Cretan Muslims
Total population | |
---|---|
est. 450,000 (1971 estimate)[1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Turkey | 200,000 (1971)[1] |
Egypt | 100,000 (1971)[1] |
Libya | 100,000 (1971)[1] |
Other countries (Lebanon, Syria etc.) | 50,000 (1971)[1] |
Languages | |
Cretan Greek, Turkish, Arabic | |
Religion | |
Sunni Islam |
Part of a series of articles on |
Turkish people |
---|
The Cretan Muslims (
Cretan Muslims were descendants of
Sectarian violence during the 19th century caused many Muslims to leave Crete, especially during the
At all periods, most Cretan Muslims were Greek-speaking,
History
Starting in 1645, the
The fall of Crete was not accompanied by an influx of Muslims. At the same time, many Cretans converted to Islam – more than in any other part of the Greek world. Various explanations have been given for this, including the disruption of war, the possibility of receiving a
It is difficult to estimate the proportion which became Muslim, as Ottoman cizye tax records count only Christians: estimates range from 30 to 40%
Year[20] | 1821 | 1832 | 1858 | 1881 | 1900 | 1910 | 1920 | 1928 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Muslims | 47% | 43% | 22% | 26% | 11% | 8% | 7% | 0% |
People who claim descent from Cretan Muslims are still found in several Muslim countries today, and principally in Turkey.
Between 1821 and 1828, during the Greek War of Independence, the island was the scene of repeated hostilities. Most Muslims were driven into the large fortified towns on the north coast and both the Muslim and Christian populations of the island suffered severe losses, due to conflicts, plague or famine. In the 1830s, Crete was an impoverished and backward island.
Since the Ottoman sultan, Mahmud II, had no army of his own available, he was forced to seek the aid of his rebellious vassal and rival, Kavalalı Mehmed Ali Pasha of Egypt, who sent troops to the island. Starting in 1832, the island was administered for two decades by Mustafa Naili Pasha, whose rule attempted to create a synthesis between the Muslim landowners and the emergent Christian commercial classes. His rule was generally cautious, pro-British, and he tried harder to win the support of the Christians (having married the daughter of a priest and allowed her to remain Christian) than the Muslims. In 1834, however, a Cretan committee had already been founded in Athens to work for the union of the island with Greece.
In 1840, Egypt was forced by
Religious tensions erupted on the island between Muslims and Christians and the Christian populations of Crete revolted twice against Ottoman rule (in 1866 and in 1897). In the
Crete became a semi-independent parliamentary state within the Ottoman Empire under a Greek Orthodox Governor. A number of the senior "Christian Pashas" including
The island's Muslim population dropped dramatically because of these changes, with many emigrating to other parts of the Ottoman Empire. until recently.
Culture
Literature
Turks in Crete produced a varied literary output, leading one researcher to define a "Cretan School" which counts twenty-one poets who evolved within Ottoman
A taste and echo of this tradition can be perceived in the verses below by Giritli Sırrı Pasha (1844–1895);
Fidânsın nev-nihâl-i hüsn ü ânsın âfet-i cânsın
Gül âşık bülbül âşıkdır sana, bir özge cânânsın[26]
which were certainly addressed to his wife, the poet-composer
Recently, a number of books written by descendants of Cretan Muslims in the form of novelized family souvenirs with scenes set in Crete and Anatolia have seen the day in Turkey's book market. Saba Altınsay's "Kritimu" and Ahmet Yorulmaz's trilogy were the first to set the example in this move. There has even been family souvenirs written by the Cretan Muslim writer Mustafa Olpak, whose biographies in retrospect from the shores of Istanbul, Crete and Kenya follow his grandfathers who were initially brought to the Ottoman Empire as slaves to Crete. (see below: Further reading).
