The Rhodes Blood Libel of 1840: Episode in the History of Ottoman Reforms

Since historians assume that the Rhodes blood libel of 1840 was a small-scale version of the contemporaneous Damascus Affair, Rhodian Jews, too, are believed to have been rescued by Moses Montefiore and other European Jews. Yet, unlike the Damascus crisis that turned into an international political emergency, the one on Rhodes was treated by the Ottomans as a domestic legal case and handled in accordance with the Tanzimat laws (a series of modernizing reforms), the 1840 penal code in particular. This article, based on newly discovered evidence, examines the legal means and mechanisms used to manage the Rhodes crisis, arguing that its resolution, advocated by the Jewish leadership in Istanbul, can be adequately understood only in the context of the Tanzimat judicial reform. This was the first instance when the Sublime Porte complied with its European allies’ demand that it guarantee its non-Muslim subjects equal treatment and legal protection.