Proselytes of a New Nation: Muslim Conversions to Orthodox Christianity in Modern Greece 9780197621752, 9780197621776, 9780197621769, 9780197621783, 0197621759

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Proselytes of a New Nation

Proselytes of a New Nation Muslim Conversions to Orthodox Christianity in Modern Greece S T E FA N O S KAT SI KA S

1

3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Katsikas, Stefanos, author. Title: Proselytes of a new nation : Muslim conversions to Orthodox Christianity in modern Greece / Stefanos Katsikas. Description: 1. | New York : Oxford University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2021057649 (print) | LCCN 2021057650 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197621752 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197621776 | ISBN 9780197621769 | ISBN 9780197621783 | ISBN 9780197621776 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Christian converts from Islam—Greece. | Orthodox Eastern Church—Greece. | Greece—History—19th century. Classification: LCC BV2625 .K38 2022 (print) | LCC BV2625 (ebook) | DDC 261.2/7—dc23/eng/20220128 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021057649 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021057650 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197621752.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

In memory of Evangelos Dioletis And in recognition of the lost and the sufferers of the COVID-​19 pandemic

Contents Acknowledgments  Names and Dates  Transliteration 

Introduction 

ix xiii xvii 1

1. The Greek War of Independence 

24

2. Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas 

57

3. Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy 

84

4. Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas 

124



157

Conclusion 

Notes  References  Index 

165 195 215

Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge those whose support, advice, and assistance made this book possible. First, I wish to thank Paraskevas (Paris) Konortas of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, who, as my professor in the Department of History at the Ionian University in Corfu more than twenty years ago, stimulated my interest in researching the lives of the Muslims in Greece prior to the 1923 forced Greco-​Turkish population exchange. I wish to thank the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation of Athens, which generously funded a two-​year postdoctoral research project (2008–​ 2009) through the Department of History and Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. My thanks to Benjamin C. Fortna, director and professor at the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Arizona, Dimitris Kamouzis, senior research fellow at the Center for Asia Minor Studies in Athens, and Paris Konortas, my co-​editors of State-​Nationalisms in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and Turkey (2013). I wish to thank Dimitris, my research partner at the Latsis Foundation, and Paris, the research project’s academic leader, for their collaboration. Thanks also to Kostas Gavroglou, the Latsis Foundation’s academic supervisor of the project; Robert Holland, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London; and Olga Katsiardi-​Hering, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, for their support and guidance. Many thanks to my research assistants Sakis Dimitriadis, Thanasis Papadimitriou, Aggeliki Lioka, and Giorgos Papaioannou. As director of the Program in Modern Greek Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-​ Champaign (UIUC) between 2012 and 2018, where much of the research of this book was conducted, I benefited from the invaluable support of a number graduate assistants who helped with teaching and administration, including Charalambos Ntantanis, Ilias Bolaris, Anna Tsiola, Venetta Ivanova, Anastasia-​Olga Tzirides, and Maria Kontari. I am deeply grateful to the Onassis Foundation, the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation, and the Houston Family Foundation, especially Dennis and Cathy Houston, for their generous support. I cannot thank enough Mary Kalantzis and William Cope of the College of Education at UIUC for their advice and assistance. I am most grateful to Cynthia Read, executive editor at Oxford University Press, OUP’s anonymous reviewers, and the staff of the History and Religious Studies series at OUP. I also wish to thank Julie Goodman for editing my manuscript and Irini Urania Politi

x Acknowledgments for creating the book cover image and for her friendship. Many colleagues have helped me during the writing of this book through their friendship, encouragement, and academic and other support. I wish to thank Maria Todorova of UIUC, a great mentor and a true friend. I am also deeply grateful to Vemund Aarbakke, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; Samim Akgönül, Université de Strasbourg; Ayhan Aktar, Bilgi University; Elçin Macar, Yıldız Technical University; Nadine Akhund, Sorbonne-​ IRICE Institute; Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago; Alain Bresson, University of Chicago; Nathalie Clayer, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique; Katherine E. Fleming, New York University; Thomas Gallant, University of California, San Diego; Katerina Gardika, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; Anastasia Giannakidou, University of Chicago; Sakis Gekas, York University, Canada; Yannis Glavinas, General State Archives of Greece; Molly Greene, Princeton University; Jonathan Hall, University of Chicago; Ariel Hessayon, Goldsmiths, University of London; Renee Hirchon, Oxford University; Valerie Hoffman, UIUC; Wolfgang Hoepken, University of Leipzig; Nicole Immig, Bogazici University; Stathis Kalyvas, Oxford University; Maria Kavala, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; Alexandros Kazamias, Coventry University; Paschalis Kitromilides, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; Kostas Kostis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; Christina Koulouri, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences; Andreas Lymberatos, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences; Giorgos Mavrogordatos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; Jason Merchant, University of Chicago; David Nirenberg, University of Chicago; Marina Pyrovolaki, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; Holly Shissler, University of Chicago Anastasia Stouraiti, Goldsmiths, University of London; Marina Terkourafi, Leiden University; Sofia Torallas-​Tovar, University of Chicago; Konstantinos Travlos, Özyeğin University; Thanos Veremis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. I wish to thank Maria Stassinopoulou and the Institute of Byzantine and Modern Greek, the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Neugriechische Studien, and the Forschungsbereich Balkanforschung (INZ) an der ÖAW for co-​sponsoring my lecture “Renouncing Islam to Join Greek Orthodoxy and the Nation: Muslim Converts to Greek Orthodoxy during the Greek War of Independence, 1821–​ 1832,” on 10 December 2019. The discussion that followed my lecture helped me with the writing of this book. Thanks are also due to the General State Archives of Greece, the Service of the Diplomatic and Historical Archives of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Parliamentary Archives and the Library of the Hellenic Parliament, the National Library of Greece, the Historical Archives of the Benaki Museum, the Hellenic Literature and Historical Archives, the Gennadius Library at

Acknowledgments  xi the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, King’s College (London) Library, London School of Economics and Political Science Library, University of London Senate House Library, the British Library, the British National Archives, the UIUC library and the University of Chicago library. Many thanks to the students I have been fortunate to teach in the United Kingdom and in the United States, and the great, constructive, and happy moments we have shared. I also wish to thank for their friendship and support my good friend Kathryn Anthony, who provided terrific company, delicious meals, and illuminating travel experiences, lots of laughs and memorable moments, when I lived in Urbana-​Champaign. I also feel grateful to many other friends who have supported me: George Kydonakis, Dimitris Fyntanides, Miltiades Bolaris and his family, Endy Zemenides, Dimitrios Kourkouvis and his family, John Goularas, Costas Chaniotakis, Maria Pappas, Pete Kamberos, George Papadantonakis, Kiki Dara, Spyros Kypraios, Angelos Vlazakis, Evangelos Melas, Diotima Papadi, Ireni Urania Politi, Paris Tsoulfas, Vasilis Petsinis, Maria Troupi, Elias Katsikas, Elsa Katsika, Sofia Kakafika, Abdelaadim Bidaoui, Eman Saadah, Aazam Feiz, Mithilesh Mishra, Ercan Balcı, and Robert Leucht. I’d also like to thank my friends at the Greek Orthodox parish of the Three Hierarchs in Champaign, Illinois, and at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Chicago. As always, I am most grateful to my family, my biggest fans in good and in bad times: my mother, Chrysoula Katsika; my father, Georgios Katsikas; and my siblings, Manolis and Marina and their families. Finally, I’d like to make special mention of Evangelos Dioletis, researcher in molecular biology at Yale University and a good friend of mine, who passed away suddenly and prematurely in spring 2019. I am dedicating this book to his memory as well as to the memory of all those who passed or suffered during the COVID-​19 pandemic. Most of the writing of this book took place in my apartment in Hyde Park, Chicago, during the pandemic and helped me cope with the extended lockdown.

Names and Dates On 16 February 1923 Greece left the Julian and adopted the Gregorian calendar. Most of the dates in this book refer to the period prior to 16 February 1923 and for that reason I have used the Julian calendar. For any dates after 16 February 1923 the Gregorian calendar is followed. The use of names and terms presented one of the greatest challenges in writing this book. The very name “Greek” is in itself highly problematic. Modern Greeks do not call themselves Greeks, but use the name “Hellenes,” which was used in antiquity to describe people of Hellenic culture and today is used to associate modern with ancient Greeks. In fact, as a self-​identifying name, “Greeks” is an exonym that has been accepted by modern “Hellenes,” just as the Deutsch accept being called Germans and the Magyars Hungarians, and in fact refer to themselves as such in foreign languages and official translations. Until the fifteenth century ce and beyond, “Hellenes”—​because most Christians of the Eastern Roman Empire (i.e., Byzantium) associated this name with ancient Greeks and with paganism—​was considered inappropriate to use. Gennadius Scholarios, who served as the first Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople after the Ottoman conquest in May 1453, rejected “Hellene” in favor of the generic “Christian.” The Ottomans chose to identify Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, regardless of their ethnic or linguistic background, with the name Rûm (“Romios” in Greek), meaning “Roman.” Medieval Europeans often used “Greeks” to denote followers of the Orthodox Christian Patriarchate of Constantinople regardless of their mother language, because the ecclesiastical language of the patriarchate was Koine Greek, a supraregional form of spoken and written Greek that served as the lingua franca of much of the Mediterranean region and the Middle East in Hellenistic, Roman, and Ottoman times.1 For this reason, in this book, I call the patriarchate the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, Orthodox Christian Patriarchate of Constantinople, or Ecumenical Patriarchate, which is the official formal appellation of this entity. A few Greeks did appropriate “Greeks” (Graikoi) to denote Greek-​speaking Orthodox Christians, but that name was not widely used with that meaning. In this book, I avoid using “Greek” prior to discussing the establishment of the modern Greek state, and, when I do, the name refers to a Grecophone person or describes something relating to a Greek speaker or speakers. The name does not imply that the Greek-​speaking person to whom the name refers was someone who had a shared sense of Greek national identity and a shared understanding that he belonged to a people group,

xiv  Names and Dates that is, a Greek national community, with whom the Greek-​speaking person shared a common ethnic, linguistic, and cultural background. For this reason, instead of “Greek,” I often use composite names, such as “Greek-​speaking” or “Grecophone,” because they are seen as less confusing. Depending on the context, “Greek Orthodox” and “Greek Orthodox Christians” refer to the faithful of the Orthodox Christian Patriarchate of Constantinople or the Autocephalous Church of Greece, founded in 1833. “Turks” often refers to “Muslims” in historical sources, almost until the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. There are often disagreements on the use of “Albanian,” “Bulgarian,” “Vlach,” “Arvanite,” “Pomak,” and the like in historical sources of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Historical sources often use names on which they bestow a blurred identity: for example, “Alvanophonoi” (Albanian speakers or Albanian nationally minded), “Voulgarophonoi” (Bulgarian speakers or Bulgarian nationally minded), Tourkophonoi (Turkish speakers or Turkish nationally minded), “Roumanizontes” (Romanian nationally minded), and combinations of these. The meanings of such names often obey political calculations, and thus shift over time; for example, a Voulgarophone could simply become a Slavopohone (Slavic speaker). Since the establishment of Albania, Bulgaria, and Turkey as nation-​states occurred after the historical period that this book covers, I avoid using “Albanian,” “Bulgarian,” and “Turk” when discussing events; when I do, these names mean an Albanian speaker, a Bulgarian speaker, a Turkish speaker, or something relating to these people. As with the use of “Greek,” the use of “Albanian,” “Bulgarian,” and “Turk” prior to the establishment of those groups’ respective nation-​states do not imply that the people to whom they refer necessarily had a sense of national identity or a shared understanding that they belonged to a group with whom these Albanian, Bulgarian, or Turkish speakers shared a common ethnic, linguistic, and cultural background. Again, composite names—​for example, “Albanian-​speaking,” “Bulgarian-​speaking,” and “Turkish-​speaking”—​are often, but not always, preferred and often describe minorities in Greece whose mother languages are Albanian, Bulgarian, or Turkish, respectively. In this book, “Arvanites” refers to Albanian-​speaking Orthodox Christians, “Vlachs” refers to Eastern Romance (Aromanian)–​ speaking natives of the Balkans. “Roma” and “Gypsies” refer to members of an Indo-​Aryan ethnic group, traditionally itinerant, whose mother language is Romani or a mixture of Romani and other languages. The meaning of the term “nation” saw significant changes over time, and several Greek terms have been used to refer to the Greek nation, from the older genos to the modern ethnos. Genos is often seen in Greek ecclesiastical documents, where it denotes the faithful of the Orthodox Christian Patriarchate of Constantinople. The more problematic phyle is also used to mean “race.” There

Names and Dates  xv are often subtleties of meaning when authors choose to use one term over another that can be lost in translation. The term genos can have many meanings (race, species, gender, breed, family, ilk) and, along with its derivatives omogenos (same-​genos) and allogenos (other-​genos), is frequently used with significance regarding minorities. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Balkans, places often changed names due to policies of hegemonic cultural imposition, and this may confuse the reader. There is hardly a city that retained its name from Byzantine to Ottoman times and when it ended up in one or another Balkan nation-​state; in many cases, speakers or authors, based on their own ethnicities, may use different names. For Greeks, Istanbul is Konstantinoupolis (Constantinople), Izmir is Smyrni, and Edirne is Adrianoupoli(s) (Adrianople). The choice of name often betrays the speaker’s or author’s political preference. In this book, I generally use the names that were officially or commonly used at the time. On some occasions, I provide older names for a city or village in other languages in parentheses. Although “Konstantiniyye” was used as the most formal official name throughout most of the Ottoman period up to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, I use the modern Turkish name “Istanbul,” attested in a range of variants since the tenth century, at first in Armenian and Arabic, then in Ottoman sources, deriving from the Greek phrase eis tin Polin (to the City) and based on the common usage of referring to Constantinople as “the City.” I do not use “Istanbul” in titles that contain “Constantinople” (e.g., the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople); I use Salonica or Selânik for Thessaloniki and Izmir for Smyrna.

Transliteration Greek names and terms are transliterated so that their reading approximates their pronunciation in Greek. Ottoman Turkish words have been rendered in modern Turkish, using the Redhouse Turkish/​Ottoman-​English Dictionary (Istanbul: SEV Matbaaciik ve Yayıncilik, 1999) as a standard. Throughout the book the Ottoman word for “governor” is transliterated as “pasha,” not “paşa.” For transliterating the Bulgarian alphabet, the following system is used: Ж (zh), Ч (ch), Ш (sh), Щ (sht), Ц (ts), Х (h), Й (y) Ю (yu), Я (ya), Ъ (ŭ), Ь (y), and У (u).

Introduction In early February 1831 Nikolaos Mavrommatis, the interim governor or prefect of the district of Argos in the northeastern Peloponnese, visited a formerly Muslim woman residing in his district who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy. The woman’s original Muslim name was Shekire,1 but after conversion she had taken the Greek Orthodox Christian name Charikleia. In his visit to Charikleia, the governor was accompanied by a Muslim man called Tattaris, who had been sent from Charikleia’s Muslim relatives in order to convince her to renounce Christian Orthodoxy, leave Argos, and rejoin the rest of her family, who had emigrated to the Ottoman Empire following the Greek Revolution of March 1821 that marked the start of the Greek War of Independence (1821–​ 1832). Charikleia’s Muslim relatives had provided Tattaris with a letter, which pleaded with Charikleia to re-​embrace Islam, leave Greece, and rejoin them in the Ottoman Empire. Despite all of the efforts to change Charikleia’s mind exerted by her visitors, as well as by her relatives prior to their emigration to the Ottoman Empire, she remained adamant in her decision to stay in Argos and refused to follow her Muslim relatives. Moreover, during her conversation with the governor of Argos and Tattaris, Charikleia made clear to them that not only did she not agree to rejoin her relatives, but from that moment on she did not wish to have any communication with them at all.2 Charikleia’s case is not exceptional. There are many similar and varied reports in the voluminous files on neophytes in the Diplomatic and Historical Archives of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Greek State Archives, and other archival collections across Greece. Muslims and other non-​Christian converts to Orthodox Christianity are known as neophytes, a term originating from Koine Greek and used in early Christian scriptures to refer to novices, or non-​Christians who had become Christian through baptism. Greek archival sources refer to Muslim and other non-​Christian converts to Orthodox Christianity as neofytoi (νεόφυτοι) or singular neofytos (νεόφυτος), which in Greek means “newly sprung,” or the plural neofotistoi (νεοφώτιστοι) or singular neofotistos (νεοφώτιστος), which in Greek means “newly enlightened.” In this book, these terms are mostly used to describe Muslims who denounced Islam and embraced Christian Orthodoxy as their religious faith. Whenever the neophyte’s old religion was not Islam, this is mentioned. In cases in which there is no specific mention of the neophyte’s Proselytes of a New Nation. Stefanos Katsikas, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197621752.003.0001

2  Proselytes of a New Nation old religion, the reader should assume that prior to conversion to Christian Orthodoxy the neophyte was Muslim. Although the general theme of conversion and the existence of Muslims in the newly established modern Greek state of the nineteenth century are not unknown to historians and specialists in modern Greece, the Balkans, and southeastern Europe, little attention has been paid, in terms of in-​depth, specialist research, to the process of conversion from Islam to Christianity in the age of Greek nationalism and nation-​building.

Religious Conversions Religious conversion is the adoption of a set of beliefs identified with one specific religious denomination to the exclusion of others. It is the abandonment of adherence to one denomination and affiliation with another. This might be from one to another denomination within the same religion, for example, from Baptist to Roman Catholic Christianity or from Sunni to Shi’a Islam. Religious conversion can be the outcome of coercion: an individual is forced to adopt a religion, or a different religion, or irreligion, over the belief system to which he or she originally adhered. However, religious conversion can often result from the convert’s wish to adopt a new religious faith, either because he or she discovered in the new faith a system of beliefs and values that best fit the convert’s esoteric needs and answers his or her existential questions, or because the convert has been persuaded by another individual or group of people from a different religion or belief system to become an apostate to his or her former religious faith and to join the new faith or belief system. Converts’ decision to adopt a new religious faith can be part of their tactics to survive or improve their political, economic, or social standing in a war or a changing political environment. The act of persuading individuals to leave their religious faith or belief system and join another is called proselytism. Some converts may continue, covertly, to be faithful to the beliefs and practices they originally held while outwardly behaving as converts. Crypto-​ Jews, crypto-​Christians, and crypto-​Muslims are historical examples of Jews, Christians, and Muslims who, respectively, apostatized Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and converted to another, outwardly practiced religious faith while quietly believing in and practicing the religious faith they abandoned. Over the span of human history, the relationship between religion and politics has been complex. While religious leaders and the state have different aims, both are connected by power and order; both use reason and emotion to motivate behavior.3 Throughout history, leaders of religious and political institutions have cooperated, opposed one another, or attempted to co-​opt one another, for purposes both noble and base. They have implemented programs driven by many

Introduction  3 different values, from compassion aimed at alleviating current suffering to brutal change aimed at achieving long-​term goals, for the benefit of groups ranging from small circles to all of humanity. Religion has often been used coercively. Christianity became a majority religion only after the sixth century, and Christians in the Roman Empire were persecuted intermittently between the Great Fire of Rome in 64 under Roman Emperor Nero and the Edict of Milan in 313, under which the Roman emperors Constantine I and Licinius legalized the Christian religion. During the reign of Constantine I (306–​337), Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire,. Following the First Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church in 325 in Nicaea (today İznik, Turkey), the Roman imperial government began a process of integrating Christianity. Christianity evolved from a persecuted religion into one capable of persecution and sometimes eager to suppress ancient pagan religions. On 27 February 380, with his Edict of Thessalonica (present-​day Thessaloniki), the Byzantine emperor Theodosius I, together with co-​emperors Gratian and Valentinian II, declared Trinitarian Nicene Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. The Edict of Thessalonica ended official state support for traditional polytheist religions and customs and described other Christians as “foolish madmen.” On 26 March 426 Theodosius II and co-​emperor Valentinian II established a commission to collect, update, and compile existing laws; it published a constitution on 15 February 438 that went into effect in the eastern and western parts of the empire on 1 January 439: It is Our will that all peoples who are ruled by the administration of Our clemency shall practice that religion which the divine Peter and Apostle transmitted to the Romans. . . . The rest, whom we adjudge demented and insane, shall sustain the infamy of heretical dogmas, their meeting places shall not receive the name of churches, and they shall be smitten first by divine vengeance and secondly by the retribution of Our own initiative.4

During the Saxon Wars (772–​804), Charlemagne, King of the Franks, forcibly converted the Saxons, a group of early Germanic peoples who in the early Middle Ages gave their name to a large country near the North Sea coast of what is now Germany, from their native Germanic paganism. Charlemagne converted the Saxons through warfare and by law upon conquest. For example, in the Massacre of Verden in 782, he reportedly had 4,500 captive Saxons killed for rebelling,5 and he imposed a law (Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae) on conquered Saxons in 785 that prescribed punishment by death to those who refused to convert to Christianity. Forced conversions of Jews were carried out with the support of rulers during late antiquity in the Mediterranean and the early Middle Ages in the Byzantine

4  Proselytes of a New Nation Empire, in the Iberian Peninsula, and in Gaul, a region inhabited by Celtic tribes that encompassed present-​day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, parts of northern Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany, particularly the west bank of the Rhine.6 Crusaders forced Jews to convert to Christianity in Lorraine, on the Lower Rhine, in Bavaria and Bohemia, in Mainz and in Worms.7 Instigated by King Charles II of Naples in southern Italy, Dominican inquisitors forced Jews to convert to Christianity in the thirteenth century.8 In 1201 Pope Innocent II ordered that an individual who agreed to be baptized to avoid torture and intimidation could be compelled to outwardly observe Christianity: Those who are immersed even though reluctant, do belong to ecclesiastical jurisdiction at least by reason of the sacrament, and might therefore be reasonably compelled to observe the rules of Christian Faith. It is, to be sure, contrary to the Christian Faith that anyone who is unwilling and wholly opposed to it should be compelled to adopt and observe Christianity. For this reason, a valid distinction is made by some between kinds of unwilling ones and kinds of compelled ones. Thus, one who is drawn to Christianity by violence, through fear and through torture, and receives the sacrament of Baptism in order to avoid loss, he (like one who comes to Baptism in dissimulation) does receive the impress of Christianity, and may be forced to observe the Christian Faith as one who expressed a conditional willingness, though, absolutely speaking, he was unwilling.9

During the Northern Crusades against the pagan Balts and Slavs of northern Europe, forced conversions were a widely used tactic, sanctified by the pope.10 Most of the native populations of these regions who did not want to accept Christianity were converted only after repeated rebellions and even following initial forced conversion. In old Prussia, the tactics employed in the initial conquest of the territory and subsequent conversions resulted in the death of most of the native population, whose language consequently became extinct.11 Upon converting to Christianity in the tenth century, Vladimir the Great (980–​1015), the ruler of Kievan Rus’, ordered his subjects in Kiev to undergo a mass baptism in the Dnieper River.12 Ivan the Terrible, Grand Prince of Moscow (1533–​1547) and the first tsar of Russia (1547–​1584), conquered the Khanate of Kazan in the sixteenth century and after the fall of Kazan, the capital, in 1552 expelled, slaughtered, or converted to Christian Orthodoxy its Muslim population.13 Following the example of Ivan the Terrible, in the eighteenth century Empress Elizabeth Petrovna of Russia (1741–​1762) launched a campaign of forced conversion of Russia’s non-​Orthodox subjects, including Muslims and Jews.14

Introduction  5 After the end of Islamic control of Al-​Andalus in 1492, Jews and Muslims were forced to leave the Iberian Peninsula or convert to Roman Catholicism.15 Many of these Muslims and Jews, forced by the Spanish Inquisition to change their religion or face execution, ostensibly chose to become Roman Catholics, while in their private lives they continued to practice the religion they had allegedly abandoned. They became known as Moriscos or “Secret Moors” (crypto-​Muslims) and Marranos or “(crypto-​Jews). Most of the persecuted Muslims and Jews of the Iberian Peninsula left for the Ottoman Empire and Morocco. Most of the naval powers of Europe also forced conversion of the indigenous non-​Christian populations as soon as these powers established control in North, Central, and South America. Alongside forced conversions, Christianizations were often the product of the work of Christian missionaries or the outcome of intercultural interactions between Christians and non-​Christians. They were culturally successful projects, frequently conducted peacefully, without the implication of forceful means. Perhaps the most prominent example of Christianization through peaceful means in Europe was the conversion of the Slavic populations of Moravia through the successful missionary work of two Byzantine monks and theologians, Cyril (born Constantine, 826–​869) and Cyril’s brother Methodius (born Michael, 815–​885). In 862, Cyril and Methodius were sent by the Byzantine emperor Michael III on a missionary expedition to Moravia, a predominantly Slavic state in Central Europe that included territories that are part of today’s Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Serbia. Through their work to evangelize the Christianity of the Eastern rite, that is, the practice of Christianity in Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire (and following the break of communion between Rome and Constantinople in the eleventh century), the faith became widely known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, or Christian Orthodoxy.16 The two brothers’ missionary expedition occurred at the request of Moravia’s Prince Rostislav, who ruled Moravia with the support of the Frankish king Louis the German (843–​ 876), grandson of Emperor Charlemagne and third son of Louis the Pious. Later, Rostislav sought independence from the Franks, expelled missionaries of the Church of Rome from Moravia, and instead turned to Byzantium for ecclesiastical assistance and political support.17 As part of their missionary activities, Cyril and Methodius devised the Glagolitic alphabet, the oldest known Slavic alphabet, and, in 863, began the task of translating the Gospels and other liturgical texts into the language now known as Old Church Slavonic. In 861, Khan Boris, known also as Boris I, ruler of medieval Bulgaria, concluded an alliance with the East Frankish king Louis the German and informed him that he would like to accept Christianity according to the Western rite, that is, the way Christianity was practiced by the Church of Rome. This alliance threatened Moravia at the same time as the Byzantine mission of Cyril and Methodius

6  Proselytes of a New Nation was intended to draw Moravia closer to Constantinople and strengthen Byzantine influence there.18 Having been informed by their Moravian allies that Khan Boris was ready to ally with Louis the German and accept Christianity, the Byzantines attacked Bulgaria at the end of 863. A Rome-​dependent Bulgaria in the Balkan hinterland and close to Constantinople would be a threat to the Byzantine Empire’s interests. Boris was unprepared for war because Bulgaria was affected by crop failure and earthquakes, which he had taken as a sign to convert to Christianity, according to the Eastern rite, and he sought peace with the Byzantines.19 In the negotiations that followed, Boris pledged to convert to Christianity according to the Eastern rite, along with his people. The two sides concluded a thirty-​year peace, and a Christian mission from Constantinople arrived at Pliska, the Bulgarian capital, which converted Boris, his family, and high-​ranking dignitaries. Boris was given the Christian name Michael, after the Byzantine emperor at the time, Michael III. After Boris’s conversion, the Bulgarian population began converting to Christianity, a not entirely peaceful process. As Byzantine missions converted the Bulgars and other non-​Christian subjects of medieval Bulgaria,20 the converts were encouraged to destroy the pagan holy places, and in 865 revolts broke out in many administrative districts of the state. Rebels marched toward Pliska with the intention of killing Boris and restoring the old pagan religion, but Boris suppressed the revolt.21 The Christianization of the subjects of the medieval Bulgarian state resulted in greater Byzantine influence.22 Religious ceremonies in medieval Bulgaria were conducted in Greek by clergy sent from the Byzantine Empire, and the newly established Bulgarian Church was subordinate to the Church of Constantinople. The revolt against Christianity led Boris to ask the Church of Constantinople to allow the Bulgarian Church independent status, which Constantinople refused. Boris turned to the pope in Rome and asked the Byzantine Christian mission to leave Bulgaria, a development that displeased Constantinople. A Church Council was held in Constantinople from 5 October 869 to 28 February 870 with delegates from Bulgaria as well as from the churches of Rome and Constantinople, which declared the Bulgarian Church independent under the leadership of an archbishop, who was to be elected by the bishops with the approval of the Bulgarian ruler.23 Meanwhile, Cyril’s students created the early Cyrillic alphabet under the patronage of Khan Boris in an attempt to curb Byzantine cultural influence that might weaken the Bulgarian state. Cyrillic, based on uncial Greek, was a more suitable script for church books, but it retained some Glagolitic letters to represent sounds not present in Greek. In 893 Old Church Slavonic became the official language of the Bulgarian church and state. The creation of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets, as well as that of Old Church Slavonic, facilitated the work of Byzantine missionaries in evangelizing

Introduction  7 and proselytizing Bulgars and Slavic populations in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans to Christianity.24 The Christianization of Bulgars facilitated the conversion of East Slavic peoples to Christianity, most notably the Kievan Rus’. A sizable portion of the population of Kievan Rus’ was Christian by 944 as a result of the cultural interactions between Christian cities and monasteries in Crimea and the Black Sea with inland territories of modern Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine as well as due to coordinated Byzantine efforts to Christianize the Kievan Rus’ by sending Christian missions aiming to end the troubled relations and achieve reconciliation with the Kievan Rus’.25 In 987, the Byzantine generals Bardas Sclerus and Bardas Phocas rebelled against the Byzantine emperor Basil II and marched against Constantinople; on 14 September 987 Bardas Phocas proclaimed himself emperor. Anxious to suppress the revolt and avoid a siege of the Byzantine capital, Basil II turned to the Kievan Rus’ for assistance, even though they were considered to be enemies of Byzantium at the time. The ruler of Kievan Rus’, Vladimir (980–​1015), agreed to assist the Byzantine emperor Basil II, in return for a marital tie, and he was promised the hand of the emperor’s sister, Anna Porphyrogenita. When the wedding arrangements were settled, Vladimir sent six thousand troops to the Byzantine Empire and helped Basil II suppress the revolt.26 It was agreed that the wedding would be Christian, and Vladimir was baptized Christian Orthodox, taking the Christian name Basil as a compliment to his imperial brother-​in-​law. Following his conversion, Vladimir baptized his twelve sons and many members of the aristocracy (boyars) and exhorted the residents of Kiev, his capital, to undergo a mass baptism in the Dnieper River. At the same time, Vladimir destroyed the wooden statues of Slavic pagan gods. The mass baptism of Kiev was followed by similar ceremonies in other urban centers of the country, and on many occasions Kievan Rus’ were converted to Christianity by force. Paganism persisted in the country for a long time, surfacing during occasional pagan protests, but in the long run the Christianization of Kievan Rus’ took root and assisted in the reconciliation with the Byzantine Empire. Greek education and literary culture flourished in Kiev and other centers of the country, and Byzantine-​style Christian churches emerged.27 Since its creation, the Cyrillic script had adapted to changes in spoken language and developed regional variations. By the early twelfth century, individual Slavic languages started to emerge, and Old Church Slavonic was modified in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and orthography according to the local vernacular usage. These modified varieties (e.g., Serbian Church Slavonic, Russian Church Slavonic, Bulgarian Church Slavonic, and more) eventually stabilized, and their regularized forms were used by scribes to produce new translations of liturgical material from Koine Greek, or Latin in the case of Croatian and other Slavonic churches that followed the Western rite.

8  Proselytes of a New Nation

Conversions under Islamic Rule Islamic law prohibits forced conversion, following the Qur’anic principle that “there is no compulsion in religion.”28 In theory, Islamic religious tolerance applied only to the monotheistic religions of Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, known as the “People of the Book,” or dhimmī, as long as they paid a jizya tax.29 Pagans were offered two options: to convert to Islam or suffer death. In practice, the dhimmī status was also extended to non-​monotheistic religions of conquered peoples such as Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists.30 In the history of Islam, however, forced conversion has been threatened or carried out in the contexts of war, insurgency, and intercommunal violence.31 The wars of the Ridda (apostasy), launched in 632 and 633 following the death of the Prophet Muhammad by Caliph Abu Bakr against rebel Arabian tribes who had accepted Islam but refused to recognize Abu Bakr’s authority as caliph, could be described as an instance of forced conversion. The actions of these tribes were less a relapse to paganism than a termination of a political contract they had made with Prophet Muhammad.32 In the ninth century the Samaritan population of Palestine, an ethnoreligious group that originated from the Israelites of the ancient Near East, faced forced conversion to Islam at the hands of the rebel leader Firāsa and were defended by Abbasid caliphal troops.33 In an invasion of the Kashmir Valley in 1015 Mahmud of Ghazni, the first independent ruler of the Turkic dynasty of Ghaznavids, plundered the valley, took many prisoners, and carried out forced conversions to Islam. His later campaigns in the cities of Mathura, Baran (Bulandshahr), and Kanauj resulted in many conversions to the Islamic faith. Those enemy soldiers who surrendered to Mahmud of Ghazni were converted to Islam. In Baran alone, ten thousand residents, including its king, converted to Islam. The late twelfth-​century raids by Muhammad of Ghor, the sultan of the Ghurid Empire along with his brother Ghiyath ad-​ Din Muhammad (1173–​ 1202), and as sole ruler (1202–​ 1206), enslaved thousands, most of whom were compelled to convert as one of the preconditions of their freedom.34 Sikandar Shah Miri, known also as Sikandar Butshikan, sixth sultan of the Shah Miri dynasty of Kashmir (1389–​1413), demolished Hindu temples and forcefully converted Hindus to the Islamic faith.35 Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty (1501–​1736) in Persia, decreed Twelver, or Imamiyyah, Shi’ism, the largest branch of Shi’a Islam, to be the official religion of the state and forced the people of Persia, the majority of whom were Sunni, to convert to Shi’ism.36 After the Safavid Abbas I (1571–​1629) captured the island of Hormuz, he forced local Christians to convert to Shi’a Islam. Abbas II (1642–​1666) granted his ministers authority to force Jews living in

Introduction  9 Safavid Persia to become Muslims, whereas Sultan Huseyn (1694–​1722) decreed the forcible conversions of Zoroastrians to Shi’a Islam.37 Although mass forced conversion to Islam was not the rule, the Ottoman Empire also saw instances of forced conversions. In 1517 Sultan Selim I (1512–​ 1520) and Sultan Ibrahim I (1640–​1648) attempted to enforce the Islamization of non-​Muslims in the Balkans, but both were discouraged by the Sheik-​ul-​Islam—​ the second highest Sunni Muslim religious official in the Ottoman Empire after the caliph—​on Qur’anic grounds.38 Mass forced conversions took place in the western Rhodope Mountains in the seventeenth century, but this was a rather exceptional occurrence caused by Kadızade Mehmed’s formation of a religious movement that condemned and pledged to root out corrupt practices in the Ottoman Empire that they regarded as non-​Islamic. The movement gained influence and counted not only the sultan himself but also Grand Vizier Fasıl Ahmed Pasha among its supporters.39 Perceptions of external threats, such as territorial advances by Tsarist Russia in the eighteenth century, also provoked eruptions of religious persecution, forced conversion, and heavy taxation on non-​Muslims aimed at covering the costs of wars.40 Forced conversion became institutionalized between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Ottoman Empire with devşirme, an Ottoman practice of forcibly recruiting soldiers and bureaucrats from among the preadolescent children of the rural Christian populations of the Balkans. This practice emerged out of the Ottoman kul, or slavery system, in the early life of the empire, with the kuls (slaves) being mostly prisoners of war, hostages, or slaves purchased by the Ottoman state. In the fourteenth century the system evolved into a regular recruitment of rural Christian boys in the Balkans in an attempt by the Ottoman sultans to counteract the power of Turkic nobles by developing vassal troops, independent of the regular Ottoman army. The recruited Christian boys converted to Islam, and then enrolled and trained in one of the four imperial institutions: the palace, the scribes, Muslim clergy, or the military. Those enrolled in the military became either part of the janissaries, elite infantry units that formed the sultan’s household troops, or other military units.41 A number of dhimmī converted to Islam in order to avoid discrimination, violence, and torture inflicted by Ottomans in positions of power or by ordinary Muslims. To protect their assets from encroachment or seizure in chaotic times, some dhimmī registered their assets as vakıf (pl. evkaf), that is, mortmain properties, to religious or charitable Islamic institutions protected by Ottoman law. In those circumstances, the dhimmī retained their assets in exchange for an annual compensation they were to pay in perpetuity to the Islamic institution(s) to which the assets were registered as evkaf.42 Christian literate converts to Islam were particularly engaged in attempts to introduce Islam to disillusioned Christians in the post-​Reformation period,

10  Proselytes of a New Nation portraying it as the most authentic scriptural religion that guarantees salvation at the end of time. Their presentation of Islam as a universal religion, in a polemical language reminiscent of that of Christian humanists, was particularly prominent in the sixteenth century, matching the Ottomans’ contemporary claim to the Roman imperial legacy and aspiration to achieve a universal monarchy with full domination of the Mediterranean.43 Christian and Muslim sanctuaries were frequently used by the faithful of both Islam and Christianity, and many dhimmī became crypto-​Christians or crypto-​Jews, often passing their religious dualism on to their descendants, who perpetuated the dual faiths.44 This gave rise to the Balkan proverb “St. Ilia up to mid-​day, and after mid-​day Alia.” Peasant converts were not exposed to Islamic indoctrination, perhaps with the exception of those who visited the local mosque or tekke (dervish lodge).45 People in need of daily religious guidance could switch from one religion to the other. The presence of Muslim hodjas, or schoolmasters, often compensated for a lack of Christian priests. Around 1700, Roman Catholic Albanians from the village of Mat (today part of Dibër County in Albania) told a passing Roman Catholic missionary that they would convert to Islam if the Roman Catholic archbishop in Durrës did not regularly send them a Roman Catholic priest. Roman Catholic villagers were dissatisfied with the archbishop, who sent them missionaries only twice a year. They threatened to invite a hodja to perform religious services in Mat and meet the spiritual needs of its residents.46 In the seventeenth century, Sabbatai Zevi, a Sephardic Jew whose ancestors had emigrated to the Ottoman Empire during the Spanish Inquisition, proclaimed himself the Messiah and called for abolishing major Jewish laws and customs. After he had attracted a large following, he was arrested by the Ottoman authorities and given a choice between execution or conversion to Islam. Zevi chose conversion. Afterward, a number of his followers also falsely converted to Islam and became known as Dönmeh: they ostensibly practiced Islam, while in private they performed the non-​Islamic rituals they had conducted as followers of Zevi.47 A large number of peasant dhimmī converted to Islam through Islamic mysticism, or Sufism. Muslim congregations formed around Sufi grand masters, who viewed and practiced Islam differently from the mainstream Islam of the ulamā the Muslim scholars recognized as authorities in traditional Islamic law and theology. Islamic mysticism began very early in Islamic history, and several Sufi orders were widespread in rural areas of Anatolia and the Balkans, both Sunnis, for example, Nakşibendi and Halveti, and Shi’as, such as Bektaşi and Kızılbaş. Sufi ministrants (dervishes) preached Islam in syncretic forms, integrating beliefs and practices of other religions, including Orthodox Christianity. Thus, they made Islam familiar and approachable among peasant dhimmī with little or no education.48 Indeed, Islamic mysticism was instrumental in the transformation

Introduction  11 of Anatolia from a Christian to a majority Muslim society from 1100 to 1500.49 Members of the Sufi fraternities, or tariqah, and Sufi dervishes had often spiritually conquered non-​Muslims in the Balkans prior to the arrival of the Ottoman army. Sufi dervishes sought to convert by example rather than by overt proselytizing, such as by providing hospitality and security to people in remote Balkan territories. Those dervishes who formerly had been Christians, however, carried out more zealous and impassioned religious propaganda among non-​Muslims, including Christians.50 A significant number of people in the medieval kingdom of Bosnia (1377–​ 1463) converted to Islam after conquest by the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the fifteenth century. The conversion was gradual, proceeding at different rates in various areas among different groups—​more rapidly in urban centers, which were seats of learning and of the Ottoman administration, than in the countryside—​and by the seventeenth century had turned the majority of the population of Bosnia to Muslim.51 Christianity had relatively shallow roots in Bosnia prior to Ottoman domination, due to the lack of a strong Christian church organization to command a strong following along with fierce competition among the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches and the schismatic Bosnian Church that collapsed shortly before the Ottoman conquest, leaving most people religiously unengaged and receptive to the appeal of Islam.52 The receptiveness was assisted by a folk culture of Christian worship that included ceremonies and practices that were distinct from official Christian doctrine and application and therefore adaptable to the religiously syncretic nature and folk religious beliefs, customs, and performances of Sufism. Conversion to Islam also conferred economic and social status. A number of Christian nobles converted to Islam to hold on to their property and enjoy political rights and a status denied to non-​Muslims, while many newly Islamized converts of a lower socioeconomic level were able to turn their holdings into freehold farms by converting to Islam. In addition, only Muslims could hold positions in the Ottoman state apparatus, which conferred special privileges and a much higher standard of living. Muslims also enjoyed legal privileges: Christians could not sue Muslims, and their testimony could not be used against Muslims in court.53 Similarly, Islam was first introduced in the western Balkans, in the territories that form present-​day Albania, after the Ottoman conquest in the fifteenth century. Until the end of the sixteenth century the Islamic religion was mostly confined to members of the old aristocratic ruling class who had converted to Islam to retain their lands and political and economic status, as well as to sparse military outpost settlements of Muslim Turkic and other ethnic groups who had moved from Anatolia and other Ottoman-​controlled areas.54 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries large numbers of Albanian-​speaking Christians converted to Islam, often to escape higher taxes levied by the Ottomans on

12  Proselytes of a New Nation Christian subjects, as well as due to interactions with Islamic mysticism, especially Bektashism.55 This order of Islamic mysticism was named after the thirteenth-​century Alevi Wali Haji Bektash from Khorasan, a historical region of the northeast province of Greater Iran, and became very active after the sixteenth century in Anatolia and the Balkans. Such conversions also aimed in part to gain advantages in the Ottoman trade networks, bureaucracy, and army.56 The Ottoman Empire was an Islamic state with a strict religious hierarchy, in which non-​Muslims were legally second-​class citizens. The strong division along religious lines prevented the integration of the empire’s subjects, except in cases of conversion.57 Mass forced conversion of Orthodox Christians to Islam was rarely practiced immediately following the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. The Islamization of the non-​Muslim populations, including part of the non-​Muslim nobility, was a gradual process that mostly took place from the mid-​fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, when Islam still held some prestige, and drastically diminished subsequently.58 Mass Islamization was prohibited, even when zealous sultans like Selim Yavuz (1512–​1520) and Ibrahim I (1640–​1648) or Ottoman governmental officials, including local administrators, exercised pressure on non-​ Muslims to convert to Islam, and those who attempted to practice it were punished. The process of Islamization progressed and matured over decades, largely as the result of the creation of an Islamic ambiance and the development of religious and communal institutions.59 Thus, in the decades following the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus from the Venetians (1571), many of the island’s Christians converted to Islam, especially between 1580 and 1637. The Islamization of these Cypriot Christians, however, was the result of their interactions with members of the Mevlevi Sufi order, which operated extensively on the island.60 There was also a solid economic logic behind the absence of a systematic policy of forced conversions: the dhimmī paid the head tax (ziya), which was a major source of income for the Ottoman treasury. Mixed marriages were quite common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Crete and the Peloponnese. There were also instances of a Muslim father leaving his children in the care of his still-​Christian Orthodox wife and her family when he went away on military campaigns, sometimes never to return. The Ottoman authorities often became concerned that such children, brought up in Christian households, might grow up to compromise their Islamic faith, and on some occasions the authorities ordered that they be placed temporarily with pious Muslim families on the island. Courts registered frequent complaints that certain persons, ostensibly Muslims, had been seen going to Christian Orthodox churches. There were also cases, brought to the attention of the Ottoman courts, concerning male converts to Islam, the majority of whom were uncircumcised.61

Introduction  13

Historiography and Conversions in the Balkans The study of religious conversion in the Balkans has mostly focused on the conversion of non-​Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire to Islam. On the one hand, nationalist historiography in the Balkans often “creatively interpreted” data based on Ottoman census records to argue that the Ottoman conquest was followed by unprecedented destruction and forced conversion to serve the political purpose of demonstrating the oppressiveness of Ottoman rule and justifying the various national liberation movements.62 Balkan nationalist historians often represent converts to Islam as victims of Ottoman oppression or “traitors” to their “nation” and religion. In this view, devşirme plays a particularly important role, portrayed as the chief Ottoman method of conversion designed to rob the subject nations of their best and brightest.63 In addition, existing historiographical literature on religious conversions in the Balkans often aims to show that non-​Turkish-​speaking Muslims of the region are not Ottoman or Turks, but former non-​Muslim subjects who had converted to Islam during Ottoman rule under oppression by the Ottoman authorities.64 They could become part of the successor, post-​Ottoman Balkan Christian states if they denounced Islam and embraced Christianity, the dominant religion of these nations, and became affiliated with these states’ national Christian churches. More balanced accounts have been published that deviate from nationalist literature and explore new sources, such as records from the Ottoman courts and collections of legal opinions (fatwā) of Ottoman jurisprudence. These accounts show that it was fairly easy to convert to Islam in the Ottoman Empire, and that different types of people, of all ages, often converted as a strategy to achieve desired social goals. Since most of these studies draw on archives of the Ottoman central government and Ottoman courts, they have created the impression that the Ottoman state was the key agent of conversion rather than one of many participants in a process that involved a variety of social actors and initiatives.65 Many studies place conversions in the Ottoman Empire in a broader historical and geographical context and demonstrate the upward social mobility of converts to Islam.66 Some scholars see conversions in the Ottoman Empire as part of a mechanism that kept the network of intergroup relations well oiled.67 A number of scholarly works have shown that the Ottoman ruling class was not unduly occupied with the sincerity of religious conversions and that a Muslim was one who proclaimed the true religion in words and, externally, submitted, to all its orders, whether or not out of true belief. Therefore, personal conscience aside, the person achieved the legal status of a Muslim by abstaining from acts forbidden by the holy law and by observing the prescribed external forms.68 Seventeenth-​and eighteenth-​century Greek chronicles often refer to cases of religious antagonism between Christian Orthodox and Muslims, as well as to cases

14  Proselytes of a New Nation of religious conversion, which often play a significant role in interreligious antagonism. A number of studies argue, however, that a careful reading of these chronicles shows that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, religious conversions in the Ottoman Empire were mainly seen as a problem of faith, and not as a method of nationalization or denationalization, as was the case in the Balkans in the age of nationalism.69 Even in cases of overt religious transgression, such as those of men who were actively seeking martyrdom in the eighteenth century, the Ottoman authorities did not rush to punish religious apostates. According to Islamic law as interpreted by the majority of Ottoman Islamic scholars, an Islamic apostate was a person who openly declared his or her doubts and reservations concerning the Islamic faith. It was not possible to look into an individual’s heart. For example, Damascinos, a Christian Orthodox monk from Mount Athos, had apostatized from Islam. Damascinos was captured by the Ottoman authorities and brought before the Ottoman qadi, or judge, to allow him an opportunity to repent: “[The qadi] offered him coffee, which he proceeded to throw in the official’s face, and started declaiming against Islam as a false religion. He seemed to want to attract the worst punishments the Turks [Ottomans] could inflict upon him. But, he was taken for a madman and simply given a severe beating. Yet he kept trying, and, after publicly insulting Islam three times in front of Turkish soldiers, he was executed.”70 Islam was not a missionary religion with a primary objective to save human souls. Nor was it a missionary movement, the chief objective of which was the conversion of men and women to the Islamic faith. There were no equivalents to the Franciscan or Dominican or Jesuit Christian religious orders or to Christian denominations such as Presbyterians or Congregationalists.71 Ottoman flexibility in accommodating various non-​Muslim groups by offering them political autonomy in return for performing valuable services forced Venetians and Habsburgs to adjust their own policies toward nonsubjects and nonconformists in order to compete for the services of people with specific technological and political skills, especially in the contact zones between the empires. Converts were particularly valued as recruits into the diplomatic, military, and commercial corps in the age of increasing confessional and imperial competition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In other words, conversion to Islam within the Ottoman Empire had an impact beyond its borders.72 Many studies focus on religious syncretism that existed in many remote, rural areas of the Balkans and Anatolia before the rise of nationalism and show how the people of those areas regarded religious practice as more important than religious dogma; on many occasions mainstream religious faith was mixed with supernatural beliefs. These scholars argue that religious beliefs in the rural Balkans and Anatolia were “practice-​oriented,” dealing mainly with worldly goals, with little or no emphasis on religious doctrine. Religious practices were aimed at

Introduction  15 ensuring the health and welfare of one’s family, crops, and animals, and this setting rendered religious boundaries fluid and made it easier for non-​Muslims to convert to Islam.73 While Balkan historiographical literature on conversions has focused on the Islamization of Christians in the region during the Ottoman period, it has paid little attention to the inverse processes of Christianization of Muslims, which occurred in almost all Christian-​majority Balkan nation-​states in the age of nationalism during the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. In addition to conversions from Islam to Christianity, there were cases of conversions from one Christian denomination to another. During the Second World War, Christian Orthodox Serbs were forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism,74 whereas following the Second World War, the Greek Catholic Church in Transylvania, and Ukraine was outlawed, and its members were forced to convert to Christian Orthodoxy on the pain of imprisonment. Its properties were confiscated and given to the Romanian Orthodox Church and to the Christian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow respectively.75 Selim Deringil is among the very few scholars who explore conversion in the age of nationalism in the late Ottoman Empire. In Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire, Deringil argues that religion did not diminish in importance with the emergence and rise of nationalism in the post-​Ottoman space, including the Balkans. Rather, nationalism was defined by religion,76 which often dominated all other elements of the Balkan nationalist movements, a view also supported by Fikret Adanır, who maintains that the nineteenth-​century Balkan wars of independence from Ottoman rule were simultaneously wars of religion.77 Like Mark Mazower, who claims that in the age of nationalism in the Balkans “religion became a marker of national identity in ways not known in the past, and therefore more sharply marked off from neighbouring religions,”78 Deringil asserts that what distinguishes religious conversions in the post-​eighteenth-​ century Balkans is that they overlap with the rise of nationalism that swept across the region and were influenced by the Balkan nationalist movements. For example, nineteenth-​century Greek nationalism was closely connected with Orthodox Christianity and affiliated with the Greek Orthodox patriarchate of Constantinople and, after 1833, to the autocephalous Church of Greece, as well as to the Greek Orthodox patriarchate of Constantinople.79 Orthodox Christianity was viewed as the common bond unifying the members of the Greek nation, and was therefore regarded as the principal cultural element that defined Greek national identity, along with the Greek language. Orthodox Christian ideas often inspired political activism and action; for example, laws were passed to foster stricter religious adherence. During the Greek War of Independence, Greek insurgents viewed Orthodox Christianity as a mobilizing factor that instigated interest, enthusiasm, and support for an

16  Proselytes of a New Nation otherwise dangerous political project among Greek-​and non-​Greek-​speaking Christian Orthodox people. Nationalism, a product of the past three centuries, is a primarily political “cultural construct” that invents traditions,80 but in the Balkans and the nation-​states that emerged from the domains of the former Ottoman Empire, most of the nationalist ideologies were in essence religious nationalism because they were inextricably linked to a particular religious belief, dogma, or affiliation.81 Although religion was repressed through modernization efforts, secularization, and eventually atheism campaigns in the twentieth century, Balkan nationalism was built on the historical memory and models that exploited religious divisions and intolerance of the past; religious affiliation often became the fault line between nations. The secular intelligentsia and other key protagonists used religion and the religious legacy in the nation-​building project. One aspect of nationalism used to build barriers and mobilize support for Balkan nationalist projects against the Ottoman Empire is the narrative about the organization by the Ottoman authorities of systematic forced conversions to Islam of non-​Muslims in an attempt to increase further the Muslim presence in the Balkan peninsula at the expense of non-​Muslims.82 Religious conversions in the age of nationalism differ from earlier conversions in their causes, their meaning, and the manner in which they were conducted. In the Ottoman Empire of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, and even the eighteenth, religious conversions were seen as a religious development, either as a blessing that increased confidence or an anathema that reduced and demoralized the flock. In the context of nineteenth-​century Balkan nationalism, religious conversions were seen as an act of religious faith as much as an act of rejection of the national identity to which the renounced religion was related and a synchronous adoption of a new national identity with which the new religion was associated. In other words, religious conversions meant the loss of a soul and a body from a “nationally imagined community” in favor of another, often rival nation. This loss was also seen as a symbolic rape of the community’s honor if the religious apostate were a woman or a child, or as a national trophy for their religious and national community embraced by the religious convert.83 To paraphrase David Nirenberg, competition for women and competition for (female) converts are related.84 The conversion of abducted women was often seen as a symbolic, valuable national prize, while sexual violence offered a symbolically dense representation of territorial appropriation as well as the inability of the vanquished men to defend their territory and their manhood.85 The view that religious conversions in the age of nationalism are different from earlier conversions in their causes, their meaning, and the manner in which they were conducted seems also to be supported by the findings of other scholarly works. During the protracted Ottoman conquest of Crete in 1669 a number

Introduction  17 of Christian Orthodox residents of the island had converted to Islam and joined the Ottoman janissary corps without these conversions creating a fierce and brutal divide between the Christian and Muslim communities.86 This is in contrast to the nineteenth-​century conversions, when Crete became a hotspot of nationalist agitation and conflict between Christian Orthodox and Muslims, and conversions to Islam seemed to generate social trauma and give rise to greater social conflicts on the island. The fact that since the late nineteenth century national and ethnic conflicts in the Balkans have been fought out in the religious domain should not be allowed to color our understanding of phenomena in the prenationalist era, i.e., before the end of the eighteenth century.87 Nationalism is preoccupied by fears of loss or potential loss of national identity, as well as of the weakness and frailty of national feelings, which were to be strengthened and become dominant in the territories claimed by nationalism. Fear of and hatred for the religious apostate in this context are quite important for understanding a potential loss of national identity or the loss of a member of the flock or national group. Religious apostates are seen as potential dismantlers of the religious flock and the national community. The national narrative often focuses on the “good” example, the role model to emulate, the hero, the martyr. The religious convert killed by a national rival could be seen as a martyr to the national cause, a loyalist or patriot. As such, the negative or positive symbolism of the religious convert or apostate can be seen as transgression against or obedience to the “symbolic realm” of the national community or, by extension, the violation or enrichment of the “inner world” of the national community.88 Since the concepts of religion and citizenship were seen as identical, one who joined or turned away from a religion committed either an act of treason or a commendable and heroic act for the nation and the fatherland. Those who abandoned their faith were also disrupting public order and could not be allowed to circulate freely among the faithful; for this reason the punishment for their crime had to be extremely severe.89 In other words, during the age of nationalism, religious conversions were seen not as individually reprehensible acts but as either a compliment or an affront to the entire, more or less amorphously imagined, national community. Thus, while Greek historiography does not regard as Greeks the Christian Orthodox of Crete who had converted to Islam in Ottoman times, those who apostasized and re-​embraced Christian Orthodoxy during the rise of Greek nationalism and Muslim-​Christian Orthodox conflict on the island during the nineteenth century were pronounced martyrs.90 Zoran Milutinović analyzes the works of four writers of Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian literature during the period of national revival in the early nineteenth century. In the works of all four, the enemy is not a foreign conqueror but a native religious apostate who collaborates with the conqueror by adopting

18  Proselytes of a New Nation his faith: “The culprit is never the Other, it is always a [religious] apostate, a renegade, someone ambiguously placed between us and them, by being one of us, but siding with them nonetheless.”91 Georgije Magarašević, a Serbian historian and publisher who lived at the end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (1793–​1830), claimed in 1827 that “Islamized Serbs, blinded by fanaticism, are much worse than the [Ottoman] Turks.”92 As in the case of Greek, Bulgarian, and other nationalisms leading to the formation of Christian nation-​states in the Balkans, Serb conversion to Islam was at the core of Serbian nationalism. In the minds of ordinary people, every neighbor who professed a different religion belonged to the “enemy civilization.”93 Nineteenth-​century novelist and prose writer Jaša Ignjatović (1822–​1889) of Novi Sad in the present-​day Republic of Serbia argued that a Serb without religious rites and customs was not considered a Serb. A dissident from the faith was considered by the people to be a lost son, one who had lost the sense of the importance of Serbhood.94 Bulgarians’ conversion to Islam under Ottoman rule served to legitimize the name-​changing campaign forced on Bulgarian Muslims by the communist regime of Todor Zhivkov in the late 1980s.95 Deringil analyzes views of Islamic apostasy and the treatment of Islamic apostates in an imperial state, the Ottoman Empire, after the introduction of the Tanzimat reforms (1839–​1876), a wide-​ranging series of political, economic, and social reforms that aimed to modernize the empire and secure its territorial integrity against internal nationalist movements and external aggressive powers. Overall, the ruling philosophy of the Ottoman state was that of religious and ethnic diversity and inclusion for its subjects, whereas Balkan nation-​states were in favor of national homogeneity and assimilation. This book builds on Deringil’s work by exploring why Muslims converted to Christianity during the Greek War of Independence as well as the life of the converts during the first three decades of the postindependence years, the era of the reign of King Otto in the newly established Kingdom of Hellas (1833–​1862). Greece was the first country to become an independent state in the Balkans and a pioneer in experimenting with minority issues. Indeed, Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva, known also as Louis Kossuth (1802–​1894), a Hungarian nobleman, statesman, and governor-​president of the Kingdom of Hungary during the revolution of 1848–​1849, played an important role in the shaping of the law of minority rights in 1849, which is widely alleged to be the first law in Europe that recognized minority rights.96 The law gave minorities the freedom to use their mother tongue within the local administration and courts, in schools, in community life, and even within the national guard of non-​Magyar councils.97 However, Greece clearly preceded this with some actual implementation. Jewish emancipation was an extremely slow process in Europe; the Kingdom of Hellas, which granted freedoms and rights

Introduction  19 to non-​Orthodox Christians as well as to Muslims and Jews with its inception in 1830, was preceded only by the United States of America, France, and a handful of German states.98 With regard to its Muslim populations, Greece’s ruling framework and many of the country’s state administrative measures and patterns were to serve as a template at a later stage for other Christian Orthodox Balkan states with Muslim minorities (e.g., Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Cyprus).99 This may not be a phenomenon worthy of self-​congratulation, however; this book will show that, despite the freedoms and rights acquired by non-​Christians in the Kingdom of Hellas, these individuals were never legally and practically regarded as Hellenes or Greek nationals. Any policies regarding them can in fact be ambivalent and cannot serve as a guide to present-​day solutions. Unlike works such as those of Bojan Aleksov, which shed light on religious conversions in Serbia in the age of nationalism, or of Zoran Milutinović, which explore religious conversions in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia during the same period, or of Mehmet Celik, who analyzes religious conversions in early post-​Ottoman Ruse in Bulgaria,100 this book aims to be a pioneering, comprehensive analysis of religious conversions in nineteenth-​century (post-​Ottoman) Greece. It will shed light on the issue of religious identities and conversions in the early phase of nation-​building in the Balkans and at the early stages of the transition from the Ottoman to the post-​Ottoman period. Unlike Deringil, who is preoccupied with religious apostasy and the relations between the neophyte and the religious community the convert leaves behind, in this book I focus mainly on the relations between the neophyte and the new life and religious community that the convert chooses to embrace: that is, I consider the convert from the perspective of the Christian Orthodox religion and the Greek state that the neophyte aspires to become a part of, rather than as an apostate through the eyes of Islam and the Ottoman Empire’s religious patronage. This perspective is pivotal to establishing the political, economic, and social foundations of independent Greece and determining the country’s minority policies and patterns of behavior toward religious converts to Orthodox Christianity. The expansion of the time frame under consideration to the end of the reign of King Otto (1862) is justified by the fact that by that time almost all of the unresolved cases of converts to Orthodox Christianity during the Greek War of Independence and the first postindependence years had been settled. Moreover, with the exception of the conversions to Orthodox Christianity during the Greek War of Independence and the first few postindependence years, there were no mass conversions to Orthodox Christianity in later phases of the history of modern Greece. Only a few isolated cases existed in the areas occupied by Greece during the Balkan Wars (1912–​1913) and the Greco-​Turkish War of 1919–​1922, along with some cases of Muslims who converted to Orthodox Christianity to avoid

20  Proselytes of a New Nation being deported to Turkey under the compulsory Greco-​Turkish population exchange of 1923.

Primary Sources The purpose of this book is to explore the conversion of Muslims to Orthodox Christianity during the Greek War of Independence, as well as the lives of the neophyte converts during the Greek War of Independence and the first three decades of the postindependence years, that is, the era of regency (1833–​ 1835) and the reign of King Otto (1835–​1862). In addition to secondary sources on the topic of religious conversions in the Balkans and elsewhere, many of which were analyzed earlier in this introduction and include single-​ author and co-​authored books, collective volumes, conference proceedings, articles in peer-​reviewed academic journals, and reports and pamphlets published in Greek, Turkish, English, French, German, and Bulgarian, the book draws its findings from a wide range of primary sources. These include official state documents, such as some fragments of registration catalogues with information on the professional and economic state of the neophytes, their current and previous (Muslim) family status—​names of their parents, siblings, spouses, their professions and properties—​memos, correspondence, and legal opinions by state officials on a series of issues with reference to the neophytes in the Greek State Archives as well as in the Archives of the Hellenic Parliament; formal requests from the neophytes personally, their legal representatives (proxies) or spouses and relatives on behalf of the neophytes to the Greek authorities in the Greek State Archives and in the Archives of the Hellenic Parliament; acts, royal decrees, and ministerial orders with reference to the neophytes published in the statute book; debates in the legislative bodies, memos of and correspondence between the various branches of the government (executive, legislative, and judiciary) in the Archeio Ellinikis Paliggenesias (Archive of the Hellenic [National] Revival) and in the Archive of the Hellenic Parliament; letters at the Diplomatic and Historical Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic from Muslim relatives who had left Greece for the Ottoman Empire during or after the Greek War of Independence and who after the war had written to the Greek authorities to learn of or ask the Greek authorities to help them reconnect with their Muslim relatives who had remained in Greece (many of whom had in the meantime converted to Orthodox Christianity, a development of which the Muslim relatives were aware or unaware); diplomatic correspondence between the Greek and the Ottoman authorities on issues relating to property

Introduction  21 and other legal disputes between Muslims originating from Greece and living in the Ottoman Empire and their neophyte relatives living in Greece in the Diplomatic and Historical Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic; court records and archives concerning property and other legal disputes between Muslims and members of their families or relatives converted to Orthodox Christianity at the Greek State Archives; ecclesiastical documents, memos, and correspondence between ecclesiastical officials or between ecclesiastical and state officials on the issue of baptism of Muslim and other non-​Orthodox to Orthodox Christianity; and local and national newspaper articles with news on neophytes from the newspaper archives in the Archives of the Hellenic Parliament. Most of the primary sources concerning Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy were researched for a previous project that explored the life of the Muslim communities in the Kingdom of Hellas from the time of the establishment of the Modern Greek state in 1832 until the eve of Greece’s entrance to the Second World War (1940), which led to the publication of my book Islam and Nationalism in Modern Greece, 1821–​1940 and numerous articles in peer-​ reviewed academic journals and chapters in edited books. These primary sources have gained little attention in Greek, and to a great extent in Balkan historiography, mostly because Muslim conversion to Orthodox Christianity is regarded as a sensitive issue. They tend to give rise to contradictions of established national narratives that had been fundamental to the project of nation-​building, such as that of the oppression and brutality of Ottoman rule, which, among other things, was allegedly exemplified by extensive programs of forced Islamization of non-​Muslims in the region. Unfortunately, no memoirs, diaries, letters, or other forms of personal correspondence exist that could enrich our knowledge of the neophytes’ personal experiences in the national environment of Greece during the Greek War of Independence and the first three decades of the postindependence years. Most of the neophytes were illiterate, which in itself prohibited them from being able to create their own written records. Therefore, a researcher must primarily rely on tertiary (state and nonstate) sources. Despite the existence of some direct personal correspondence between neophytes and state officials discussed elsewhere in this book, one might question the extent to which this correspondence voices the true mind of the neophytes, as it is frequently filtered or self-​censored, as often happens in the communication between citizens and state officials. Moreover, given the high level of illiteracy among the citizens of nineteenth-​century Greece, including among the overwhelming majority of neophytes, this correspondence was produced by third parties on their behalf.

