Ottoman Greece

Most of the areas which today are within modern Greece's borders were at some point in the past a part of the Ottoman Empire. This period of Ottoman rule in Greece, lasting from the mid-15th century until the successful Greek War of Independence that broke out in 1821 and the establishment of the modern Greek state in 1832, is known in Greek as Tourkokratia (Greek: Τουρκοκρατία, "Turkish rule"; English: "Turkocracy"). Some regions, however, like the Ionian islands or Mani in Peloponese were never part of the Ottoman administration, although the latter was under Ottoman suzerainty.

The Byzantine Empire, the remnant of the ancient Roman Empire who ruled most of the Greek-speaking world for over 1100 years, had been fatally weakened since the sacking of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204.

The Ottoman advance into Greece was preceded by victory over the Serbs to its north. First the Ottomans won the Battle of Maritsa in 1371. The Serb forces were then led by the King Vukasin Mrnjavcevic, the father of Prince Marko and the co-ruler of the last emperor from the Serbian Nemanjic dynasty. This was followed by another Ottoman victory in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo.

With no further threat by the Serbs and the subsequent Byzantine civil wars, the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 and advanced southwards into Greece, capturing Athens in 1458. The Greeks held out in the Peloponnese until 1460, and the Venetians and Genoese clung to some of the islands, but by 1500 most of the plains and islands of Greece were in Ottoman hands. The mountains of Greece were largely untouched, and were a refuge for Greeks to flee foreign rule and engage in guerrilla warfare.

Cyprus fell in 1571, and the Venetians retained Crete until 1669. The Ionian Islands were only briefly ruled by the Ottomans (Kefalonia from 1479 to 1481 and from 1485 to 1500), and remained primarily under the rule of the Republic of Venice.

Ottoman Greece was a multiethnic society as apart from Greeks and Turks, there were many Jews, Italians (especially Venetians), Armenians, Serbs, Albanians, Roma (Gypsies), Bulgarians etc. However, the modern Western notion of multiculturalism, although at first glance appears to correspond to the system of millets, is considered to be incompatible with the Ottoman system. The Greeks with the one hand were given some privileges and freedom; with the other they were exposed to a tyranny deriving from the malpractices of its administrative personnel over which the central government had only remote and incomplete control.
Despite losing their political independence, the Greeks remained dominant in the fields of commerce and business. The consolidation of Ottoman power in the 15th and 16th centuries rendered the Mediterranean safe for Greek shipping, and Greek shipowners became the maritime carriers of the Empire, making tremendous profits. After the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Lepanto however, Greek ships often became the target of vicious attacks by Catholic (especially Spanish and Maltese) pirates.

This period of Ottoman rule had a profound impact in Greek society, as new elites emerged. The Greek land-owning aristocracy that traditionally dominated the Byzantine Empire suffered a tragic fate, and was almost completely destroyed. The new leading class in Ottoman Greece were the prokritoi (πρόκριτοι in Greek) called kocabaşis by the Ottomans. The prokritoi were essentially bureaucrats and tax collectors, and gained a negative reputation for corruption and nepotism. On the other hand, the Phanariots became prominent in the imperial capital of Constantinople as businessmen and diplomats, and the Greek Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarch rose to great power under the Sultan's protection, gaining religious control over the entire Orthodox population of the Empire, Greek and Slavic.

Ottoman rule

A map of the Ottoman Empire at the death of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566.

The consolidation of Ottoman rule was followed by two distinct trends of Greek migration. The first entailed Greek intellectuals, such as Basilios Bessarion, Georgius Plethon Gemistos and Marcos Mousouros, migrating to other parts of Western Europe and influencing the advent of the Renaissance (though the large scale migration of Greeks to other parts of Europe, most notably Italian university cities, began far earlier, following the Crusader capture of Constantinople). This trend had also effect on the creation of the modern Greek diaspora.

