Greek Orthodox Community in the Ottoman Empire

This article introduces and analyzes Evangelinos Misailidis’ earliest known petition to the Ottoman state, dated November 29, 1844, in which he requested permission to publish a newspaper in Turkish using the Greek script. Signed as “Vangelinoz, son of Misail,” the petition marks the starting point of Misailidis’ prolific career as a journalist, publisher, and cultural mediator in the Ottoman Empire. It illuminates the early stages of Turcophone Greek print culture and its role in serving communities that spoke Turkish but wrote in Greek letters. Beyond its bureaucratic function, the petition reveals the sociolinguistic complexities of Ottoman society, reflecting both the state’s regulatory priorities and the community’s need for accessible media. Misailidis emphasized the utility of the proposed newspaper for trade, current affairs, and general knowledge while pledging adherence to censorship rules. Though initially rejected, the petition laid the groundwork for the eventual publication of Beşāret il-Maşrıḳ (The Eastern Herald) in Smyrna in 1845. Situating this document within Misailidis’ wider contributions—in journalism, publishing, and orthographic standardization—the study underscores its significance as a milestone in the development of Turcophone Greek literature and as a window into the entangled histories of language, commerce, and governance in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire.

(Note: Abstract follows)

Bu çalışmada, yeni bilgi ve kaynaklar ışığında, geç Osmanlı dönemindeki Rum Ortodoks kültürü tarihsel, sosyolojik ve edebî açılardan ele alınmaktadır. Burada, daha önce gerçekleştirilen kapsamlı bir araştırma (Ayaydın Cebe 2009), Rum Ortodoks cemaati odağında gözden geçirilerek geliştirilmiştir.

Yaklaşık olarak son on yıldır metinlerin dijitalleştirilmesi ve Osmanlı’yı farklı kültürel bileşenleri dışlamadan bütüncül bir yaklaşımla değerlendiren çalışmaların artması, araştırma olanaklarını zenginleştirmiş; bu süreç, bilgilerimizi tazelemiş ve bakış açımızı derinleştirip genişletmiştir.

Osmanlı cemaatleri, bir yandan kendi uluslaşma süreçlerinden geçerken öte yandan birbirleriyle kesintisiz bir kültürel ve edebî alışveriş içinde olmuşlardır. Bu etkileşim, bazı siyasal kırılmalara karşın, din, dil ve etnik kimliklerin ötesinde bir “Osmanlı” kimliği altında ve Türkçe etrafında yoğunlaşan son derece çeşitli ve çok katmanlı bir kültür yaratmıştır.

Rum Ortodoks cemaatinin modern Osmanlı edebiyatına ve halk edebiyatına yönelik ilgisi, bu topluluğun hem üretici hem de tüketici olarak edebiyat etkinliğinde oynadığı aktif rolü gözler önüne sermektedir. Bu ilgi, yalnızca kültürel bir katkı olmakla kalmamış, aynı zamanda dönemin edebiyat dinamiklerini anlamada önemli bir bağlam da sunmuştur.

Hem Türk hem Yunan edebiyatı tarihlerinden dışlanmış olan Osmanlı yönetimi altındaki Rum Ortodoksların kültürel üretimini araştırmak, Müslüman-Türklerin bu alandaki verimine de çeşitli açılardan ışık tutmaktadır.
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This study examines the Rum Orthodox culture in the late Ottoman period from historical, sociological, and literary perspectives in light of new information and sources. A previously conducted comprehensive study (Ayaydın Cebe 2009) has been revised and expanded with a focus on the Rum Orthodox community.

Over the past decade, the digitization of texts and the rise of studies that assess the Ottoman cultural landscape through a holistic approach—without excluding any of its cultural components—have enriched research opportunities. This process has refreshed our knowledge and deepened and broadened our perspectives.

While Ottoman communities experienced their respective nation-building processes, they also engaged in continuous cultural and literary exchanges with one another. Despite certain political ruptures, this interaction created a highly diverse and multi-layered culture that transcended religious, linguistic, and ethnic identities under an overarching "Ottoman" identity, with Turkish as a central medium.