22  Proselytes of a New Nation

The Book’s Contents The book addresses questions such as the following: Why did many Muslims convert to Orthodox Christianity? What did conversion mean to them? What were the converts’ economic, social, and professional profiles? How did their conversion affect relations with their Muslim relatives in Greece and the Ottoman Empire? Given that, according to sharia law and the Ottoman legal system, Muslim apostates (i.e., Muslim converts to other religions) lost their right to inherit family property unless family wills provided differently, the book also analyzes the way in which conversion often complicated family relations and led to legal disputes over property. It also explores the methods by which the Greek state adjudicated legal disputes on property issues between the neophytes and their Muslim relatives; for example, since many of the disputed property rights were established in Ottoman times when sharia law was in force, the book also explores the extent to which Greek courts considered sharia when they made their decisions. The book also looks at neophytes’ relations with the Greek and Ottoman states and the way in which neophytes merged into Greek society. To what extent did conversion assist the neophytes’ integration into Greek society? The Greek case of Muslims’ conversions to Orthodox Christianity is not the only one in the nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century Balkans. The Pomaks, Bulgarian-​speaking Muslims, were subjected to forcible conversion during the Balkan Wars (1912–​1913); Bulgarian authorities viewed Pomaks as national strays, ethnic Bulgarians Islamized in Ottoman times.101 In 1948 the Bulgarian communist authorities initiated programs aimed at the religious and ethnic assimilation of the Pomaks, including population transfers to areas of ethnic Bulgarian settlement. Between 1970 and 1973, vigorous attempts were made to oblige Pomaks to abandon their Muslim names and adopt Bulgarian Christian Orthodox names. Those attempts were extended to Muslim Roma and, in the 1980s, to Turkish-​speaking Muslims.102 Conversions of Muslims to Orthodox Christianity also occurred in Serbia, Romania, and elsewhere in the Balkans. Chapter 1 sets the stage by exploring the conditions leading to the emergence of Greek nationalism: the beginning, development, and outcome of the Greek War of Independence. Emphasis is given to the close relationship between Orthodox Christianity and Greek nationalism as well as to the role of Christian Orthodox religion as a mobilizing factor among the Christian Orthodox during the war, which paved the way for Christian Orthodoxy to become the dominant religion in the newly established Kingdom of Hellas. Chapter 2 analyzes the impact of the Greek War of Independence on the Muslim populations in the areas affected by war, how the war determined the legal and social status of Muslims and their relations with the Greek state and the Ottoman Empire, and Muslims’

Introduction  23 lives in the Kingdom of Hellas during the regency (1833–​1835) and the reign of King Otto (1835–​1862). Chapter 3 explores the conditions that led many Muslims to convert to Orthodox Christianity during the Greek War of Independence and the way in which these conversions were received by the Greek civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the rebellious areas. The chapter also assesses the efforts made by many Muslim families separated by the Greek War of Independence to reunite with missing Muslim and neophyte family members after the end of the war. It analyzes the measures taken by the administration of Ioannis Kapodistrias to assist those family members in reuniting with family in the Ottoman Empire and help economically destitute neophytes. The chapter also discusses legal disputes over property issues between Muslims and neophyte family members in eastern Roúmeli and on the island of Euboea, where neophytes were often viewed by their Muslim family members as Islamic apostates who, as a result of their apostasy against Islam, had lost their inheritance and other rights to family property. Chapter 4 explores the converts’ economic and social profiles and analyzes their legal, economic, and social status during the regency and reign of King Otto. The chapter also discusses gender and conversion, including reasons why the majority of Muslim converts were women, as well as how many conversions of women were related to incidents of abduction of Muslim women by Christian Orthodox men on the island of Euboea and elsewhere. Chapters 3 and 4 are mostly narrative and expository. Their analysis follows in the conclusion, which draws on the discussions in the chapters, mainly Chapters 3 and 4, to address theoretical questions on religious conversions and nation-​building in Modern Greece.

1

The Greek War of Independence Fight for Faith and Fatherland! The time has come, O Hellenes. Long ago the people of Europe, fighting for their own rights and liberties, invited us to imitation. . . . The enlightened peoples of Europe are occupied in restoring the same well-​being, and, full of gratitude for the benefactions of our forefathers towards them, desire for the liberation of Greece. We, seemingly worthy of ancestral virtue and of the present century, are hopeful that we will achieve their defense and help. Many of these freedom-​lovers want to come and fight alongside us. . . . Who then hinders your manly arms? Our cowardly enemy is sick and weak. Our generals are experienced, and all our fellow countrymen are full of enthusiasm. Unite, then. O brave and magnanimous Greeks! Let national phalanxes be formed, let patriotic legions appear and you will see those old giants of despotism fall themselves, before our triumphant banners. —​Fight for the Faith and the Motherland, Alexander Ypsilants’s Revolutionary Proclamation, Iaşi, 24 February 1821

In the winter of 1820–​1821 the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II sought to destroy Ali Pasha of Tepelena, the Muslim warlord who controlled much of present-​day Albania and mainland Greece.1 This was part of Mahmud’s efforts to restore the depleted authority of the Ottoman central government, which was challenged by various warlords who operated in the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Middle East.2 The military operations against Ali Pasha engaged substantial armed forces and focused the Ottomans’ attention on the areas adjacent to Ali Pasha’s territory, thus leaving uncovered other rebellion-​prone places in the Balkans. This opportunity was not missed by the Filiki Etaireia, or Society of Friends. This secret nineteenth-​century organization, founded in 1814 in Odessa, recruited widely among the inhabitants of the Greek-​speaking world, but also, broadly, the Christian Orthodox world, with the aim of purging the Ottoman rulers from the “Motherland” through an armed revolt.3 Influenced by the revolutionary fervor gripping Europe at that time, the Filiki Etaireia planned to launch revolts in the Peloponnese, the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, and Istanbul itself. The moment for an insurrection seemed to be ripe for two other Proselytes of a New Nation. Stefanos Katsikas, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197621752.003.0002

The Greek War of Independence  25 reasons besides Ali Pasha’s revolt. First, from 1821 to 1823 the Ottoman Empire was at war with Qajar Persia, which, like the Ali Pasha revolt, engaged significant Ottoman armed forces. Second, the Great European Powers of the time, mainly Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia, that were allied in opposition to uprisings in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, were preoccupied with revolts in Italy and Spain. The insurrection was planned for 25 March 1821, the Orthodox Christian Feast of the Annunciation, known to Greek Orthodox as Evangelismos. The selection of the symbolic date aimed to propound the idea that the insurrection project had divine approval that could lead only to its success and to help mobilize Christian Orthodox subjects of the empire to support the insurrection. Like the Annunciation, the insurrection presaged the conception of a new nation. The Ottomans discovered the Filiki Etaireia’s plans, forcing its leadership to start the insurrection earlier than planned. On 6 March 1821, Alexander Ypsilantis, a prominent Phanariot (member of Istanbul’s Christian Orthodox elite) and a high-​ranking Russian officer and leader of the Filiki Etaireia,4 launched his small army across the river Pruth, which marked the border between Russian Bessarabia and Moldavia. Ypsilantis hoped to take advantage of the concurrent uprising led by Tudor Vladimirescu, who had been in contact with the Filiki Etaireia, of the Aromanian inhabitants of the Ottoman principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia against the native aristocratic boyars. But the Aromanianss showed no enthusiasm for making common cause with the Greeks, whom they associated with the oppressive rule of the Phanariot hospodars (princes) of the region, who in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries ruled Wallachia and Moldavia as viceroys to the Ottoman sultan.5 Following the defeat of his ragged army in the battle of Dragatsani in Wallachia in June 1821, Ypsilantis, accompanied by this brother Nicholas and remnants of his followers, was forced to flee into Habsburg territory, where he was kept in confinement for seven years. The invasion petered out.6 The revolt in the Danubian principalities helped inspire the uprising in Moreas (Peloponnese), where the Greek War of Independence began. The region was suffering from pillaging by gangs throughout much of the Balkans after 1770, which the Ottoman authorities were unable to stop.7 Sporadic outbursts of violence in March 1821 soon assumed the form of a successful all-​out revolt. The Ottoman garrisons withdrew to their coastal fortresses after vicious fighting marked by atrocities on both sides. Revolts broke out in Central Greece, colloquially known as Roúmeli; Thessaly; Macedonia; and the Aegean islands, including Crete. But many of them were eventually suppressed. In the meantime, the insurgents’ makeshift fleets achieved success against the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea and prevented Ottoman reinforcements from arriving by sea.

26  Proselytes of a New Nation By the end of March 1821 the rebels effectively controlled the countryside, while the Ottomans were confined to fortresses, most notably those of Patra, recaptured by the Ottomans on 3 April 1821; Acrocorinth; Monemvasia; Nafplio; and the provincial capital Tripolitsa, to which many Muslims from the rebellious areas had fled with their families at the beginning of the uprising. The rebels lacked artillery, and these fortresses were loosely besieged by local insurgents under their own captains. With the exception of Tripolitsa, all of the sites had access to the sea and were thus able to be resupplied and reinforced by the Ottoman fleet. Therefore, success at sea was vital for the rebels from the early stages of the insurgence. The insurgents’ fleet was outfitted by prosperous islanders, mainly from three Aegean islands: Hydra, Spetses, and Psara. Although manned by experienced crews, the insurgents’ ships were not designed for warfare, equipped only with light guns and staffed by armed merchantmen.8 In the face of this situation, the insurgents used fireships, the so-​called pyrpolika or bourlota, which had proven to be effective during the Orlov revolt, a Greek revolt, and major precursor to the Greek War of Independence, against the Ottomans in 1770, organized by Alexey Orlov, commander of the Imperial Russian Navy during the Russo-​Ottoman War of 1768–​1774.9 Conventional naval actions also took place, in which naval commanders such as Andreas Miaoulis distinguished themselves. Under siege from May 1821, Tripolitsa was finally seized by the rebels on 23 September of the same year, and the city was given over to the mob for two days.10 With the exception of Acrocorinth, which the Ottomans surrendered on 14 January 1822, the insurgents had succeeded in temporarily securing their positions in the Peloponnese and in Roúmelias well as in the Argosaronic islands, some of the Cyclades, and Samos. Uprisings in Crete, Macedonia, and other locations met a fierce Ottoman response and eventually perished.11

The Ottoman Reaction In the heated atmosphere of lingering Muslim-​Christian tensions in the Balkans, a result of incidents such as the 1804 Christian uprising of Belgrade against the depredations of the janissaries, the Greek revolt soon assumed a strong religious dimension. The Ottoman Porte (synecdoche for the Ottoman central government) launched a jihad against the rebels. The dividing line of the conflict was between Orthodox Christians and Muslims,12 and large-​scale violence became the norm on both sides. Orthodox Christian clergy were arrested, notables publicly humiliated, property plundered, and individuals murdered in many places around the Ottoman Empire. The Orthodox Christians of Istanbul were subject to purges, especially the Phanariot elite, who lost the privileged place they had enjoyed in the

The Greek War of Independence  27 Ottoman administration.13 Among them were Constantine Mourousis, the Christian Orthodox serving as dragoman of the Porte, a senior representative of the Ottoman government and de facto deputy foreign minister; two retired dragomans; a number of wealthy Christian Orthodox bankers and merchants in Istanbul, including a member of the affluent Mavrokordatos family; three monks and a priest of the Orthodox Church; and three ordinary Christian Orthodox accused of planning to poison the city’s water supply.14 In Smyrna Ottoman soldiers, drawn from the interior of Anatolia to fight in the Peloponnese, Roúmeli, or the Danubian principalities, staged a massacre of the Christian Orthodox population of the city in June 1821. Thomas Gordon, a British army officer and historian who joined the insurrection and later wrote the first English-​language history of the Greek War of Independence, wrote, “3,000 ruffians assailed the Greek quarter, plundered the houses and slaughtered the people; Smyrna resembled a place taken by assault, neither age or sex respected.”15 The ferocity of the massacre was such that when a local imam was asked to give a fatwā (a ruling on a point of Islamic law) justifying the murder of Christians by Muslims and refused, he, too, was promptly killed on the false grounds that he was not a proper Muslim. In an April 1822 incident well-​publicized in Christian Europe, the Ottoman fleet, under Kapudan Pasha Kara Ali, arrived on the island of Chios, where Ottoman troops went on a rampage, killing, raping, or enslaving the Christian Orthodox population of the island without mercy. Before the arrival of Kara Ali’s fleet, the Christian Orthodox population of Chios was between 100,000 and 120,000; of those approximately 25,000 were killed in the massacre and another 45,000, mostly women and children, were sold into slavery.16 In another incident, on 10 April 1821, Grigorios V, the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, was brutally hanged at the main gate of the patriarchate in the Phanar district in Istanbul, despite the fact that he and the synod of the patriarchate had strongly opposed the revolt and pronounced an anathema on Ypsilantis and the rebels.17 Most accounts portray the execution of Patriarch Grigorios as a punishment, because in Ottoman eyes he had failed to observe the implicit contract whereby the patriarch was expected to act as the guarantor of the loyalty of the millet-​i Rûm or Rûm millet, the Orthodox Christian affiliates of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate of Constantinople. His execution made him an ethnomartyras (national martyr) and outraged the Greek rebels and Christian Europe.

Atrocities against Muslims The 1821 Greek revolt in Moreas began with the murder of Ottoman government officials, especially tax collectors, but it soon became a widespread attack by Greek guerrillas and peasants against the Muslim population of the region.18

28  Proselytes of a New Nation According to some sources, the Greek rebels killed more than twenty thousand Muslims, most of them Turkish-​speaking men, women, and children, in just a few weeks.19 In the words of the British historian W. Alison Phillips, “within three weeks of the outbreak of the revolt, not a Muslim was left, save those who had succeeded in escaping into the towns.”20 The British historian George Finlay writes: Before two months had elapsed [after the start of the Greek War of Independence] the greater part [of the Muslim population] was slain—​men, women, children were murdered without mercy or remorse. Old men still point to the heaps of stones and tell the traveler, “there stood the pyrgos (tower) of Ali Aga, and there we slew him, his harem and his slaves,” and the old man walks calmly on to plow the fields which once belonged to Ali Aga, without a thought that any vengeful fury can attend his path. The crime was a nation’s crime, and whatever perturbations it may produce must be in a nation’s conscience, as the deeds by which it can be expiated must be the acts of a nation.21

Bishops and priests often exhorted their parishioners to exterminate the infidel Muslims; Metropolitan Bishop Germanos of Patra, in his patriotic cry of rebellion proclaimed, “Peace to the Christians! Respect to the Consuls! Death to the Turks!”22 Thus rang out the song that, from mouth to mouth, announced the beginning of the revolt: “In the Morea [Peloponnese] shall no Turk be left, nor in the whole wide world.”23 Even official documents often expressed pride in and encouraged the ethnic and religious cleansing. Thus, in 1827, six years after the start of the Greek War of Independence, the Politikon Syntagma tis Ellados adopted by the Third National Assembly in Troezen declares, “Hellenes! The developments have proven that, when we want, we are able to win; tens of thousands of Ottomans were wiped from the face of the fatherland; we were able to destroy thousands of them. When we love one another, are united and have the same wish; then we can have one and the same desire, when all of us aim to the same benefit.”24 Though some contemporary historical accounts downplay the atrocities against Muslims during the time of the 1821 Greek uprising,25 others offer chilling descriptions of massacres of Muslim populations in the Peloponnese, as well as in the Aegean islands and in Roúmeli.26 For example, in his History of the Greek Revolution Finlay writes: The Christian population had attacked and murdered the Mussulman population in every part of the peninsula [Peloponnese]. The towers and country homes of the Mussulmans were burned down, and their property was destroyed, in order to render the return of those who had escaped into the fortresses hopeless. From the 26th of March until Easter Sunday, which fell, in the year 1821, on

The Greek War of Independence  29 the 22nd of April, it is supposed that fifteen thousand [Muslim] souls perished in cold blood and that about three thousand farmhouses of Turkish dwellings were laid waste.27

And in A History of Greece from Its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, Finlay argues, “The extermination of the Mussulmans in the rural districts was the result of a premeditated design. It proceeded more from the vindictive suggestions of the Haiterists [members of the Filiki Etaireia] and men of letters, than from the vengeful feelings of the people, or the innate barbarity of the klephts.”28 Atrocities against Muslims had also taken place in the Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Ypsilantis and his supporters took the cities of Iaşi and Galaţi in present-​day Romania. In both cities and in the surrounding areas, armed Muslim officers of every rank, merchants, sailors, and soldiers were surprised and massacred.29 After Tsar Alexander I refused to offer military support to Ypsilantis, based on the antirevolutionary spirit in Europe following the Congress of Vienna and the formation of the Holy Alliance, the Ottomans stifled the uprising, and Ypsilantis fled, leaving behind memories of atrocities against Muslims as well as hatred, mistrust, and ruptured social bonds between Christian Orthodox and Muslims. Massacres of Muslim civilians began with the outbreak of the uprising in Morea, but they seem to have been inflamed by news of retaliatory measures taken by the Ottoman authorities against the Christian Orthodox of Istanbul and other places, including the execution of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, Grigorios V.30 Most of the Muslims sought refuge with their families in the few strongholds of the rebel areas, such as the Acropolis of Athens, which were held by Ottoman garrison troops. There they were either besieged and ultimately killed or, in rare cases, rescued by Ottoman garrison forces. Indeed, on 9 June 1822, after a siege of several months, the Ottoman garrison of the Acropolis, driven by lack of water, agreed to capitulate and be removed to Asia Minor in neutral ships. They were to lay down their arms but were to be allowed to retain half of the valuables in their possessions. The Christian Orthodox bishop of Athens asked Greek rebels to conform to the terms of the capitulation by swearing oaths to God. About 1,150 Muslims, of whom only 180 were capable of bearing arms, surrendered on these terms and were lodged in the extensive buildings contained within the ruins of the Stoa of Hadrian pending the completion of the arrangements for their removal. At the same time, news reached the city that the army of Mahmud Dramali Pasha had crossed the Straits of Thermopylae and was heading toward Athens, about two hundred kilometers away. The rebels, joined by a mob of Christian Orthodox Athenians, slaughtered the defenseless prisoners.31

30  Proselytes of a New Nation The horror of the Acropolis massacre had many parallels during the course of the Greek War of Independence. One such case was that in Vrachori (present-​ day Agrinio), an important town in western Roúmeli with some five hundred Muslim families and around two hundred Romaniote (Greek-​speaking) Jews, people of the most part of some wealth and consideration: The Ottoman garrison of the town consisted of 600 Muslim Albanian mercenaries. On 9 June 1821 the town was attacked by around 2,000 armatoloi,32 later increased to 4,000. The Albanians, seeing themselves outnumbered, and having, through their chief Nourka, relations with the armed militias, opened negotiations with the Greek rebels and were allowed to march out with arms and goods. Before leaving, however—​thinking, doubtless, that it was [a]‌pity all the spoil should fall into the hands of the Greeks—​they plundered the Turks and forced the Jews to give up to them all the money and jewelry in their possession with the wealth of which they deprived these poor wretches had they hoped to purchase the protection of the captains of the armatoloi; as soon as they could do so, they informed the Greeks of Nourka’s treachery and laid down their arms on promise of personal safety. That promise was immediately violated. The massacre commenced with the Jews—​men, women and children were murdered without mercy, after being tortured to make them reveal their supposed hidden treasures. The poorer Muslims shared the same fate and only [a] few of the wealthier families were spared by the Greek rebel leaders who hoped to hold them for ransom.33

On 25 March 1821 the Muslims of the town of Kalavryta in the northern Peloponnese—​southeast of Patra and northwest of Tripoli—​surrendered to the rebels after receiving a promise of security. That promise was soon violated. Most of the men were murdered, and the women and children were dispersed as slaves or domestic servants for the Greeks.34 On 22 March, Kalamata, a town in the southwestern Peloponnese besieged by Greek insurgents, had capitulated; its Muslim population received solemn promises that their lives would be spared, but the promises were intended only to overcome the desperate Muslims’ obstinate resistance. The prisoners were soon dispersed among their captors to serve as domestic slaves, and before many months had elapsed all the men had been slain.35 Amvrosios Phrantzes, a Greek Orthodox ecclesiastic, member of the Filiki Etaireia, and one of the most candid historians of this early period of the uprising, uses the Greek proverbial expression “The moon devoured them” (Tous katefage to feggari), which is mockingly used to denote that someone has mysteriously disappeared.36 Muslims and non-​Muslims with their families sought refuge from the rebels’ rampant ferocity in two other citadel towns, Monemvasia in the southern and

The Greek War of Independence  31 Navarino in the southwestern Peloponnese.37 After months of a difficult siege by sea and land, and weakened by famine, Monemvasia opened the gates of the citadel and capitulated to the Greek rebels on 23 July 1821. Muslims, mostly Turkish-​speaking, surrendered their arms and were allowed to retain their movable property. The Greeks had promised to transport them to Asia Minor in three brigs from the island of Spetses, which had maintained the sea blockade. The Muslims were bound to pay a fixed sum for their passage. However, a body of rebels, most of them from the region of Mani, opposed the terms of the capitulation to the utmost of their power. They murdered many Muslims who had not yet embarked or had chosen to stay in town, and plundered their properties. Many of the Greek officers present did everything they could to stop the violation of the terms of the capitulation, but their interference was viewed with jealousy and only partly succeeded. Instead of being deported to Asia Minor as promised, those on the ships were stripped of their clothes, beaten, and left on a desolate rock in the Aegean. Only a few were saved by a French merchant ship, the M. Bonfort.38 The surrender of the citadel of Navarino followed a few days later, on 5 August, with far greater atrocities. Before Navarino capitulated, many Muslim families, mostly Turkish-​speaking, had been compelled by hunger to escape the citadel and throw themselves on the mercy of the Greek rebels from the surrounding areas, with whom they had once been connected through social bonds of mutuality. Before leaving, the Muslims gave up all of the public property in the fortress and all their money and jewelry. They were allowed to retain only their clothes and household furniture. The rebels promised to transport them to Egypt or Tunisia.39 The Muslims’ money and valuables were carried on board a Greek ship anchored in the harbor as part of the blockade. While this was happening, disputes arose over the manner in which Muslim women were searched for gold and jewels. A general massacre ensued, and in the space of an hour almost every Muslim man, woman, and child who had not already boarded were murdered.40 Only a few Muslims were rescued, some protected by the rebels out of mercy; they embarked on the rebels’ ships, which transported them to Smyrna instead of Egypt or Tunisia. There, enraged by what they had experienced in Navarino and seeking vengeance, some of them killed four hundred Orthodox Christians on 10 October 1821. A month later, on 8 November, some joined a Muslim mob of around fifteen hundred who slew another five hundred Christian Orthodox faithful as they were leaving the Greek Orthodox church of St. Foteini after a service celebrating the Feast of Taxiarches honoring Archangels Michael and Gabriel.41 The ferocity of the Greek War of Independence is well encapsulated in the case of Amvrosios Phrantzes. Born in 1778 in the mountainous village of Mesorrogi in the region of Kalavryta in the Peloponnese, Phrantzes became a monk at a

32  Proselytes of a New Nation very young age in the Christian Orthodox monastery of the Great Cave in Kalavryta and joined the Filiki Etaireia in February 1819. Along with Germanos, the Christian Orthodox bishop of Patra, Phrantzes is regarded as a pioneer of the 1821 revolt in the Peloponnese.42 In his Summary of the History of Reborn Greece, Phrantzes provides the following lively eyewitness description of scenes of the 1821 uprising: Such tragic slaughter and murder have never occurred in the history of any centuries. . . . Women, wounded with musket-​balls and sabre-​cuts, rushed to the sea, seeking to escape, and were deliberately shot. Mothers robbed of their clothes with infants in their arms, plunged into the water to conceal themselves from shame, and they were then made a mark for inhuman riflemen. Greeks seized infants from their mothers’ breasts and dashed them against the rocks. Children, three and four years old, were hurled living into the sea and left to drown. When the massacre was ended, the dead bodies washed ashore, or piled on the beach, threatened to cause a pestilence.43

Phrantzes, who records these atrocities of his countrymen with shame and indignation, hired men from the Greek camp to set fire to the bodies of the victims and the wrecks of some vessels in the harbor to avoid the effects of so many putrid remains exposed in the autumn sun.44 One of the worst atrocities for its ferocity and the number of victims took place after the fall of Tripolitsa in September 1821. The population of Tripolitsa is estimated to have been around fifteen thousand prior to the Greek War of Independence, of whom seven thousand were Orthodox Christians, one thousand were Jews, and the rest were Muslims. When the 1821 uprising broke out in the Peloponnese, most of the Christian Orthodox had fled this city in the heart of the Peloponnese, where the pasha of the Morea, the Ottoman governor of the region, resided.45 Muslims of the surrounding areas, such as Mystras, Bardounia, Leondari, and Fanari, filled the resulting void, along with Kihaya Bey’s troops that were protecting the city. It has been estimated that approximately thirty thousand people, four thousand of whom were armed Turkish-​speaking and Albanian-​speaking Muslims, took refuge inside the walls of Tripolitsa’s citadel when the city was besieged by approximately six thousand Greek rebels, their numbers growing day by day in the summer of 1821.46 Phillips declares that “the other atrocities of the Greeks paled before the awful scenes which followed the storming of Tripolitsa,”47 while Finlay refers to the capture of Tripolitsa as “a scene of fighting, murder, and pillage . . . unexampled in duration and atrocity even in the annals of this bloody warfare. Human beings can rarely have perpetrated so many deeds of cruelty on an equal number of their fellow-​creatures as were perpetrated by the conquerors on this

The Greek War of Independence  33 occasion.”48 Famine, disease, and fighting had already thinned the population, yet it is believed that approximately eight thousand Muslims died at the hands of Greek rebels during the sack of the town, two thousand of whom, mostly women and children, were led to a ravine in the nearby mountain and murdered.49 Many young women and girls were carried off as slaves by volunteer rebels who were returning home. A few high-​ranking Ottoman officers and the Muslim women of Khurshid Pasha’s harem were spared in the expectation of high ransoms. Many Muslims had surrendered on receiving promises that their lives would be spared, but those who were capable of bearing arms were sent out of the city, under the pretense of quartering them in a neighborhood where greater facilities existed for obtaining provisions; there they were murdered during the night.50 Historical accounts of the massacre following the fall of Tripolitsa are shocking: “For three days the miserable inhabitants were given over to the lust and cruelty of the mob of savages. Neither sex nor age was spared. Women and children were tortured before being put to death.”51 The massacre was so vicious and murderous that Theodoros Kolokotronis, an eminent army officer who in 1825 became commander in chief of Morea’s Greek forces, took part in the siege of Tripolitsa, and recalled that “from the gate of the citadel [his] horse’s hoofs never touched the ground” because the entire path was carpeted with corpses.52 The air was tainted with a deadly miasma, and a terrible epidemic broke out among the insurgents.53 The plunder gained was vast, and some Peloponnesian captains significantly increased their wealth by looting the property of murdered Muslims. On learning of the atrocities in Tripolitsa, Gordon, the first English philhellene to join the Greek Revolution, left Greek service in disgust.54 Massacres of Muslims also took place in the Aegean islands during the early years of the revolt. One of the main purposes of the insurgents was to embroil in the war as many Christian Orthodox communities as possible, of which most would have preferred to stand aside. Their strategy was to engineer some atrocity against the local Muslim population so that the indifferent Christian Orthodox communities would ally with the rebels in fear of retaliation by the Ottomans.55 In March 1822, several hundred armed rebels from the island of Samos landed on Chios, destroyed a few mosques, attacked the Muslim population living on the island, and proclaimed an uprising; this forced the Ottomans to send reinforcements to the island in the form of an Ottoman fleet under Kapudan Pasha Kara Ali, which led to the massacre discussed earlier. Similar atrocities took place in April 1822 on Hydra. In addition to the massacre of the Muslims of the island, two brigs of the insurgents captured an Ottoman ship laden with valuable cargo and carrying passengers. On board was the recently deposed Ottoman Sheik-​ul-​Islam, who was said to be traveling to Mecca for a pilgrimage, accompanied by all his family. His efforts to prevent the cruel reprisals in the Ottoman capital, following the massacres of Muslims in the Peloponnese and elsewhere,

34  Proselytes of a New Nation had earned him disfavor and exile. There were other Muslim families on board. The Hydriots murdered them all in cold blood: “[H]‌elpless old men, ladies of rank, beautiful slaves, and little children were butchered like cattle. The venerable old man whose crime had been an excess of zeal on behalf of the Greeks, was forced to see his family murdered before his eyes.” These words, from a Christian witness and historian sympathetic to the Greek cause, provide a gruesome description of the incident.56

International Reaction The news of the insurgence was received with dismay in many European capitals. The Congress of Vienna (1814–​1815), convened to settle critical issues arising from the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and provide a long-​term peace plan for Europe, had created a new international world order based on two main principles: restoring and safeguarding the balance of power in Europe and establishing collective responsibility for peace and stability in Europe among the Great Powers.57 In this context, the European powers recognized the degeneration of the Ottoman Empire but did not know how to handle the insurgence. Afraid of the complications that the partition of the Ottoman Empire might raise, British Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh, Austrian Foreign Minister Prince Klemens von Metternich, and Tsar Alexander I agreed on the necessity of preserving the status quo and peace in Europe. Metternich also persuaded the tsar that Russian Foreign Minister Count Ioannis Kapodistrias, who was of Greek origin, was in league with the Italian Carbonari, an Italian revolutionary group, prompting the tsar to renounce Ypsilantis’s uprising in the Danubian principalities and disavow Kapodistrias, who resigned as foreign minister. Metternich had feared that Kapodistrias might lead Alexander to declare war on the Ottomans to support the military actions of the Filiki Etaireia. The Holy Alliance had been signed in Paris on 26 September 1815 by the monarchist great powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia with the aim of restraining liberalism and secularism in Europe. On 14 December 1822, the Alliance denounced the Greek War of Independence as audacious. After the execution of Patriarch Grigorios V, Alexander I sent an ultimatum to Istanbul via Kapodistrias demanding promises from the Ottomans to stop executing Orthodox priests. Receiving no answer, Alexander broke off diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Porte.58 The execution of Patriarch Grigorios V and the 1822 massacre on Chios contributed to a powerful upsurge of sympathy for the insurgents that grew in liberal circles of Europe and led to the development of philhellenism, a nineteenth-​century world movement that supported the Greek War of Independence and the establishment of an independent Greek

The Greek War of Independence  35 nation-​state, due in part to the Greek origin of much of the classical heritage of Europe and the United States. Philhellenism was in tune with Romanticism and enabled a younger generation of artistic and literary intellectuals to expand the classical repertoire by treating modern Greek history as an extension of ancient history; the idea of a regeneration of the spirit of ancient Greece permeated the rhetoric of the supporters of the Greek War of Independence. Classicists and Romantics of that period envisioned the termination of Ottoman rule as the prelude to the revival of the Golden Age.59 Clergymen and university professors in Europe gave speeches claiming that Europe owed a huge debt to ancient Greece, that the insurgents were entitled to call upon the classical heritage as a reason for support, and that Greece would achieve progress only with freedom from the Ottoman Empire. Edward Everett, professor of Greek at Harvard, was active in championing the cause of the Greek War of Independence in the United States. In November 1821, Everett published an appeal from Adamantios Korais, a Greek scholar who had laid the foundations of Modern Greek literature and whose activities paved the way for the Greek War of Independence. Korais was responsible for the emergence of an artificial form of Greek language, known as Katharevousa (purified), a compromise between Ancient Greek and the colloquial vernacular form of Modern Greek, that was to be increasingly adopted for official and formal purposes by the modern Greek state. Korais’s appeal, which appeared in several US newspapers, called for US intervention on behalf of the insurgents: “To the citizens of the United States, it is your land where Liberty has fixed her abode, so you will assuredly not imitate the culpable indifference, or rather the long ingratitude, of the Europeans.”60 The spirit of philhellenism is well captured in The Isles of Greece, verses by the most celebrated philhellene of all, the English poet Lord Byron: The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dream’d that Greece might yet be free For, standing on the Persians’ grave, I could not deem myself a slave.

Byron lent his name, prestige, and wealth to the cause of Greek independence; he organized funds and supplies, including the construction of several warships. European aristocrats like Byron and wealthy Americans, including Jonathan Miller of Vermont and the Bostonian physician Samuel Gridley Howe, took part in the insurgents’ military actions in the war.61 It is estimated that between the summer of 1821 and the end of 1822, some 360 philhellene volunteers from France and the German and the Italian states traveled to the rebellious areas to

36  Proselytes of a New Nation join the insurgents against the Ottomans.62 The monument to the philhellenes in the Roman Catholic church in the city of Nafplio displays 274 names—​100 from the German states, 40 or so each from France and Italy, smaller contingents from Britain, a handful from Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, and elsewhere, and a single Portuguese. Many who did not fight financed the war. In France, Britain, Spain, Russia, the United States, and many other places, philhellenic committees were established to raise funds and supplies. The London Philhellenic Committee assisted the insurgents by arranging two loans—​£800,000 in 1824 and £2 million in 1825—​ that helped to stabilize the fledgling revolutionary government.63 In the winter of 1821–​1822 the Philhellenic Committee of Charleston, South Carolina, sent fifty barrels of dried meat to the insurgents, while the Philhellenic Committee of Springfield in Massachusetts sent supplies of dried meat, flour, fish, and sugar. A fundraising ball organized by the Philhellenic Committee of New York raised $8,000, which the London Chronicle ruefully admitted was “a sum, be it known to the shame of the United Kingdom, almost as large as all the subscriptions which the Greek Committees have been able to obtain in this country after eighteen months’ exertion.”64 The Philhellenic Committee of St. Petersburg under one of Russia’s leading philhellenes, the government minister Prince Alexander Golitsyn, raised 973,500 rubles, then the equivalent of £9,000, in August 1822. By the end of the war, millions of rubles had been raised in Russia for the relief of refugees who had crossed into that country from the Danubian principalities, as well as for ransoming Christian Orthodox enslaved by the Ottomans.65 In Europe, the Greek War of Independence, which at first met with a lukewarm or negative reception in much of the political class of the Great European Powers, aroused widespread sympathy among the public. Ottoman atrocities were given wide coverage in the media, while the insurgents’ cruelties tended to be played down or suppressed for such reasons as the admiration of Greece’s classical past, skillfully claimed by the insurgents, but also due to religious motivations. This coverage was often derived from and helped promote further anti-​Islamic feelings and helped inspire sympathy from the Christian public of Europe, who often saw the Greek rebels as defenders of the Christian faith and Europe from the offensive by Islam and the Ottomans.66 The Ottoman massacres of Chios in 1822 inspired Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting The Massacre of Chios; other philhellenic works by Delacroix were inspired by Byron’s poems. Byron died of fever at Messolonghi in western Roúmeli in 1824. His death helped to strengthen European sympathy for the war. The first recognition of non-​Ottoman sovereignty in the territories under insurgence, however, came from faraway Haiti. In a letter of 15 January 1822 to Korais and other Greek Orthodox expatriates who had written to Jean-​Pierre Boyer, the president of Haiti, and other international leaders in search of support

The Greek War of Independence  37 for the war, Boyer expressed his support and compared the struggle underway across the Atlantic to the struggle for independence in his own land. He apologized for being unable to support the insurrection financially, though he hoped he might be able to in the future. Boyer filled his letter with references to classical Greek history, demonstrating his detailed knowledge and powerfully evoking the contemporary revolutionaries as the rightful heirs of their ancestors. In August 1822, George Canning, a British Tory statesman who was to become British prime minister (April–​August 1827), succeeded Viscount Castlereagh as foreign secretary. Influenced by the mounting popular agitation against the Ottomans, and fearing that Russia might undertake unilateral action against the Ottoman Empire, Canning believed that a settlement of the Greek War of Independence could no longer be postponed. Tsar Alexander I’s position was ambivalent, since he regarded himself as the protector of the Orthodox Church. His subjects had been deeply moved by the hanging of Greek Orthodox patriarch Grigorios V and the massacres and persecutions of Christian Orthodox in the Ottoman Empire.67 In February 1823, Canning notified the Ottomans that Britain would maintain friendly relations with the empire only under the condition that the latter respect its Christian subjects. In the meantime, the British commissioner of the Ionian Islands, a British protectorate between 1815 and 1864, was ordered to consider the Greeks to be in a state of war and to give them the right to cut off certain areas to block the Ottomans from getting provisions.68

Shifting Loyalties Although religion became the driving force to rally support among Christians, especially the Christian Orthodox, a number of Orthodox Christians did not sympathize with the Greek War of Independence and collaborated with the Ottomans or wished to remain neutral due to the uncertain outcome of the war, fearing for their lives and properties should the Ottomans regain control. On many occasions, Greek insurgent captains in Roúmeli made secret pacts with Ottomans, known as kapakia. These pacts were often arranged for tactical reasons, such as to save the Christian Orthodox populations from murder and plunder by the Ottomans, to buy time for the supply and reorganization of their irregular armies before resuming the fight, or because the captains were in conflict with the Greek insurgents’ leadership, questioned the course of the war, and secretly allied with the Ottomans to save their and their followers’ lives and interests.69 Many captains, including Georgios Varnakiotis, Gogos Bakolas, Georgios Karaiskakis, and Odysseas Androutsos, often concluded kapakia with the Ottomans during the war—​and other times prosecuted Greek captains who had made secret agreements with the Ottomans, stigmatizing them as traitors to

38  Proselytes of a New Nation Greece and the rebels’ cause.70 Varnakiotis became an outcast,71 Bakolas joined the Ottomans and fought against the Greek insurgents, Karaiskakis was tried as a traitor, and Androutsos, arrested and imprisoned in the Frankish Tower of the Acropolis of Athens, was executed on 5 June 1825 by Yannis Gouras, his former second in command.72 A number of American and European philhellenes who initially supported the war and had come to the rebellious areas to take part changed their opinion of the Greek cause during the war or shifted loyalties altogether. Some of these philhellenes, like Gordon, were shocked by the rebels’ atrocities against unarmed civilians and left the war. Others shifted loyalties driven by base motives. One such case was a captain from Piedmont known as Frankiskos or Francesco Kouvernantis (or Gouvernatis, according to some sources), originally from Sardinia, who became a lieutenant colonel of the Greek regular army. Kouvernatis allegedly was bribed by Ibrahim Pasha, the eldest son of Muhammad Ali, ruler of Egypt and Sudan, after Ibrahim’s invasion in the Peloponnese in February 1825, to betray Greek insurgent military plans. Familiar with the geography of the Peloponnese, Kouvernatis also helped Ibrahim’s army with advice on advancing with minimal casualties.73 The Greek War of Independence was an all-​out war in which neutrality and, worse, collaboration with the enemy were unacceptable to the insurgents, who often attacked those who adhered to neutrality or colluded, torturing them, damaging their assets, or killing them. Kolokotronis’s guidance to his bandit group, with respect to collaborators and those remaining neutral and refusing to support the insurgents, became legendary: “Fire and axe to those groveling [to the Ottomans].”74 Dimitrios Nenekos, a Christian Orthodox Arvanite captain in the Peloponnese and a well-​ known Greek insurgent, collaborated with the enemy after Ibrahim Pasha’s invasion of the Peloponnese. He joined a number of Christian Orthodox insurgents, including many peasants in Zoumbatochoria and Lala in the northern Peloponnese, who had changed sides and pledged allegiance to Ibrahim and the Ottomans. Moreover, Nenekos persuaded some Christian Orthodox insurgent captains to change positions, renounce the Greek War of Independence, and pledge allegiance to Ibrahim and the Ottomans by signing documents of submission, known as proskynochartia, or “grovel certificates.”75 Ibrahim appreciated his services and offered him money, horses, and land in the rebel areas. In addition, at Ibrahim’s recommendation, the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II issued a firman, an imperial edict that honored Nenekos by granting him permission to use the title of bey, normally used by Ottoman district rulers. By order of Kolokotronis, Nenekos was assassinated in the spring of 1828 by his relative Athanasios Sagias, a close friend of Kolokotronis.76

The Greek War of Independence  39

The Outcome of the War In January 1822, the Greek insurgents declared the “independence of Hellas” in lands they controlled. The Ottomans attempted to restore control in areas under Greek revolt three times between 1822 and 1824, with no success. The Ottoman presence was uncoordinated and not properly supported due to logistical problems. The cash-​strapped Ottoman state, whose relations with Russia were often problematic, once again had to concentrate substantial military forces on its borders with the Russian Empire. Russia had broken off diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Porte after the hanging of Grigorios V and the massacres of Greek Orthodox across the Ottoman Empire. In addition, from October 1820 to July 1823, the Ottomans were at war with Qajar Persia; in March 1823 a huge fire at the Tophana military arsenal in Istanbul destroyed the Ottoman state’s main cannon foundry and much of its supply of annunciation . Short of men and money, the Ottoman state turned to hiring Albanian-​speaking Muslim mercenaries to fight the insurgents; they formed the bulk of the Ottoman forces in the Peloponnese and Roúmeli until 1823. The Albanian-​speaking Muslim mercenaries fought only for money and were liable to go home when not paid or when unable to plunder in lieu of pay.77 The rebels’ initial successes soon became a stalemate. The lack of a centralized leadership hampered the effectiveness of the revolutionary activity, which was often fragmented and not coordinated. In addition, internal rivalries prevented them from consolidating their position in the Peloponnese and extending their control in Roúmeli. In the autumn of 1823, a civil war broke out between the provisional government of Georgios Kountouriotis, formed in January 1822 and led by Alexandros Mavrokordatos and Andreas Londos, and supporters of the Filiki Etaireia, led by Kolokotronis. This civil war ended in June 1824 with the victory of the provisional government.78 It was soon followed by a second civil war that began in October 1824 between insurgents from Roúmeli and the islands, led by Kountouriotis and Ioannis Kolettis, and insurgents from the Peloponnese, led by Kolokotronis, Londos, and Kanellos Deligiannis.79 This war ended in February 1825 under the pressure of Egyptian forces, led by Ibrahim Pasha, who landed in the Peloponnese to quell the Greek War of Independence and restore Ottoman control under his rule. By the end of June 1825, Ibrahim had captured most of the Peloponnese, with the exception of Navarino, which fell on 15 April, and Nafplio and the surrounding areas, which remained free, after Dimitrios Ypsilantis, brother of Alexander, the leader of the Filiki Etaireia, and Yannis Makriyannis, an Orthodox merchant who had become a military officer in the Greek War of Independence successfully defended Nafplio on 24 June at the Battle of Lerna Mills, on the outskirts of the city.

40  Proselytes of a New Nation At the same time, the Ottoman army in Roúmeli was besieging the town of Messolonghi for the third time, and in the spring of 1826 Ibrahim managed to capture the marshes around Messolonghi and thus cut off besieged insurgents from the sea, blocking the supply route. Although Ibrahim and the Ottomans offered terms for ceasing their attacks, the insurgents refused to surrender. On 22 April 1826, the besieged decided to sail from Messolonghi by night, with three thousand men, to cut a path through the Egyptian lines and allow six thousand women, children, and noncombatants to follow.80 However, an insurgent defector informed Ibrahim of the plan. Ibrahim deployed his entire army to stop them; only eighteen hundred insurgents managed to cut their way through his lines. Between three thousand and four thousand women and children were enslaved, and many of the people who had remained behind decided to blow themselves up with gunpowder rather than submit to slavery. The news of Messolonghi’s fall sparked horror among the insurgents and inflamed feelings of compassion among the philhellenes for the plight of the insurgents, strengthening the outrage at the Ottomans and Ibrahim’s invading army. A vast outpouring of songs, poems, essays, sermons, and plays in Britain, France, and elsewhere used the recurring image of the murder of a sweet and innocent young Greek woman at the hand of the Ottomans as the symbol of the fall of Messolonghi. In late June 1826, the Ottomans were outside Athens and laid siege to the city and the Acropolis, the last fortress still held by the rebels in Roúmeli. In the summer of 1826, the insurgents gave command of their army to Gen. Sir Richard Church, an Irish officer of the British army, who landed in the rebel areas in March 1827 and was welcomed by his old friend Kolokotronis. Church and the rebels, however, misunderstood one another. Finlay explains, “The Greeks expected Church to prove Wellington [the Duke of Wellington had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo] with a military chest well supplied from the British treasury. Church expected the irregulars of Greece to execute his strategy like regiments of guards.”81 A week after Church’s landing, Lord Cochrane arrived to take command of the Greek navy. Cochrane insisted on a bold but risky plan to stage a night attack against the Ottomans across the open plains of Attica as a way to break the siege of the Acropolis. A military operation launched on 5 May 1827 ended in disaster: the insurgent captains started quarrelling with one another, and their forces scattered and were destroyed by the Ottoman cavalry.82 On 5 June the starving and thirsty insurgents besieged in the Acropolis surrendered in what was to be the last Ottoman victory of the war. Meanwhile, Tsar Nicholas I succeeded Alexander I in December 1825, and British Foreign Secretary Canning sent Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, to Russia for negotiations that resulted in the signing of the Protocol of St. Petersburg of 4 April 1826, giving Britain and Russia the diplomatic authority for settling the “Greek Question,” as the Greek War of Independence was described

The Greek War of Independence  41 in diplomatic circles of Europe. The two countries offered to mediate between the insurgents and the Ottoman government to reach an agreement that would leave the lands controlled by Greek insurgents under Ottoman suzerainty, but with a measure of autonomy.83 The Greek insurgents formally requested mediation according to the Protocol, but in light of the military successes in the Peloponnese and Roúmeli, the Ottomans and Ibrahim showed no willingness to shop the fighting, and the Ottomans refused to grant autonomy to the lands under Greek control. France had helped its client Muhammad Ali with weapons and officers to train his army and was therefore initially reluctant to support the Protocol of St. Petersburg. But since Britain and Russia were determined to impose mediation with or without France, the French joined the British-​Russian alliance as a way of ensuring French influence in the new Greek state.84 On 6 July 1827, Britain, France, and Russia signed the Treaty of London, which provided that the three allies should offer negotiations for an autonomous Greek state under Ottoman suzerainty, which on 29 August the Ottoman Porte formally rejected. Subsequently Admirals Edward Cordington and Henri de Rigny, commanders in chief of the British and French Mediterranean fleets, sailed into the Gulf of Argos in the Peloponnese to intercept supplies destined for Ibrahim’s forces, and from there to Navarino in early September 1827, where they were joined by a Russian squadron under the Dutch admiral Lodewijk van Heiden. In Navarino, the British, French, and Russian fleets met the Ottoman Egyptian fleet, which had been reinforced with Muhammad Ali’s new fleet that had been completed in Alexandria and joined the existing Ottoman Egyptian fleet in Navarino with the aim to attack Hydra and knock the Greek navy out of the war. On 20 October 1827, as the weather got worse, the British, Russian, and French fleets entered the Bay of Navarino in peaceful formation to shelter themselves and to make sure that the Egyptian-​Ottoman fleets did not slip away to attack Hydra. When a British frigate sent a boat to request that the Egyptians move their fire ships, the Egyptians shot the officer on board. The frigate responded with musket fire, and soon a full naval battle between the British, French, and Russian naval squadrons and the Ottoman and Egyptian armada ensued, leading to the destruction of the Ottoman-​Egyptian fleet. The Ottoman Porte demanded compensation from Britain, France, and Russia for the ships, but the demand was refused due to the Ottomans’ having acted as the aggressors. The British, French, and Russian ambassadors withdrew from Istanbul.85 Negotiations followed between the Greek provisional government of Kapodistrias, which was in power in January 1828,86 and the three European powers that resulted in the March 1829 London Protocol, which proposed the establishment of an autonomous Greek state under minimal Ottoman suzerainty, with a northern frontier to extend from the Ambracian Gulf in the Ionian Sea to the Pagasetic Gulf in Thessaly.87 The Ottoman government

42  Proselytes of a New Nation rebuffed the proposal before the Russo-​Ottoman war of 1828–​1829. In April 1828, Russian forces crossed the Danube, reaching the surroundings of Istanbul by August 1829. The diplomatic negotiations that followed concluded with the London Protocol of 3 February 1830, which proclaimed Greece an independent state, but reduced its size by contracting the northern border to the line connecting the Malian Gulf in the western Aegean to the Spercheios and Aspropotamos rivers in Roúmeli. Greece would be a kingdom. The throne was initially offered to Leopold, Prince of Saxe-​Coburg and Gotha and the future King of Belgium. But, discouraged by the gloomy picture painted by Kapodistrias and unsatisfied with the Malian Gulf–​Spercheios/​Aspropotamos borderline, Leopold refused the offer. In the meantime, Kapodistrias, taking advantage of the Russo-​Ottoman War, sent troops of the reorganized Hellenic army to Roúmeli with the aim of seizing as much territory as possible, including Athens and Thebes, before Britain, France, and Russia imposed a ceasefire. The victories of the Hellenic army in Roúmeli proved decisive for the inclusion of more territories in the future Greek state. Britain and Russia accepted a French offer to send an army to expel Ibrahim’s forces, which were continuing to fight. Nicholas Joseph Maison, a French military officer, was given command of a French expeditionary corps of fifteen thousand men that landed on 30 August 1828 at Petalidi, a village in the Messinia region of the southwestern Peloponnese, and drove Ibrahim’s troops from the Peloponnese by 30 October. The expeditionary corps’ military engineers helped rebuild in the Peloponnese and other areas of the new Greek state and left Greece in 1833.88 The withdrawal of Leopold as a candidate for the throne of Greece and the July 1830 Revolution in France, which led to the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent to the throne of his cousin Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, delayed the final settlement of the “Greek Question.” Negotiations among Britain, France, Russia, Greece, and the Ottoman Empire were further delayed following the assassination of Kapodistrias by the Mavromichalis clan in late September 1831 outside the church of St. Spyridon in Nafplio. The clan had been asked to submit unconditionally to Kapodistrias’s authority. When they refused, Kapodistrias jailed Petrobey Mavromichalis, sparking vows of vengeance from his family.89 Following Kapodistrias’s death, and after lengthy negotiations with the Ottoman Porte, a final settlement of the “Greek Question” was reached with the 21 July 1832 Treaty of Kalender Köşk, or Treaty of Constantinople, signed by Britain, France, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. Greece’s northern border shifted to the line connecting the Ambracian and the Pagasetic gulfs. The newly formed Kingdom of Hellas was to pay a one-​off indemnity of £1,600,000 to the Ottoman government, an amount equivalent to the revenues the Ottoman sultan would forfeit by the cession of the additional territories of

The Greek War of Independence  43 eastern Roúmeli, the island of Euboea, and the Sporades islands (see maps 1.1 and 1.2. from the previous book).

In May 1832, the British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, convened a conference in London with France and Russia that decided to offer the throne of Greece to Prince Otto of Wittelsbach, the second son of King Ludwig of Bavaria. The Fifth National Assembly at Nafplio, the last in the series of national conventions of the Greek War of Independence, approved the choice of Otto, and on 15 March 1832 passed the Constitution of 1832, titled the Politikon Syntagma tis Ellados (Political Constitution of Greece) and often referred to as Igemonikon Syntagma tis Ellados (Hegemonic Constitutions of Greece). As co-​guarantors of the Greek monarchy, Britain, France, and Russia agreed to guarantee a loan of 60 million francs to the new king and signed a protocol on 7 May 1832 with Bavaria that outlined the manner of managing the Regency until Otto reached

44  Proselytes of a New Nation

his majority.90 The Fifth National Assembly (5 December 1831–​15 March 1832) disbanded soon after, owing to intense differences among its members. After Otto’s arrival in February 1833, the Regency that ruled the Kingdom of Hellas until 1835 ignored the Hegemonic Constitution, as did Otto himself. King Otto ruled as an absolute monarch until 3 September 1843, when a bloodless coup by the military garrison of Athens, assisted by the citizens of that city, forced Otto to adopt a new constitution.

The War in Perspective The 1821 insurrection in the Peloponnese and elsewhere was not an isolated event. Numerous similar, failed insurgent incidents occurred throughout the history of the Ottoman era in the Balkans and other parts of the Ottoman dominion. After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the subsequent fall of the successor states of the Eastern Roman/​Byzantine Empire, the Ottomans had established control, with some exceptions, in the Balkans and Anatolia and granted some political rights to Orthodox Christians under their rule.

The Greek War of Independence  45 Christian Orthodox intellectuals and humanists of the time, such as Demetrios Chalkokondyles, left the Ottoman Empire for non-​ Ottoman Europe before or during the Ottoman invasion and began to call for the liberation of their homeland. Chalkokondyles called on Venice and “all of the Latins” to aid the Christian Orthodox against “the abominable, monstrous, and impious barbarian Turks.”91 An Orthodox bishop, Dionysios Philosophos, called by his rivals Skylosophos (Dogwise), had led two revolts of farmers against the Ottomans in Thessaly in 1600 and in Yānyâ (present-​day Ioannina) in 1611, with aid from Spain.92 Throughout the seventeenth century, Christian Orthodox in the Peloponnese resisted the Ottomans with the support of Venice, as their resistance supported Venetian plans to occupy the Peloponnese in the sixth Ottoman-​Venetian war, known also as the Morean war, of 1684–​1699. After the Morean war, the Peloponnese were under Venetian rule for thirty years before the Ottomans reversed Venice’s territorial gains in 1718. From then on, the Peloponnese remained in turmoil, as bands of warlike Christian anti-​Ottoman insurgents multiplied in the mountains.93 The Russo-​Ottoman War of 1768–​1774 reinvigorated a popular belief among the Orthodox in the Ottoman Empire that identified Russians with the “fair-​ haired nation” that was to conquer the Ishmaelites and take Constantinople (present-​day Istanbul), the City of the Seven Hills, and its dominions 320 years after its capture by the Ottomans.94 Russian agents were active in Ottoman lands and attempted to inflame uprisings among Orthodox Christian subjects in an effort to help Russians achieve their goals. One such uprising was the Orlov revolt of 1770 in the Peloponnese and later in Crete, which, despite support from Russia, was easily suppressed by the Ottomans and resulted in punitive measures against Orthodox Christians in the rebellious areas.95 After the crushing of the Orlov uprising, in which Maniots (Christian Orthodox residents of the Mani peninsula in western Lakonia and eastern Messinia in the southern Peloponnese) had taken part, Albanian-​speaking Muslims, known also in Greek historical sources as Turkalvanoi or Turkoalbanians, formed gangs that ravaged the Peloponnese and other regions and kept the Maniots confined inside Mani.96 In 1770 the Ottoman bey of the Peloponnese, Hassan Ghazi, saw his chance to invade Mani and subjugate once and for all the Maniots, who continually resisted Ottoman rule and had defeated several Ottoman incursions into their region. With a large force of Albanian-​speaking Muslims, he besieged Mani, but the Maniots defeated his army, forcing him to withdraw from Mani and securing its loose territorial autonomy within the Ottoman dominion.97 During the Second Russo-​ Ottoman War (1787–​ 1792), the Christian Orthodox community of Trieste financed Lambros Katsonis, a Christian Orthodox from Livadia in Roúmeli who had taken part in the 1770 Orlov revolt,

46  Proselytes of a New Nation to build up a small fleet, with which he started harassing the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea. In 1778, he forced the Ottomans to abandon the island of Meis, or Kızılhisar (present-​day Megisti or Kastelorizo), and the island’s castle was renamed Lambros Katsonis castle. In 1790 Katsonis’s fleet was destroyed by a joint Ottoman-​Algerian naval force at the bay of Porto Kagio on the island of Andros. Katsonis escaped to Odessa and Yalta, where he was granted the Livadia estate, which later became Catherine the Great’s Livadia Palace.98

The Rise of Greek Nationalism The start of the Greek War of Independence was unexpected, and its conclusion unpredictable. When it broke out nothing boded well for its outcome. On occasion, the war risked meeting a fate similar to that of the unsuccessful uprising of Alexander Ypsilantis in Wallachia and Moldavia in February 1821, or of other failed insurgent incidents discussed earlier . The motives of the participants in the war were unclear and not the same for all. For many insurgents, the March 1821 insurrection was a spontaneous reaction against the Ottoman establishment, which was associated with lawlessness, economic misery, and arbitrary administration. After the 1770s, Albanian-​speaking Muslim gangs raided many areas in the Peloponnese and Roúmeli, despite the Ottoman government’s repeated attempts to restrict them. The conflict between Sultan Mahmud II and Ali Pasha of Tepelena in the first quarter of the nineteenth century aggravated the situation, as it diverted military units that could have been used for law enforcement.99 The Greek War of Independence was the culmination of Greek nationalism, a political movement that emerged in the eighteenth century with the aim of promoting the interests of Greek Orthodox Christians, often called Hellenes, who were unclearly defined on the basis of their common Greek language, Orthodox Christianity, history, and culture. Greek nationalism eventually aspired to achieve Christian Orthodox sovereignty from Ottoman rule. It was the first national movement to emerge in the Ottoman Empire and was given impetus by the Modern Greek or Neo-​Hellenic Enlightenment. The latter was the Greek expression of the Age of Enlightenment, also known as the European Enlightenment. The separation of church and state that was a political goal of the European Enlightenment was not necessarily an objective of the Modern Greek Enlightenment. Many of its leading members, such as Eugenios Voulgaris, Neophytos Doukas, Theophilos Kairis, and Theoklitos Farmakidis, were members of the Christian Orthodox clergy and had received an Orthodox Christian education.100 Other conservative members of the Christian Orthodox clergy resisted the ideas of the Enlightenment and disdained its adherents’

The Greek War of Independence  47 admiration for ancient Greek philosophy, literature, and culture. A number of these conservative members formed the Kollyvades movement, which began operating in the second half of the eighteenth century in the monastic community of Mount Athos at around the same time as the emergence of the Modern Greek Enlightenment. The Kollyvades were alarmed by the way all too many of their fellow Orthodox Christians were falling under the influence of the European Enlightenment and were convinced that a regeneration of the Greek genos (nation) would come not through embracing the secular ideas of the Enlightenment, fashionable in non-​Ottoman and non-​Christian Orthodox Europe, but only through a return to the true roots of the Orthodox Christianity: through the rediscovery of Patristic theology and Orthodox liturgical life. In his Antifonisis (Response), published in 1802 in Trieste under the pseudonym Nathanael Neocaesareus, Athanasios Parios (1712–​1813), an Orthodox hieromonk and member of the Kollyvades, argues that ancient Greek philosophers were not worthy of admiration, as they had failed to eradicate polytheism from the world or bring eudaimonia and harmony to human society; many of the ancient Greek city-​states had been involved in endless civil wars, ultimately forced to bend to the power of the Macedonians in order to achieve peace.101 Both Greek nationalism and the Modern Greek Enlightenment were driven by Greek predominance in trade and education in the Ottoman Empire, which had developed for several reasons. After the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire was in military decline, having failed to adapt to advances in military technology, and had become vulnerable to external challenges from the Habsburg Empire, Persia, and Russia. Challenges from Russia, the sole Orthodox Christian power in the world, had a special resonance among Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman domain. The Russo-​Ottoman wars of the eighteenth century were crucial to the development of the Greek national idea. Tsar Peter the Great had envisaged the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the reinstitution of a new Byzantine Empire with an Orthodox Christian emperor. The Russo-​Ottoman War of 1710–​1711, known also as the Pruth River Campaign, set a precedent for the Greeks, when Tsar Peter appealed to Orthodox Christians in Ottoman territories to rise against the Ottomans to fight for “faith and homeland.” The Russo-​ Ottoman wars of Catherine the Great (1762–​1796) inspired Christian Orthodox to consider political emancipation with the aid of Russia; for example, the Orlov revolt was incited by Russian agents, and a Greek flotilla under the captainship of Lambros Katsonis had assisted the Russian fleet in the war of 1788–​1792.102 The 1774 Treaty of Kuchuk-​Kainarji, present-​day Kaynardzha, in Bulgaria, gave Russians the right to claim a protectorate over all Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire. This and other external challenges from Christian Europe strengthened the ties between Ottoman Christians and the Christian European states, increasing their confidence and encouraging a sense of superiority that

48  Proselytes of a New Nation was supported by an extensive network of European missionary schools operating in the Ottoman Empire. The subjects studied in these schools familiarized many Ottoman Christians with eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century European technological and other advances and offered graduates access to the economic and political networks and markets of Christian Europe. Revolutionary nationalism, influenced by the French Revolution, grew across Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including in the Balkans.103 As the military power of the Ottoman Empire declined, Greek nationalism emerged and asserted itself. Rigas Feraios, a Christian Orthodox writer of Aromanian Vlach ancestry from Velestino in Thessaly, was the first to conceive of and organize a comprehensive national movement aiming at the political emancipation of all Balkan people from the Ottomans, including Muslim populations, and the creation of a “Hellenic Republic,” a political entity that would encompass most of the Balkans south of the Danube River, Asia Minor, the islands of the Aegean, and the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. This entity essentially was to be a revived Byzantine Empire, but an empire in which monarchical institutions would have been replaced by republican institutions modeled after the French republican constitution of 1793—​a “civic nation” based on inclusiveness and the 1791 Rights of Man, a book by Thomas Paine, an English-​born American political activist, political theorist, and revolutionary, which posits that popular revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. Riga’s insistence on the cultural predominance of the Greeks, however, and on the use of the Greek language, stirred little interest among the other peoples of the Balkans. Arrested in 1797 in Trieste by officials of the Habsburg Empire, Feraios was handed over to the Ottomans and transported to Belgrade along with his co-​conspirators. In June 1798 all of them were strangled and their bodies dumped in the Danube.104 Feraios’s death fanned the flames of Greek nationalism; his poem “Thourios” (War Song) was translated into a number of European and Balkan languages and served as a rallying cry for the Christian Orthodox against Ottoman rule: For how long, o brave young men, shall we live in fastness, Alone, like lions, on the ridges, in the mountains? Shall we dwell in caves, looking out on branches, fleeing from the world on account of bitter serfdom? Abandoning brothers, sisters, parents, homeland, friends, children and all our kin? Better one hour of free life, than forty years of slavery and prison!105

Feraios’s martyrdom was to inspire three young Christian Orthodox merchants, Nikolaos Skoufas, Emannuil Xanthos, and Athanasios Tsakalov. Influenced by the Italian Carbonari, an informal network of secret revolutionary societies active in the Italian peninsula from around 1800 to 1831, and taking

The Greek War of Independence  49 advantage of their own experience as Freemasons, in 1814 they founded the Filiki Etaireia in Odessa, an important center of the Greek Orthodox mercantile diaspora in Russia.106 With the support of wealthy Greek Orthodox diaspora communities in non-​Ottoman Europe, the Filiki Etaireia planned for an insurrection by Christian Orthodox subjects in Ottoman territories. Its main objective was a revival of the Byzantine Empire with Constantinople (present day Istanbul) as its capital, rather than the formation of a Greek national state.107 Another influential figure in Greek nationalism was Adamantios Korais, born of Greek parents in Smyrna in 1748; he had lived much of his life in Amsterdam and France. Korais had witnessed the French Revolution and been inspired by the European Enlightenment. He borrowed ideas from European intellectuals, such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, and participated in political and philosophical debates via correspondence with the American revolutionary and US founding father Thomas Jefferson. Korais propounded a furthering of education among the Christian Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire as the necessary means to advance their personal and family welfare and the prosperity of their homeland. He was a fierce critic of the lack of education among the Christian Orthodox clergy and their subservience to the Ottoman Empire, although he conceded that it was the Orthodox Church that had preserved the national identity of the Greeks. He advocated the restoration of the term “Hellene” (Ellinas) or “Graikos” (Greek) as an ethnonym for the Greek Orthodox, to replace Romiós (Roman). A classical scholar, he was repelled by the Byzantine influence on Greek society and believed that western Europe, not Byzantium, was the heir to ancient Greek civilization. This heritage had to be transmitted to the Christian Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire for them to claim their political emancipation from despotic Ottoman rule and seek to establish a Greek Republic modeled after the Golden Age of Pericles. For this reason, he spent much of his time trying to convince wealthy Ottoman Greek Orthodox to build schools and libraries. A small but influential group of Phanariots had ascended to positions of power at the highest reaches of the Ottoman state. The Ottoman Empire needed skilled diplomats to rescue what they could from its decline. Since Ottomans traditionally ignored European languages and cultures, the government assigned diplomatic tasks to Phanariots, who had a long mercantile and educational tradition and the necessary skills. From the end of the seventeenth century until the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence, Phanariots monopolized the office of the terjümaân bashı, the principal interpreter and de facto deputy foreign minister, and acted as interpreters for the Kapudan Pasha, the grand admiral of the Ottoman fleet, who was de facto governor of the Aegean Sea. They became the sultan’s hospodars in Wallachia and Moldavia and opposed the spread of Russian and Austrian influence in these regions. The Phanariots’ rule as hospodars was

50  Proselytes of a New Nation much resented by locals. Some hospodars, however, became enlightened patrons of Greek letters and culture, and their courts functioned as channels through which European ideas reached the Orthodox Christians of the empire.108 Of greater significance was the emergence of an entrepreneurial, widespread, and prosperous Greek Orthodox mercantile class, whose activities were based both within and beyond the empire. Merchants of Greek origin or culture came to dominate Ottoman trade, exporting raw materials and importing European manufactured goods and colonial wares. Paroikies, Greek mercantile communities, were established throughout the Mediterranean, the Balkans, central Europe, southern Russia, and even India, and Greek became the lingua franca of commerce among them. The development of this mercantile class was assisted by the fact that non-​Muslims in the Ottoman Empire were exempt from being drafted into military service, unlike Muslim subjects.109 Moreover, the Treaty of Kuchuk-​Kainarji allowed Russian merchant vessels to sail the Black Sea unimpeded, and over the next several decades Greek merchant ships under Russian flags conducted business in Ottoman seas and beyond.110 Greek merchants also benefited from protective policies and financial incentives offered by Christian European leaders. For example, a series of patents of toleration issued by the Habsburg emperor Joseph II in 1781 granted freedom of worship to Greek Orthodox Christians and removed restrictions on their buying property, joining guilds, and attending universities in Habsburg lands.111 Success in commerce gave many Greek merchants the confidence to abandon their common fatalistic belief that God had sent the Ottomans to punish Greek Orthodox Christians for their sins and protect their religion from Roman Catholics. Some wealthy Greek merchants offered material and other support to the Greek War of Independence, although others were not prepared to risk their newly acquired prosperity in what they viewed as a precarious enterprise. But the most significant contribution of this newly emerging mercantile class was to sustain the material base for the development of a Greek national movement, particularly the intellectual revival of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that gave rise to a Greek national consciousness. Some of the merchants sponsored young Greek Orthodox students to study in universities in Italy, the Habsburg Empire, and elsewhere in non-​ Ottoman Europe. Their education exposed them to the ideas of the European Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Romantic nationalism. These young students also became aware of the extraordinary hold of the language and civilization of ancient Greece on the minds of their European contemporaries. During the Ottoman period, knowledge of the ancient Greek world had all but died out, but under the influence of European classical scholarship a rising Greek Orthodox intelligentsia realized they were the heirs to a heritage that was universally respected and admired throughout the civilized world.

