Greek Muslims

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Greek Muslims

"Young Greeks at the Mosque" (Jean Léon Gérôme, oil on canvas, 1865); this oil painting portrays Greek Muslims at prayer in a mosque).
Total population
~ 1 million
Regions with significant populations
Turkey · Cyprus · Syria · Lebanon · Greece
Languages
Greek (Pontic, Cretan, Cypriot) · Turkish
Religion
Sunni Islam
Related ethnic groups
other Greeks · Turks

Greek Muslims, also known as Greek-speaking Muslims, are Muslims of Greek ethnic origin, and are found primarily in Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece, although migrations to Lebanon and Syria have been reported^[1]. The vast majority of the autochthonous Muslim minority in Greece (including the Greek-speaking Muslims), most of whom are fluent in Turkish, espouse a Turkish national identity. Historically, Greek Orthodoxy has been associated with being Roman i.e. Greek and Islam with being "Turk" (Τούρκος), despite ethnic or linguistic references.

Most Greek-speaking Muslims in Greece left for Turkey during the 1920s population exchanges under the Treaty of Lausanne (sometimes in return for Turkish-speaking Christians), with the exception of the Muslims in Thrace, who are officially recognized as a minority. The largest community of Greek-speaking Muslims in today's Greece is among Dodecanese Muslims who were spared from the population exchange due to Italian rule over the islands.

[edit] Turkey

In Turkey, where most Greek-speaking Muslims live,^{[citation needed]} there are various groups of Greek-speaking Muslims, some autochthonous, some from parts of present-day Greece and Cyprus who migrated to Turkey under the population exchanges or immigration.

[edit] Pontic Greek Muslims

Muslims of Pontic Greek origins, speakers of the Pontic language (named Ρωμαίικα Roméika, not Ποντιακά Pontiaká as it is in Greece), which is spoken by some people in Tonya, Maçka, Sürmene, Çaykara, and Dernekpazarı districts of Trabzon. Due to mass migration from the region, high linguistic assimilation to Turkish, and the fact that the language has no official status, the total number of the speakers may be guessed; roughly 50,000 - 75,000 people^{[citation needed]}. Ömer Asan estimated the number of people of Pontian Greek descent in Turkey at about 300,000 in 1996 (see Pontos Kültürü). According to Heath W. Lowry's^[2] great work about Ottoman tax books^[3] (Tahrir Defteri) with Halil İnalcık it is claimed that most Turks of Trabzon city are of Greek origin. The community is usually considered deeply religious Sunni Muslims of Hanafi madh'hab. Sufi orders such as Qadiri and Naqshbandi have a great impact. It is sometimes claimed in Greece that some of the Greek Muslims of Pontus are in fact crypto-Christians.^[4]

[edit] Cretan Turks

Cretan Turks (Τουρκοκρητικοί) or Cretan Muslims (Girit Müslümanları) cover Muslims who arrived in Turkey after or slightly before the start of the Greek rule in Crete in 1908 and especially in the framework of the 1923 agreement for the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations and have settled on the coastline stretching from the Çanakkale to İskenderun. Today, only elderly women may be found to be fluent in Cretan Greek and only estimates can be made regarding their number. They often name the language as Cretan (Kritika (Κρητικά) or Giritçe) instead of Greek. The Cretan Turks are Sunni (Hanafi) with a highly influential Bektashi minority that helped shape the folk Islam and religious tolerance of the entire community. Significant numbers of Cretan Muslims also settled in Libya especially in the east side cities like Soussa and Benghazi, where they are distinguishable by their Greek surnames. Many of the older members of tis community still speak Cretan Greek in their homes.

Ethnographic map of Macedonia (1892). Muslim Greek areas are shown in yellow.

