In the late 16th century, while the Mediterranean was ablaze with conflicts between Christians and Muslims (such as the Cyprus War), an invisible network of spies crossed religious and political borders: it was the Sephardic network in the service of the Mendes/Nasi family. Descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews forced to convert (the so-called conversos or New Christians, according to Francisco Bethencourt's definition), the Mendes - converted to Judaism under the name Nasi, Hebrew for "prince" - built a commercial empire that turned into a perfect intelligence machine. Gracia Nasi (née Beatriz de Luna) and her grandson Joseph Nasi (née João Miques) were at the centre of this network, using their trade in spices, precious stones and textiles to weave alliances and gather intelligence throughout Europe and the Levant. Established in the Ottoman Empire around 1570 after their expulsion from Portugal and two brief stays in Antwerp and Venice, the Nasi found in Constantinople the ideal place to consolidate their power. Joseph Nasi became one of the most influential men at the court of Sultan Selim II, acting as his personal advisor; his role in advising the Sultan to attack the Venetians in the Cyprus War (1570-1573) is still debated. Through a dense network of agents - merchants, ambassadors, Jewish doctors and Christian converts - the Nasi monitored the movements of Venice, Spain and even small Italian states. Their strength lay in their mobility and discretion: they exploited the Jewish diaspora from the Iberian peninsula as a natural network of information linking Lisbon, Antwerp, Venice, Thessaloniki and Jerusalem. The Mendes/Nasi story reveals how, in a Mediterranean fragmented by religious wars, intelligence could arise not only from military or diplomatic might, but also from the resilience of persecuted communities capable of turning trade into political power. The Venetians knew something about this: in one of his reports, the Ambassador Extraordinary to Constantinople Andrea Badoer wrote that Nasi was "of the greatest harm not only to your serenity, but also to all Christendom, because since he is the head of his whole nation, and has intelligence in every place, and for all parts of the world, he makes known to his majesty many imperfections of princes, which then cause great revolutions in states". The intelligence Badoer speaks of was precisely intelligence, fundamental to the Venetians as already explained in a previous pill.