The Greek War of Independence  51 Other merchants endowed schools and libraries and financed the publication, principally outside the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, of a growing and increasingly secular body of literature aimed specifically at a Greek Orthodox audience. Seven times as many Greek books were published during the last quarter of the eighteenth century as during the first.112 On the eve of the Greek War of Independence, major centers of Greek commerce, such as Yānyâ, Izmir, and Sakız (present-​day Chios), were also important centers of Greek education and home to Greek schools. In the course of the nineteenth century, a small but growing number of educated Greek Orthodox Christians articulated an ever more explicit Greek national consciousness and became increasingly resentful of Ottoman rule. Their efforts were often opposed by the Phanariots, the higher Orthodox Christian clergy, and the kodjabashis, Orthodox Christian notables who were too comfortable with the Ottoman status quo to identify with the growing Greek national movement. Educated members of the Greek Orthodox diaspora, dazzled by the advanced material and technological progress of industrialized Europe, aspired to overthrow Ottoman rule and replace it with a new state that would model its political institutions and practices on those of industrialized Europe, chiefly of France: The Ottoman state, nested in this part of Europe that it occupies by force, if it is deemed to be its administration, has not been possible to recognize so far, nor shall it be henceforth recognized by the Christian Powers, as a component of the European system . . . because its laws, its customs and practices, its religious foundations and its administration ran completely counter to the European system. . . . Why did the Congress of Vienna, whose acts were sealed through the Treaty of the Holy Alliance, wish to mix the commands of the Gospel with the principles of the Quran? Why did it wish to attach the crescent of Mohammad to the cross of Jesus? The great communion of Europe, whose existence goes back one thousand and five hundred years, is founded on the solid bedrock of Christian commands. . . . Who will claim that the Turk is a member of this family, and that the customs and practices, which are the foundation of the [Ottoman] state, follow the spirit, the custom and the practices of the European people and especially of the people whom [the Ottoman state] rules with an iron scepter?113

Their revolutionary aspirations did not always resonate with the insurgents and peasants of the Peloponnese and Roúmeli, who gave primacy to family and local institutions. Many of them exploited the turmoil and anarchy of the Greek War of Independence simply to advance their personal, family, or other agendas, to plunder others and expand their possessions, or to punish and kill fellow countrymen to their own advantage. Old rivalries among clans and cliques for

52  Proselytes of a New Nation position, wealth, and Ottoman favor were among the primary motives of many insurgents who took part in the Greek War of Independence, and they often maneuvered and hedged their commitments during the war. Many educated members of the Greek diaspora, however, insisted on embracing new concepts, such as national loyalty and citizenship, and adhered to a different mindset, inspired by what they imagined to be their “higher motives,” to achieve their goals and gain indispensable support from industrialized Europe. Many insurgents neither comprehended nor shared these motives.

Power Rearrangements among the Christian Orthodox Whatever the motives of the supporters of the 1821 insurgence, the Orthodox Christian faith played an important role as a mobilizing force for rallying the support of the many ethnically and linguistically diverse Orthodox Christian communities of the rebellious areas. Orthodox Christianity fed the insurgents’ uncompromising intensity and clarity of purpose. Enemies of the insurgence, they believed, stood not only against the rebels’ aspirations but also against God. Religion also allowed an easier identification of the enemy: Muslims could be seen as enemies, religious “infidels,” by each of the ethnically and linguistically different Orthodox Christian communities. Muslims and non-​Muslims loyal to the Ottoman state were not to be tolerated in the new status quo that the rebels aspired to create. Indeed, many supporters of the Greek War of Independence, including a number of major figures, such as Capt. Markos Botsaris, Capt. Kitsos Tzavelas, and the female naval commander Laskarina Bouboulina, were Arvanites whose native languages were dialects of Albanian, not Greek. Some number of Slav-​ speaking Orthodox Christians sympathized with the cause of their rebellious Orthodox fellows in the Morea and Roúmeli, and came from the northern Balkans to support the war. Vaso Brajović from Mojdež in Montenegro, known as Vasos Mavrovouniotis or Vasos the Montenegrin, and Kristo Dagović of Belgrade, known as Hatzichristos Voulgaris or Hristo the Bulgarian, were two Christian Orthodox chieftains of Slavic ethnic origin with no Greek background who participated in the war effort with their two Slavic-​speaking militias.114 Likewise, Dimitrios Parkas, a former Muslim from Ethiopia who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy in Russia and participated in Ypsilantis’s uprising in Wallachia and Molodavia in 1821, returned to Russia after the failure of the uprising and then joined Dagović’s contingent in the Peloponnese to help liberate his Christian Orthodox brothers.115 For centuries, religious faith had been a strong factor of identity in the Ottoman Balkans that surpassed other forms of identity, such as ethnicity and language.

The Greek War of Independence  53 Orthodox Christians lived in an unnational ecumene that reached across the entire Ottoman Empire.116 There were no standardized national languages prior to the establishment of the Balkan nation-​states; few of the multiple linguistic divisions across the Balkans were sharply defined or unbridgeable. The clearest linguistic divisions among Orthodox Christians lay perhaps among the Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Serbian, Turkish, and Vlach/​Aromanian families of dialects, but large commonalities of everyday vocabulary helped to overcome those barriers. So did the similarities of grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and phonology in what linguists term “the Balkan Sprachbund,” the Balkan language area.117 The languages that helped create this Orthodox Christian ecumene were koine, or liturgical Greek and Slavonic, similar to the use of Latin among the Roman Catholic faithful, that, although spoken and written by the educated, were the mother tongues of none. Koine Greek was historically the ecclesiastical language of the Orthodox Christian Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Phanariot elites who controlled it. The three other senior Orthodox patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem also traced their history to the Byzantine era, but the patriarchate of Constantinople was primus inter pares. Its seat was in the capital of both the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. It was believed to have been founded by St. Andrew, the First-​Called Apostle, which provided theological justification for its spiritual primacy and honorary title, “Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.” Its location in the capital gave it opportunities for political influence on the Ottoman government that, in the long run, helped turn the patriarchate of Constantinople’s primacy into dominance. While the patriarch of Antioch resided in Damascus, after the eighteenth century the patriarchs of Jerusalem and Alexandria resided in Istanbul, and thus were under the influence of the Phanariots. In 1766–​1767 the Phanariots had persuaded the Ottoman government to abolish autocephaly, the status of self-​governance, of the Slavonic ecclesiastical dioceses of the patriarchate of Peć in today’s northwestern Kosovo and of the archbishopric of Ohrid in today’s Republic of North Macedonia, placing them under the authority of the patriarchate of Constantinople.118 By the end of the eighteenth century, these developments had made the patriarchate of Constantinople the unchallenged ruler of some thirteen million Orthodox Christians in the empire. The increased influence of the Phanariots and the patriarchate of Constantinople, along with the rise of the Greek-​speaking mercantile class, increased the prestige of the Greek language and led to Greek cultural hegemony within the millet-​i Rûm (Roman nation), as the Eastern Orthodox Christian community was known to the Ottomans, until the middle of the nineteenth century.119 The education of many Orthodox non-​Greek-​speakers was conducted almost entirely in Greek, and a number of scholars and intellectuals for the millet-​i Rûm and of its diaspora in non-​Ottoman territories believed that members of

54  Proselytes of a New Nation the Orthodox world had to be Hellenized. They were to write and speak Greek, communicate in Koine Greek, and, for some, marginalize any forms of vernacular Greek, which was seen as a shameful reminder of Ottoman rule, since the vocabulary and syntax of the diverse dialects of vernacular Greek were considered a threat to the unity of the millet-​i Rûm. In 1759 the monk Kosmas the Aetolian (1714–​1779) toured areas in present-​day western Greece and Albania, urging Albanian-​and Aromanian-​speaking Orthodox Christians to abandon their mother language and become speakers of Koine Greek, asserting “[O]‌ur Church is Hellenic,” and because Koine Greek was the ecclesiastical and liturgical language of the Christian Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople. In 1802 Daniil (1754–​1825), a Grecophone Aromanian Vlach priest and scholar from Moscopole, present-​day Voskopojë in Albania, wrote, “Albanians, Vlachs, Bulgarians, speakers of other languages, rejoice and prepare to become Romaioi [i.e., Romans, speakers of Koine Greek].”120 Although it is difficult to measure the grassroots effects among non-​Greek-​ speaking Orthodox of these efforts for Hellenization of the millet-​i Rûm, Greek cultural hegemony did not remain unopposed. Three years after Kosmas the Aetolian’s tour in southwestern Balkans, in 1762, Paisiy Hilendarski (later St. Paisiy Hilendarski), a Bulgarian clergyman from Samokov in today’s southwestern Bulgaria, a key figure of Bulgarian nationalism who had established himself as a hieromonk and deputy-​abbot of Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos, published in Zograf Monastery (Mount Athos) his Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya, a history of Bulgaria that aimed to awaken and strengthen national consciousness among Bulgarian speakers. He writes to his Bulgarian-​speaking Orthodox fellows: Oh, you unwise moron! Why are you ashamed to call yourself a Bulgarian and why don’t you read and speak in your native language? Weren’t Bulgarians powerful and glorious once? Didn’t they take taxes from strong Romans and wise Greeks? Out of all the Slavic nations they were the bravest one. Our rulers were the first ones to call themselves kings, the first ones to have patriarchs, the first ones to baptize their people. . . . Why are you ashamed of your great history and your great language and why do you leave it to turn yourselves into Greeks? Why do you think they are any better than you? Well, here you are right, because did you see a Greek leave his country and ancestry as you do?121

Rûm vs. Hellenic/​Greek Identification The terms “Ellines” (Hellenes) and “Graikoi” (Greeks), which prior to the eighteenth century are used as ethnonyms by few educated Greek-​speaking and

The Greek War of Independence  55 Hellenized Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire,122 are used more frequently after the mid-​eighteenth century under the influence of Greek-​ speaking Hellenized Orthodox of the diaspora. During this period Hellenes and Hellenism are connected to Christian Orthodoxy, hesitantly at the beginning and more confidently as one approaches the start of the Greek War of Independence. Both terms are often used interchangeably. The term “Romioi” (Romans, singular “Romios”), members of the Orthodox Christian Rûm community, was the preferred term for Orthodox Christian scholars of the Ottoman Empire. For an Orthodox Christian of the empire, “Ellin” often meant “pagan.” Writing in the 1780s, Dimitrios Katartzis, a Phanariot scholar, insisted that the correct term to describe his own identity was “Romiós” or “Christianós” (Christian) and argued that it was unworthy of a Romiós Christianós to call himself Hellene, because Hellenes were pagans.123 On many occasions, however, terms such as Graikós and Ellin had religious, not ethnic or linguistic meanings, and were used as synonyms for Romiós.124 Despite inconsistencies in the meanings of these terms, Ellin more often tended to refer to Grecophone or Hellenized Orthodox Christians. After the start of the 1821 revolution, the term was especially used to describe the Orthodox Christians of the areas in revolt, conveying the assumption that the Orthodox Christians of the areas in rebellion were descendants of the ancient Greeks. They were inhabitants of the same region, Ellas (Hellas), where ancient Greek civilization had been born and flourished; many of them spoke a version of the same language; and all of them worshiped in Koine Greek. Many of the Greek Orthodox of the time tended to view the world in ethnic terms.125 In addition, a number of Greek Orthodox nationalists aspired to restitute a relationship between Greek-​speaking Orthodox Christians and ancient Greeks. This aspiration reached almost obsessive proportions during the first decade of the nineteenth century, when, to the dismay of Church authorities, Greek Orthodox nationalists began to name their children and their ships after the luminaries of ancient Greece rather than after Christian saints. The restituted relationship provided a way to legitimize political emancipation from Ottoman rule and appealed to the international admiration for the Greek classical world, an admiration the Greek nationals thought they needed if they were to obtain international help to establish a Greek nation-​state. Semantic inconsistencies and confusion often occurred with such concepts as genos and ethnos, which were often used interchangeably to denote either a religious community (millet) or an ethnolinguistic group, although after the eighteenth century ethnos increasingly tended to describe an ethnolinguistic group and, as such, could be translated as the contemporary European term “nation.”126 Thus, writing in 1771, Eugenios Voulgaris, the Orthodox bishop of Kherson in present-​day Ukraine, argues that the Greek and other ethni form the Orthodox Christian genos, the millet-​i Rûm.127

56  Proselytes of a New Nation

Greek Nationalism: Religious or Ethnolinguistic in Character? The 1821 uprising was orchestrated and executed by members of the millet-​i Rûm who used Christian Orthodox religion in order to mobilize support. It was not organized and conducted only by ethnic Greeks with a clear aim of creating an ethnically and linguistically homogeneous Greek state; thus, the uprising was not strictly “Greek.” The rebels aspired to overthrow Ottoman rule and establish a Christian state, whose language would be Greek—​the language of the millet-​i Rûm’s leading institution, the Greek Orthodox patriarchate of Constantinople. Moreover, after the establishment of the Kingdom of Hellas, and under the influence of German and Italian nationalisms, the nationalism of Greeks and other Balkan peoples assumed more ethnolinguistic characteristics. Greek nationality did not describe any subject of the kingdom, but mainly referred to Greek Orthodox individuals, and Greek speakers only secondarily. Writing in 1842, Sophocles Evangelinos Apostolides, a native of Tsangarada in Mount Pelion and the first tenured professor of Modern Greek in the Western world at Harvard University, claimed that most Greek Orthodox in the Ottoman Empire identified themselves by religion as Romaioi. The term Ellines was mainly used by the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Hellas, which Apostolides derogatorily called the Kingdom of “Bavarian Hellas” because of its Bavarian rulers.128 But if in the new political environment shaped by the Greek War of Independence a Greek Orthodox individual is defined as a Hellene, where does this leave the non-​Greek Orthodox, and particularly Muslims? Are they not to be considered Hellenes? What is their political and social status in the new state? These are questions to be discussed in the next chapter.

2

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas Muslims in Rebel Areas There is no reliable census for the period just before the war, but it is estimated that approximately 650,000 to 700,000 Christian Orthodox and 60,000 to 91,000 Muslims (9.1 to 11.9 percent of the population) lived in the territories of what formed the 1832 Kingdom of Hellas: the Peloponnese, Roúmeli, and a number of islands, including the Argosaronic, Cyclades, Euboea, and Sporades (maps 1.1 and 1.2 from the previous book).1 Muslims numbered 70 percent of the population in Kyparissia, 15 percent in Euboea, and 10 percent in Attica, where approximately half to three-​quarters of the entire arable land belonged to rich Muslim landlords living in cities or in konaks, fortified mansions.2 There are no statistical data to provide a precise picture of the ethnic composition of the Muslim populations in these areas, but historical sources make mention of Albanian-​ speaking, Turkish-​speaking, and few Greek-​speaking Muslims, most of the last believed to be descendants of Islamized Greek-​speaking Christian Orthodox.3 But regardless of their mother language, like many people in the Balkans at the time, some Muslims were bilingual or multilingual. Most of the educated and upper-​class and many ordinary Muslims practiced Sunni Islam, while the record also shows a significant but indeterminate number of followers of various Sufi orders, which were expressed either through Sunni, such as the Nakşibendi and Halveti, or Shi’a, such as the Bektaşi, and Kızılbaş, traditions. For example, after the end of the Greek War of Independence, Chalkida was home to around twelve Sufi sanctuaries, known also as tekkes, but only a few of them—​one to five, according to the sources—​were active in the first years of the Kingdom of Hellas.4 The outbreak of the Greek War of Independence alarmed the Muslim population of the rebel areas.5 Most of the Muslims who lived in the villages, the provinces, and the countryside, terrified, sought refuge in fortified cities, such as Tripolitsa, Patra, Nafplio, Monemvasia, Methoni, Koroni, and Acrocorinth.6 In the region of Patra, one of the first battle locations of the war, ongoing assaults by Greek insurgents and peasants forced Muslims to seek refuge in the city, where violent unrest soon spread. Religious fanaticism and the desire for revenge led to a surge of violence that quickly spread across the Peloponnese, Roúmeli, and other rebellious areas. On 6 April 1821, less than a month after the war broke out, Christian Orthodox priests had already baptized a number of Muslim children in Proselytes of a New Nation. Stefanos Katsikas, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197621752.003.0003

58  Proselytes of a New Nation order to take vengeance on Muslims who had circumcised Christian Orthodox youths.7 At the beginning of April, Yûsuf Pasha, the Ottoman commander of Patra, transferred part of the Muslim population of the city to Roúmeli and captured many Christian Orthodox women and children. Most of the Muslim inhabitants of the small town of Kalavryta surrendered to the Greek insurgents after negotiating a treaty, while those of Vostitsa, present-​day Aigio, took refuge in the city of Salona, present-​day Amfissa, in Roúmeli.8 A similar fate awaited a number of Muslims from Kalamata, who had been unable to take refuge in fortified cities in time: they were all captured and dispersed among the villages of Mani.9 Although armed and renowned for their bravery, many Albanian-​ speaking Muslims who did not collaborate with Greek insurgents were terrified by the news of the March 1821 insurrection in the Peloponnese and abandoned their fortified houses to take refuge in the castle of Mystras. This amplified the fear among Turkish-​speaking Muslims of the city, and all of them, both Turkish-​ and Albanian-​speaking Muslims, left Mystras for Tripolitsa on 26 March 1821. Sixty Muslim families from Vardounia in the southern Peloponnese sought protection in the fortress of Monemvasia. The departure of Muslims and their separation from their Christian Orthodox neighbors often occurred in an emotionally charged atmosphere that reflected the cordial relations between the two groups.10 Upon leaving, many of the Turkish-​speaking Muslims in Mystras handed the keys of their houses over to Christian Orthodox neighbors and friends, saying to them, “Keep the keys, neighbors. If we return, let these houses be ours; and if we don’t, let them be yours.”11 The Turkish-​speaking Muslims of Androusa and the regions of Arkadia, where the Muslim population was three times that of the Christian Orthodox population, took refuge in the fortified cities of Koroni and Navarino; when they departed, many Muslims from Androusa and Arkadia kissed their Christian Orthodox neighbors goodbye, vowing to reunite with them after the war. The Muslims of Leondari and Karytaina in the region of Arkadia sought refuge in Tripolitsa.12 The largest Muslim exodus toward Tripolitsa was the mass flight of the Muslim residents of Mourtarochoria and Fanari: some five thousand Muslim men, women, and children perished on the journey or drowned while trying to cross the Alfeios River. Most sought refuge in the fortress of Karytaina before ending up in Tripolitsa.13 The armed Albanian-​speaking Muslims of Lala in the northwestern Peloponnese, where most Turkish-​ speaking Muslims of Gastouni had sought refuge, remained in place, but, once besieged by Greek insurgents, they moved to Patra on 17 June 1821 and left for Macedonia, destroying everything in their path. The majority of the houses of Muslims in Lala were burned by Greek insurgents after the departure of the Albanian-​ and Turkish-​speaking Muslims from the region.14

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  59 Amid the havoc of the war, many Greek insurgents provided examples of altruism to and protection of Muslims. After four centuries of cohabitation, the war did not completely destroy the bonds between Christian Orthodox and Muslims. On many occasions, negotiations took place between the Greek rebels and the besieged Muslims in fortified cities with the aim of obtaining the cities’ surrender with the synchronous release of the Muslims. In some cases, the two sides reached agreements that provided for the safe departure of Muslim refugees from rebellious areas, while allowing those who wished to remain to stay.15 For example, the agreement for the surrender of Corinth in late 1821 provided that those Muslims who wished to stay in the Peloponnese were free to do so and that the Greek insurgents would respect their religious freedom. The wealthiest Muslims—​those with annual incomes of more than 2,000 Ottoman kuruş—​were forced to surrender a third, and in some cases half, of their wealth.16 After the surrender of the castle of Monemvasia on 22–​23 July 1821, 756 Muslims were transferred to Asia Minor in ships provided by Greek rebels. Some Muslims preferred to remain in the Peloponnese, trusting the terms of the agreement.17 The Muslim population of Nafplio, exhausted by hunger and the long siege, was forced to surrender on 30 November 1822; according to the agreement between the Greek insurgents and the besieged, most of the Muslims were transferred to Izmir and other areas in Asia Minor.18 In some cases, however, the agreements between Greek insurgents and besieged Muslims were not fully honored. After the surrender of the fortress of Acrocorinth on 14 January 1822, the terms of the agreement between the Greek rebels and the besieged were respected at first, but later infractions occurred at the expense of the disarmed Muslim population, which was then transferred to Asia Minor.19 There were cases when negotiations between the Greek rebels and the besieged failed because one of the two sides rejected the other’s terms. The besieged Muslims were often in despair and risked their very survival by refusing to surrender, but their hope that the Ottoman army might one day arrive and set them free reinforced their stamina and determination. For example, repeated negotiations for the surrender of Tripolitsa and the release of the starving all failed, while only Albanian-​speaking Muslim mercenaries were able to leave the city under a special agreement. At the end of 1822, the Muslim population that remained in the rebellious areas declined significantly. The interruptions of the Greek Civil War (1823–​ 1825) reduced the number of battles against the Ottomans and mitigated the persecution of Muslims. When Ibrahim Pasha’s invasion with his Ottoman-​ Egyptian army reversed the course of events, the Greek insurgents and Christian Orthodox population found themselves at a disadvantage; many Christian Orthodox were murdered, captured, enslaved, and tortured. During the invasion, a fairly large number of Muslim captives were exchanged for Christian

60  Proselytes of a New Nation Orthodox prisoners.20 According to sharia law, non-​Muslim prisoners of war are entirely at the disposal of the winner; they may be enslaved, or the males put to death, or left alive as free dhimmī, or be exchanged for Muslim prisoners of war; the law was not always strictly applied in all areas. Ioannis Kapodistrias himself, soon after he became governor of Greece in January 1828, showed a keen interest in the release of prisoners. He asked Anton von Prokesch-​Osten, the diplomatic representative of the Austrian Empire, to exercise his influence on Ibrahim Pasha to arrange an exchange of captive Christian Orthodox women and children for 112 Egyptians held by the Greek insurgents. Prokesch-​Osten persuaded Ibrahim to agree to the exchange, at a ratio of one Egyptian to two or three of Ibrahim’s prisoners.21 A significant number of Christian Orthodox captives from the Peloponnese and Roúmeli were, however, sold in slave markets in the ports of Methoni, Koroni, Navarino, and elsewhere: “The slaves who were trafficked were mostly women of all ages: there were also a few children, all under sixteen [years old], because past this age captives either were put to death, or locked in dungeons.”22 Philhellenes often bought and freed Christian Orthodox prisoners from Muslim merchants. It is not easy to determine the exact number of people captured from various areas in the Peloponnese and Roúmeli during Ibrahim Pasha’s military campaign; the historical sources are contradictory. It is estimated, however, that at least twelve thousand to fourteen thousand people became captives during Ibrahim Pasha’s campaign in the Peloponnese and Roúmeli, many of whom won their freedom, while others were enslaved in Egypt or other places. The record of the enslaved is difficult to trace. Incomplete information indicates that almost all of them were Islamized, either by order of their masters or by their own wish, as some believed that conversion to Islam would facilitate their integration into the Muslim societies where they were forced to start new lives.23 The last Muslims to leave the rebellious areas did so in October 1828, after the surrender to the French expeditionary force of the fortresses of Methoni, Koroni, Navarino, and Rio in the Peloponnese. At the end of August 1828, 110 Muslims left Monemvasia who had remained in the area after the city was taken by Greek insurgents in 1821. Ioannis Kapodistrias informed General Nicholas Joseph Maison, commander of the French expeditionary force, that he had instructed the district governors of Greece to provide certificates to native Muslims who wished to remain in their districts, confirming that “the Muslims who remain[ed] as a result of the capitulation [of their districts], were under the protection of the Greek government, as well as under the auspices of the Allied Powers Britain, France and Russia, until all their concerns were settled for good by the negotiations that would secure the fate of Greece.”24 The Muslim populations of Koroni, Methoni, and Navarino sailed in late September and early October 1828 for Izmir, following the Ottoman-​Egyptian army, which

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  61 was leaving the Peloponnese. The last Muslim families living in the fortress of Rio near Patra departed for Asia Minor after its surrender to the French expeditionary force on 30 October 1828.25

Implications of the War The Greek War of Independence was the first of the Balkan national movements to trigger murders and atrocities toward and expulsions of Muslims on such a large scale. The Christian uprising in Belgrade in 1804 had primarily been aimed at the misrule of the janissaries, who had killed and pillaged Muslims and Christians indiscriminately, leading Sultan Selim III’s commander in Belgrade to order Christians to arm themselves for protection. Neither the 1804 uprising nor the massacres, atrocities, and expulsion of Muslims that followed were on the scale of those of the Greek War of Independence,26 which set the pattern for future Balkan national uprisings and conflicts with the Ottomans. These included the Eastern Crisis conflicts of 1875–​1878, the Balkan wars of 1912–​1913, the First World War in 1914–​1918, and the Greco-​Turkish War of 1919–​1923. All aimed to create unified nations by destroying ethnic and religious groups that stood in the way, such as the Muslims, whose loyalty was assumed to be with the Ottomans. The attacks against Muslims in the Balkans are often seen as an outpouring of hatred following a long period of unjust Ottoman harm and oppression rather than as calculated political acts that often exploited the chaotic atmosphere to kill and pillage for the perpetrators’ status and economic profit.27 In addition, Muslims were viewed as a locus of future pro-​Ottoman sentiment in the event of an Ottoman counterattack to aid them. In other words, Muslims were seen as a fifth column in the areas targeted by the insurgents to form part of the future Greek state, and as such had to be forced from their homelands or exterminated. Muslims were not the only religious group that suffered atrocities and massacres at the hands of Greek rebels. Jews too were often victims, although they were not the main target of the insurgents. Their tragedy was a byproduct of attacks against Muslims.28 Approximately five thousand Jews were killed during the Greek War of Independence in the Peloponnese alone, including almost the entire Jewish population of Tripolitsa, one thousand souls.29 A similar fate befell the two hundred Jews of Vrachori, present-​day Agrinio, in Roúmeli when the town fell in June 1821.30 Some of the massacres of Jews, such as those in Tripolitsa, were due to existing virulent disputes between Jews and Orthodox Christians during Ottoman times, if not earlier, and derived fresh hostility following the mistreatment of the corpse of Grigorios V by a Jewish mob in Istanbul following his execution by the Ottomans in April 1821.

62  Proselytes of a New Nation

Muslims and Greek National Identity From the outset of the Greek War of Independence, Muslims served in the war as soldiers, physicians, surgeons, and translators of Ottoman documents. In addition, prior to and soon after the start of the war, Greek insurgents signed military pacts with Albanian Muslim bands that pledged to support the Greek insurgents and fight the Ottomans with them. These Albanian Muslim bands were loyal to Ali Pasha of Tepelena, who was also of Albanian origin, and these pacts were part of a joint effort to disperse the available Ottoman forces in the region to the benefit of Ali Pasha of Tepelena and the insurgency. On 29 October 1821, for example, Albanian-​speaking Muslim notables from Peta in Epirus sent a letter informing Alexandros Mavrokordatos and the Greek revolutionary leadership in western Roúmeli that the Albanian-​speaking Muslims from Peta had concluded a military pact with the Greek insurgents in their region: All the undersigned Turks [i.e., Muslims] and Romioi [i.e., Romans or Christian Orthodox] have been bounded by inseparable ties of brotherhood, having the unmistakable God as our witness, with a firm and unchangeable decision, and with the stronger oath of honor and conscience, now and forever to stay as such [bound in brotherhood ties] and let us not have any other difference between us than religious faith. Everything else remains the same and equal for both Turks [i.e., Muslims] and Christians.31

On 4 November 1821, Mavrokordatos forwarded the letter to the assembly of Greek insurgents who met in Salona between 15 and 20 November 1821 and formed the Areopagus, the regional administrative body in eastern Roúmeli, which, among other things, elected representatives for the first National Assembly in Epidaurus (20 December 1821–​16 January 1822). In a separate letter, Mavrokordatos notified the assembly that the Albanian-​speaking Muslim notables had agreed to support the cause of Greek independence.32 The number of Muslims who served in the Greek War of Independence was significantly smaller than the number of Slav-​speaking Orthodox Christians, but they were equally respected by the Christian members of their communities. In one case, the Muslim Mustafa Gekas from Livadia in Roúmeli left the comfort of his affluent life to fight on the side of Greek insurgents in 1821 “motivated by pity and sympathy for the tyranny and the inhumanity inflicted on his fellow Muslims, suffering with the Hellenes.”33 Dervis Mehmet, a Muslim translator from Tripolitsa, said in 1828 that he served in the war because he wanted to die in his homeland; he felt he was “a genuine Hellene.” Being a zealot for freedom, he did not view his act as a betrayal of his fellow Muslims.34 An anonymous Muslim from Kalavryta claimed in a letter to the Greek authorities in 1829 that he had

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  63 refused to follow his family, who had left Kalavryta during the war, because he wanted to live side by side with his Orthodox Christian fellows. He considered his nationality to be a higher priority than his religious differences with the Orthodox Christians: “[T]‌hat [my family and I] are Turks [Muslims] it is true; you can be assured however that our conscience is not Turkish, but was, and still is, purely Hellenic, and more so than any other Hellene.”35 By the end of the war, some Muslim supporters of the war had succeeded in articulating a Greek Muslim identity, although prior to 1821 Greek nationalism had had no influence on the Muslim populations in the war-​torn areas. These Muslims’ experience during the war led them to perceive themselves as part of an imagined national Greek community. In 1856 the Greek Parliament debated whether to offer state compensation to Youpis Dritsakos, a Muslim from the village of Konstantina, present-​day Spartia, in Lakonia, whose father was Muslim and mother Christian Orthodox. During the war Dritsakos had fought the Ottomans and, a physician, had provided medical services to the Greek insurgents. This helped him establish close ties with the Christian Orthodox community and remain in Konstantina, now in the Kingdom of Hellas, with his Muslim wife, Fatma Balaka, and their children, because, in his own words, he had “put homeland above religion.” Dritsakos and Balaka never renounced their Islamic faith and were both respected in Sparta, due to his medical service to the Greeks, especially to the poor, during the war and after. They baptized and raised their children as Christian Orthodox, however, because they believed they would be more easily accepted and have better opportunities to progress professionally and socially as Christian Orthodox in the new political and social environment.36 As did many Muslim philhellenes and supporters of the Greek War of Independence in rebellious territories, Dritsakos and Balaka tried to capitalize on his support of the Greek insurgents during the war by requesting that the Greek government return the property they had inherited from their parents before the war. The property, with its sizable arable lands and olive and mulberry groves, had been confiscated by the Greek authorities and trespassed upon during the war. In 1856 the state secretary of finance, Alexandros Kontostavlos, ordered the return of all of the family’s remaining inherited assets, valued at approximately 12,000 drachmas.37 Kontostavlos justified his decision as follows: “[Dritsakos] should not have been deprived of this property because he is not viewed an enemy of the Hellenes, and the law of war [which justified the confiscation of Muslim properties in territories controlled by the Greek insurgents] applied only to the enemies [of the Greek War of Independence] and not to people of any faith who joined the insurgent Hellenes and were useful to the Hellenic cause, who can rightly claim they are Hellenes by consciousness and

64  Proselytes of a New Nation proven friends of the Hellenic struggle. Under no circumstances should these people be subject to a war act aimed at the confiscated properties of the enemies [of the Greek cause].38

The political and intellectual heritage of the Greek War of Independence did not include a view of Muslims as Greek nationals (Hellenes). Constitutions and other official documents adopted by the Greek revolutionary authorities provided religious tolerance to all citizens living in the territories controlled by Greek insurgents, but at the same time reserved the status of Hellenes to indigenous Christians only and stripped all political rights from Muslim and Jewish residents. All the revolutionary constitutions acknowledged Orthodox Christianity as the dominant religion in the country, which also became the main criterion for assigning Hellenic nationality, echoing the Ottoman millet system.39 For example, the first provisional constitution of independent Greece adopted in 1822, the Prosorinon Politevma tis Ellados, defined Ellines (Hellenes) as “all those who believe in Christ and were born within the insurgents’ domains.”40 The second provisional constitution of 1823, the Nomos tis Epidavrou, adopted in Astros, added the criterion of language, stating, “[Ellines] are those who speak ellinika (Hellenic, i.e., Greek) as their mother language and believe in Christ.”41 In addition, the third revolutionary national assembly convened in 1827 in Troezen, another town in the Peloponnese, and the constitution it approved, the Politikon Syntagma tis Ellados, omits the reference to the Greek langauge and claims that Hellenes are simply those born in the country who “believe in Christ” and came either to fight with the insurgents or to live in Hellas.42 Subsequent revolutionary and postrevolutionary constitutions defined Greek nationality on the basis of religion (Christianity in general, without restricting it to Christian Orthodoxy only) and Greek langauge, with Christian religion always holding primacy over Greek language. Although the Nomos tis Epidavrou introduced the Greek language as a defining element of Greek nationality, the Christian religion was widely regarded as the most significant criterion of Greek nationality, and therefore was often given prominence over Greek language by the overwhelming majority of Greeks at the time in Greece and abroad. This view is reflected in a newspaper article of 19 November 1824, authored by Theodoros Negris, a Greek politician who had served in the provisional administration of the rebellious areas during the war and was a member of the First and the Second National Assemblies. Titled “Concerning Religion,” the article expresses Negris’s views on the provisions of the Nomos tis Epidavrou regarding religion as a defining element of the Greek nationality. Negris asserts that the Nomos tis Epidavrou is incomplete because “the Hellenic language should not be a criterion for one’s civil rights.” He argues that the phrase “and all Christians under the Turkish [i.e., Ottoman] yoke, in general”

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  65 should have been included in the provision defining Greek nationality by the Second National Assembly in Astros. This is because “the citizens of Caesarea [i.e., Karaman and Cappadocia] speak Turkish,43 Bulgarians [speak] Bulgarian, but nevertheless both the Caesarean and the Bulgarian in reality have the same [civil] rights as [Hellenes] from the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus.”44 In addition, the newspaper Filos tou Nomou argued in an editorial of 17 September 1826: [The Christian Orthodox] religion is the strongest bond in society. . . . [I]‌t preserved the most important and unlimited treasure of the mother language [i.e., Greek] and, through the Hellenic language, the memory of ancient glory. [Religion] did not allow the Hellenic nation to be assimilated into the barbarians who had seized [its] territory, as had its earlier masters, the Roman emperors, for whom, the Hellenes sacrificed their national name Ellines for the sake of their own religion, being renamed Romioí (i.e., Christian Orthodox).45

As part of an attempt to integrate the Roman Catholic populations of the Aegean Islands into the emerging Greek nation-​state, the archimandrite priest Grigorios Dikaios, also known as Papaflessas, who served as minister of internal affairs and had fought in the war, sent a circular to the Roman Catholic “Hellenes of the Western Church” on 9 June 1823 that disassociated religious affiliation from Greek nationality: Both natural and human-​based laws do not ever allow in any nation divisions along religious lines exclusively; for nationality is not founded on a basis of religion, but on many material and moral interests, common throughout the nation. . . . If we throw an eye on the enlightened world, we see many nations, each of which consists of adherents of different denominations, who nevertheless are tied together in one nation . . . the German nation, the Dutch, the French and more, each of which consists of Evangelicals, Roman Catholics and Christians of other denominations. Nevertheless, the German nation is one single nation, like the Dutch and the French. Only barbarous nations identify religion with nationality, and only because of that can a small religious difference be capable of dividing a nation.46

Although they shared the same language and culture with their Christian Orthodox neighbors, the Roman Catholics in the Aegean were not part of the millet-​i Rûm, nor were they always supportive of the Greek War of Independence. They refused to take up arms in support of the 1821 uprising, to pay taxes to the provisional Greek revolutionary government, or to recognize the local authorities appointed by the government, demonstrating a clear preference for Ottoman rule and the status quo ante bellum. However, they enjoyed a privileged

66  Proselytes of a New Nation status: the insurgents had succumbed to pressures from France and other European powers to treat non-​Orthodox Christians in their domain well. In addition, the restrictions of the Hellenic nationality and citizenship to Christian Orthodox would not be received well by philhellenes, comrades in arms, and others who admired ancient Greece and were themselves Roman Catholics or Protestants, or came from majority Roman Catholic or Protestant countries. In his circular, however, Dikaios clarified that overcoming religious differences in the Greek nation referred to dogmatic variations within Christianity, and not to the dichotomy between Christians and non-​Christians: The Hellenic nation took up arms to liberate itself from the horrible tyranny of the Turks [i.e., Ottomans], and to live as an independent and free nation. This nation will be ruled by laws that impose isonomy and view all those born in Hellas as Hellenes, both members of the Eastern Church and of the Western Church, and in general all those who believe in Christ. This is shown by our respectable National Assembly [of March 1823, in Astros], which followed natural laws and does not exclude any Christian from the nation, but rather invites all those who believe in Christ and whose mother language is Greek to partake in the holy struggle for the faith and the homeland. . . . And those of you, the Christians of the Western Church, born in Hellas, you are inseparable from our nation. If you have been indoctrinated by priests of the Western Church, you have not stopped being members of the same nation as those indoctrinated by priests of the Eastern Church. You are Hellenes too, and you are subject to the same national obligations and have the same rights as the Eastern Christians.47

Negris also supported Dikaios’s view, and claimed in an article in Efimeris ton Athinon on 19 November 1824: Eastern Orthodoxy is the religion of the Hellenic nation. The other religions, without any exceptions, are acceptable and their rituals are not impeded. . . . [T]‌he Lutherans, the Pope’s faithful, the Armenians and others are allowed to reside in Hellas and build churches. And the Jews are allowed to reside in Hellas and build synagogues and the pagans can erect their own temples as well, without any obstacles. This permission was given by the law because my homeland also needs foreign [citizens], to bring us the arts and sciences and teach us to farm; we need to perfect our ploughs and do good ironwork and profit by mining ores from our land.48

In other words, believers of faiths other than the Christian Orthodox are allowed to reside in Greece and are free to practice their faith and erect temples where

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  67 they can worship their religion. They are not, however, viewed as equal to Orthodox Christians. The distinction between Christians and non-​Christians was in tune with the general views at the time. The only dissonance came from a few liberal scholars living in Europe, such as Adamantios Korais and Jeremy Bentham, who, influenced by the spirit of the European Enlightenment, often raised the issue of discrimination against Muslims and Jews in Greek constitutional documents.49 With reference to the fate of Muslims and Jews in a liberated Hellas, in his Peri ton Ellinikon Symferonton (Concerning Hellenic Interests) in 1825, seven years prior to the establishment of the Kingdom of Hellas, Korais argued against expelling the Muslim and Jewish populations who had been living in the rebel areas for a long time and whose only difference from the Greeks was religion: Not only is exile [of Muslims and Jews] unjust, but it is not in favor of our interests at all. . . . Trust me, friend, we should judge them as brothers who obey the same laws. . . . [W]‌e have to educate in justice all those we view as unjust, sharing with them the same goods. . . . Jews should have synagogues and Turks [i.e., Muslims] mosques . . . and if for your voyage you must choose between two ships, and the captain of the first is Christian but totally inexperienced in sailing and of the second is an experienced Turk or Jew, to whom would you trust your life and belongings? This is how such distinctions matter in politics.50

Muslims in the Kingdom of Hellas We should provide to all Muslims who would prefer to live in our Kingdom, every protection, which all citizens of whatever religious faith should enjoy, and we should bestow on them the most perfect freedom of their religious beliefs.51 It is estimated that 750,000 people lived in the Kingdom of Hellas in 1832, of whom 2,500 were Muslims. Most of the Muslims lived in Euboea, with 1,500 residing in Chalkida (Chalcis), Euboea’s capital.52 The Muslims of Euboea represented the only large and dense Muslim population in the kingdom. There was also a small number of Muslims scattered around the country, remnants of erstwhile thriving Muslim communities. One such example was Ibrahim Arnaoutoğlu, the former Ottoman district governor of Vostitsa and an esteemed member of Vostitsa’s Muslim community. Arnaoutoğlu was captured by Greek insurgents during the Greek War of Independence and was exchanged with the Ottoman authorities for Greek captives.53 In 1838, he returned to Tripolitsa to live out his life in his homeland. In March 1845 he sought permission from the

68  Proselytes of a New Nation Greek Parliament to exchange land he owned in Mantineia for fields of equal size in Chalkida, where he and his family resided.54 A number of Albanian-​speaking Muslims, originating from different parts of the kingdom or from neighboring Ottoman areas, served as noncommissioned officers in the Greek army.55 One such was Ahmet Tefik, a Muslim lieutenant from Thessaly who lived in Chalkida. Tefik joined the Greek armed forces in 1881, and he and his family, although they were Muslims of the Ottoman Empire, were granted Greek citizenship because of his military service.56 Like the wartime provisional constitutions, postwar constitutional documents granted a privileged status to Orthodox Christianity and its faithful. In their preambles, they invoked the “Holy, one-​in-​essence and indivisible Trinity” and recognized Orthodox Christianity as the dominant religion in Greece. They forbade other religions to proselytize among Orthodox Christians or to interfere in the internal affairs of Orthodox Christianity, but they allowed Orthodox Christians to proselytize and interfere with other faiths. The Greek king and his heirs had to be Orthodox Christians and defenders of the Orthodox faith. The king, the members of the Hellenic Parliament, and the civil servants had to swear an Orthodox Christian oath when they took office, although post-​1864 Greek constitutions provided for the oaths of parliamentarians and civil servants to be sworn according to other faiths.57 Greek authorities had to accept the fact that non-​Orthodox as well as Orthodox Christians inhabited their newly founded kingdom. For example, the London Protocol of 3 February 1830 provided for an “act of amnesty . . . in favor of all Muslims or Christians who have taken sides against the cause [the Greek War of Independence]. . . . Muslims, who wish to continue to inhabit the territories and islands assigned to Greece will retain their property there, and will invariably enjoy, with their families, a perfect security.”58 The Treaty of Kalender Köşk offered a period of eighteen months after the demarcation of the Greco-​Ottoman border during which Muslims could sell their estates and move to the Ottoman Empire if they wished. The Muslims who remained in the kingdom would not be regarded as Greek nationals (Hellenes) and would not become Greek citizens. The first citizenship law, enacted in May 1835, was modeled after citizenship laws in the United States, Britain, and France and applied jus soli, birthright citizenship under which individuals born in the kingdom were Greeks, and their fathers gained the right to become Greek nationals at the time of their birth.59 However, since the earlier provisional constitutions restricted Greek nationality to Christians, most Muslims were excluded from Greek citizenship unless they or their parents had converted to Christianity or had been granted Greek nationality.60 Thus, when a Muslim from Karystos in Euboea applied for Greek citizenship in 1852, the Greek authorities claimed that “Article 6 of the provisional Troezen constitution of 1827 regards Greek nationals as only those who believe

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  69 in Christ and reside in Greece . . . [and] his [the applicant’s] father did not believe in Christ.”61 Being deprived of Greek citizenship meant fewer rights for Muslims. For example, according to the constitutions of 1844 and 1864, only Greek citizens were accepted into the civil service, leaving the impression that Muslims were regarded as second-​class citizens.62 When the term “Ellin” was used in state documents, it did not include Muslims. The latter were called mousoulmanoi, Muslims, moamethanoi or Mohammedans, Tourkoi or Turks, and Othomanoi or Ottomans. Othomanoi also designated Ottoman citizens or Muslims of the Ottoman Empire. For example, a law passed on 15 May 1835 regarding state compensation to neophyte Muslim converts to Orthodox Christianity defined neophytes as “baptized Ottomans and their descendants,” despite the fact that, when the law passed, the neophytes were residents of Greece, born and raised in the country.63 Similarly, a royal decree of 18 December 1882 regulating the foundation of Muslim schools in Larisa in Thessaly, then in Greek territory, was entitled “Royal decree for the foundation of an Ottoman school in Larisa.”64 Post-​Ottoman Greeks could not easily disengage from the Ottoman millet worldview that emphasized the role of religion in individuals’ identities. Nevertheless, some Muslims succeeded in gaining Greek citizenship due to their record of supporting the War of Independence or because their application was supported by powerful members of Greek society. One such case was that of Ibrahim Arnaoutoğlu, who was given Greek citizenship by King Otto soon after his arrival in Greece in 1838. Since Ibrahim was a Greek citizen, his son Halil and Halil’s children were automatically granted Greek citizenship.65 The citizenship law of October 1856 that replaced that of May 1835 applied jus sanguinis, the right of blood, as a major principle of the citizenship law, influenced by the concept of “objective nationality” conceived of by scholars such as Johann Fichte. According to jus sanguinis, children like Halil and Halil’s sons were automatically granted Greek citizenship at birth.66 Some Muslims from Euboea became Greek citizens in the 1860s. By that time the Muslim population of Euboea had been significantly reduced due to emigration to the Ottoman Empire, and Muslims were not seen as the great threat to national security that they had been in the first two decades after the Greek War of Independence, when their numbers were higher and memories of war fresher. During this period, no specific legal framework existed that regulated the administration of Muslim religious, educational, and cultural institutions, such as procedures for appointing Muslim religious clergy, the operation of Muslim schools, and the content of school curricula. This lack of a legal framework did not treat Muslims as a special group but left the Muslim population unprotected from state discriminatory policies. The general, and often ambiguous, clauses of international treaties and state legal documents were meant to protect Muslims’

70  Proselytes of a New Nation cultural autonomy and civil rights. For example, Greek constitutions recognized the right of non-​Orthodox Christians to believe and practice their religious faith in freedom as long as they did not proselytize to Orthodox Christians (constitutions of 1864 and 1911).67 The constitutions declared that “personal freedom is inviolable, and no one may be persecuted,” and “in Greece no individual can be sold or bought; a slave or venal of any origin or religion is free when the individual sets foot on Greek soil.” The absence of a legal framework for Muslims can be explained partly by the fact that international treaties such as the 1830 London Protocol or the 1832 Treaty of Kalender Köşk, which established the Kingdom of Hellas, did not force Greece to adopt such a legal framework, unlike, for example, the 2 July 1881 Convention of Istanbul that ceded Thessaly from the Ottoman Empire to Greece and obliged the Hellenic Kingdom to adopt such a legal framework. International treaties of the time made specific mention of Jewish and nonconformist Christian communities, but not of Muslims. For example, the 1814 Congress of Vienna, which aimed to reestablish peace and order in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, was mostly concerned with the protection of the rights of Jews in Bavaria and Württemberg or of Poles in Prussia, Russia, and Austria-​Hungary. The 1856 Congress of Paris that followed the Crimean War paid special attention to the status of Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire, but not Muslims. No experience existed of integrating Muslim populations acquired through territorial readjustment into the body politic of countries whose religious majorities were Christian. In this respect, the Kingdom of Hellas served as a litmus test for such experience in Europe, beginning with southeastern Europe. In addition, there were no international mechanisms to force a sovereign state like the Kingdom of Hellas to protect the religious or any other rights of its subjects.68 The Great Powers of Europe were also biased against Islam and the Ottoman Empire, often viewing Islam as a religion that did not permit Ottoman society to conform to European political, social, and economic advancements. The Ottoman Empire, once an international rival, was now viewed as a weak state, the “sick man of Europe,” as it was frequently called in European diplomatic circles. Thus, after the Crimean War, the European powers pressed the Ottoman regime to strip Islam from state law through the Tanzimat reforms, but they applied no similar pressure to Ottoman Christians or, indeed, to the Kingdom of Hellas.69 The European powers were not as concerned with the status and the rights of Muslims in Greece as they were with those of Christians. The 1 July 1830 London Protocol agreed by Britain, France, and Russia that elaborated on the terms of the 3 February 1830 London Protocol specified that “the intentions and solicitude of the three Courts . . . with respect to the equality of civil and political rights [in Greece], referred especially to members of the Christian church.”70 In a letter of 15 August 1830 to Ioannis Kapodistrias, governor of Greece, the deputy

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  71 ambassadors of Britain, France, and Russia clarified that “the full equality of civil and political rights has been specifically stipulated in favor of Christian cults.”71 Not only the European powers but also the Greek authorities were often indifferent to the well-​being of Muslims in the kingdom. Due to their small numbers, which were shrinking further due to emigration to the Ottoman Empire, Muslims lacked the leverage to force Greek authorities to pay more attention to their needs: in 1861 approximately 400 Muslims lived on Euboea, while by 1869 only 150 remained.72 Muslim emigration flows to the Ottoman Empire were continuous, despite occasional setbacks; for example, at the end of 1832, after a large wave of Muslims from Karystos in Euboea arrived in Çeşme and Sivrihisar in Anatolia, many of the Karystos emigrants returned a year later, disappointed with the conditions they found in Anatolia and the treatment they received from locals and the Ottoman authorities. Their stories led many of their fellow Muslims who were ready to emigrate to postpone their plans.73 However, incidents such as this were the exception, not the rule. With memories of the Greek War of Independence still fresh, Orthodox Christians often viewed Muslims as national enemies because they were of the same faith as the Ottoman dynasty and ruling class. An atmosphere of diplomatic antagonism against the Ottoman Empire prevailed with the promulgation of the Megali Idea. This visionary irredentist concept of Greek nationalism expressed the goal of establishing a Greek state that would encompass all areas inhabited by ethnic Greeks, including the Greek Orthodox population that remained under Ottoman rule, as well as all of the regions that had traditionally belonged to Greeks in ancient times, such as the southern Balkans, Anatolia, and Cyprus.74 This state would have Constantinople (Istanbul) as its capital. The Megali Idea was first articulated by Prime Minister Ioannis Kolettis of Greece during his political debates with King Otto before the promulgation of the 1844 Constitution: The Kingdom of Hellas is not Hellas; it is merely a part: the smallest, poorest part of Hellas. Hellene is not only he who inhabits the Kingdom, but also he who lives in Ioannina, Salonica or Serres . . . or Constantinople . . . or any other region belonging to Hellenic history or the Hellenic race. . . . There are two great centers of Hellenism. Athens is the capital of the Kingdom. Constantinople is the great capital, the dream and hope of all Hellenes.75

Although first articulated in 1844, the Megali Idea had been deeply rooted in the Greek psyche since Ottoman times, as witnessed by popular sayings such as “Once more, as years and time go by, once more [these lands] shall be ours!” It was to dominate Greece’s foreign and domestic politics until 1923. The Megali Idea identified the Ottoman Empire as Greece’s main rival and, given the empire’s Islamic character as well as its patronage of Greece’s Muslims, regarded Muslims

72  Proselytes of a New Nation as the empire’s Trojan horse in the Greek national body. This, along with the fact that they were not Christians—​the religion that Greek constitutions and legal documents regarded as an indispensable element of Greek national identity—​ meant that Muslims did not serve in the Greek army.

The Muslim Exodus The Greek authorities had no organized plan to drive out the kingdom’s Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom lived in Euboea. The Kingdom of Hellas was too young and vulnerable a state to adopt measures that would upset the Muslim population, complicate diplomatic relations with Istanbul, and risk retaliatory measures against Greek Orthodox Christians in Ottoman lands. In a confidential letter sent to King Otto in April 1838, Konstantinos Zografos, the royal secretary of foreign affairs, advised the king to take action in response to unpleasant incidents against Euboean Muslims, lest these incidents threaten “the interests of Hellenes [i.e., Orthodox Christians] in Turkey [i.e., Ottoman Empire].”76 When Otto was selected as king, Britain, France, and Russia extracted a pledge from his father, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, that King Otto would restrain himself from hostilities against the Ottoman Empire, insisting that Otto’s formal title be “King of Hellas” and not “King of Hellenes,” which would have laid claim to the Greek Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire. George Ludwig von Maurer, one of the three members of the Regency Council that advised the underage King Otto until he reached adulthood in 1835,77 stated, “[I]‌t was our impartiality in religious affairs that encouraged some hundreds of Muslims to remain in Greece.”78 The kingdom, however, lacked a history and culture of state administration. Its state structures were in formation, and officials were often unfamiliar with their roles and duties. It was not always easy for the Greek government to fully control local administrations, which often misinterpreted or disobeyed government instructions. In this context, Muslim civil rights were often violated, Muslim properties were frequently encroached upon, and the local authorities turned a blind eye to and sometimes even protected the perpetrators, who were neither punished nor forced to compensate their Muslim victims. This led Gregory Perdicaris, the Greek American US consul in Athens, to remark, “[The Muslims of Chalkida], failing to sell their estates, are forced to remain in the land of their ancestors and to become witnesses to humiliating insults towards . . . their religion.”79 In March 1834, Muslims from Chalkida complained to the local authorities about a frangoforemenos—​the derogatory term for a Greek of high social status who embraced European or “French” dress codes and did not wear the fustanella, a stiff white kilt that was the national costume of the Greeks. This person had toured Muslim and mixed villages in Karystos, encouraging Orthodox

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  73 Christian farmers working on Muslim farms to stop paying their leases or any other revenue to their Muslim landowners. The prefect of Euboea sought advice from the secretary of foreign affairs, who in his response accused the prefect of “pretending ignorance” on the matter and the general situation in Euboea.80 The Muslims of Euboea did not find it easy to adjust to the new cultural environment of the kingdom, which increased their feelings of insecurity and led them to emigrate to the more familiar Ottoman Empire. Religious holidays and feasts in Euboea had changed to emphasize Orthodox Christianity. There was no limit to the size of Christian churches in the kingdom, and churches were allowed to display crosses and summon the faithful to prayer with loud bell ringing, while the adhan, the muezzin’s call to prayer from the minaret of the one operating mosque in Chalkida, was forbidden.81 To ensure that the dead were actually dead, the Greek authorities ordered that all cadavers were to remain unburied for a period of thirty-​six to forty-​eight hours.82 Many Muslims saw this order as disrespectful to their customs, which require the burial of the dead within twenty-​four hours.83 Dress codes, social etiquette, customs, and tastes changed, including the freedom to consume the formerly prohibited pork and alcohol. Urban space was often redesigned, and Islamic buildings such as mosques, tekkes, and cemeteries were demolished or converted for different uses; one of the mosques in Chalkida became the Orthodox Christian Church of St. Nicholas.84 The destruction of Muslim graves in the churchyard of St. Paraskevi’s Orthodox Christian Church, a former mosque, led Perdicaris to complain to the Greek government of the “destruction of historical monuments” that made the “Greeks look worse than the Turks [i.e., Ottomans].”85 The fact that many Muslims lived in the urbanized environment of Chalkida exposed them to non-​Islamic cultural influences. Some Muslim families preferred to send their children to Greek public schools, despite the existence of a mektep, a Muslim elementary school, in Chalkida.86 A number of Muslim students pursued their academic studies at the University of Athens rather than in the Ottoman Empire.87 The increasing exposure to non-​Islamic lifestyles was changing Muslim social life. By the end of the 1870s, the only item of dress that distinguished Muslim men from the rest of the population was the fez. Muslim women’s dress code remained more traditional, but European influences were discernible there as well. They often adopted the French chignon hairstyle and wore thin yashmaks, transparent veils that partly revealed their faces, which they wore in the presence of unknown men and removed when among women.88 Many Muslims also consumed alcohol.89 To a certain extent, Muslim emigration was self-​perpetuating. The shrinking Muslim population affected Muslim community life, causing feelings of frustration, unhappiness, and misery for the Muslims who remained behind. Some

74  Proselytes of a New Nation young Muslim men traveled to the Ottoman Empire for education or work and did not return. As the Muslim male population diminished, many conservative Muslim families married their women to Muslim husbands from the empire, which often led entire families to emigrate. In October 1877, Mustafa Idrizis, an esteemed Muslim from Chalkida, married his daughter to a Muslim schoolteacher living near Quluz, present-​day Volos, and after the wedding the entire family moved to Thessaly.90 Muslim emigration increased during times of dispute between Muslims and Orthodox Christians. In 1834–​1835, many Orthodox Christians from the island of Samos, refusing to accept that their island had not become part of the Kingdom of Hellas, fled to the kingdom and settled near Chalkida. They had taken an active part in the Greek War of Independence, and a provisional government with its own constitution had been set up to rule the island. The London Protocol of 1830, however, excluded Samos from the kingdom and declared the island an autonomous tributary principality under Ottoman suzerainty, paying to the Ottoman government the annual sum of £2,700. Thus Samos remained until 1913, when the Ottomans ceded the island to Greece under the terms of the 1913 Peace Convention of Athens.91 Many Muslims were forced by the island authorities to take families of Samian refugees into their homes for an agreed rent to be paid by the refugees.92 At the same time, a number of Muslim families were asked to do the same for soldiers and army officers of a battalion from neighboring Fthiotida, brought to the island to maintain order due to an increase in crime and sporadic clashes between Muslims and refugees. This contravened Islamic custom, as Muslim females were not allowed even to be seen by males other than their spouses and family members, let alone to live under the same roof with non-​Muslim male foreigners. Many of the refugees and soldiers were accommodated in the empty houses of Muslims who had emigrated to the Ottoman Empire, and others were settled in mosques and Islamic public buildings.93 Despite agreements, rents were not always paid, and thus Muslim landlords often accommodated Samian refugees and Greek military personnel in their homes at their own expense. Tenants often forced Muslim landlords and their families out of their houses or damaged property with neither compensation nor apologies. On many occasions, these “tenants” attacked Muslims physically or verbally but were not punished for their actions.94 This caused further unrest among the Muslims, many of whom sold their properties and left for the Ottoman Empire. Britain, France, and Russia, the guarantors of Greece’s independence, intervened and complained about the violations of the London Protocol of 1830 and the 1832 Treaty of Kalender Köşk, which were meant to ensure the protection of Muslims’ civil rights and religious freedom in the Kingdom of Hellas.95 The Greek government sent Ioannis Pittaris, a special

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  75 government commissioner, to find out why the Euboean authorities seemed to act unfairly toward local Muslims. In his January 1835 report to the government, Pittaris claimed that the disturbances against Muslims were due to “the unskillful and wild-​mannered ways of those who execute the orders of the Greek government.”96 He recommended the establishment of a three-​member committee, to include one Euboean Muslim, to investigate all cases of Muslim house sharing, especially the problematic ones, and recommend satisfactory solutions for all interested parties. A few months after Pittaris’s recommendation, such a committee was in operation and included two Muslims.97 In addition, the Greek regency issued royal decrees for the release of three Muslims, Osman Efendi, Keli Ibrahim, and Ismail Ibrahim, who had been imprisoned because they refused to lease their properties to Samian refugees and Greek military personnel.98 They also forced Georgios Psyllas, prefect of Euboea and Attica, to resign his position because he “dared to abuse the power he was entrusted with.” Psyllas was replaced by Georgios Ainian, who had served as prefect before Psyllas but had been forced out of office in May 1834 because it was alleged that his policies favored Muslims at the expense of Orthodox Christians.99 The regency’s measures brought peace, but the Samian refugees and military personnel hosted by Muslims never fully paid the rent they owed; by the end of the 1830s only 11,109 drachmas, 10 percent of the amount owed, had been paid to Muslim landlords.100 Muslim emigration also surged around the time of the Crimean War. The Greek government saw the war as an opportunity to expand their young country into Ottoman areas inhabited by Orthodox Christians. The government refrained from declaring war on the Ottoman Empire under severe diplomatic pressure from Britain and France, whose forces occupied Piraeus, Greece’s main port, and effectively neutralized the Greek army. In 1854, however, betting on a Russian victory and with a large section of its political class and the public expecting their fellow Orthodox Christians in Russia to help Greece fulfill its national aspirations, Athens encouraged a large-​scale revolt in Epirus and uprisings in Crete.101 These were easily crushed by the Ottoman army, frustrating the Greek political class, who blamed King Otto for not declaring war on the Ottomans. Greece’s backstairs involvement in the Crimean War disturbed Greco-​Ottoman relations and inflamed hatred among Orthodox Christians in Euboea, who often attacked Muslims and violated Muslim properties. Such incidents led French novelist and journalist Edmond François Valentin About to remark, “The Greeks tolerated [Euboean Muslims], as they tolerated [Euboean] Jews: I know nothing more intolerant than their tolerance.”102 In this atmosphere of hostility, an unspecified number of Muslims left Euboea with the assistance of the Ottoman government, which dispatched ships to facilitate a quick and safe transfer of Euboean Muslims to the Empire.103

76  Proselytes of a New Nation

The Ottoman Kin-​State The Ottoman state assumed the role of political patron of Greece’s Muslims. In 1849 the Ottoman government established consulates in Chalkida and Karystos that operated until the turn of the twentieth century. A number of the Ottoman consuls were not subjects of the Ottoman Empire, but instead were trusted, educated Euboean Muslims with good command of the Greek and Ottoman Turkish languages. The Ottoman consulates functioned as channels of political and cultural contact between the Ottoman Empire and Euboean Muslims; they updated the Ottoman authorities on the Muslim political, social, and political life of Euboea and reported any issues that required Ottoman diplomatic intervention with the Greek authorities. For example, worried about the poor condition of the only operating mosque in Chalkida and the safety of those praying in it, in 1888–​1889 the Ottoman authorities fully financed the mosque’s repair.104 They also considered building a new mosque in another area or rebuilding the existing mosque from scratch and surrounding it with a covered walkway of shops. However, these ideas remained on paper, even though the Hazine-​i Celile, the Ottoman treasury, disbursed the necessary funds, which seem to have vanished in the labyrinthine dark alleys of the Ottoman and Greek state bureaucracies.105 In many instances, the Ottoman government interfered with the Greek authorities on behalf of Euboean Muslims, and sometimes issues concerning the Muslims of the island complicated Greco-​Ottoman relations. In 1835, Ottoman authorities intervened on behalf of the Muslims of Chalkida, who complained that Chalkida’s municipal authorities did not allow Muslims to sell or repair any Muslim-​owned properties or Islamic buildings in the city’s castle area pending the completion of Chalkida’s new urban plan. This reduced real estate prices at a time when many Muslims were planning to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire. Yielding to Ottoman diplomatic pressure, King Otto issued a royal decree on 9 November 1839 that exempted all old and new Muslim properties from the new urban plan of Chalkida.106 In July 1852 Muslims visiting a mosque in Chalkida were subjected to verbal and physical attacks by local Orthodox Christians. The incident created a major diplomatic crisis: the Ottoman Empire threatened to recall its ambassador from Athens and declare war on the Kingdom of Hellas. The diplomatic tension calmed down after the intervention of Britain and France, who forced the Greek state to apologize to the Ottoman government.107

Muslim Properties The aim of the Kingdom of Hellas was to sweep away the entire Ottoman Islamic legal and social order. This was in line with the general spirit of the Greek War

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  77 of Independence, which regarded this legal and social order as abhorrent to Greeks and to most subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Sharia law was prima facie repugnant to independent Greece and was to be extirpated. However, it was impossible to ignore Ottoman legal precedents in certain areas, especially in land use and taxation. Greek authorities had to refer to these precedents regarding landholding, where legal continuity was essential if they wanted to maintain the rights enjoyed by Christians under Ottoman rule.108 This was true in property transactions, particularly in eastern Roúmeli, including Euboea. These areas were occupied by the Ottoman army during the diplomatic negotiations for Greece’s independence. The Ottoman authorities had agreed that these areas were to come under Greek rule, provided that Muslims who lived there would retain the rights to their private properties and would be allowed sell these rights, should they wish to, within a stipulated time. The Greek authorities had adopted the Hexabiblos, Promptuarium (Latin) or Shestiknizhia (Russian), a book of law in six volumes written in 1344–​1345 by Konstantinos Armenopoulos, a senior judge of Salonica. It was first used as the interim civil code in 1828 in the territories under Greek control and, in 1835, as the official civil code of the kingdom, remaining in effect until 1946. First printed in 1540 in Paris, the Hexabiblos compiles a range of Byzantine legal sources. It was the chief book of law for Christians in Ottoman times and, along with local customary laws, served as the legal basis for the resolution of civil disputes.109 It was not always easy to translate legal rights from Ottoman law to those of the Hexabiblos because they represented two different legal systems that embodied differing philosophies. For example, even after the introduction of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858, which aimed to rationalize the chaos of Ottoman land affairs, Ottoman land law was still complex and inconsistent.110 It recognized a system of shared rights in property that led to great complexity in matters of land tenure. A single property might have a sovereign or residual owner, probably the state or a religious institution; a usufructuary holding the right to the property in perpetuity or for as long as there were heirs to claim it; a revenue agent holding a lease to manage the property and collect its revenues; and peasant tenants who might hold occupancy rights in perpetuity. Greek authorities often translated the right of tassaruf, that is, the right for usufruct of a public land, to full ownership. This right might have been perpetual and hereditary in Ottoman times, but it did not de jure correspond to full ownership. Only mülk, owned, lands approximated full proprietorship by contemporary European standards. Extensive pieces of land and a great number of buildings owned by Muslims and non-​Muslims were evkaf properties, inalienable charitable endowments destined under sharia law for Islamic religious or charitable purposes with no option for reclaiming these assets. There were many different types of evkaf, and the legal status of each was determined by the will of its donor. This already complex picture was complicated

78  Proselytes of a New Nation further in cases of property sales, exchange, rental, or sublease of these different rights in various ways. This complexity was challenging enough in Ottoman times, but became almost chaotic during the Greek War of Independence due to the prolonged turmoil and lawlessness. There were families who continued to work farms where their forebears held various rights; landless families who had settled on state lands and who remained undisturbed, paying the usufruct tax; still others who claimed their farms as fully private property on the basis of alleged legal acquisition prior to the Greek War of Independence. Very few were able to present property titles in support of their claims, and disputes and litigation were endless.111 Thus, in December 1832 the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee responsible for the sale of Muslim properties in Attica and Euboea warned potential buyers to beware of fake property titles.112 Greek authorities often operated under a system of political patronage, by which state actors were not always keen to observe the rule of law. Legal arrangements and documents were of little importance, or were interpreted as the legal authorities saw fit at the time. At one point, the Ottomans had maintained an elaborate system of land and tax records, but the decline of the Ottoman administration after the seventeenth century affected these records, which became filled with inconsistencies and irregularities.113 Imperfect as they were, Ottoman records were denied to the Greek provisional governments during the Greek War of Independence, while local Ottoman records in areas under rebellion were destroyed or removed by departing Ottoman officials. A government committee appointed to gather information concerning land, population, and taxation in eastern Roúmeli in 1828 reported that archival records had been unreliable prior to the revolution due to the disorder that prevailed under Ottoman rule. During the war, “everything was destroyed, not a register nor any other public document was saved,” which could have shed light on matters of property. The Ottoman governor of İzzedin, present-​day Lamia, removed the region’s tax and property records to Yenişehir, present-​day Larisa.114 The expulsion of many Muslims from territories controlled by Greek insurgents during the war freed vast real estate holdings, properties owned by both Muslim individuals and the Ottoman state, which were seized by Greek insurgents exploiting the turmoil of war. Most of the properties, however, amounting between 1,482,600 and 2,471,000 acres, came under public control and became known as ethnikes gaies, national estates.115 In a region with very few forms of wealth other than agriculture, the ethnikes gaies were viewed as public assets that might help place the new state’s finances on a sound footing. The provisional governments in power between 1821 and 1832 sold off some of the ethnikes gaies and pledged others in mortgage schemes. In 1871 the government of the Kingdom of Hellas introduced a program that distributed most of

