Religious Geography Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Due to the fact that ethnic geography is often forgotten in studies on historical
geography, the main factor in the differentiation of geographical environment is often
attributed to a change that its subject is variable. However, the subject is immutable
and human being. People transform their environment in various ways according to
their economic, cultural, religious, and social needs. Cities that change hands with
political movements change completely after a while, and in some, almost everything
can be erased except relief. Changing recreational and cultural areas, cultural texture, and changing city culture of cities have revealed new cities known with their old
names, and sometimes they have reappeared in the world geography as new cities
where even their old names have been changed. In this case, the existence of a historical German town with a German name and a German texture in its architecture
in a country like Azerbaijan and a minaret that could stay in the middle of Hungary
gains even more meaning. While changing cities preserve the changing cultural and
architectural environments within themselves, many buildings that need to be preserved are sometimes deliberately erased from the silhouette of the cities, sometimes
within the context of the historical process, natural disasters, and needs. At this point,
the settlements, with their different periods of transformation differing from their
former inhabitants and cultures, create areas that history and geography should deal
with together. In this study, the spatial transformation caused by the human being
was evaluated together with the sample settlements, old and new photographs, and
street views, and the reasons affecting this change and the differentiation it revealed
were emphasized. In the study, the relevant literature was scanned and the necessary archival documents and the reports of the competent authorities were used, but
more land surveys and interviews were made. The main ethnic element living in the
place and the issues such as ignoring its own existence in the environment where it
lives and paving the way for other places of worship, as well as the construction of
Non-Community churches in Muslim villages, zoning law in the country and the
tenders for its past, and the ethnocultural environment shaped as a result of these
and the changed human geography have been revealed. The main difficulties encountered in the making of this study were the inadequacy of the relevant literature
within the scope of the article, as well as the reluctance of official authorities (Greek
institutions) to provide documents and their presupposition that there is no double
standard against Muslim religious institutions. despite this, the obvious deformation
of the silhouette on the field and the scraping of historical artifacts from the city silhouettes, almost as if history were disregarded, were so obvious that no documents
other than photographs were needed. Despite this, the part of the old mosques that
were allowed to exist, especially in Western Thrace, should have been considered in a separate category. In this context, in the analyzed regions, practices such as destruction, hiding, concealment, or leaving them to be demolished have also been observed. Before this study, the antithesis of the thesis put forward in the article was also
examined separately and the possibility of the coincidence of the issues mentioned
in the study was also emphasized. In this context, the article has been written with
skepticism, from a middle point, and an unbiased perspective. However, in almost all
practices, it has been clearly seen that there was no protectionist tendency by Greek
authorities towards Muslim religious structures and they do not leave them in their
“actual form” as they should be on the city skyline, regarding them as “alien objects”.
As a matter of fact, this view of the Greek authorities has been proved and revealed
by the pictures from the field as well as the statutes and the documents based on the
data obtained from the interviews conducted with concerned authorities through the
instrumentality of ethnography, discourse analysis, and grounded theory.
Keywords: Geography, Historical Geography, Ethnocultural-Environment, Spatial Transformation, Architectural Environment, Islamic Skyline, Greece