Daniel de Abraham Lopez

Daniel ben Abraham de Fonseca (ca. 1668–ca. 1740) was a Jewish physician of Iberian origin who achieved prominence for his involvement in Ottoman diplomacy. Born into a marrano family in the Portuguese city of Porto, Fonseca grew up as a Christian after his grandfather and uncle were burned at the stake and his father fled the country. Although he was baptized and joined the priesthood, he practiced the Jewish faith secretly and eventually went to France, where he studied medicine in Bordeaux and Paris.

Sometime between 1680 and 1702, he arrived Istanbul, where he reverted to Judaism publicly and became the personal physician of the French ambassador, Baron Charles de Férriol (1637–1722, in office 1699– 1710) and of the envoy Pierre Comte des Alleurs (in office 1710–1716), continuing in this capacity until 1719. According to Rosanes, he studied religious subjects during this time and made the acquaintance of the noted physician Tobias Cohn (Ṭuviyya Cohen, 1652–1729). Unlike the latter, he involved himself deeply in political and diplomatic affairs at the Sublime Porte and at times represented French interests against Austria. Most of his activity at the Ottoman court overlapped with the reign of Ahmet III (r. 1703–1730)

In 1709, after his defeat by the Russians in the Battle of Poltava, the Swedish king Charles (Karl) XII (r. 1697–1718) took refuge near the Ottoman city of Bendery (present-day Bender in Moldova). De Fonseca was importantly involved in negotiating an Ottoman-Swedish alliance against Russia with Charles. To further this effort, he used a Jewish woman who had regular access to the imperial harem to spread heroic stories about the Swedish king among the women; the sultana, deeply impressed by the tales of Charles’s courage, even took to calling him arslanım (Turk. my lion). The Ottomans agreed to help Charles make his way across Russia to Sweden, but balked at his demand for an escort of fifty thousand soldiers, and he remained at Bendery for some years until the Ottomans captured his camp and brought him to Istanbul in 1713.

At the court, de Fonseca made the friendship of the Greek Phanariote nobleman and intellectual Count Alexander Mavrocordatos (ca. 1636–1709), the chief dragoman to the Sublime Porte. When the latter’s son Nicholas (1670–1730) became prince of Wallachia in 1710, he took de Fonseca with him to Bucharest to serve as his personal physician. De Fonseca remained there until 1714, when he returned to Istanbul. His reputation was by now so well established that he was appointed chief physician (hekimbaşı) to Sultan Ahmet III. During the course of his career, de Fonseca evinced concern for the affairs of Jews and he played a role in negotiating the Treaty of Passarowitz (Požarevac, 1718), which ameliorated the condition of Jews in Austria.

When his patron Ahmet III was deposed in 1730, de Fonseca returned to Paris, where he associated with leading figures of intellectual society, including Voltaire (1694–1778), who described him as knowledgeable and capable and “perhaps the only philosopher of his people.” De Fonseca died in Paris at an advanced age, but Galanté noted that there was a grave in Izmir (Smyrna) bearing his name.

Murphey surmises that de Fonseca’s involvement in political affairs at the court must have occupied all of his time, since he left behind no published works. His legacy as a central figure in diplomatic circles in Istanbul resembled that of many of his Jewish physician predecessors.

D Gershon Lewental

Bibliography

Carmoly, Eliakim. Histoire des médecins juifs anciens et modernes (Brussels: Société Encyclographique des Sciences Médicales, 1844), pp. 198–199.

Carvalho, Silva. “Daniel da Fonseca, Juif portugais, célèbre médecin et politicen à Constantinople,” in Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag Max Neuburgers, mit 91 internationalen medicohistorischen Beiträgen, ed. Emanuel Berghoff (Vienna: Maudrich, 1948), pp. 75–80.

Friedenwald, Harry. The Jews and Medicine: Essays, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944), p. 725.

Galanté, Abraham. Histoire des Juifs de Turquie (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1985), vol. 1, p. 139; vol. 8, p. 64; vol. 9, pp. 92–93.

Murphey, Rhoads. “Jewish Contributions to Ottoman Medicine, 1450–1800,” in Jews, Turks, Ottomans: A Shared History, Fifteenth through the Twentieth Century, ed. Avigdor Levy (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002), pp. 69–70.

Rosanes, Salomon A. Divre Yemey Yisraʾel be-Togarma: ʿAl-pi Meqorot Riʾshonim, vol. 4, Qorot ha-Yehudim be-Turqya u-va-Araṣot ha-Qedem: Mi-Shenat 5400 ʿad Shenat 5490, 1640–1730 (Sofia: Defus ha-Mishpaṭ, 1934–35), pp. 188–189.

Citation D Gershon Lewental. " Fonseca, Daniel de." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online , 2012. Reference. Jim Harlow. 11 December 2012 <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-...>