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  79 the arable land of the ethnikes gaies to landless peasants and legalized the arbitrary planting of vines and trees on the national estates. The program was intended to fulfill at last the repeated promises of the Hellenic Parliament to grant the lands liberated from Ottoman control to Greek nationals, who would be able to cultivate them as full independent proprietors.116 The July 1832 Treaty of Kalender Köşk distinguished between Muslim properties as (a) those in regions under Greek control in 1832, where Muslim proprietors would have no further claims, and (b) those in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea, held by Ottoman forces and ceded to Greece by the terms of the Treaty of Kalender Köşk, whereby Muslims retained rights to private property. Their rights included individual interests in evkaf lands where individuals had interests as tenants or as hereditary trustees and which would be treated as private property, becoming eligible for sale within eighteen months after the demarcation of the Greco-​Ottoman border. These evkaf properties are known as evkaf adi.117 Soon after the signing of the 1830 London Protocol for the establishment of a sovereign Greek state became known, Muslim holders of large estates in eastern Roúmeli, including Euboea, began to sell their properties and move to the Ottoman Empire. Although at the time eastern Roúmeli and Euboea were held by the Ottoman army, these Muslim landholders became aware through diplomatic connections in Istanbul that the future territorial status of eastern Roúmeli and Euboea were uncertain. In August 1830 the Judicial Committee on Ottoman Land Estates was formed. The committee consisted only of Greeks, appointed by the Kapodistrias government, who were tasked with verifying the authenticity of Ottoman property titles, overseeing the fairness of property transactions involving Greek citizens in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea, and ratifying property sales. This committee appears under various names in official documents, for example, the Ratification Committee on Property Sale Contracts, the Examining Committee of Ottoman Land Properties in Attica and Euboea, and the Examining Committee for Divestments and Sales of Ottoman Properties in Attica and Euboea. The committee operated until the end of 1849, when it was formally dissolved.118After 1849, the Ottoman government would send a sharia court judge or an Ottoman law expert to Greece who would verify property titles for those interested in selling their properties or issue new titles where property titles were missing, then certify the validity of the sale transactions. Their certifications were submitted to the Examining Committee for ratification and had to be confirmed by Greek state authorities before being submitted to a local Greek court for validation of the property transaction. The Greek authorities and Greek courts accepted Ottoman property titles translated into Greek if they were certified to be authentic.119 A joint Greco-​Ottoman judicial committee was formed in 1836, whose main role was to adjudicate property transactions between Greeks and Ottoman citizens

80  Proselytes of a New Nation who sold their properties in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea under the Treaty of Kalender Köşk and moved to the Ottoman Empire. It oversaw the sale of Muslim assets, verified their title deeds, and worked out compromises between parties in cases of property disputes before reaching final decisions. In cases of split votes or objections, property disputes were heard again by the deputy chair of the Council of State, the Symvoulio tis Epikrateias, founded in 1835 as the supreme administrative council of the kingdom. These final decisions held, despite the fact that the Ottoman government disputed the prerogative of the Greek state, as opposed to Britain, France, and Russia, the three guarantors of Greece’s independence, to make final decisions about contested property transactions.120 After 1839, the reexamination of property disputes was conducted by ad hoc arbitrators, high-​ranking state administrators, or judges appointed by the Greek government.121 The main rationale for establishing the 1836 joint Greco-​Ottoman judicial committee was to accelerate the ratification of property sales in the kingdom by Muslims who wished to move to the Ottoman Empire before the eighteen-​month deadline established by the Treaty of Kalender Köşk. However, the committee’s scope also included the adjudication of property sales where Muslim proprietors had already moved to the empire or were not Ottoman citizens. The 1836 Greco-​Ottoman Committee consisted of four members, two appointed by the Greek government and two by the Ottoman Porte. A number of Ottoman appointees to the committee, such as G. Konemenos and I. Adamantidis in 1859, were Orthodox Christian Ottoman citizens.122 The idea of a judicial committee with half of its members Ottoman citizens adjudicating property transactions in sovereign Greece was not always well received by the Greek political class and the public. A letter of 5 January 1837 from the secretary of justice to the secretary of foreign affairs states, “What an unpleasant impression has caused to the public the view of Ottoman [officials] meeting in Hellas to judge Hellenes irreversibly.”123 After the adoption of the 1844 Constitution that abolished King Otto’s absolute rule and established a constitutional monarchy in Greece, local authorities in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea proposed a number of initiatives to abolish the 1836 Greco-​Ottoman Committee, as the new constitution forbade the establishment of any judicial committee or emergency courts under any name. The Greek government, however, dismissed all of their initiatives on the basis that the 1836 Committee had been founded based on international treaties, such as the Treaty of Kalender Köşk, that had established the kingdom, and therefore did not run counter to the 1844 Constitution.124 Overlaps between the scope of Greek courts and that of the 1836 Greco-​ Ottoman Committee, however, often caused confusion as to which cases of property disputes were within the purview of the Greek courts and which should be decided by the 1836 Committee. Thus, in June 1836, the Greek government gave to the Areios Pagos, the Supreme Court of the kingdom, the right to decide which

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  81 property disputes fell to the Greek courts and which to the 1836 Greco-​Ottoman Committee.125 Three months earlier, in April 1836, the Greek government had ordered that citizens who had legal disputes with Muslims had to take these disputes to Greek courts, or even seek detention of the Muslims if necessary, until July 1836. After that date no legal differences were to prevent Muslims who wished to move to the Ottoman Empire from leaving the country because “[the government] wished to facilitate the migration of Ottoman residents to their own state, which is sometimes prevented by judicial impediments around the time of their departure.”126 A bill was passed in November 1836 to expedite legal procedures for the benefit of Muslims who wished to move to the Ottoman Empire that ordered Greek courts to prioritize pending trials on property sales by Muslims who wished to emigrate.127 In addition to accelerating legal procedures, these measures also revealed the Greek government’s urgent wish to demonstrate that the establishment of the 1836 Greco-​Ottoman Committee had not diminished its sovereignty. An intragovernmental memo of 7 September 1836 stated that “it is against the nature of independent states to be subject to a foreign court where trivial cases of foreign citizens are judged” and that therefore the government had decided to reduce the role of the 1836 Greco-​Ottoman Committee to that of an advisory organ to Greek courts, which henceforth should be the only institutions to decide legal disputes over Muslim properties.128 The Greco-​Ottoman Committee completed its pending cases by the end of January 1862, when it legally ceased to be.129All property disputes after that date were settled in Greek courts. Although due to the lack of credible sources it is difficult to estimate the exact volume and value of Muslims’ property sales, it is estimated that around 60 percent of arable lands in the territories that formed the Kingdom of Hellas belonged to Muslims and were either confiscated or encroached upon by Greeks or sold by Muslim owners to residents of the kingdom, mostly Greeks. In Attica alone, approximately 20,000 stremmata (4,942 acres) of Muslim land,130 worth in total 1,981,407 Ottoman kuruş (grosia, or piastres, in Greek)changed hands between 1833 and 1839 (map 1.2. from the previous book). In the district of Thiva the total value of Muslim land sold during the same period is estimated at 1,703,500 kuruş . Available sources show that the 1836 Greco-​Ottoman Committee, particularly busy during the first few years after its establishment, adjudicated fewer than 20 percent of Muslim property transactions. By 1849, the committee was handling only eleven cases.131 Greek courts, the 1830 Examining Committee on Ottoman Land Properties, and a few specialized committees oversaw the rest. One such specialized committee was the Greco-​Ottoman Committee on Disputed Forests, the main task of which was to determine the future status of forests in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea. There were also Greek committees with limited geographic scope, such as the Committee for Ottoman Estates in the district of Fthiotida.132

82  Proselytes of a New Nation Throughout this period there were ongoing, direct discussions between the Ottoman and Greek governments. Two appointed diplomatic representatives, one Greek and one Ottoman, met frequently to evaluate the progress of the committees’ work and to resolve any problems that might have arisen. Despite genuine intentions to divide the labor and accelerate the process of the transition from an Ottoman property tenure system to that of the Kingdom of Hellas, the proliferation of committees caused overlaps in their work, which were both confusing and counterproductive. A number of disputes concerning Muslim properties were also settled through Greco-​Ottoman bilateral agreements. In February 1844 the kingdom signed a convention with the Ottoman Empire under which Athens agreed to pay the total sum of 549,000 kuruş, with 8 percent interest, to purchase from the Ottoman Empire all the rights to şerif-​i evlad properties held by the Ottoman state or Ottoman subjects, including by Muslims in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea.133 Through similar Greco-​ Ottoman agreements, in September 1837 the kingdom bought all property rights from the Ottoman state and subjects in the district of Thiva in eastern Roúmeli and in the districts of Euboea and Attica in March 1838.134 These property settlements were conducted in a rush, under pressure by Britain, France, and Russia for the Ottoman Empire to settle any remaining issues with the kingdom. The Ottoman state and its subjects, therefore, relinquished their property rights in these areas for much lower compensation than the true value. Thus, in the early 1830s Muslim property owners in Athens often fell victim to intentional legal delays and other machinations by potential Greek and foreign buyers, who, aware that Athens was to become Greece’s new capital in September 1834, wished to acquire as much property as they could at the lowest possible cost.135 The Greek authorities had little choice but to accept in principle the validity of Ottoman law, including sharia law, and incorporate it de facto in the country’s domestic legal framework. Their purpose was to avoid injustices, correct abuses of property rights, and provide legal continuity to the residents of the new state, with no intent of establishing a legal dualism, as became the case after 1881.136 Thus, a state document of 1846 regarding the operations of the 1836 Greco-​ Ottoman Committee instructs the members that “the litigation of [property] differences produced by Ottoman law should be conducted under whichever law is valid in Greece, including Ottoman law and the prevailing customs of the Ottoman state.”137 The 1836 Committee and the other committees involved in property transactions, as well as the Greek courts, often consulted the Ottoman authorities and sharia courts that operated in Athens, Chalkida, Nafplio, and other towns during the first three decades of the kingdom to issue property titles, confirm their authenticity, and get advice on property disputes that required expertise on Ottoman and sharia laws.138 This was because interested parties quite often presented false property titles or encouraged or paid friends

Muslims in War and Postwar Hellas  83 and acquaintances to offer perjured testimony to help the interested parties arrogate property assets to themselves. For example, in February 1837 a Muslim convert to Christian Orthodoxy named Eleni, daughter of Mehmet Ali Ağa, a Muslim notable of Athens, accused Veltan and Ali Ağa Rigas, Muslim residents of Athens, of arrogating to themselves an orchard in Patisia that had been her maternal property and part of her wedding dowry, on the basis of perjured testimonies of friends and acquaintances. Veltan and Ali Ağa had sold the orchard to Ioannis Xenos, a Christian Orthodox resident of Athens, without presenting a property title and had received a deposit of 600 drachmas for the sale.139

Muslims and Greek Nation-​Building The fate of Muslims in Hellas during and after the Greek War of Independence has been inextricably linked with the project of Greek nation-​building, which began with the Greek Revolution of 1821 and continued until 1923. This project aspired to create a modern European state; next to ideas of secularism, prominence for Orthodox Christianity was recognized, while principles such as the isonomy and liberal ideas of tolerance in legal documents conflicted with discriminatory policies toward non-​Christian Orthodox groups. Greek national identity, that of a Hellene, was defined by Orthodox Christianity and a command of the Greek language, which were recognized as the dominant religion and the official language of the state, with Christian Orthodoxy holding primacy over Greek language. In a society that could not easily disengage from the Ottoman millet worldview that emphasized the role of religion in individuals’ identities, Muslims (and Jews) were not regarded as Hellenes, but as residents of the new state without any rights to the Hellenic nationality and citizenship or to serve in the Greek army or the country’s civil sector. Those Muslims who did not support the Greek War of Independence were often seen as an enemy Trojan horse simply because they shared the religion of the Ottoman dynasty and ruling class. Thus these Muslims were persecuted ruthlessly by the Greek insurgents during the war in an attempt to exterminate them, force them to leave the territories in which they lived, or simply force them to accept the new rule. Those Muslims who survived and refused to emigrate lived as pariahs in the postwar order and were treated as second-​class citizens. The Kingdom of Hellas did not provide a legal framework for the regulation of their religious and cultural life or the protection of their autonomy from arbitrary and intolerant policies by governmental and local authorities, as it would do following the annexation of Thessaly in 1881. Instead, Muslims were left to follow an “underground life,” vainly wishing to take up again what the Greek Revolution of 1821 had violently interrupted.

3

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy In a political environment favorable to Christian Orthodoxy many Muslims renounced the Islamic faith and converted to Orthodox Christianity. Most, making a virtue of necessity, chose to convert to avoid hardship, maltreatment, capture, and torture at the hands of Christian Orthodox insurgent fanatics or rebels who used Christian Orthodoxy as a means to advance their agenda: to harm, kill, and steal from those disfavored in the new political environment or seen as enemies—​ Muslims, Jews, as well as non-​ Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Christians loyal to the Ottoman state. Some converted as a precautionary measure that helped them protect their lives and properties, as well as the lives and properties of family members, unsure of their prospects for a better life in the changing political environment. This chapter explores the conditions that led many Muslims to convert to Christian Orthodoxy during the Greek War of Independence and the way these conversions were received by the Greek civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the rebellious areas. The chapter also assesses the efforts made by many Muslim families separated by the war to reunite with missing Muslim and neophyte family members after the end of the war. The chapter discusses as well legal disputes over property issues between Muslims and neophyte family members in eastern Roúmeli and on the island of Euboea, where neophytes were often viewed by their Muslim family members as Islamic apostates who, as a result of their apostasy, had lost their inheritance and other rights to the family property.

The Context of Conversion During the first two years of the war, some Muslims, especially women and children, were captured by Greek insurgents after the fall of citadels, including the citadel of Tripolitsa on 23 September 1821, where many had taken refuge.1 Many Muslims from Mystras and Vardounia near Mani in the southern Peloponnese, from Fanari and Leondari in the western Peloponnese, and from other areas, foreseeing the fall of their citadels to the Greek insurgents, entrusted their wives and children to Christian Orthodox neighbors for protection.2 The older of these Muslim wives and children often served the families with whom they lived, laboring on farms or became domestic workers. The families often treated the Proselytes of a New Nation. Stefanos Katsikas, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197621752.003.0004

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  85 new members under their protection with affection, especially children, whom they often adopted, raised as their own, and baptized as Orthodox Christians.3 After the fall of these areas to Greek insurgents, many of the wives and children were moved to other areas.4 From the outset of the Greek War of Independence, some Greek insurgents, motivated by Christian Orthodox religious zeal, baptized many Muslim captives or noncaptives who had asked to be baptized in an attempt to escape abuse and the misfortunes of war.5 Some Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy were young children, baptized without their consent. Voluntary baptism and baptism due to conviction were often the case with Muslims who had lived in Christian Orthodox families or were of Christian origin, such as children of mixed marriages, usually with Christian Orthodox mothers, or from families where one or both of the parents had been Christian Orthodox and had converted to Islam. There were also Muslims who accepted Christian Orthodox baptism under duress, out of fear for their lives or to avoid abuse, mistreatment, or torture. Others converted in order to keep part or all of their parents’ property, which risked being confiscated because they were Muslims, reason enough for being classified as enemies of the Greek insurgents and their cause. Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy often made official statements after their conversions. Their assertions that they had converted to Christian Orthodoxy voluntarily and of their own free will (αυτοπροαιρέτως και οικεία βουλήσει) cannot be taken at face value, although it is impossible now to know what might have led them to convert.6 Some of these official statements, however, were undoubtedly the result of psychological pressure exerted on the converts by their Christian Orthodox neighbors. The content of a number of these statements can be viewed as a gesture of gratitude to those who had saved the converts from death, often by marrying them, or as an expression of their desire to reside in their birthplace for the rest of their lives rather than follow their Muslim family members who had left for the Ottoman Empire during the war and now wanted the converts to join them.7 Some of these official statements might also reflect a sincere desire to convert to Christian Orthodoxy on the part of Muslims who were aware of their Christian Orthodox ancestry. Some of the Muslims who had been forced to convert returned to Islam during the war, when circumstances allowed. Such an occasion occurred after Ibrahim Pasha occupied most of the Peloponnese and Roúmeli from February 1825 to October 1828.8 A number of captured Muslims who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy and became laborers for Christian Orthodox families prior to his invasion of the Peloponnese defected to Ibrahim re-​Islamized and guided Ibrahim’s army through the Peloponnesian territories that were unfamiliar to the invading Egyptian forces. A great number of the approximately two hundred Muslims who, captured by Greek insurgents after the fall of Livadia in southern Roúmeli

86  Proselytes of a New Nation in the spring of 1821, had been baptized en masse as Christian Orthodox re-​ Islamized after Ibrahim occupied Roúmeli; in the words of the Greek authorities at the time, “[O]‌ur good Christians became lions and turned against Greeks.”9 An eighteen-​year-​old Muslim male captive from the village Zapandi, present-​ day Megali Chora, in western Roúmeli, baptized Christian Orthodox, took the Christian Orthodox name Ioannis and was adopted by a Christian Orthodox captain named Tsolkas. A few days before Messolonghi’s fall to the Egyptian and Ottoman armies in April 1826, however, Ioannis defected to the Egyptian army, re-​Islamized, and betrayed the plan of the besieged to sail from Messolonghi during the night of 22 April 1826.10 There were also occasions when Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy escaped or left areas under the domain of Greek insurgents for territories under Ottoman control, such as eastern Roúmeli and Euboea in the early 1830s, and reconverted to their Islamic faith. For example, three female Muslims from Nafplio were forced to convert to Christian Orthodoxy and moved to Chalkida (Eğriboz, in Turkish) in the early 1830s, where they re-​Islamized.11 The re-​ Islamization of converts happened not only during the course of the Greek War of Independence but often occurred after the war. After his parents died during the war, Petros Bey, a resident of Chalkida and son of the Muslim Arif Ağa, was taken under the wing of a Greek Orthodox military officer who baptized him Christian Orthodox. After 1890, Petros Bey moved to the Ottoman Empire, where he exploited his Muslim ancestry to obtain assistance from the Ottoman authorities in finding a job and a house. He reconverted to Islam in the hopes that this would gain him favor with the authorities and his Muslim friends, who could assist him to integrate into the new environment of the Ottoman Empire and increase his opportunities for professional and social advancement.12 An indefinable number of Muslims had a loose relationship with Islam and voluntarily converted to Orthodox Christianity. This included Muslims who resided in the northwestern district of Gastouni and the southeastern region of Monemvasia in the Peloponnese, who had been Orthodox Christians in the past and had become Islamized after the Orlov revolt of February 1770.13 In the atmosphere of suspicion of, mistrust of, and resentment toward the Christians in its aftermath, some Christian Orthodox were converted to Islam by force. Others converted by choice in an attempt to avoid acts of discrimination, retaliation, violence, and torture by the Ottoman authorities or by ordinary Muslims and the various Muslim gangs that were pillaging their regions.14 For these Muslim converts, the Greek War of Independence offered the opportunity to return fearlessly to the faith of their ancestors. A number of Orthodox Christians in the Peloponnese converted to Islam in hopes of overcoming the poverty they suffered; under the Ottoman Empire, Muslims were exempted from certain taxes that non-​Muslims had to pay.15 Furthermore, with the rise of Sufism, the Halveti

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  87 and Bektashi Sufi orders were particularly active in rural areas in the Peloponnese and Roúmeli. An indeterminate number of Orthodox Christian peasants converted to Islam through interaction with Sufi religious ministrants, or dervishes and their followers.16 Some of the Orthodox converts to Islam during this period were crypto-​Christians, who dressed and behaved like Muslims and observed Islamic rituals while in public, but practiced Orthodox Christianity in private.17 The Greek War of Independence established a political and social context in which crypto-​Christians could openly declare the faith they were practicing discreetly. However, since it is not clear to what degree the crypto-​Christians voluntarily adopted Christian Orthodoxy, the statement that crypto-​Christians living in rebellious areas embraced Christian Orthodoxy during the war is questionable.18 The number of Islamized Christian Orthodox in the Peloponnese who had maintained their religious consciousness strongly enough to wish to reembrace Christian Orthodoxy during the war is uncertain. Moreover, there is little information on crypto-​Christians in the rebellious areas after 1821. For example, Hassan Divriotis, a Muslim from Filiatra in the southwestern Peloponnese, had been born to a Christian Orthodox family but was Islamized when he was a little boy in 1769. With the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, five members of his family (his mother and four of his siblings) were baptized Christian Orthodox. The fact that three of Hassan’s brothers remained Muslim indicates that many Muslims born of recently Islamized mothers were unable or unwilling to return to Christian Orthodoxy.19 Furthermore, in 1828, while some 110 Muslims who still lived in Monemvasia left for Asia Minor, others of an unknown number decided to remain and convert to Christian Orthodoxy, either because they had only recently been Islamized or because they were married to Christian Orthodox spouses.20 Available sources show that an indefinable number of Christian Orthodox in the Peloponnese who had been Islamized in the post-​Orlov period were aware of their Christian Orthodox origin. Regardless of the circumstances of their conversions, for many the religious boundaries seemed not to have been insurmountable. The bonds between Orthodox Christians and Muslims were often close, which in itself helps to explain the fluidity of religious identities.21 For example, there are accounts of mixed marriages between Muslims and Orthodox Christians in the region of Monemvasia and in Mourtarochoria in the northwestern Peloponnese.22 Sometimes a Muslim spouse respected the religious beliefs of the Orthodox Christian partner, and vice versa, and both continued to practice their different religious faiths even after marriage. For example, Seyyid Ağa, an Ottoman officer in the village of Lala in the northwestern Peloponnese, married a Christian Orthodox woman named Zoe, who continued to practice Christian Orthodoxy, kept Christian Orthodox icons in her bedroom, and even secretly

88  Proselytes of a New Nation baptized Seyyid and Aziz, her two Muslim children, and dedicated them to the Christian Orthodox church of St. Charalambos.23According to historical accounts, on some occasions Muslims from Mourtarochoria and other areas in the Peloponnese became godparents at the baptisms of children of Orthodox Christians with the active engagement of the local Christian Orthodox priests. Although the Canon Law of Eastern Orthodox Christianity requires godparents of Eastern Orthodox Christian children to be Eastern Orthodox Christians, the local priests were not penalized by the bishops for conducting these baptisms.24 Travelling extensively in Ottoman territories from 1798 to 1820, the French writer, explorer, and philhellene François Pouqueville visited the village of Floka, near ancient Olympia in the northwestern Peloponnese, in February 1816. Most of its Greek Orthodox residents had been Islamized in 1716: “The residents of this area who have embraced the Muslim religion, continue to remember the [Greek Orthodox] faith of their ancestors, which they practice. Thus, all of them connect their Turkish [i.e., Muslim] names to those of Christian saints, by calling themselves for example: Ali-​Ioannis, Mustafa-​Konstantinos, Suleyman-​ Panagiotis, and the women Fatimah-​Katerina, Ayse-​Maria, and so on.”25 The historical sources lack information on the origins of Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy, as well as on religious syncretism and the existence of crypto-​Christians in the rebellious areas prior to the Greek War of Independence. Nevertheless, it appears that there were Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy in these areas who must have been of Christian or semi-​Christian origin. According to existing population registers of the time, a fairly large number of Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy seem to have had a Christian Orthodox mother. On the other hand, many Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy seem not to have been recorded in any source; it is not easy to accept, for example, that all Muslims in the districts of Fanari, notably in Mourtarochoria and Gastouni, where some Orthodox Christians had been Islamized after the Orlov revolt, and in Karytaina and Tripolitsa in the Peloponnese, had perished or fled to the Ottoman Empire. The risk of being killed by fanatical Muslims might have prevented some Muslims or Islamized Christian Orthodox from converting to Christian Orthodoxy. A number of Muslims of Christian Orthodox origin had been killed during the first two years of the Greek War of Independence. Others, fearing the reactions of their co-​religionists, joined the Muslims who left the rebellious areas for the Ottoman Empire; many of them might have lost awareness of their Christian Orthodox origin. Some of them, gripped by the zeal of the Muslim neophyte, did not want to convert to Christian Orthodoxy, even though such an act could save their lives or rescue part or all of their inherited family property as well as protect them from captivity, abuse, maltreatment, and other misfortunes of war. In addition, the fate of Christian Orthodox women married to Muslim

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  89 males, as well as the daughters of mixed marriages in Mourtarochoria, who had often been raised Christian Orthodox, is not known. According to available sources, Christian Orthodox women married to Muslims had remained with their husbands after the start of the war, which could mean that many of these women had gradually converted to Islam.

Baptism of Muslim Captives From the start of the Greek War of Independence, amid an atmosphere of religious fanaticism, Greek insurgents often forced Muslim captives to convert to Christian Orthodoxy. Quite often, Greek insurgents forced Muslim female captives, sexual slaves, concubines, and domestic workers to be baptized in order to marry Christian Orthodox men, either their masters or friends of their masters, in exchange for economic or other trade-​offs from the candidate grooms.26 The first political institutions and newly emerged political authorities of the rebellious areas were divided on what their attitude should be toward the Christian Orthodox neophytes, whether their conversions from Islam had been forced or not. The Peloponnesian Senate and later the government of the insurgents—​also known as to ektelestiko, the Executive—​did not allow the Christian Orthodox baptism of Muslim captives, which they regarded as an act of violence toward the captured as well as an exploitation of the captives’ desire to live. The Peloponnesian Senate and the Executive believed that the Christian Orthodox baptism of Muslims was often motivated not by the neophytes’ sincere intentions but by the pressure of their difficult circumstances. Indeed, many Muslims captured during the war asked to be baptized Christian Orthodox by Greek insurgents in order to avoid death or slavery, and their requests were willingly granted by the local insurgents’ political and religious authorities. For example, in the spring of 1821, Muslim captives in Livadia were allowed to be baptized en masse in order to avoid mistreatment and torture.27 After intense debate, the Peloponnesian Senate changed its position and was inclined to authorize the Christian Orthodox baptism of Muslims in rebellious areas. Many Peloponnesian senators regarded the baptism as an act of humanism, because “amid so much bloodshed during the war, which every sensible Hellene insurgent detested, [the Senate] viewed Christian Orthodox baptism as the only way for Hellenes to appear more merciful to reborn Muslims through divine baptism.”28 Many Peloponnesian senators believed in the divine power of Christian Orthodox baptism, which would mean the rebirth of Muslims into a new life based on the teachings and values of Orthodox Christianity. At the same time, a number of senators believed that the baptism of Muslims would resonate with the political elites and the public in Christian countries in Europe

90  Proselytes of a New Nation and elsewhere, would moderate the brutality of the war against the majority of Muslims, and would make the insurgents appear more altruistic to their non-​ Christian Orthodox enemies. For these purposes, in May 1822 the Peloponnesian Senate sent Letter no. 559/​6 to the then minister of religious affairs, Iossif, Bishop of Androusa in the southwestern Peloponnese, in which the Senate asked the Executive to order Christian Orthodox bishops and priests to provide the necessary indoctrination to Orthodox Christianity and baptize all those Muslims who wanted to be baptized, starting immediately. Letter no. 559 is missing, but its content can be restored with accuracy thanks to letter no. 329/​Corinth of 9 May 1822, sent to the Executive by the minister of religious affairs to offer his view on the Christian Orthodox baptism of Muslims.29 In his letter, the minister rejected the rationale for the Senate’s request, believing that it had not examined the issue thoroughly; otherwise the Senate would not call the insurgents “merciless.” He emphasized that the Senate’s letter did not take into account that many Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy had been criminals or had become involved in acts of treason and were asking to be baptized out of fear, because they wanted to live free of any suspicion of their past crimes. The minister believed that only males twelve years old or younger should be baptized, and only with the consent of their parents. Iossif also maintained that young women who wished to, should be baptized, if the Senate justified their need to convert to Christian Orthodoxy to the Executive. Iossif suggested that no Greek should employ any young or old Ottoman (i.e., Muslim), male or female, without permission from the Executive. Those Greeks who already employed Muslims in their workplaces or homes should immediately write to the Executive and request official permission to continue employing these Muslims. The Executive sent copies of the letters from the Peloponnesian Senate and from Minister Iossif to the Vouleftikon, the Parliament, and asked for its opinion on the issue in Letter no. 1358/​10 of May 1822.30 After a lengthy debate, Parliament responded in June 1822 in Letter no. 132/​15 that it viewed as reasonable that all Muslims, without any age or gender restrictions, who wished to be baptized as Orthodox Christians should be allowed to do so, if prior to their baptism they had been indoctrinated in Christian Orthodoxy by local priests appointed for this purpose by their bishops. Parliament believed that the Church of Christ should accept all those who would come to the Church voluntarily, males and females of any age, if they wished.31 The Executive disagreed with Parliament’s views. In Letter no. 1777/​17 of June 1822 to Parliament, the Executive claimed that if the blissful, the glorious, the powerful becomes a beggar, poor, weak in everything, and one shows to this person that if [he or she] gets baptized Christian

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  91 Orthodox, [he or she] can get back whatever [he or she] was deprived of, which in no other way [he or she] could get back, and if this person sees that his or her very existence is in danger on a daily basis, the person may think that weak human beings are forced to become subject to whatever the powerful (Greek insurgents) want. This person may think that the powerful seek to imitate the system of governance of the Ottoman oppressors, through which entire populations were detached from the Christian flock and were Turkified [Islamized] in the territories of Byzantine Emperors. This is contrary to the wise beliefs of our religion, whereas the Turk [i.e., the Muslim], indifferent to the spirituality of the sacrament, is baptized with pleasure. At the same time, we do not have a sufficient number of skilled priests and places to indoctrinate throughout the Greek territory.

In addition, the Executive presented the hypothetical case of a person named Kiamil Bey [who] asks treacherously to be baptized Christian Orthodox. Our laws distinguish Hellenes on the basis of two elements—​to be born in Hellas and to believe in Christ—​and Kiamil meets both, as a native of Hellas and a believer in Christ. If he asks for and receives his Hellenic political and civil rights and requests and is given back his estates and whatever [property] he is entitled to, what would the Peloponnesians think of that? If, on the other hand, he plots against the authorities, seduces the people and becomes an elected member of the state administration, what shall he do? Create factions, commit treason, and how many other bad acts? And what if he crusades against the [Ottoman] enemy and then leads the enemy inside our territories? Here is today’s political benefit of baptizing the Ottomans, regardless of their age.32

For all these reasons, the Executive made known to Parliament its view that temporarily only those Muslim males twelve years old or younger could be baptized Christian Orthodox. Muslim males older than twelve were not to be baptized, even if members of the Christian Orthodox community were to vouch for their honesty and personal integrity. Muslim females of any age could be baptized because they were expected to be happy with the Prosorinon Politevma tis Ellados, the provisional constitution of Independent Greece adopted in 1822, that freed females from life imprisonment by their husbands and male guardians, checked the behavior of their male partners and guardians, and offered them civil rights they did not enjoy in the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, Muslim female converts to Christian Orthodoxy were not expected to turn against the Greek state. The second section of the provisional constitution of Independent Greece Prosorinon stipulated that all Greeks, without exception, should enjoy all political and civil rights and be equal before the law, regardless of their rank, class, and

92  Proselytes of a New Nation office. Greeks’ property, honor, and security was under the protection of the law, and no resident of Greece could be prosecuted for any crime without an order from a Greek court, unless the criminal were caught in the act, in which case the criminal could be prosecuted without a court order.33 There were frequent disagreements between Parliament and the Executive, mostly due to the existence of gray areas regarding the responsibilities of the two bodies, as well as Parliament’s desire to expand its duties and powers. Since the views of the Executive and Parliament often diverged, there were frequent disputes and recriminations between the two bodies, and the rebellious areas were often ruled by orders issued by the Executive. In the words of the author and politician Nikolalos Dragoumis, who had been secretary at the Third National Assembly in Troezen, “[The Executive and Parliament] consumed most of their time in prolonged and detailed written correspondence on various issues [similar to the issue of Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy], instead of spending their time on thoughts and actions regarding the actual war.”34 Parliament’s insistence on converting all Muslim captives to Christian Orthodoxy was due to some influential members, including the speaker, Dimitrios Ypsilantis, brother of Alexander Ypsilantis. Parliament replied to the Executive in Letter no. 136/​19 in June 1822, in which it claimed that the Christian Orthodox baptism of Muslim captives was politically beneficial. If Muslim captives were denied baptism, they would have trouble for the rest of their lives because they would have no political or civil rights and be even worse off in the afterlife, because the unbaptized would have no place in heaven. “Who with faith doubts that the grace of the Holy Spirit illuminates even those who are indifferent prior to baptism?” Parliament emphasized the need to build locations for Christian Orthodox indoctrination, stating that plenty of indoctrination courses were already taking place and that it was an utter calumny to claim that there were not enough educated Christian Orthodox priests able to indoctrinate proselytes in the faith. On the contrary. Parliament also claimed that any fears that neophytes might abuse the system to their own and their families’ benefit, and that they might turn against Greece should an opportunity arise, could be dispelled if a law were passed to stipulate that every Muslim captive was to be regarded as Greek and obtain Greek political rights only after baptism to Christian Orthodoxy. This law should also recognize any asset neophytes owned on the day of their Christian Orthodox baptism as their property, and that not until twenty years after baptism should they be able to occupy a public position. Such a law could at least assure the Greek authorities that the neophytes’ children would become good Greek citizens.35 The Executive, however, refused to consent. In Letter no. 1817/​20 of June 1822 to Parliament, it argued that the contingencies of war were critical, and the

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  93 insurgency could not achieve success without domestic security. Captive Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy could never inspire the Executive’s confidence for as long as the war lasted. Most of the educated priests who could indoctrinate Muslim captives into Christian Orthodoxy could not be made available because they occupied political or military positions. The Executive’s objections finally prevailed, and the Greek authorities allowed the baptism, with their parents’ consent, of Muslim males twelve years old or younger and females of any age.36 To the majority of the insurgents’ political and military classes it was clear that many Muslims had requested to be baptized in order to avoid suffering, and not for reasons of conscience. Those who were thought to choose baptism for political reasons were not to be accepted by the Greek Orthodox Church. As enemies of both the Orthodox Christian faith and of political emancipation for the Greeks, the neophytes could become dangerous, as their falsely professed belief in Christianity would allow them to penetrate the political and military structures of the state. Nevertheless, amid the turmoil of war and the lack of an efficient state administration, a large number, though impossible to verify, of Muslim captives converted to Christian Orthodoxy without the consent of the Executive. Many poor and socially low-​status Muslim captives converted in order to save their lives or escape their plight in the war. Affluent and high-​status Muslim captives hoped that they would be free sooner or later, either through prisoner exchanges or after their families had paid ransom to the Greek insurgents. The fact that females could be baptized at any age was intended to address a reality of the war: many Orthodox Christian men married Muslims, even underage girls, and Muslim brides had to convert before they could have a Christian Orthodox wedding. For example, a Muslim widow and her son from Salona had remained Muslim following the Greek War of Independence, but her daughter had converted to Christian Orthodoxy in order to marry her Orthodox Christian husband.37 This reflected the patriarchal nature of Greek and other societies, including those in non-​Ottoman Europe and the United States, and women’s subservience to men in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century. The Christian Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople did not interfere with the conversion of Muslims to Christian Orthodoxy in rebellious Greece. After the execution of Grigorios V and the murder of other Christian Orthodox bishops and laypeople in the Ottoman Empire, the ferocity of the climate led the patriarchal synod of bishops to de facto suspend its operations temporarily. The insurgents’ political and ecclesiastical authorities did not seek the patriarchate’s view on the subject; communication between the insurgent Greeks and the patriarchate was difficult in any case. The issue of conversion to Christian Orthodoxy

94  Proselytes of a New Nation of Muslims of Christian Orthodox descent or the return of those who had been Christian Orthodox and been Islamized in Ottoman times had already been addressed centuries earlier: their return to Christian Orthodoxy required them only to be blessed through the anointment of holy chrism, which was sufficient to welcome the formerly lost soul back to the Christian Orthodox flock.38

Conversion Procedures The procedure of conversion resembled the practice followed in the Ottoman system when a non-​Muslim wished to be Islamized: the only requirement for conversion was one’s will to convert to Islam and the recitation of the shahada, the verbal Islamic profession of faith in the oneness of Allah and Muhammad as his prophet. Similarly, during the war and in postwar Hellas, the Muslim’s wish to convert to Christian Orthodoxy, the declaration to the local Christian Orthodox authorities of the Muslim’s will to convert, and the sacrament of Christian Orthodox baptism were the only required steps. The successful outcome of the Greek War of Independence with the establishment of the Kingdom of Hellas precipitated a program of educational, military, political, and economic reforms between 1839 and 1876, known as Tanzimat reforms, that aimed to modernize the Ottoman state, economy, society, and army.39 The process of modernization, initiated at the insistence of the European powers, involved the adoption of models and practices, tested in industrialized European countries, that would enable the empire to protect itself from further territorial losses, decline, and potential dissolution. In the context of the Tanzimat reforms and in view of the atrocities against Muslims during the Greek War of Independence, which often involved involuntary conversion to Christian Orthodoxy, the Ottoman Empire revised its conversion procedures as part of the Reform Edict of 1856 that followed the Crimean War of 1853–​1856. The edict pledged equality in education, government appointment, and administration of justice for all subjects regardless of their religious faith, and affirmed the state’s intolerance of forced conversion to Islam, also making the execution of Muslim apostates who had converted to other faiths illegal. The conversion procedure was formalized. First, for the sake of transparency as well as for detecting and remedying cases of forced conversion, a council composed of Muslim and non-​Muslim religious authorities and officials was formed to process conversion petitions that required converts to declare that their conversions were of their own free will. The council then approved the case and recorded in a document called mazbata, which council members signed and sealed.40 The Tanzimat conversion procedure seemed to have

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  95 influenced the conversion procedures for Muslims to Christian Orthodoxy in the late nineteenth century in Balkan states that emerged after the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875–​1878. Like the Ottoman conversion procedures of the Tanzimat era, these were more formalized and bureaucratic than the conversion procedures in Hellas during and after the war. In addition, the Greek War of Independence had set a pattern for future Balkan national uprisings and conflicts, all of which aimed to create unified nations by destroying ethnic and religious groups that stood in the way, such as the Muslims, whose loyalty was assumed to be with the Ottomans. Atrocities against Muslims, including forced conversion to Orthodox Christianity, by Bulgarians, Serbs, and other Christian Orthodox took place during uprisings and conflicts in the context of the Great Eastern Crisis and the emergence of new Christian Orthodox nations in the northern Balkans (Bulgaria, Montenegro, Serbia, Romania). The conversion procedure introduced with the Reform Edict of 1856 in the Ottoman Empire was seen as appropriate for securing transparency and for preventing and remedying cases of forced conversion in the new Balkan nations that emerged after 1878. For example, many Muslims, Roman Catholics, and Jews in the Bulgarian city of Ruse (Rusçuk, in Turkish) submitted petitions to the local Bulgarian Orthodox diocese, as well as to the Bulgarian governor of the area, requesting that they be allowed to convert to Bulgarian Orthodox Christianity. As in the cases of religious conversions in the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat era, the petitions in Ruse were processed by a committee of high-​ranking officials that involved the local regional governor, the mayor of the city of Ruse, a cleric representing the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and the local mufti, a Muslim legal expert empowered to rule on religious affairs.41 In providing their reasons for converting to (Bulgarian) Orthodox Christianity, petitioners mostly stressed how long they had been living in Bulgaria or with Bulgarians, as well as how long they had been practicing the Orthodox Christian faith. In hackneyed phrases reminiscent of statements from Greek official reports in relation to Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy, the Muslims of Ruse who wish to convert to (Bulgarian) Christian Orthodoxy strove to persuade the committee members responsible for processing their petitions that no force had been exercised upon them to convert and that their decision to convert was the outcome of their free will. Thus, in his petition of 7 December 1894, Alişan Ibrahimov, a Muslim resident of Ruse, pleaded with the committee evaluating his petition that there had been no coercion in his decision to convert and that he wished to embrace Christian Orthodoxy from inner conviction. In February 1882, Mehmed Hasanov, another Muslim resident of Ruse, stated in his petition, “[N]‌obody forced me to convert and it is my decision because I have been living with Bulgarians for a long time.”42

96  Proselytes of a New Nation

Missing Family Members As soon as large-​scale military operations subsided following the naval battle of Navarino in October 1827 and for the entire period until the first few years after establishment of the Kingdom of Hellas in 1832, Muslim families, Muslim families living in rebellious areas began to search for their children and other loved ones with whom they had lost contact during the war. The conditions were favorable: international treaties, such as the 22 March 1829 London Protocol concluded by Britain, France, and Russia, provided for the right of Muslims from Greece to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire if they wished, and forced Greece to grant amnesty to Muslims and all who fought against the Greek insurgents during the war. The Greek government of Ioannis Kapodistrias viewed the reunification of Muslim families with philanthropy and understanding, but reunification encountered two major obstacles: (a) lost family members had been scattered all over Greece and often far beyond the country and therefore were hard to trace, and (b) many Christian Orthodox neophytes refused to abandon the Christian Orthodox families with whom they lived. European ambassadors both in Istanbul and the Greek capital played an active role in the liberation of war captives and the reunification of Muslim and Christian Orthodox families torn apart by the war. Kapodistrias himself showed great interest in the release of Muslim captives in territories under Greek control and their reunification with their families; he collaborated with the European ambassadors and provided every available state resource for the tracking of lost Muslim family members. Kapodistrias also referred every individual case to Greece’s district governors and civil servants and ordered that Muslims and neophytes be located.43 However, the efforts by the European ambassadors and Kapodistrias’s administration were often obstructed by Orthodox Christians in the households and farms where captive neophytes and lost Muslim family members were working.44 The families’ search for their lost Muslim and neophyte relatives intensified following the 3 February 1830 Protocol of London, which recognized Greece as an independent state and included provisions for optional amnesty for Muslim combatants against Greek rebels and voluntary emigration to the Ottoman Empire for Muslims living in Greece.45 Maria Tzovaertzi, a Christian Orthodox woman married to a Muslim, was one of the many people who lived in the Ottoman Empire and visited Greece in search of her neophyte daughter, whom Maria found in Leondari in the southwestern Peloponnese.46 When a number of Muslim families sought to reunite with the children they had entrusted to Christian Orthodox families during the war, however, their children did not wish to leave the family that had adopted them. The most common reason was that, once found, many Muslims and neophytes remained closely tied to their birthplace and preferred to live and die there. Thus, for example,

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  97 the neophyte Vasilios, son of Ağa Efendi, a resident of Parori in the district of Mystra, refused to leave Greece, saying, “I do not want to go; I want to live in this place where I was born, because here is the property of my father.”47 A great number of missing Muslims and neophytes in Greece had lost contact with their Muslim biological parents at a very young age, and with vague or no memories of their Muslim parents had developed strong bonds with their Christian Orthodox adoptive parents. In addition, many of the neophytes were married to Christian Orthodox spouses and had children, another reason for their decision to remain in Greece. Some might have thought that if they moved to the Ottoman Empire, the authorities there would harass them for having renounced the Islamic faith. Some Muslims in Greece were reluctant to move to the Ottoman Empire due to their advanced age or because of their Christian Orthodox, Islamized Christian Orthodox, or partial Christian Orthodox origins.48 For example, four afotistoi, or “unenlightened” brothers—​a term that was used for non-​Christians, including Muslims and Jews—​and their late Christian Orthodox mother, Chrysoula, had lived in Sparta in 1834. Their sister, however, also named Chrysoula, had converted to Orthodox Christianity.49 In July 1830, the district governor of eastern Sparta reported to his supervisor, the supreme district governor of Lakedaimonia and Monemvasia, that he had asked two Muslim children, a boy and a girl living with the Greek Orthodox Antonianis family, to visit his headquarters for interrogation. The authorities wished to inquire whether the children would prefer to remain in Sparta with the family or rejoin their Muslim biological parents, who had been seeking them, in the Ottoman Empire. The children stated, “[W]‌e accepted a long time ago to be baptized as Orthodox Christians, and now we live free to win our daily bread without being under anyone’s authority. We want to live here.”50 Similarly, when the children, a boy and a girl, of Zaloumi Yusûf Ağa, an affluent notable, who were born in Vardounia in the Peloponnese and were living in Marathonnisi in the southern Peloponnese, were found and interrogated by the Greek authorities in 1830, they responded, “A long time ago, we adopted the Christian Orthodox faith voluntarily and we were baptized Christian Orthodox, and now we live free with a person who provides us the necessary means for our lives and without being subject to anyone’s authority. We want to keep living in this place.”51 In January 1831, the committee of Attica and Euboea responsible for resolving issues arising from the sale of Muslim properties in that area reported to the Greek authorities that an Athenian Muslim male had recognized his twelve-​year-​old daughter, who had moved away from her Muslim family as an infant at the start of the war, in Aegina. She had been baptized Christian Orthodox and raised by a Christian Orthodox priest. The biological father had used all possible means to persuade the young neophyte to leave Aegina and join

98  Proselytes of a New Nation him in Athens, but without success. Around January 1831 the Muslim father appeared before the committee of Attica and Euboea and asked Hadji Ismail Bey and the other committee members to help him take back his daughter. He had learned that her adoptive father, who had recently visited Athens, was poor; he himself being better off, he wished his daughter to live a more prosperous life with him. The committee summoned the neophyte to ask her if she would prefer to rejoin her biological father. The Muslim man who had alleged that he was the girl’s biological father had instructed the committee to arrest his daughter and surrender her to him, regardless of her will and, because she was underage, without soliciting her opinion. With tears in her eyes, the girl stated that she preferred to remain in the Christian Orthodox faith in which she had been raised and was not convinced that the Muslim man was her biological father. The committee decided to house the twelve-​year-​old neophyte with members of the committee in the home of another local family to allow enough time for her to get to know her alleged biological father, who was visiting her regularly in hope that she might change her mind. Eight days later, however, the neophyte’s mind remained unchanged, and the committee’s report asserted, “[S]‌he appears to prefer to die, rather than change her mind and religion.”52 In July 1831, the fifteen-​year-​old neophyte Vasilios, whose Muslim name had been Yjahjas, son of the late Muslim Ağa Efendi living in the village of Parori in Mystras, refused to rejoin his Muslim relatives in Edirne (Adrianoupolis, in Greek), who had left the Peloponnese during the war and were looking for him. After his father’s death in the war, Vasilios was taken in by the Greek Orthodox family of Panagiotis Chrysikos, an artisan and son-​ in-​ law of Dimitrios Saltaferos in Parori. Chrysikos converted Yjahjas to Christian Orthodoxy and employed him as his apprentice. N. Boukouras, the district governor of Lakademonia and Monemvasia, Parori’s district, summoned Vasilios to tell him that he had an order from the state Secretariat of Foreign Affairs to notify Vasilios that some of his Muslim relatives in Edirne were looking for him. The Greek authorities could help him rejoin his relatives in Edirne, if he so wished. Vasilios replied that he had been living with Panagiotis Chrysikos for five or six years, that Panagiotis was teaching him his craft, and that he was happy with his life in the Chrysikos family, who treated him well. He preferred to remain in Mystras with the family he knew and had grown up with rather than risk moving to the unknown with people who claimed to be his relatives but whom he did not remember because they had left when he was very young. Vasilios also expressed a wish to regain part of his Muslim father’s property in the Mystras area that had been confiscated during the war: “I was born here, and I wish to live here, because my father’s assets are here. I ask the government only to return part of my father’s lands to me that will allow me to live independently and raise my own family.”53

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  99 Similarly, in January 1830, the district governor of Lakonia and Messinia in the southern and southwestern Peloponnese was asked by the government to investigate whether the neophyte children of the Muslim Zalumi Yusuf Ağa wished to remain in the region or rejoin their biological parents, who had fled to the Ottoman Empire during the war. In his report, the district governor claimed that “under no circumstances would [Zalumi Yusuf Ağa’s] children be happy to rejoin their [biological] parents in the Ottoman Empire, because the only parents they knew were those of the Christian Orthodox family that had adopted them and with whom they lived.”54 There were a few cases of children who had converted to Orthodox Christianity after they had been born as Muslims to Orthodox Christian mothers who had been taken prisoner during the war and had been forced to marry Muslim men. Some of these mothers left their marriage and escaped to Greece with their children, whom they then baptized as Orthodox Christians. One such case was that of Vasilios Aristovoulos, who had come to Greece from Istanbul and was seventeen years old in 1843. His mother, Katingo Iannopoulou, was Greek Orthodox from Chios and had been captured during the Ottoman massacre in Chios in 1822 and transferred to Istanbul. There she married Mustafa Ağa, a Muslim merchant, and gave birth to Vasilios, who had been named Ahmet. Iannopoulou secretly fled from her husband when Vasilios was six years old, escaping to Greece in the fall of 1831, around the time of the assassination of Kapodistrias. She claimed that she did so because of “religious and patriotic zeal.” Initially, she stayed on Hydra, where, in 1833, she baptized her son to Orthodox Christianity, then moved to Ermoupolis, the capital of the Greek island of Syros. Vasilios’s Muslim father requested assistance from the Ottoman authorities to help him reunite with his son.55 The Ottoman authorities coordinated with the Greek government and found Vasilios in 1843. To Mustafa Ağa’s disappointment, when asked whether he preferred to stay in Syros or move with his father to Istanbul, the boy replied, “My wish is that after I complete my studies in the middle school here, I might also complete university studies, and then go to Paris to hone my skills in science, and thereafter go wherever my interest leads me. I was abandoned by my father, and I cannot change my feelings and my intention to study.”56 The Greek authorities then notified the Ottoman diplomatic services that they could not force the young man to join his father in Istanbul and return to the Islamic faith, but that if Mustafa Ağa still wished to take his son back, he should pursue legal measures through the Greek courts.57 Apart from reasons of marital love or feelings of gratitude toward those who had saved them from death, the decisions of some female neophytes to live in Greece with their Christian Orthodox husbands might also suggest that their spouses exerted psychological pressure on them not to leave the country. Some Muslim family members visited Greece in 1830 seeking Aikaterini and

100  Proselytes of a New Nation Efrossini, the two neophyte daughters of Zadik Hafiz Mehmet Sandin Efendi who were living in the house of a Christian Orthodox named Markakis (Markos) Pavanopoulos in the town of Nissi in Messinia in the Peloponnese. When the Muslim family members asked Aikaterini and Efrossini to rejoin their Muslim biological family, the neophyte sisters refused to follow them to Istanbul. When, at the request of their Muslim family members, Aikaterini and Efrossini were summoned and interrogated by the local authorities, who wished to investigate whether the two sisters would rather live in poverty in Nissi than enjoy an affluent life in Istanbul, the sisters gave the following answer: This cannot happen, because we were raised in Christian Orthodoxy, in which we believe, and cannot give up our faith and adopt the religion of our birth father, as you advise us. This religion is utterly unfamiliar to us; we do not also agree to part with our savior, the aforementioned Markakis with whom I, Efrossini, live and wish to make my legitimate husband, united in the sacrament of holy matrimony. As for our father Zadik Effendi, we don’t personally recognize him as our father, and we can’t recall him at all, nor do we regard as our father any person other than the man who set us free, raised us for so many years and took one of us as his wife.58

Similarly, a neophyte named Vasiliki, born and raised with the Muslim name Bebe in Chania, Crete, was captured and enslaved by a Captain Halovasilis, who baptized her Christian Orthodox and married her to his widowed brother-​in-​law. Vasiliki lived with Halovasilis’s brother-​in-​law for seven years and then was married to Anagnostis Giannakou Barberis, a Christian Orthodox from Kasteli in Kissamos, Crete, who left with her for Argos. Vasiliki was twenty years old in 1831, the year her Muslim parents sent a representative to find her in Argos and ask her to join her Muslim family in Crete. Despite the representative’s efforts, she refused to leave Argos because “[she] wanted to die for the faith she had embraced.” When she was asked if her decision was motivated by fear of her husband’s reaction or any other reason she did not wish to disclose, Vasiliki responded, “I am not seized by any fears, but I am not pleased to live the rest of my life with barbarians.”59 On many occasions, Muslim family members from the Ottoman Empire, including parents, left Greece empty-​handed because the relatives they were looking for had been abducted by Ibrahim’s army and moved to Egypt as servants to army and state officials or sold in the slave markets of the Middle East and North Africa.60 After 1831 there were far fewer cases of Muslims from the Ottoman Empire looking to reunite with family members whom they had lost track of in Greece during the war. Kapodistrias, who had shown a special interest in assisting the unification of families separated during the war, was assassinated in September 1831, and, as time passed, locating people lost during the war became more difficult.

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  101 In addition, the refusal of many found family members to join their Muslim families in the Ottoman Empire as well as the conversion of lost Muslim family members to Christian Orthodoxy might have discouraged Muslims with missing relatives in Greece who had not taken any action by then. It was too great a challenge to begin a search for their missing loved ones almost ten years after the start of the Greek War of Independence that had ravaged Greece and drastically changed its anthropography. A report by P. Monastiriotis, the district governor of Lakonia, who had been asked to help locate one of the two missing Muslim children of Ahmet Ali and his wife Emine from Tripolitsa, to the state Secretariat of Foreign Affairs was among the few reports of this kind after 1831. Monastiriotis informed the Secretariat that they had located Ahmet, the missing son, but that four or five years earlier he had willingly converted to Christian Orthodoxy, lived at the residence of Panagiotis Kossonakos in Marathonnisi, and worked for Kossonakos’s farms and household. He was nineteen years old when he was found in 1838. He did not know if he had any Muslim relatives living in the Ottoman Empire, but he recalled that ten years ago his Muslim mother had left the village Vatika, present-​day Neapoli, in the district of Monemvasia. The newly found neophyte asserted that “in no way would he wish to leave Greece and join his Muslim biological family in the Ottoman Empire.”61 Much of the source material that provides information on Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy, including information about the fate of missing Muslim family members during the Greek War of Independence as well as postwar efforts to reconnect these members with alleged Muslim family who had left for the Ottoman Empire, are official institutional sources: reports, memoranda, ciphers, and telegrams, which offer invaluable insight into the minds of Greek bureaucrats and civil servants. Among other things, terms denoting religious affiliation, such as “Muslim” and “Christian” or “Christian Orthodox,” were often interchangeable with terms that described national identity, state affiliation, or citizenship, such as “Ottoman” and “Greek.” In the mind of Greek civil servants and state authorities, a Muslim was an Ottoman and a Christian Orthodox was a Greek citizen, as reflected in the constitutional and other legal documents of the time. Nationalism and national identity were conflated with faith and religious affiliation. In addition, although the cases these sources discuss may often seem entirely convincing, one might question the veracity and plausibility of these sources. The bland and unquestioning use of a Muslim’s conversion to Christian Orthodoxy out of “free will,” a common phrase in most of these sources, often implies that conversion as a survival tactic came to be seen as “free will” by the Greek authorities. The phrase “free will and conscience” or the association of conversion to Orthodox Christianity through baptism and the simultaneous transfer to freedom and a free life are so frequently repeated in these sources that it gives rise

102  Proselytes of a New Nation to suspicions concerning the veracity of their statements or the possible use of force or other strong “means of persuasion.” For example, the neophyte children (a boy and a girl) living with the Greek Orthodox Antonianis family in Sparta stated during their interrogation by the district governor of Lakedaimonia and Monemvasia in July 1830 that they had accepted baptism as Orthodox Christians and lived free. Similarly, the neophyte children (a boy and a girl) of Zaloumi Yusûf Ağa in Vardounia stated that they had accepted the Christian Orthodox faith voluntarily and after that they lived free, without being subject to anyone’s authority. The difficulty for the scholar is that the documentation furnishes no actual proof. Finding evidence to the contrary through other sources is not easy, because other than written archival sources, in most cases alternative sources are lacking. In addition, Muslim converts often told the Greek authorities what they wanted to hear, which might explain the emphasis on love of the Christian Orthodox faith or patriotism. Thus, Katingo Iannopoulou told the Greek authorities that she and her neophyte son, Vasilios Aristovoulos, had escaped from Istanbul and her Muslim husband, Mustafa Ağa, to Greece due to “religious and patriotic zeal.” Neophyte Vasiliki, former Bebe, from Chania (Crete) told the Greek authorities who interrogated her that she’d rather “die for the faith she had embraced [Christian Orthodoxy] than leave Argos and join [her] Muslim biological family” because she did not wish to “live the rest of [her] life with the barbarians [i.e., Ottoman Muslims].” The committee of Attica and Euboea responsible for resolving issues arising from the sale of Muslim properties reported with regard to the twelve-​year-​old neophyte from Aegina that she appeared to prefer to die rather than change her mind and religion. As most of the inhabitants of the rebellious areas and later in the Kingdom of Hellas were illiterate, converts often had words put into their mouths by other community members and civil servants in order to make the conversion look as if it had been proper and in line with the laws and procedures prescribed by the Greek polity. After all, the Greek authorities could not tolerate untoward incidents that would not look good to friend and foe, including the Great European Powers and the Ottoman Empire; hence the guarded wording in the official state documents and the off-​ repeated formula in these documents that neophytes had converted to Orthodox Christianity out of their own free will and conscience.

Neophytes in Economic Despair During the Greek War of Independence and the postwar years, most of the population of Greece, including the overwhelming majority of neophytes, faced severe economic problems that often threatened their very survival. The war and

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  103 Ibrahim Pasha’s disastrous invasion of the Peloponnese and Roúmeli had devastated the rebellious areas and reduced the inhabitants to economic despair. When Kapodistrias set foot in Greece for the very first time on 8 January 1828, he found a discouraging situation: fighting was continuing against the Ottomans and Ibrahim’s army, and factional and dynastic conflicts had led to two civil wars that had ravaged the country. Greece was bankrupt; most of the people were suffering from extreme poverty, famine, and disease; thousands of refugees from areas outside Greece had arrived in the country; and misery was everywhere. The Greeks welcomed Kapodistrias as a Messiah, and as soon as he arrived in Greece, he began working for the country’s recovery. Among his top priorities were support for the poor, housing for the homeless, securing small farmers’ land and properties and protecting them from falling prey to the greed of powerful landowners and creditors.62 Kapodistrias also tried to help the neophytes, most of whom were living in extreme poverty. Many had been dispossessed of their parents’ or spouses’ properties that, like all public Ottoman properties and most of the private Muslim properties in the rebellious areas, had been encroached upon by Greek insurgents or confiscated by the insurgent authorities as property of the Greek state under the jus ad bellum (law of war). Many neophytes and civil servants sent letters asking Kapodistrias to address this problem; many of the letters described the neophytes’ desperate economic situation, caused mainly by the wartime losses of their property, and pleading for help from the Greek governor. Earlier attempts by neophytes to recover their inherited family property had met with little success.63 In a letter of 14 June 1830 to Kapodistrias, which is typical of the content, language, and writing style of neophytes’ letters to the Greek governor, neophyte Aikaterini from Corinth writes: The misery in which I find myself is due to this lack of economic resources for everything, and distresses me as I wander from house to house, working every day, filled with pain and fatigue, just to find the food we need for the day. . . . Respected Governor, I owned a field with a house and a small olive grove in Corinth for many years. With tears in my eyes I beg you, Respected sir, to order that my ownership be restored, so that I may be able to live without shame. Your philanthropy has saved a great number of petitioners. Please also save me, honored father. With all respect, [the undersigned].64

From the start of the Greek War of Independence, the Greek authorities took control of, or “nationalized,” Ottoman public land and land owned by Muslims who had abandoned the rebellious areas. For example, a bill of 23 February 1822, ratified again on 25 February 1832 by the Fifth National

104  Proselytes of a New Nation Assembly, deprived Muslims and Christian Orthodox of any region who had left Greece, remained neutral, taken up arms against Greek insurgents, or assisted the Ottoman enemy of all political rights, including the right to hold private property, for life.65 Rather than distributing the nationalized land to landless farmers, however, in 1824 and 1825 the Greek authorities used the land as collateral to secure loans from British banks to pay for the war. These lands, known as ethnikes gaies or ethnika ktimata (national estates), included only Muslim lands in the Peloponnese and western Roúmeli. The Ottoman army controlled eastern Roúmeli and the island of Euboea at the end of the war and left only after negotiating the protection of the rights and properties of Muslims in those regions.66 Most Orthodox Christian farmers in the Peloponnese and western Roúmeli, including neophytes, favored the nationalization of these lands in hopes that one day the Greek authorities would redistribute the properties to them. The fact that international treaties of the time did not regulate the future status of the ethnikes gaies encouraged many neophytes to write to Kapodistrias67 in hopes that the Greek governor would authorize providing land from the ethnikes gaies to help them recover at least part of their lost family property.68 Under Ottoman law, neophytes could not normally inherit any family property since they had abandoned the Islamic faith, but Ottoman law did not apply in areas under Greek insurgents’ control. During the Greek War of Independence, the Greek revolutionary authorities had often ceded land from the ethnikes gaies to neophyte former Muslims or to their children.69 In the meantime, Kapodistrias had formed a state committee with the mandate to collect statistical information on, among other things, the number, profile, and economic status of neophytes. The committee informed the Greek governor of certain cases of neophytes who had begged them to pass their letters on to him.70 Among those who wrote to Kapodistrias were Muslims who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy and who, according to their claims, had fought alongside the Greek insurgents. One such case was that of Konstantinos Divriotis, a neophyte from Filiatra, whose Christian Orthodox father had converted to Islam in 1769 and whose siblings and mother had later converted to Christian Orthodoxy during the Greek War of Independence.71 It is not known whether all of these requests were granted by the Kapodistrias administration. However, the fact that there are no follow-​up letters from the same neophytes in later years might indicate that the petitioners had been able to recover at least part of their inherited family property. In response to such requests, on 8 June 1829 Kapodistrias issued a state circular, No. 4803, ordering the cession to the neophytes of part of the ethnikes gaies as a compensation for their lost family property. The only obligation of the neophyte beneficiaries would be to pay the tithes for these ceded land, as all farmers did.72 In addition to being

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  105 a philanthropic measure to benefit the neophytes, Kapodistrias also realized that the order would increase the amount of farmed land, growing the state’s tax revenue, and thus help Greece to gradually pay off its foreign debts.73 The Greek governor’s favorable disposition toward conversion to Christian Orthodoxy encouraged many neophytes to move to Nafplio in order to be closer to the seat of government and make it easier to submit petitions to the governor and lobby for their cases. In the meantime, the London Protocol of 3 February 1830, which recognized Greece as an independent state, provided that the ethnikes gaies were to be regarded as the property of the Greek state; therefore neither the Ottoman government nor the heirs of Muslim proprietors had any right to compensation for these lands, nor the right to reclaim them by legal means.74 Many neophytes misunderstood the purpose of the restoration to them of land from the ethnikes gaies, believing that the London Protocol ensured full ownership of the land that had been granted to them. Many of them sold the ceded land to big landowners and creditors. Kapodistrias saw the danger of concentrating large tracts of land in the hands of powerful landowners, who, exploiting the poverty of many of the neophytes, were purchasing the lands to enrich themselves, as well as the dangers of a rapid evaporation of the neophytes’ means of living.75 On 12 June 1830 the Greek governor sent a circular to the state civil service and the country’s local authorities in which he clarified that the neophytes did not, in fact, have full ownership of the lands granted to them from the ethnikes gaies. In a letter (No. 2142/​1830) to the Gerousia, the Senate, Kapodistrias argued: The Ottomans [i.e., Muslims] who have embraced Christianity, who once had had wealth and land, are now poor and miserable, and many of them are considering moving to Turkey [i.e., the Ottoman Empire], having no means to live in Hellas [i.e., Greece]. We have an obligation to forestall such a scandal and have no other way than this. . . . We urge you, Gentlemen, to grant your consent to the government’s cession of part of their properties to each of these neophytes under the following two conditions: a) this cession will be temporary until a permanent bill is passed on this issue; and b) the ceded land will not pay for the state revenue.76

The 12 June 1830 state circular also instructed state civil servants and the country’s local authorities to inform the neophytes who had either sold or were about to sell their piece of ethnikes gaies land that the Greek state would not regard the sale as valid, and to warn buyers or potential buyers of these pieces of land that these assets were state-​owned and that the Greek state reserved the right to reclaim them without the obligation to compensate the buyers. In doing so, Kapodistrias wished to protect the ethnikes gaies from the appetite of powerful local notables and landowners, most of whom had been tax collectors in

106  Proselytes of a New Nation Ottoman times and who, exploiting the turmoil of war, had already appropriated considerable amounts of land, including from ethnikes gaies, either through purchases or encroachment.77 Kapodistrias proposed a Senate bill, which passed on 3 July 1830, that provided for the Greek state to use the ethnikes gaies to compensate the neophytes and their families for property lost during the war. France, Britain, and Russia, Greece’s three guarantor powers whom Kapodistrias had consulted before acting, supported the bill, and appeared to be sympathetic toward the neophytes’ property rights.78 The amount of compensation, in the form of a plot of land from the ethnikes gaies, had to be in proportion to the neophytes’ family’s economic conditions before conversion to Christian Orthodoxy. The land allocated had to produce sufficient annual income for the neophytes and their family to live on, that is, between 200 and 2,000 phoenix (the Greek currency from 1828 to 1832), an amount equal to or exceeding the average annual income of a blue-​collar worker at the time.79 In exchange, the neophytes who would benefit from this measure had to pay a tithe tax on their annual income and would have no right to sell or mortgage the land.80 After a debate, the Senate agreed to pass the bill, while limiting the proposed annual income to 200 to 1,000 phoenix.81 The property compensation would apply only to neophytes who had remained in Greece during the war, and not to foreign nationals who had arrived during or after the war or to neophytes living abroad. The bill that passed mostly targeted Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy, and fewer neophytes who had converted from Judaism. The maximum annual income that the ceded ethnikes gaies were allowed to generate was granted to neophytes whose parents had controlled large estates in rebellious areas. Usually the owners of or holders of established property rights in large estates in these areas in Ottoman times had been Muslims, with a Christian Orthodox minority. This is not to say that Jewish converts to Christian Orthodoxy, especially those with proven records of supporting the Greek insurgents during the war, did not benefit from the bill. On 19 July 1831 neophyte Georgios Raphael, a former Jew born in Tripolitsa, converted to Christian Orthodoxy prior to the start of the Greek War of Independence. He moved to Sparta during the war and sent a petition to Kapodistrias, who in turn passed it to the Senate for review. Raphael maintained that he had supported the Greeks during the war, and requested the help of the Greek authorities to recover a house and its land in Tripolitsa, which had belonged to Mustafa, one of his two brothers, who had converted to Islam and gone missing during the war. His second brother, Sotirios, who had also converted to Christian Orthodoxy, had arrogated Mustafa’s house and land to himself:

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  107 [F]‌or the impious Ismaili Arabs [i.e., the Egyptian forces of Ibrahim Pasha] who persecuted me and endangered me many times for my loyalty to the [Greek] nation . . . Mr. Chrysogelos [the district governor of Tripolitsa] shall testify that he has testimonies from bishops. . . . I beg you for God’s love to grant me alms. If doubt exists concerning my right to the family house, the honorable government can appoint whomever they wish to verify this petition in my homeland. Because I fought a great deal for my faith and for my homeland, for this reason, fellow citizens, please do not ignore my evident rights.82

On 23 September 1830, Kapodistrias sent a circular to local Greek authorities notifying them of the bill’s approval by the Senate and instructing them in detail on how to apply its provisions. In particular, the local authorities were responsible for recording the first and last names of the neophytes, the places of their origin and residence, their profession and position at the time of the recording, their marital status, the name of their spouse, the total number of family members, the social status of their family of origin, and their property. Local authorities were instructed to record all of this information with great care and meticulousness and to provide to the government their views on the approximate amount of annual income needed for the family of each neophyte, as well as the size and exact location of the compensating ethnikes gaies property to be granted, always taking into account that the compensation should generate an annual income of 200 to 1,000 phoenix for each neophyte’s family, amounting to an average land area of 10 to 50 stremmata (1 to 5 hectares, or 2.47 to 12.35 acres).83 The bill also provided that the neophytes could be granted their ethnikes gaies lands in the area where their lost family property had been located, if they so wished. After a long delay,84 on 4 March 1832 the Fifth National Assembly, convened in Argos before its relocation to Nafplio, decided that all neophytes who had held family property prior to the Greek War of Independence would be granted, after an auction and in proportion to their family property prior to the war, an area of ethnikes gaies land able to produce an annual income of 500 to 1,500 phoenix. All the grants of ethnikes gaies land made prior to that date were declared null and void.85 This followed a long and heated debate in the National Assembly over whether the ethinkes gaies land grants should range from 10 to 50 stremmata without regard to the annual income produced or, instead of land from the ethnikes gaies, a state credit of up to 4,000 phoenix should be granted to each neophyte, as had been done for all Greek citizens,86 to buy their own land. These considerations were voted down in the final bill.87 It is not clear how many neophytes benefited from Kapodistrias’s measures. His efforts to create a powerful centralized state brought him into conflict with

108  Proselytes of a New Nation district nobles who had enjoyed economic and administrative privileges in their regions, and ultimately led to his assassination on 27 September 1831. Following Kapodistrias’s assassination, Greece entered a period of turmoil that lasted until the arrival of King Otto, during which valuable official records and documents of the neophytes, including censuses and registers, were lost or destroyed, making it complicated to estimate the number of neophytes or to reconstruct their lives during the war and in postwar Greece.88 Most of the information regarding neophytes comes from the Ottonian era (1832–​1862), including the registers of the Nafplio and Lakonia districts discussed in this book, which are based on data collected during the Kapodistrian period. In fact, the information provided in the registers of Nafplio and Lakonia is organized in a way that follows Kapodistrias’s instructions to the country’s civil service and local authorities in his circular letter of 23 September 1830.

