Moses Hamon
Moses Hamon · Science & Medicine
Médecin personnel de Soliman le Magnifique : il obtint du sultan, vers 1545, le firman qui interdit dans tout l'Empire ottoman de juger les juifs sur l'accusation de meurtre rituel sans l'aval du divan impérial
vers 1490, Grenade — 1554, Constantinople
Espagne, Empire ottoman
Moses Hamon is recognized among Jewish contributors to Science & Medicine — Médecin personnel de Soliman le Magnifique : il obtint du sultan, vers 1545, le firman qui interdit dans tout l'Empire ottoman de juger les juifs sur l'accusation de meurtre rituel sans l'aval du divan impérial
Origins and early life
Moses Hamon was born about 1490 at Granada, in the year the Catholic Monarchs were closing in on the last Muslim kingdom of Spain, into a family of Jewish physicians; his father Joseph Hamon took the family into exile with the expulsion of 1492, to the Ottoman empire, which received the Sephardim and where Joseph became physician to Sultan Bayezid II. Moses was raised and lived a Jew, never converted, and succeeded his father at court, becoming chief physician to Suleiman the Magnificent and accompanying him on his campaigns, including into Persia.
Work and career
His position gave him more influence than any physician's skill alone could: he built and endowed a yeshiva in Constantinople, maintained a great library of Hebrew manuscripts, financed scholars and the Hebrew press, and used his access to the sultan on behalf of his people. This fiche records the act for which he is chiefly remembered: about 1545, after a blood-libel accusation at Amasya in which Jews were tortured and executed on the charge of ritual murder, Hamon obtained from Suleiman a firman ordering that no such accusation anywhere in the empire might be tried by a local court, but only before the imperial divan in Constantinople, with the sultan's own knowledge.
The decree, renewed by later sultans, effectively ended judicial blood libels in Ottoman lands for centuries, at a time when they were killing Jews across Christian Europe. He also intervened at court for Gracia Mendes Nasi, who has her own fiche on this site, when she was seeking to recover her fortune from Venice. He died at Constantinople in 1554; his son Joseph succeeded him as physician to Suleiman and then to Selim II.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), « Hamon » ; Encyclopaedia Judaica ; Uriel Heyd, « Moses Hamon, Chief Jewish Physician to Sultan Süleymān » (Oriens, 1963)
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Médecin personnel de Soliman le Magnifique : il obtint du sultan, vers 1545, le firman qui interdit dans tout l'Empire ottoman de juger les juifs sur l'accusation de meurtre rituel sans l'aval du divan impérial
Source: Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), « Hamon » ; Encyclopaedia Judaica ; Uriel Heyd, « Moses Hamon, Chief Jewish Physician to Sultan Süleymān » (Oriens, 1963)