[edit] Epirote Muslims

Muslims from the region of Epirus, known collectively as Yanyalılar (Yanyalı in singular, meaning "person from Ioannina") in Turkish and Τουρκογιαννιώτες Turkoyanyótes in Greek (Τουρκογιαννιώτης Turkoyanyótis in singular, meaning "Turk from Ioannina"), who had arrived in Turkey in two waves of migration in 1912 and after 1923. Although majority of the Epirote Muslim population was of Albanian origin, Greek Muslim communities existed in the towns of Souli^[5], Margariti (both majority-Muslim)^[6][7], Ioannina, Preveza, Louros, Paramythia, and Konitsa.^[8] Hoca Es'ad Efendi, a Greek-speaking Muslim from Ioannina who lived in the eighteenth century, was the first translator of Aristotle into Turkish.^[9] The community now is fully integrated into Turkish culture.

[edit] Macedonian Muslims

Muslims living in Haliacmon valley of Central Macedonia were Greek-speaking.^[10] They were known collectively as Vallahades. They arrived in Turkey after 1923 and became gradually assimilated into Turkish Muslim mainstream. According to Todor Simovski's assessment (1972), in 1912 in the region of Macedonia in Greece there were 13,753 Muslim Greeks.^[11]

[edit] Morean Muslims

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Cypriote Muslims

In 1878 the Muslim inhabitants of Cyprus (constituting about 1/3 of the island's population, which then numbered 40,000 inhabitants) were classified as being either Turkish or "neo-Muslim." The latter were of Greek origin, Islamised but speaking Greek, and similar in character to the local Christians.The last of such groups was reported to arrive at Antalya in 1936. These communities are thought to have abandoned Greek in the course of integration.^[12]

[edit] Crimea

In the Middle Ages the Greek population of Crimea traditionally adhered to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, even despite undergoing linguistic assimilation by the local Crimean Tatars. In 1777–1778, when Catherine the Great of Russia conquered the peninsula from the Ottoman Empire, the local Orthodox population was forcibly deported and settled north of the Azov Sea. In order to avoid deportation, some Greeks chose to convert to Islam. Crimean Tatar-speaking Muslims of the village of Kermenchik (renamed to Vysokoe in 1945) kept their Greek identity and were practising Christianity in secret for a while. In the nineteenth century the lower half of Kermenchik was populated with Christian Greeks from Turkey, whereas the upper remained Muslim. By the time of the Stalinist deportation of 1944, the Muslims of Kermenchik had already been identified as Crimean Tatars, and were forcibly expelled to Central Asia together with the rest of Crimea's ethnic minorities.^[13]

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History of Greece

v • d • e

[edit] Greece

The indigenous Muslim population in Greece is not homogeneous since it consists of different ethnic, linguistic and social backgrounds which often overlap. The Muslim faith is the creed of several autochthonous ethnic groups living in the present territory of Greece, namely the Pomaks, ethnic Turks, certain Roma groups, and Greek Muslims, who embraced the Muslim faith mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries. The country's Muslim population decreased significantly (by about 500,000) as a result of the 1923 population exchange agreement between Greece and the new Turkish Republic, which also uprooted approximately 1.5 million Greeks from Asia Minor.

[edit] Lebanon and Syria

There are about 7,000 Greeks living in Tripoli, Lebanon and about 3,000 in Al Hamidiyah, Syria.^[14] The majority of them are Muslims of Cretan origin. Records suggest that the community left Crete between 1866 and 1897, on the outbreak of the last Cretan uprising against the Ottoman empire, which ended the Greco-Turkish War of 1897.^[14] Sultan Abdul Hamid II provided Cretan Muslim families who fled the island with refuge on the Levantine coast. The new settlement was named Hamidiye after the sultan.