Muslim Apostates Under Islam, the conscious abandonment of Islamic faith by a Muslim in word or deed is considered to be apostasy, and until the late nineteenth century, most Sunni and Shi’a Islamic scholars held that “apostasy” was an act of religious treason punishable by death.89 Although seven suras (chapters) of the Qur’an are preoccupied with Islamic apostasy, none of these specifies the death penalty for the apostate, but they all mention the Muslim apostate in damning terms. The death penalty for a Muslim apostate is based on various hadiths, legal interpretations of Prophet Muhammad’s sayings or acts, pronounced over the centuries by renowned Islamic scholars. With regard to Ottoman law, until the nineteenth century Islamic apostasy was seen as a crime in both civil and criminal law. The doctrine remained valid until 1844, when, under the reign of Ottoman sultan Abdülmecid I, the death penalty for Muslim apostates became inactive, but it was never formally abolished.90 The highly influential sixteenth-​century sheik-​ul-​Islam Ebussuud was unequivocal regarding the sharia ruling for a dhimmī who reverts to infidelity after having accepted Islam: “He is recalled to Islam, if he does not return, he is killed.”91 The penalty for a Muslim male apostate was death. Ottoman jurists generally granted a three-​day delay before the execution. If the apostate repented within those three days and accepted Islam, he was reprieved. If the male apostate had emigrated, the Ottoman judge declared him legally dead, in which case the judicial decision would have to be executed if/​when the apostate reentered Ottoman territory. For Muslim female apostates the punishment was less severe: they were beaten and imprisoned, but rarely executed.92 However, a closer inspection of historical archives shows that the death penalty was not widely

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  109 imposed on Muslim apostates in Ottoman times, and when it was, it was viewed as a last resort.93 When Islam was weak, Muslim apostates were regarded as particularly dangerous because they could infect others by their example. Feelings of insecurity caused the Ottoman authorities to seek out scapegoats.94 The last formal execution of a Muslim apostate by beheading took place in 1843 in the Ottoman capital Istanbul.95 A number of Muslims who had decided to convert to Christian Orthodoxy were executed and became martyrs of the Christian Orthodox faith, known as “neo-​martyrs” to distinguish them from the martyrs of the early Christian church. The neo-​martyrs were former Christian Orthodox who had at some point in their life converted to Islam for various reasons and later, motivated by feelings of guilt for their Islamization, confrontation with the Ottoman authorities, or other reasons, had abjured Islam and reembraced their formerly rejected religion. Their numbers had increased following the end of the eighteenth century, a time that coincides with the rise of Greek nationalism. Although the early Christian church discouraged voluntary martyrdom as an act of suicide, condemned by Christianity as a sin, the Greek Orthodox Church granted the title of “martyr” to many Christian Orthodox who chose to die by abjuring Islam and converting to Christian Orthodoxy; those martyrs were to be worshiped as saints.96 They served as the necessary heroes to inspire others by their example at a time of confrontation with Islam and Greek nation-​building. In the words of the Christian Orthodox Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite of the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos, an ascetic monk and theologian, “[Neo-​martyrs] are the example of patience to all Orthodox who were tyrannized under the yoke of captivity. . . . [T]‌hey are the encouragement and the incentive for all other Christians to imitate them by acts and especially for those who have denied Christ.”97 Amid the long martyrologues of Christian Orthodox martyrs and other saints arranged in the calendar order of their anniversaries or feasts were neo-​ martyrs Angelis and Pavlos. Both originated from the Peloponnese and had been executed by the Ottoman authorities a few years before the Greek War of Independence. Neo-​martyr Angelis was a Christian Orthodox doctor, a native of Argos who had Islamized voluntarily. Suffering from remorse, he abjured Islam and reconverted to Christian Orthodoxy and was beheaded by the Ottoman authorities on 3 December 1813. Neo-​martyr Pavlos originated from the village Sopoto in the Kalavryta district and had converted to Islam in Patra. He had traveled to Mount Athos, lived there for eight years as a Christian Orthodox monk, and returned to the Peloponnese, where he confessed his new Christian Orthodox identity before the mufti and the qadi of Tripolitsa while bitterly criticizing Islam. After a decision taken by the qadi and Seyyid Ali Pasha, the Ottoman governor of the Peloponnese, he was decapitated on 22 May 1818.98 In addition to Qur’anic and other Islamic teachings, to allow Islamic apostasy

110  Proselytes of a New Nation to go unpunished could be interpreted at a symbolic level as evidence of the supremacy of the Christian religion over Islam, betraying dread on the part of the Ottoman establishment and the Muslim population, who feared to see power coming into the hands of the Christian Orthodox. Thus, conversion to Orthodox Christianity was often not well received by members of the neophytes’ Muslim families, who on many occasions engaged in fierce legal disputes with their neophyte relatives, attempting to dissuade them from conversion or to force already converted neophytes to reconvert to Islam. When they failed, Muslim families often terminated their relationship with the neophyte family members and sought to strip them of any inheritance rights. Fierce, long-​term legal disputes between neophytes and their Muslim family members occurred mostly in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea, areas controlled by the Ottomans, rather than in the Peloponnese, western Roúmeli, and the Argosaronic and Cyclades island complexes that were under Greek insurgent control at the time of negotiations for Greece’s independence and were ceded to independent Greece under the Treaty of Kalender Köşk. Unlike territories controlled by the Greek rebels, where the Ottoman state and its subjects were to retain no property rights, in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea Muslims retained rights to property. As a result, neophytes in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea could not claim loss of property to the Greeks during the war as easily as neophytes in the Peloponnese and in western Roúmeli and, because there were no ethnikes gaies in those areas, could not draw on such land for compensation. Instead, neophytes in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea had to continue to share family property with their Muslim relatives or attempt to determine the property’s status in the future. Most legal experts agreed that the Greek state could not force the Muslim relatives to share their family property with the neophytes if they did not wish to do so. According to Ottoman law, neophytes were regarded as Muslim apostates and therefore had no right to family property unless their Muslim relatives granted it to them. The Greek authorities instructed the civil servants as well as the Joint Greco-​ Ottoman Committee of eastern Roúmeli and Euboea, responsible for the resolution of any issues arising from the sale of Muslim properties in that area under the Treaty of Kalender Köşk, to expend all possible means to solve any property disputes between neophytes and their Muslim relatives whenever possible and reach ad hoc compromises where they could. Thus, in response to an inquiry from the members of the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee regarding the inheritance rights of former Muslim neophyte females in November 1830, Kapodistrias wrote that they had no inheritance right on their family property according to Ottoman law, but that the members of the committee should try to preempt any property disputes as quietly and diplomatically as possible and seek compromises to resolve disagreements on property issues between

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  111 these female neophytes and their Muslim family members.99 The Joint Greco-​ Ottoman Committee’s inquiry to Kapodistrias was related to a number of female neophytes in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea who believed they had full inheritance rights to their family property, either because, as citizens of Greece, they enjoyed the same inheritance rights as all the other Christian Orthodox citizens of the kingdom or because, like the neophytes in the Peloponnese and western Roúmeli, they could make use of provisions of neophyte law to their advantage, which would help them claim their alleged shares of inherited family property. However, unlike in the Peloponnese and western Roúmeli, the Treaty of Kalender Köşk recognized property rights established in the Ottoman period in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea, and allowed Muslims who refused to live in the Kingdom of Hellas to sell any property rights they held and leave for the Ottoman Empire within a period of eighteen months from the signing of the Treaty. This was the catalyst for many long family legal disputes and family feuds involving neophyte or Muslim females whose Muslim families had held property and property rights in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea. Where there were male family members and parents who had not established property rights for their Islamic apostate or Muslim female family members prior to their death, these apostates or Muslim females could not under Ottoman law claim any inheritance right to their family property. A number of Muslims who had owned property in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea and wished to leave Greece for the Ottoman Empire had rushed to sell their property right within the eighteen-​month period without consulting their neophyte and Muslim female relatives. One such case that gave rise to discussion between Kapodistrias and the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee of eastern Roúmeli and Euboea was that of Asimo (Asimina), née Mesrouri, the neophyte wife of the Greek military officer Kostas Lagoumtzis and daughter of Rabia Hatouni and Mouyjetin Effendi Muftizade, an affluent Muslim notable in Athens, who owned a great deal of property in Attica. In 1830 the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee of Attica and Euboea authorized the sale of the Karellas çiftlik, a large estate under hereditary land management, in Attica. That year the Karellas çiftlik consisted of approximately 1,600 stremmata (160 hectares, or 395.2 acres),100 along with a ruined tower, four ruined farmhouses with four threshing floors, one vineyard, and olive and other trees. It was sold for 11,500 Ottoman kuruş to the legal representative of Muletin Effendi, a resident of Bursa in Asia Minor and a son of mufti Hamza Effendi, and of his son Satetin Mulah. Muletin Effendi had a daughter named Mishure who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy and lived in Nafpaktos in western Roúmeli. Under Ottoman law, which did not recognize inheritance rights of female family members as long as there were males in the family, Mishure did not profit from the sale of the Karellas çiftlik; the proceeds of the sale had been divided between Muletin and Satetin. Nevertheless, the Greco-​Ottoman Committee relied on the

112  Proselytes of a New Nation purchaser’s goodwill with the understanding that the new owner would compensate the neophyte Mishure for her claimed right to the threshing floors and other assets of the Karellas çiftlik at some time in the future.101 This encouraged Kostas Lagoumtzis, Asimo’s husband and legal assignee, who in 1831 submitted to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee a list of property assets belonging to Asimo through her mother, Rabia Hatouni, daughter of Mahmut Effendi, as well as all her grandfather Mahmut Effendi’s property assets, claiming that all belonged to Asimo. Lagoumtzis informed the committee that some of Hatoumi’s and Mahmut Effendi’s property assets had been sold, and requested that the committee ask all buyers of these properties to void their purchases and reclaim the money they had paid to the sellers. Otherwise, according to Lagoumtzis, he and his wife maintained the right to lay claim to all of the sold property assets, along with any legal expenses incurred in relation to the purchase and illegal use of these assets.102 In March 1836, Lagoumtzis reported to the committee that Asimo’s Muslim brother Sadudin Effendi, as well as her uncles Ali Effendi and Kiase Effendi, had sold many of Asimo’s claimed assets without her consent and despite the fact that in her view she had a right to half of the assets. Lagoumtzis also submitted a list of the unsold assets of Asimo’s family, which he wished the committee to consider as reparations for any injustice done to Asimo’s inheritance rights.103 The list included 400 stremmata (40 hectares, or 98.8 acres) of arable land, a ruined watermill, and fruit trees in Drafi; 12 stremmata (1.2 hectares, or 2.97 acres) of a vineyard in Moschato; 800 stremmata (80 hectares, or 197.6 acres) of arable land and pastures in the village of Kouvaras; 546 olive trees in Kifisia, Marousi, and Chalandri; nine farms, one pasture, and one threshing floor in different parts of Athens; oak trees in the village of Karelas; and five plots for houses, a barn, and three ruined workshops in Athens. The illegal sales had taken place during Asimo’s brief absence on a trip to Patra. When Asimo was informed of the property sales, she immediately returned to Athens, but her brother and uncles had completed the sales and left Greece for the Ottoman Empire. The committee examined Asimo’s case and, following discussions with her and her husband as well as her brother Sadudin and the other Muslim coheirs, on 10 February 1837 brought the two sides together in a compromise. The neophyte Asimo would be compensated retrospectively for her violated inheritance rights, including part of the property she had inherited from her Muslim mother, which included a sizable area of arable land, thirty-​six olive trees, one ruined watermill, threshing floors, and other trees, all located in Athens and its surrounding areas.104 With regard to this case, on 24 February 1831 Kapodistrias instructed the members of the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee that, as Ottoman law deprived Islamic apostates from any inheritance rights, the neophytes had no right to demand any share of their parents’ and other Muslim family properties

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  113 in Euboea and eastern Roúmeli, and that the Greek government had no reason to support and protect the neophytes’ property inheritance claims. Therefore, the committee should try to arrive at compromises between the neophytes and their Muslim family members in disputes over family properties and inheritance. The Ottoman members of the committee, including Ismail Bey, agreed. Compromises between the neophytes and their Muslim family members were often driven by reasons of “philanthropy and justice,” given that many Muslim females had converted to Christian Orthodoxy in order to marry their Christian Orthodox husband, chosen for them by the men in their family. The Christian Orthodox grooms entered into the marriage convinced that they would enjoy the neophyte’s wedding dowry as well as rights to inherited family property. Therefore, depriving these neophytes of any property inheritance rights due to their conversion to Christian Orthodoxy threatened to undermine their marriage and also their physical and mental health, since these women were often victims of physical and verbal violence from their Christian Orthodox husband and thus were the ones to pay a high price for the breaking of their wedding agreement. Many Muslim family members refused to cooperate, knowing that Ottoman law was on their side and that their neophyte relatives had little or no legal leverage. The Greek authorities instructed the members of the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee to explain to the uncooperative Muslim family members that their inflexibility could lead them into time-​consuming legal battles and hearings in Greek courts. Thus, their claimed family property would remain unutilized or unsold for a long time because few potential investors and buyers would be interested in property with disputed legal status.105 This policy was also followed by the Regency and King Otto’s administration. In addition, a detailed report of 22 August 1836 to the Greek Secretariat of Foreign Affairs by A. Deligiannis and Loukas Argyropoulos, the Greek members of the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee, confirmed that Ottoman law excluded Muslim apostates from any family property inheritance rights. The report clarified that the committee had tried to resolve property disputes among Muslim family members, including those who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy, based on the inheritance rights under Ottoman law upon the death of Muslim family members. This meant that Muslims who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy when the Muslim family members, parents, or any others were alive were regarded by the Ottoman law as Islamic apostates and had no inheritance right to their family property. However, Muslim heirs who had remained followers of the Islamic faith after the death of the family member and had not been disowned by the deceased family member but had converted to Christian Orthodoxy after their death, could establish an inheritance right to the property of the deceased Muslim family member. The Greek committee members were

114  Proselytes of a New Nation prepared to support the property rights of these neophytes, who, “forced by the course of events[,]‌had embraced the Christian faith.”106 Thus, in February and April 1831, Christodoulos Raftopoulos submitted two petitions to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee on behalf of neophytes Maria and Marousa, orphan daughters of Dervis Ahmet Ali Ağa Albanis, a Muslim notable of Athens. Albanis had four daughters: Emetoula, who died with her father at the start of the Greek War of Independence; Mouzejen, who married a Muslim prior to the war and in 1837 resided in Izmir; and Maria and Marousa, whose Muslim names had been Afije and Zenjiou, who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy. In his petitions, Raftopoulos requested that Maria and Marousa receive an appropriate share of the unsold estates of Mustafa Veyz Ağa, the neophytes’ uncle on their mother’s side, as well as of the value of the sold properties of Apitin Petmezi, a Muslim nephew of Mustafa Veyz Ağa, pending the judgment of their case by the Greek court. The petitions claimed that both neophytes had the same inheritance rights as Apitin Petmezi to the property of Mustafa Veyz Ağa.107 In October 1835, Raftopoulos submitted a new petition to the committee, in which he requested that the committee not authorize any sales of Maria’s and Marousa’s land inheritance nor of the lands of their Muslim uncle, Osman Bouloubasi, whose heirs had all died, leaving only Maria and Marousa to inherit Bouloubasi’s properties in Athens and surrounding villages. Although the two neophyte sisters had complained repeatedly to the Greek authorities and had taken all necessary measures for the confirmation of their right to inherit, the properties they claimed had been sold in 1830 and 1831 to Georgios Psyllas, Ioannis Fenerlis, Panagiotis Skouzes, Nikolaos Skourtis, Nikolaos Polyzoidis, Spyridon Vougiouklis, and Kyriakos Toutountzis, all Christian Orthodox residents of Athens and of the surrounding areas, who had since occupied and used the properties. The committee ruled that the neophyte sisters’ complaints were fair, and therefore refused to validate the property sales, asking the Greek courts to adjudicate the case.108 The properties listed in Raftopoulos’s 1835 petition claimed as the sisters’ inheritance a house and the vault of a nearby olive press, which had been purchased by Psyllas; an orchard in Sepolia village and shares in the watermill of Skoundoupi Mourtiza purchased by Skouzes; and a plot of land for a house in Athens purchased by Toutountzis Bouloubasi’s estates claimed by the neophytes included a house in Athens purchased by Skourtis; a farm in Mandra Malagma purchased by Vougiouklis; and various properties in Kifisia village, purchased by Fenerlis, that included a house with warehouses and a yard; a fenced orchard with various trees and an olive grove containing forty-​ three olive trees; a fenced orchard with a house and seventeen olive, walnut, and other trees; one vineyard containing also nine olive and other trees; two farms, one of which contained farmhouses; one threshing floor; one church;

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  115 four olive trees; 1,200 stremmata (120 hectares, or 296.4 acres) of arable land; and 207 olive trees.109 During the hearing on the neophyte sisters’ case at the First Instance Court of Athens, Psyllas claimed that Ottoman law did not recognize inheritance rights for Maria and Marousa because they had apostatized. The court, however, ruled that Maria and Marousa did own as heirs two-​thirds of their late father’s property (court ruling no. 451/​1836). Psyllas appealed to the Appellate Court of Athens, which tried the case in Psyllas’s absence. His side claimed that, according to Ottoman law, in the absence of male direct family members, male collateral relatives inherit, but Muslim apostates do not inherit. During the hearings Maria and Marousa were introduced as “terribly poor residents of Athens, who had spent many years in hopes of enjoying part of the property that belonged to them, but that had instead been sold by their Muslim relatives.”110 The Appellate Court ruled that, according to Ottoman law, Maria and Marousa had not lost their inheritance rights because they had already inherited their share of their Muslim father’s property when he died in 1821, long before they had converted to Christian Orthodoxy. Therefore, if Derviş Ahmet Ali Ağa’s property was divided into twelve portions, each of his daughters would inherit 2.22 portions. As a result, Psyllas had to return 4.44 of the twelve portions to Maria and Marousa.111 The Appellate Court’s verdict was in line with resolution no. 388/​1839 of the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee on this case: Maria and Marousa had inherited their share of their late father’s property before their conversion, and Ottoman law did not remove vested properties of those who were later to abandon the Islamic faith: “After all, all [Greek] laws provide for the freedom of conscience. Therefore, if Maria and Marousa enjoyed their inheritance from their parents under their faith, and later thought it better to embrace the Eastern Christian Orthodox faith, this did not entail their being deprived of their vested inheritance rights.” In addition, resolution no. 388/​1839 highlights that the occupation of Athens by the Greek insurgents in April 1821 meant that as of that date, Greek, and not Ottoman, law was in force. Greek law excluded collateral relatives from inheritance in favor of the three living daughters of Albanis: Mouzejen, Maria, and Marousa. Therefore, resolution no. 388/​1839 stated that Psyllas had legally bought only one-​third of Albanis’s property and had to return or compensate his daughters for the remaining two-​thirds.112 On many occasions, neophytes rejected compromise solutions with other heirs of their Muslim family property and claimed recognition of the full inheritance they alleged they would have had a right to had they not converted to Christian Orthodoxy. In addition, many of the claimed family properties had already been sold at the time when many neophytes were filing lawsuits in Greek courts against their Muslim relatives. Whatever the outcome, the lawsuits were often prolonged and time-​consuming, frequently to the utter frustration

116  Proselytes of a New Nation of the litigants, many of whom were Muslims who had either had to move from the Ottoman Empire to Greece or travel there for the lawsuit and who had little time or funds. A communication to the Greek authorities from Ali Mullah Deli Ahmet, a Muslim Athenian, captures well this frustration. Ali Mullah, a resident of Izmir, had arrived in Athens in 1832 and had lived there before and during the first few years of the Greek War of Independence in order to sell some of his family property in Athens and the surrounding areas, as well as the properties of some of his Muslim relatives, who had also moved from Athens to Izmir during the war. His family property in Athens included an olive grove of eighty-​four trees in Tseprisa, present-​day Pyrna; a 7-​stremmata (0.7 hectare, or 1.73 acre) vineyard; a ruined house and orchard; and eighteen olive and other trees in Marousi; 1 stremma (0.10 hectare, or 0.248 acre) of arable land, occupied by Sarandis Bananas, in Bostania; an olive grove occupied by Chatzis Kordas, formerly with one hundred trees but containing only eighty at the time of the lawsuit, in Suleymana; and an olive grove with twenty-​seven trees, occupied by Stavros Arabatzis, in an undisclosed location.113 As soon as he had arrived in Athens, Ali Mullah Ahmet found that some of his family property was occupied illegally by Sanadis Bananas, Chatzis Kordas, and Stavros Arabatzis, the Christian Orthodox husbands of neophytes, whose personal details are undisclosed in the archival records. Ali Mullah Ahmet had collected written documents attesting to his property rights, and filed a lawsuit, which three years later (1835) still had not been adjudicated. Ali Mullah Ahmet was unfamiliar with the Greek legal system and was “unable to satisfy the greed of the Greek lawyer” who was pursuing his case. After three years of a legal fight with the usurpers of his property, he had spent most of the money he had brought with him to Athens and “became a miserable spectacle in the streets of Athens.” On 10 July 1835 he complained to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee, which did not satisfy his needs; on 6 September 1835, he wrote to the Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs and requested that the Greek government put an end to his plight so that he might return to his family in Izmir, who had suffered from his three-​year absence in Greece. The Royal Secretariat also failed to grant Ali Mullah’s request.114 An internal memo from N. G. Theocharis, the Greek secretary of finance, instructed the Greek civil services to redirect Ali Mullah’s case to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee and, if the committee viewed the case as beyond its scope, Ali Mullah was to be instructed that only the Greek courts could resolve legal disputes.115 Even in cases where neophytes won their lawsuits, the buyers had to be compensated by the sellers of the reclaimed properties, which was not always a straightforward process since often the sellers had emigrated to the Ottoman Empire or elsewhere, had passed away, or were not bound by the outcomes of court proceedings in which they had not participated. Thus, for example, at the

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  117 end of 1832, the neophyte Rigoula, daughter of Kadir Hussein Bey, a Muslim notable from Athens, and wife of Georgios Litzikas, had reported to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee that her father’s Muslim nephew, Tahir Ağa, had sold an orchard in Marousi, the property of her father, to a Christian Orthodox priest named Ioakeim Menidiatis without consulting her, “as if he did not know she was alive.” After Rigoula learned of the property sale, she complained to her Muslim relatives, who acknowledged the unfairness of the sale and agreed to vouch for her right to the orchard. Menidiatis, however, refused to return the orchard to Rigoula in exchange for the price he had paid as well as any other expenses entailed in its sale. Rigoula asked the committee to consider her “plight and her poverty” and force the bad-​tempered orchard purchaser to return her property. If Menidiatis refused, she would sue him for all of the expenses, possible damages, and lost revenue from the property. In his response to Rigoula, Menidiatis claimed that, in reality, her father had possessed only one-​fourth of the orchard in Marousi; the other three-​quarters belonged to her father’s brother and mother, and that many Marousi villagers could confirm this. Rigoula’s uncle, Sheikh Hassan, tried to buy her quarter share of the orchard at a good price. Menidiatis claimed that if Rigoula had not been pleased with the proposed price, she should have made her legal claims against Sheikh Hassan and not himself.116 Due to cases like this, the Greek members of the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee asked the Greek government to pass a law reassigning the responsibility of solving legal disputes between neophytes and other Muslim heirs over family property to the committee, not the Greek courts. Many Christian Orthodox purchasers of Muslim property and property rights in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea who had ended up in lengthy legal disputes with neophytes in Greek courts also supported such legislation.117 Some neophytes who were on good terms with their Muslim relatives succeeded in settling their family property disputes without any intervention by the Greek authorities.118 Among the few such cases was that of Emine Suleyman Ağa, a Muslim of the Ottoman Empire and former resident of Patra, and her two neophyte children in the Kingdom of Hellas, a boy and a girl, occasionally referred to as grandchildren in some archival documents. In April 1841, the Ottoman ambassador to Greece, Konstantinos Mousouros, contacted the local authorities in Achaia in the northern Peloponnese through the Greek government and asked them to provide information on the children. During the Greek War of Independence, Emine had entrusted her two Muslim children to the Christian Orthodox Kerimis family in Kalavryta, where they ended up in Patra as domestic workers in the household of Dimitrios Zaimis, a military captain during the war and a politician in the postwar years.119 The children or grandchildren were found after a long search. The girl, Fatme, had been baptized Christian Orthodox and renamed Vasiliki; she was fifteen years old in

118  Proselytes of a New Nation 1841. Vasiliki’s eighteen-​year-​old brother, Abdul had been renamed Ioannis and worked for Panagiotis and Dimitrios Bakaouris, commercial farmers in Patra. In 1837, Ioannis left Patra for an unknown destination, possible the district of Argos in the Peloponnese, according to an unconfirmed report.120 In December 1842, however, the Greek authorities found the neophyte Ioannis in Athens, working as a domestic worker for Rigas Palamidis, a state councilor and later secretary of internal affairs.121 The Greek authorities informed the Ottoman authorities that they could help Emine Suleyman Ağa to travel to Patra if she wished to meet her children. The Ottoman authorities expressed Emine’s wish that Vasiliki also benefit from the Greek laws that compensated neophytes for inherited family property lost during the war and be compensated for the lost lands of her Muslim father in the Peloponnese, which at the time of Mousouros’s request had become part of the ethnikes gaies. Vasiliki could use the compensation for her Muslim father’s lost property as her wedding dowry in the future.122 The Greek government viewed Emine’s request favorably, and although the deadline had long since passed for neophytes to apply for legal assistance and submit supporting documents, the government made an exception in Vasiliki’s case. The justification was that when the laws had come into effect, Vasiliki had been underage and had had no guardian to take up her case. Otto’s government passed an ad hoc royal decree on 9 September 1842, which “for the sake of leniency” ceded to the neophyte Vasiliki Suleyman Ağa a piece of the ethnikes gaies as compensation for the family property lost during the war. The neophyte would enjoy utilization rights to her inherited land until she married, in Greece, and would then enjoy full ownership of the ceded land.123 On many occasions, however, relations between neophytes and their Muslim relatives were far from amicable. In July 1830, neophyte sisters Eleni, wife of the Christian Orthodox Anastasios Balanos, and Maria, wife of Georgios Staikos, from Athens, daughters of Muslim Derviş Beyzağa, requested assistance from the Greek authorities. One of their Muslim brothers, Sadik Derviş Beyzağa, had arrived from the Ottoman Empire, along with their uncle Sali Ağa Beyz, with the intention of disinheriting the sisters due to their conversion to Orthodox Christianity, and selling the family property in Attica, which consisted of the village of Olympos; land in the villages of Daggla, Bala, Anavyssos, Markopoulo, Chaidari, and elsewhere; three houses in Athens; and three workshops, two mills, and olive groves in various locations. In the summer of 1837, the neophyte sisters, under pressure from their husbands, complained to the Greek authorities and laid claim to the property of their parents, as well as that of their deceased cousin Hassan Sali Beyz, which had been sold by their brother. The sisters’ long legal dispute with their brother lasted until 1838 without success.124 The Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee ratified Beyzağa’s property sales, and neither the Greek authorities nor the Greek courts disputed the committee’s decision. The

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  119 committee’s rationale was that under Ottoman law female family members were excluded from inheritance rights as long as male descendants existed.125 In a letter to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee, the Athenian neophyte Fanio, daughter of Ahmet Effendi Mouterizi, a Muslim notable of Athens, requested that the committee prevent the sale of an estate of 400 stremmata (40 hectares, or 98.8 acres) in Chalandri that had belonged to her deceased Muslim sister Zeynep. After her sister’s death, the demesne was passed to Fanio’s father pending Fanio’s Muslim brother’s arrival from Izmir. Although in her letter Fanio claimed that her brother “spared no effort to do injustice and alienate her from her paternal property,” she hoped that if the committee prevented the sale of as much as possible of the still available property she was claiming, her brother might agree to do her justice and offer her a fair share of the family property.126 In a different case, in September 1830 two neophyte sisters from Athens, Maria and Fimitza (Efthymia), daughters of the Muslim Mehmet Dalaloumi, notified the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee that some of their Muslim relatives had attempted to disinherit them and encroach upon and sell their father’s property in Athens because of their conversion to Orthodox Christianity.127 Similarly, in September 1830, Metoula, a resident of Athens and daughter of Bekir Ağa, a Muslim notable of Athens, and her Muslim mother, Moulha Kantis, informed the Greek committee responsible for the sale of Muslim properties in Attica and Euboea in 1830 that she had been the only survivor among her Muslim siblings after the Greek War of Independence began. In 1822 she had voluntarily converted to Christian Orthodoxy, taking the name Eleni, to marry Argyris Leivaditis, a Christian Orthodox resident of the island of Salamina, where they lived with their two children after 1822. As Eleni was the only member of her Muslim family who had survived the war, she was the only heir to her late parents’ property in Athens, but she feared that her Muslim collateral relatives, or even a stranger, might seek to sell part or the whole of the property. She therefore asked the committee to stop anyone who might seek to sell her family property, because she was “firmly to remain Christian Orthodox and a Greek citizen.” Eleni’s family property in Athens included a house in Athens; 400 stremmata (40 hectares, or 98.8 acres) in Athens; 400 stremmata in the village of Bogiati; 400 stremmata in the village of Kokla; one hundred olive trees in St. Anna; an orchard in Patisia; a share in the watermills of the villages of Revma and Skondoupi; two farms and a pasture in Bourtzi; and a threshing floor at Intim Baba. Eleni sent the committee a list of jewelry and money in Ottoman liras that she had entrusted to Ali Effendi, the son of the mufti of Athens, for safekeeping, and asked the committee also to collect the jewelry and the money from Ali Effendi on her behalf.128 In another case, in October 1830 Hanum Hadji came from Athens to Salona, present-​day Amfissa, where her neophyte daughter Eleni lived with her spouse, Vasilios Saratzoglou, aiming to persuade her daughter to abandon her husband

120  Proselytes of a New Nation and her new Christian Orthodox faith and move with her mother to Athens. K. Metaxas, Salona’s district governor, summoned Hanum Hadji and Eleni to his office to resolve their dispute. He asked Eleni if she wanted to stay with her Orthodox Christian spouse or to follow her mother to Athens. The neophyte daughter replied that she could not abandon her husband and her children. She was happy with her life in Salona and was expecting a new baby. Hanum Hadji insisted that the district governor ask her daughter again, and a third time. The district governor gave the mother permission to stay with her daughter for a full day, but despite all her efforts, Hanum Hadji failed to achieve her desired result and left for Athens in despair.129 In a similar case, in September 1830 Esmeni, a Muslim widow and daughter of Muslims Mullah Ali and Zeginek from Karystos in southern Euboea, had in 1824 been abducted from her home by Greek insurgents in Athens, where she lived with her Muslim husband, Mehmet Kotsou, and taken to Hydra, where, on 25 May 1825, she converted to Orthodox Christianity and took the name Aikaterini. She commissioned Sarantos Pananas, a Greek legal assignee from Athens, to help reclaim her parents’ land in Kifisia, then a village outside Athens and today an Athenian suburb. Aikaterini had two Muslim sisters, one rumored but not confirmed to be living in Izmir, and the other living with her husband in Mytilene. In August 1830, a Muslim male cousin visited Aikaterini in Hydra and asked her to return to Islam; if she would not, he intended to go to Athens and sell all of her family assets. Later, an Athenian friend told Aikaterini that all of her family property had been sold without her legal assignee, Pananas, having informed her.130 Aikaterini replaced Pananas with Alexandros Gikas, who, as her new legal assignee, complained to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee of Attica and Euboea. Sheikh Ali, the brother of the last Mevlevi dervish of Athens, had sold the house of her Muslim ex-​husband, Mehmet Kotsou, along with a 3-​stremmata (0.3 hectare, or 0.741 acre) field, to Avgerinos Kritis, a Christian Orthodox Athenian, for 1,500 Ottoman kuruş.131 Gikas also complained of the sale of lands that Aikaterini had owned as her wedding dowry. The Ottoman representative on the committee maintained that, according to Ottoman law, the dowry was inalienable and was to be disposed of only in line with Aikaterini’s wishes.132 A Muslim’s conversion to Christian Orthodoxy frequently triggered family disputes, disinheritance from family property, and destitution. Many neophytes could not bear this heavy burden and chose to renounce Orthodox Christianity and return to Islam. One such case was that of a daughter of Ali Koutzikouna, an affluent Muslim landowner in Attica. He and his wife Naile had had five daughters: Ayşe, Fatima, Zeynep, Katriye, and Hatice. It is not clear which of them converted to Christian Orthodoxy; she is simply mentioned as “the neophyte daughter of Ali Koutzikouna” in the archival records of the time. Because

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  121 of pressure from her family over ownership of the inherited family property in Attica, part of which was claimed by her Muslim mother and sisters, supported by Ali Koutzikouna’s brother Hüseyin, the neophyte daughter abandoned Orthodox Christianity in the end and returned to the Islamic faith. Reconversion to Islam allowed her to settle the property dispute with her mother and her sisters. They finally agreed to sell seventy-​eight olive trees in the village of Patisia, an orchard and another ten olive trees in the village of Sepolia, a plot in Athens, and other assets.133 Like any conflict of similar type, the Greek War of Independence inaugurated a prolonged period of turmoil and lawlessness in the Greek rebellious areas, where the established lawful order of the land was suddenly suspended. This created an uncertain environment, which continued for some time after the establishment of the new state order of Hellas and, later, of the Kingdom of Hellas, following international recognition of its national sovereignty. The uncertainty led individuals and institutions to employ strategies they thought would help them survive and exploit the power rearrangements to secure and, if possible, expand their opportunities and standing in the new environment. Conversions, abductions, killing, ethnic and religious cleansing, emigration, and plunder were often the strategies employed. Wartime and postwar Hellas was not unique in this. Similar strategies were employed in analogous settings elsewhere, including in the Balkans, for example, in the territories that formed the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia during the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875–​1878 and after the establishment of the Principality and Eastern Rumelia.134 The same took place in the territories that in 1830 formed the Principality of Serbia and in 1878 the Kingdom of Serbia during the Serbian Revolution (1804–​1817) and the Great Eastern Crisis, as well as after the ceasefire (1817) and establishment of the principality and later the kingdom.135 The successful outcome of the Greek War of Independence, along with the flaws of state administration and the inability of the Greek government to consistently control local authorities, provided fertile ground for wealth increase through illegal acts and criminal activities, such as pillage and property encroachment. Marriage-​based conversion through abductions of Muslim women was one method used by greedy, fortune-​hunting Orthodox Christian men to expand their properties, increase their wealth, and possibly elevate their social standing. Most of the legal disputes between neophytes and their Muslim relatives occurred in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea, held by Ottoman forces on 3 February 1830, the date of the signing of the London Protocol that proclaimed Hellas an independent nation-​state and ceded to Greece by the terms of the Treaty of Kalender Köşk, whereby the law of succession applied and Muslims retained rights to private property. In the Peloponnese and in western Roúmeli, which

122  Proselytes of a New Nation Greek insurgents controlled on 3 February, Hellas assumed full ownership of all public property, including public lands controlled by Ottomans. There the newly established nation-​state had no obligation to compensate private ownership for assets confiscated during the war by reason of the jus ad bellum (law of war), presumably referring to the right of booty. Greece’s obligations in regard to the succession of Muslim property was to respect Muslim tenure rights. Abolishing Ottoman land law altogether and substituting Muslim private ownership with its equivalent in the country’s civil code were not easy to happen for practical reasons—​Ottoman land law was complex inconsistent. In addition, the Greek authorities wished to retain a high degree of legal certainty, particularly since many Greeks owned land under the previous regime. Therefore, Greece accepted in principle the validity of Ottoman law, including sharia law, and incorporated it de facto in the country’s domestic legal framework, and with it a legal dualism. Greece was not the only country with legal dualism or pluralism and conflicts of jurisprudence. Legal diversity existed, and still exists, in many countries. On many occasions, empire-​states and smaller polities alike have recognized the legal authority of multiple religious and cultural communities. Legal diversity based on religion existed in both the Ottoman and Habsburg empires.136 Soon after the British East India Company acquired administrative oversight in three populous regions of India under the Mughal imperial title of dewani in 1765, the company designed a new plural legal order in which the application of English law was restricted to cases involving British subjects and company officials, while Hindu and Muslim law continued to be applied in other cases, and exclusively in some forums.137 Spaniards shaped a formally different legal status for Native Americans in conquered areas following the destruction of the Aztec Empire in the sixteenth century, creating a new position of protector de Indios (protector of the Indians) and special courts for considering Indian litigation.138 States’ claims to legal hegemony developed in ad hoc and incomplete ways over the length of the nineteenth century, which may have altered the configuration of legal pluralism as it was known in early modernity. To a great extent, such claims still existed in many areas of the world during the nineteenth century, but, even at that time, state-​centered legal orders remained jurisdictionally complex, and many states, far from holding unitary legal systems, continued to accommodate different legal traditions.139 Greece, however, was a new nation with a state bureaucracy in formation and without the history of older, imperial and colonial states, where state authorities and subjects had become used to operating in diverse legal environments and multicentric jurisdictional orders and had developed mechanisms and strategies that allowed them to cope with jurisdictional complexity and find ways to use that complexity to their advantage. The legal order of Greece was young, and both state actors and citizens were unfamiliar with the new legal environment,

Muslim Converts to Christian Orthodoxy  123 which was in formation in parallel with the formation of the new nation and state. The country mostly relied on the goodwill of the litigants—​neophytes and their Muslim family members—​as well as on the interpersonal skills of the members of the committees responsible for reaching compromises arising from the sale of Muslim properties. The country lacked a coherent and well-​structured mechanism or body of laws able to resolve issues emerging from conflicts between the Ottoman legal code, the civil code adopted by Greece, and customary laws that existed in the various regions of the Greek state. When compromises could not be reached between the litigants, the differences were finally settled by the Greek courts or committees, but it was not clear which cases fell under the purview of the Greek courts and which under the purview of the committees, which often exacerbated the problems, if they did not create new ones, and inflamed the disputes among the litigants. Quite often, the judges in Greek courts were not familiar with the Ottoman land code. Unlike the postcolonial United States, whose legal system belongs to the same legal family and holds a common tradition and methodology with the legal system of colonial Britain,140 Ottoman law, including the Ottoman land code, and the civil law in Greece were two different legal systems with different philosophies, methodologies, and traditions, and any attempt to translate legal rights from one to the other created more problems than it solved. After the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875–​1878 the legal dualism of eastern Roúmeli and Euboea would be formalized and introduced in territories with Muslim populations ceded to the Balkan states from the Ottoman Empire. In addition to land law, the legal dualism would expand to other fields, including religious, civil, and family law. Thus, under the provisions of international treaties, aspects of the Ottoman and sharia laws would be incorporated into the legal systems of Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia in order to protect the properties, as well as the religious freedom and cultural life, of Muslim communities, and these aspects would coexist with those states’ civil codes in a form of legal dualism.141 This would lead to endless legal disputes, and although dualism offered some legal protection to Muslim populations, it could not in itself fully protect Muslims from the discriminatory policies and criminal activities targeting them, leading many of the followers of Islam to migrate to the Ottoman Empire and, after the empire’s dissolution, to the Republic of Turkey.

4

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas Following the exploration of the conditions that led to Muslims’ conversions to Orthodox Christianity during the Greek War of Independence, this chapter analyzes the economic and social profile as well as the legal, economic, and social status of the converts in the Kingdom of Hellas during the Regency (1832–​1835) and the reign of King Otto (1835–​1862), discussing their policies toward the converts. It also explores gender aspects of conversion: why the overwhelming majority of Muslim converts were women; the correlation of conversions to Christian Orthodoxy with incidents of abduction of Muslim women by Orthodox men Christian, who intended to marry them by force and increase their assets by controlling their neophyte spouses’ properties or obtaining generous dowries from their spouses’ Muslim families.

The Neophytes Due to the lack of statistical data, it is difficult to estimate the exact number of neophytes in the rebellious areas during the Greek War of Independence. Most of the archival sources that could help estimate the exact number of neophytes are missing. There are few surviving registries with information on the number of neophytes, on their original Muslim names, their new Christian Orthodox names, their ages, professional backgrounds, and other information. One registry exists of 128 neophytes from Pronia (a suburb of Nafplio, northeast of the Peloponnese, capital of the modern Greek state from 1828 to 1833),1 another of 375 neophytes in Lakonia.2 The registries of Nafplio and Lakonia originated during the Regency (6 February 1833–​20 May 1835); their content indicates that they were created by the Regency’s decision to collect information on the neophytes to help resolve lingering economic problems from the war and the Kapodistrian administration. Following orders from the Regency and the country’s prefectures, on 16 March 1834 the municipality of Nafplio requested that local priests ask all neophytes and unbaptized Muslims to register with the municipality.3 The registry of Lakonia is not dated or signed by the local authorities, but the ages of the neophytes and their children, as well as some noted comments, date this registry also to 1834. Proselytes of a New Nation. Stefanos Katsikas, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197621752.003.0005

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  125 The number of neophytes recorded in these registries is close to the actual number of neophytes living in those areas in 1834 and later, but these are not representative of the number of neophytes living in the entire country. Some neophytes, either because their economic problems had been resolved under Kapodistrias’s administration or for other reasons, were not included in the registries. For example, in the village of Agios Nikolaos in Monemvasia in Lakonia, eight families of neophytes comprising twenty-​five individuals had been recorded in 1828, whereas only six neophytes appeared in the 1834 registry for that village.4 According to the dates in these registries, the total number of Muslims in the Peloponnese who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy did not exceed seven hundred. Given that the total population of the Peloponnese in 1821 is believed to have been about 400,000 to 450,000, it seems that the total number of Muslims who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy in the Peloponnese was between 0.16 and 0.18 percent of the population.5 In wartime and the postwar atmosphere of violence, danger, insecurity, and fear, statistical records do not always provide an accurate picture of the ethnic and religious composition of the population. For example, it is difficult to believe there were no Muslim conversions to Orthodox Christianity in settlements that lack such records, such as in the town of Tripolitsa. Nevertheless, if one assumes that the statistical records cited earlier are representative of other regions that were to become part of the Kingdom of Hellas in 1832, it would be safe to maintain that Muslim converts to Orthodox Christianity amounted to about 1 percent of the population. All in all, a few thousand neophytes resided in Greece at the time, out of a total population of around 750,000.

The Regency and Otto’s Reign When Otto ascended the newly created throne of Greece he was underage, and a three-​man Regency council of Bavarian court officials, headed by Count Josef Ludwig von Armansperg, who had served as Bavaria’s interior and finance minister (1826–​1828) and as foreign and finance minister (1828–​1831) under King Ludwig I, controlled his administration. The other regents were Karl von Abel and Georg Ludwig von Maurer. After Otto reached his majority on 21 May 1835, he removed the regents, who by that time had proved to be unpopular with the people, and ruled as an absolute monarch until 1843. The economic conditions of the neophytes preoccupied the Regency from the very beginning. It is not clear whether the Regency’s interest was instigated by a new wave of petitions and letters from neophytes or was simply part of a plan to continue the work of the Kapodistrian administration. A royal decree of 18 November 1833 ratified the content of the 3 July 1830 bill as well as the policies

126  Proselytes of a New Nation described in Kapodistrias’s 18 September and 23 September 1830 circular letters on applying its provisions. As a result, a detailed recording of neophytes throughout the new nation took place in 1834, producing registries such as those of Nafplio and Lakonia.6 Kapodistrias’s policies on compensation for neophytes’ lost property continued during King Otto’s reign. A royal decree of 30 January 1835 determined that each neophyte or child of a neophyte was entitled to compensation for property lost during the Greek War of Independence. As before, the compensation would take the form of an allotment of land from the ethnikes gaies proportionate to the size of the lost property that should produce an annual income of 194 to 970 drachmas, corresponding to the annual income margins provided for in Kapodistrias’s bill (but converted into drachmas, Greece’s currency from 1832 to 2001). In most cases, the pieces of land from the ethnikes gaies granted to neophytes produced an annual income that did not exceed 800 drachmas. In some cases, the ceded lands provided extremely low annual incomes of 10 to 15 drachmas at a time when the average annual income of a blue-​collar worker was 174.72 drachmas. If the neophyte’s lost property produced an annual income of less than 200 phoenix or 194 drachmas, the Greek authorities would compensate the neophyte with a piece of land that could produce an annual income close to the annual income of the neophyte’s lost property. In addition, Article 6 of a royal decree of 21 April 1835 provided that the land granted to neophytes from the ethnikes gaies in the past should be regarded as fully owned properties. Until the Greek state introduced a tax on land, the only tax that the neophytes had to pay for the ceded properties was the tithe tax.7 Under the decree, the right to compensation belonged only to Muslims who had been baptized Christian Orthodox or to neophytes who were the immediate descendants, but not siblings or collateral relatives, of Muslims who had lived in Greece prior to 18 September 1830. This right did not apply to any other compensation or property rights that a neophyte might be able to establish by other laws, such as the right of a female neophyte to a dowry, or compensations and honors that a neophyte might have received or been able to establish in return for services during the Greek War of Independence. The neophytes eligible for compensation were to apply to the Secretariat of Finance within a six-​month period from the time of the publication of the royal decree, that is, up to 15 November 1836. The neophytes who had been compensated by the Greek state in the past were to retain the properties they had received in compensation, to which they held full ownership rights, but would have no right to obtain further property in the future. The royal decree also provided that the neophyte’s actions during the war, his or her current social status, and the size of the lost property were to be taken into consideration by the Greek state in determining the size of the land granted in

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  127 compensation. If the lost property had been a ruined or nonexisting building, the Greek authorities would compensate the neophyte for the plot of land for the building only; if the plot was unavailable, another plot of equal value would be granted. In cases where the lost property was a building that could not be returned to the neophyte, the Greek state was to compensate the neophyte with land equal in value to that of the original building plot. Finally, in cases where the neophyte was granted a shared asset of higher value than the lost property, the neophyte was to pay the surplus value back to the Greek state at 6 percent interest in ten annual installments. It is not clear if, in the end, all neophytes were granted a decent amount of land to produce an adequate annual income to support them and their families. The Greek authorities made every effort to accommodate as many of the neophytes’ needs as possible. However, a number of unresolved issues remained three decades later.8 The newly established Kingdom of Hellas was preoccupied with issues of higher priority, such as the organization of the new state, the establishment of political and other institutions, the creation of a regular army, the restructuring of the country’s economy, and the reconstruction of the agricultural infrastructure, which lay in ruins. All of these affected the vast majority of the country’s voters following the introduction of the 1844 Constitution. The Constitution reformed Greece’s political system to create a constitutional monarchy with multiparty elections, and the country’s political class often overlooked the concerns of neophytes, whose electoral base was small and political leverage minor. Nevertheless, it can be estimated that, under the provisions of these royal decrees, 5,841.15 acres of land from the ethnikes gaies had been ceded to neophytes by the end of 1857. These included fields, vines, olive trees, fruit trees, mulberry trees for silk production, gardens, and various buildings such as houses, towers, workshops, shops, mills, and oil presses.9 The Secretariat of Finance authorized the compensation, but the eligibility of the neophytes and the fixing of the exact value of their compensation were the responsibility of local authorities and specialized committees appointed by the government. After the 21 April 1835 royal decree a number of neophytes who possessed no property sent petitions to the Greek government—​some sent two, three, or more times—​asking to be compensated for lost family property during the Greek War of Independence. A number neophytes, although they were compensated with land from the ethnikes gaies, were not satisfied and demanded further compensation from the Greek authorities, claiming that the land they had received was less than the size of their lost property or had failed to provide a sufficient annual income to allow their families to live with dignity—​or both. Their requests were often accompanied by supporting documents and letters from various patrons—​Greek politicians, civil servants, clergymen, and influential members of their local societies—​who vouched for them, lobbied on their

128  Proselytes of a New Nation behalf, and provided additional information on the neophytes’ origins, the exact date of their Christian Orthodox baptism or marriage, or the location and size of their parents’ property.10 The system for granting compensation to neophytes’ families was not immune to abuses by those neophytes who enjoyed political connections, supporters, and friends, often including members of the state administration, local authorities, and members of the review committees. Greedy husbands often pressured their neophyte wives to claim property they did not own or to demand more property than they were entitled to. Many esteemed members of the Greek political class, civil service, and society were married to neophytes and attempted to make false claims on properties their neophyte wives had never owned. For example, a typical land grant from the ethnikes gaies resulted from a petition to the prefect of Arkadia in the central Peloponnese by the neophyte daughters Elisavet and Aikaterini of the Muslim Terzis Hassanis. Both women had married Christian Orthodox men in 1828 and had claimed the properties of their father and their uncle Hussein Ağa. The father owned a residence in Tripolitsa; the uncle owned half of the village of Kerastari near Leondari. Depositions by village elders verified that the Muslim owners of Kerastari had received an annual payment of one part in five of the grain yield from the village’s eight zeugaria (about 80 hectares) of land. The total number of land grants from ethnikes gaies to neophytes could not have exceeded a few hundred, but it is estimated that 23,650 stremmata (236,500 hectares, or 5,841.55 acres) had been granted to the families of Elisavet and Aikaterini by the end of 1857.11 Earlier cases like this prompted the Greek government’s decision on 7 May 1838 to pass a royal decree that asked the Court of Auditors to be extremely careful when examining information regarding neophytes’ origins and their inheritance and compensation rights, as well as the true value of their family property.12 Occasionally the Great European Powers interceded with the Greek authorities on behalf of neophytes who had been their citizens. One such case was that of neophyte Gottlieb, an officer of the French navy and son of Ahmet Ağa, a Muslim resident of Corinth, in the northeastern Peloponnese. Under a decree by King Otto, Gottlieb had been allotted a sizable portion of land from the national estates, which brought him an annual income of 600 drachmas, quite high by the standards of the time and close to the maximum annual amount of 970 drachmas established by the royal decree of 30 January 1835. In a note to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, King Otto pointed out that offering portions of land from the national estates to the neophyte Gottlieb, a French national and permanent resident of France, was an act of leniency that was to be regarded as a favor to the French ambassador, Théodore de Lagrené, who had intervened on Gottlieb’s behalf. It was contrary to the Greek laws that stated that only neophytes who were permanent residents of the Kingdom of Hellas had a right to property

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  129 compensation.13 In addition, after investigation by the Greek authorities, it was found that Gottlieb’s father, Ahmet Ağa, had owned a very small property before the Greek War of Independence, which consisted of a few olive trees and a small house, and that this property by no means justified the size of the property Gottlieb had obtained in compensation from the Greek state. Similarly, in January 1835, the ambassador of the Austrian Empire requested that the Greek authorities compensate the neophyte widow Maria Iosifina, nicknamed Finio, the former Neyube Serif Bey, daughter of Sekri Bey, a Muslim from Tripolitsa but by then a national and a permanent resident of the Austrian Empire. The Greek authorities investigated the case, and on 25 March 1835 through an ad hoc royal decree compensated Finio with 540 stremmata (54 hectares, or 133.38 acres) of land that had been her father’s property before the war and now were part of the ethnikes gaies, along with a 225-​square-​meter (400 pecheis) plot in Tripolitsa for building a house14—​on the condition that she would reside permanently in the Kingdom of Hellas. The Greek authorities’ decision to compensate Finio remained inactive until 1839, when she decided to leave the Austrian Empire and live in Greece.15 As soon as she arrived in Greece, however, Finio engaged in a long dispute with the Greek authorities: she questioned the extent to which the land to be ceded to her in the Mantineia district in the central Peloponnese was part of her father’s property prior to the Greek War of Independence, in accordance with the ad hoc royal decree regarding her compensation, or the property of someone else. Finio also questioned the metric system used to determine the size of the ceded lands: should the stremma mentioned in the 25 March 1835 royal decree be considered equal to 1,000 square meters per the metric system applied by King Otto in his 23 September 1836 royal decree? Or should it be regarded as equal to 1,702 square meters (3,025 picheis), according to the metric system largely corresponding to the Ottoman metric system used in the Peloponnese prior to the 23 September 1836 royal decree? The dispute with the Greek authorities, along with Finio’s failure to meet either the set deadlines for the submission of requested documents or the presentation of witnesses able to confirm that the ceded land was actually her father’s property, delayed the completion of her entire compensation process until 1840, five years after the royal decree that had established the procedure for compensation.16 In December 1837, neophyte Angeliki Valsamaki, a British national and wife of Marinos Valsamakis, requested the Greek authorities to compensate her for part of her family’s property that had been destroyed and encroached upon during the war. Her Muslim name prior to her conversion to Christian Orthodoxy had been Rayle Hassanoğlou; she was from the district of Tripolitsa, where her Muslim family had owned a large property. During the war Angeliki and her Greek Orthodox husband had lived in Malta, then a protectorate of the

130  Proselytes of a New Nation British Empire. Marinos Valsamakis was a British citizen, and after his marriage to Angeliki, she became a British citizen as well. In 1830, the two returned to reside permanently in Greece. Marinos encouraged Angeliki to pursue the case. Since she had lived in the Peloponnese before the war and after her return in 1830, her absence in Malta, she claimed, should have been viewed as a temporary refuge during the war, and not as permanent. After an investigation, the Greek authorities notified her that her family property was less significant than her husband believed it to be; it consisted of a house, four commercial shops in Tripolitsa, and 300 stremmata (30 hectares, or 71.4 acres) of arable land of poor quality in the village of Manari near Tripolitsa.17 Political connections were helpful not only to neophytes but also to Muslim residents of Greece, especially those with a good record of their activities during the Greek War of Independence. On 10 July 1830 a Senate committee reviewed Kapodistrias’s proposal (No. 1865/​1830) for compensating Muslims who had remained in the country and had not left for the Ottoman Empire during the war. For reasons of philanthropy and justice, a portion of land from the ethnikes gaies should be granted to them as compensation for family property lost during the war and as a way for these Muslims to earn an income. The Senate accepted Kapodistrias’s proposal on the condition that the ceded land from the ethnikes gaies not produce an annual income higher than 200 phoenix, and that priority be given to those Muslims who had supported the war.18 One Muslim with political connections who rushed to exploit the offer was Mehmet Osta Brachopoulos from Kyparissia in the southwestern Peloponnese. Brachopoulos had served as a surgeon during the war. Afterward he continued to live in Kyparissia and remained a faithful Muslim until the end of his life. His Muslim wife, Selahe Veli Bartseliotou, converted to Orthodox Christianity after her husband’s death.19 Trying to capitalize on his wartime support, Brachopoulos wrote to King Otto on 25 April 1852 requesting the return of the property once owned by his Muslim parents and in-​laws that had been confiscated by the Greek authorities during the war. Brachopoulos’s case was discussed in the Greek Parliament, which passed a law (ΣΚΖ΄, 18 April 1853) that allowed him and his wife full ownership of any property they could prove had belonged only to the couple before the war, and not to their parents or other family members. Brachopoulos and Bratseliotou were claiming full ownership of the house they lived in in Kyparissia; another dilapidated house in the Kourobrahimi area of Kyparrisia; a dilapidated workshop in the same town; a ruined oil press in the Korma area of Kyparissia; 2 stremmata (0.2 hectare, or 0.494 acre) in the Talasini area of Kyparissia; a 3-​stremmata (0.3 hectare, or 0.741 acre) vineyard in the area of Psyrou in Kyparissia); a 5-​stremmata vineyard in Filiatra; 24 stremmata (2.4 hectares, or 5.93 acres) of arable land in various areas; and 150 olive trees,

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  131 some of which had been rented out during the past thirty years. The house in which the couple lived in Kyparissia and the vineyard in Psyrou had belonged to his father, and the rest of the property belonged to her father. The couple had been unable to prove their ownership of the entire property they were claiming. In the meantime, Brachopoulos passed away, and after his death Bratseliotou became Christian Orthodox. As a favor for Brachopoulos’s wartime service, the Greek Parliament amended the ΣΚΖ΄ law in 1861 to cede to Brachopoulos’s neophyte widow their home in Kyparissia; the dilapidated house in Kourobrahimi; the 3-​stremmata vineyard in Psyrou, for which she had to pay an annual usufruct tax to the Greek state; and a 6-​stremmata (0.6 hectare, or 1.482 acre) farm in Bartsa in Kyparissia, for all of which she would enjoy full ownership rights.20 A similar case was that of Hassan Ağa Kourtalis (full name Kourti Ali Zande Hassan Ağa), a Muslim from Talanti, present-​day Atalanti, in Fthiotida in eastern Roúmeli, a surgeon who had served with the insurgents during the Greek War of Independence. In 1822, after Athens had been seized by Greek insurgents under the leadership of Odysseas Androutsos, Hassan Ağa moved to the Acropolis of Athens; along with another Athenian surgeon, named Sourbis, he had cared for wounded Greek insurgents, including Capt. Yannis Makriyiannis and philhellene François Robert, a lieutenant colonel in Napoleon’s army who had joined the rebellion in 1821. In recognition of Hassan Ağa’s wartime service, King Otto authorized the return of property, including çiftliks, that Hassan Ağa had owned in Talanti and lost during the war. However, the serfs who worked in the çiftliks rebelled, did not recognize Hassan Ağa’s property rights on the çiftliks, and refused to pay retrospectively all the taxes they owed him since 1820, when serfs had stopped paying taxes.21 After complaints from the Ottoman authorities, in June 1839 the Greek government asked the local authorities in the district of Lokrida, where Hassan Ağa’s çiftliks lay, to exhaust all possible means to persuade the serfs to compromise with the çiftlik owner and agree on a plan to pay the owed tax voluntarily. Otherwise, they threatened, Hassan Ağa would take the case to a Greek court.22 In 1849, the case was debated in the Greek Parliament, where opposition MPs accused the government of Konstantinos Kanaris of favoritism toward Hassan Ağa’s family. They reminded the government that in 1840 King Otto had ceded to Hassan Ağa 1,000 stremmata (100 hectares, or 247 acres) in Talanti as a reward for his medical service during the war. Hassan Ağa had then moved to Chalkida, where he died. Not long before, his family had been awarded another 2,500 stremmata (250 hectares, or 617.5 acres) of land, along with pastures, watermills, and other assets worth 160,000 drachmas. This led the residents of the surrounding areas to complain to King Otto and the Greek Parliament that no inch of land had been left for them and that they had ended up being slaves of the Muslim Hassan Ağa.23

132  Proselytes of a New Nation

Profiles of the Neophytes Based on the registries of Nafplio and Lakonia, most of the registered neophytes were women, which is in line with information provided by other sources with reference to the gender apportionment of neophytes: in Naplio, 99 females (73.35 percent) versus 29 males (26.65 percent) and in Lakonia, 229 females (60 percent) versus 146 males (40 percent), for a total 328 females (65 percent) versus 175 males (35 percent). The disparity in the numbers of women and men can be explained by the fact that forced conversion to Orthodox Christianity had disproportionately affected women and children, the most vulnerable members of the population. Many of the men had been fighting in armed groups and gangs that gave them mobility and a measure of protection. Women and children were unprotected and less mobile, especially when the settlements where they lived were taken over by Greek insurgents. Many female Muslims were forced to adopt Orthodox Christianity after having become concubines or sexual slaves of Greek military chieftains. For example, at the start of the Greek War of Independence, twenty-​year-​old Fatima, the daughter of Salis Afendakos, an affluent Muslim landowner from Salona, was abducted by a Greek chieftain, became his slave, and was forced to convert to Orthodox Christianity and take the name Stathou or Efstathia. By the age of thirty, Stathou was living in the village of Chryso, ten kilometers southeast of Salona, with her twenty-​five-​year-​old sister, Katerina (nickname of the Christian name Aikaterini), formerly Hatidje, who had also been forced to convert to Orthodox Christianity. Panagiotis N. Loidorikis, the governor of Salona, wrote to the civil servants of his district that the two neophyte sisters “were living under the ‘protection’ of a Greek soldier,” did not live an “honest” life, and that their contacts with men “were not commendable.”24 Christian Orthodox men who wished to increase their wealth by obtaining a large dowry often targeted Muslim women with large family properties. Sakire, a daughter of Abdul Bey Arnaoutoğlou of Tripolitsa, a powerful ayan, or local notable, in Ottoman times, was the surviving member of one of the important Muslim families of the Peloponnese. She had received a grant of two villages and maintained control over a substantial amount of land. She converted to Orthodox Christianity, took the name Charikleia, married Demetrios Tournavitis, and received a dowry of 1,000 stremmata (247 acres) of the national estates at Mycenae, a former property of her father that had been confiscated during the Greek War of Independence.25 Similar were the cases of Panagiotis Rodios, minister of war in Kapodistrias’s government until 1831; he had received land as the dowry of his neophyte wife, provoking much criticism. Rigas Palamidis was a senator during the Kapodistrian era, a state councilor and later MP from Mantineia, and served as Speaker of the Greek Parliament and twice as secretary of domestic affairs during King Otto’s reign. Palamidis married the Muslim daughter of the pasha,

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  133 or governor, of Yenişehir, present-​day Larissa, who had been taken prisoner by Greek insurgents during the war and had converted to Orthodox Christianity before her marriage, taking the name Aikaterini. Palamidis claimed that Aikaterini’s affluent Muslim family, which had owned large estates in Thessaly and elsewhere, had owned land in the Peloponnese prior to the war, a fact he had tried to exploit to encroach on lands belonging to the ethnikes gaies.26 On 22 August 1836, members of the committee that oversaw Muslim property sales in Attica, Thiva, Fthiotida, and Euboea reported with some cynicism to the Greek Secretary of Foreign Affairs that some female neophytes married to Orthodox Christians had lost any claim to their Muslim families’ properties, and that this would likely cause their Christian husbands to “blame and abandon them.”27 In 1834, the year that the registries of Nafplio and Lakonia district were recorded, 285 (57.80 percent) of the neophytes listed were between sixteen and twenty-​five years of age, whereas 82.35 percent were between eleven and thirty (Table 4.1). With an average age of twenty-​five for registered neophytes in 1834

Table 4.1  Ages of Neophytes Recorded in the Registries of Nafplio and the Lakonia District (1834) Nafplio Age Group

