
After the Expulsion of 1492, Spanish-speaking Jews harassed and persecuted by the Inquisition, accepted by Sultan Bayezid II to the Ottoman territories and arrived in waves from the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal). A large community grew in Monastir and made up over ten percent of the city's population in 1900. The local Jewish population referred to themselves as Monastirli. Most Jews of Monastir were murdered during the Holocaust, and at present none remain in the city.
This project seeks to preserve the genealogical history of the Monastirli community.