Dariya A. Zaichenko

Travelling is an indispensable source of information about foreign countries. Both today and in the 17th century, journeys abroad immerse travelers in local cultural and linguistic environments, providing numerous opportunities to gain new knowledge, especially when it comes to Constantinople, a city with a rich history. In the early 17th century, Pietro Della Valle (1586–1652), an Italian nobleman, musician, diplomat, and traveler, visited Constantinople during his journey through the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and India (1614–1626). He documented his experiences and observations in letters to his Neapolitan friend, Mario Scipano, a professor of medicine. What drew the young Italian’s attention in Constantinople? Whom could one meet there? How did ambassadors spend their leisure time? What languages could travelers learn, why were Turkish Jews teaching them, and why did Europeans eagerly acquire Eastern manuscripts?

After the Ottoman conquest of Syria and Palestine, the cities of the Holy Land became part of a strategically important region connecting several parts of the empire, but remained an unchanged meeting place for Christian, Jewish and Muslim civilizations. Traders, emigrants and pilgrims from different countries crossed paths in Syria and Palestine - they witnessed and described in letters and memoirs the changes that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Ottoman era. A network of diverse contacts intertwined Jewish communities due to the dispersion of the Jewish diaspora across Mediterranean countries. Jewish immigrants and visitors to the Holy Land exchanged news and established ties that spread to different parts of the Mediterranean and involved representatives of various groups and institutions of Jewish society. Their notes cover urban life in the Middle East in the 16th century, the evolution of settlements in Palestine, and the formation of the image of the foreigner. Moreover, they reveal a key feature of Jewish socio-cultural life: the existence of a system of well-established bonds between communities as a means of survival. The article analyses contacts between the Holy Land and neighbouring Mediterranean countries by the example of communication between Jewish communities in Syria and Palestine, Italy and North Africa, taking into account the historical realities of the Ottoman era. The geography of connections, the subjects of letters, the place of the Holy Land in the system of communication between the diaspora centers of the Levant, and the participation of emigrants in the socio-cultural life of the Mediterranean in the 16th-early 17th centuries are examined.