Qualla: Rhodes Blood Libel

Rhodes Blood Libel: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 4.0. On February 17, 1840, a Greek Orthodox boy went for a walk in Rhodes and did not come home. His mother reported him missing the next day. Within a week, the island's Jewish community, who had lived on Rhodes for nearly two thousand years, would be accused of a crime that had no factual basis in any era of their religious practice but that medieval Christian Europe had circulated for centuries: the so-called blood libel, the lie that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood for Passover. What followed was torture, a twelve-day siege of the Jewish quarter on the eve of Purim, and an international diplomatic battle that would clear the community's name and produce an Ottoman imperial decree denouncing the libel as false.

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Image: Bernard Gagnon | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rhodes Blood Libel: A Community Older Than the Charge

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jebulon, CC0. Jews had lived in Rhodes since at least 142 BC, when the island appears in a Roman decree renewing the friendship treaty between Rome and the Jewish nation. Benjamin of Tudela, the twelfth-century traveler, counted around 400 Jews in the city. The community survived the catastrop...

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Image: Jebulon | CC0

Rhodes Blood Libel: The Accusation Takes Hold

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Circle of Titian, Public domain. Two Greek women came forward several days after the boy disappeared, claiming they had seen him walking with four Jewish men. One was identified as Eliakim Stamboli. He was arrested and given five hundred blows of the bastinado on the soles of his feet. On February 23, in a room ...

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Image: Circle of Titian | Public domain

Rhodes Blood Libel: The Quarter Under Siege

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit [[*Fotograf: Heiko Gorski (Moonshadow) ]], CC BY-SA 3.0. On the eve of Purim, Yusuf Pasha sealed off the entire Jewish quarter. No one could enter or leave. Someone tried to smuggle a corpse into the quarter to fabricate evidence; the residents stopped the attempt. The blockade lasted twelve days, lifted only after a senior Ottoman tre...

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Image: [[*Fotograf: Heiko Gorski (Moonshadow) ]] | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rhodes Blood Libel: The International Fight

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karelj, Public domain. Word reached Constantinople, then London, then Vienna. The Rothschild family bank in Vienna, run by Salomon Mayer von Rothschild, had close ties to Chancellor von Metternich. On April 10, Metternich dispatched instructions calling the libel "absurd" and ordering the Austrian amba...

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Image: Karelj | Public domain

Rhodes Blood Libel: Acquittal and the Sultan's Decree

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Böhringer Friedrich, CC BY-SA 2.5. On May 26, an Ottoman tribunal in Constantinople opened the formal investigation, with Jewish and Greek delegations of five each, joined by the qadi from Rhodes, the French consul, and the Austrian vice-consul. The qadi testified that the entire affair had been the product of hat...

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Image: Böhringer Friedrich | CC BY-SA 2.5