Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror andhis Jewish physician Yaqub Pasha or Jacopo of Gaeta (b. around 1430)I

Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror andhis Jewish physician Yaqub Pasha or Jacopo of Gaeta (b. around 1430)I do think they were really romantic lovers.“He also found favour in the eyes of the king’s son, called Sultan Mehmed. His soul was bound to him and he loved him. Because of his love for him he asked his father to give him this physician, to be with him and to serve him, and the king listened to the voice of his son and gave him to him. And the man went with the king’s son and he served him.” — Salonica Rabbi Samuel de Medina (1506-1589)A 15 century account by Salonica Rabbi Samuel de Medina (1506-1589):“A story that happened thus. There was a certain Jewish man, a respected scholar and a physician, who journeyed from the land of his birth and came to live in the land of Ishmael*, for he had heard that they are men of benevolence. And he came in the time of the king, Sultan Murad, to the place where the king dwelt in his capital, which is Edirne. And the high officers of the king saw that this man was good and wise, and that God made all whom he treated to prosper in his hand. They praised him to the king, and the man was taken into the house of the king, and he became great in the house of the king. He also found favour in the eyes of the king’s son, called Sultan Mehmed. His soul was bound to him and he loved him. Because of his love for him he asked his father to give him this physician, to be with him and to serve him, and the king listened to the voice of his son and gave him to him. And the man went with the king’s son and he served him. And one day, on Thursday the tenth of the month they call Muharrem, at the beginning of the year 855 of their reckoning 7 (that is the year 5211 of the reckoning of the children of Israel), the king died, and Sultan Mehmed his son ruled in his place. The year of his accession was 5211, as stated, and they made the chronogram ‘lion-king ’, and he sat on his father’s throne in Edirne. In the second year of his reign he built a small town in the place and he called it Boghaz-kesen, and to-day it is called Yeini Hisar, which is beyond Galata. And the king came from Edirne to see the town and the building that his servants had built, and he brought the physician-with him. In those days the king deigned to aggrandize and exalt the said physician, for he found favour in his eyes by the great wisdom and understanding that he possessed”.Mehmed frees Jacub and his future descendants from any kind of taxes. And Samuel explains it as “…it seems that all this the king did for the physician because of his love for him, without the physician asking it of the king”.Mehmed granted his physician such document twice and Samuel adds: “…and this is a sign and a wonder of the great friendship and immense love and exceeding affection which that physician had from the king”.Rabbi ends the account with the events of conquest:“God awakened the spirit of the king and he came and besieged this great city of Constantinople, and God gave it into his hand and he captured it, and he brought his throne there and dwelt there and made it his capital in place of Edirne, and the said physician also came with him, with the two documents in his hand. The physician set up his dwelling there with the king and with his household, and he dwelt among the Jewish people who were in the city at the time of its capture and those whom the king brought there from the towns which had been in his possession from the days of his fathers”.*(a common term in medieval Hebrew for Muslim lands) -- source link

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