The second entailed Greeks leaving the plains of the Greek peninsula and resettling in the mountains, where the rugged landscape made it hard for the Ottomans to establish either military or administrative presence.

Administration

The Sultan sat at the apex of the government of the Ottoman Empire. Although he had the trappings of an absolute ruler, he was actually bound by tradition and convention. These restrictions imposed by tradition were mainly of a religious nature. Indeed, the Koran was the main restriction on absolute rule by the sultan and in this way, the Koran served as a "constitution."

Ottoman rule of the provinces was characterized by two main functions. The local administrators within the provinces were to maintain a military establishment and to collect taxes. The military establishment was feudal in character. The Sultan's cavalry was entirely Turkish and were allotted land, either large allotments or small allotments based on the rank of the individual cavalryman. All non-Muslims were forbidden to ride a horse which made traveling more difficult. The Ottomans divided Greece into six sanjaks, each ruled by a Sanjakbey accountable to the Sultan, who established his capital in Constantinople in 1453. Before this division occurred, the Ottomans implemented the millet system, which segregated peoples within the Ottoman Empire based on religion.

"The Hyperian Fountain at Pherae", Edward Dodwell.

The conquered land was parceled out to Ottoman nobles, who held it as feudal fiefs (timars and ziamets) directly under the Sultan's authority. This land could not be sold or inherited, but reverted to the Sultan's possession when the fief-holder died. During their life-times, these Ottoman nobles, who were generally cavalrymen in the Sultan's cavalry, lived well on the proceeds of their estates with the land of the estate being tilled largely by peasants.

The Ottomans basically installed this feudal system right over the top of the existing system of peasant tenure. The peasantry remained in possession of their own land and their tenure over their plot of land remained hereditary and inalienable. Nor was any military service ever imposed on the peasant by the Ottoman government. All non-Muslims were in theory forbidden from carrying arms, but this was ignored. Indeed, in regions such as Crete, almost every man carried arms.

The Greek people were, however, heavily taxed by the Ottoman Empire and this tax included a "tribute of children." The Ottomans required that one male child in five within every Christian family be taken away from the family and enrolled in the corps of Janissaries for military training in the Sultan's army. There were many repressive laws, and occasionally the Ottoman government committed massacres against the civilian population. No Greek's word could stand against a Turk's in a law court.
Under the Ottoman system of government, Greek society was at the same time fostered and restricted. With one hand the Turkish regime gave privileges and freedom to its subject people; with the other it imposed a tyranny deriving from the malpractices of its administrative personnel over which it exercised only remote and incomplete control. In fact the “rayahs” were downtrodden and exposed to the vagaries of Turkish administration and sometimes to the Greek landlords. The term rayah came to denote an underprivileged, tax-ridden and socially inferior population.

Economy

Engraving of a Greek merchant (16th century)

Greek woman of Thessaloniki (16th century) by Cesare Vecellio

The economic situation of the majority of Greece deteriorated heavily during the Ottoman era of the country. Life became ruralized and militarized. Heavy burdens of taxation were placed on the Christian population, and many Greeks were reduced to subsistence farming whereas during prior eras the region had been heavily developed and urbanized. The exception to this rule was in Constantinople and the Venetian-held Ionian islands, where many Greeks lived in prosperity. Greeks heavily resented the declining economic situation in their country during the Ottoman era.

After about 1600, the Ottomans resorted to military rule in parts of Greece, which provoked further resistance, and also led to economic dislocation and accelerated population decline. Ottoman landholdings, previously fiefs held directly from the Sultan, became hereditary estates (chifliks), which could be sold or bequeathed to heirs. The new class of Ottoman landlords reduced the hitherto free Greek farmers to serfdom, leading to depopulation of the plains, and to the flight of many people to the mountains, in order to escape poverty.

