The Implementation of Ottoman Religious Policies in Crete 1645-1735: Men of Faith as Actors in the Kadı Court. (original) (raw)
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Marriage and Divorce of Christians and New Muslims in Early Modern Ottoman Empire: Crete 1645-1670
This paper focuses on many interesting remarks with regard to the application of Ottoman law in Crete in the second half of the XVII century. At that time, the general principles of Ḥanafī law on marriage and divorce were followed and the Otto-man modifications stressing the judicial and sultanic authority were observed. The registration of marriage contracts is considered an important if not necessary requirement. The aim was to alleviate complications in case of divorce or death of one of the spouses. The petition to the judge to reissue a marriage contract was a practical necessity, an example of which is the order of the judge to produce the marriage contract, as proof. This does not mean though that practice was similar everywhere in the empire. Societies like the Cretan one with a long tradition of written documentation, inherited by the Venetians, was more apt to adopt Otto-man innovations on registration than towns in Anatolia. Christians and new Muslims in Crete seem to have adapted rather rapidly to the introduction of the new judicial system. They can defend themselves successfully in court and they are aware of procedure. It is remarkable to see a Christian woman achieving the rehearing of her case through a sultanic order few years after the conquest. I cannot however but wonder about the type of legal advice and aid she had received local customs like the traditional dowry given by the wife to the husband, is thus disguised, as gift to adhere to new legal concepts. Social problems like poverty, forced conversion or second marriages, illustrate the problems the judge was faced with. Thus the ottoman judge uncertain as to whether the rapidly changing Cretan society, with the numerous converts and non-Muslims is capable of understanding fine points of Islamic law, operates as an educator reminding the litigants of their obligations.
Conversion Under the Threat of Arms. Converts and Renegades during the War for Crete (1645-1669)
The main goal of this paper is to through analysis of several well documented cases, typical for this region, and this war (a captured Montenegro chieftain who willfully turned Muslim and advanced in the Ottoman administrative hierarchy, a Bosnian Franciscan who converted to Islam under the threat of loss of life or case of young refuges from Bosnia crossing to Christian lands claiming that they were Christians who had been forcefully converted), to explore the problem of (forceful or willing) conversions in the circumstances of the major armed conflict. As this paper will argue, the conversion did not provide equal opportunities for Muslims and Christians. While for captured Muslims it was simply a means of survival (converts were mainly offered to bring their families and settle on Venetian territories in Dalmatia), turning renegade could prove to be a path for considerable social advancement for adroit Christian prisoner. Additionally this paper will also show, how due to the extraordinary circumstances of the prolonged armed conflict, the attitude of state and church authorities in regard to converts was put to the extremes. On the one hand, the threat of loss of life served as the convenient basis for more benevolent attitude (and reintegration) of converts who managed to find a way back from the Ottoman lands. Yet, at the same time, the state of war, pushed the Venetian side to take more radical steps concerning the Christian renegades of status and importance who actively participated in the Ottoman war effort, by putting a price on their heads or plotting their poisoning or assassination; a course of action the Republic would not pursue lightly in the time of peace.
Conversion to Islam in the Balkans: Kisve Bahası Petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 1670-1730
2004
Given the paucity of monograph-length studies on Ottoman Balkans from the Ottomanist perspective, every new publication in the field is bound to attract considerable interest. That will undoubtedly be the case with Anton Minkov's study, especially because it deals with a topic that does not cease to intrigue audiences both in the Balkans and in general-the process of conversion to Islam. The title of Minkov's study suggests that the work focuses on the process of conversion to Islam in the Balkans, in the period between 1670 and 1730. Nevertheless, the first three chapters of the book, comprising more than a half of the study, focus on the period prior to the 17th century and deal exclusively with published literature on the topic of conversion to Islam in the Balkans, Anatolia, and central Muslim lands in the early centuries of Islam. The first chapter introduces the theories of conversion to Islam previously set by scholars, and features a long review of R. Bulliet's famous Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History and D.C. Dennet's Conversion and the Poll Tax in Early Islam, by which Minkov pays homage to his methodological models and introduces his own quantitative methodological apparatus. By taking over Bulliet's terminology and categorization of converts into "innovators," "early adopters," "early majority," "late majority" and "laggards," Minkov sets out to re-read the demographic data collected by Speros Vryonis in his Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. He concludes that conversion in Asia Minor in the pre-Ottoman period was a gradual and primarily social process "operating in a fashion similar to the mechanism of innovation diffusion in human societies" (page), which is a restatement of Bulliet's theory. The second chapter moves into the discussion of the existing scholarship on Islamization