Ottoman customs documents reached Venetian archives written in Hebrew letters.

Evidence

Jews served especially in the customs administration, where their knowledge of European languages and conditions was useful. Those who came from Europe could speak Spanish and often Italian too. We find for example great numbers of customs receipts in the Venetian archives, in Hebrew letters. A customs receipt is given so that the recipient can show it to another customs officer, and if the other customs officer was also likely to be Jewish, it made good sense to write the customs receipt in Hebrew letters. In the Venetian archives there are boxes of customs receipts given by Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman service to Venetian merchants. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 166

Categorization

• XREF: Hebrew-letter Ottoman administrative documents undercut the clean script-civilization mapping that Orientalist accounts of Ottoman bureaucracy assumed — script choice was pragmatic, tracking who would read the document.