Portrait | Moses Franco (1864- }

A Jewish family which derived its name from a place near Navarre, Spain. There were Francos at Amsterdam, Venice, Tunis, Constantinople, Adrianople, Silistria, Magnesia, Smyrna, Brusa, and in the islands of Crete and Rhodes. According to the family traditions, the Francos of Constantinople, who are Austrian subjects, are the descendants of two Jews of Prague, the brothers Abraham and Moses, who settled in Constantinople in 1780.

Mavi Boncuk

Moses Franco

Historian and schoolmaster in the employ of the Alliance Israélite Universelle; born at Constantinople 1864. He studied at the Ecole Normale Orientale Israélite, Paris, was principal of several Jewish schools in the East, and founded the Jewish schools at Safed, Palestine. In collaboration with Col. Rushdi Bey he has compiled three French readers that have been officially introduced into the Turkish schools of the Ottoman empire, namely: "Alphabet Français," 1889; "Premier Livre de Lecture," 1888; and "Cours Moyen de Lecture," 1889. He is the author of "Histoire des Israélites de l'Empire Ottoman," Paris, 1897; and "Les Sciences Mystiques chez les Juifs d'Orient," ib. 1900. In 1901-02 he published "La Communauté Israélite de Safed" (in "Revue des Ecoles de l'Alliance Israélite Universelle"). For sixteen years Franco has contributed to two Anglo-French periodicals of Constantinople, "Stamboul" (1886-97) and "Le Moniteur Oriental" (1897-1903). He later became director of the Alliance Israélite Universelle School at Shumla, Bulgaria.