A Dirge for the Ninth of Av

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This dirge relates the tragic events that struck the Ottoman Jewish community in July 1826, when two powerful Jewish financiers were murdered in Istanbul on the sultan’s orders. They were Isaac Karmona, known as Çelebi Behor Karmona, and Isaiah Aciman (Ajiman). Both had business ties with the Janissary corps, which had been liquidated by the sultan a few weeks earlier, following the revolt mentioned in the dirge. After Karmona was strangled in his mansion, some of his family members were exiled. A few days later, Ajiman was beheaded. The dirge is modeled on traditional kinot, particularly The Seven Sons of Hana, a story of seven brothers killed by King Antiochus Epiphanes for refusing to renounce Judaism. This is why Ajiman is referred to as “the second one,” as if Karmona and Ajiman were brothers. One version of the kina talks of the mother witnessing the violent death of one of her sons, which explains the presence of Karmona’s mother in the dirge. This lamentation has twenty-two quatrains. As is typical for Sephardi koplas (couplets), the first letters of the first line of each stanza form an acrostic that follows the Hebrew alphabet. The need for a particular sequence of letters appears to have affected the logic of the narration. Thus quatrains sixteen and nineteen are evidently switched.