The Legacy Of Sara Khatun, The First Woman Diplomat Of The Muslim East

During the Renaissance, it was not common for women to be politically active. However, two women were known to be ahead of their times, Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi and Sara Khatun. Both women wielded considerable influence over the Ottoman Turkish sultans. Both women were involved in diplomatic affairs. And both women had influential men in their lives, whom they greatly influenced.

Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi managed to smuggle hundreds of Jews out of lands controlled by the Inquisition to the Ottoman Empire and also oversaw the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Spanish. She rescued Jewish captives, constructed synagogues and yeshivas, and was a major philanthropist. As the head of the banking empire, she contributed greatly to enriching Ottoman Turkey to such a great level that she would be awarded with the province of Tiberius.  

Jane Gerber, author of “The Jews of Spain,” noted that between 1391 and the fifteenth century, a significant number of Jews immigrated to the Holy Land: “Entire family groups banded together and rented ships and made their way to Eretz Yisrael. Most of these Jews would settle in Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron and Tiberius.”

Thanks to Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi’s contributions to the Ottoman state, these Jews would receive backing from the Ottoman authorities, thus creating a precedent that later on the Zionist Movement was able to follow. Several hundred years before Theodore Herzl, a Jewish woman was working to return Jews to Israel under the protection of the Ottoman Empire.