1669 to 1821
Under Ottoman rule, Crete – called Girit in Turkish – was established as an eyalet (province), the primary administrative unit of the Ottoman Empire. The four territoria of Venetian rule were quickly reorganised into three districts called pashaliks: Chania, Rethymnon and Candia (which now included Siteia). Each pashalik was run by a pasha appointed by the sultan in Constantinople, with the pashas of Chania and Rethymnon being subordinate to the pasha of Candia. Candia, known within the empire by its Turkish name Kandiye, remained the main administrative centre for the island, and its pasha was the commander-in-chief of Crete and head of the armed forces. The district of Sfakia was somewhat exceptional. It was first granted as a fief to the victorious commander of the Ottoman forces, but he donated it as a vakif (pious endowment) to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. This was not good news for the Sfakians as, in addition to the usual heavy taxes, as described below, the district had to pay a substantial annual “holy tribute”. It was not until 1760 that some relief from this burden was given.
The pasha of Candia was the supreme civil and military ruler of the island, being responsible for the collection of revenue and the training and equipping of the armed forces. Each of the three pashas was assisted by a divan (council) which met weekly or in emergency session. The membership of the divan varied over time, but typically it consisted of the pasha as chairman, the qadi (magistrate), the mufti (expounder of Islamic law), the leader of the janissaries and the commander of the military. There was also a secretary, a local Cretan speaker who would communicate between the authorities and the community. At local level, each district had a leader, who represented the Christian community before the Ottoman authorities in matters regarding taxes. They would negotiate the amount and allocation of taxes, and organise their collection and delivery to the authorities or tax farmers. On occasions during the period, but not invariably, a leader would be elected proedros (chairman) of the area.
The power of the pasha often existed on paper only, and his authority could be undermined by the janissaries, an elite force of infantry, originally created to form the sultan’s household troops and bodyguards. After the ending of hostilities, the military administration was largely in their hands. They were initially composed of prisoners of war and Christian boys who had been kidnapped and brought up as Muslims, and were characterised by strict discipline and fierce loyalty to the sultan. Over the years, the janissaries grew extremely powerful and wealthy, many becoming senior officers or high state officials, and by the end of the seventeenth century more and more Muslim recruits were joining the force, hoping for rapid advancement. In Crete there were two divisions of janissaries: the imperial janissaries from Constantinople, and the local janissaries recruited from Cretan Muslims – although over time even the imperial janissaries came to be made up largely of local recruits. In Candia, there were five battalions of imperial janissaries, each of 5,000 men, and twenty-eight barracks of local janissaries. A similar force was stationed in Chania to control the west of the island.
Although none of the janissaries in the empire were exactly pussycats, those in Crete seem to have been notorious for their savagery. Their power grew to such an extent that they became a law unto themselves, and were even able to ignore or contravene the sultan’s orders. In 1690, the pasha of Chania attempted to curb their powers. He was promptly killed and his body thrown to the dogs. An imperial decree of 1762 sets out the problem:
The brigands and malefactors in the employment of the guard of this fortress, cheating and deceiving their superiors and neglecting their duties, have found the opportunity to openly devote themselves to robbery and crime and, in drunkenness, they tour the neighbourhoods bearing their weapons, and insult the honour of the inhabitants and attack families and their children.1
A folk song of the period has a janissary telling a Christian:
In theory, the imperial janissaries were paid by central government, while the others were paid from local taxes. As time went on, payment from the Sublime Porte (Constantinople) became more and more irregular and the janissaries sought other sources of income as landowners, tax collectors, tax farmers or even artisans. Thus, they gradually became integrated into the economic life of the island, to the detriment of their military duties. In 1812, there was finally a concerted attempt by the Sublime Porte to crush the janissaries in Crete. Osman Pasha was sent to Crete, and he immediately enlisted Christian warriors from Sfakia to help him implement the policy. He hanged large numbers of janissaries – 500 on a single day, according to some reports. The local Muslims were outraged by this and began the rumour that Osman was a secret Christian, called Yannis. Meanwhile, the Christian Cretans were delighted by Osman’s ruthless attack on the janissaries. Osman’s anti-janissary policy was continued by his successor, and the power of the janissaries was finally curtailed. In 1826, after a failed janissary revolt against the sultan and the execution of over 6,000 of the rebels, the corps was disbanded by the sultan, and large numbers of the janissaries were imprisoned or exiled. Many, however, were admitted into the new Ottoman army, the Victorious Troops of Muhammad.
