Agrinio, Arta and Patras on the Ionian coast, 1816

More now-forgotten Jewish communities on the west coast of Greece.

Janina, 6th of Alonari, (July) 1816.

Vrachori [Agrinio], the residence of Elmas the governor, and the modern capital of Ætolia or Carleli, is said to have been founded and reared by Jews driven from Lepanto and other places in that quarter; but this is probably an error, for the Jews always take up their abode in towns already established, and are never known to form new colonies. The town, nevertheless, contains 120 persons, of the Hebrew nation, authorised to have a synagogue. Three churches, and as many mosques appropriated to the use of 600 families, Christian and Mahametan. The Turks live on the revenue of their military lands and pensions; the Greeks are wholly engaged in agriculture, so that the trade in silk, the only proper business of Vrachori, is altogether in the hands of the Jews. The bazars presented but a few poorly furnished shops; and on the river Thermissus, which passes a mile east from the town, are established tanneries for the manufacture of red and yellow morocco-leather.

…

The extinction of the Jews of Patras is chiefly ascribed to the brutal treatment they received from the Turks during the dreadful pestilence of 1756, when they were forced into a walled inclosure, and there they perished by contagion and famine; war in such a condition would have been welcomed as a mercy.

…

The town [Arta, Greece] contains also the residence of the archbishop, with twenty-six Greek churches, seven synagogues, and five mosques; circumstances announcing a place of no small extent and population. Still, the inhabitants did not exceed 7000 Greeks, 1000 Jews, originally from the south of Italy, and 800 Mahometans, up to the breaking out of the pestilence of 1816.

François Charles Hugues Laurent Pouqueville. Travels in southern Epirus, Acarnania, Ætolia, Attica, and Peloponesus. 1816. Page 40.

Patras and the Albanian trade, 1813

At various points Patras, situated on the northern Peloponnese on the Gulf of Corinth was ruled by the Genoese and Venetians. Apart from 1687–1715, when the Venetians re-established themselves, this area was ruled by the Turks and their vassals. Possibly the Jews arrived during the Venetian rule and remained.

"Patras is governed by a bey, subject to the pasha of the Morea; the town contains a great number of Jews, who are the principal commercial agents; almost all business in this way passes through their hands. France names a commercial agent who receives no salary, but all ships of the country which stop here make him some present; they also pay an anchorage, though it cannot be exacted. The drogmans are all Jews, who eagerly seek after an office which they know very well how to turn to a good account. To judge by one of these good people, by name Solomon, they do no great honour to the languages they pretend to speak: the French, as he called it, which he spoke was a terrible mix of the Provençal and Barbary languages, pronounced with so strange and discordant an accent, that it was no very easy matter to comprehend what he meant to say."

Pouqueville comments that French trade has done very well in Albania over the preceding ten years. The merchants of Ancona and Sinigaglia pass their shoddy products off as French. While the locals still prefer Venetian-supplied muskets from Brescia to the French product, the Jews can’t compete with the French. I suspect the situation changed within the year once formerly embargoed British products entered the market.

François Charles Hugues Laurent Pouqueville. Travels in the Morea, Albania, and other parts of the Ottoman empire. 1813