Excerpt from a Talks at Google presentation by Andree Aelion Brooks about Dona Gracia Nasi. The speakers discuss identification of a court portrait (Venetian clothing indicating high status), a possible daughter contrasted with Dona Gracia, and Dona Gracia's diplomatic strategy—leveraging threats to/from the Ottoman Sultan to secure better treatment for Jews (including sending letters and provoking an envoy). The excerpt also contains historical commentary comparing Ottoman and Christian military discipline and weapons (noting the curved sword and early use of gunpowder).
Chapters
He had found a picture of her painted by the royal court artist in those times and he sent it to me and he said that it was the woman on the right.
And I said, because she has Venetian.
Clothing on and Donna Gracia required when.
She went to the court of Silliman that she should wear Venetian clothing. It was the highest status clothing you could wear. And I said, I'm looking at this and I've blown it up. And I said, that's not the face of a woman who did all the things she did. This is the face of a woman who did a lot of the things. Look at the strength of that face versus this, if at all.
She isn't in the book because I.
Didn'T even think that that was the right person. But he says, so I'm not so sure. But look at that face versus that face that looks like her daughter.
Sort of a woman unfortunately under the thumb of a very, very strong willed woman who never really came into her own.
So one of the questions I had is what was the relationship between the Sultan and the Ottoman Empire and her and the Jews and also what alliances were there with the Ottoman? Either or back to Christian.
The Sultan of course was the head of the Ottoman Empire, he was the chief. What she did was very often play the power play of trying to frighten the Christians to the Muslims, the Muslim to the Christians in order that the Jews got a better deal. So she played both sides of the coin when she was in Venice and they didn't want to let her go, which is a story I didn't tell. She makes sure that a letter gets out to the Sultan's court, the Sultan sends an envoy to the Phoenicians saying, you better let this lady out or we're going to bring our ships in here. So she played very heavily on both sides at that point in time. It was the Christian Europe was terrified of the Muslims because as today, they always seem to have a weapon that we have not quite perfected yet. The weapon of the day today, you would say was terrorism, right, or the suicide bomber. The weapon then was the curved sword. They were terrified of the curved, you know, the curved sword of the Turks. You must have seen it. That was supposed to be absolutely lethal. They were still stabbing people with a straight sword and that just went in and out. The curved sword. It was certain death. I mean it was a terrifying instrument. They also had gunpowder which they hadn't quite perfected in Christian Europe yet. So. So, you know, and if you look back at the Muslim incursions into Europe in the 1100s, you'll see that every 500 years, the Muslims and Christians have a face off. And always the Muslims bring with them a weapon that we have not yet got. One of the ways in which the armies functioned, the Muslim armies versus the Christian armies in those days was the Christian armies were kind of degenerate. You know, a lot of drinking, a lot of women, a lot of kind of not very disciplined. Whereas the Muslim armies could march for days on rice. They were tremendously disciplined. They didn't drink, and, you know, they just wiped the floor off of the Christian soldiers.