The criminal justice system and all cases involving Muslims were based firmly on Islamic law, although sultanic law (qanun) and local customary law were also taken into account by the qadis. The chief qadi was appointed by the Ottoman state and had wide judicial powers. His salary was paid almost entirely from fines. Court procedures were generally simple, based on sworn evidence given by all the participants under binding oaths. First, the accuser was asked to produce two reliable witnesses. If this was done, the trial ended there and the accuser won. If the accuser could not produce witnesses, the defendant was asked to take an oath, which led to acquittal. Oaths were sworn on the Gospel by Christians, on the Qur’an by Muslims and on the Torah by Jews. However, according to Islamic sharia law, greater weight was given to Muslim testimony as non-Muslims were considered inferior in law and, in any case, could not testify against Muslims. This imbalance can be illustrated by the story of Saint Myron, the New Martyr of Crete, a well-known Orthodox saint. Myron was a twenty-year-old tailor and a devout Christian. A group of local Muslims took a dislike to him and began a campaign of harassment designed to provoke him into retaliation, which would bring about immediate punishment. He was of a peaceful disposition and did not react, whereupon they bribed a twelve-year-old Muslim boy to accuse him of sexual molestation, for which the sentence was death. The testimony was taken at face value. Myron was found guilty, and, after unsuccessful attempts to persuade him to convert, he was hanged. Only a few days later, his accuser confessed to perjury and was also punished under Islamic law, although the sentence is not known.
Civil cases in which all participants were Christians or Jews could be dealt with by their own communities, although this did not always happen. These cases were mainly in the realm of family law or disputes between members of the same faith. At various times, there appears to have been some flexibility in jurisdiction between the qadis and the Christian courts administered by the Church authorities. On the one hand, the pashas allowed some extension of ecclesiastical courts into areas outside their strict remit, where this was convenient to the authorities and did not involve Muslims. On the other hand, it was not unknown for a Christian to use the qadi, if he felt that it would be to his advantage. This was particularly so in divorce cases, where Islamic law was much more lenient than Orthodox ecclesiastical law, for example in its acceptance of divorce by mutual consent. The Church was generally totally opposed to such actions, but there is evidence that a more pragmatic approach was occasionally taken. An item in an eighteenth-century collection of canon law warns bishops “to be mild and fair or else run the risk of estranging their flocks, and handing them over to the Muslim unbelievers”.3 In fact, bishops and priests themselves did not hesitate to use the services of the qadi court when they felt that this served their interests.
As in all parts of the Ottoman Empire, the post of dragoman (interpreter of the Sublime Porte) was of immense importance at various times during the period of Ottoman rule. The dragoman was a local who could speak Turkish, and who was nominated for office by the qadi or pasha and appointed by the sultan. His office was in Candia and he was assisted by three Christian secretaries and representatives in Chania and Rethymnon. As the official interpreter, he had considerable influence, and worked closely with the finance director on matters of taxation and employment. Although they were Christian Cretans, the first loyalty of the dragomans was to the Ottoman state, but all too often their loyalty was primarily to themselves. Often oppressive and harsh to their fellow Christians, they were generally disliked by the Cretans, and their irregularities were even commented on in Ottoman state documents.
Almost as soon as the Ottoman army set foot on Cretan soil, tax collection began. The first tax census was carried out in 1650, even before the capture of Candia. Although a tiny amount of land was left in private hands, most of it was nationalised as belonging to Allah and assigned to his representative on earth, the sultan. Certain estates were nominated as religious dependencies, the revenues from which went towards the upkeep of mosques, public works and charitable institutions. The rest of the island was divided into smaller units called timars. These were allotted to Muslims: the larger estates to aghas (high-ranking military officials) for service in the Cretan War, and smaller properties to military officers in charge of security. For example, as a reward for his victory at Candia, Köprülü was granted all the land surrounding the city that fell within the range of a cannonball fired from the walls. Within the timars, smaller estates were given to ordinary Muslim subjects. The timar holders did not actually own the land, but had a non-hereditary right to part of the produce in exchange for their administrative or military service to the empire. They also had a right to part of the tax income of the villages within their timar, as well as fines imposed by the courts. The workers, mostly Christians, had a hereditary right to work the land. Legally, they also had a hereditary right to the land itself, through grant of the sultan, who had ownership of the land. They paid no rent but were heavily taxed. From a legal point of view, they were not serfs.
