The first Ladino travelogue: Moses Almosnino’s treatise on the extremes of Constantinople

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 1566–67, a renowned Sephardi rabbi of Salonica, Moses Almosnino, produced a multi-part vernacular work, a Romanized and abridged adaptation of which was published in Madrid in 1638 under the title Extremos y grandezas de Constantinopla. Since that moment, Almosnino’s multi-part and multi-genre work, eventually published in full as Crónica de los reyes otomanos, has been known as a travelogue. The third part of the full version in particular has been invariably described as a picturesque travel account of Constantinople, and its author as a keen observer. In this article, I will show that what has been taken for a trustworthy description of the Ottoman capital is, in fact, an idiosyncratic representation of this city in the form of a medieval treatise on its alleged climatic, socioeconomic, and moral extremes. Furthermore, rather than conveying Almosnino’s impressions in his own terms, this account heavily depends on several intertexts, including works by Hippocrates, Aristotle, Maimonides, Ibn Sinna, and other classical and medieval authors. As will become clear, due to its intertextuality, this work – one of the most misinterpreted in Sephardi literature – cannot be treated as a reliable source on Constantinople.