Religion

The Sultan regarded the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church as the leader of all Orthodox, Greeks or not, within the empire. The Patriarch was accountable to the Sultan for the good behavior of the Orthodox population, and in exchange he was given wide powers over the Orthodox communities, including the non-Greek Slavic peoples. The Patriarch controlled the courts and the schools, as well as the Church, throughout the Greek communities of the empire. This made Orthodox priests, together with the local magnates, called Prokritoi or Dimogerontes, the effective rulers of Greek towns and cities. Some Greek towns, such as Athens and Rhodes, retained municipal self-government, while others were put under Ottoman governors. Several areas, such as the Mani Peninsula in the Peloponnese, and parts of Crete (Sfakia) and Epirus, remained virtually independent. During the frequent Ottoman–Venetian Wars, the Greeks sided with the Venetians against the Ottomans, with a few exceptions. The Orthodox Church assisted greatly in the preservation of the Greek heritage, and during the 19th century, adherence to the Greek Orthodox faith became increasingly a mark of Greek nationality.

The emblem of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

As a rule, the Ottomans did not require the Greeks to become Muslims, although many did so on a superficial level in order to avert the socioeconomic hardships of Ottoman rule or because of the alleged corruption of the Greek clergy. The regions of Greece which had the largest concentrations of Ottoman Greek Muslims were Greek Macedonia, notably the Vallaades, neighboring Epirus, and Crete (see Cretan Muslims). Under the millet logic, Greek Muslims, despite often retaining elements of their Greek culture and language, were classified simply as "Muslim", although most Greek Orthodox Christians deemed them to have "turned-Turk" and therefore saw them as traitors to their original ethno-religious communities.

Some Greeks either became New Martyrs, such as Saint Efraim the Neo-Martyr or Saint Demetrios the Neo-martyr while others became Crypto-Christians (Greek Muslims who were secret practitioners of the Greek Orthodox faith) in order to avoid heavy taxes and at the same time express their identity by maintaining their secret ties to the Greek Orthodox Church. Crypto-Christians officially ran the risk of being killed if they were caught practicing a non-Muslim religion once they converted to Islam. There were also instances of Greeks from theocratic or Byzantine nobility embracing Islam such as John Tzelepes Komnenos and Misac Palaeologos Pasha.

Byzantine historians noted the liberal and generous nature of Ottoman Sultans. Bayezid I, according to a Byzantine historian, freely admitted Christians into his society while Murad II set out reforms of abuses that was prevalent under Greek rulers. Persecutions of Christians did nevertheless take place under the reign of Selim I (1512-1520), known as Selim the Grim, who attempted to stamp out Christianity from the Ottoman Empire. Selim ordered the confiscation of all Christian churches, and while this order was later rescinded, Christians were heavily persecuted during his era.

Taxation and the "tribute of children"

Greeks paid a land tax and a heavy tax on trade, the latter taking advantage of the wealthy Greeks to fill the state coffers. Greeks, like other Christians, were also made to pay the jizya, or Islamic poll-tax which all non-Muslims in the empire were forced to pay instead of the Zakat that Muslims must pay as part of the 5 pillars of Islam. Failure to pay the jizya could result in the pledge of protection of the Christian's life and property becoming void, facing the alternatives of conversion; enslavement or death.

Like in the rest of the Ottoman Empire, Greeks had to carry a receipt certifying their payment of jizya at all times or be subject to imprisonment. Most Greeks did not have to serve in the Sultan's army, but the young boys that were taken away and converted to Islam were made to serve in the Ottoman military. In addition, girls were taken in order to serve as odalisques in harems.

These practices are called the "tribute of children" (devshirmeh) (in Greek παιδομάζωμα paidomazoma, meaning "child gathering"), whereby every Christian community was required to give one son in five to be raised as a Muslim and enrolled in the corps of Janissaries, elite units of the Ottoman army. There was much resistance, for example, Greek folklore tells of mothers crippling their sons to avoid their abduction. Nevertheless, entrance into the corps (accompanied by conversion to Islam) offered Greek boys the opportunity to advance as high as governor or even Grand Vizier. One prominent example is Pargali Ibrahim Pasha, who was born the son of a Greek fisherman from [Parga] and became one of the most trusted advisors of Sultan Suleiman and field general and statesman with his own palace.

