Les Juifs de Bursa

Bursa, a former Ottoman capital, had a Jewish presence dating back to the Byzantine era, reinforced at the end of the fifteenth century by the arrival of Sephardic refugees expelled from the Iberian Peninsula. Jews were active there in commerce and crafts, particularly in silk and textiles for which the city was a renowned center. The community, organized around its synagogues, existed within the tolerant framework offered by the Ottoman Empire to Jews. In the twentieth century, it declined through emigration, its members moving primarily to Istanbul and Israel.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World — Brill
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan