MESA Conference Abstract The Death of David Altaras: Identity and Plurality at the Crossroads of the Mediterranean. In a letter to the Cinque Savii, (the Venetian board of trade), written on April 15th 1774, the Venetian Consul informs the members of the death of David Altaras, the head of the Jewish Altaras clan, and the strange circumstances that followed his death. Directly after the passing of Altaras, both the Venetian consul and the Ottoman Qadi turned up at the house to place a seal on the door, claiming the deceased as one of their own. This tug of war between the two sides dragged on for a long time, while the body was left to decompose in a sealed house. It wasn’t until after four European consuls, in a rare show of solidarity, came together to petition, that the Qadi gave way under pressure and allowed the body to be buried without paying the required taxes. The Altaras clan exemplify the Levantine families who straddled the divide between the Ottoman and European worlds, and rose to commercial power in the second half of the eighteenth century as a result of a change in commerce and market patterns. Identity in the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period was fairly fluid and opportunistic. Members of the Levantine community were long-standing inhabitants of the empire who had lived there over an extended period of time, and as such, considered themselves subjects of the sultan. However, many of them simultaneously retained their European identities, which was Venetian in the case of the Altaras. By the nineteenth century, the Levantine identity meant being part of a growing commercial bourgeoisie, cultural go-betweens, dragomans, and even consuls or representatives of European nations. By examining the letter announcing the death of Altaras and other such correspondence from the Venetian state archives, this paper will demonstrate the ambivalent approach the Levantines took towards their hybridity using their dual identities to leverage trade and further their ambitions. This paper will argue that they were able to do this by availing themselves of the dual legal systems provided to them by both the Europeans and the Ottoman authorities and using them both to their advantage.