of the Balkans and summarizes the theories on the conquest of the region by the Ottomans. Minkov juxtaposes the so-called "catastrophe" and "blessing" theories of the conquest held by the Balkan and Turkish scholars, respectively, while offering that he himself is in favor of the thesis that the Ottoman conquest did not cause a major disruption in the economic and social life of the population, as it allowed room "for the continuity of local traditions and life patterns" (34). On the basis of a numerical analysis of the information extracted from published Ottoman tax registers Minkov concludes that the two first phases of conversion process, those of "innovators" and "early adopters," were completed by 1530. According to his calculations, the "early majority" phase in the Balkan context sets in at the end of the 16th century, while in the second half of the 18th conversion to Islam in the Balkans comes to a halt. The third chapter deals with "Forms, Factors and Motives of Conversion to Islam in the Balkans" and is probably most interesting for a reader with general interest. Here Minkov engages the Balkan (especially Bulgarian) nationalist historiography's thesis about the primarily forced nature of conversion to Islam in the Balkans. He goes over the fabled methods of forced conversion, such as slavery, devshirme (the "infamous" child levy), punitive mass conversions, the phenomenon of neomartyrdom, and marriage and concubinage, consistently arguing against their impact on the process of Islamization. Minkov is most fascinated with the transformation in the institution of the devshirme in the beginning of the 17th century, when the levying of Christian children within the domains of the Ottoman Empire was discontinued and the janissary ranks began to be filled by sons of janissaries and voluntary converts interested in tax privileges associated with janissary status. He concludes this chapter by stating that the reasons and factors of conversion can be grouped as economic, social, and religious-cultural, and that there cannot be a single explanation for conversion. In the fourth chapter Minkov finally introduces documents that form the basis of his contribution to the discussion on conversion to Islam in the Balkans-636 petitions submitted by 88 REVIEWS
2016
In the course charted by Late Ottoman Crete after 1840, the year 1889 marks a key point, as radical change to the institutional context created by the Halepa Pact from November 1878 threatened the powerful political and social status of Christians, which had consolidated over the eleven years from 1879 to 1889. Under the weight of the economic and fiscal crisis from 1889-1895, a strong anti-Ottoman consciousness formed in the greater part of the Cretan population, playing a decisive role in Crete’s route to secession from the Ottoman Empire. This study draws on British consular reports, the limited –due to ban- and censored local press (Mesogeios and Herakleion newspapers), and Kriti, the official gazette containing decisions and decrees by institutions on the island and at the Porte, as well as the proceedings of the General Assembly meetings at the 1895 and 1896 sessions.
Journal of Church and State, 2021
Despite the widespread belief among scholars, the so-called millet system was not the working institution of Church-State relations in the modern Ottoman Empire. Since the equality among citizens was declared during the Tanzimat reforms, Ottoman jurists regarded the non-Muslims' privileges as the Ottoman expression of the liberal principle of religious freedom. Therefore, a closer look at the legal transformation from Ottoman to post-Ottoman law reveals how deliberately the Ottoman legacy was invented. A case in point is Crete, an autonomous island soon to be annexed to Greece, whose constitutions at the turn of the twentieth century demonstrate intriguing aspects of this transformation. While the Muslims’ status in present-day Greece is mainly derived from the international treaties concluded between 1881 and 1923, Crete was made an explicit exception in these texts. Although the Ottoman Muslims were the ordinary citizens of the empire, after 1899 and especially 1907, Muslims in Crete and then in Greece became a legal minority who were obliged to be religious. In so doing, the 1907 Constitution of Crete simply added minority Muslims to the predominantly Orthodox regime as borrowed from the Greek model. After the Balkan Wars, Muslims in Greece were left in the periphery of law, often without due transformation in the constitutional texts, as the Muslim administration was more a diplomatic concern than a constitutional issue. In conclusion, Cretan experience regarding the Muslims’ status reveals the gradual steps through which legal transformation took place, and testifies to the multiple Ottoman legacies concerning the Church-State relations.
Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2010
The fin-de siècle eastern Mediterranean witnessed profound political and socioeconomic transformations and changes. Within this context, negotiations and conflicts in Ottoman Crete are well worth considering, not only for understanding the dynamic relations between the Muslim and Christian communities of Crete, but also for insights into the larger themes of a region where Christianity, Islam, ancién regimes, and nation-states intersected and interacted. New information about the social and political transformation of Ottoman Crete within the broader context of the late nineteenth century eastern Mediterranean region can be gleaned from an examination of archival sources. In particular, new light can be shed on the Cretan revolt of 1897 which, contrary to the view of most scholarship to date, was not just a bid to unite the island with Greece, but rather an effort by local Cretan Christians aimed at transforming Cretan society into one in which Christians would be dominant.