Abraham de Castro ( Hebrew: אברהם קסטרו; d. 1560) was an Ottoman Jewish financialist who served as the head of the mint for

Ottoman Sultan The sultans of the Ottoman Empire ( tr, Osmanlı padişahları), who were all members of the Ottoman dynasty (House of Osman), ruled over the transcontinental empire from its perceived inception in 1299 to its dissolution in 1922. At its hei ...

, Selim I and played an active role in the Cairo Purim.

Biography

Possibly born in Spain, into the de Castro family, he may have come to Egypt following the

Alhambra decree The Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion; Spanish: ''Decreto de la Alhambra'', ''Edicto de Granada'') was an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain ( Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Arag ...

of 1492. It was in

Ottoman Egypt The Eyalet of Egypt (, ) operated as an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire from 1517 to 1867. It originated as a result of the conquest of Mamluk Egypt by the Ottomans in 1517, following the Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–17) and the a ...

, that de Castro rose to great social prominence, especially in official government circles. He leased the taxes on customs and trade in Alexandria, and in 1520, Selim I, appointed de Castro as master of the mint (''mu'allim dār al-darb''). After this appointment, de Castro became involved in several philanthropic activities on behalf of individuals and institutions in Egypt. Although, following the succession of Suleiman the Magnificent, a certain

Aḥmad Pasha Ahmad ( ar, أحمد, ʾAḥmad) is an Arabic male given name common in most parts of the Muslim world. Other spellings of the name include Ahmed and Ahmet. Etymology The word derives from the root (ḥ-m-d), from the Arabic (), from the ve ...

was appointed as

Viceroy of Egypt The Ottoman Empire's governors of Egypt from 1517 to 1805 were at various times known by different but synonymous titles, among them ''beylerbey'', viceroy, governor, governor-general, or, more generally, ''wāli''. Furthermore, the Ottoman sult ...

. In 1523, Pasha plotted to establish himself as an independent sovereign, and asked de Castro to mint the coins with his name in lieu of the sultan. de Castro secretly left Egypt and hastened to Constantinople to inform the sultan of Aḥmad's plot. The sultan received him with high honors and gave him costly presents. After hearing of de Castro's actions, Pasha threatened to murder all the Jews in Cairo, although this massacre was evaded after Pasha was stabbed to death by one of his junior officers, leading to the event later being known as the "Cairo Purim". By the late 1530s, de Castro had moved to Jerusalem, where he played a central role in the city's Jewish society, primarily in its economic life, mainly dealing with real estate. Castro evidently remained in Jerusalem until his death in 1560.A.B. Pollack, "The Jews and the Egyptian Treasury in the Times of the Mamluks and the Beginning of the Turkish Regime,"

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Castro, Abraham de 1560 deaths 16th-century Jews 16th-century Sephardi Jews Egyptian Sephardi Jews Sephardi Jews in the Mamluk Sultanate Sephardi Jews from the Ottoman Empire