Neophytes

%

6–​10

0

0

11–​15

2

16–​20

Lakonia District

Total

Neophytes %

Neophytes %

1

0.26

1

0.20

1.69

32

8.55

34

6.90

31

26.27

99

26.47

130

26.32

21–​25

40

33.89

115

30.48

155

31.34

26–​30

20

16.94

67

17.91

87

17.65

31–​35

9

7.62

32

8.55

41

8.32

36–​40

9

7.62

21

5.61

30

6.09

41–​45

0

0

4

1.06

4

0.81

46–​50

3

2.54

3

0.80

6

1.22

51–​55

0

0

0

0

0

0

56–​60

4

3.58

0

0

4

0.81

61–​65

0

0

1

0.26

1

0.20

118

100

375

Total

100

493

100

Source: Nikolaou, Georgios, Islamisations et Christianizations dans le Peloponnese (1715–​CA 1832), Ph.D. Thesis, Strasbourg: Universite des Sciences Humanes Strasbourg II, 1997, p. 350

134  Proselytes of a New Nation (i.e., thirteen years after the start of the war, during which most of the registered neophytes had converted to Christian Orthodoxy), it appears that most of the neophytes had converted, or been converted, at a very young age, some even as young as one or two. This demonstrates that Christian Orthodox baptisms had started with the war and that the decision of the Executive to allow the Christian Orthodox baptism of Muslim males up to the age of twelve and of Muslim females regardless of age had generally been observed. Most of the neophytes in the registries were women and children. The registries of Nafplio and Lakonia offer a good picture of the neophytes’ economic status. Most female neophytes were dependent on their husbands or worked in households as maids. The majority of the neophytes claimed that they had not received any economic aid from the state in the past.28 Most came from wealthy families, which is an indication of their Turkish origin; most of the fertile land in the rebellious areas had been in the hands of the descendants of Turkish-​speaking Muslim settlers from Anatolia, Konya, and other regions who had settled in the Peloponnese, Roúmeli, and other areas of the Balkans during the early Ottoman period.29 The Muslim families of neophytes often possessed considerable real estate in the rebellious areas: houses, towers, workshops, shops, mills, oil presses, khans (inns), and other assets. A significant part of these properties were in rural areas or in the suburbs of cities and towns. The landownership of neophytes’ Muslim families varied: fields, vineyards, olive trees, orchards with fruit trees and mulberry trees for silk production, fields of vegetables, and others. Some owned entire villages as çiftlik owners. The degree of accuracy of the information regarding inherited family property declared by neophytes during the process of data collection by the Greek authorities is uncertain, given that most of the neophytes had been very young during the Greek War of Independence, and one might question their ability to recall correctly. In addition, there may have been a tendency to exaggerate the size of their inherited property in the hopes that the Greek state would grant them a greater amount of land from the ethnikes gaies. Furthermore, the Christian Orthodox husbands of some female neophytes or the other Christian Orthodox males or masters with whom they lived often pushed these female neophytes to exaggerate the size of their parents’ property for the same reason. General Plapoutas had attempted to appropriate the villages of Zoulatika and Bouza in Gortynia in the Peloponnese, previously owned as çiftliks by the Muslim Halil Ağa, because, he claimed, his neophyte maid Gontse, who lived with him, had been adopted by Halil Ağa prior to the Greek War of Independence and was therefore Halil Ağa’s legal heiress.30 Quite often the information regarding neophytes’ inherited family property was supported by falsified property titles and other official-​ looking documents. Occasionally Greek civil servants, following strict orders by

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  135 the Greek authorities, verified this information and often caught misstatements or fraudulent documents. Most neophytes were poor or lower class at the time of their registration in the Kapodistrian and Regency periods. This is corroborated by a report from the governor of Salona to Panagiotis N. Loidorikis, the temporary commissioner of eastern Greece, on 10 April 1831. The governor claimed that, of the twenty-​four families of neophytes listed in a registry sent to him, only two sisters had originated from a rich Muslim family, and even they were impoverished because their family property had been confiscated or encroached upon during the war. All of the rest were from poor families, and some were “destitute.” The governor recommended that the Greek government give each of them a plot of government-​controlled land.31 Some neophytes were so poor that they devised ways to claim properties that had not belonged to them. For example, three female neophytes in the town of Salona tried to deceive the Greek authorities by requesting recognition of their right to large properties, confiscated during the war, that had belonged to Muslims who had emigrated and whom they falsely claimed as their relatives.32 Many of the neophytes in the registries of Nafplio and Lakonia were owners of small estates (ktimaties) and farmers.33 Some were merchants, tailors, or secretaries. Most of the husbands of the female neophytes from Lakonia were landowners and farmers, whereas most of those of the female neophytes from Nafplio were soldiers, doctors, civil servants, executive officers, and artisans. This can be explained by the fact that Lakonia was a rural area, whose residents lived mainly from farming, whereas Nafplio was the first capital of Greece and a major administrative and economic center in the Peloponnese. Therefore, the neophytes of Nafplio appear to have come from wealthier families than those from Lakonia. The families of some neophytes, regardless of whether they resided in villages or in urban centers, had maintained large family properties, which had been confiscated by the Greek authorities or had been encroached upon by individuals during the war. Conversion to Orthodox Christianity was often part of a strategy of the neophytes for reclaiming their lost family property; a number succeeded in regaining partial or full ownership of, or were compensated partially or in full for, their lost family property. For example, Yusuf Ağa Zachoris, father of the neophyte Martha, was a Muslim landowner in the area of Vardounia in the southern Peloponnese, where he owned half of the villages of Torapsa, Dafni, Kydonies, and Trinissa and two-​thirds of the villages Lagio and Levetsova as çiftliks; two mills, two olive oil presses, three houses in Trapsa, six towers, and many other properties. Suleyman Busufezouloğlou from Tripolitsa, father of the neophyte Aikaterini, had possessed four houses, two mills, six workshops in Nafplio and Tripolitsa, 860 stremmata (86 hectares, or 212.42 acres) of farmland and pastures, a number

136  Proselytes of a New Nation of gardens, and many other large assets before the war. Imam Koutsoiman of the village of Langadia in Gortynia, father of the neophyte Aikaterini, owned six houses, a tower, a mill, a workshop, plus 600 stremmata (60 hectares, or 148.2 acres) of farmland and pasturage and sheep. Some neophytes had lost their parents at a very early age; the sources of information about their families and inherited property that they submitted to the Greek authorities were the people with whom they were living who might have known their family or might have collected information about their family to support their claims. Some of the first names displayed in the registries, such as Hadji Avdouramanis, Mustafa Karamanos, Alis Kouloglou, Behir Selegoudis, Mustafa Mahmoutis, Yusûf Seydakis, Orner Hotzas, Imin Metopoulos, and Meymetağas Arifağas, are obviously Muslim names. However, it is not easy to claim with certainty whether many of the other recorded names are Christian Orthodox or Muslim. This is the case with names such as Venetos, Chousrekinis Xerakis, Arifağas Tzolakis, Mousto Pirnakis, Drizi Korkodilos, and others. The case was similar with many Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy on the island of Crete, where the neophytes continued to speak Greek and bear Muslim-​Cretan names (Effendakis, Mehmedakis, Maraboutakis, and others) after their conversion.34 Many of these family names as well as first names were phonetic or orthographic Hellenizations of Islamic and Turkish names, or first names transformed into Greek surnames, such as Meyannis and Drizağadakis, which in itself is evidence for a formerly shared mode of coexistence that the Greek War of Independence had fractured.35 The mothers of some neophytes in the Lakonia registry were Christian Orthodox. In fourteen cases, the neophyte children themselves or those with whom the children lived claimed that the children’s mother was Christian Orthodox. This is the case, for example, of a mother named Georgitsa, whose Greek name betrays her Christian Orthodox faith. There are many other cases like this in the Lakonia registry.36 These were Christian Orthodox women who had married Turkish-​speaking Muslims in Ottoman times, and whose children might remember that their mother was Christian Orthodox. The fact that these women kept their Christian Orthodox names means that they might have retained their Christian Orthodox faith. However, it was customary for the children, boys and girls, to follow their father’s faith. Some children with Christian Orthodox mothers and Muslim fathers appear to have been brought up according to the principles of the Islamic faith. In the registry of Nafplio, the fifty-​year-​old Anastassoula declared in 1834 that her mother, Ayse, a woman with a Muslim name, was Christian Orthodox. This indicates that Christian Orthodox women married to Muslim men were not always able to keep their faith. This might not be the only case of a neophyte having an Islamized Christian Orthodox mother. There might be other cases undeclared by neophyte children, either because

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  137 they were unaware of their mother’s being Christian Orthodox or because they did not wish to declare it. Mixed marriages between Christian Orthodox and Muslims were not rare in the Peloponnese and Roúmeli at the end of the eighteenth and in the early nineteenth centuries. In the Nafplio registry, there are three cases of neophytes—​one from Crete, one from Leondari, and one from Mystras—​who stated that they had been baptized Christian Orthodox prior to the Greek War of Independence. This might mean that their mothers had been Christian Orthodox or that their families were crypto-​Christians.37 Most of the neophytes in the Lakonia registry (354, or 94.65 percent) had been born in the Lakonia district, which prior to 1821 constituted the kaza, or district, of Mystra and Monemvasia; 19 had been born in other areas of the Peloponnese. Only 16 neophytes in the registry of Nafplio, including two neophytes who had been Jews prior to their conversion to Christian Orthodoxy, came from Nafplio, whereas 104 originated from unspecified areas across the Peloponnese or other regions, such as Roúmeli and Crete. The registries also show that a number of Muslims in the rebellious areas had been displaced or relocated during the war and in the immediate postwar years. Muslim women and children from Mystra and Vardounia had taken refuge in the citadel of Tripolitsa at the beginning of the war. After the fall of Tripolitsa, these Muslim women and children moved to other areas; only some of them returned to the same villages in Mystra and Vardounia where they had been born and had grown up. Many Muslim captives changed masters and places of residence more than once before they converted to Christian Orthodoxy, and their conversion was often followed by marriage and relocation: some female neophytes relocated because it was customary for women to move to the home of their husband after marriage.38 It is not always clear if the neophytes’ relocation had occurred before or after their conversion to Christian Orthodoxy. According to available sources, in the Monemvasia district only a few Muslims had been taken prisoner by Greek insurgents during the war yet some neophytes in the Lakonia registry seem to have been living in the same villages where they had lived before 1821. This means that these neophytes had converted to Christian Orthodoxy after the outbreak of the war, and their conversions might have been related to the extensive Islamization of many Christian Orthodox in this area during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Those times might have survived in the converts’ memories or those of their family, and perhaps of their immediate descendants, who had wished to return to Christian Orthodoxy. According to the registry of the Lakonia district, 236 neophytes (63 percent) had moved from the villages where they had been born to neighboring villages. Only eight neophytes in the registry resided outside the Lakonia district. In Sparta, with a population in 1829 of 450 souls, 74 neophytes, or 16 percent of the 1829 population, resided in the town in 1834.39 At Vatika, or Faraklo, 37 neophytes constituted 6.68 percent of

138  Proselytes of a New Nation the town’s 1829 population of 539 people. The 19 neophytes in Kaminia constituted almost half of the village’s total population of 47. In other areas of the district, the presence of neophytes was insignificant and scattered across many villages. Most of the neophytes (107) in the Nafplio registry were females who originated from other regions of the Peloponnese, with six from Roúmeli and three from Crete.40 They settled with their Christian Orthodox husbands and masters in Nafplio, where they had been domestic workers during the Greek War of Independence.41 Some neophytes declared a second residence in addition to their primary residence in Nafplio, either because the declared second residence had been their parents’ property or because their Christian Orthodox spouse had originated there. In the Lakonia registry, many neophytes’ children were between ten and thirteen years old. This indicates that some neophytes had been married during the first years of the Greek War of Independence. Most neophyte marriages, however, had been contracted between 1828 and 1830. This also applies to the neophytes in the Nafplio registry, where the ages of some of the neophytes’ children were greater than the time that had elapsed between 1821, when conversions to Christian Orthodoxy had begun, and 1834, when the registry was created.42 If these were neither false declarations by the parents nor erroneous registrations, then these children had been born to Muslim couples and baptized Christian Orthodox by their mothers, or they had been born to mixed marriages between Muslim men and Christian Orthodox women and had been brought up discreetly as Christian Orthodox by their mothers. There are not enough sources to verify that many of the Islamized Christian Orthodox in the southeastern and northwestern Peloponnese or elsewhere during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had converted to Christian Orthodoxy during the Greek War of Independence. For example, the Nafplio registry does not record the names of neophytes’ mothers, which makes it difficult to see how many had had Christian Orthodox mothers. Conversions of Islamized Christians to Orthodox Christianity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the Peloponnese might not have been as common as in the southeastern and other areas of the Peloponnese. This might have been due to the rapid progress of the war after its start in March 1821. In the southeastern and areas of the northern Peloponnese, where the war had begun, such as the region of Kalavryta, the Muslims of Christian Orthodox origin might have suffered the same fate as that of the rest of the Muslim population: an indeterminate number of Muslims of Christian Orthodox origin might have been killed or might have left the Peloponnese, along with the rest of the Muslim population, to areas of Ottoman control, as had many Albanian-​speaking Muslims from Lala in the northwestern Peloponnese.

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  139 The reluctance of Muslims of Christian Orthodox origin to return to Christian Orthodoxy could be due to their fear of the reactions of their fellow Muslims or to their lack of memory or awareness of their Christian Orthodox origins. In fact, the rather limited number of conversions to Christian Orthodoxy in places like Fanari and Gastouni, where Islamization of many Christian Orthodox had taken place during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, may show that the impact of Islamization on the religious identities of Christian Orthodox who had converted to Islam was deeper than one might have thought. This might also mean that the phenomenon of crypto-​Christianity was limited to a small number of converts. Nevertheless, according to the registries of Nafplio and Lakonia, more than half of the conversions to Christian Orthodoxy had taken place in the same villages of the Vardounia region where the Islamization of Christian Orthodox had occurred prior to 1821.43 In addition, in the region of Monemvasia, where a number of Christian Orthodox had converted to Islam in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially through mixed marriages, many Muslims had converted to Christian Orthodoxy after 1821 and had remained in their birthplace when they could have left in safety during the Greek War of Independence. This in itself corroborates the assumption that many neophytes had been the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christian Orthodox, or had been Muslims of Christian Orthodox origin.

Abductions Abductions, including kidnappings, of females that involved their subsequent conversions to Christian Orthodoxy had occurred both during the Greek War of Independence and in the postwar period. In the atmosphere of general disorder caused by the war, such actions were a regular phenomenon. Even after the establishment of the modern Greek state, the existence of new state and legal institutions that considered these actions to be punishable did not always deter the perpetrators. Certain types of abduction, such as bride kidnapping, were rooted in regional customary laws and practices that often led local as well as state authorities to tolerate them. If the kidnapped victim was Muslim and therefore regarded as non-​Hellene (Greek), local and state authorities were often indifferent out of hatred for the religion of the Ottoman Empire, Greece’s major rival. Indeed, while abductions of non-​Muslim women did occur, it was easier for Christian Orthodox abductors to avoid legal consequences, as well as the outrage of their Christian Orthodox communities, if the abducted females were regarded as “infidels.” It was also more difficult for the victims and their families to take legal action against the abductors, due to labyrinthine bureaucratic and legal procedures as well as the unwillingness of local authorities to support

140  Proselytes of a New Nation their cases. This was due in part to religious bias, but also to fears of upsetting the abductor’s family and friends, who often were powerful enough to threaten the local authorities’ political survival. The Great Powers were often indifferent to the protection of Muslims and their rights in the Kingdom of Hellas, or at best offered lukewarm support, in the spirit of religious freedom, when no force or violence had been involved in the abduction. Unable to obtain justice, the Muslim family of the abducted could turn to the Ottoman diplomatic agencies in Greece, such as the Ottoman embassy in Athens or the Ottoman consular corps, where they could protest and request that the agencies mediate with the Greek authorities. Non-​Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire who were involved in religious conversion and apostasy disputes could claim the protection of one or the other of the Great Powers, which favored Christianity, beginning with the Russian mandate to protect Christian Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire, supposedly granted by the 1774 Russo-​Ottoman Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca.44 The Muslims, however, could mostly count on the protection of the Ottoman Empire. After the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, the Ottoman sultan had assumed the title of caliph, which endured until the caliphate’s abolition by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1924. The caliph became the chief Muslim civil and religious ruler, regarded as the successor to the Prophet Muhammad, and was the spiritual steward of all Muslims in his domain and beyond. Abduction could involve bride kidnapping, known also as marriage by abduction or marriage by capture, a practice in which a man abducts the woman he wishes to marry, occasionally even with her consent. This often happened when the bride’s or the groom’s parents did not agree to the marriage, at a time when most marriages were arranged by parents and relatives of a couple, and parents were expected, according to the customs and practices of the time, to be heavily involved in their children’s decisions as to whom to marry. However, often abduction occurred without the consent of the abductee: an abductor would enslave a woman or a man to be used for labor or concubinage and sexual slavery. The social system of most European societies at the time, including the emerging Greek society, was patriarchal; men held primary power and occupied roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege, and control of property, with inheritance of property and titles belonging to the male lineage. Women held an inferior position in society and enjoyed fewer political and social rights; their roles were mostly restricted to that of concubine, housewife, and producer of children. In this context, Muslim women were often abducted as trophies by Orthodox Christian men, were enslaved by their abductors, became their concubines, performed their housework, and worked in their fields. On many occasions, they were converted to Christian Orthodoxy by command of their masters, who

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  141 often married the Muslim abductees, who became their neophyte wives. Female virginity was regarded as a valuable commodity. There was a cultural expectation that a woman would not engage in premarital sexual intercourse.45 Women who were not virgins lost the opportunity for a socially advantageous marriage, and in some instances the premarital loss of virginity entirely eliminated their chances of marriage. There were cases of unmarried females who were found not to be virgins, whether voluntarily or as the result of rape, and who were subjected to shaming, ostracism, or even honor killing, due to the belief that the victims were to blame for bringing shame and dishonor upon their family by violating the standards of their community. Thus, abduction and rape created a fait accompli: it was not easy for the abductee to return to her family; the abductor, however, could make amends by marrying the victim, and thus meet the Christian biblical requirement that a man who seduces or rapes a virgin pay a bride price to her family by marrying her.46 Abductions and Christianizations of Muslim females that took place in the early 1840s in Euboea threatened to disrupt Greco-​Ottoman diplomatic relations and exacerbated the ongoing migration of Euboean Muslims to the Ottoman Empire. This emigration had begun as soon as it became clear that Euboea would become a territory of the Kingdom of Hellas and increased after the establishment of the kingdom in 1832. The abductions and Christianizations also disturbed Christian Orthodox–​Muslim community relations in areas of mixed population on the island, for example, in Chalkida and Karystos. The most serious of these incidents took place in Chalkida at the end of 1841 and concerned the conversion to Christian Orthodoxy of three young Muslim girls. It was so serious that at the end of that year the Greek government informed Ioannis Kolettis, its ambassador to France, and Charilaos Trikoupis, ambassador to Great Britain, expecting the French and British authorities to show interest in the case and intervene.47 The Greek government had been informed that a young Muslim girl named Refye had left her family’s house in Chalkida; a few days later, she had converted to Orthodox Christianity, taking the name Kalliopi, and married a Christian Orthodox warrant officer named Vasilios Bon. The incident led the Muslims of Chalkida to riot and forced the Greek government to send an extraordinary delegation, led by State Councilor Rigas Palamidis, to investigate the issue. After he arrived in Euboea, Palamidis found the Muslim convert already married, and two older Muslim girls who had also converted to vasilios Orthodox Christianity. Palamidis succeeded in removing the three girls from the Christian Orthodox men who housed them and sent the three neophytes to Athens, where the older two stayed with a Christian Orthodox family, and Kalliopi, who was married, stayed in a different house along with her Muslim mother, who hoped to persuade Kalliopi to return to Islam. Many members of the Muslim community of

142  Proselytes of a New Nation Chalkida had argued that Kalliopi was underage, but a few days later she submitted to the public prosecutor a written complaint that she had turned fifteen and that she was being illegally kept in custody. She requested her freedom, as she was now of age and free under law to make her own decisions in life. The other two neophytes from Chalkida also submitted written complaints. One of them, named Maria, maintained that her adoption of Christian Orthodoxy was due to her strong religious feelings: Inspired by Christian Orthodox feelings only and having decided to adopt the holy faith of Jesus Christ, the undersigned abandoned all my beloved belongings and, disdaining all oppressions and persecutions, accepted the divine baptism, but that was not the end of my plight. . . . I wish to return to my Christian Orthodox relatives in Chalkida and live with them, that I may find a job and be able to lead a stable and honorable life, free to submit myself to the worship of the immaculate faith for which I suffered so much.48

The public prosecutor decided that taking the three neophytes into custody was illegal, and ordered their freedom. Kalliopi’s mother tried in vain to annul her daughter’s marriage, based on its having taken place after her daughter’s abduction. She then requested the assistance of Konstantinos Mousouros, known also as Kostaki Musurus Pasha, born in 1807 in Istanbul of a distinguished Phanariot family, who in 1840 had become the Ottoman Empire’s first ambassador to the Kingdom of Hellas, a position he kept until 1848. Mousouros wrote to the Greek authorities and requested Kalliopi’s immediate return to her Muslim mother, as well as punishment of her abductors and their accomplices. Mousouros claimed that Kalliopi was eleven years old, and not fifteen, as she claimed, and questioned the extent to which an underage girl had the right to freedom in her actions. In his response to Mousouros, the Greek royal secretary of justice, G. A. Rallis, insisted that Kalliopi was fifteen and argued that as she now had a husband she was subject to his authority, which overrode any other authority, including that of her parents. The only way to fulfill Kalliopi’s mother’s request was if the Greek courts were to annul the marriage. According to Greek law at the time, an underage female was any girl who had not completed her twelfth year;49 underage girls had no right to freedom of action but were subject to the guardianship of their parents, another adult relative, or an unrelated adult. Once a girl was twelve, the guardianship was over and she was free to act as she wished; her actions could not be restricted by guardianship, except in cases relevant to the management of her property.50 After this exchange with the Greek authorities, Mousouros informed Kalliopi’s mother that he could not help her. Her daughter’s marriage could not be annulled because Kalliopi had converted to Orthodox Christianity prior to

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  143 her marriage, an act that, according to the Greek authorities, proved her consent to the abduction and marriage. The Greek legal system did not regard Kalliopi, whom the Greek authorities claimed to be fifteen years old, as underage. The three female neophytes were released and allowed to return to Chalkida, Kalliopi to her Christian Orthodox husband and the other two to the Christian Orthodox households where they lived. Mousouros’s correspondence with the Greek Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs touches on the status of the Muslim community of Chalkida and sheds more light on Kalliopi’s abduction and subsequent conversion to Christian Orthodoxy. It appears that a gang of Greek soldiers from forces stationed in Euboea had entered the house of Kalliopi’s mother, the Muslim Kiamile, widow of Karpouzade Ahmet Ağa, an esteemed member of Chalkida’s Muslim community, and abducted her daughter. Instead of ordering the abductors’ arrest and prosecution, the governor of Euboea facilitated their crimes by rejecting Kiamile’s pleas to order Kalliopi’s return. Mousouros’s letters emphasized that illegal offenses against the Muslim community of Chalkida, such as that against Kalliopi and her Muslim family, occurred regularly, and that the issue had been raised repeatedly in past correspondence with the Greek government. However, instead of improving, the situation was deteriorating; incidents of abductions of Muslim females and their subsequent conversions to Christian Orthodoxy had recently increased. Mousouros was asking the Greek government what measures had been taken to restore law and order in Euboea. He requested the return of Kiamile’s daughter to her mother and the punishment of Kalliopi’s abductors. He also asked for a prompt response from the Secretariat so that he could inform Kiamile and Kalliopi’s Muslim relatives, who were threatening to write to the Ottoman government in Istanbul. He also emphasized that the situation had led Kalliopi’s Muslim family “to look forward to abandoning their homeland [Euboea], which was inscribed in their hearts; but under the administration of the current governor, the island had turned into an inhospitable land that offered no security guarantees.”51 Vasilios Bon, Kalliopi’s Christian Orthodox husband, filed a lawsuit in Chalkida’s Court of First Instance against his mother-​in-​law, Kiamile, and Emin Ağa Karpouzade, Kalliopi’s cousin, on 31 August 1841. In his lawsuit, Bon requested that Kiamile and Emin Ağa cease to be the managers of his wife’s property and compensate him and Kalliopi for any missing or destroyed assets. According to the lawsuit, Kalliopi was the only heir of her late father, Ahmet Ağa Karpouzade, who had died ten years before, when Kalliopi was very young. Ahmet Ağa’s property consisted of valuable movable items, vineyards, farms, olive trees, mills, and debt bonds totaling 30,000 drachmas. Kiamile and Emin Ağa Karpouzade had sold part of the property and cashed in the bonds. In order for Kiamile and Emin Ağa to cover any losses from their mismanagement of

144  Proselytes of a New Nation Ahmet Ağa’s property, they had planned to marry Kalliopi to Emin Ağa. Kalliopi did not agree to that marriage and had reacted by leaving her house and seeking protection in the house of the Greek major general Nikolaos Kriezotis, where, on 17 August 1841, she had been baptized Christian Orthodox and had married Bon on the same day. Having no other property in Greece besides Kalliopi’s inheritance, Kiamile and Emin Ağa were allegedly preparing to leave for the Ottoman Empire and take any movable property with them. This gave Bon and Kalliopi no other option but to file the lawsuit. The court acted swiftly, confiscating Kalliopi’s property and imprisoning Emin Ağa.52 In a later narration of events to Alexandros Mavrokordatos, the Greek ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Kiamile claimed that Emin Ağa was her nephew and that she and he had managed a 7.4-​acre vineyard, owned by Kalliopi, that shared borders with the vineyard of Major General Kriezotis. Kriezotis had often offered to buy Kalliopi’s vineyard, but Kiamile and Emin Ağa could not agree on the price. Emin Ağa passed his management rights on the vineyard to Kiamile, but Kriezotis never stopped bothering him about the property. Some Christian Orthodox creditors of Emin Ağa had then confiscated the vineyard and sold it at a price far below its fair market value. When Kalliopi came of age, however, she had gained full ownership rights to the vineyard, and therefore the confiscation and sale of the vineyard to Kriezotis were not valid. Kriezotis then threatened Kiamile that if her family were to try to reclaim the vineyard, he would refuse to return it and would abduct Kiamile’s daughter. A few days after Kriezotis’s threat, a burglary by Greek soldiers took place at Kiamile’s house. When Kiamile went to the local police station to report the crime and ask for assistance, some friends of Kriezotis entered the house during her absence pretending that they had been sent by the police, and asked Kiamile’s daughter to follow them to the police station in order to identify the allegedly arrested burglars. Instead they led Kalliopi to Kriezotis’s house. A few days later, Greek bailiffs appeared at Kiamile’s house, confiscated all her movable property, and imprisoned Emin Ağa, who, according to Kiamile, was her daughter’s fiancé. When Mavrokordatos asked Kiamile why she did not file a lawsuit in a Greek court, she responded that she did not trust the Greek courts and had been discouraged to do that by Mousouros. Mavrokordatos sent a letter to the Greek government in which he claimed that Kiamile’s complaints had upset the Ottoman authorities and increased their concerns about the state of the Muslims of Euboea based on the alleged abduction of Kalliopi that had apparently been motivated by property interests.53 In a second letter a few days later, Mavrokordatos emphasized that Kiamile had won support for her case from Bezmiâlem Sultan, mother of the Ottoman sovereign Abdülmecid I. Abdülmecid I ordered the Ottoman government to do all it could to protect Kiamile’s rights. Mavrokordatos was notified that Greco-​Ottoman diplomatic

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  145 relations would be seriously affected if the Greek government did not show any sympathy toward Kiamile’s case and did not move swiftly to restore the lawful order. Mavrokordatos replied that the Greek authorities had tried their best to resolve the issue; it had been Mousouros’s bad advice to Kiamile not to take any legal action in Greek courts that had stopped the Greek authorities from taking any further action.54 In the meantime, Mousouros had forwarded a letter to the Greek government that had been sent to him a month earlier by Emin Ağa and expressed his hopes that the Greek authorities would take the necessary measures for the return of Kalliopi to her mother and the annulment of her Christian Orthodox marriage with Bon. According to Mousouros, Emin Ağa had been held for a long time in the criminal prison of Chalkida without the Greek authorities attributing any crime to him, which made him believe that the real reason for his imprisonment was that he was a Muslim and Kalliopi’s fiancé. The Greek government replied that Emin Ağa had been a temporary internee in the political, not the criminal, prison of Chalkida because Chalkida’s Court of First Instance had ruled that he had misused Kalliopi’s property and the court saw a risk that he might flee the country in order to avoid criminal charges. The court also wished to guarantee that Ahmet Ağa’s property was to be managed by Kalliopi, his heir, and not by Kiamile and Emin Ağa. For these reasons Emin Ağa could not be freed without the prior consent of the accusers, Kalliopi and Bon, until there was a final court decision or until Emin Ağa had provided a guarantee to which the court would agree. With regard to the annulment of Kalliopi’s Christian Orthodox marriage, the Greek government emphasized that, by law, it was not allowed to take action on this issue. Whoever wished to contest the marriage would be free to do so in a Greek court.55 In October 1842 Mousouros wrote to the Greek government, pointing out that Emin Ağa had been born in Chalkida and still held unsold property in Euboea, but that he should not be detained under the pretext that he might return to the Ottoman Empire simply because he was an Ottoman national. If the Greek authorities insisted on detaining him in prison, it could have negative consequences for Greek nationals living in Ottoman territories. Emin Ağa had suffered physically and emotionally during his nearly yearlong detention in prison for no other reason than that he had been co-​manager of a vineyard whose management rights had already been transferred.56 Mousouros also claimed that Chalkida’s judicial authorities had favored Bon, an officer of the Greek army, and discriminated against Emin Ağa. Meanwhile, Kaimile had gone to Istanbul to request assistance from the Ottoman authorities. The Muslim community of Chalkida was not eager to raise funds to pay Chalkida’s court as a guarantee for Emin Ağa’s release lest their act outrage Bon, who might then threaten them and their families.57

146  Proselytes of a New Nation At the end of 1842, Chalkida’s Court of First Instance issued a decision on the case. Although the court accepted that Kalliopi had converted to Christian Orthodoxy voluntarily, the Court described her as underage almost a year after her marriage, implying that she had been underage at the time of her abduction and marriage, as her mother and Mousouros had claimed. In addition, the trial demonstrated that the main reason for Kalliopi’s abduction was control of her property, which after her marriage fell to her husband. When he learned of the court’s decision, Ambassador Mavrokordatos sent a letter to the Greek government expressing his “sad impression and astonishment” that Kalliopi was underage and his certainty that the decision would disappoint the Sublime Porte (a synecdoche for the central government of the Ottoman Empire), which would most certainly complain to the Greek authorities.58 Secretary of Justice Rallis responded that the fact that Kalliopi was underage at the time of her marriage did not contradict the Greek government’s claims, not did it prove the existence of any illegality. Rallis falsely maintained that the Greek government had never claimed that Kalliopi was of age, but that she had a right to make her own decisions and that, according to the laws of the Kingdom of Hellas, whether or not she had been underage, as she had no father no one else could contest the validity of her marriage.59 Kalliopi’s case was only one of numerous similar cases. In 1833, the year of the cession of Euboea to the Kingdom of Hellas, Mustafa Ahmet Zade, a Muslim from Karystos, notified the Ottoman consul Hadji Ismail Bey that some Christian Orthodox residents of Karystos were keeping a Muslim female servant of his in custody and pressuring her to convert to Christian Orthodoxy. Hadji Ismail informed the Greek authorities, and the Greek Regency condemned the incident as “a criminal venture,” ordering the local courts to investigate the case. The Regency also accused the prefect of Euboea of neglecting his duty to protect Muslims’ freedom of religious conscience from religious fanatics, and his duty to enforce the guarantees for religious freedom that had been pledged to the Muslims in royal declarations, decrees, and decisions, which he had neglected to communicate.60 Moreover, the Regency rejected the suggestion that Zade’s Muslim servant testify before the prefect of Euboea as to whether she would prefer to be Christian Orthodox or Muslim. The Regency ordered the immediate freeing of the servant and asked the local authorities to assist her in case she expressed a preference to convert to Christian Orthodoxy and was being prevented from doing so.61 In February 1839, K. Nikolaidis, a member of the municipal council of Xirochori, present-​day Istiaia, in Euboea sent a letter to King Otto on behalf of the entire municipal council regarding two neophyte children. Mustafa Hodja Smyrnaios, a Muslim resident of Xirochori, had had three children, one boy and two girls, with a Christian Orthodox woman from Xirochori named Anastasia

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  147 Tzamna, whom Smyrnaios had abducted during the Greek War of Independence. When the Ottomans left Euboea, Tzamna did not want to move to the Ottoman Empire and so the family remained in Euboea. With the consent of Smyrnaios, the children had been baptized Christian Orthodox, with Christian Orthodox notables from Xirochori as godparents. The municipal council had appreciated the fact that Smyrnaios had agreed to convert his children to Christian Orthodoxy, and often supported his poor family by providing food and clothing for the children. In 1838 Smyrnaios arraigned the members of Xirochori’s municipal council at Chalkida’s Court of First Instance for having abducted his children, because he had decided to move to Quluz, present-​day Volos, and the council did not want him to take his children with him lest they be converted to Islam in their new environment in the Ottoman Empire. While the members of the municipal council were preparing to defend themselves in the court, Euboea’s Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee, responsible for property disputes between Muslims and non-​Muslims, had invited the members of Xirochori’s municipal council to appear before the committee to attempt to solve the issue. In his letter, Nikolaidis therefore was asking King Otto to request that the committee not get involved, but instead allow the Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs to manage the dispute, in the hopes that the Secretariat would show appropriate respect to the Christian Orthodox faith.62 In a letter of 10 March 1839 to the Greek Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, the Ottoman government raised the issue of Smyrnaios’s children and provided a different version of the events. The government reported that Smyrnaios, known also as Mustafa Smyrlis, had legally married Tzamna, a Christian Orthodox woman, in the Ottoman town of Quluz. His wife had remained Christian Orthodox. Soon after their marriage, the couple and their newborn daughter moved to Xirochori in Euboea, which then was under Ottoman rule. While in Xirochori, the couple’s second child, a boy, was born. A few years later, Smyrnaios’s wife passed away, and he decided to move back to Quluz, but the mayor of Xirochori had not allowed him to take his children with him, even though his late wife had had no relatives in Xirochori who could look after the children. Smyrnaios complained to the Greek Royal Secretariat of Justice, which had ordered the local authorities of Xirochori to allow the children to join their father in Quluz, but its order remained unexecuted. While Smyrnaios was trying to solve the issue with the Greek government, his children were being held in Xirochori.63 In his response to the Ottoman government, K. Zografos, the Greek royal secretary of foreign affairs, claimed that the case was closed as far as the Greek authorities were concerned. In Zografos’s view, Tzamna could not have been Smyrnaios’s legal spouse because she had continued to be Christian Orthodox after marriage, which is not allowed by either Ottoman law or Christian canon law. Zografos maintained that Tzamna was Smyrnaios’s

148  Proselytes of a New Nation concubine, and that the children of their concubinage were to be regarded as the legal children of their mother only.64 In their response to Zografos, the Ottoman authorities posted Smyrnaios and Tzamna’s marriage certificate as well as the birth certificates of the two children, whose Muslim names were Fatime and Hasan, all ratified by the qadi of Quluz. The Ottoman authorities also maintained that Ottoman laws did allow mixed marriages and that, according to Christian canon law, the children of a concubine belonged to whoever recognized them as his or her children. The Ottoman government also claimed that Smyrnaios had had difficulties with the Greek authorities as he had tried to solve this case for the previous six years, while his children had been wondering in the streets of Xirochori without any guardianship and protection, dressed and fed by the Ottoman consul of the region.65 The Greek Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs contested these claims, arguing that only Greek courts had been responsible for deciding the case. The Greek authorities were aware of the submitted marriage certificate, but local people in Xirochori had testified against its validity, claiming that there had been no legal marriage, that Tzamna was Smyrnaios’s concubine, and that Smyrnaios did not care about his children, as demonstrated by the fact that he had never objected to their conversion to Christian Orthodoxy. Although Ottoman law allowed mixed marriages between Christian Orthodox and Muslims, Christian canon law forbade them. The Greek Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs emphasized that it would not consent to hand over to a Muslim these underage children born on Greek territory, raised in the Christian Orthodox faith, and under the guardianship of the Christian Orthodox community of Xirochori.66 In July 1840, members of the Muslim community of Chalkida sent a letter to the Ottoman embassy in Athens claiming that a Muslim widow named Feizula, a resident of Chalkida, had decided to leave the city for the Ottoman Empire with her children. Feizula had made arrangements with an Euboean ship and had loaded all of her and her children’s belongings. One day before her departure, some Christian Orthodox men had abducted and seduced one of her daughters, a fourteen-​year-​old. Feizula had requested the help of the local police to find her daughter. But when the police found the daughter, to Feizula’s astonishment they informed her that her daughter wished to convert to Christian Orthodoxy; therefore, they had been unable to help Feizula retrieve the abducted girl.67 Feizula then requested the assistance of the Ottoman embassy in Athens, which in turn contacted Andronikos Paikos, the Greek royal secretary of foreign affairs, emphasizing the significance of the case and demanding the return of the abductee to her mother as well as exemplary punishment for the abductors.68 In his response, Paikos informed Mousouros, the Ottoman ambassador, that the Greek Royal Secretariat of Justice had already ordered the return of the abducted Muslim daughter and the arrest of her abductors.

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  149 P. A. Anagnostopoulos, the governor of Euboea, provided a different version of the events to the Secretariat of Justice, which led the Secretariat and the Greek government to change their minds. According to Anagnostopoulos, an unnamed Muslim man from the Muslim community of Chalkida had been planning to leave Euboea for the Ottoman Empire with his family, but one of his stepdaughters had hidden herself in the house of a Christian Orthodox resident. The stepfather had asked the help of the police to find his vanished stepdaughter. When the stepdaughter was found and asked the reason for her disappearance, she told the police that she had decided some time before to convert to Christian Orthodoxy, and since she realized that her parents would not allow her to convert if she went with them to the Ottoman Empire, she had decided to disappear. The police alleged that the stepdaughter had asked them not to surrender her to “Ottoman hands,” that is, to her parents. They said she told them, “I prefer to die rather than leave for Turkey [i.e., Ottoman Empire], and renounce my decision to convert to Christian Orthodoxy.” This led the police to ask a Christian Orthodox family of the city to take care of the stepdaughter and allow the Muslim parents to visit her whenever they wished. For six days, despite the cries, tears, and promises of her mother and her Muslim siblings, the stepdaughter had not changed her mind. She was baptized as an Orthodox Christian and adopted the Greek Orthodox name Eleni. Anagnostopoulos, the governor, had stood as Eleni’s godfather. In Anagnostopoulos’s view, employing force to make Eleni, who had most of the local Christian Orthodox population united behind her, reconvert to Islam against her will was against Greek law.69 Mousouros had then requested that the neophyte Eleni be transferred to Athens, along with her Muslim parents, in order for her to testify freely before him and the Greek royal secretary of foreign affairs as to whether she wished to separate from her Muslim parents and remain in Greece. Mousouros emphasized that he had not recognized the Greek authorities’ right to decide the case and that he wanted to prove to the Greek government the unreliability of Anagnostopoulos’s claims.70 In a letter of 7 August 1840, Anagnostopoulos notified the Greek Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs that the neophyte Eleni had stated clearly before him, Euboea’s public prosecutor, as well as the chief judge of Chalkida’s Court of First Instance, the priest who officiated Eleni’s Christian Orthodox baptism, and all those who had witnessed the sacrament of Eleni’s baptism, that she wished to move away from her fellow Muslims and remain Christian Orthodox. Therefore, she felt no obligation to appear before the Ottoman ambassador in Athens because “she no longer belonged to the Ottomans, whom she had left for good.” Anagnostopoulos also claimed that, having been baptized Christian Orthodox, the neophyte Eleni was a Greek national, and as such she was subject to the religious and civil laws of the Kingdom of Hellas, meaning that she was to live

150  Proselytes of a New Nation in Greece, her homeland, among Christian Orthodox Greeks, and not among Ottomans. Eleni’s parents had postponed their departure to Selânik (Ottoman Salonica) for a month in the hopes that they would be able to persuade their daughter to abandon Christian Orthodoxy, reconvert to Islam, and follow them to the Ottoman Empire. However, despite their continuous efforts, Eleni refused to follow them, and her parents ultimately left for Selânik without her. After her conversion to Christian Orthodoxy, Eleni had been living in the house of P. Koumelas, a Christian Orthodox resident of Chalkida whom after conversion Eleni married, and had asked the local Greek courts to appoint a legal representative who could help her reclaim her late Muslim father’s property from her Muslim mother and stepfather who, Eleni maintained, had misappropriated her late father’s property. The local Greek courts accepted Eleni’s appeal and appointed I. Tassaios and K. Tzeproudis as the two guardians of her late father’s property. Eleni could decide nothing regarding her late father’s property without their consent.71 The Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs ordered Euboea’s governor to continue his efforts to persuade the neophyte Eleni to travel to Athens, and offered assurances on behalf of the Greek government that she would be free to declare her religious choice. If she continued to refuse to travel to Athens, the governor of Euboea was ordered to bring her to Athens by force.72 On 15 October 1840 Eleni traveled to Athens, where Mousouros and Paikos questioned her. She told both that she preferred to remain Christian Orthodox and live with her Greek Orthodox husband in Chalkida, where she returned following the inquiry.73 Abductions and conversions to Christian Orthodoxy were not restricted to female Muslims. Female Jews also fell victim. In January 1845, Mousouros informed the Greek government that neophyte Dimitrios Grigoriou, known also by his cognomen, Dimitrios Bogazianos, a resident of Athens, had baptized a little girl, age six, the daughter of a Jewish woman from Izmir named Rika Mizrahi, who lived in his house and worked as his housemaid. Mizrahi had left Izmir for Athens immediately after the great fire of 29 July 1841, which had consumed almost two-​thirds of the city. When she left, she had taken her children with her. Soon after she arrived in Athens, Mizrahi baptized her son Haim Solomon and her three other daughters Christian Orthodox; the second eldest daughter later married a Jew from Chalkida named Matakas Ferizis. At some point Mizrahi decided to leave Bogazianos’s house, but he did not allow her to take her neophyte daughter that he had baptized with her. After many fruitless demarches, Mizrahi, accompanied by her son and other Jews, appeared at Bogazianos’s house to claim her daughter but had been confronted by a mob of Christian Orthodox religious fanatics threatening to murder her. Terrified, Mizrahi abandoned her daughter

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  151 and left for Chalkida with her son. Mousouros asked the Greek government to help reunite her and her daughter.74 On 15 January 1845, the Greek police summoned Mizrahi to Athens, where she testified that eight months earlier she had decided to convert to Christian Orthodoxy along with her little daughter. Her daughter had been baptized Christian Orthodox in her presence, but the Christian Orthodox priest had asked Mizrahi to take a course of Christian Orthodox catechism for five or six months before being baptized. During that period, Mizrahi had changed her mind, deciding to remain Jewish. The police had also invited Bogazianos and his, wife, Eleni to an inquiry, where both confirmed Mizrahi’s testimony. Mizrahi kept insisting on being reunited with her daughter, but Bogazianos and his wife refused to return the child, who did not wish to be reunited with her mother. The police had informed the public prosecutor of Athens, but before the prosecutor could invite the interested parties for an inquiry, Mizrahi had notified the police that she had finally decided to leave her daughter to Bogazianos and had left for Chalkida. She allegedly justified her decision by stating, “At the end of the day, both of us [i.e., Jews and Christian Orthodox] believe in the same God.”75 The public prosecutor’s final report on the case stated that Mizrahi had compromised after Bogazianos and his wife, who were childless, had paid her; they adopted her neophyte daughter, and Mizrahi left for Chalkida.76 The story became complicated when the neophyte’s father, Nehamas Michael Mizrahi, a Jew from Izmir who had been away in Jerusalem at the time of the great fire, returned to Izmir. Informed of the developments, he traveled to Athens and challenged his daughter’s adoption. According to Greek law, in cases of child adoption, the adoptive parents were to be issued a legal child adoption certificate, which, in this case, did not exist. As Nehamas was alive, his wife could not legally give up their daughter for adoption, let alone sell her, without his consent. He asked the Ottoman embassy in Athens to look into the issue in order for him “to leave consoled from a territory [i.e., the Kingdom of Hellas] in which the troubles and sorrowful cries of Israelites are denied any mercy, as they are not regarded as human beings.”77 The government informed Mousouros that, since the adoptive father of the neophyte girl was a Greek citizen, the Greek government could not interfere because the rights and freedoms of Greek citizens were constitutionally protected. Should the Ottoman ambassador wish, he could advise the biological father to file a lawsuit in the Greek courts.78 In April 1864, I. Fotiadis, the Ottoman ambassador in Athens, notified the Greek secretary of foreign affairs that Ismail Yusuf Mosia, a Muslim resident of Karystos in Euboea, had informed the ambassador of the abduction and subsequent seduction and conversion to Christian Orthodoxy of Hazife, his twelve-​ year-​old Muslim sister. As her eldest brother, Ismail was Hazife’s guardian.79 Hazife and Ismail’s Muslim parents had passed away in Karystos a few years

152  Proselytes of a New Nation before, leaving seven children, five girls and two boys, all of whom were under Ismail’s protection. Hazife had been abducted by a Christian Orthodox resident of Karystos, who, assisted by other Christian Orthodox men, had imprisoned Hazife in the house of the Christian Orthodox Ioannis Chatzinikolis in Karystos. Their aim had been to convert her to Christian Orthodoxy and marry her to their Christian Orthodox friend Nikolaos Damvrias of Karystos. On 23 March 1864 Ismail complained to the local church warden, Archimandrite Nathanael, who informed him that Hazife’s Christian Orthodox baptism had been scheduled for 18 April. Ismail protested, and Archimandrite Nathanael postponed Hazife’s baptism to a later date. The postponement suited Ismail, who had asked the Greek authorities to order the cancelation of his sister’ baptism because she was underage.80 Informed of the incident, the Secretariat of Religious Affairs had asked the prefect of Euboea to order the Christian Orthodox diocese of Karystia to postpone Hazife’s baptism and wedding. In the end, Hazife converted to Christian Orthodoxy on 18 April 1864 and married Damvrias eight days later, before the local authorities had been able to order the postponement of both sacraments. Hazife’s youngest brother, Mehmet, had given his consent for her conversion and her marriage. Ismail had changed his mind, and appeared with Hazife before the district governor of Karystos, where he testified that no violence had compelled Hazife’s conversion to Christian Orthodoxy, but that she had voluntarily embraced her new faith.81 The Greek Secretariat of Foreign Affairs then notified Fotiadis that Euboea’s local authorities had informed him that Hazife was an adult according to Greek law. As such, none of her older brothers were her legal guardians; she had decided to convert to Christian Orthodoxy voluntarily, as she was free under the Greek Constitution to follow the religion of her choice. The Secretariat also stated that, following the deaths of her Muslim parents, Hazife had lived with Aikaterini Liatina, a Christian Orthodox widow of Karystos, and had worked as her housemaid, and that Hazife’s eldest brother, Ismail, had reported in error that Hazife’s conversion to Christian Orthodoxy was the result of her abduction and seduction.82 As with archival information on the fate of missing neophytes and Muslim family members during the Greek War of Independence, discussed earlier, many archival sources on neophytes—​including much of the material relating to neophyte females abducted as Muslims by Christian Orthodox men and converted to Christian Orthodoxy in order to marry their abductors—​are sources produced by official institutions. Although the appearance of facts these sources provide may often seem entirely convincing, one might frequently question the veracity and plausibility of the information. Statements such as that of neophyte Maria from Chalkida that she had decided to “adopt the holy faith of Jesus Christ” inspired by “Christian Orthodox feelings . . . [and] disdaining all oppressions and persecutions, accepted the divine baptism,” and that she wished to abandon her

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  153 Muslim family and remain with her new Christian Orthodox in-​laws in Chalkida and live “free to submit [herself] to the worship of the immaculate faith for which she suffered so much.” may be questionable. The report by Anagnostopoulos, governor of Euboea, to the Greek government that the abducted neophyte daughter of Feizula, the Muslim widow from Chalkida, had declared under interrogation that she preferred “to die rather than leave for Turkey [i.e., the Ottoman Empire],” where her family was planning to emigrate, “and renounce [her] decision to convert to Christian Orthodoxy” also raises suspicions as to its truthfulness and whether the neophyte’s testimony had been forced. It could also have been the case that neophytes often told the Greek authorities what they wanted to hear as a survival tactic, or felt they were in situations from which they could not easily escape, or that things could become worse for them if they were honest. As most of the residents in the Kingdom of Hellas, neophytes included, were illiterate, it could be that many of the statements in these reports did not reflect the true minds and feelings of the neophytes interrogated by the Greek authorities and that the converts had words put into their mouths by other community members and civil servants in order to make the conversions look as if they had been proper and in line with the laws and procedures prescribed by the Greek state. Finding evidence to the contrary through other sources is not easy, because nonofficial and noninstitutional alternative sources are missing.

Status of the Neophytes The Greek authorities did their best to reward conversion to Orthodox Christianity, an important element of Greek national identity, and regarded naturalized neophyte Christians as Hellenes to ensure that they would enjoy the same legal rights as all Greek citizens, an option not available to Muslim residents of the new Kingdom of Hellas who had decided to remain Muslim. Orthodox Christianity was the main criterion for assigning Greek nationality, according to revolutionary and postrevolutionary constitutions and citizenship laws. In addition, most neophytes had a good command of Greek even when Greek was not their mother tongue, and therefore also met the criterion of language introduced by the second provisional constitution (1823), the Nomos tis Epidavrou, according to which “[Ellines, i.e., Hellenes] are those who speak Greek as their mother language and believe in Christ.”83 Official documents of the time emphasize the importance the Greek authorities gave to the adoption of Christian Orthodoxy by non-​Christians and to the elevation of the status of the converts as Hellenes. One such document is a letter of August 1840 from the office of the governor of Euboea to the Secretariat of the Royal House and Foreign Affairs with reference to a Euboean female neophyte

154  Proselytes of a New Nation named Eleni: “Previously an Ottoman [i.e., Muslim], [Eleni] is now baptized Christian Orthodox, is Hellene, is subject to the religious and civic laws of Hellas and will live in Hellas, her home country.”84 In other words, Christian Orthodox baptism was not simply a sacrament but also signified the conversion of the neophyte to Greek nationality and citizenship, as well as the symbolic transfer of the convert to his or her new homeland, which might be the same village, town, or settlement where the convert had been living prior to conversion, as in the case of the neophyte Eleni. The adoption of Christian Orthodoxy was a symbolic act, affirming that the neophyte’s place of residence was under Greek—​non-​ Ottoman—​dominion and that the convert had accepted and approved his or her new, Christian Orthodox identity. Greek authorities attempted to treat neophytes fairly by returning part of their Muslim family property lost during the Greek War of Independence and offering legal and administrative assistance and privileges that non-​Orthodox Christians lacked in Greece. These measures aimed to offer a smoother integration of the neophytes into the new political and social environment, as well as the means to improve their political, economic, and social status. The Greek press often published glowing reports about neophytes and their actions, as well as laudatory obituaries when they died. One such was a touching obituary in the newspaper Chronos of Eleni Metaxa, the neophyte wife of the Greek senator from the island of Kephalonia, in March 1843.85 The fact that conversions to Orthodox Christianity often took place to allow a marriage between a Christian Orthodox man and a Muslim woman also demonstrates the neophytes’ successful integration into Greek society. The population’s general lack of literacy and education, as well as the informality of social relations at the local level, often facilitated integration over segregation. A good example is the reaction of Chalkida’s residents to the July 1882 death of the Muslim nobleman Halil Bey Arnaoutoğlou. A big crowd of Orthodox Christians and Muslims was reported to have attended the funeral, and, due to Arnaoutoğlou’s high social status, the Greek authorities for the first time allowed a procession with the coffin, carried by both Orthodox Christians and Muslims, in a Muslim funeral.86 The registries of Nafplio and Lakonia provide a good picture of the family status of the neophytes as a random sample of their family status in the rest of the country (Table 4.2). Thirteen years after the first conversions to Christian Orthodoxy and four years after Greece’s independence, many converts had become integrated into their Greek community, where many of them had been born and raised. Terms such as neofytos/​neofytoi, neophytes, or neofotistos/​ neofotistoi (newly enlightened), used in official documents or as appellatives of converts to Christian Orthodoxy by Orthodox Christian community members, were often the only reminders of the neophytes’ conversion. On some occasions, these terms became neophytes’ surnames, for example, Aikaterini Neofytou and

Neophytes in the Kingdom of Hellas  155 Table 4.2  Family Status of Neophytes in Nafplio and Lakonia in 1834 Family Status

Nafplio* Men

Lakonia Women Men

Total Women Men

Women % Men and Women

Married

11

61

58

138

69

199

53.28

Single

16

20

86

72

102

92

38.56

Widowed

0

9

0

19

0

28

5.56

Divorced

0

1

0

0

0

1

0.19

Couple of Neophytes

4

4

0

0

4

4

0.79

Unknown

0

9

0

0

0

9

1.78

31

104

144

229

171

333

Total

* =​people baptized Christian Orthodox before 1821. Source: Nikolaou, Georgios, Islamisations et Christianizations dans le Peloponnese (1715–​CA 1832), Ph.D. Thesis, Strasbourg: Universite des Sciences Humanes Strasbourg II, 1997, p. 362

Sofia Neofytou.87 In 1834 most women neophytes were married to Christian Orthodox men: 203 (63.6 percent) out of 319, according to the registries of Nafplio and the Lakonia district. Some neophyte women had previously been married to Muslims or Christian Orthodox husbands but had been widowed by 1834. The number of unmarried neophyte males was higher than that of unmarried neophyte females: 102 unmarried neophyte men (59.6 percent) out of 171 versus 92 unmarried neophyte women (27.6 percent) out of 333, according to the two registries. The difference was likely due to the fact that women generally married at a younger age than men; the average age of most of the men listed in the registries in 1834 was very young, less than twenty years old. Nevertheless, a part of the Greek population was unwilling to accept the Muslim converts as equal to Orthodox Christians by birth. Given the lack of statistical data on the subject, it is difficult to measure the exact size of this group. It appears to have been small, given that individual complaints were seen only sporadically in the press and the fact that the various archival sources overall exhibit positive attitudes toward the conversions. However, these Greeks demonstrated the existence of a red line that could not be crossed, even by sincere converts, a line that served as a fence that guarded certain high-​status professions, such as judges and priests, against neophytes. Some individuals believed such honorable positions should be occupied only by Greek nationals who had been Orthodox

156  Proselytes of a New Nation Christians from birth. Thus, this sarcastic remark, probably referring to a neophyte of the city, by a journalist in the 21 May 1835 edition of Chronos, the newspaper of Nafplio: “It became possible in Hellas for a denier of [our] faith named Suleyman Nouris to become a judge.”88 A few days later, a strongly written reader complaint appeared in the same newspaper demanding correction of the false impression that the appointed judge was a Muslim: “He is Hellene by race and Orthodox Christian by religion on both his father’s and his mother’s side, and belongs to one of the most notable families in the region.”89 An article published in the newspaper O Sotir on 10 July 1838 argues, “It is a shameful lie that our government is generous towards the neophytes and the Great Powers and thrifty towards the rest of the Hellenes.”90 This reveals the existence of negative feelings toward neophytes among some in the society who feared that neophytes had become more privileged than other Greek nationals. A story in the Greek newspaper Aion of 9 February 1846 complained that the Orthodox Christian ecclesiastical committee of Sparta had requested approval of the priestly ordination of a neophyte from the Synod of Metropolitan Bishops of the Orthodox Church of Greece, based in Athens: We are neither joking nor lying, but we are concerned by the situation of our Church and feel pity for ourselves. We challenge our Member of Parliament, Mr. Korfiotakis, to take the floor in parliament and argue that this neophyte has to be ordained to the priesthood because we are not living in the Middle Ages. . . . We are really ashamed to publish these amusing stories, because they cause shock to the public, but what can we do? We have no other consolation but the freedom of the press. . . . [S]‌oon, with divine permission, we will have Gypsies serving at the altar, yes, Gypsies!91

Conclusion The Greek War of Independence was an extremely violent conflict characterized by numerous massacres and atrocities, a lack of respect for civilian life, and the taking of prisoners of war on both sides of the conflict. All of this was vividly described in contemporary and subsequent historical accounts. Allison Phillips, an English historian and specialist in the history of nineteenth-​century Europe, writes about the war: Everywhere the peasantry rose and massacred all Turks, men, women, and children—​on whom they could lay hands. In the Morea [i.e., the Peloponnese] shall no Turk [i.e., Muslim] be left, nor in the whole wide world. Thus, rang the song, which from mouth to mouth, announced the beginning of a war of extermination. . . . Within three weeks of the outbreak of the revolt, not a Muslim was left, save those who had managed to escape in towns.1

Accounts like these have established the view that the war either killed or forced out the entire Muslim populations of the areas that would become part of the Kingdom of Hellas; by 1832, no Muslims lived in those territories.2 It is true that the overwhelming majority of Muslims either were murdered or left the war-​ torn areas. Even in eastern Roúmeli and on the island of Euboea, which began to be evacuated by the Ottoman army soon after the independence of the Kingdom of Hellas, Muslim residents who wished to sell their property were given notice of a period during which they could do so legally. The vast majority of Muslims chose that option. But to claim that the 1832 Kingdom of Hellas was almost empty of Muslims is not entirely accurate. Of a total population of nearly 750,000, approximately 2,500 Muslims were living in the kingdom in 1832. Most of the Muslims lived in Euboea, with 1,500 residing in Chalkida, Euboea’s capital. Apart from these, there were Muslims who lived with their families in villages and cities inhabited mostly by Orthodox Christians. Some had fought on the side of the Greek insurgents during the war and described themselves as “Muslim philhellenes.” Given the religious character of the war and the inextricable bond between Orthodox Christianity and Greek nationalism in the new political environment that disfavored Islam, many Muslims chose to convert to Orthodox Christianity or to convert their children. Proselytes of a New Nation. Stefanos Katsikas, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197621752.003.0006

158  Proselytes of a New Nation On many occasions, conversion was forced, and, when circumstances permitted, neophytes who had been forced to convert defected from their newly adopted religion and returned to their Islamic faith. Quite often, though, conversion was the result of a choice; it helped Orthodox Christian neophytes maintain or elevate their social status, recover family property lost during the war, and achieve better integration into their new environment. The boundaries between conversion by force and conversion by choice were often vague in the havoc of the Greek War of Independence and the period of nation-​and state-​building that continued well after the end of the war; methodologically, therefore, this distinction might not be entirely useful. Constitutional and other legal documents in Greece from the war and its aftermath pledged freedom of religious beliefs for the inhabitants of the rebellious areas and, later, of the newly established Kingdom of Hellas. Therefore, any religious conversion, including the conversion of Muslims to Orthodox Christianity, may be assumed to have been voluntary, an act of free will and of the neophyte’s conscience, as many neophytes declared verbally or by signed document when Greek authorities investigated cases that invited suspicion, or cases in which Muslim family members or other members of a community maintained that a conversion had been forced. Greek archival collections on Muslim converts to Orthodox Christianity during the Greek War of Independence and its aftermath are full of neophytes’ signed statements, serving as written proofs of verbal affirmations after formal interrogations by the Greek authorities, in most cases with the presence of more than one witness, such as Muslim family members, representatives of the Ottoman diplomatic missions in Greece, or Christian Orthodox community members as third parties. Most of these signed statements declare that the Muslims who had converted to Orthodox Christianity had done so out of “free will and free conscience.” Neophytes could act out of free will, despite possible opposition from members of their religious community of origin. This was the case, for example, in some mixed religious marriages, usually between a Muslim woman and a Christian Orthodox man, conducted through free will and with the consent of the families of the bride and the groom. According to Christian Orthodox canon law, conversion to Christian Orthodoxy was the only way for non-​Christian Orthodox individuals to marry Christian Orthodox. A Muslim or Jewish female with no likelihood of a dowry and with diminishing marriage prospects may well have freely consented to conversion to Christian Orthodoxy in order to marry a Christian Orthodox male. Free will had also to be coupled with the legal right to exercise it, particularly in cases of minors or young people. If a conversion was contested by the family or religious community of the converted Muslim or Jew, their last line of defense was often that the convert had not been of an age to be able to exercise free will. The struggle over the bodies

Conclusion  159 and souls of the young converts was fought over the question of the legal age of discernment. When compared to the official state positions on neophytes’ motives, the reality on the ground was often different and undocumented. The spectrum of “voluntary” and “forced” conversion is very broad, and can range from a conversion at the point of a sword or gun to that of a sincere spiritual seeker who saw Orthodox Christianity as the path to salvation. Force did not necessarily come in the form of a sword, a gun, or an axe; “voluntary” conversions could well be the result of incremental pressure and/​or promises of reward. On the other hand, forced conversions, particularly of young children, could become “voluntary” with the passage of time, as the child became socialized in the Christian Orthodox context and Greek society. A child or young Muslim converting to Orthodox Christianity would be entirely dependent on his or her guardian, whether the young person was a servant in the guardian’s household or a concubine. In the archives, male and female children and young people are overrepresented, as are cases of abductions of young girls who converted to Orthodox Christianity. Although the archival documents do not overtly declare it, there are real implications of sexual abuse,3 of which the Greek authorities often appeared to have been aware or to suspect but were hesitant to act upon due either to their biases against Islam and Muslims, pressure from local communities and political patrons, or the different social mores of the time that tolerated such practices. Another gray area is that of converts who were not directly forced to convert under threat to their lives and/​or the lives of their loved ones, but converted due to indirect pressure or the knowledge of being trapped in undesirable or oppressive situations, where they saw conversion to Christian Orthodoxy as the only way of escape. Often, conversions to Orthodox Christianity were survival strategies for Muslim converts, who were trading their religious identity for a more secure place in a fluid political and social environment, with the goal of ensuring their and their family’s lives and prosperity. Thus, impoverished Muslims who lost their assets during the Greek War of Independence and either could not or did not want to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire often perceived that the only way to make a living was to make use of Greek laws that allowed Muslim converts to Orthodox Christianity to be compensated with a portion of the ethnika ktimata (national estates) for their lost property. Many Muslim women who had been abducted by Christian Orthodox men and forced to marry them fall into this category. The men may have been genuinely attracted to these Muslim women and girls or have calculated that they might obtain large dowries by marrying them, even if by force. Once married, they would be able to make inheritance claims on the assets of their Muslim in-​laws in cases where the bride came from an affluent family. Under pressure from the Greek authorities, the abductees’ family members, or members of the local community, Christian

160  Proselytes of a New Nation abductors often agreed to release abducted Muslim women and girls and allow them to return to their family. However, some of the Muslim female abductees whose Christian Orthodox abductors had given them the option to return to their family had refused to do so, fearing that they could not bear living in disgrace in their local community, regarded as profaned after being abducted and raped, let alone by an infidel. They rightly feared that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for them to marry someone of their own or their family’s choice in the future. Therefore, these abducted Muslim females often preferred to accept their sad “destiny” by converting to Christian Orthodoxy, marrying their Christian Orthodox abductors, and living with them for the rest of their lives. The decision of Muslims to convert was a result of a complex interplay of loyalties, political dynamics, and self-​interest rather than purely religious principles. Conversion was perceived as a way of developing a Hellenic (Greek) national identity, which was the ticket to a safer and better life in the new political and social environment created by the Greek War of Independence and the establishment of the Kingdom of Hellas that followed. On many occasions, conversions were marriage-​based and did not necessarily entail an intention to achieve a Hellenic national identity. This is mostly the case with many Muslim females who converted to marry Christian Orthodox men. In this respect, Greece and the age of nationalism that Greece introduced in the Balkans seem to set a pattern for religious conversions, including Muslim conversions to Christian Orthodoxy, which was to be repeated elsewhere in the post-​Ottoman Balkans. Thus, after the establishment of the Principality of Bulgaria, following the Treaty of Berlin in 1878,4 as a de facto independent and de jure vassal state under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, many Muslims in the city of Ruse (Rusçuk, in Turkish) on the bank of the Danube River in northeastern Bulgaria converted to Bulgarian Orthodox Christianity in public baptisms as a means to obtain Bulgarian national identity and the privileges associated with being part of the dominant religious group—​in some cases, for marriage as well as for safety reasons.5 The decision of many Muslims to convert to Christian Orthodoxy was often facilitated by pragmatism, a lack of education, religious syncretism, everyday interactions, and religious commonalities with Orthodox Christians. The overwhelming majority of residents in the rebellious areas were peasants; their religious worship was “practice-​oriented,” dealing primarily with this world. It included little or no doctrine, but chiefly emphasized rituals that supported worldly goals, such as prayer for the health and welfare of families, crops, and animals.6 Although they and their spouses remained Muslims, some baptized and raised their children as Christian Orthodox, believing that this would assist their children to better integrate in Greek society. Becoming Hellenes (Greek nationals) allowed them to occupy elected offices and high-​ranking civil service positions. In a way, this confirms Richard Bulliet’s thesis that “leaving aside

Conclusion  161 ecstatic converts, no one willingly converts from one religion to another if by virtue of conversion he markedly lowers his social status.”7 Religious fluidity could also be explained by the weakness of religious institutions during this period. There were shortages of Muslim religious ministers in the rebellious areas and a lack of organized Islamic religious structures, whereas Ottoman state structures that might have sustained and even enforced religious boundaries and protected the Islamic religious identity and Islam as a religion were absent or weak. Regardless of the motives behind conversion, only those Orthodox Christian neophytes and Muslims with political connections achieved economic gains, and those sometimes scandalously. Most neophytes, like most of the Greek population, were poor and economically disadvantaged. There is a widely held view that people’s religious identity has been well entrenched over centuries of theocratic rule in the Balkans, mainly through the Ottoman millet system. One might also expect that this would be the case for people of religious conservative, peasant, and Islamic family backgrounds, like most of the Orthodox Christian neophytes. But one can easily argue that the lack of education and the informal social relations at the local level facilitated Muslim religious conversions to Orthodox Christianity in many cases. The boundaries between “Muslims” and “Christians” are still too often imagined as stable, unchanging, and easily translatable into modern ethnic categories. During the Greek War of Independence and the first few postindependence years, however, religious boundaries were not insurmountable. Religious conversions to Orthodox Christianity should be understood in the context of war, anarchy, and changing power relations. The neophyte self-​transforms because his or her internal mindset and/​or external environment is transformed. In this way, the fluidity of the wartime political and social environment serves as “a precursor to conversion.”8 In the words of Selim Deringil, “To convert is to change worlds.”9 The process of conversion comprises both an internal component that demands a change of consciousness and an external component of behavior that leads to the creation of a new self-​identity and a new way of life. It entails a new identity for the convert, a new theological foundation, and a commitment to a new moral authority. The motives for conversion may vary from simple to more complex, from discreditable to creditable, from voluntary to forced, from the influence of family and social networks or the lack thereof. But in the case of the Greek War of Independence, whatever the motives of conversion, the process was facilitated by the anarchy of the war, the defeat of the Ottomans, the political and social fluidity of the transition of power, and the subsidence, if not collapse, of Islamic institutions in Greece in favor of Orthodox Christianity. Religious conversion became a very socially and politically charged issue as it overlapped with the birth and the rise of nationalism in the Balkans and

162  Proselytes of a New Nation Anatolia. Apostasy from one’s religious faith and consequent conversion to another religion was regarded as denouncing a particular national identity and state affiliation with the simultaneous adoption of another, which could have explosive political, social, and even diplomatic consequences if the religious/​national group abandoned by the convert was in conflict with or seen as a national enemy of the religious/​national group that the neophyte was joining through conversion. Unlike religious conversions prior to the emergence of nationalism, in the age of nationalism conversion to a certain religious faith often meant the adoption of an attendant national identity, national discourse, and ultimately national movement. Conversions of Muslims to Orthodox Christianity often complicated diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Hellas and the Ottoman Empire, as in the case of the forced conversion to Christian Orthodoxy of many abducted Muslim females in the 1840s in Euboea. After the 1840s such conversions hardly ever became thorny issues in Greco-​ Ottoman diplomatic relations. Muslim emigration to the Ottoman Empire had seriously reduced the number of Muslims in Greece: after the 1840s only a couple of hundred Muslims were left. The passions of the Greek War of Independence had been subdued, and a new normalcy had been restored. Following the postwar settlement, Muslims in the formerly rebellious areas were accepted as “estranged others” in the kingdom and were no longer targeted by Greeks. Following the war, the Ottoman Empire entered a period of domestic state reforms, known as the Tanzimat reforms, that aimed at the modernization and consolidation of the empire’s social foundations and the securing of its territorial integrity against internal nationalist movements and external aggressive powers. In the context of this period of reform that lasted until 1876, Ottoman authorities became more tolerant of religious conversions in general, including the conversion of Muslims to other religious faiths. In 1844, the Ottoman sultan Abdülmecid I pledged to abolish the death penalty for Muslim apostates. The promise was not fulfilled, but the death penalty for Muslim apostates fell progressively and tacitly into inactivity. Among the reforms’ major objectives was to politically and socially emancipate the empire’s non-​Muslim subjects, or dhimmī, and more thoroughly integrate them into Ottoman society by enhancing their civil liberties and granting them equality throughout the empire. Most of the conversions of Muslims and Jews to Orthodox Christianity occurred during the Greek War of Independence. When conditions allowed, as had happened during Ibrahim Pasha’s invasion of the Peloponnese and Roúmeli, a number of Muslims who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy abandoned their new religion without a second thought and reembraced Islam. Symbolic boundaries may change according to the historical context: that which defines a person one day can become useless or even dangerous the next. In addition, the symbolic meaning of conversions was more powerful during the Greek

Conclusion  163 War of Independence, and Greek fervor for recruiting members of other faiths for conversion to Orthodox Christianity was greater. Conversion marked a break with the past, a rejection of heritage and history, and a new beginning. The Muslim convert was a national trophy for the Greek insurgents, a hero who had succeeded in breaking ranks with the enemy Ottoman Empire and joining the Greek cause. By the same token, Ottomans viewed Muslim apostates to Orthodox Christianity as “traitors within the gates,” somewhat akin to views of the witch in medieval Europe.10 This also explains the fact that Muslim converts to Orthodox Christianity in eastern Roúmeli and on the island of Euboea were often, but not always, involved in legal disputes with their Muslim relatives regarding family property. In addition to Islamic law, which normally disqualified females and Muslim apostates from inheriting family property, quite often Muslim family members in eastern Roúmeli and Euboea took action against their family members who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy without having a legitimate reason to do so. Greeks regarded Muslim and Jewish converts to Orthodox Christianity as Greek nationals. There is no evidence to suggest that neophytes were discriminated against or were not fully integrated into their local community. However, for a number of Greeks, Greek national identity was a birthright privilege, and therefore citizens naturalized by conversion to Orthodox Christianity were not seen as equals to Orthodox Christians by birth. They ought not to have the privileges enjoyed by the latter, such as the ability to enter professions of high social status. For these Greeks, while conversion to Orthodox Christianity might pull the converts from the social margins occupied by non-​national Muslims, Jews, and other non-​Christian minorities, it sufficed only to elevate the neophytes to the rank of second-​class citizens, where they could enjoy better social standing than Muslims and other non-​Christian minorities but could never equal the top-​ class Christian Orthodox by birth.