Music
A study by one Greek researcher counts six Cretan Muslims who engaged themselves into music in Cretan Greek dialect.[27] The Cretans brought the musical tradition they shared with the Cretan Christians to Turkey with them:
One of the significant aspects of Giritli culture is that this Islamic—often Bektashi—sensibility is expressed through the Greek language. [There has been] some confusion about their cultural identity, and an assumption is often made that their music was somehow more "Turkish" than "Cretan". In my view this assumption is quite wrong....[15]
But certain instruments were more often used by Christians: there are few cases of Muslim
Cretan Muslim popular culture in Turkey
Nuances may be observed among the waves of immigrations from Crete and the respective behavioral patterns. At the end of the 19th century Muslims fled reprisal to take refuge in the present-day territory of Turkey or beyond (see
Among contributions made by Cretan Muslims to the Turkish culture in general, the first to be mentioned should be their particular culinary traditions based on consumption at high-levels of
An overall pattern of investing in expertise and success remains remarkable among Cretan Muslims, as attested by the notable names below. However, with sex roles and social change starting out from different grounds for Cretan Muslims,[29] the adaptation to the "fatherland"[30] did not always take place without pain, including that of being subjected to slurs as in other cases involving immigration of people.[31] According to Peter Loizos, they were often relegated to the poorest land:
They were briefly feted on arrival, as 'Turks' 'returning' to the Turkish heartland... like the Asia Minor Christians seeking to settle on land in northern Greece, the Muslim refugees found that local people, sometimes government officials, had already occupied the best land and housing.[32]
The same author depicts a picture where they did not share the "Ottoman perceptions of certain crafts and trades as being of low status",[32] so more entrepreneurial opportunities were open to them. Like others who did not speak Turkish, they suffered during the "Citizens Speak Turkish!" campaign which started in 1928. "Arabs, Circassians, Cretan Muslims, and Kurds in the country were being targeted for not speaking Turkish. In Mersin, for instance, 'Kurds, Cretans, Arabs and Syrians' were being fined for speaking languages other than Turkish.".[33] In the summary translation of a book on Bodrum made by Loizos, it is stated that, even as late as 1967, the Cretans and the 'local Turks' did not mix in some towns; they continued to speak Greek and mostly married other Cretans.[34]
Diaspora in Lebanon and Syria
As of 2006[update] there were about 7,000 Greek speakers living in
Many Cretan Muslims of Lebanon somewhat managed to preserve their identity and language. Unlike neighboring communities, they are monogamous and consider divorce a disgrace. Their community was close-knit and entirely endogamous until the Lebanese Civil War, when many of them were forced to migrate and the community was dispersed.[35]
Cretan Muslims constitute 60% of
Notable people
- Giritli Ali Aziz Efendi: Turkey's third ambassador in Berlin and arguably the first Turkish author to have written in novelistic form.
- Husainid Dynasty, which ruled Tunisiauntil 1957.
- Kandiye): One of the most important 18th-century poets of Turkish folk literature.
- Giritli Sırrı Pasha: Ottoman administrator, Leyla Saz's husband and a notable man of letters in his own right.
- Vedat Tek: Representative figure of the First National Architecture Movement in Turkish architecture. Son of Leyla Saz and Giritli Sırrı Pasha.
- Roman Catholicbishop and author.
- Rahmizâde Bahaeddin Bediz: The first Turkish photographer by profession. The thousands of photographs he took, based as of 1895 successively in Crete, İzmir, Istanbul and Ankara (as Head of the Photography Department of Turkish Historical Society), have immense historical value.
- Salih Zeki: Turkish photographer in Chania[41]
- Adrianople, and Lasithi.
- Ismail Fazil Pasha: (1856–1921) descended from the rooted Cebecioğlu family of Söke who had settled in Crete[42] He has been the first Minister of Public Works in the government of Grand National Assembly in 1920. He was the father of Ali Fuad and Mehmed Ali.
- Mehmet Atıf Ateşdağlı: (1876–1947) Turkish officer.
