This volume is a major contribution to Jewish as well as to Ottoman, Balkan, Middle Eastern, and North African history. These twenty-eight original essays grew out of an international conference at Brandeis University -- the first ever to be convened specifically on this subject ... The essays focus on many central topics: the structure of the Jewish communities, their organisation and institutions, the scope of their autonomy, and their place in Ottoman society. Other subjects include Sephardic folklore, Jewish-Muslim acculturation, Jewish contributions to Ottoman arts, demographic perspectives of the Jewish communities, problems of immigration and emigration, the modernisation of Ottoman Jewry, and Jewish participation in political life.