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.[1][2][3][4] The towns of Safed and nearby Tiberias, with substantial Jewish communities, were destroyed in the turmoil.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Only a few of the former residents of Safed returned to the town after the destruction.[6][7] Gershom Scholem considers the 1662 reports about the destruction of Safed as "exaggerated".[8] The community, however, recovered within several years, whereas Tiberias lay in waste for decades.

  1. ^ a b Isidore Singer; Cyrus Adler (1912). The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. Funk and Wagnalls. p. 283. In 1660, under Mohammed IV. (1649-87), Safed was destroyed by the Arabs.
  2. ^ a b Jacob De Haas (1934). History of Palestine. p. 345. Safed, hotbed of mystics, is not mentioned in the Zebi adventure. Its community had been massacred in 1660, when the town was destroyed by Arabs, and only one Jew escaped.
  3. ^ a b 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..."
  4. ^ a b Franco, Moïse (1897). Essai sur l'histoire des Israélites de l'Empire ottoman: depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours. Librairie A. Durlacher. p. 88. Retrieved 13 July 2011. Moins de douze ans après, en 1660, sous Mohammed IV, la ville de Safed, si importante autrefois dans les annales juives parce qu'elle était habitée exclusivement par les Israélites, fut détruite par les Arabes, au point qu'il n' y resta, dit une chroniquer une seule ame juive.
  5. ^ A Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine. P.409. "Sultan Seliman surrounded it with a wall in 5300 (1540), and it commenced to revive a little, and to be inhabited by the most distinguished Jewish literati; but it was destroyed again in 5420 (1660)." [1]
  6. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference barnai14 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ a b 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..."
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference gershom was invoked but never defined (see the help page).