It seems almost providential that, at a moment when the persecutions in Europe were increasing in number and virulence, the new Turkish empire should have arisen to offer an hospitable asylum to the hunted Jews. When, three days after the chastisement which he inflicted on Constantinople, the sultan, Mahomet II, proclaimed that all the fugitive inhabitants might return to their homes and estates without fear of molestation, he gave a benevolent thought to the Jews. He permitted them to settle freely in Constantinople and other towns, allotted them special dwelling-places, and allowed them to erect synagogues and schools. Soon after his capture of Constantinople, he ordered the election of a Greek patriarch, whom he invested with a certain political authority over all the Greeks in his new dominions, and also nominated a chief rabbi to preside over the Hebrew communities. This was a pious, learned, upright Israelite, named Moses Kapsali. Mahomet even summoned this rabbi to the divan, and singled him out for special distinction, giving him a seat next to the mufti, the Chief Ulema of the Mahometans, and precedence over the patriarch. Moses Kapsali (born about 1420, died about 1495), also received from the sultan a kind of political suzerainty over the Jewish communities in Turkey. The taxes imposed upon the Jews he had to apportion among communities and individuals; he had to superintend their collection and to pay them into the sultan's exchequer. He was furthermore empowered to inflict punishment on his co-religionists, and no rabbi could hold office without his sanction. In short, he was the chief and the official representative of a completely organized Jewish communal system.