Notes Names and Dates 1. Bubenik, “The Rise of Koine”; Horrocks, Greek, 4–​6.

Introduction 1. Most likely Shekure (Shakira or Shakura in Arabic), but in Greek “u” is rendered with an “i.” For Muslim names in this book I retain the Greek pronunciation and orthography of the source. 2. Diplomatic and Historical Archives of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs (hereafter DHAGMFA), 1831, 60:1, “The Interim Governor of Argos N. Mavrommatis to the [Greek] Secretariat of Foreign Affairs and Merchant Navy, Argos, 4 February 1831.” 3. Firth, “Spiritual Aroma.” 4. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Codex Theodosianus, XVI 1.2, 475. 5. Barbero, Charlemagne. 6. Soyer, The Persecution, 3–​4. 7. Heschel, Maimonides, 43. 8. Soyer, The Persecution, 3–​4. 9. Chazan, Church, State and Jew, 103. 10. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, 71–​95. 11. Dollinger, The German Hansa, 34. 12. Perrie, The Cambridge History, 66. 13. Perrie, The Cambridge History, 319–​320. 14. Lieven, The Cambridge History, 186. 15. Al-​Andalus was the name by which Arabs and non-​Arab Muslims of the Middle East and the Maghreb called the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages. Soyer, The Persecution, 182; Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 64. 16. For their work to evangelize Christianity among the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius are often called the “Apostles of the Slavs.” 17. Betti, “The Making of Christian Moravia”; Curta, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages; Vlasto, The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom; Goldberg, Struggle for Empire. 18. Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages; Goldberg, Struggle for Empire; Fine, The Early Medieval Balkans. 19. Giuzelev, Medieval Bulgaria, 130. 20. The Bulgars were Turkic semi-​nomadic warrior tribes whose ethnic roots can be traced in the Volga-​Ural region and according to some researchers in Central

166 Notes Asia. They spoke a Turkic language, i.e., Bulgar language of Oghuric branch, and migrated westwards across the Eurasian steppe absorbing other tribal groups and cultural influences, including Iranian, Finnic, and Hunnic tribes. During the seventh century the Bulgars settled in the Pontic-​Caspian steppe, where they established the polity of Old Great Bulgaria (c. 630–​635). There, they preserved the military titles, organization and customs of Eurasian steppes, as well as pagan shamanism and belief in the sky deity Tangra. Old Great Bulgaria was defeated by the Khazar Empire in 668 CE. In c. 679 CE, Khan Asparukh conquered Scythia Minor—​ the region surrounded by the Danube at the north and west and the Black Sea in the east, roughly corresponding to today’s Dobrudzha, with a part in Romania, and part in Bulgaria—​opening access to Moesia—​the region south of the Danube River that included most of the territory of modern-​day Central Serbia, Kosovo, the north-​eastern parts of Albania and the northern parts of North Macedonia, the whole of northern Bulgaria, Romanian Dobrudzha and small parts of Southern Ukraine—​and established the First Bulgarian Empire, where the Bulgars became a political and military elite. They merged subsequently with established Byzantine populations as well as with previously settled Slavic tribes, and were eventually Slavicized, thus forming the ancestors of modern Bulgarians. See Stepanov, The Bulgars; Sophoulis, Byzantium and Bulgaria. 21. Vlasto, The Entry of the Slavs into the Christendom; Sullivan, Christian Missionary Activity. 22. The Medieval Bulgarian state of Khan Boris included Bulgars, Turkic semi-​nomadic warrior tribes, Slavs, and Romanized (later called Vlachs) or Hellenized Christian Thracian populations. 23. The creation of the independent Bulgarian archbishopric was unprecedented. Usually, independent churches were those founded by the apostles, the twelve chief disciples of Jesus Christ, or their students. 24. Giuzelev, State and Church. 25. Shepard, “The Origins of Rus’.” 26. Sevcenko, “The Christianization of Kievan Rus’.” 27. Franklin, “Kievan Rus’.” 28. Haleem, The Qur’an, 2:256: “There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is henceforth distinct from error. And he who rejects the false deities and believeth in Allah hath grasped a firm handhold which will never break. Allah is Hearer, Knower”; Bonner, Jihad, 80–​90. 29. Campo, Encyclopedia of Islam, 194–​195; Hallaq, An Introduction. 30. Hallaq, Sharīa, 327. 31. Bonner, Jihad, 89–​90; Lapidus, Islamic Societies, 345; Waines, An Introduction, 53. 32. Lewis, Arabs in History, 50. 33. Gil, A History of Palestine, 822. 34. Lal, Indian Muslims, 64, 334. 35. Bakshi, Kashmir, 70. 36. Roemer, “The Safavid Period,” 218. 37. Lapidus, A History, 385–​386.

Notes  167 38. The office of the Sheik-​ul-​Islam was an Ottoman innovation. The holder of the office was an Ottoman dignitary whose title denoted him as the chief of Islam, and he headed the ulamā, the religious-​judicial hierarchy of the empire. The office was created in 1423 by the Ottoman emperor Murad II, to be conferred on the celebrated Djelalzadeh, whom Murad II had raised to the office of qadi, judge, and mufti, denoting a Muslim legal expert empowered to rule on religious affairs. Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin. 39. Todorova, “Conversion to Islam.” 40. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam, 1:471. 41. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 1:27, 112–​129; Nicolle, “Devshirme System”; Vakalopoulos, The Greek Nation, 41. 42. Tsopotos, Gi kai Georgoi, 58–​59. 43. Krstic, Contested Conversions, 167–​168. 44. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam, 1:570; Lopasic, “Islamisation”; Kalicin, Velkov, and Radushev, Osmansi Izvori. 45. Norris, Islam, 264. 46. Skendi, Balkan Cultural Studies, 154. 47. Baer, The Dönme; Baer, “The Double Bind”; Neyzi, “Remembering to Forget.” 48. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam, 1:31, 2:565; Vryonis, The Decline; Vryonis, “Religious Changes,” 173; Clayer, Mystiques, État, 252, 378, 564; Melikoff, “Recherches.” 49. Vryonis, The Decline; Vryonis, “Religious Changes,” 173. 50. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam, 1:44; Barkan, “Osmanlı Imperatoǧlu’nda.” 51. Fine, “The Various Faiths,” 5–​6; Lopasic, “Islamisation.” 52. Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims, 16–​18; Malcolm, Bosnia, 41–​42; Sugar, Southeastern Europe, 52–​53. 53. Friedman, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 30; Malcolm, Bosnia, 63–​ 66; McCarthy, “Ottoman Empire,” 65. 54. Ramet, Nihil Obstat, 209; Bieber, “Muslim Identity,” 15–​19; Ergo, “Islam in the Albanian Lands”; Gawrych, The Crescent; Giakoumis, “The Orthodox Church”; Kopanski, “Islamization”; Skendi, “Religion in Albania.” 55. Doja, “A Political History”; Pistrick, “Interreligious.” 56. Norris, Islam, 47–​48; Vickers, The Albanians, 17–​24; Doja, “Instrumental Borders,” 60; Stavrianos, The Balkans, 498; Anscombe, “Albanians”; Duijzings, Religion. 57. Todorova, “The Ottoman Legacy,” 47. 58. Menage, “The Islamization,” 67; Inalcik, “Ottoman Methods.” 59. Levtzion, “Toward a Comparative Study.” 60. Jennings, Christians and Muslims, 137–​143. 61. Adıyeke, “Multi-​Dimensional Complications.” 62. Riis, Religion, 22. 63. Aleksov, “Adamant and Treacherous.” 64. Katsikas, “Muslim Minority”; Myuhtar-​ May, “Pomak Christianization”; Ersoy-​ Hacısalihoğlu, “Bulgaria’s Policy.” 65. Minkov, Conversions to Islam; Baer, Honored by the Glory; Baer, “Islamic Conversion Narratives.”

168 Notes 66. Todorov, The Balkan City; Mutafčieva and Dimitrov, Sur l’État; Karpat, “The Land Regime”; Belin, Étude sur la Propriété. 67. Barkey, Empire of Difference, 128. 68. Deringil, Conversion and Apostasy, 14–​15. 69. Strauss, “Ottoman Rule,” 206. 70. Balivet, Romano Byzantine, 187. 71. Poston, Islamic Da’wah, 158. 72. Krstic, Contested Conversions; Rothman, Brokering Empire; Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople; Greene, “Trading Identities”; Greene, A Shared World; Agoston, “Information”; Levtzion, “Toward a Comparative Study.” 73. Fine, The Early Medieval Balkans; Hasluck, Christianity and Islam; Vryonis, The Decline; Vryonis, “Religious Changes”; Arnold, The Preaching of Islam; Birge, The Bektashi Order; Balivet, “Aux Origines de l’Islamisation”; Stahl, Croyances Communes des Chrétiens; Zeginis, “O Bektasismos sti Dytiki Thraki”; Melikoff, “Recherches”; Doumanis, Before the Nation; Husain and Fleming, “A Faithful Sea.” 74. Ramet, Serbia and the Serbs, 237; Yeomans, Visions of Annihilation. 75. The Greek Catholic Church includes members who follow the Greek Byzantine liturgy but ecclesiastically are in full communion with the pope and the worldwide Roman Catholic Church. 76. Deringil, Conversion, 1–​27. 77. Adanır, “The Formation,” 303. 78. Mazower, The Balkans, 76. 79. Kitromilides, “Orthodox Culture”; Kitromilides, “  ‘Imagined Communities’  ”; Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution; Roudometof, “Invented Traditions”; Clogg, “The Greek Millet.” 80. The literature on nationalism is rich. For a concise overview of the main arguments on nationalism, see Anderson, Imagined Communities; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism; Breuilly, Nationalism and the State; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism; Smith, Myths and Memories; Smith, Nationalism; Billing, Banal Nationalism; Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed; Hroch, Social Preconditions; Hroch, “National Self-​ Determination”; Marx, Faith in Nation; Jusdanis, The Necessary Nation; Guibernau, The Identity; Guibernau, Belonging; Özkırımlı, Theories. 81. Kishwar, Religion; White, Muslim Nationalism; Fleming, “Orientalism”; Kitromilides, Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy. The term “religious nationalism” was coined by Milorad Ekmečić in Stvaranje Jugoslavije. 82. Aleksov, “Adamant and Treacherous,” 83–​85. 83. Deringil, Conversion and Apostasy, 2. 84. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 128, 185. 85. Schick, “Christian Maidens.” 86. Greene, A Shared World, 107. 87. Kitromilides, “Orthodox Culture.” 88. Smith, Ethnosymbolism and Nationalism, 54, 64. 89. Özçelik, “Osmanlı İç Hukukunda,” 350. 90. Adıyeke, “Multi-​Dimensional Complications.”

Notes  169 91. Milutinović, “Sword, Priest and Conversion,” 41. 92. Aleksov, “Adamant and Treacherous,” 164. 93. Aleksov, “Adamant and Treacherous.” 94. Aleksov, “Adamant and Treacherous,” 171. 95. Todorova, “Conversion to Islam.” 96. Péter, Rady, and Sherwood, Kossuth Sent Word, 101. 97. Frucht, Eastern Europe, 354. 98. Doxiadis, State, Nationalism, 47–​80. 99. Katsikas, Islam and Nationalism; Katsikas, “Millets in Nation States”; Tsitselikis, Old and New Islam; Popovic, L’Islam Balkanique. 100. Celik, “Religious Conversion.” 101. Georgiev and Trifonov, Pokrŭstvaneto; Myuhtar-​May, “Pomak Christianization”; Ersoy-​Hacısalihoğlu, “Bulgaria’s Policy”; Korkmaz, “Shifting.” 102. Eminov, Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities; Karpat, The Turks of Bulgaria; Şimşir, The Turks of Bulgaria.

Chapter 1 1. Fleming, The Muslim Bonaparte; Skiotis, “From Bandit to Pasha.” 2. Anscombe, “Continuities”; Anscombe, State, Faith, 46–​89. 3. Panagiotopoulos, “Oi Tektones”; Vournas, Filiki Etaireia; Brewer, The Greek War, 26–​35. 4. The offering of the leadership of the Filiki Etaireia to Alexander Ypsilantis, after the refusal of the post by Count Ioannis Kapodistrias, foreign minister of the Russian Empire, shows the hopes that the members of the Filiki Etaireia placed in the Russian Empire, as a Christian Orthodox country, to support their cause. 5. Hitchins, A Concise History, 56. 6. Dakin, The Greek Struggle, 41–​57; Vakalopoulos, “Symvoli stin Istoria.” 7. Anscombe, “Albanians.” 8. Brewer, The Greek War, 89–​91. 9. For the Orlov revolt of 1770, see “The Rise of Greek Nationalism” section. 10. St. Clair, That Greece, 45. 11. Detorakis, “I Tourkokratia,” 375; Vacalopoulos, History of Macedonia, 592–​596, 627–​628. 12. Anscombe, “The Balkan Revolutionary Age.” 13. Philliou, Biography, 67–​74; Lewis, What Went Wrong, 44–​45. 14. Brewer, The Greek War, 104. 15. Gordon, History, 1:191. 16. Clogg, “Aspects,” 23; Brewer, The Greek War, 165. 17. The gate has remained closed from that day to the present. After three days, Patriarch Grigorios’s corpse was handed to a Jewish mob, for there had long been animosity between Greeks and Jews in Istanbul, and dragged to the Golden Horn.

170 Notes Picked up by the Greek crew of a Russian ship and taken to Odessa in 1871, the body was transferred to Greece. On the centennial anniversary of his martyrdom, in 1921, Patriarch Grigorios V was formally proclaimed a saint of the Greek Orthodox Church. Clogg, A Concise History, 36–​37; St. Clair, That Greece; Woodhouse, The Philhellenes. 18. Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 2:364–​374, 387. 19. Finlay, History, 2, 172; St. Clair, That Greece, 1. 20. Phillips, The War, 48. 21. Finlay, 2, History, 172. 22. Gordon, History, 1:149. 23. Phillips, The War, 48; St. Clair, That Greece, 12. 24. Hellenic Parliament, Politikon Syntagma tis Ellados (The Troezen Constitution, 1827), accessed 15 January 2022, https://​www.hel​leni​cpar​liam​ent.gr/​UserFi​les/​ f3c70​a23-​7696-​49db-​9148-​f24dc​e6a2​7c8/​syn09.pdf. 25. Blaquière, The Greek Revolution; John Lee Comstock, History. 26. Lemaitre, Musulmans et Chrétiens. 27. Finlay, History, 2:187. 28. Finlay and Tozer, A History of Greece, 6:152–​153. When the Ottoman state was militarily weak, bandit groups of various religious ethnic backgrounds that struck Muslims and Christians alike infested the Balkan countryside, known also to the Greek-​speaking Christian Orthodox as kleftes (klephts, the Greek equivalent of hajduks/​hayduts in Serbian, hajdut in Bulgarian; hadjuk in Bulgarian has the same connotation as in Turkish-​rascal, bandit; haydut is the noble form). Because they defined Ottoman rule, the kleftes often held a significant place in popular lore. Clogg, A Concise History, 9, 40–​41; Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause, 27. 29. Gordon, History, 1:100; Finlay, History, 2:146–​147; Phillips, The War, 32–​33. 30. Booras, Hellenic Independence, 24. 31. Phillips, The War, 100–​101. 32. The Ottomans responded to bandit groups’ challenges by recruiting the ablest among the bandit groups, as well as by contracting Christian Orthodox militias, known as armatoloi (armatols), with the aim of enforcing the sultan’s authority. An area under the control of the armatoloi was called armatoliki, with the oldest known armatoliki having been established in Agrafa, a mountainous region split between Roúmeli and Thessaly during the reign of the Ottoman sultan Murad II (1421–​1451). Batalas, “Send a Thief,” 154–​157; Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause, 27. 33. Phillips, The War, 57–​58. 34. Raybaud, Mémoires, 1:365. 35. Finlay, History, 2:184. 36. Phrantzes, Epitomi tis Istorias, 1:335. 37. Since the establishment of the Modern Greek state, Navarino is also called Pylos. Greek historical sources at the time refer to Navarino as Neokastro, meaning New Castle, which referred to the fortress built by the Ottomans in 1573 at the southern entrance of the Navarino bay, as opposed to the thirteenth-​century fortress built by the Franks at the northern entrance of the bay.

Notes  171 38. Finlay, History, 2:261–​262; Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 5:393–​394; Phillips, The War, 52–​55. 39. Gordon, History, 1:231 adds in a footnote that one of the Greek rebel negotiators of the capitulation of the citadel of Navarino boasted to him that he had succeeded in purloining and destroying the copy of the agreement that had been given to the Muslims so that no proof might remain of any such transaction having been concluded. 40. Finlay, History, 2:262–​263; Phillips, The War, 58–​59. 41. Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 5:394; Vakalopoulos, “Aixmalotoi,” 39; Phrantzes, Epitomi tis Istorias, 1:355–​412, 417–​430; Spiliadis, Apomnimonevmata, 1:225; Striebeck, Mittheilungen, 39–​42. 42. Kalantzis, O Istorikos. 43. Phrantzes, Epitomi tis Istorias, 1:399–​401. 44. Finlay, History, 2:263; Phrantzes, Epitomi tis Istorias, 1:400–​401. 45. Knight, Geography, 897; Frost, History, 344–​345. 46. Gordon, History, 1:234; Salpigx, 5 August 1821, 6–​7. 47. Phillips, The War, 59. 48. Finlay, History, 2:267. 49. Passing by the ravine two years after the massacre, Finlay saw heaps of unburied bones bleached by the winter rains and summer suns (History, 2:268n3). 50. Spyridon Trikoupis claims that the few Muslims who were spared at the taking of Tripolitsa were murdered subsequently at Argos on suspicion of having been privy to the escape of one of their number (Istoria, 2:128). 51. Phillips, The War, 61. 52. Kolokotronis, Diigisis, 80. 53. Disease also followed similar killing sprees in other towns and villages in areas under rebellion in the Peloponnese and Roúmeli. By the end of 1821, illness was said to have carried off more Orthodox Christians than had fallen at the hands of the Ottomans. Finlay, History, 2:270. 54. Dakin, The Greek Struggle, 66–​67. 55. St. Clair, That Greece, 79. 56. Phillips, The War, 67. 57. Vick, The Congress; Jarrett, The Congress; Champan, The Congress. 58. Waddington, A Visit to Greece, 10; St. Clair, That Greece, 57; Woodhouse, Capodistria, 262–​264. 59. Riasanovsky, The Emergence of Romanticism; McCalman, An Oxford Companion. 60. St. Clair, That Greece, 59; Pappas, The United States, 42, 142. 61. Richard, Letters and Journals, 21–​26. 62. Brewer, The Greek War, 138. 63. Wynne, State Insolvency, 2:284; Brewer, The Greek War, 289–​290; Finlay, History, 2:337–​338; Blaquière, The Greek Revolution, 305; Blaquière, Narrative, 123–​128; Green, Sketches, 174. 64. St. Clair, That Greece, 59; Pappas, The United States, 42, 142. 65. Brewer, The Greek War, 142–​144.

172 Notes 66. Brown, International Politics, 52; Schick, “Christian Maidens,” 286. 67. Stavrianos, The Balkans, 28. 68. Brown, International Politics, 52. 69. Papagiorgis, Ta Kapakia. 70. Ellinika Chronika, no. 30, 15 April 1825, 3–​4. 71. Ellinika Chronika, no. 50, 21 June 1824, 3–​4; no. 76, 17 September 1824, 2. 72. Efimeris ton Athinon, no. 37, 21 January 1825, 1; no. 38, 24 January 1825, 1. 73. Filos tou Nomou, no. 43, 11 August 1824, 2–​3. 74. Petropoulos, “Forms of Collaboration.” 75. In a gesture of goodwill, on 8 April 1827, Ibrahim released approximately one thousand Christian Orthodox captives from the regions of Kalavryta, Gastouni, and Pyrgos (north and northwestern Peloponnese), many of whom had signed proskynochartia. Kolokotronis, Ellinika Ypomnimata, 305, 516–​517; Deligiannis, Apomnimonevmata, 3:141. 76. Chrysanthopoulos, Apomnimonevmata, 1:395, 2:398. 77. Dakin, The Greek Struggle, 96–​98; Gordon, History, 1:164–​165; Waddington, A Visit to Greece, 105. 78. Rotzokos, “Oi Emfylioi Polemoi,” 154–​161. 79. Rotzokos, “Oi Emfylioi Polemoi,” 164–​170. 80. Howarth, The Greek Adventure, 196. 81. Finlay, History, 2:418–​419. 82. Gordon, History, 2:395; Trikoupis, Istoria, 4:147–​148. 83. Temperley, The Foreign Policy, 586–​587. 84. Brewer, The Greek War, 316–​318. 85. Howarth, The Greek Adventure, 239–​241. 86. Trikoupis, Istoria, 4:285, 303; Dontas, The Last Phase, 68; Kolokotrones, Kolokotrones, 288. 87. Dakin, The Greek Struggle, 260. 88. To Ergo. 89. Clogg, A Concise History, 41–​45. 90. Clogg, A Short History, 68–​69. 91. Bisaha, Creating East and West, 114. 92. Bartl, Der Westbalkan Zwischen, 146–​149. 93. Infelise and Stouraiti, “Venezia”; Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, vol. 4: Tourkokratia 1669–​1812. 94. Mango, “The Legend,” 85–​86. 95. Gallant, The Edinburgh History, 6–​ 10; Gritsopoulos, Ta Orlofika; Rotzokos, Ethnafipnisi kai Ethnogenesi. 96. Svoronos, Histoire, 59. 97. Kassis, Mani’s History, 35. 98. Pryakhin, Lambros Katsonis; Vakalopoulos, “I Strofi ton Ellinon pros tous Rosous.” 99. Skiotis, “From Bandit to Pasha,” 231–​238. 100. Kitromilides, “Orthodox Culture”; Kitromilides, “  ‘Imagined Communities’  ”; Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution; Roudometof, “Invented Traditions”; Clogg, “The Greek Millet.”

Notes  173 101. Ware, The Orthodox Church, 99–​100; Zelepos, “Metemorfothi Gar kai Eginen.” 102. Frary, Russia, 20–​21. 103. Goldstein, Wars and Peace Treaties, 20. 104. Svoronos, Histoire, 62. 105. Clogg, A Concise History, 29. 106. Dakin, The Greek Struggle, 41–​42. 107. Jelavich, History, 2:204–​205. 108. Drace-​Francis, The Making, 15–​19; Karathanassis, “Le Rôle,” 253–​256. 109. Stoianovich, “The Conquering”; Todorov, The Balkan City, 58, 193, 198. 110. King, The Black Sea, 140–​141, 147. 111. Seirinidou, Ellines sti Vienni. 112. Dimaras, La Grèce, 30, 104, 122. 113. Ellinika Chronika, no. 5, 16 January 1826, 1–​2. 114. Vogli, “Ellines to Genos,” 86n70; Papageorgiou, “Vasos Mavrovouniotes”; Veselin Beshevliev, Todorov, and Kirkova, Izsledvaniia. 115. Parkas moved to the Peloponnese along with his Ethiopian (Muslim) partner. At some point during the military operations Greek insurgents misidentified Parkas’s partner and captured and imprisoned her in a mosque, along with other Muslims. General State Archives, Athens (hereafter GSA Athens), VC, catalogue 4, 83, “D. Parkas’ Petition to the Greek Government, Nafplio, 16 June 1825.” 116. Kitromilides, “Orthodox Culture”; Kitromilides, “  ‘Imagined Communities’  ”; Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution; Roudometof, “Invented Traditions”; Clogg, “The Greek Millet”; Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 179. 117. Tomić Mišeska, Balkan Sprachbund; Freedman, “The Balkan Languages.” 118. Konortas, Othomanikes Theoriseis, 217–​27. 119. Roudometof, “From Rum Millet to Greek Nation,” 20. 120. Mackridge, Languages, 58. 121. Benend, History Derailed, 76; Daskalov, The Making of a Nation, 152–​155. 122. Chasiotis, “Anazitontas Esoterikes kai Exoterikes.” 123. Katartzis, Ta Evriskomena, 43–​44, 50, 105. 124. Dimaras, Neoellinikos Diafotismos, 82–​ 86; Mantouvalou, “Romaios-​ Romios”; Livanios, “The Quest,” 55. 125. Kitromilides, Neoellinikos Diafotismos, 224. 126. Mackridge, Languages, 52. 127. Batalden, Catherine II’s Greek Prelate, 18–​19. 128. Apostolides Evangelinos, A Romaic Grammar, iv.

Chapter 2 1. Kolodny, La Population, 1:191–​192; Popovic, L’Islam Balkanique, 109; Konortas, “Les Musulmans,” 74; McCarthy, Death and Exile, 20; Despotopoulos, “Teliki Rythmisi,” 577; Mamoukas, Ta Kata tin Anagenisin, 11:258–​259; Sakellariou, I Peloponnisos, 118, 283; Despotopoulos, “Paragontes,” 69; Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 232.

174 Notes 2. Allamani, “Gegonota,” 70–​100; Diamantourou, “Exaplosi,” 110. 3. Kolodny, La Population, 1:191–​192; Popovic, L’Islam Balkanique, 109; Konortas, “Les Musulmans,” 74; McCarthy, Death and Exile, 20; Despotopoulos, “Teliki Rythmisi,” 577; Mamoukas, Ta Kata tin Anagenisin, 11:258–​259; Sakellariou, I Peloponnisos, 118, 283; Despotopoulos, “Paragontes,” 69; Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 232. 4. Baedeker, Greece, 201; Skouras, “To Proto Cheirografo,” 29; Baltsiotis, O Exthros, 238–​239, 242–​243. 5. For a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the Greek War of Independence on the Muslim populations in the war affected areas and the life of Muslims in Greece from 1832 to 1940, see Katsikas, Islam and Nationalism in Modern Greece; Katsikas, “Millets in Nation States”; Katsikas, “Millet Legacies in a National Environment”; Katsikas, “Hostage Minority”; Tsitselikis, Old and New Islam; Glavinas, Oi Mousoulmanikoi Plythismoi; Alexandre Popovic, L’ Islam Balkanique. 6. Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 5:311, vol. 6, and vol. 7; Moschopoulos, Istoria, 101ff.; Konortas, “Les Musulmans,” 7–​22; Popovic, L’Islam Balkanique, 110. 7. Pouqueville, Histoire, 1:347; Chrysanthopoulos, Apomnimonevmata, 1:64; Green, Sketches, 28ff.; Spiliadis, Apomnimonevmata, 1:59; Zoras, Eggrafa, 9–​23. 8. Raybaud, Mémoires, 1:363; Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 5:329, 341; Phrantzes, Epitomi tis Istorias, 4:161, 169. 9. Spiliadis, Apomnimonevmata, 1:64; Vakalopoulos, Aixmalotoi, 35. 10. Spiliadis, Apomnimonevmata, 1:70; Trikoupis, Istoria, 1:86. 11. Filimon, Dokimion, 3:44. 12. Filimon, Dokimion, 3:32, 53; Trikoupis, Istoria, 1:90; Phrantzes, Epitomi tis Istorias, 1:373. 13. Filimon, Dokimion, 3:55; Chrysanthopoulos, Apomnimonevmata, 1:79; Spiliadis, Apomnimonevmata, 1:66; Kolokotronis, Diigisis, 147. 14. Chrysanthopoulos, Apomnimonevmata, 1:175; Spiliadis, Apomnimonevmata, 1:76; Trikoupis, Istoria, 1:320. 15. Chrysanthopoulos, Apomnimonevmata, 1:251; Filimon, Dokimion, 4:228; Raybaud, Mémoires, 1:514; Kolokotronis, Diigisis, 240; Voutier, Mémoires, 21. 16. Sfyroeras, “Topiki Epikratisi,” 182; Sfyroeras, “I Epanastasi,” 222. 17. Raybaud, Mémoires, 1:341; Archeia Ellinikis Paliggenesias (hereafter AEP), 1:442–​445. 18. Phrantzes, Epitomi tis Istorias, 2:137–​ 145; Voutier, Mémoires, 317–​321; Chrysanthopoulos, Apomnimonevmata, 1:410–​434; Moschopoulos, Istoria, 301–​302. 19. Raybaud, Mémoires, 2:177; Voutier, Mémoires, 196; Trikoupis, Istoria, 2:140; Sfyroeras, “I Epanastasi,” 217–​218. 20. Trikoupis, Istoria, 3:155; Vakalopoulos, Aixmalotoi, 85. 21. Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 8:313; General Gazette of Greece (hereafter GGG), no. 25, 11 April 1828. 22. Deval, Deux Années, 191–​192. 23. Ibrahim Pasha’s military operations in the eastern Mediterranean around the time of the Greek War of Independence and those of his father, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, aimed to crush uprisings in places like the Peloponnese, Crete, and Kasos, and resulted in a great number of Christian Orthodox ending up in the slave markets of

Notes  175 Egypt and elsewhere, inspiring authors to write historical novels, among them Rhea Galanaki’s The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha. Set in the nineteenth century, the novel’s plot revolves around attempts by the inhabitants of Crete to overthrow the occupying Ottoman Empire. Ismail Ferik Pasha is a Cretan boy (based on an actual historical figure) who is kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam, raised to become a military leader, and then, in adulthood, sent to subdue a revolt on his native island. 24. Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 326. 25. Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 8:341; Bessan, Souvenirs, 64. 26. Anscombe, “The Balkan Revolutionary Age”; Paxton, “Nationalism and Revolution.” 27. Millas, “History Textbooks,” 21–​33; Özkırımlı and Sofos, Tormented by History, 91–​ 97; Ersanlı, “The Ottoman Empire.” 28. European Jews, including the Rothschild family, helped to finance the Greek War of Independence with a contribution of 6,000 francs to the Paris Philhellenic Committee. After the establishment of the Kingdom of Hellas in 1832 a number of Jews who lived in the Ottoman Empire moved to Greece (Filos tou Nomou, no. 149, 2 October 1825). In addition, many Jews living in the rebellious areas supported the war, including a Rabbi Elviggos, who issued a circular asking his co-​religionists to make donations in support of the Greek insurgents (Filos tou Nomou, no. 239, 30 August 1826). 29. Levy, The Jews, 95; Castellan, Histoire, 264–​265. 30. Phillips, The War, 58; Finlay, History, 2, 202–​203. 31. Acheloos, 29 October 1821. 32. Acheloos, 4 November 1821. 33. GSA, Athens, Vlachogiannis Collection (hereafter VC), 83, “Mustafa Gekas to the Parliament, 5 October 1827.” 34. Loucatos, “Les Arabes,” 252–​256. 35. Loucatos, “Les Arabes,” 269–​270. 36. GSA, Athens, VC, Catalogue 4, 83, “Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, 4th Cycle, 3rd Synod, vol. 2, 107–​08.” 37. GSA, Athens, VC, Catalogue 4, 83, “Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, 4th Cycle, 3rd Synod, vol. 2, 85–​6, 110–​12.” 38. GSA, Athens, VC, Catalogue 4, 83, “Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, 4th Cycle, 3rd Synod, vol. 2, 26–​27.” 39. In the Ottoman Empire, religious groups were allowed to rule themselves under their own religious laws (e.g., sharia, canon law, and halakha) and customs and enjoyed self-​government for their community affairs. Although Ottoman rule for Muslims and dhimmī (non-​Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection) was neither uniform nor structured prior to the nineteenth century and varied across regions and groups, some common patterns emerged. Religious communities set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. Courts, schools, and welfare systems were in the hands of religious officials. All that the Ottomans required was loyalty to the sultan’s authority. When a member of a religious community committed a crime against a member of another, the law of the injured party applied, but any dispute involving a Muslim fell under sharia law. Konortas, “From Taife”; Braude,

176 Notes “Foundation Myths”; Clogg, “A Millet within Millet”; Davidson, “The Millets”; Karpat, “Millets and Nationality.” 40. Prosorinon Politevma tis Ellados, 1822, Section 2, paragraph β΄, accessed 15 January 2022, https://​www.hel​leni​cpar​liam​ent.gr/​UserFi​les/​f3c70​a23-​7696-​49db-​9148-​ f24dc​e6a2​7c8/​syn06.pdf. 41. Nomos tis Epidavrou, 1823, Chapter 2, Section β΄, accessed 15 January 2022, https://​ www.hel​leni​cpar​liam​ent.gr/​UserFi​les/​f3c70​a23-​7696-​49db-​9148-​f24dc​e6a2​7c8/​ syn07.pdf. 42. Politikon Syntagma tis Ellados, article 6, accessed 15 January 2022, http://​www.hel​ leni​cpar​liam​ent.gr/​UserFi​les/​f3c70​a23-​7696-​49db-​9148-​f24dc​e6a2​7c8/​syn06.pdf. 43. The Karamanlides (Karamanlılar in Turkish) were Turkish-​ speaking Christian Orthodox who used the Greek alphabet for writing their form of Turkish. 44. Efimeris ton Athinon, no. 26, 26 November 1824, 4. 45. Filos tou Nomou, no. 244, 17 September 1826. 46. Manikas, “Scheseis Orthodoxias,” 103–​104n191. 47. Filos tou Nomou, no. 24, 6 June 1823, 3–​4. 48. Efimeris ton Athinon, no. 23, 19 November 1824, 3–​4. 49. Filaretos and Koraes, Simeioseis, 8–​ 20; Rosen, “Bentham’s Constitutional Theory,” 38–​43. 50. Korais, Peri ton Ellinikon, 88–​97. 51. Royal Act by the Greek Regency on behalf of King Otto, Official Governmental Gazette (hereafter OGG), no. 2, 22 February 1833, 8–​9. 52. Baltsiotis, O Exthros, 217. 53. Finlay and Tozer, A History of Greece, 7:147–​148; Trikoupis, Istoria, 1:59. 54. GSA, Athens, VC, 83: “Minutes HP, 1:1, vol. 2, 726–​27”; Nea Efimeris, 17 July 1882. 55. OGG, no. 44, 20 May 1881; OGG, no. 93, 20 October 1881; OGG, no. 13, 9 December 1881; OGG., no. 347, 23 December 1887. 56. Baltsiotis, O Exthros, 268–​269. 57. Articles 43, 47, 64 of 1864 and 1911 constitutions, accessed 15 January 2022, http://​ www.hel​leni​cpar​liam​ent.gr/​UserFi​les/​f3c70​a23-​7696-​49db-​9148-​f24dc​e6a2​7c8/​ syn13.pdf; http://​www.hel​leni​cpar​liam​ent.gr/​UserFi​les/​f3c70​a23-​7696-​49db-​9148-​ f24dc​e6a2​7c8/​syn14.pdf. 58. GGG, 10 May 1830, 145. 59. OGG, no. 20, 16 May 1835. 60. Vogli, Ellines to Genos,197. 61. Christopoulos, Euclides, and Diligiannis, Efimeris, 1:104–​105. 62. Article 3 of 1844 and 1864 constitutions, accessed 15 January 2022, http://​www.hel​ leni​cpar​liam​ent.gr/​UserFi​les/​f3c70​a23-​7696-​49db-​9148-​f24dc​e6a2​7c8/​syn12.pdf; http://​www.hel​leni​cpar​liam​ent.gr/​UserFi​les/​f3c70​a23-​7696-​49db-​9148-​f24dc​e6a2​ 7c8/​syn13.pdf. 63. OGG, no. 20, 10 May 1836. 64. OGG, no. 197, 18 December 1882. 65. DHAGMFA, 40:2–​25 (1865), “Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 17 December 1865”; 20:2–​25 (1865), “Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 17 December 1865.”

Notes  177 66. A woman’s nationality was determined by the nationality of her husband. Greek women married to foreigners had the right to reclaim their Greek nationality, if they wished, in cases where they had been widowed and wished to reside in Greece (article 12). See Act 391 (Civil Code of 1856), OGG, no. 75, 15 November 1856. 67. Kyriakopoulos, Ta Syntagmata, 183, 221. 68. Jackson, National Minorities, 61. 69. Horowitz, “International Law,” 462–​465. 70. Protocols of Conferences, no. 33, 112. 71. Soutsos, Syllogi, 245. 72. Kolodny, La Population, 1:226; Petropoulos and Koumarianou, “I Periodos,” 13:15–​ 16; Baltsiotis, O Exthros, 223. 73. T. C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı (hereafter BA), f: HH, g: 47727; f: F, g: 47759; f: C, g: 47682; Balta, “I Othomaniki Martyria,” 198–​199. 74. Stouraiti and Kazamias, “The Imaginary Topographies”; Skopetea, To “Protypo Vasileio”; Kremmydas, I Megali Idea. 75. Smith, Ionian Vision, 2. 76. DHAGMFA, 7:1 (1838), “C. Zographos à S. Me. Le Roi, Rapport Confidential Tauchant les Affaires Turques en Grèce, Athènes, 6 April 1838.” 77. The other two regents were from Bavaria: Count Josef Ludwig von Armansperg, chair of the Regency Council, and Karl von Abel. 78. Maurer, Das Griechische Volk, 189. 79. Perdicaris, The Greece of Greeks, 1:108–​109. 80. DHAGMFA, Ottoman Lands in Greece, 1834, “Ottoman Landowners in Chalkida to the Prefecture of Euboea, Chalkida, 29 March 1834”; “[Prefect of Euboea] to the Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Chalkida, 6 April 1834”; “[Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs] to the Prefect of Euboea, Nafplio, 13 April 1834.” 81. Bouchon, Voyage, 26; Bronzetti, Erinnerung, 124. 82. OGG, no. 16, 5 May 1834. 83. DHAGMFA, 68:1Α (1835), “Complaints from Chalkida Ottomans, Athens 22 March 1835.” 84. Ragavis, Ta Ellinika, 3:28. 85. Perdicaris, The Greece of Greeks, 1:111. 86. Evoia, 11 March 1876, 2. 87. Evripos, 13 June 1879, 2. 88. Evoia, 12 February 1876, 4. 89. Evripos, 1 April 1889, 2–​3. 90. Evoia, 27 October 1877, 4. 91. Sevastakis, Samiaki Politeia; Moutafis, “To Zitima tis Samou.” 92. Fousaras, “I Metepanastatiki Chalkida,” 138. 93. DHAGMFA, 68:1A (1836), “Regarding Ottoman Houses in Chalkida, Athens, 3 October 1836.” 94. DHAGMFA, 68:1Α (1835), “About the Euboean Ottoman Ibrahim Efendi, Athens, 29 April 1835.”

178 Notes 95. DHAGMFA, 7:1Α–​ΣΤ (1836), “Secretariat of Justice to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 2 March 1836.” 96. DHAGMFA, 68:1Α (1835), “Pittaris to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Chalkida, 22 January 1835.” 97. DHAGMFA, 68:Α (1835), “Pittaris to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Chalkida, 22 January 1835”; “Touchant les Turcs Demeurant à Chalcis, Athens, 25 February 1835”; 68:1B (1835), “G. Ainian to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 19 November 1835.” 98. DHAGMFA, 68:1Α (1835), “Otto . . . Im Namen des Königs, Athens, 09 May 1835”; “Otto . . . Im Namen des Königs, Athens, 11 May 1835”; 7 (1835), “Pittaris to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Chalkida, 22 April 1835.” 99. OGG, no. 19, 26 May 1834; Farantos, “O Nomarchis Evoias,” 102–​110. 100. DHAGMFA, 68:1Β (1835), “About Turkish Houses in Euboea, Athens, 12 November 1835”; “Rent Payment from Samian Refugees, 19 December 1835.” 101. Finlay and Tozer, A History of Greece, 7:224. 102. About, La Grèce Contemporaine, 74–​75. 103. BA, İ.HR., g: 5281, d: 107, 07 Recep 1270 [5.4.1854]; DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1868), “Ismail Muhtar Premetis to Ioannis Fotiadis, Athens, 23 March 1868.” 104. BA, f. HR.TO., g: 122, d: 12, 14.1888, g: 92, d: 342, 16.1889, g: 14, d: 343, 02.1899, g: 44, d: 13, 03.1889, g: 14, d: 244, 02.1889; BA, f: Y.A.RES, g: 8, d: 50, 18 Rabiulahir 1307; Baltsiotis, O Exthros, 262. 105. BA, f: Y.A.RES, g: 8, d: 50, 18 Rabiulahir 1307; f: HR.TO., g: 78, d: 12, 13.1888; Baltsiotis, O Exthros, 263. 106. DHAGMFA, 68:1 (1843), “Mufti Zade Serif to Deputy [Ottoman] Ambassador K. Mousouron, Chalkida, 14 January 1843”; “Secretariat of Interior to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 25 March 1843.” 107. DHAGMFA, 20:1–​14 (1852), “Greek Ambassador in Istanbul to the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pera, 9 August, 1852.” 108. Nakos, To Nomiko Kathestos, 180–​214. 109. OGG, no. 7, 7 March 1835. 110. Belin, Étude; Mutafčieva and Dimitrov, Sur l’État; Karpat, “The Land Regime.” 111. McGrew, Land and Revolution, 208. 112. OGG, no. 15, 27 April 1838, 70. 113. McGrew, Land and Revolution, 29; Maurer, Das Griechische Volk, 1:124. 114. DHAGMFA, 27 (1828), “Christodoulos Ainian and Spyridon Kalogeropoulos to the Panhellenic, 18 September 1828.” 115. Nakos, “Ai ‘Megalai Dynameis,’ ” 488–​491. 116. McGrew, Land and Revolution, 207–​214. 117. Foreign Office Archives, British National Archives (hereafter FO), 421/​4, 6:47, Protocol of the Conference of London of 26 September 1831; McGrew, Land and Revolution, 51. 118. OGG., no. 45, 14 December 1849. 119. DHAGMFA, 7:1A–​B (1832), “Detailed Memo from the Examining Committee to the Greek Government Regarding Divestment, Athens, 21 July 1832.”

Notes  179 120. DHAGMFA, 7:1A–​B (1841), “C. Musurus [à] Monsieur le Secrétaire d’ État J. Rizos, Athènes, 23 Octobre 1841.” 121. OGG, no. 21, 10 October 1839. 122. OGG, no. 30, 2 August 1852; OGG, no. 27, 24 July 1861. 123. DHAGMFA, 7:1A–​B (1837), “Secretary of Justice to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 5 January 1837.” 124. DHAGMFA, 7:1 (1845), “The Minister of Justice to the Governor of Euboea, Athens, 24 January 1845.” 125. OGG, no. 57, 16 October 1836. 126. OGG, no. 14, 14 April 1836. 127. OGG, no. 65, 14 November 1836, “Royal Degree concerning Ottomans’ Emigration, Athens, 10 November 1836.” 128. It was common in the nineteenth century, however, for a foreign consular court to operate in another country’s territory with a limited scope of responsibilities. For instance, Greek consular courts operated in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. 129. OGG, no. 28, 15 July 1859; DHAGMFA, 7:1 (1862), “The Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee, Athens, 30 January 1862.” 130. Stremma (pl. stremmata) is a basic unit of land measure in Greece; it varied in size from region to region under Ottoman rule and was fixed by the Greek national authorities at 0.10 hectares (0.247 acres). 131. DHAGMFA, 7:1 (1849), “The Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 16 November 1849.” 132. DHAGMFA, 7:1 (1857). 133. OGG, no. 12, 25 April 1844. Şerif-​i evlad was a kind of family trust whereby a donor placed his property under vakıf legal status—​he donated it to a Muslim holy or charitable institution—​and his heirs enjoyed part of the trust’s income in perpetuity. Singer, Charity; Deguilhem, Les Waqf; Kurban and Tsitselikis, A Tale of Reciprocity. 134. OGG, no. 10, 22 March 1838. 135. Kairofylas, I Athina, 1:13; Biris, Ta Prota Schedia, 6–​7. 136. Nakos, To Nomiko Kathestos, 180–​214. 137. DHAGMFA, 7:1 (1846). 138. Chronos, 11 June 1833, 50–​ 51; Papageorgiou, Archeio, 2:112, 121; Nikolaos Ioannidis, Evretirion. 139. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 24:21, “Report of Eleni, Former Pikir Mehmet Ali Ağa to the Examination Committee of Ottoman Property Titles, Athens, 25 February 1837.”

Chapter 3 1. Vakalopoulos, Aixmalotoi, 34–​41. 2. Chrysanthopoulos, Apomnimonevmata, 1:239; Filimon, Dokimion, 4:218. 3. Voutier, Mémoires, 100, 155; Black, Narrative, 253

180 Notes 4. Filimon, Dokimion, 4:226; Voutier, Mémoires, 66; Kolokotronis, Diigisis, 168. 5. Trikoupis, Istoria, 2:257; Vakalopoulos, Aixmalotoi, 11, 321. 6. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1830), “Letter Referring to the Christian Orthodox Baptism of Two Muslim Boys, Marathonisi, 21 April 1830”; GSA, Athens, General Secretarial of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 243A, “Letter Referring to the Christian Orthodox Baptism of Kalliopi, a Former Muslim from Androusa, Nafplio, 5 October 1827” and “Letter Referring to the Christian Orthodox Baptism of Elleni, Former Muslim from Tripolitsa, Nafplio, 12 June 1830”; 245, “Petition Regarding Five Muslims Baptized Christian Orthodox in Corinth, Nafplio, 1 July 1830.” 7. GSA, Athens, General Secretarial of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 244A, “Petition to Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias from Sofia, a Muslim Convert to Christian Orthodoxy, Neokastro, 23 June 1830”; DHAGMFA, 60:1Θ (1830), “Interrogation of Muslim Girls Baptized Christian Orthodox and Named Aikaterini and Efrossini, Kalamata, 24 February 1830, Attached to the Report of the Extraordinary Commissioner of Lakonia and Low Messinia L. Lykourgos, Kalamata, 25 February 1830” and “Interrogation of the Christian Orthodox Convert Charikleia (Former Muslim Name: Sakire), Argos 5 March 1830, Attached to the Report of the Governor of Argos I. Vratsanos, 5 March 1830.” 8. Black, Narrative, 253; GSA, Athens, Archive of General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 244A, “Petition Addressed to the Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias from Sofia, a Muslim Convert to Orthodox Christianity, Neokastro, 23 June 1830.” 9. AEP, 1:294. 10. Michos, Apomnimonevmata; Ellinika Chronika, no. 35, 2 May 1825, 1. 11. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1833), “The Perfect of Euboea to the Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Chalkida, 26 July 1833.” 12. BA, f: Y.PRK, g: 75, d: 25 Rabiulevvel 1308, f: İ.DH, g: 93859, d: 1199, 26 Rabiulevvel 1308, f: DH. MKT, g: 64, d: 1797, 23 Cemazeyilevvel 1308, g: 85, d: 1800, 08.C.1308, g: 127, d: 1806, 27 Cemazeyilahir 1308, g: 95, d: 1882, 22 Rabiulevvel 1309. 13. Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 255–​316. 14. Vryonis, The Decline, 356; Vryonis, “Religious Changes,” 173; Vryonis, “Les Provinces”; Todorov, The Balkan City, 85–​87; Castellan, Histoire, 188. 15. To account for the decision of many Christian Orthodox to convert to Islam, Theodoros Kolokotronis claims that “the Greeks [i.e., Orthodox Christians] began to convert to Islam because of Ottoman tyranny and their insatiable desire for glory” (Diigisis, 263–​264). 16. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam, 1:31, 2:565; Vryonis, The Decline, 356; Vryonis, “Religious Changes,” 173; Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, 180–​182; Birge, The Bektashi Order, 215–​218; Balivet, “Aux Origines,” 14; Stahl, Croyances Communes des Chrétiens, 79–​126; Clayer, Mystiques, État, 252, 378, 564. 17. Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 279, 338; Pouqueville, Voyage, 4:281–​282; Gell, Narrative, 117–​118. For more information about crypto-​Christians in early modern and modern Ottoman times in the Balkans and Asia Minor, see Balivet, “Aux Origines”; Lopasic, “Islamisation”; Kalicin, Velkov, and Radushev, Osmansi Izvori. 18. Kalicin, Velkov, and Radushev, Osmansi Izvori, 33. 19. Loucatos, “Les Arabes,” 265–​267; GSA, Athens, Archive of General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 222.

Notes  181 20. GSA, Athens, Archive of General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 116. Unfortunately, the registry of Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy in Monemvasia, sent by the provisional governor of Monemvasia, N. Karoris, to Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias, is missing. This registry might have provided additional information on these converts. According to other information contained in the folder of the missing report, some Muslims who had played a pivotal role in the surrender of the fortress of Monemvasia to the Greek insurgents remained in Greece, fearing the reaction of the Ottoman authorities. 21. There is a large literature on evidence of the coexistence, and even co-​burial in the same cemeteries, of Muslims and Christians in territories of Greece and other parts of the Ottoman Empire. See Baer, Makdisi, and Shryock, “Tolerance”; Doumanis, Before the Nation; Rohn, Barnes, and Sanders, “An Early Ottoman.” 22. Gritsopoulos, Ta Orlofika, 430. Mixed marriages between Orthodox Christians and Muslims were a common practice in the Ottoman Empire; however, official decrees and letters of 1600–​1840 prohibited the use of force or violence to contract a marriage between a Christian and a Muslim. Todorov, The Balkan City, 87, 257. 23. Chryssanthakopoulos, I Ileia, 30; Fotopoulos, “Oi Lalaioi Tourkalvanoi,” 434. According to Abu Hanifa, founder of the Sunni Hanafi School of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) that the Ottoman ruling class had followed since the founding of the empire, a Muslim husband cannot prevent his non-​Muslim wife from eating pork, drinking wine, or visiting non-​Islamic places of worship. Fattal, Le Statut Legal, 131. 24. Filimon, Dokimion, 3:54. 25. Pouqueville, Voyage, 4:281–​ 282; Dodwell, A Classical, 2:326; Gell, Narrative, 117–​118. 26. GSA, Athens, Ioannis Kapodistrias, Ministry of Religion and Education, 1A, “Petition from Fotinos Michopoulos, Tripolitsa, 28 May 1823” and “Petition of Anastasios Loulopoulos, Tripolitsa, 5 June 1823”; General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 244A, “Petition from Sofia: A former Muslim Married to a Peloponnesian Christian Orthodox, Neokastro, 23 June 1830.” 27. Vakalopoulos, Aixmalotoi, 53; Filimon, Dokimion, 4:218, 226. Archival records of the time are full of conversions to Orthodox Christianity of Muslim prisoners during the Greek War of Independence, shedding light on their trajectory from the moment of their capture to the time of their conversion and sometimes up to 1830–​1831 or later. For example, Kalliopi, daughter of Ahmet Ağa Fassokoteouğlou, confided by her father to the Christian Orthodox Deliyannis family prior to the fall of Tripolitsa, was baptized Orthodox Christian and later married an Orthodox man (GSA, Athens, General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 229, Nafplio, 4 January 1830); a Muslim girl from Arkadia in the central Peloponnese was baptized Christian Orthodox in 1821 and took the name Aikaterini (GSA, Athens, General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 193, Kalamata, 25 March 1829); a Muslim convert to Orthodox Christianity named Eleni was from Tripolitsa (GSA, Athens, General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 243A, Nafplio, 12 June 1830); Muslims who had converted to Christian Orthodoxy during the Greek War of Independence were sought for by members of their families who had left for territories under Ottoman control during the war (DHAGMFA, 60:1, 60:2, and 76:1 (1830)).

182 Notes 28. Trikoupis, Istoria, 2:257. 29. AEP, 1:388–​389. 30. AEP, 1:280. 31. AEP, 1:117; Trikoupis, Istoria, 2:185–​186. 32. AEP, 1:289–​290. 33. Prosorinon Politevma tis Ellados, 1822, accessed 15 January 2022, https://​www.hel​ leni​cpar​liam​ent.gr/​UserFi​les/​f3c70​a23-​7696-​49db-​9148-​f24dc​e6a2​7c8/​syn06.pdf. 34. Dragoumis, Istorikai Anamniseis, 31. 35. AEP, 1:118–​119. 36. AEP, 1:293–​294. 37. OGG, no. 19, 22 May 1838, “[Royal Decree] about the Control from the Court of Auditors on the Written Protocols for Compensation to the Neophytes about their Inheritance Rights”; GSA, Athens, VC, Catalogue 4, 83, “Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, 1st Cycle, 1st Synod, vol. 2, 726–​27,” Catalogue 2, 135, “Neophytes’ Book.” 38. Malaxos, Nomokanon, 53. 39. Cadırcı, Tanzimat Döneminde; Eryılmaz, Osmanlı Devlentinde. 40. Deringil, Conversion and Apostasy, 55; Aslan, “The Religious Conversion,” 26–​27; Donia, Islam, 55. 41. Celik, “Religious Conversion,” 109–​112. 42. Celik, “Religious Conversion,” 111–​112. 4 3. DHAGMFA, 60:1 (1829), “Ottoman Captives: The Extraordinary Commissioner of Lakonia and Low Messinia L. Lykourgos to the General Chancellery of the State Regarding Zalouni Yusûf Ağa’s Two Male Children, One of Whom was Baptized Christian Orthodox in Marathonissi, and His one Female Child, who Lived Elsewhere, Marathonissi, 12 December 1829”; GSA, Athens, General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 241, “Petition from Doudou Koudalopoula, Muslim Female from Neokastro, to Kapodistrias Regarding the Release of Her Two Neophyte Daughters in Spetses and Santorini, Nafplio, 26 May 1830”; Bétant, “Correspondance,” 1:446, 513–​5 14, 2:104, 316, 319, 332, 462–​4 63; Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 8:312; Daskalakis, Keimena-​P igai, 298; DHAGMFA, 60:1 (1828), “Count Guilleminot to Ioannis Kapodistrias Regarding the Release of Ottoman Captives, Poros, 29 November 1828” and “Ioannis Kapodistrias to Gros and Saint Léger, Poros, 30 November 1828”; 60:1 (1830), “Ottoman captives: Ioannis Kapodistrias to Dawkins, Deputy Ambassador of Britain to the Greek Government, Nafplio, 30 January 1830.” 44. DHAGMFA, 60:1 (1830), “Ottoman Captives: Letter from the Extraordinary Commissioner of Lakonia and Low Messinia L. Lykourgos to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Merchant Navy, Marathonissi, 30 August 1830.” 45. DHAGMFA, 60:1 (1830), “Ottoman Captives: Ibrahim Moulabechtosoğlou’s Petition Regarding Two Muslim Children in Lakonia, Ermoupoulis, 19 April 1830” and “The Extraordinary Commissioner of Lakonia and Low Messinia L. Lykourgos Regarding the Search for a Muslim Child from Tripolitsa, Who Had Been Baptized

Notes  183 Christian Orthodox and Left Tripolitsa after the Death of His Master, Kalamata, 7 April 1830.” 46. Maria Tzovaertzi remained Christian Orthodox for some time after her marriage in 1820, but she eventually converted to Islam. GSA, Athens, General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 243B, “Report of the General Secretariat Regarding Maria Tzovaertzi and Her Neophyte Daughter, Tripolis, 19 June 1830.” 47. DHAGMFA, 60:1Θ (1831), “Ottomans or Neophytes Captured by Greeks: Interrogation of Neophyte Vasilios (Mystras, 10 July 1831), Attached to a Letter Sent from N. Boukyras, the District Governor of Mystras, to the Greek Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Mystras, 11 July 1831.” 48. GSA, VC, Catalogue of Manuscripts 2, 193, “Register Book of Neophytes,” nos. 40, 157, 166, 269; GSA, Athens, VC, 132, Secretariat of Ecclesiastics and Public Education, “Ioannis Medrinos, Mayor of Tripolitsa, Regarding an Elderly Muslim Woman Residing in the City, Whose Two Daughters Had Been Converted to Christian Orthodoxy, Tripolitsa, 27 October 1836.” 49. GSA, VC, Catalogue of Manuscripts 2, 193, “Register Book of Neophytes,” no. 62. 50. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1830), “The Governor of Eastern Sparta, I. Kornilios to the Governor of Lakedaimonia and Monemvasia, Marathonisi, 21 July 1830”; Voutier, Mémoires, 100, 155. 51. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1830), “N. Spiliadis, Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Merchant, to I. Kornilios, District Governor of Sparta, Nafplio, 15 January 1830” and “I. Kornilios, District Governor of Sparta, to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Merchant Navy, N. Spiliadis, Marathonissi, 21 April 1830”; 60:1 (1831), “Ottoman Captives: Letter from Governor of Lakonia and Monemvasia to the Government, Mystras, 26 July 1830.” 52. DHAGMFA, 60:1 (1831), “The Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea to the [Greek] Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Merchant Navy, Athens, 20 January 1831.” 53. DHAGMFA, 60:1 (1831), “Interrogation of the Illiterate Neophyte Vasilios, Former Yjahja, Son of the Muslim Ağa Efendi, by the District Governor of Lakedaimonia, N. Boukouras, Mystras, 10 July 1831” and “The District Governor of Lakedaimonia and Monemvasia, N. Boukouras to the [Greek] Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Mystras, 11 July 1831.” 54. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1830), “The Secretary of State, N. Spiliadis, to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs and Merchant Navy, Nafplio, 15 January 1830.” 55. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1843), “A. Mavrokordatos to the Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, I. Rizos, Pera, 10 February 1843.” A note by the Ottoman ambassador to Athens, Konstantinos Mousouros, provides a slightly different version of Vasilios Aristovoulos’s story: Mustafa Ağa was a merchant from Istanbul who had escaped along with his wife and his son Ahmet from the island of Syros several years before, during the war. Ahmet Ağa, who in the meantime had become an adult, had expressed his desire to return to Istanbul, his birthplace, to an unnamed Ottoman official who had passed through Syros, in order to be able to practice his Islamic faith. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1843), “K. Mousouros to the Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs,

184 Notes I. Rizos, Athens, 26 March 1843” (in French) and “N. Poniropoulos, to the Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, I. Rizos, Ermoupolis, 15 March 1843.” 56. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1843), “Administrative Act on the Question about No. 663 and 7 March Executive Order from the Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, 15 March 1843.” 57. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1843), “The Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, I. Rizos to the Greek Embassy of Istanbul, Athens, 20 March 1843.” 58. DHAGMFA, 60:1 (1830), “Interrogation of Neophytes Aikaterini and Efrossini (Kalamata, 24 February 1830), along with a letter by the Extraordinary Commissioner of Lakonia and Low Messinia L. Lykourgos on the matter (Kalamata, 25 February 1830) and letters by the ambassadors of Britain, France and Russia to Istanbul (Kalamata, 22 February 1830).” 59. DHAGMFA, 60:1 (1831), “Interrogation of Illiterate Neophyte Vasiliki, Spouse of Anagnostis Giannakos Barberis, by the Deputy-​Secretary of Argos District, M. Margaritis, Argos, 5 November 1831” and “District governor of Argos, N. Mavromatis to the Greek Government (Secretariat of Foreign Affairs), Argos, 5 November 1831” and “District Governor of Argos, N. Mavromatis to the Greek Government (Secretariat of Foreign Affairs), Argos, 30 November 1831.” 60. DHAGMFA, 60:1Θ (1831), “Ottomans Captured by Greeks or Neophytes: Letter from the District Governor of Kalavryta, K. Pelopidas, to the Government Regarding the Female Muslim Havâ, Daughter of the Muslim Hassan Lafazanis from Tripolitsa, Kalavryta, 10 January 1831.” 61. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1838), “The District Governor of Lakonia, P. Monastiriotis, to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Areopolis, 8 July 1838.” 62. Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 8:232. 63. GSA, Athens, General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 191, “Petition of Neophyte Aikaterini Eleftheri, Kalamata, 18 March 1829”; 193, “Petition of Neophyte Aikaterini, Kalamata, 25 March 1829”; 210, “Petition of N. Lagosgelos, on Behalf of His Neophyte Wife Sofia, Argos, 17 July 1829” and “Petition of Neophyte Maria, Originated from Neokastro, Kalamata, 25 March 1829”; Loucatos, “Les Arabes,” 248. 64. GSA, Athens, General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 243A, “Neophyte Aikaterini to [Governor] Ioannis Kapodistrias, Nafplio, 14 June 1830.” 65. AEP, 5:147–​149. 66. Nakos, To Nomiko Kathestos, 89–​102; Nakos, “Ai Megaleai Dynameis”; Drikos, Oi Poliseis. 67. Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 8:331–​332. 68. An organized distribution of part of the ethnikes gaies to farmers took place in 1871 in the context of the agricultural reform undertaken by the Greek government of Alexandros Koumoundouros. McGrew, Land and Revolution, 207–​214. 69. McGrew, Land and Revolution, 199 refers to the case of 480 stremmata (48 hectares, or 118.56 acres) of land from ethnikes gaies transferred in 1824 to the neophyte Panagiotis, son of Muslim Ali Anaktarağa, cited in Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 376n127.