The timar system was already in decline by the time Candia fell and, within a relatively short time, the system was fundamentally changed. The 1670 census and resulting law code introduced, for the first time in Ottoman practice, the concept of private ownership of land. Although the system of land ownership became extremely complicated, in essence the timar holders now became landlords and the agrotes (farmers) tenants. A system of tax farming was introduced, in which the right to collect taxes was auctioned, often to the landlords. Because of the high level of taxation, many of the agrotes were impoverished, their land being seized by the local gentry and converted into private property, leading to a gradual concentration of land into the hands of a few. Thus, the whole system became corrupted, and the resulting erosion of state control led to yet another attempt to regularise the positions of landlords and tenants. Now, and for most of the remainder of Ottoman rule, the landlords provided the land and the agrotes the labour. The landlord was obliged to provide shelter to the labourer and his family, and a small area of land for his use. In return, after production costs and taxes, a portion of the produce was given to the landholder.
Although everyone – Muslims included – had to pay land taxes, the burden on Christians was much heavier, and seems to have been the harshest of any in Greek lands ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Their basic land tax amounted to 20% of the land’s revenue, payable annually. This was double the tax of other Greek regions. There was no escape because, from 1685, to prevent people trying to avoid taxation by not cultivating their land, uncultivated farms had to pay a special tax based on the production of previous years. The few Christians who managed to keep their land had to pay a special additional tax. Most hated of all taxes was a poll tax on all Christian Cretans, who were divided into three categories – wealthy, moderate income and poor – and taxed accordingly. On top of all this, there were heavy taxes imposed on the newly re-established Orthodox Church, which in most cases were recouped by the Church from the peasantry.
Heavy as the tax burden was, the story did not stop there. Officials were known to overestimate grain production by as much as three times, by calculating the potential yield rather than measuring the actual harvest. Meanwhile, landowners and officials were able to devise local taxes to extort products of all kinds from the peasants. The most extraordinary was probably the obligation of peasants in the Chania and Rethymnon districts to transport 6,300 loads of snow from the mountains to the towns for producing cold drinks for the pashas and aghas. There were strict orders from the Sublime Porte against such tax abuse, and several offending pashas were in fact beheaded. However, in many other cases, the janissaries simply refused to carry out the orders, and the abuse went unchecked. A more serious development occurred in 1720, when officials were allowed to bid for tax collection rights for life. The vast majority of these contracts were gained by janissaries, and it wasn’t long before the tax farming contracts became hereditary. This led to even more ruthless exploitation and vast wealth for the collectors. In turn, this gave them the economic power and strength to largely ignore the central government, a situation that was to have severe consequences.
In spite of heavy taxation and the irregular behaviour of the janissaries, Ottoman rule was not all bad news for the Christian peasantry. The restoration of the Orthodox hierarchy was a major change from Venetian rule, but perhaps a more dramatic improvement for the average Christian was the fact that the Ottomans did not conscript the islanders to work on the galleys, in contrast to many other Greek areas of the empire. While the war with Venice continued, this decision was probably made for tactical and political reasons, as predicted by one of the Venetian generals:
I think the enemy will behave more prudently [than us]. In order to win the trust of the kingdom’s population, he will try not to frighten them, and will ask only that they remain in their village to attend to their fields and their vines for their own account. By enticing them in this way, and with this false pretence of liberty and munificence, the enemy will gain their devotion.4
Once the war was over, the motive became more economic. The vastness of the empire gave the Ottomans a virtually unlimited pool of recruits for the galleys, and it made sense to reserve the fertile island of Crete for agricultural production and to ensure it had a thriving rural population.