The Rum Orthodox community’s interest in both modern Ottoman literature and folk literature reveals its active role in literary production and consumption. This engagement was not only a cultural contribution but also provided a significant framework for understanding the literary dynamics of the period.

Investigating the cultural production of Rum Orthodox communities under Ottoman rule—who have been largely excluded from both Turkish and Greek literary histories—also sheds light on various aspects of literary contributions made by Muslim-Turkish authors.

This article investigates the Ottoman Greek Orthodox internal exiles, focusing on the deportees' experiences and the intricacies of their agency during the Great War (1914-18). It does so by examining deportees' understudied ego-documents, taken either from the collections of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies in Athens or from family archives. Organized into labor-battalions or housed in open internment camps in town quarters, the inland exiles were deported to secure the rear front and homogenize the country, but their deportation was characterized by local influences and inconsistencies. Several of the Greek Orthodox exiles managed to survive and maintain their cultural ties by exploiting such inconsistencies, either by selling their skills or by resisting exile through solidarity, desertion, and resistance.

Κατά την επανασύσταση της επιστημονικής ιατρικής στο Παρίσι και την εκδήλωση κινήματος υγιεινής την ίδια περίοδο, εκδόθηκαν εκεί τα δύο πρώτα ιατρικά συγγράμματα του Σαράντη Αρχιγένους «τοῦ ἐξ Ἐπιβατῶν τῆς Θράκης»/“D’Épivatès en Thrace”, όπως ακριβώς αυτοπαρουσιάζεται ο συγγραφέας κάτω από τον τίτλο και των δύο, ελληνικό και γαλλικό, που δεν υπήρξαν πανομοιότυποι· απευθύνονται σε διαφορετικούς
αποδέκτες, ο πρώτος στους ομογενείς και ο δεύτερος, μέσω της γλώσσας της νέας οθωμανικής ελίτ που ανέλαβε το μεταρρυθμιστικό έργο, στους κατοίκους της αυτοκρατορίας: Ὑγιονομία ἢτοι Κανόνες πρὸς Διατήρησιν τῆς Ὑγίας και Hygionomie, ou Règles pour se conserver en bonne santé: à l’ usage des habitants de L’Empire Ottoman.
Τα συγγράμματα παρουσιάζουν κανόνες ατομικής υγιεινής με παρεμβαλλόμενες συστάσεις δημόσιας υγιεινής προς τους διοικούντες και έχουν ως κύρια στόχευση να φανούν χρήσιμα στην πατρίδα. Η στόχευση επηρεάζει τη συγγραφική ποιότητα, την έκταση, τη γλωσσική έκφραση και την αναγνώριση του συγγραφέα. Επειδή περιεχόμενο
του επιστημονικού αυτού πατριωτισμού είναι η απελευθέρωση από την αμάθεια και τις δεισιδαιμονίες, αλλά και η κοινωνική συνοχή, εξετάζεται η σχέση του τόσο με τον νεοελληνικό Διαφωτισμό όσο και με την οθωμανική μεταρρυθμιστική κίνηση, την τελευταία αναλαμπή του βαλκανικού Διαφωτισμού. Εξετάζεται επίσης η νομιμοποίηση
που προσφέρει η δημοσίευση στον συγγραφέα/κάτοχο της νέας γνώσης και η πρόσληψη των συγγραμμάτων.

«“Αλλά μόλις επροφθάσαμε να διορθώσουμε το μαγαζί κ[αι] η Πατρίς μας εκάλεσε υπό τας ενδόξους σημαίας της”: Οι Ρωμιοί αντιμέτωποι με τις προκλήσεις της Μικρασιατικής Εκστρατείας» στο Έλληνες Στρατιώτες και Μικρασιατική Εκστρατεία: Πτυχές μιας Οδυνηρής Εμπειρίας, επιμ. Δημήτρης Καμούζης, Αλέξανδρος Μακρής και Χαράλαμπος Μηνασίδης, 113-164 (Αθήνα: Βιβλιοπωλείον της Εστία, 2022)

Mēnasidēs, Charalampos. “‘Alla molis eprofthasame na diorthōsume to magazi k[ai] ē Patris mas ekalese ypo tas endoxus sēmaias tēs’: Oi Rōmioi antimetōpoi me tis proklēseis tēs Mikrasiatikēs Ekstrateias” sto Ellēnes stratiōtes kai Mikrasiatikē Ekstrateia: Ptyches mias odynērēs empeirias, ep. Dēmētrēs Kamuzēs, Alexandros Makrēs, Charalampos Mēnasidēs,  113–164. Athēna: Bibliopōleion tēs “Estias”, 2022.