Opposition of the Greek populace to taxing or paidomazoma resulted in grave consequences. For example, in 1705 an Ottoman official was sent from Naoussa in Macedonia to search and conscript new Janissaries and was killed by Greek rebels who resisted the burden of the devshirmeh. The rebels were subsequently beheaded and their severed heads were displayed in the city of Thessaloniki. In some cases, it was greatly feared as Greek families would often have to relinquish their own sons who would convert and return later as their oppressors. In other cases, the families bribed the officers to ensure that their children got a better life as a government officer.

Demographics

The incorporation of Greece into the Ottoman Empire had other long-term consequences. Economic activity declined to a great extent (mainly because trade flowed towards cities like Thessaloniki, İzmir, and Constantinople), and the population declined, at least in the lowland areas (Ottoman censuses did not include many people in mountainous areas). Turkish settled extensively in Thrace and Greek Macedonia, while there were population of Greek Muslims of Christian Orthodox convert origin in especially southwestern Macedonia, such as the Vallahades. After their expulsion from Spain in 1492, Sephardic Jews settled in Thessaloniki (known in this period as Salonica or Selanik), which became the main Jewish centre of the empire. The Greeks became more inward-looking, with each region cut off from the others — only Muslims could in theory ride a horse, which made travel more difficult. Greek culture and education declined significantly (with the exception of the Orthodox Church).

Influence to tradition

See also: Greek folk music, Rebetiko, Klephts, and Armatoloi

Portrait of a Greek armatolos by Richard Parkes Bonington (oil painting, 1825–1826, Benaki Museum).

After the 16th century, many Greek folk songs (dimotika) were produced and inspired from the way of life of the Greek people, brigands and the armed conflicts during the centuries of Ottoman rule. Klephtic songs (Greek: Κλέφτικα τραγούδια), or ballads, are a subgenre of the Greek folk music genre and are thematically oriented on the life of the klephts. Prominent conflicts were immortalised in several folk tales and songs, such as the epic ballad To tragoudi tou Daskalogianni of 1786, about the resistance warfare under Daskalogiannis.

Ottoman decline

Leonardos Philaras (c. 1595 – 1673) was a Greek scholar born in Athens, and an early supporter of Greek liberation from Ottoman rule, spending much of his career in persuading Western European intellectuals to support Greek Independence.

After the unsuccessful Ottoman siege of Vienna, in 1683, the Ottoman Empire entered a long decline both militarily against the Christian powers and internally, leading to an increase in corruption, repression and inefficiency. This provoked discontent which led to disorders and occasionally rebellions. As more areas drifted out of Ottoman control, the Ottomans resorted to military rule in parts of Greece. This only provoked further resistance. Moreover, it led to economic dislocation, as well as accelerated population decline.

Another sign of decline was that Ottoman landholdings, previously fiefs held directly from the Sultan, became hereditary estates (chifliks), which could be sold or bequeathed to heirs. The new class of Ottoman landlords reduced the hitherto free Greek peasants to serfdom, leading to further poverty and depopulation in the plains. Athens was on its most part a run-down village, its peasant Greek population extremely poor and isolated, not allowed near the Acropolis where the more wealthy Turks were settled.

The French diplomat and philhellene François-René de Chateaubriand after his visit in Sounion in 1806, wrote his impressions: "Around me there were graves, silence, disaster, death and some Greek sailors sleeping without cares on the ruins of Greece. I abandoned that divine place forever, my head filled with its greatness in the past and its downfall today". However, the overall Greek population in the plains was reinforced by the return of some Greeks from the mountains during the 17th century.