- Mustafa Ertuğrul Aker: (1892–1961) Turkish officer who sank HMS Ben-my-Chree.
- Writer The Fisherman of Halicarnassus), although born in Crete and has often let himself be cited as Cretan, descends from a family of Ottoman aristocracy with roots in Afyonkarahisar, and his father had been an Ottoman High Commissioner in Crete and later ambassador in Athens.[43]
- Hüsamettin Cindoruk: Turkish politician, president of the Turkish Republic.
- Bülent Arınç (born 25 May 1948) is a Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey since 2009. He is of Cretan Muslim heritage with his ancestors arriving to Turkey as Cretan refugees during the time of Sultan Abdul Hamid II[44] and is fluent in Cretan Greek.[45] Arınç is a proponent of reconverting the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, which has caused diplomatic protestations from Greece.[46]
- Halil Berktay (born 27 August 1947) Turkish historian of Cretan Muslim origin.
- Tuba Büyüküstün, Turkish actress
- Yörükand paternal Kurdish)
- Ferdi Özbeğen, Turkish singer
- Bennu Yıldırımlar, Turkish actress
- Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Turkish-Islamist poet (on mother side)
- Mustafa Fehmi Kubilay, was a Turkish teacher and a lieutenant. He is considered a "Martyr of the Revolution" in Turkey.
See also
- Al Hamidiyah
- Cretan State
- Emirate of Crete
- Greek Muslims
- History of Crete
- International Squadron (Crete intervention, 1897–1898)
- Massacre of Phocaea
- Turks in Lebanon
References
Notes
- ^ ISBN 978-0-415-45653-1.
- ISBN 978-975-428-612-0.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-5275-2489-7.
The island in question [Crete] was home to Cretan Muslims, descendants of ethnic Greeks who had converted to Islam after the Ottoman conquest in the seventeenth century. Although the language of administration and prestige was Ottoman Turkish, Cretan Muslims used Greek to express their Bektashi Islamic sentiment. After all, Islam in Crete was profoundly influenced by the Bektahi Sufi Order. Although they identified as Greek Muslims, Christian Greeks described them as Turkocretans since they had "betrayed" the Greek Orthodox Church. Some Cretan Muslims reportedly described themselves as "Turco-Romnoi," which means "European Turks," treating the term "Turk" as synonymous with "Muslim," or "Turkish Greeks," namely, Muslim Greeks or Greek Muslims.
- ^ Psaradaki, Eleni (30 August 2021). "Oral Memories and the Cretan Identity Of Cretan Turks in Bodrum, Turkey" (PDF). Stratejik ve Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi Türk-Yunan İlişkileri Özel Sayısı, C. 5. pp. 41–54.
With the term "Cretan Turks" we refer to the descendants of Islamized Cretans during the occupation of the island of Crete by the Turks in 1669. A large number of Cretans (as it also happened generally in Greece) became Muslims in order to avoid the socioeconomic hardships of the Ottoman Occupation of Crete.
- ISSN 0035-8789.
The Cretan "Turks" were not ethnically Turkish, or even Anatolian at all. They were Cretans whose ancestors had accepted Islam at some time after the Turkish conquest of the island in the middle of the seventeenth century.
- ^ Hyland, Tim (18 May 2020). "Uğur Z. Peçe Uncovers a Forgotten Part of the History of Crete". Lehigh University. Retrieved 17 April 2023.
the people known as the Cretan Turks—a Muslim people of Greek descent—ended up relocating, permanently, to Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, Libya and the Balkans [...] Though the island was home to both Christians and Muslims, both groups were of Greek origin.
- ISBN 0748633642
- ISBN 0674013859, p. 118
- ISBN 978-0-691-00898-1.
- ^ Demetres Tziovas, Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters Since the Enlightenment; William Yale, The Near East: A modern history Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1958)
- ^ Barbara J. Hayden, The Settlement History of the Vrokastro Area and Related Studies, vol. 2 of Reports on the Vrokastro Area, Eastern Crete, p. 299
- ^ Balta, E., & Ölmez, M. (2011). Between religion and language: Turkish-speaking Christians, Jews and Greek-speaking Muslims and Catholics in the Ottoman Empire. Istanbul: Eren.