These extracts are taken from the text of Kallinikos' verse memoirs written 1758-63 and published in the volume Καλλινίκου Γ΄ Πατριάρχου Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, Τα κατά και μετά την εξορίαν επισυμβάντα, ed. Agamemnon Tselikas (Athens 2004). The numbers in square brackets refer to pages in that edition. Kallinikos was dethroned and exiled by Sultanic decree at the behest of his opponents within the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church. Until the decree was lifted, he was also denied communion in church. In 1761 he returned clandestinely to Constantinople from his exile in St Catherine's Monastery at Sinai. On the advice of his physician, Dr Manolakis Manos, Kallinikos sought out enjoyable diversions in order to combat the misery of being an outlaw and an excommunicate. In disguise to avoid being arrested, he spends much of his time wandering about the city and exploring the countryside on both shores of the Bosporus.

Payır, Sada, and Athanasios Nikolaidis. "Cappadocia Ottoman Construction Company (1912) by Arsenios Istanbolloglou and Partners." In Following the Traces of Turkish-speaking Christians of Anatolia, vol. II, edited by Evangelia Balta, 449-464. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2021.

This paper investigates the construction of the anti-Islamic discourse as reflected in the Greek apologetical and polemical literature on Islam from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Written in a period when the Greek communities experienced a phase of sociocultural transformation and adaptation to the new conditions imposed by the Ottoman rule, this literature develops new perceptions about Islam as a religion and its influence on the religious life of the Greek Orthodox communities by building its argumentation on the established Byzantine anti-Islamic polemical tradition. The social and religious contexts are shaping the construction of the discourse, while the authors are making their mark on its polemical style and tone. During this period, the anti-Islamic apologetical and polemical literature developed its own set of features, which will deeply influence the articulation of the discourse.
In this paper I will take into account the some of the anti-Islamic treatises pertaining to this polemical and apologetical literature, authored by Pachomios Rousanos (1508-1553), Gherasimos Blachos (1607-1685), Panagiotes Nikousios (1613/1621-1673), Anastasios Gordios (1675-1728), and an Anonymous treatise written at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Even if each of these treatises has a different framework when discussing Islam, they all form a corpus of texts that share common ideas about Muslims and Islam’s tenets and customs, and a strong anti-Islamic literary tradition forged within the
Byzantine Empire. The main focus of this paper will be on stressing the main characteristics of the anti-Islamic discourse during the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. I will discuss the context of producing these texts, their authors, audiences, manuscripts and reception. Moreover, I will focus on examining the channels according to which the Ottomans, directly or not, contributed to the articulation of the anti-Islamic discourse during the “Age of Confessionalization”. Last but not least, I will stress the importance of this literature for the intellectual and religious history of the Greek communities during the early modern period, but also its significance for the dynamics of the Christian-Muslim confessional relations in the Ottoman Empire.

This book aims to reveal communal relations in I ˙ zmir/Smyrna through the lens of Greek-Turkish relations during the age of Ottoman reforms. The primary sources used in this book, Ottoman-Turkish archival material and Greek newspapers of the period, demonstrate that these reforms did not disturb the social cohesion of I ˙ zmir, a city with a unique vibrancy that had been produced over many centuries. The historical evidence also indicates that the Ottoman Empire did not attempt to mould social relations in I ˙ zmir, instead benefited from the city's pre-existing socio-cultural and economic norms, which were well suited to its modernization program. It uncovers the dynamics of coexistence and communal relations before being brought to an abrupt halt by the formation of the modern nation-states.