On the other hand, the position of educated and privileged Greeks within the Ottoman Empire improved greatly in the 17th and 18th centuries. As the empire became more settled, and began to feel its increasing backwardness in relation to the European powers, it increasingly recruited Greeks who had the kind of administrative, technical and financial skills which the Ottomans lacked.

From the late 1600s Greeks began to fill some of the highest and most important offices of the Ottoman state. The Phanariotes, a class of wealthy Greeks who lived in the Phanar district of Constantinople, became increasingly powerful. Their travels to Western Europe as merchants or diplomats brought them into contact with advanced ideas of liberalism and nationalism, and it was among the Phanariotes that the modern Greek nationalist movement was born. Many Greek merchants and travelers were influenced by the ideas of the French revolution and a new Age of Greek Enlightenment was initiated at the beginning of the 17th century in many Ottoman-ruled Greek cities and towns.

Greek nationalism was also stimulated by agents of Catherine the Great, the Orthodox ruler of the Russian Empire, who hoped to acquire the lands of the declining Ottoman state, including Constantinople itself, by inciting a Christian rebellion against the Ottomans. However, during the Russian-Ottoman War which broke out in 1768, the Greeks did not rebel, disillusioning their Russian patrons. The Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji (1774) gave Russia the right to make "representations" to the Sultan in defense of his Orthodox subjects, and the Russians began to interfere regularly in the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire. This, combined with the new ideas let loose by the French Revolution of 1789, began to reconnect the Greeks with the outside world and led to the development of an active nationalist movement, one of the most progressive of the time.

Greece was peripherally involved in the Napoleonic Wars, but one episode had important consequences. When the French under Napoleon Bonaparte seized Venice in 1797, they also acquired the Ionian Islands, thus ending the four hundredth year of Venetian rule over the Ionian Islands. The islands were elevated to the status of a French dependency called the Septinsular Republic, which possessed local autonomy. This was the first time Greeks had governed themselves since the fall of Trebizond in 1461.

Among those who held office in the islands was John Capodistria, destined to become independent Greece's first head of state. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Greece had re-emerged from its centuries of isolation. British and French writers and artists began to visit the country, and wealthy Europeans began to collect Greek antiquities. These "philhellenes" were to play an important role in mobilizing support for Greek independence.

Uprisings before 1821

Lambros Katsonis

Greeks in various places of the Greek peninsula would at times rise up against Ottoman rule, mainly while taking advantage of wars the Ottoman Empire would engage into. Those uprisings were of mixed scale and impact. During the Ottoman–Venetian War (1463–1479), the Maniot Kladas brothers, Krokodelos and Epifani, were leading bands of stratioti on behalf of Venice against the Turks in Southern Peloponnese. They put Vardounia and their lands into Venetian possession, for which Epifani then acted as governor.

Local, quickly-crushed revolts such as the Epirus peasant revolts of 1600 and 1611 would occur throughout the peninsula.

In 1571, the Christian fleet in the Battle of Lepanto included a dozen of ships with Greek captains and crew from Crete and the Ionian islands, one of them manned with funds of El Greco. The success of the battle by the Holy League triggered uprisings in places of the peninsula such as Phocis (recorded in the Chronicle of Galaxeidi) and the Peloponnese, led by the Melissinos brothers and others. All of these revolts were crushed by the following year. During the Cretan War (1645–1669), the Maniots would aid Francesco Morosini and the Venetians in the Peloponnese. Greek irregulars also aided the Venetians through the Morean War in their operations on the Ionian Sea and Peloponnese.

A major uprising during that period was the Orlov Revolt (Greek: Ορλωφικά) which took place during the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) and triggered armed unrest in both the Greek mainland and the islands. In 1778, a Greek fleet of seventy vessels assembled by Lambros Katsonis which harassed the Turkish squadrons in the Aegean sea, captured the island of Kastelorizo and engaged the Turkish fleet in naval battles until 1790.