- Henry Noel Brailsford (full text[permanent dead link]), an eyewitness of the immediate aftermath, uses the term "wholesale massacre" to describe the events of 1897 in Crete.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-85065-368-4.
Quote, p. 87: "In the eve of theGreek Kingdom."
Quote, p. 88: "Some effort was made by Greece prior to the war to win Turcocretans to the idea of Greek government in[Turkish] organizations which includes the worst elements among Turcocretans and the Laz people(...) as disastrous and inexpedient" in the same source." - ^ a b c Chris Williams, "The Cretan Muslims and the Music of Crete", in Dimitris Tziovas, ed., Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions, and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment
- ^ gazeteistanbul (21 February 2017). "Anneanne dili "Giritçe"". Gazete İstanbul (in Turkish). Retrieved 3 November 2020.
- ^ Tuncay Ercan Sepetcioglu (January 2021). "Cretan Turks at the End of the 19th Century: Migration and Settlement (19. Yüzyılda Girit Türkleri: Göç ve Yerleşim)" – via ResearchGate.
- ^ Greene, pp. 39–44
- ^ Greene, pp. 52–54
- ^ Macrakis, p. 51
- ^ McTiernan, pp. 13–23.
- ^ McTiernan, p. 28.
- ^ McTiernan, pp. 35–39.
- ^ "The Cretan Rebellion of 1897 and the Emigration of the Cretan Muslims — Refugee History". Refugeehistory.org. 21 July 2017. Retrieved 30 July 2022.
- Hacı Bektash Veli and Turkish Culture Research Center. Archived from the originalon 30 January 2008. Retrieved 30 April 2007. (abstract also in English) Aside from those cited in the article, the principal men of letters considered to compose the "Cretan school" are; 1. Ahmed Hikmetî Efendi (also called Bî-namaz Ahmed Efendi) (? – 1727), 2. Ahmed Bedrî Efendi (? – 1761), 3. Lebib Efendi (? – 1768), 4. Ahmed Cezbî Efendi (? – 1781), 5. Aziz Ali Efendi (? – 1798), 6. İbrahim Hıfzî Efendi (? – ?), 7. Mustafa Mazlum Fehmî Pasha (1812–1861), 8. İbrahim Fehim Bey (1813–1861), 9. Yahya Kâmi Efendi (? – ?), 10. Ahmed İzzet Bey (? – 1861), 11. Mazlum Mustafa Pasha (? – 1861), 12. Ahmed Muhtar Efendi (1847–1910), 13. Ali İffet Efendi (1869–1941).
- ^ Summary translation: A slender sapling you are, freshly shooting beauty and grace you are, an affection for one's mind you are! The rose is in love with you, the nightingale is in love you. An uncommon beloved one you are! (note that "fidân" can mean "sapling" as a noun and "slender" as an adjective, and "âfet" has more than one meaning as its English equivalent "affection".)
- Rethimno. Archived from the original(PDF) on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 30 April 2007.
- ^ "A Greek point of view on Cretan Turks". Cretan-music.gr. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
- S2CID 144517389.
- ^ M. Ragip Zik. "Giritli Mübadillerde Kimlik Oluşumu ve Toplumsal Hafıza" (in Turkish). Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul. Archived from the original on 11 March 2005. Retrieved 30 April 2007.
- ISBN 1-85043-428-X, p. 187;
- ^ ISBN 0-19-829713-0, p. 133-5
- ISBN 90-04-03424-2
- ^ a b c d Greek-Speaking Enclaves of Lebanon and Syria by Roula Tsokalidou. Proceedings II Simposio Internacional Bilingüismo. Retrieved 4 December 2006
- ^ ISBN 978-90-04-08265-6.