Resistance to Ottoman rule began almost immediately. Young men fled to three Venetian fortresses, from which they carried out guerrilla raids. Not for the first (or last) time, many priests could be found among the resistance. The motives for the resistance were often more personal than political – revenge for a particular injustice against a family, for example. Nevertheless, as long as the fortresses existed, there was always the hope that Venice would one day reconquer the island. The guerrillas were known as hains (treacherous ones) by the Ottomans, and they were a thorn in the side of the authorities for many years. Meanwhile, ships from the Venetian fortresses continually harassed Ottoman merchant shipping. The three islands were centres of espionage, especially the fortress at Souda. Several of the Christian secretaries to the divan are believed to have been spies, and there is circumstantial evidence that even some high-ranking Muslims, including aghas, were giving information to Venice, although it is not clear whether this was deliberate or inadvertent.
The Venetian hopes of reconquering Crete lasted fewer than fifty years. During the war between the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire of 1684 to 1699, a Venetian force landed on Crete in 1692, aiming to stir up rebellion and recapture Chania. After forty days, the expeditionary force retreated with many losses, while the fortress at Gramvousa was surrendered to the Ottomans by its commander for a large sum of money. Souda and Spinalonga survived for another twenty-two years as refuges for Cretan families, with about 600 people on each island. During another war from 1715 to 1718, both were finally captured and the inhabitants sold into slavery or enlisted as oarsmen in the Ottoman galleys. Crete, described by one proveditore generale as “the most beautiful crown to adorn the head of the Most Serene Republic”, was now totally in Ottoman hands.5
From then on, the hains operated from the mountains and remote monasteries, and often acted more as brigands than resistance fighters, as much a danger to the Christian villagers as to the authorities.6 This led to requests by the villagers for protection and, for a short time, armatoloi (armed Christian militias) were appointed for the purpose. These did something to curb the activities of the hains, but the government was wary of arming Christians, and preferred instead to organise bands of Muslims to hunt them down. Another tactic was to intimidate the villagers into betraying any hains in the area. Christian provincial leaders were held personally responsible for any Muslim taken hostage or for any damage to Muslim property. In some areas, villagers were obliged to act as lookouts or sentries, and any actual help to the hains (or to pirates) was severely punished.
Any hain caught alive suffered torture and a particularly horrible form of execution called the çinkeli. This was a large wooden frame with pulleys at the top and an array of meathooks half way down. The prisoner was hauled up to the top on ropes, which were then released, allowing him to fall onto the hooks below. The rare “lucky” ones would be killed instantly, but usually injuries, not immediately lethal, would condemn the victim to a long and painful death. A French traveller in 1700 described one such execution during which a prisoner, although in great pain, was quietly smoking a pipe.7 Spasmodic resistance largely died out within a few years, until the major rebellion of Daskalogiannis in 1770.
The authorities had little control over Sfakia, due to its remoteness and difficult terrain. The Sfakians paid their taxes, but were otherwise left largely to their own devices. With access to the sea, a small fleet was established which traded throughout the Mediterranean and even as far as the Black Sea. Not only did this trade bring prosperity to the region, it also brought important contact with the outside world, particularly Russia. Ioannis Vlachos, known as Daskalogiannis (Teacher Ioannis), was a wealthy shipowner and a leading figure in Sfakia. In 1769, Catherine the Great of Russia sent a fleet under her envoy Count Theodore Orloff to the Peloponnese to incite the Greeks into rebellion. Although the rebellion was quashed immediately, Daskalogiannis met Orloff and conceived the idea of a similar liberation movement in Crete, backed by the Russians. He set about fortifying strategic positions in Sfakia and building up stocks of armaments. His plans were not supported by all the locals, and even his uncle, a priest, had severe reservations. A contemporary poem describes his objections:
And then the priest shook his head,
Deep in thought, his soul was full of consternation,
“Teacher Yannis,” he said, “Come to your senses,
You’ll drag the whole of Crete into dire distress,
And you’ll bring ruin on Sfakia,
And all the Pashas and the Turk will descend on us,
By the time the ships of Muscovy reach us
The Sfakians won’t have a home in Sfakia to rest”.8
Nevertheless, the revolt began. The Sfakians refused to pay their poll tax, and drove out the tax collector. A well-armed and well-supplied rebel army of 2,000, together with twenty priests, then moved down from the mountains on Easter Sunday 1770. They spent the next week preparing for war and continuing the Easter celebrations.9 They then attacked Apokoronas and Aghios Vasileios, forcing the Muslim population to seek refuge in Chania. The Ottoman response was immediate. A force of 15,000 was rushed to Sfakia, causing the leaders to send boatloads of women and children to safety in the southern Peloponnese and the island of Kythera. A major battle on the plateau of Krapi forced the Sfakians to retreat into the high mountains. From there, they successfully defended themselves throughout the summer of 1770, but at a terrible price to the more accessible areas. Villages were destroyed, flocks scattered and many of the inhabitants captured and sent to the slave markets of Candia, among them Daskalogiannis’ uncle, wife and daughters. When it became apparent that no help would be forthcoming from the Russians, the situation became hopeless. The pasha offered amnesty to the rebels if they surrendered, which they did, accepting the harsh conditions imposed.
