, a wise man and an agreeable orator, imitated his father in all his virtues, and by his love for poetry excelled him in gifts of the mind. He formed a sort of school or circle of poetry, that is to say, he assembled from time to time, at his own expense, all those interested in neo-Hebrew poetry, to recite their poems, and urged those at a distance to send him the fruit of their muse in order to encourage their zeal for this beautiful but neglected art. Two poets distinguished themselves in this numerous circle, Jehuda Zarko and Saadio Longo. To them we may add Israel Najara, the prolific versifier, living in Damascus. It is true that the verses of these writers do not contain much real poetry, and that the authors deserve the name of poet only on account of the smoothness and euphony of their style. As a matter of course this group of poets extolled Gedalya Ibn-Yachya, their patron and protector, in their verses.
The Jews of Turkey also wrote Latin verses in the security and comfort of their present life. The writers were, of course, immigrant Marranos, who had learnt the language of their oppressors in the dungeons of Spain and Portugal. When the conscientious physician, Amatus Lusitanus, whose aid had been sought alike by kings and beggars, and who, on account of the intolerance of the reactionary policy, emigrated from Italy to Salonica, and there acquired new friends and admirers, fell a sacrifice to his devoted energy, and died of the plague, one of his friends, the Marrano Flavio Jacopo de Evora, composed a memorial to him in beautiful Latin verses to the following effect:
He who so often recalled the breath well-nigh gone from the dying, and was, therefore, beloved by kings and peoples, lies far from the land of his birth, beneath the dust of Macedonia.
The exaltation of the Turkish Jews and their contentment with their present condition imbued them with thoughts of independence. Whilst the Jews of Christendom had no such thought, and from time immemorial considered themselves in a condition of subjugation to their masters, the Turkish Jews became familiar with the idea of regarding themselves as independent men.
Joseph of Naxos long cherished the thought of founding a Jewish state. The Jew and the statesman in him yearned for this, and the enormous wealth of his mother-in-law, over which he had control, was to serve him as the means for its execution. Even when a fugitive Marrano he had seriously put before the Republic of Venice the request that it give him one of its numerous islands, so that he might people it with Jewish inhabitants. But this was refused either on account of the narrow-mindedness of the Christians or the fear of mercantile competition. When later on Joseph stood high in favor with Prince Selim, and also with Sultan Solyman, he obtained from them, besides seven villages, the ruins of the city of Tiberias, for a small Jewish state to be peopled only with Jews. He sent one of his agents to superintend the re-building of Tiberias. The Turkish prince gave the pasha of Egypt strict orders to assist the building in every way. The Arab occupants of the neighboring villages were compelled to render forced labor, and the new and beautiful houses and streets of the city of Tiberias were completed in a year. Joseph of Naxos wished to make it a manufacturing town to compete with Venice. He planted mulberry-trees for the cultivation of silk-worms, and introduced looms for the manufacture of silks; he also imported wool from Spain for the making of fine cloth.
Joseph does not seem to have directed his full energy to the little Jewish state; his plans were far more extensive, and thus New Tiberias never became an important place. He next endeavored to obtain the island of Naxos as a dukedom, together with the adjacent islands of the Ægean Sea, and when he was fortunate enough to be appointed duke by Sultan Selim, he thought no more about peopling his little island state with Jews; perhaps it was not practicable. His mind was next set on becoming king of Cyprus. It is possible that he might have transformed this island of the goddess of beauty into a Jewish state had he obtained possession of it, but his enemy, the grand vizir, Mahomet Sokolli, prevented this. Thus his dreams of founding an independent Jewish state were dispelled. In reality, Joseph of Naxos did nothing of lasting importance for Judaism. He made various attempts, and then relaxed in his endeavors, or misspent his means.