Many Greek Muslims of Lebanon somewhat managed to preserve their identity and language. Unlike neighbouring communities, they are monogamous and consider divorce a disgrace. Until the Lebanese Civil War, their community was close-knit and entirely endogamous. However many of them left Lebanon during the 15 years of the war.^[14]

Greek Muslims constitute 60% of Al Hamidiyah's population. The community is very much concerned with maintaining its culture. The knowledge of the spoken Greek language is remarkably good and their contact with their historical homeland has been possible by means of satellite television and relatives. They are also known to be monogamous.^[14]

[edit] Central Asia

In the Middle Ages, after the Seljuq victory over the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV, many Byzantine Greeks were taken as slaves to Central Asia. The most famous among them was Al-Khazini, a Byzantine Greek slave taken to Merv, then in the Khorasan province of Persia but now in Turkmenistan, who was later freed and became a famous Muslim scientist.^[15]

[edit] Population

According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, Greek is spoken by approximately, 600,000 people in Turkey,^[16] out of whom an estimated 5,000 are members of the remnants of Greek Orthodox community of Istanbul^[17]. Some Greek sources give the following numbers for Greek Muslims in Turkey: Pontic Greek Muslims over 300,000, Cretan Turks 200,000 - 300,000, Cypriot Muslims 150,000, Vallahades 50,000.^[18]

[edit] Notable muslims of Greek descent (non-conversions)

• Ahmed I - (1590 - 1617), Ottoman sultan, Greek mother Handan Sultan - wife of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed III
• Ahmed III - (1673 – 1736), Ottoman sultan, Greek mother (Mah-Para Ummatullah Rabia Gül-Nush), originally named Evemiae
• Bayezid I - (1354 - 1403), Ottoman sultan, Greek mother (Gulcicek Hatun or Gülçiçek Hatun) wife of Murad I
• Bayezid II - (1447 - 1512), Ottoman sultan, Greek mother (Amina Gul-Bahar or Gulbahār Khātun, tr:I. Gülbahar Hatun), a Greek Orthodox woman of noble birth from the village of Douvera, Trabzon
• Hayreddin Barbarossa, (c. 1478 – 1546), privateer and Ottoman admiral, Greek mother, Katerina from the island of Lesbos
• Ibrahim I, (1615 - 1648), Ottoman sultan, Greek mother (Kadinefendi Kösem Sultan or Mahpeyker, originally named Anastasia)
• Mehmed IV, Ottoman sultan, Greek grand-mother, Kösem Sultan
• Muhammad al-Mahdi (الإمام محمد بن الحسن المهدى) also known as Hujjat ibn al-Hasan, final Imām of the Twelve Imams Shi'a, Greek mother, Her Greatness Narjis (Melika), was a Byzantine princess who pretended to be a slave so that she might travel from her kingdom to Arabia
• Murad I, Ottoman sultan, Greek mother, (Valide Sultan, Nilüfer Hatun (Water lily in Turkish), daughter of the Prince of Yarhisar or Byzantine Princess Helen (Nilüfer))
• Murad IV, Ottoman sultan, Greek mother (Valide Sultan, Kadinefendi Kösem Sultan or Mahpeyker, originally named Anastasia)
• Mustafa I, Ottoman sultan, Greek mother (Valide Sultan, Handan Sultan, originally named Helena (Eleni))
• Mustafa II,^{[19][20][21][22]} Ottoman sultan, Greek Cretan mother (Valide Sultan, Mah-Para Ummatullah Rabia Gül-Nush, originally named Evemia)
• Oruç Reis, (also called Barbarossa or Redbeard), privateer and Ottoman Bey (Governor) of Algiers and Beylerbey (Chief Governor) of the West Mediterranean. He was born on the island of Midilli (Lesbos), mother was Greek (Katerina)
• Osman II, Ottoman sultan, Greek mother (Valide Sultan, Mahfiruze Hatice Sultan, originally named Maria)
• Selim I, Ottoman sultan, Greek mother (Gulbahar Sultan, also known by her maiden name Ayşe Hatun); his father, Bayezid II, was also half Greek through his mother's side (Valide Sultan Amina Gul-Bahar or Gulbahar Khatun - a Greek convert to Islam) - this made Selim I three-quarters Greek
• Suleiman I (Suleiman the Magnificent), Ottoman sultan, his father Bayezid II was three-quarters Greek; (Suleiman's mother was of Georgian origin).
• Shah Ismail I, the founder of Turkic-Persian Safavid Dynasty of Iran: Ismā'il's mother was an Aq Qoyunlu (Turkmen) noble, Martha, the daughter of Turkmen Uzun Hasan by his Pontic Greek wife Theodora Megale Comnena, better known as Despina Hatun. Theodora was the daughter of Emperor John IV of Trebizond whom Uzun Hassan married in a deal to protect Trebizond from the Ottomans.
• Kaykaus II, Seljuq Sultan. His mother was the daughter of a Greek priest.
• Sheikh Bedreddin - (1359-1420) Revolutionary theologian, Greek mother named "Melek Hatun".
• Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt (Arabic: إبراهيم باشا‎) ‎ (1789 – November 10, 1848), a 19th century general of Egypt. He is better known as the (adopted) son of Muhammad Ali of Egypt. Ibrahim was born in the town of Drama, in the Ottoman province of Rumelia, currently located in the Macedonian region of Greece, to a repudiated Greek Christian woman and a man named Tourmatzis.
• Gedik Ahmet Pasha, a distinguished Ottoman grand vizier as well as an army and navy commander during the reigns of sultans Mehmed the Conqueror and Beyazid II. His background remains largely unknown. Some sources claim that he was of Albanian descent, but this theory is almost exclusively based on his refusal to participate in a campaign to İşkodra (Shkodër) on one occasion. He was most likely of Serbian and Byzantine Greek descent.

