Sabbatai Zevi - in Istanbul

In Istanbul

At the beginning of the year 1666, Sabbatai left Smyrna for Istanbul (the Ottoman Empire's capital, then known in the Christian West as Constantinople.) He may have been forced to do so by city officials or hoped for a miracle in the Turkish capital. Nathan Ghazzati had prophesied that Sabbatai would place the sultan's crown on his own head. However, the grand vizier, Ahmed Köprülü, ordered Sabbatai's immediate arrest upon arrival and had him imprisoned, maybe to avoid any doubts among local and foreign observers of the imperial court as to the mettle of state power still wielded by the Turkish Sultanate and by the Sultan himself.

Sabbatai's imprisonment had no discouraging effect either on him or on his followers at this initial stage. The lenient treatment to which he was subjected in prison, which may have been secured by means of bribes, seems to have rather strengthened his immediate circle of followers in their messianic beliefs. In the meantime also, all sorts of fabulous reports concerning the miraculous deeds which "the Messiah" was performing in the Turkish capital were spread by Ghazzati and Primo among the Jews of Smyrna and in many other communities, and the messianic expectations in the Jewish diasporas seem to have raised initially to a still higher pitch with the move to the capital of the Empire.