Farewell to Salonica : city at the crossroads / by Leon Sciaky.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sciaky, Leon, 1893-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sephardim.

Selânik (Turkey)--Social life and customs.

Selânik (Turkey).

Turkey--Ethnic relations.

Turkey.

Ethnic relations.

Sephardim--Turkey.

Jews--Turkey.

Jews.

Thessalonikē (Greece)--Social life and customs.

Thessalonikē (Greece).

Turkey--History.

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 299 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm

Edition:

First Paul Dry Books edition.

Place of Publication:

Philadephia : Paul Dry Books, 2003.

Summary:

A turn-of-the-century memoir highlighting one of history's great cultural crossroads At the crossroads of the Eastern and Western worlds, Salonica--now Greece's third largest city, Thessaloniki--was an oasis in a desert of conflicting powers and interests. A Turkish territory until 1912, the city was an economic center of the Ottoman empire and cultural center of Sephardic Judaism. In this memoir, Leon Sciaky, the son of a Sephardic merchant family who immigrated to Turkey during the Spanish Inquisition, tells of growing up in the vibrant community that flourished in Salonica at the turn of the century. He introduces the Turkish sheiks and dervishes, Sephardic rabbis, Hungarian revolutionaries, Bulgarian farmers, Greek priests, Kurdish grocers, Albanian woodcutters, and French headmasters who populated this little Balkan world. Although his early years were idyllic, Sciaky's well-respected merchant family could not escape the violence of Salonica's constant lesions and struggles.

Contents:

Prologue: The Minaret 3

1 Our House in Salonica 9

2 The Well 21

3 Antecedents 40

4 Wheat 53

5 Gathering Clouds 69

6 My First School 83

7 The Drought 98

8 A Covenant with Death 114

9 The Messiah 132

10 Widening Horizons 148

11 Tillers of the Soil 163

12 Shukri 189

13 Consulting Among Themselves 208

14 Homecoming 223

15 The Muezzin Calls No More 234

16 The Old Order Passeth 257

Leon Sciaky in America 289.

ISBN:

1589880021

OCLC:

51942676