[edit] Notable Greek converts to Islam

• Mahfiruze Hatice Sultan - (d 1621), maiden name Maria, was the wife of the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I and mother of Osman II
• Kösem Sultan - (1581 - 1651) also known as Mehpeyker Sultan was the most powerful woman in Ottoman history, consort and favourite concubine of Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603-1617), she became Valide Sultan from 1623-1651, when her sons Murad IV and Ibrahim I and her grandson Mehmed IV (1648-1687) reigned as Ottoman sultans; she was the daughter of a priest from the island of Tinos - her maiden name was Anastasia
• Handan Sultan, wife of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed III
• Andreas Tzortzis - British lecturer and teacher
• Al-Khazini - (flourished 1115–1130) was a Greek Muslim scientist, astronomer, physicist, biologist, alchemist, mathematician and philosopher - lived in Merv (modern-day Turkmenistan)
• Carlos Mavroleon - son of a Greek ship-owner, Etonian heir to a £100m fortune, close to the Kennedys and almost married a Heseltine, former Wall Street broker and a war correspondent, leader of an Afghan Mujahideen unit during the Afghan war against the Soviets - died under mysterious circumstances in Peshawar, Pakistan
• Zaganos Pasha - military commander under Mehmet II (Mehmet the Conquerer) who ironically fought for the Ottomans in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
• Sinan - Ottoman architect
• Hamza Yusuf - American Islamic teacher and lecturer
• Gazi Evrenos - (d. 1417), an Ottoman military commander serving as general under Süleyman Pasha, Murad I, Bayezid I, Süleyman Çelebi and Mehmed I
• Pargalı İbrahim Pasha, the first Grand Vizier appointed by Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire (reigned 1520 to 1566)
• İbrahim Edhem Pasha, born on the island of Chios, Ottoman statesman who held the office of Grand Vizier in the beginning of Abdulhamid II's reign between 5 February 1877 and 11 January 1878
• Narjis, mother of Muhammad al-Mahdi the twelfth and last Imam of Shi'a Islam, Byzantine Princess, reportedly the descendant of the disciple Simon Peter, the vicegerent of Jesus
• Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) the famous singer of Cypriot Greek origin, converted to Islam at the height of his fame in December, 1977^[23] and adopted his Muslim name, Yusuf Islam, the following year.

[edit] See also

• Greek language
• Hamshenis
• Bulgarian Muslims
• Macedonian Muslims
• Pomaks
• Bosniaks
• Afro-Turks

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• www.GreekMuslims.com
• Karalahana.com
• Trebizond Greek: A language without a tongue
• Radio Ocena
• Rest in Crimea