THE OFFICE OF ḥakham bashi was created on the cusp of an extended period of profound crisis in the Jewish communities of the Ottoman empire. This atmosphere of crisis permeates the history of many of those communities during the second half of the nineteenth century, decades characterized by bitter disputes and controversies around issues of leadership. Confrontations and polemics of various sorts were of course endemic to premodern Jewish society as well, but it appears that, as in eighteenth-century Europe, so in the nineteenth-century Middle East the rise of individualism and the increasing variety of cultural options available led to widespread and often dramatic conflicts entailing complex and difficult personal and public choices. These controversies, which began with a realignment of forces within the community and continued with demands on the part of various social groups for a share of power, more than once ended with the removal of the incumbent ḥakham bashi.

The legal changes gradually introduced by the Ottoman authorities over the course of the nineteenth century accelerated and brought to the surface social tensions in the Jewish communities at the centre of the empire. The Jewish millet decree of 1864–5 defined the rules for electing the ḥakham bashi and the spiritual and steering committees of the community, with the intention of creating a balance among the three foci of power—the ḥakham bashi, the rabbinic scholars, and the wealthy laymen (gevirim)—within the communities. Almost all the disputes over the office of ḥakham bashi derived from tensions which developed in the wake of these reforms. But the confrontations and power struggles within the communities were also motivated by factors rooted in human nature—jealousy, hatred, and rivalry—which further exacerbated the tension between the ḥakham bashi and his rivals.

Very few chief rabbis during these decades served out their full term of office, and even those who did rarely escaped embroilment in conflict with one or another group in the communities they served.