Journey To Turkey: The Chida's Adventures in Turkey - Pirates, Manuscripts, and Kings

this torah class is brought to you by torahanytime.com so back hashem we were zacha to be at mccoymare's kadosham and of all places turkey and someone commented these travels it's like when traveled across europe and my reaction was halawai it should be in the footsteps of the khida but it sort of elicited a curiosity did the kida go to turkey and i opened up to say for toiv and sure enough the hida records his travels and his trip to turkey in the year 1756 so the khida in his maghatov which he records his various travels he speaks about in his entry to tishrei 1756 he talks about how he gave the shabba shubhadrasha and levarno and then he skips to sivan the 26th of sivan and he speaks about leaving lavarno with the captain on the boat ragusaya with the captain of the ship giovanni cassellar who was an expert captain and writes that he passed puerto farajo he passed napoli sicilia and on wednesday the fourth day of tamos he his boat went in between two volcanoes one the north one the south the volcanoes of stromboli and grand cratere and the hidalgo continued to travel past the islands of crete and the archipelago and finally he says he saw kara burun which i believe is in the izmir region and incredibly on the 14th day of tamos close to noon they were boarded by corsair frances who is probably one of the pirates of the maltese knights templar of saint john and the captain went up to him and tried to stop him but 20 pirates boarded the he does trip and says he was searched with all kinds of searches and they kept him in the captain prisoner and says it was shabbos and he was not even evil able to eat two meals on shabbos and he was very distressed because he had given the captain a purse full of teleros which was a widely minted silver coin and he had also had his possession 500 gold ducats and he had letters from london which was considered uh dangerous um because of these pirates who they were always suspicious of people from england and says i recited vihinayam the 91st chapter 91 times i said vihinayam which is tihillam park sadi and sadiwan 91 times i made many nadaram and on the 15th day of tamos at noon they allowed us to go back onto our ship but behold 20 of them kept their swords drawn and they kept us on our boat for six days and they stripped us of all of our gold and silver and all of our merchandise but says hashem he had one small money belt that he was able to procure a large amount of money finally they let us go after six days thanks the captain who was able to remain calm and kept his mouth closed for the entire duration finally on the twentieth of tamos the khida says we were able to reach izmir and in the evening we were welcomed with great honor and were able to restore much of the money that we needed and the qidah writes and what did i see in izmir i saw the chuvas of maran who spent a significant amount of time in constantinople he saw the manuscript of the afghan shiloh sichuva's base yosef the chuvas of the beissers a manuscript in izmir what else did i see in izmir i saw the says now we mentioned that the classes and rav arun lapapa split the duties of chief rabbi after the great reign of yosef iscafa they split the duties ravaran al-fafa was the leader in azadayan and mishpat and the sakdoylan and in yaradeya and the rivaran le faffa the shimbak deuteronomy says he saw the sheet of mecubetsus of ravaran luffaffa in izmir well here is when this is the exact date that the says this doesn't mean the in the questions of sal ashkenazi but the same style of writing where he collects the various opinions this he saw in the city of izmir so incredibly the uh original rove of izmir uh yosef escapa the roy choi saif followed by knesset sagadola and rivaran lefafa now we're going to see what the hida saw of the manuscripts of the knesset then says he traveled he continued to travel and on the fourth day of elol it was shabbos he was in taqir dag which was near istanbul constantinople and finally on the sixth day of ello he entered costa costa's constantinople and he rented a room and amazingly he was greeted with great uh warmth and covered now the hidalgo continues his travels on the 27th day of tishrei he went to the gate of the officer of the legs and he saw them bring the elephants which seems like the hidden a zoo on the second day of khajwan he saw the mosque nordi asmaniye which is near the grand bazaar which we were just at yesterday on wednesday how time flies so we were just there yesterday we saw this mask now the mask is opposite the hagia sophia which we saw yesterday and according to most poison you're allowed to go inside a mosque but i personally would not go inside um the kluisenberg rebbe is uh in achuva writes that one should not go inside of a mask although most permit it nevertheless i did not feel comfortable going inside one would have to remove their shoes declaring that it's a holy place something that i did not want to do but it's interesting the writes that the hagia sofia was a landmark but interestingly doesn't say that he went inside so perhaps he does means to say it is a landmark but he personally did not go inside he saw over there other notable buildings palaces of all kinds of animals that describes a palace of leopards lions tigers wolves elephant heads crocodile heads and the grand bazaar which we just saw yesterday and then says after seeing all of these things we're in the orita synagogue that's where we davened we were there and that in that synagogue there is a bhima which is in the shape of a boat and the writes about the various shules that he visited in istanbul and he saw the cemetery at igri kapu and hidavan at the cover we searched and searched for the rebellio mazrahi but we were not able to find it but in fact writes he did pray at the cover of rabio mizrahi and and the sword that we spoke about yesterday of naftali katz that was made for him by rabham abulaffia with all kinds of engravings and shame ice the says that i saw that sword and i saw a safer by a monster who lived with the shivchat to try to be matara himself and it was very questionable and controversial until the marambit yosef the besafe and the radhvas and mabin and the all agreed to it says i saw their personal signatures now says sunday the 16th of judgment died and sultan mustafa the son of sultan ahmad immediately became the king i tried to get a view of the proceedings and i saw it and i pronounced the bracha over the king and the describes in great detail what that procession was like and concludes that great gifts were given out to the passerbys but says i went to see this king to be able to behold that which the gemara says one should always run to see the kings of gentiles so that when we see king mashiach we will see the noticeable difference between the grandeur the majesty of hamashiach and all other kings and we could use that as a paradigm for what we saw in izmir and constantinople by the way the qidah also says he saw the king going and returning from the gelato tower which we also were in that vicinity but says the purpose of witnessing all these things the grandeur the majesty the architecture of the nations of the world is so that we see and recognize that when hashem brings the meshiach and he bestows upon claudius the royalty that they deserve we will we will be able to see how we far surpass all the nations of the world in the bracha that we will receive from bakalish so all of our experiences are only to yearn that if this is the culture and the majesty of the nations of the world just imagine the great blessing and success and majesty the russian will be stole upon claudius you've just experienced another torah class brought to you by torahanytime.com