RESMI, AHMAD Ottoman statesman and historian. Ahmad b. Ibrahim, known as Resmi, belonged to Rethymo (turk. Resmo; hence his epithet) in Crete and was of Greek descent (cf. J. v. Hammer, GOR, viii. 202). He was born in III (1700) and came in 1146 (1733) to Stambul where he was educated, married a daughter of the Ke is Efendi
- ^ "Tuerkische Botschafter in Berlin" (in German). Turkish Embassy, Berlin. Archived from the original on 2 June 2001.
- ISBN 978-3-931479-46-6.
Ahmed Resmi Efendi (1700–1783). Der osmanische Staatsmann und Geschichtsschreiber griechischer Herkunft. Translation "Ahmed Resmi Efendi (1700–1783). The Ottoman statesman and historian of Greek origin"
- ^ European studies review (1977). European studies review, Volumes 7–8. Sage Publications. p. 170.
Resmi Ahmad (−83) was originally of Greek descent. He entered Ottoman service in 1733 and after holding a number of posts in local administration, was sent on missions to Vienna (1758) and Berlin (1763–4). He later held a number of important offices in central government. In addition, Resmi Ahmad was a contemporary historian of some distinction.
- ISBN 978-90-04-16121-4.
Ahmad b. Ibrahim, known as Resmi came from Rethymno (Turk. Resmo; hence his epithet?) in Crete and was of Greek descent (cf. Hammer- Purgstall, viii, 202). He was born in 1112/ 1700 and came in 1 146/1733 to Istanbul
- ^ "Salih Zeki". Anopolis72000.blogspot.com. 19 September 2009.
- ^ "Interview with Ayşe Cebesoy Sarıalp, Ali Fuat Pasha's niece". Aksiyon.com.tr. Archived from the original on 3 September 2011.
- ^ Yeni Giritliler Archived 19 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine Article on the rising interest in Cretan heritage (in Turkish)
- ^ "Arınç Ahmediye köyünde çocuklarla Rumca konuştu" [Arınç spoke Greek with the children in the village of Ahmediye]. Milliyet (in Turkish). Turkey. 23 September 2012. Retrieved 8 May 2015.
- ^ Bülent Arınç anadili Rumca konuşurken [Bülent Arınç talking to native speakers of Greek] (video) (in Turkish and Greek). You Tube. 2013. Retrieved 8 May 2015.[dead YouTube link]
- ^ "Greece angered over Turkish Deputy PM's Hagia Sophia remarks". Hurriyet Daily News. Turkey. 19 November 2013. Retrieved 8 May 2015.
Bibliography
Further reading
- ISBN 978-975-07-0424-6.
- ISBN 975-14-0847-4.
- ISBN 975-7891-80-0.
- Mustafa Olpak (2005). Kenya'dan İstanbul'a Köle Kıyısı (Shores of slavery from Kenya to Istanbul). Ozan Yayıncılık. ISBN 978-975-01103-4-4.
- İzmir Life magazine, June 2003
- 'Fethinden Kaybına Girit (Crete from its conquest to its loss), Babıali Kültür Yayıncılığı, 2007
- Michael Herzfeld, A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town, Princeton University Press, 1991
- Michael Herzfeld, "Of language and land tenure: The transmission of property and information in autonomous Crete", Social Anthropology 7:7:223-237 (1999),
- Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, Cambridge University Press, 2002
- Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911), s.v. Crete; La Grande Encyclopédie (1886), s.v. Crète
- Kemal Özbayri and Emmanuel Zakhos-Papazahariou, "Documents de tradition orale des Turcs d'origine crétoise: Documents relatifs à l'Islam crétois" Turcica VIII/I (5), pp. 70–86 (not seen)
- ISBN 0-691-00898-1
- A. Lily Macrakis, Cretan Rebel: Eleftherios Venizelos in Ottoman Crete, PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, 1983.