The War of Independence

Main article: Greek War of Independence

The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan by Eugène Delacroix (1826, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago).

The Massacre at Chios (1824) by Eugène Delacroix.

A secret Greek nationalist organization called the "Friendly Society" or "Company of Friends" (Filiki Eteria) was formed in Odessa in 1814. The members of the organization planned a rebellion with the support of wealthy Greek exile communities in Britain and the United States. They also gained support from sympathizers in Western Europe, as well as covert assistance from Russia. The organization secured Capodistria, who became Russian Foreign Minister after leaving the Ionian Islands, as the leader of the planned revolt. On March 25 (now Greek Independence Day) 1821, the Orthodox Bishop Germanos of Patras proclaimed a national uprising.

Simultaneous risings were planned across Greece, including in Macedonia, Crete, and Cyprus. With the initial advantage of surprise, aided by Ottoman inefficiency and the Ottomans' fight against Ali Pasha of Tepelen, the Greeks succeeded in capturing the Peloponnese and some other areas. Some of the first Greek actions were taken against unarmed Ottoman settlements, with about 40% of Turkish and Albanian Muslim residents of the Peloponnese killed outright, and the rest fleeing the area or being deported.

The Ottomans recovered, and retaliated in turn with savagery, massacring the Greek population of Chios and other towns. This worked to their disadvantage by provoking further sympathy for the Greeks in Britain and France, although the British and French governments suspected that the uprising was a Russian plot to seize Greece and possibly Constantinople from the Ottomans. The Greeks were unable to establish a strong government in the areas they controlled, and fell to fighting amongst themselves. Inconclusive fighting between Greeks and Ottomans continued until 1825 when the Sultan sent a powerful fleet and army from Egypt to suppress the revolution.

The atrocities that accompanied this expedition, together with sympathy aroused by the death of the poet and leading philhellene Lord Byron at Messolongi in 1824, eventually led the Great Powers to intervene. In October 1827, the British, French and Russian fleets, on the initiative of local commanders but with the tacit approval of their governments destroyed the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Navarino. This was the decisive moment in the war of independence.

In October 1828, the French landed troops in the Peloponnese to stop the Ottoman atrocities. Under their protection, the Greeks were able to regroup and form a new government. They then advanced to seize as much territory as possible before the Western Powers imposed a ceasefire.

A conference in London in March 1829 proposed an independent Greek state with a northern frontier running from Arta to Volos, and including only Euboia and the Cyclades among the islands. The Greeks were disappointed at these restricted frontiers, but were in no position to resist the will of Britain, France and Russia, who had contributed mightily to Greek independence. By the Convention of May 11, 1832, Greece was finally recognized as a sovereign state.

When the Ottomans finally granted the Greeks their independence, a multi-power treaty was formally established in 1830. Capodistria, who had been Greece's unrecognized head of state since 1828, was assassinated by the Mavromichalis family in October 1831. To prevent further experiments in republican government, the Great Powers, especially Russia, insisted that Greece be a monarchy, and the Bavarian Prince Otto, was chosen to be its first king.

See also

• Dragomans
• Giaour
• Greek Muslims
• Ionian Islands under Venetian rule
• Phanariotes
• Rayah
• Sipahis
• Timeline of Orthodoxy in Greece (1453–1821)

Sources

• Finkel, Caroline. Osman's Dream. Basic Books, 2005. p. 57. "Istanbul was only adopted as the city's official name in 1930".
• Hobsbawm, Eric John. The Age of Revolution. New American Library, 1962. ISBN 0-451-62720-2.
• Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans, 18th and 19th Centuries. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. ISBN 0-521-27458-3.
• Paroulakis, Peter H. The Greek War of Independence. Hellenic International Press, 1984.
• Shaw, Stanford. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
• Vacalopoulos, Apostolis. The Greek Nation, 1453–1669. Rutgers University Press, 1976.

External links

• Macedonian Question: Turkish Domination