The Rhodes blood libel is made against…
February 1840 CE
On February 17, 1840, a boy from a Greek Orthodox family in Rhodes goes for a walk and does not return.
The next day his mother reports the disappearance to the Ottoman authorities.
The island's governor, Yusuf Pasha, orders a search, but several days' efforts prove fruitless.
The European consuls press the governor to solve the case: the boy's family is Christian, though without foreign protection.
The Greek Christian population of Rhodes, meanwhile, has no doubts that the boy has been murdered by the Jews for ritual purposes.
The assurance of the local Christians having been impressed upon the Ottoman authorities, they begin searching the Jewish quarter, again in vain.
Several days later, two Greek women report having seen the boy walking towards the city of Rhodes accompanied by four Jews.
The women claim that one of the Jews was Eliakim Stamboli, who is arrested, questioned, and subjected to five hundred blows of the bastinado.
On February 23, he is interrogated again and tortured in the presence of many dignitaries, including the governor, the qadi (Muslim judge), the Greek archbishop, and European consuls.
Under severe torture, Stamboli confesses to the ritual murder charge and incriminates other Jews, opening the door to further arrests.
Some half dozen Jews are accused of the crime and tortured, and the chief rabbi is intensely questioned as to whether Jews practice ritual murder.
At the instigation of the Greek clergy and the European consuls, the governor Yusuf Pasha blockades the Jewish quarter on the eve of Purim and arrests Jacob Israel the chief rabbi.
The inhabitants can obtain neither food nor fresh water.
The Jews thwart a subversive attempt to smuggle a dead body into the Jewish quarter.
The Muslim authorities, on the whole, are not keen to pursue the ritual murder accusation against the Jews.
The Muslim official in charge of the blockade is found smuggling bread to the imprisoned residents; at the insistence of the British consul, he is bastinadoed and dismissed from service.
The qadi openly sympathizes with the Jews.
At the end of February, he initiates further hearings on the case, after which evidence is declared insufficient to convict the prisoners.
The governor, on the other hand, refuses to lift the blockade of the Jewish quarter, though he seems to waver somewhat.
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