Notes  185 70. GSA, Athens, General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 191, “Petition of Neophyte Aikaterini Eleftheri, Kalamata, 18 March 1829”; Gritsopoulos, “Statistikai,” 437–​ 440, 444. 71. Loucatos, “Les Arabes,” 264. 72. GGG, 1 October 1830, 369–​370. 73. AEP, 21:95. 74. Some neophytes, however, claimed the entirety of their inherited family properties at that time or later. GSA, Athens, General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 247, “Petition from Neophyte Kalliopi Metaxa, Nafplio, 14 June 1830”; Nakos, To Nomiko Kathestos, 105n2. 75. GSA, Athens, General Secretariat of Ioannis Kapodistrias, 229, “Petition from Neophyte Kalliopi, Daughter of Ahmet Ağa Fassokoteoğlou, Nafplio, 4 January 1830”; 241, “Response by the District Governor of Leondari and Tripolitsa Regarding the Property of Neophyte Charikleia, Daughter of Abdul Bey Arnaoutoğlou of Tripolitsa, Tripolitsa, 26 May 1830.” 76. AEP, 21:59–​60. 77. Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 8:232. 78. O Sotir, 10 July 1838. 79. 1.12 phoenix was equal to 1 French franc. See Decree Β΄, 25 January 1830, in GGG, no. 11, 5 February 1830, 41–​42, showing the exchange rates of the phoenix against most foreign currencies of the time. 80. Bétant, Correspondance, 4:78. It is estimated that in 1833 only one-​sixth of Greek farmers owned freehold land and paid a tithe tax. The other farmers cultivated national estates and paid 25 percent of the annual income as rent. Petropoulos, Politiki, 1:272. 81. AEP, 23:20. 82. AEP, 21:150–​152. 83. GGG, no. 79, October 1, 1830, 369; McGrew, Land and Revolution, 199. 84. AEP, 5:57–​59, 62–​64, 81, 109, 113, 132–​133, 135, 146–​149. 85. AEP, 5:161. 86. AEP, 5:57–​59. 87. AEP, 5:159, 161. 88. Petropoulos and Koumarianou, I Themeliosi, 100. 89. Esposito, The Oxford Dictionary, 22; Omar, “The Right”; Griffel, “Apostasy”; Zwemer, The Law of Apostasy, 80–​81. 90. Peters and De Vries, “Apostasy in Islam.” 91. Düzdaǧ, Seyhülislâm Ebussud Efendi, 90. 92. Imber, Edu’s Su’ud, 70–​71. 93. Özçelik, “Osmanlı İç Hukukunda.” 94. Girard, “Generative Scapegoating.” 95. Deringil, Conversion and Apostasy, 21. 96. Moss, “The Discourse.” 97. Agios Nikodimos o Agioreitis, Neon Martyrologion, 17.

186 Notes 98. Agios Nikodimos o Agioreitis, Neon Martyrologion, 193; Notaras, Neon Limonarion, 151, 233–​250; Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 289–​298; Theocharides and Loules, “Oi Neomartyres”; Delehaye, “Greek Neomartyrs.” 99. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 10:200, “Orders of 10 November 1830 and of 24 February 1831”; 10:198. 100. Four zeugaria or zeugia (sing. zeugarion or zeugion) was a unit of land representing the extent that a yoke of oxen could plow in a season, for example, a peasant farm. The unit definition varied from place to place; in the early 1830s in Attica one zeugarion or zeugion amounted to 300 or 400 stremmata (30 or 40 hectares, 74.1 or 98.8 acres). See Palaiologos, Georgiki, 1:2. 101. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 34:242. 102. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 37, “Report of Kostas Lagoumtzis to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, Athens, 8 March 1831.” 103. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 37, “Reports of the Husband of Illiterate Neophyte Asimo, Kostas Lagoumtzis, to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, Athens, 13 March 1836 and 7 June 1836.” 104. GSA, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 24, “Decision no. 384/​24 February 1837”; 44, “Minutes of the 23–​24 February 1837 Meeting of the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates.” 105. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 10, “Order no. 715 by the Governor of Greece I. A. Kapodistrias to the Attica and Euboea Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, Nafplio, 24 February 1831.” 106. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1837), “Report of the [Greek] Members of the [Joint Greco-​ Ottoman] Judicial Committee [on Ottoman Estates] A. Deligiannis and Loukas Argyropoulos to the Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 22 August 1836.” 107. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 36, “Petition of Ch. Raftopoulos to the Attica and Euboea Greek Committee, Athens, 30 April 1831.” 108. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 36, “Petition of the Legal Assignee Ch. Raftopoulos to the Enquiring Committee for the Turkish [i.e., Ottoman] Estates, Athens, 3 October 1835.” 109. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 36, “A List of the Property Assets of Neophyte Daughters of the Ottoman Dervis Mehmet Ali Ağa Albani and of Osman Bouloubasi that Belong to [the Sisters] through Inheritance, Signed by Christodoulos Raftopoulos, Athens, 3 October 1835.” 110. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 11:7, “Petition of Ch. Raftopoulos to the [Greek] Secretariat of Finance, Athens, 9 October 1839”; 8:7, “Court Ruling no. 579/​1837 by the Appellate Court of Athens.” 111. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 8, “Ruling no. 579/​1837 of the Appellate Court of Athens”; 10:196, 201–​204. Greece’s

Notes  187 Supreme Court (the Areios Pagos) overrode the verdict of the Appellate Court of Athens for reasons that are not clear. See GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 11:8, “Ruling no. 392/​1839 of the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea.” 112. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 11:8, “Resolution of the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea”; 11:9, “Reasoning of Resolution no. 388/​1839”; 11:20, “Copy of the Execution Section of Resolution no. 388/​1839.” 113. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 22:53. 114. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 22:53, “Petition from the Ottoman [i.e., Muslim] Ali Mullah to the Joint Greco-​ Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, Athens, 10 July 1835”; 22:48, “Petition from Ali Mullah Ahmet to the [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 6 September 1835”; 22:49, “Letter from Ali Mullah Ahmet to King Otto, Athens, 28 September 1835.” 115. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 22:49. 116. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, 22:54, “Report of Illiterate Neophyte Rigoula to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, Athens, 9 June 1835”; 20:7; 22:57; 40:121, “Rigoula’s Report (authored by Th. Vrizakis) to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, Athens, 31 December 1832”; 41:128, “Father Ioakeim Menidiatis’ Report to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee of Attica and Euboea, Athens, 31 January 1833.” 117. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1837), “Report of the [Greek] Members of the [Joint Greco-​ Ottoman] Judicial Committee [on Ottoman Estates] A. Deligiannis and Loukas Argyropoulos to the Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 22 August 1836” and “The [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos to King Otto, Athens, 29 January 1837” (in French) and “Letter from G. Psyllas et al. to King Otto, Athens, 15 February 1837.” 118. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1837), “Report of the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 22 August 1836.” 119. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “K. Mousouros to the [Greek] Secretary of Foreign Affairs A. Paikos, Athens, 21 April 1841” (in French). 120. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “The District Governor of Achaia I. Amvrosiadis to the [Greek] Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Patra, 23 May 1841” and “The [Greek] Secretary of Foreign Affairs A. Paikos to the Ottoman Ambassador of Greece K. Mousouros, 3 June 1841” (in French) and “The District Governor of Achaia I. Amvrosiadis to the [Greek] Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Patra, 16 June 1841” and “The [Greek] Secretary of Foreign Affairs A. Paikos to the Ottoman Ambassador of Greece K. Mousouros, 24 June 1841” (in French) and “The District Governor of Achaia I. Amvrosiadis to the [Greek] Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Patra, 16 June 1841.” 121. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “The District Governor of Argos I. Kontoumas to the [Greek] Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Nafplio, 9 December 1842”; 1843, 76:1, “The

188 Notes Chief of Police of Athens Nikos Petrokokkinos to the District Governorship of Attica, Athens, 11 January 1843.” 122. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “The [Greek] Secretary of Foreign Affairs A. Paikos to the Ottoman Ambassador of Greece K. Mousouros, Athens, 3 June 1841” (in French) and “The Ottoman Ambassador of Greece K. Mousouros to the [Greek] Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos, Athens, 21 March 1842” (in French). 123. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1842), “The [Greek] Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos to the [Greek] Secretariat of Finance, Athens, 30 March 1843” and “The Director of the [Greek] Secretariat of Finance K. Tisamenos to the [Greek] Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 19 September 1842.” 124. GSA, Athens, VC, Catalogue 4, 83, “Complaint from Two Sisters Eleni (Spouse of Anastasios Balanos) and Maria from Aigina, 23 July 1830”; GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee, 43:176, “Report of the Spouses and Proxies of Neophytes Eleni and Maria Anastasiou Balanou and Georgios Staikos to the Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee, Athens, 16 August 1837”; 43:178, “George Staikos’ Report to the Joint Greco-​ Ottoman Judicial Committee, Athens, 24 August 1838.” 125. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee, 10:187, “P. K. Ipiti’s Report to Greece’s Secretariat of Finance, Athens, 9 December 1838,” 19:118. 126. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 39:229, “Report from Fanio the Athenian, Daughter of Ahmet Effendi Mouterizi, to the Committee of Euboea and Attica, Athens, 16 June 1831.” 127. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​ Ottoman Judicial Committee, 38:54, “Report from Maria, Spouse of Georgios Manios, and of Fimitsa, Widow of the Late Kyriakoulis Argyrokastritis, to the Euboea and Attica Committee, Aigina, 21 September 1830.” 128. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 38:70, “Letter from Neophyte Eleni, Argyriou Leivaditis’ Wife, to the Greek Committee Responsible for the Sale of Muslim Properties in Attica and Euboea, Salamis, 5 September 1830.” 129. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 38:31, “Extraordinary Commissioner of Eastern Roúmeli, K. Metaxas, to the Committee of Euboea and Attica, Salona, 15 October 1830.” 130. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 38:11, “D. Gikas to the Committee of Athens, Nafplio, 19 April 1831”; 39:82, “Avgerinos G. Kritis to the Committee of Euboea and Attica, Athens, 15 March 1831”; 39:150, “Alexandros Gikas to the Committee of Euboea and Attica, Athens, 19 May 1831”; 39:319, “Alexandros Gikas to the Committee of Euboea and Attica, Athens, 14 May 1831.” 131. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 38:11, “Alexandros Gikas to the Committee of Euboea and Attica, Nafplio, 11 April 1831”; 39:82, “Report of Avgerinos G. Kritis to the Committee of Euboea and Attica, Athens, 15 May 1831”; 39:150, “Alexandros Gikas to Committee of Euboea and Attica, Athens, 19 May 1831”; 39:310, “Alexandros Gikas to the Committee of

Notes  189 Euboea and Attica, Athens, 8 May 1831”; 39:319, “Report of Alexandros Gikas to the Committee of Euboea and Attica, Athens, 31 May 1831.” 132. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Judicial Committee on Ottoman Estates, 39:59, “Ismail Bey to the Committee of Euboea and Attica, Evripos, 28 October 1831.” 133. GSA, Athens, Joint Greco-​Ottoman Joint Committe, 15:197;21:59; 45:47. 134. Mirkova, Muslim Land; Mirkova, “ ‘Population Politics’ ”; Bantekas, “Land Rights.” 135. Radovanovic, “Contested Legacy”; Pavlowitch, Serbia; Pavlowitch, A History, 27–​ 30, 47–​58, 108–​144. 136. Cohen, Jewish Life; Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire. 137. Benton, Law; Travers, Ideology. 138. Owensby, Empire of Law; Kellog, Law; Cutter, The Legal Culture; Borah, Justice. 139. Benton, “Historical Perspectives.” 140. Sayre, “Change.” 141. Popovic, L’ Islam Balkanique; Mirkova, Muslim Land; Mirkova, “ ‘Population Politics’ ”; Bantekas, “Land Rights”; Radovanovic, “Contested Legacy”; Pavlowitch, Serbia; Pavlowitch, A History, 27–​30, 47–​58, 108–​144.

Chapter 4 1. The table of neophytes from Nafplio also contains the names of two Jews who had converted to Orthodox Christianity. 2. GSA, VC, Catalogue of Manuscripts 2, 193, “Register Book of Neophytes.” 3. Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 347–​348. 4. Belia, “Statistika Stoicheia,” 82. 5. Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 232, 302; Efimeris ton Athinon, no 23, 19 November 1824, 3–​4. 6. Royal Decree, 21 April 1836, OGG, no. 20, 15 May 1836. 7. Royal Decree, 21 April 1836, OGG, no. 20, 15 May 1836; McGrew, Land and Revolution, 200. 8. GSA, Athens, VC, Archives of (King) Otto’s period, 132, “Petition of the Neophyte Maria from Corinth, Athens, 29 November 1845.” 9. FO, 32:288, “Financial Committee: Strickland’s Enclosures nos. 1–​23.” 10. GSA, Athens, Archives of the Ottonian Period, 132, “The Mayor of Karyes Confirms the Christian Orthodox Baptism of Neophyte Panagiota, Barbitsa, 27 July 1836” and “Certificate from the Mayor of Kydoniá Regarding the Property of the Muslim Mahmoutis Svolos, Dafni, 10 March 1838” and “Certificate from the Mayor I. M. Kedrinos for the Two Neophyte Daughters of Terzis Hassanis, Tripolitsa, 27 November 1836” and “Confirmation of Residence for the Two Neophyte Daughters of Terzis Hassanis, Tripolitsa, 10 June 1836” and “Petition of the Two Neophyte Daughters of Terzis Hassanis for a Grant of Compensation for Their Lost Family Property and Accompanying Documents, Tripolitsa, 15 June 1836.” 11. GSA, Athens, VC, 132, “Church, Press, Education, 1833–​62.”

190 Notes 12. GSA, Athens, Archives of the Ottonian Period, 132, “Petition from Neophyte Maria from Corinth, Athens, 29 November 1845” and “Certificate Signed by Many Residents of Kyparissia Regarding the Good Services Offered by Surgeon Metos Ostan Brachopoulos During the Greek War of Independence, Kyparissia, 23 March 1848” and “Certificate from K. Panopoulos, Chief of the Tax Collecting Authorities in Tryfilia on the Property of Neophyte Ibrahim Mothonopoulou, Kyparissia, 25 July 1870”; McGrew, Land and Revolution, 294n14. 13. DHAGMFA, 68:1A–​B (1839), “The Secretary of Economy, Mr. Spaniolakis, to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 17 July 1839” and “K. Zografos to Théodore de Lagrené, Athens, 17 July 1839” (in French). 14. Pechys (pl. pecheis): a cubit, the smallest unit of linear and area measurement, which varied from place to place under the Ottomans but was standardized by the Regency and later King Otto’s government: 1 square pechys equaled 0.5625 square meters. See Otto’s royal decree of 28 September 1836 standardizing Greece’s metric system (GGG, no. 56, 16 October 1836). 15. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1838), “The Secretary of Foreign Affairs, K. Zografos to the King, Athens, 29 March 1838” (in French); 68:1A–​B (1839), “F. Wallenburg to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs K. Zografos, Athens 22 September 1839” (in French; Maria Finio’s statement in Italian is attached) and “F. Wallenburg to the Secretary of Justice and Interim Secretary of Foreign Affairs A. Paikos, Athens, 28 December 1839” (in French); 76:1 (1840), “G. K. Tisamenos, Director of the Secretariat of Finance, to King Otto, Athens, 30 October 1840.” 16. DHAGMFA, AAK:Β΄ (1840), “The Economic Commissioner of Mantineia, Ioannis Leondaridis, to the Secretariat of Finance, Tripolitsa, 17 July 1840.” 17. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1838), “The Interim Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, A. Paikos, to the Secretariat of Finance, Athens, 24 December 1837” and “The Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, K. Zografos, to the King, Athens, 26 March 1838” (in French). 18. AEP, 23:23. 19. GSA, Athens, VC, Catalogue 4, 83, “Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, 7th Cycle, 2nd Synod, 1st volume, 401.” 20. GSA, Athens, VC, Catalogue 4, 83, “Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, 7th Cycle, 2nd Synod, 1st vols. 28–​29, 170–​72, 182–​84, 187–​8, 401–​02.” 21. DHAGMFA, 68:1A–​B (1839), “Letter of the Commissioner of the Ottoman Porte Kousdi Effendi, n.p., n.d.” and “Letter of Hassan Ağa Kourtalis to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 29 April 1839.” 22. DHAGMFA, 68:1A–​B (1839), “The [Greek] Secretary of Foreign Affairs to the Commissioner of the Ottoman Porte Kousdi Effendi, Athens, 22 June 1839.” 23. GSA, Athens, VC, Catalogue 4, 83, “Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, 2nd Cycle, 2nd Synod, vol. 3, 157, 336.” 24. GSA, VC, Catalogue II, 135, 16–​18. 25. McGrew, Land and Revolution, 200n14. 26. For Panagiotis Rodios, see McGrew, Land and Revolution, 200; for Rigas Palamidis, see Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 386n151 and I Elpis, 8 March 1843; Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 8:233. 27. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1837).

Notes  191 28. Vakalopoulos, Istoriatou Neou Ellinismou, 8:241. 29. Vakalopoulos, Istoria tou Neou Ellinismou, 8:352. 30. Tsotsoros, Oikonomikoi, 271. 31. GSA, Athens, VC, Catalogue B΄, 135, “Neophytes’ Book.” 32. GSA, Athens, VC, Catalogue 4, 83, “Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, 1st Cycle, 1st Synod, vol. 2, 726–​27.” 33. Fifty-​seven landowners (50 percent) in the Nafplio register and seventy-​five (25 percent) in the Lakonia register. Some thirty-​five professions are listed in the registry of Nafplio and twenty-​four in that of the Lakonia district. 34. Kolodny, “La Crète,” 247. 35. For the Hellenization of surnames, see Triandafyllidis, Ta Oikogeneiaka, 127. The Hellenization of Islamic surnames was also fascilitated by the fact that the Turkish Republic forced Turks to adopt surnames by as late as 1935. Kunt, “Ottoman Names,” 227–​234. 36. For example, nos. 11, 17, 56, 62, 73, 98, 121, 224, 225, 226, 227, 236, 240, 248 of the Lakonia district register. 37. See nos. 3, 41, and 93 in the Nafplio registry. 38. DHAGMFA, 60:1 (1829), “Ottoman Captives”; 60:1Θ (1830), “Muslim Captives”; 60:1δ (1831), “Captives in the Peloponnese.” 39. Archeion Ioannou Kapodistria, 8:132–​148; Chouliarakis, Geografiki, 1:39–​40. 40. During the Greek War of Independence, many Cretans, including crypto-​Christians, had left Crete for the Peloponnese, the Cyclades islands, and Asia Minor. See Peponakis, “Exislamismoi,” 71. 41. In 1829, 5,556 people lived in Naflio and 228 in Nafplio’s suburb Pronia. Archeion Ioannou Kapodistria, 8:118; Chouliarakis, Geografiki, 1:40. 42. See no. 9: Sofia, fifteen years old, Georgakis, twenty years old; no. 28: Katerina, twenty-​two years old; no. 66: Anastasios, sixteen years old; no. 79: Vasilios, nineteen years old. 43. Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 82–​254; Daskalakis, Keimena-​Pigai, 1:299. 44. Hurewitz, Diplomacy, 1:54. 45. Moore, Davidson, and Fisher, Speaking of Sexuality, 256. 46. Exodus 22:16–​17; Deuteronomy 22:28–​29. 47. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “The Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs to the [Greek] Ambassador in Paris, I. Kolletis, and to the [Greek] Ambassador in London, Charilaos Trikoupis, Athens, 5 December 1841.” 48. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “Inquiry of Neophyte Maria from Chalkida to the [Greek] Secretariat of Internal Affairs, Athens, 27 October 1841.” 49. Eyal Ginio’s study of religious conversion in Salonica shows that Muslim religious authorities typically approved conversions by those over the age of ten (“Childhood,” 110). 50. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “The Royal Secretary of Justice, G. A. Rallis, to the Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 13 September 1841” and “[The Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs], I. Rizos to the Ambassador of the Sublime Porte, K. Mousouros, Athens, 21 September 1841” (in French).

192 Notes 51. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “K. Mousouros to the Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos, Athens, 21 August 1841” (in French) and “K. Mousouros to the Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos, Athens, 25 September 1841” (in French). 52. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “Lawsuit of the Temporary Guardian of Vasilios Bon’s Underaged Wife Kalliopi at Chalkida’s Court of First Instance, Chalkida, 31 August 1841.” 53. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “A. Mavrokordatos to the [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos, Pera, 5 April, 1842.” 54. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “A. Mavrokordatos to the [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos, Pera, 14 April 1842.” 55. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “K. Mousouros to the [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos, Athens, 14 November 1841” (in French) and “I. Rizos to the Ambassador of the Sublime Porte K. Mousouros, Athens, 6 December 1841” (in French). 56. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “K. Mousouros to the [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos, Athens, 16 October 1842” (in French). 57. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “K. Mousouros to the [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos, Athens, 26 November 1842” (in French). 58. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “A. Mavrokordatos to the [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs Iakovos Rizos, Pera, 26 December 1842.” 59. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1841), “The [Greek] Royal Secretary of Justice, G. A. Rallis, to the Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 12 January 1843.” 60. OGG, no. 2, 22 February 1833; no. 17, 4 May 1833; DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1833), “Two Ottoman Documents, Followed by Their Summaries in Greek, with no Date” and “S. Trikoupis to ‘Sire,’ Nafplio, 7 June 1833” (in French). 61. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1833), “[Greek] Royal decree, Dated on 26 June 1833 in German Followed by Greek Translation” and “The Prefect of Euboea, Georgios Ainian, to the [Greek] Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Chalkida, 26 July 1833.” 62. DHAGMFA, 68:1A–​ B (1839), “K. Nikolaidis’ Letter to King Otto, Athens, 21 February 1839.” 63. DHAGMFA, 68:1A–​B (1839), “The Sublime Porte’s Commissioner to the [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs K. Zografos, Athens, 25 July 1839.” 64. DHAGMFA, 68:1A–​B (1839), “The [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs to Kousdi Effendi, Athens, 4 August 1839.” 65. DHAGMFA, 68:1A–​B (1839), “Kousdi Effendi to the [Greek] Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 8 August 1839.” 66. DHAGMFA, 68:1A–​B (1839), “The [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs K. Zografos to the Ottoman Commissioner of the Sublime Porte Kusdi Effendi, Athens, 12 August 1839.” 67. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1840), “Traduction d’ Une Pétition Collective des Musulmans de Négrepont Addressee au Ministre-​Rèsident de la Sublime Porte près de M. le Roi de Grèce, en date du 21 Djèmari-​Ullével 1256 de l’ Hégire (7/​19 Juillet 1840).” 68. DHAGMFA, 76:1(1840), “K. Mousouros to the [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs Andronikos Paikos, Athens, 10 July 1840” (in French).

Notes  193 69. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1840), “Euboea’s Governor, P. A. Anagnostopoulos to the [Greek] Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Chalkida, 12 July 1840” and “Andronikos Paikos to the Ambassador of the Sublime Porte K. Mousouros, Athens, 24 July 1840” (in French) and “K. Mousouros to the Greek Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs I. Rizos, Athens, 12 August, 1841” (in French). 70. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1840), “K. Mousouros to the [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs A. Paikos, Athens, 25 July 1840” (in French) and “The [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs to the Governor of Euboea, Athens, 29 July 1840.” 71. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1840), “The Secretary of Euboea’s Governor’s Office, A. K. Proussos, to the [Greek] Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, Chalkida, 7 August 1840.” 72. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1840), “The [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, A. Paikos to the governor of Euboea, Athens, 5 September 1840.” 73. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1840), “The [Greek] Royal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, A. Paikos, to the [Greek] Royal Secretariat of Maritime Affairs, Athens, 1 November 1840.” 74. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1845), “K. Mousouros to the Greek Prime Minister and Interim Minister of Foreign Affairs, I. Kolettis, Athens, 30 January 1845” (in French). 75. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1845), “Nikos Petrokokkinos, Athens Policeman, to the Governor’s Office of Attica, Athens, 5 February 1845.” 76. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1845), “Diomidis Kyriakou, Public Prosecutor of Athens Court of Appeals to the [Greek] Ministry of Justice, Athens, 27 February 1845.” 77. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1845), “Nehamas Mizdrahi to the Ottoman Ambassador Konstantinos Mousouros, n.p and n.d.” 78. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1845), “The [Greek] Minister for Religious Affairs and Public Education, I. Kolettis, to the [Greek] Ministry of Justice, Athens, 25 August 1845” and “I. Kolettis to Ottoman Ambassador in Athens Konstantinos Mousouros, Athens, 3 September 1845” (in French). 79. DHAGMFA, 76:1B (1864), “Ottoman Ambassador in Athens I. Fotiadis to the [Greek] Secretary of Foreign Affairs, P. Kalligas, Athens, 18 April 1864” (in French). 80. DHAGMFA, 76:1B (1864), “Ismail Yusuf Mosia, Ottoman Muslim Citizen, Resident of Karystos, to the Ottoman Ambassador in Athens I. Fotiadis, Karystos, 29 March 1864.” 81. DHAGMFA, 76:1B (1864), “The District Governor of Karystia Iatridis to the Governor (Prefect) of Euboea, Kymi, 16 May 1864.” 82. DHAGMFA, 76:1B (1864), “The Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Zinovios Valvis to the Ottoman Ambassador in Athens I. Fotiadis, Athens, 5 June 1864” (in French). 83. Nomos tis Epidavrou, 1823, ­chapter 2, section β΄, accessed on 15 January 2022, https://​www.hel​leni​cpar​liam​ent.gr/​UserFi​les/​f3c70​a23-​7696-​49db-​9148-​f24dc​e6a2​ 7c8/​syn07.pdf. 84. DHAGMFA, 76:1 (1840), “The Governor of Euboea to the Secretariat of the Royal House and Foreign Affairs, Chalkis, 7 August 1840.” 85. Chronos, 8 March 1843. 86. Nea Efimeris, 17 July 1882. 87. Gritsopoulos, Istoria, 2:460–​462. 88. Chronos, 21 May 1835, 2.

194 Notes 89. Chronos, 25 May 1835, and part of the complaint is published in the issue of 28 May 1835, due to the lack of space in the issue of 25 May. 90. O Sotir, 10 July 1838. 91. Aion, 9 February 1846.

Conclusion 1. Phillips, The War, 48. 2. The number of Muslims in the territories that later formed part of the 1832 Kingdom of Hellas prior to the Greek War of Independence is estimated to be between sixty thousand and ninety-​one thousand (9.1 to 11.9 percent of the entire population). Kolodny, La Population, 1:191–​192; Popovic, L’Islam Balkanique, 109; Konortas, “Les Musulmans,” 74; McCarthy, Death and Exile, 20; Despotopoulos, “Teliki Rythmisi,” 577; Mamoukas, Ta Kata tin Anagenisin, 11:258–​259; Sakellariou, I Peloponnisos, 118, 283; Despotopoulos, “Paragontes,” 69; Nikolaou, “Islamisations,” 232; Allamani, “Gegonota,” 70–​100; Diamantourou, “Exaplosi,” 110. The British historian Douglas Dakin claims that no fewer than fifteen thousand out of forty thousand Muslims had escaped to Ottoman-​controlled areas long before the entire Peloponnese was up in arms (The Greek Struggle, 59). Other sources indicate that only a few had escaped, and that the rest had been exterminated by Greek rebels. 3. Ginzburg, “Checking the Evidence.” 4. Although an Ottoman vassal, the Principality of Bulgaria, had its own constitution, flag, and anthem and conducted its own foreign policy. In 1885, it expanded its territory by annexing Eastern Rumelia, an autonomous province created in 1878 by the Treaty of Berlin that covered a region roughly corresponding to today’s southern Bulgaria, following a bloodless revolution in there. The Ottoman Empire accepted this annexation with the Tophane Agreement. On 5 October 1908, Bulgaria declared its independence as the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Crampton, A Concise History, 85–​98. 5. Celik, “Religious Conversion.” 6. Fine, The Early Medieval Balkans, 171. 7. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam, 41. 8. Baer, Honored, 13–​14. 9. Deringil, “There Is No Compulsion,” 547. 10. Mayer, “Witches.”

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Tables are indicated by t following the page number Abbas I, 8–​9 Abbas II, 8–​9 abductions, of women bride kidnapping, 139–​40 cases of, 141–​52 overview, 139–​41 testimonies of, 152–​53 Abdülmecid I, Sultan, 108, 144–​45, 162 Abel, Karl von, 125 About, Edmond François Valentin, 75 Abu Bakr, Caliph, 8 Acrocorinth, 26, 59–​60 Acropolis of Athens Greek siege of, 29, 30 Ottoman siege of, 40 adoption, 151 Aegean islands, 25, 26, 33–​34, 65–​66 Ahmet, Ali Mullah Deli, property dispute of, 115–​16 Ainian, Georgios, 75 Aion (newspaper), 156 Albanian, as term, xiv Albanian-​speaking Muslims in Greek army, 68 Greek War of Independence and, 52, 62 as mercenaries, 39, 45, 59 in rebel areas, 32, 46, 57–​58, 138 terminology, xiv Albanis, Dervis Ahmet Ali Ağa, daughters of, 113–​15 Alexander I, Tsar, 29, 34–​35, 37 Ali Pasha of Tepelena, 24–​25, 46, 62 Anagnostopoulos, P. A., 149–​50, 152–​53 Anatolia, 10–​12, 14, 71 Andrew (the First-​Called Apostle), 53 Androutsos, Odysseas, 37–​38 Angelis (neo-​martyr), 109–​10 Antifonisis (Parios), 46–​47 apostates/​apostasy, 108–​23 death penalty and, 108–​9, 162 inheritance and property disputes, 22, 110, 111–​12, 113–​15

national identity and, 16–​18 penalty for female, 108–​9 Qur’an on, 108, 109–​10 treatment of, 14 views of, 162–​63 Apostolides, Sophocles Evangelinos, 56 Appellate Court of Athens, 115 Areios Pagos, 80–​81 Areopagus, 62 Aristovoulos, Vasilios, 99, 102 Armansperg, Ludwig von, 125 Armenopoulos, Konstantinos, 76–​77 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 140 Athens as capital, 71, 82 coup of 1843, 43–​44 Ottoman siege of, 40 atrocities against Muslims, 27–​34, 61, 94–​95 against non-​Muslims, 30–​31, 61 Attica Muslims in, 57 property sales and settlements in, 78, 79, 81, 82, 97–​98, 102, 111–​12, 119, 120–​21 Autocephalous Church of Greece, xiii–​ xiv, 15–​16 autocephaly, 53 autonomy, Greek, 40–​42 Aztec Empire, 122 Bakolas, Gogos, 37–​38 Balkans, the atrocities against Muslims in, 61, 94–​95 Christianization of Muslims in, 15 historiography and conversions, 13–​20 Islam in, 11–​12 name changes, xv religion and nationalism in, 15–​18 religious practice vs. religious faith in, 14 secularization and modernization, 16 “Balkan Sprachbund,” 52–​53

216 Index Balkan Wars (1912–​1913), 19–​20, 61 baptism, 85, 87–​88, 89–​94, 133–​34, 153–​54 Basil II, 7 Battle of Dragatsani (1821), 25 Bektash, Alevi Wali Haji, 11–​12 Bektashism, 11–​12, 57, 86–​87 Belgrade, uprising and atrocities at, 61 Bentham, Jeremy, 67 Bey, Hadji Ismail, 97–​98, 112–​13, 146 Bezmiâlem Sultan, 144 Bon, Vassilios, 141–​46 borders, Greek, 41–​43 Boris, Khan, 5–​6 Bosnia, Islam in, 11 Bosnian Church, 11 Boyer, Jean-​Pierre, 36–​37 bride kidnapping, 139–​40 bride price, 140–​41 Britain diplomatic interventions, 75, 76, 82 negotiations of treaties, 40–​41, 42–​44, 70–​71 support for Greek War of Independence, 36, 37, 40–​41 See also Great European Powers British East India Company, 122 Bulgaria Christianization of, 5–​7 conversions to Islam in, 17–​18 nationalism, 54 Principality of, 160 Bulgarian, as term, xiv Bulgarian Church, 6–​7 Bulgarian-​speaking Muslims, 22 Bulliet, Richard, 160–​61 Byron, Lord, 35–​36 The Isles of Greece, 35 Byzantine Empire Bulgaria and, 5–​7 forced conversions of Jews, 3–​4 Kievan Rus’ and, 7 revival of, 47–​49 Canning, George, 37, 40–​41 Castlereagh, Viscount, 34, 37 Catherine the Great, 47–​48 Celik, Mehmet, 19 Chalkida abduction and conversion of Muslim women in, 141–​46 Court of First Instance, 143–​45, 146–​47, 149–​50 mosques and Sufi sanctuaries in, 57, 73, 76 Muslim-​owned real estate in, 76 Muslims in, 72–​73, 157

Chalkokondyles, Demetrios, 44–​45 Charlemagne, 3, 5 Charles II (king of Naples), 3–​4 Charles X (king of France), 42–​43 children in adopted Greek Orthodox families, 84–​85, 96–​99, 101 baptism of, 84–​85 conversion, 159 faith of, 136–​37 Chios atrocities against Muslims in, 33–​34 massacre of Greek Orthodox in, 26–​27, 34–​35, 36 Christianity/​Christian crypto-​Christians, 2, 9–​10, 86–​87, 136–​37, 139 Greek national identity and, 64–​65 in international treaties, 70–​71 as majority religion, 3 persecution of, 3 as term, xiii–​xiv See also Orthodox Christianity Christianization, 5, 15. See also conversion, religious Christian Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, 93–​94 Chronos (newspaper), 154, 155–​56 Church, Sir Richard, 40 Church of St. Nicholas, 73 citizenship, 68–​69 civil law, 76–​77, 121–​23 Cochrane, Lord, 40 “Concerning Religion” (Negris), 64–​65 concubines, 89, 132, 140–​41, 148, 159 Congress of Paris (1856), 69–​70 Congress of Vienna (1814), 34, 51, 69–​70 Constantine I, 3 Constantinople, xv, 48–​49, 53, 71 Fall of (1453), 44–​45 Constitution (1832), 43–​44 Constitution (1844), 80, 127 constitutions, 64, 68–​70 first provisional constitution (1822), 64, 91–​92 Politikon Syntagma tis Ellados (1827) 28, 43–​44, 64 second provisional (Nomos tis Epidavrou, 1823), 64–​65, 153 Convention of Istanbul (1881), 69–​70 conversion, religious context of, 16, 84–​89, 161 covertly faithful to original faith, 2, 5, 9–​10, 86–​87, 139

Index  217 forced, 2, 3–​5, 8–​9, 12, 16, 94–​95, 132, 158, 159, 161–​62 “free will” and, 101–​2, 158–​60 Greco-​Ottoman diplomatic relations and, 162 integration into Greek society and, 160–​61 to Islam, 10–​12, 86–​87 under Islamic rule, 8–​12 national identity and, 160, 161–​62 overview of, 2 procedures, 94–​95 reasons and motivation for, 2, 84, 85, 159–​61 religious practice vs. religious faith and, 14 spectrum of “voluntary” and “forced,” 158, 159 as survival strategy, 101–​2, 152–​53, 159–​60 symbolic meaning of, 153–​54, 162–​63 voluntary, 2, 86–​87, 157, 158, 159 Cordington, Edward, 40–​41 Corinth, surrender of, 59 Crete, 16–​17, 136 Crimean War, 75 crypto-​Christians, 2, 9–​10, 86–​87, 136–​37, 139 crypto-​Jews, 2, 5, 9–​10 crypto-​Muslims, 2, 5 Cyprus, conversions to Islam in, 12 Cyril (Byzantine monk), 5, 6–​7 Cyrillic alphabet, 6–​7 Dagović, Kristo, 52 Damascinos (Christian Orthodox monk), 14 Daniil, 53–​54 Danubian principalities, revolt in, 25, 29 Delacroix, Eugène, The Massacre of Chios, 36 Deligiannis, Kanellos, 39 dervishes (Sufi ministrants), 10–​11 devşirme, 9, 13 dhimmī. See “People of the Book” (dhimmī) Dikaios, Grigorios, 65, 66 documentation lost or destroyed, 107–​8 missing family members and, 101–​2 See also registries, of neophytes Dominican inquisitors, 3–​4 Dönmeh, 10 dowries of neophyte women, 112–​13, 126, 158–​60 property as, 124, 132–​33 Dragoumis, Nikolalos, 92 Dritsakos, Youpis, 63–​64 Easter Crisis conflicts (1875–​1878), 61 Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 5, 53–​54, 87–​88. See also Orthodox Christianity

Ebussuud (sheik-​ul-​Islam), 108–​9 Ecumenical Patriarchate. See Orthodox Christian Patriarchate of Constantinople Edict of Milan (313), 3 Edict of Thessalonica (380), 3 education, 7, 47–​48, 49, 51, 73, 154 “Ellines” as term, 54–​55, 56, 64, 65, 69 See also Hellenes/​Hellenism emigration of Muslims to Ottoman Empire, 59–​61, 71, 73–​74, 80–​81, 141, 162 of neophytes, 72–​75, 101 Enlightenment European (Age of), 46–​47 Modern Greek (Neo-​Hellenic), 46–​48 ethnikes gaies (national estates), 103–​4 amount of land granted as, 127, 128 ceded to neophytes, 103–​8, 117–​18, 126–​ 31, 159–​60 factors considered in granting, 126–​27 false claims and falsified documents, 128, 134–​35 income and, 106, 107, 126, 128–​29, 130 policies and royal decrees, 105–​6, 107, 126–​27 political support for petitions, 128–​31 as public assets, 78–​79 sale of ceded, 105–​6 ethnos, xiv–​xv, 55 Euboea Muslims in, 23, 67–​68, 69, 71, 72–​73, 157 property disputes and settlements in, 76–​77, 82, 110–​13, 121–​22, 146–​47 regency’s measures in, 74–​75 Europe philhellenic committees in, 36 support for Greek War of Independence, 34–​ 35, 36, 40–​41, 42–​43 See also Great European Powers European Enlightenment, 49, 67 Everett, Edward, 35 Examining Committee on Ottoman Land Properties, 79, 81 Executive (ektelestiko) on baptism of neophytes, 89, 90–​93 disagreements with Parliament, 92 exodus, Muslim, 72–​75 families missing members, 96–​102 obstacles to reunification, 96 response to conversion, 110 sources and documentation, 101–​2

218 Index Fanari, Muslims of, 58, 84–​85, 88 Fasıl Ahmed Pasha, Grand Vizier, 9 Feraios, Rigas, 48 “Thourios” (War Song), 48 Fight for the Faith and the Motherland (Ypsilants), 24 Filiki Etaireia (Society of Friends), 24–​25, 48–​49 Filos tou Nomou, 64–​65 Finlay, George, 27–​29, 32–​33, 40 First Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church (325, Nicaea), 3 First World War (1914–​1918), 61 forced conversion to Christian Orthodoxy, 3–​4, 5, 94–​95, 132, 158, 159, 161–​62 to Islam, 8–​9, 12, 16, 94 See also conversion, religious Fotiadis, I., 151–​52 France, 40–​41 expeditionary troops, 42, 60–​61 French Revolution, 42–​43, 48, 49 freedom, of religious belief, 50, 67, 115, 146, 158 French Revolution, 42–​43, 48, 49 Fthiotida, 74 Gastouni, 86–​87, 88, 139 Gaul, 3–​4 Gekas, Mustafa, 62–​63 gender, of neophytes, 23, 132 Gennadius Scholarios, xiii–​xiv genos (nation), xiv–​xv, 46–​47, 55 Germanos of Patra (Metropolitan Bishop), 28, 31–​32 Ghazi, Hassan, 45 Ghiyath ad-​Din Muhammad, 8 Glagolitic alphabet, 5, 6–​7 Golitsyn, Alexander (Prince), 36 Gordon, Thomas, 26–​27, 33, 38 Gouras, Yannis, 37–​38 “Graikoi/​Graikos,” as term, 49, 54–​55 Gratian (Roman emperor), 3 graves, destruction of Muslim, 73 Great Eastern Crisis (1875–​1878), 94–​95, 121, 123 Great European Powers bias against Islam and Ottoman Empire, 70–​ 71, 140, 156 Greek War of Independence and, 34, 36 intercessions on behalf of neophytes, 128–​90 revolts in Italy and Spain and, 24–​25 Greco-​Ottoman bilateral agreements, 82 Greco-​Ottoman Committee (1836), 79–​ 81, 82–​83

adjudication of property disputes and transactions, 79–​80, 110–​14 reduction and cessation of, 80–​81 Greco-​Ottoman Committee on Disputed Forests, 81 Grecophone, as term, xiii–​xiv, 55 Greco-​Turkish War of 1919–​1922, 19–​20, 61 Greece as constitutional monarchy, 43–​44, 80, 127 cultural hegemony, 53–​54 independence of, 18, 39, 41–​42 influence of civilization, 50, 55 as kingdom, 41–​42 map of territorial expansion, 42–​43 See also Kingdom of Hellas Greek, as term, xiii–​xiv Greek army, Muslims serving in, 68, 71–​72 Greek Catholic Church, 15 Greek Civil War (1823–​1825), 39, 59–​60 Greek courts, property disputes and, 80–​ 81, 116–​17 Greek insurgents motives of, 51–​52 negotiations and agreements with Muslims, 37–​38, 59, 62 treatment of collaborators, 38 See also Greek War of Independence Greek language Greek national identity and, 56, 64–​65, 83, 153 Katharevousa, 35 Koine Greek, xiii–​xiv, 1–​2, 53–​54, 55 prestige of, 53–​54 Greek national identity/​nationality definition of, 64, 83 language and, 56, 64–​65, 83, 153 religion and, 64–​67, 101, 153 terminology, 54–​55 Greek nationalism Megali Idea, 71–​72 rise of, 46–​52 Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople. See Orthodox Christian Patriarchate of Constantinople “Greek Question,” 40–​41, 42–​43 Greek Royal Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, 146–​ 48, 149–​50, 151–​52 Greek War of Independence (1821–​1832), 1, 15–​16, 18 accounts of, 157 atrocities against Jews, 61 atrocities against Muslims, 27–​34 beginnings of, 25–​26

Index  219 economic impact of, 102–​3 European support for, 34–​40 financing of, 35–​36 Greek merchants and, 50 impact on Muslims and other religious groups, 57–​58, 61 intelligentsia on, 16, 50, 51–​52 international reaction to, 34–​37 motives for, 46 Muslims who supported, 62–​63 naval warfare, 26 Ottoman reaction to, 26–​27 outcome of, 39–​44 in perspective, 44–​46 shifting loyalties in, 37–​38 turmoil of postwar period, 121, 127, 158 Grigorios V (Patriarch of Constantinople) execution of, 26–​27, 29, 34–​35, 37 mistreatment of corpse, 61 Gypsis, as term, xiv Haierists. See Filiki Etaireia (Society of Friends) Haiti, support for Greek War of Independence, 36–​37 Halveti tradition, 57, 86–​87 Hazife (case of abduction), 151–​52 Hellenes (“Ellinas”), xiii–​xiv, 49, 54–​55, 56, 65 Christian Orthodoxy and, 54–​55, 153–​54 status and, 64 “Hellenic Republic,” 48. See also Kingdom of Hellas heretics, 3 Hexabiblos, 76–​77 Hilendarski, Paisiy, 54 History of Greece from Its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, A (Finlay), 29 History of the Greek Revolution (Finlay), 28–​29 honor killing, 140–​41 Howe, Samuel Gridley, 35–​36 Huseyn, Sultan, 8–​9 Hydra, atrocities against Muslims in, 33–​34 Iberian Peninsula, 3–​4, 5 Ibrahim I, Sultan, 9, 12 Ibrahim Pasha French expeditionary troops against, 42 invasion by, 38, 39, 59–​60, 102–​3, 162–​63 prisoners of war and, 59–​60 siege of Messolonghi, 40, 85–​86 Idrizis, Mustafa, 73–​74 Igemonikon Syntagma tis Ellados (Hegemonic Constitutions of Greece), 43–​44 Ignjatović, Jaša, 17–​18

India, legal pluralism in, 122 inheritance rights female family members and, 111–​12, 118–​19 loss of, 23, 103–​4, 111–​14 property disputes and, 110–​11, 113–​15 Innocent II (Pope), 3–​4 integration, into Greek society, 154–​55, 160–​61 Iossif, Bishop of Androusa, 90 Islam in Balkans, 17–​18 in Bosnia, 11 buildings, 73 conversions to, 8–​11, 13–​14 European bias against, 70–​71 mysticism, 10–​12 restrictions on customs, practices, and traditions, 73 as universal religion, 9–​10 See also Muslims Islamization, 12 re-​Islamization, 85–​86, 120–​21, 162–​63 Islamized Orthodox Christians, conversions to Christian Orthodoxy, 88–​89, 138–​39 Isles of Greece, The (Byron), 35 Ismail I (founder of the Safavid dynasty), 8–​9 Istanbul, xv, 41–​42, 53, 71. See also Constantinople Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya (Hilendarski), 54 Italian Carbonari, 34, 48–​49 Ivan the Terrible, 4 Jefferson, Thomas, correspondence with Korais, 49 Jews abductions of Jewish women, 150–​51 atrocities against, 61 crypto-​Jews, 2, 5, 9–​10 discrimination against, 67 emancipation of, 18–​19 forced conversions of, 3–​4, 5 Joint Greco-​Ottoman Committee, 78, 103–​4, 110–​12, 113–​14, 115, 116, 118–​19, 146–​47 Joseph II (Habsburg emperor), 50 Judicial Committee on Ottoman Land Estates, 79 jus ad bellum (law of war), 103 jus sanguinis (right of blood), 69 jus soli (birthright citizenship), 68–​69 Kalamata, 30, 57–​58 Kalavryta, 30, 57–​58 Kalliopi (Refye), abduction and conversion of, 141–​46

220 Index Kanaris, Konstantinos, 131 Kapodistrias, Ioannis, 23, 34, 42, 70–​71, 96, 100 assassination of, 42–​43, 107–​8 bills and proposals on ethnikes gaies, 106, 107, 125–​26, 130 cession of ethnikes gaies to neophytes, 104–​7 neophytes’ letters and petitions to, 103–​ 5, 110–​11 prisoners of war and, 59–​60 on protection of Muslims in Greece, 60–​61 recovery after the war and, 102–​3 Kara Ali (Kapudan Pasha), 26–​27, 33–​34 Karaiskakis, Georgios, 37–​38 Katartzis, Dimitrios, 54–​55 Katsonis, Lambros, 45–​46, 47–​48 Kiev, mass baptism in, 4, 7 Kievan Rus’, Christianization of, 7 Kingdom of Hellas, 18, 22–​23, 42–​43, 56 Bavarian rulers of, 56 civil code of, 76–​77 legal environment of, 83, 121–​23 map (1832–​1863), 43–​44 minority rights in, 18–​19 Muslims in, 67–​72, 157 population of, 57, 67–​68 state administration, 72–​73 turmoil of postwar period, 121, 127 Kızılbaş tradition, 57 Kolettis, Ioannis, 39, 71, 141 Kollyvades movement, 46–​47 Kolokotronis, Theodoros, 33, 38, 39 Kontostavlos, Alexandros, 63–​64 Korais, Adamantios, 35, 49, 67 Kosmas the Aetolian, 53–​54 Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva, Lajos (Louis Kossuth), 18–​19 Kostaki Musurus Pasha. See Mousouros, Konstantinos Kountouriotis, Georgios, 39 Lagoumtzis, Kostas, 111–​13 Lagrené, Théodore de, 128–​29 Lakonia, registries of neophytes in, 124, 132, 133–​34, 133t, 135, 136–​38, 139, 154–​55 language Muslims and, 57 national identity and, 64–​65 See also Greek language legal dualism/​pluralism, 121–​22, 123 Leopold, Prince of Saxe-​Cobourg and Gotha, 41–​43 Licinius, 3 Livadia, 45–​46, 85–​86, 89

Loidorikis, Panagiotis N., 132, 135 London Philhellenic Committee, 36 London Protocol (1829), 41–​42 London Protocol (1830), 41–​42, 69–​71, 121–​22 on ethnikes gaies, 104–​5 Muslim emigration to Ottoman Empire, 79, 96 Samos excluded, 74 status and rights of Christians, 70–​71 status and rights of Muslims, 68–​69, 74–​75 Londos, Andreas, 39 Louis the German, 5–​6 Ludwig I (king of Bavaria), 72, 125 Macedonia, 25, 26 Magarašević, Georgije, 17–​18 Mahmud Dramali Pasha, 29 Mahmud II, Sultan, 24–​25, 38, 46 Mahmud of Ghazni, 8 Maison, Nicholas Joseph, 42, 60–​61 Makriyannis, Yannis, 39 Mani/​Maniots, 45 Marranos, 5 marriage by abduction or capture, 121, 140–​41 children of mixed, 85, 99 conversion and, 138, 139, 154, 158–​59, 160 dowries of neophytes and, 112–​13, 120, 124, 132–​33, 159–​60 mixed religion, 12, 87–​89, 93, 97, 136–​37, 139, 147–​48, 154–​55, 158–​59 relocation and, 137 martyrs, 109. See also neo-​martyrs Massacre of Chios, The (Delacroix), 36 Massacre of Verden (782), 3 massacres, 26–​27, 29, 30, 33–​35, 36, 61 Maurer, Georg Ludwig von, 72, 125 Mavrokordatos, Alexandros, 39, 62, 144–​ 45, 146 Mavromichalis, Petrobey, 42–​43 Mavrommatis, Nikolaos, 1 Megali Idea, 71–​72 Mehmed, Kadızade, 9 Mehmet, Dervis, 62–​63 Meis (Kızılhisar), 45–​46 men, number of neophyte, 132, 154–​55, 155t merchants/​mercantile class, 50, 51 Messolonghi, siege and fall of, 40, 85–​86 Methodius (Byzantine monk), 5 Metternich, Klemens von (Prince), 34 Miaoulis, Andreas, 26 Michael III (Byzantine emperor), 5, 6 military personnel, housed with Muslim families, 74–​75

Index  221 Miller, Jonathan, 35–​36 millet-​i Rûm (Roman nation), 26–​27, 55, 56, 65–​66 Hellenization of, 53–​54 terminology, 26–​27 minority rights, 18–​19 missing family members, 96–​102 cases, 96–​100, 101–​2 Mizrahi, Rika, abduction of daughter of, 150–​51 modernization, 16, 94, 162 Monastiriotis, P., 101 Monemvasia atrocities at, 30–​31 Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy in, 86–​88, 137–​38, 139 Muslim departure from, 59, 60–​61, 87 Moravia, 5–​6 Christianizations of Slavic populations of, 5 Morean war (1684–​1699), 44–​45 Moreas massacre of Muslims, 27–​29 revolt in, 25, 27–​28 See also Peloponnese Moriscos (“Secret Moors” or crypto-​ Muslims), 5 mosques demolished or converted, 73 Ottoman funding of repairs, 76 Mourousi, Constantine, 26–​27 Mourtarochoria Muslims of, 58, 87–​88 neophytes in, 87–​89 Mousouros, Konstantinos (Ottoman ambassador), 117–​18, 142–​43, 144–​45, 148, 149–​50 Muhammad, Prophet, 8, 94, 108, 140 Muhammad Ali, 38, 40–​41 Muhammad of Ghor, 8 Muslim converts to Christian Orthodoxy. See neophytes Muslim properties, 72–​73, 76–​83, 134 compensation for lost, 63–​64, 103, 126–​31 information and records, 78, 134–​35 Ottoman land law and, 77–​78 seizure of, 78–​79, 103 See also ethnikes gaies (national estates); property disputes Muslims atrocities against, 27–​34, 61, 94–​95, 157 children in Greek Orthodox families, 84–​85, 96–​99, 101 crypto-​Muslims, 2, 5 discrimination against, 67

displacement or relocation, 58, 137 emigration to Ottoman Empire, 59–​61, 71, 73–​74, 80–​81, 141, 162 employment of, 90 exposure to non-​Islamic lifestyles, 73 Greek citizenship and national identity, 62–​ 67, 68–​69 in Kingdom of Hellas, 57, 67–​72 legal framework for, 69–​70 massacres of, 27–​31, 32–​34, 157 political status, 64 population and ethnic composition, 57, 67–​68, 157 in rebel areas, 57–​61 relations with Christian Orthodox Christians, 58, 59, 87–​88 rights of, 18–​19, 68–​69, 76–​77 serving in Greek army, 68, 71–​72, 83 serving in Greek War of Independence, 62–​63, 157 terms for, 69 views and treatment of, 52, 71–​72, 83 See also Islam; neophytes Muslim women abduction and conversion of, 89, 121, 132, 140–​46, 159–​60 baptism of, 91–​92, 93 dress, 73 punishment of apostate, 108–​9 remaining with Christian Orthodox husbands and families, 99–​100 See also gender; marriage Nafplio, 39 during insurgence, 57–​58, 59 neophytes in, 104–​5 registries of, 107–​8, 124, 125–​26, 132, 133–​ 34, 133t, 135, 136–​38, 139, 154–​55 Nakşibendi tradition, 57 nation, terminology and, xiv–​xv, 55, 66 National Assembly First, 62 Second, 64–​65, 66 Third, 28, 92 Fifth, 43–​44, 103–​4, 107 nationalism Balkans, 16–​18 Greek, 46–​52 religious conversion and, 16–​18, 161–​62 revolutionary, 48 nationalized lands. See ethnikes gaies (national estates) naval warfare, 26

222 Index Navarino atrocities at, 30–​31 battle of, 40–​41 fall of, 39 Muslim departure from, 58, 60–​61 Negris, Theodoros, 64–​66 “Concerning Religion,” 64–​65 Nenekos, Dimitrios, 38 Neocaesareus, Nathaneal. See Parios, Athanasios neo-​martyrs, 109–​10 neophytes in adopted Greek Orthodox families, 96–​100 ages of, 133–​34, 133t attitudes towards, 92–​93, 155–​56, 162–​63 baptism, 89–​94 compensation for lost property, 63–​64, 103, 126–​31 disputes with family members, 110–​21 economic and social status, 102–​3, 134, 135, 153–​56, 161, 163 exodus and emigration, 72–​75, 101 family status, 155t gender apportionment, 132 integration into Greek society, 154–​ 55, 160–​61 names of, 136 ordination of, 156 origins of, 88, 136–​38 population of, 124, 125 professions and occupations, 135, 155–​56 profiles of, 132–​39 registries of, 124–​25, 133–​34, 135–​36 relocation and displacement, 137–​38 rights of, 91–​92, 110–​11, 126, 153 sources of information about, 1, 21, 134–​35 terminology and definition, 1–​2, 69, 154–​55 See also conversion, religious Nero, 3 Nicholas I, Tsar, 40–​41 Nomos tis Epidavrou (second provisional constitution, 1823), 64–​65, 153 Northern Crusades, 4 novices, 1–​2 obituaries, of neophytes, 154 Old Church Slavonic, 5, 6–​7 Orlov revolt (1770), 26, 45, 47–​48, 86–​87 Orthodox Christianity/​Christians conversion to, 19–​20, 92, 153 on conversion to Islam, 12, 86–​87 as dominant religion, 68, 83 insurgence and, 22–​23, 26–​27, 52

linguistic divisions, 52–​53 Muslims and, 58, 59, 74, 87–​88 national identity and, 15–​16, 46, 49, 52–​53, 55, 56, 64, 83, 101, 153–​54 under Ottoman rule, 44–​45 as term, xiii–​xiv Orthodox Christian Patriarchate of Constantinople, xiii–​xv, 15–​16, 53, 56 O Sotir (newspaper), 156 Otto (King), 18, 19–​20, 69, 72, 76, 80, 124 Regency council of, 125 Ottoman Empire apostasy under, 14, 17–​18 Conquest (1453), xiii–​xiv, 11–​12 European bias against, 70–​71 interventions on behalf of Muslims in Greece, 76 Islam and Islamization under, 9–​12, 13–​ 14, 15–​16 insurgent incidents against, 44–​45, 46 military, 39, 47–​48 non-​Muslim groups in, xiii–​xiv, 9, 14 terminology and, 69 war with Qajar Persia, 24–​25, 39 Ottoman kin-​state, 76 Ottoman Land Code (1858), 77–​78 Ottoman law on apostasy, 108, 110, 111–​14, 115 in Greek legal environment, 77–​78, 82–​ 83, 121–​23 on inheritance rights, 103–​4, 110–​14, 115, 118–​19 land law, 76–​78, 79 on mixed marriages, 147–​48 Ottoman Porte, 26–​27, 34–​35, 39, 40–​ 41, 42–​43 Ottoman-​Venetian war (1684–​1699), 44–​45 Otto of Wittelsbach (Prince), 43–​44 pagans/​pagan religions, 3, 7, 8 Paikos. Andronikos, 148, 150 Paine, Thomas, Rights of Man, 48 Palamidis, Rigas, 132–​33, 141–​42 Palmerston, Lord, 43–​44 Parios, Athanasios, Antifonisis, 46–​47 Parkas, Dimistrios, 52 Parliament (Vouleftikon) on baptism of Muslim converts, 90, 92 disagreements with Executive, 92 Patra, Muslims in, 57–​58 patriarchy, 93, 140 Pavlos (neo-​martyr), 109–​10 Peace Convention of Athens (1913), 74

Index  223 Peloponnese Ibrahim Pasha invasion of, 38, 39, 42, 60, 85–​ 86, 102–​3, 162–​63 insurgence in, 24–​25, 26, 30, 32, 39, 40–​41, 44–​45, 57–​58, 59, 60–​61, 110, 121–​22 population of neophytes in, 125 turmoil in, 44–​45, 52 Peloponnesian Senate, on baptism of neophytes, 89–​90 “People of the Book” (dhimmī), 8, 162 conversions and, 9–​11, 12 Perdicaris, Gregory, 72–​73 Peri ton Ellinikon Symferonton (Concerning Hellenic Interests) (Korais), 67 Peter the Great, Tsar, 47–​48 Petrovna, Elizabeth (Empress of Russia), 4 Phanariots, 26–​27, 49–​50, 51, 53 hospodars (princes), 25, 49–​50 philhellenism/​philhellenes, 34–​40 committees, 36 monument in Nafplio, 35–​36 Muslim, 157 support for Greek War of Independence, 36 volunteers joining insurgents, 35–​36 Philippe, Louis (Duke of Orléans), 42–​43 Phillips, W. Alison, 27–​28, 32–​33, 157 Philosophos, Dionysios, 44–​45 Phocas Bardas, 7 Phrantzes, Amvrosios, 30, 31–​32 phyle, as term, xiv–​xv Pittaris, Ioannis, 74–​75 place names, changes to, xv Plapoutas, General, 134–​35 Politikon Syntagma tis Ellados (Political Constitution of Greece, 1827), 28, 43–​44, 64 Pomaks, xiv, 22 Porphyrogenita, Anna, 7 Pouqueville, François, 87–​88 poverty, 102–​3, 135 prisoners of war, 59–​60 Promptuarium. See Hexabiblos property compensation for neophytes’ lost, 63–​64, 103, 126–​31 conversion to Islam and, 9, 11, 22, 110, 111–​ 12, 113–​15 evkaf, 9, 77–​78, 79 Muslim, 72–​73, 76–​83, 134–​35 rights, 23, 77–​78, 110–​14, 121–​22, 126 See also ethnikes gaies (national estates); Muslim properties property disputes adjudication of, 22, 79–​81, 82–​83, 103–​4, 110–​11

cases of, 22, 23, 110–​21, 162–​63 family members and, 112–​13, 117–​20 frustrations with, 115–​17 Greco-​Ottoman bilateral agreements, 82 Greco-​Ottoman Committee and, 79–​81 in Greek courts, 81 Ottoman land law and, 77–​78 proselytism, 2 Prosorinon Politevma tis Ellados (1822) (first provisional constitution), 64, 91–​92 Protocol of St. Petersburg, 40–​41 provisional government, 39, 41–​42, 45–​46 Pruth River Campaign. See Russo-​Ottoman War of 1710–​1711 Psyllas, Georgios, 75 Qur’an on apostasy, 108, 109–​10 on forced conversion, 8, 9 rape, 140–​41, 159–​60 Reform Edict (1856), 94–​95 refugees, 36, 59, 102–​3 Samian, 74–​75, 91–​92 Regency (1832–​1835), 125 on neophytes, 124, 125–​26, 146 registries, of neophytes, 124–​26, 132, 133–​34, 135, 136–​38, 154–​55 re-​Islamization, 85–​86, 120–​21, 162–​63 religion diversity, 18 Greek nationality and, 64–​67, 101, 153 politics and, 2–​3 syncretism, 14, 88, 160–​61 See also Islam; Orthodox Christianity/​ Christians religious conversion. See conversion Ridda, wars of the, 8 rights apostasy and loss of, 23, 103–​4, 111–​14 of Greeks, 64–​65, 91–​92 inheritance, 23, 103–​4, 110–​12, 113–​ 14, 118–​19 minority, 18–​19, 69–​70 of Muslims in Greece, 68–​71, 72–​73, 74–​75 of neophytes, 91–​92, 110–​11, 153 property, 23, 77–​78, 110–​14, 121–​22, 126 of religious freedom, 69–​70, 74–​75, 123, 146 Rights of Man (Paine), 48 Rigny, Henri de, 40–​41 Roma, xiv, 22 Roman Catholics, 65–​66 Roman Empire, Christianity in, 3

224 Index Romanticism, 34–​35 “Romioi/​Romaioi” (Romans), 49, 53–​55, 56, 65 Rostislav (Prince of Moravia), 5 Roúmeli insurgence in, 25, 26, 37–​38, 39, 40, 42, 51–​52 legal dualism of, 123 Muslims in, 57 neophytes in, 23 property disputes and settlements in, 76–​77, 79–​80, 82, 110–​13, 121–​22 Rûm, as term, xiii–​xiv Ruse (Bulgaria), 95, 160 Russia, 36, 39, 40–​41, 45, 47–​48 Russo-​Ottoman Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774), 140 Russo-​Ottoman wars, 41–​42, 45–​46, 47–​48 Sagias, Athanasios (Nenekos’s relative and Kolokotronis’s friend), 38 St. Foteini, massacre at, 31 Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite, 109 Samaritans of Palestine, 8 Samos, 26, 74 refugees, 74–​75, 91–​92 Saxons, forced conversion of, 3 Saxon Wars (772–​804), 3 schools, 47–​48, 73. See also education Sclerus Bardas, 7 Selim I, Sultan, 9, 12 Selim III, Sultan, 61 Serbia, 15, 17–​18 Serbian Revolution (1804–​1817), 121 Seyyid Ali Pasha, 109–​10 sharia law in Greek legal framework, 76–​77, 82–​83, 121–​22, 123 on prisoners of war, 59–​60 property disputes and, 22, 77–​78, 82–​83 Sheik-​ul-​Islam, 9, 33–​34 Shestiknizhia. See Hexabiblos Shi’ite Islam, 57 Sikander Shah Miri, 8 Skoufas, Nikolaos, 48–​49 slavery, 9, 26–​27, 40, 59–​60 Slavic languages, 7 Smyrna, massacre at, 26–​27, 31 Smyrnaios, Mustafa Hodja, 146–​48 Spanish Inquisition, 5 Sufism, 10–​11, 57, 86–​87 Suleyman Ağa, Emine, and children, 117–​18

Summary of the History of Reborn Greece (Phrantzes), 31–​32 Sunni Islam, 8–​9, 57, 108 Symvoulio tis Epikrateias, 79–​80 Tanzimat reforms, 18, 70–​71, 94–​95, 162 taxation, 9, 11–​12, 86–​87 tithe tax, 106, 126 Tefik, Ahmet, 68 Theocharis, N. G., 116 Theodosius I, 3 Theodosius II, 3 Thessaly, 25, 44–​45, 69–​70, 83 “Thourios” (War Song) (Feraios), 48 trade, 47–​48, 50. See also merchants/​ mercantile class treaties, international legal framework for Muslims in, 69–​70 rights of Muslims in, 74–​75 See also specific treaties Treaty of Berlin (1878), 160 Treaty of Kalender Köşk (1832), 42–​43, 68–​70, 74–​75, 79–​80, 110, 111–​12, 121–​22 Treaty of Kuchuk-​Kainarji (1774), 47–​48, 50 Treaty of London (1827), 40–​41 Treaty of the Holy Alliance, 29, 34, 51 Trikoupis, Charilaos, 141 Tripolitsa massacre at, 32–​33, 61 siege and fall of, 26, 57–​58, 59, 84–​85, 137 Tsakalov, Athanasios, 48–​49 Turkish-​speaking Muslims, 22, 57–​58 Turk, as term, xiv, 69 ulamā (Muslim scholars), 10–​11 United States philhellenic committees in, 36 support for Greek War of Independence in, 35 Valentinian II (Co-​emperor of Theodosius I), 3 van Heiden, Lodewijk, 40–​41 Varnakiotis, Georgios, 37–​38 Venice, 44–​45 virginity, 140–​41 Vlachs, xiv Vladimir (ruler of Kievan Rus’), 4, 7 Vladimirescu, Tudor, 25 von Prokesch-​Osten (diplomat) 59–​60 Vouleftikon. See Parliament (Vouleftikon) Voulgaris, Eugenios, 46–​47, 55 Vrachori, massacre at, 30, 61

Index  225 Wellesley, Arthur, 40–​41 women and girls abduction and conversion of, 16, 23, 139–​ 53, 159 number of neophyte, 132, 154–​55 role in society, 140 Xanthos, Emannuil, 48–​49

Ypsilantis, Alexander, 24, 25, 29, 46 Ypsilantis, Dimitrios, 39, 92 Ypsilantis, Nicholas, 25 Yûsuf Pasha, 57–​58 Zevi, Sabbatai, 10 Zhivkov, Todor, 17–​18 Zografos, Konstantinos, 72, 147–​48