A DESERTED JEWISH CEMETERY OF AKHİSAR

Yıl 2016, Cilt: 4 Sayı: 8-9, 131 - 182, 30.12.2016

Mehdi İlhan

Öz

In the town of Akhisar, a Western Anatolian town,
there lie some tombstones with inscriptions in Hebrew on them.
It is clear that the place was once a Jewish cemetery. The place no
longer looks like a cemetery for it is not only surrounded with
buildings, but the land is ploughed for cultivation. Lately the
cemetery had been taken into an enclosure and the tombstones
have been aligned at certain intervals and the field has been
patched with grass. The tombs can no longer be identified. There
are twenty-six tombstones lying on the ground here and there. The
number of tombstones is not enough so as to claim whether more
than one person is buried in one tomb or to draw out family ties.
In any case I observed that the field is big enough to encompass
twenty-six tombstones. They all belong to the Ottoman period
dating from 1884 to 1918. Today there is no longer a Jewish
community in this town. The Jews in almost none of the Anatolian
towns have been in majority and therefore it is difficult to say
whether they ever had a lack of space for burial ground.

Anahtar Kelimeler

jewish, cemetery, akhisar

Kaynakça

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