French Jews, Turkish JewsThe Alliance Isralite Universelle, a French Jewish organization founded in 1860, occupies a crucial place in the history of Sephardi communities in the modern period. In the fifty years after its creation, the Alliance established a vast network of schools in the lands of Islam for the purpose of "civilizing" the local Jewish communities and remaking them in the idealized self image of French Jewry. This study, drawing on the author's extensive