The terms included the requirement that all poll tax be paid, all weapons and stores surrendered and the ringleaders subjected to retribution. There were also tight restrictions on shipping and trade, and on the repair and building of churches. A further tithe to the sultan was to be paid, and all Christian religious ceremonies and the ringing of church bells were forbidden. Daskalogiannis and the leaders gave themselves up, but, in spite of the amnesty, the teacher was flayed to death. The other leaders spent three years in prison, but then escaped back to Sfakia. This rebellion was the first major uprising against the Ottomans in Crete, but also the last for about fifty years.
Even before the Cretan War was over, the Ottomans, as was their normal practice, had begun to re-establish the Orthodox Church hierarchy on the island. Under the millet system of justice, “subordinate” religious groups such as Orthodox Christians, Jews or Armenian Christians were each recognised as a separate community and largely allowed to deal with their own internal affairs. For example, the Orthodox Christians in Crete were considered part of the Orthodox millet, under the leadership of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The island was again divided into twelve dioceses which retained their ancient names, as in Byzantine times. In 1647, the metropolitan bishop of Gortyn was again established as the archbishop of Crete, reporting to the patriarch. He was the head of all the Christians, clergy and laity.
Islamic law allowed the Church several privileges, and in theory the Ottoman authorities had no right to interfere in its work or internal organisation. Anything to do with canon law or family law – such as marriage, divorce or inheritance – was dealt with according to Orthodox Church rules. Orthodox clergy were also protected by order of the sultan and there were strict rules against intimidation of clergy from the authorities.
As can be imagined, this impunity did not stop the janissaries committing acts of violence or murder against the clergy. In one case, in 1779, the bishop of Chania rode his horse through the town gate, an action not permitted to Greeks. The janissaries on guard took this as an insult, and were on the point of burning the bishop and his priests to death, when their anger was diverted by a clever pasha who issued an arbitrary decree that all Greeks of any class must sleep outside the city at night. This seemed to assuage the janissaries’ anger, and the rule was rigorously enforced for two months, until the Greeks had raised enough money to bribe the pasha to revoke the decree. It became the practice to rely on bribery rather than decrees from the sultan to ensure safety for the clergy, and it was common for the monasteries to invite a powerful agha to sit on the supervisory committee as protection against janissary raids, for a fee.
With these privileges went certain duties. As well as being expected to keep the Christian population “under control”, the patriarchs, metropolitans and bishops also had to act as tax farmers for ecclesiastical taxes. The metropolitan had to pay a tax of 76,000 silver pieces to Constantinople, which he recouped by imposing a tax of twelve silver pieces on each Christian family. The Patriarchate levied a tax of a similar amount on the island, along with various other taxes, including a levy of olive oil for the oil lamps in the churches of Constantinople. In many cases, the patriarch was as harsh as the sultan in enforcing tax collection, and bishops and even the metropolitan could be sacked for non-compliance. In fact, relations between the Cretan Church and the Patriarchate were often strained, and eventually things got so bad that there was a major rift between the two. The Cretan Church declared itself autocephalous (self-governing) and appealed to the sultan, who ratified the decision by imperial decree, forbidding the patriarch from any further involvement in church affairs in Crete. The patriarch acted quickly to get imperial policy reversed, a new metropolitan was installed, the “rebellion” was quashed, and the bishop of Rethymnon, one of the ringleaders, was expelled from Crete. The new metropolitan restored relations with the Patriarchate, and payment of taxes resumed.
Officially, there was freedom of worship for all religions in the Ottoman Empire, but there was still widespread vandalism against Christian churches, as well as occasional attacks on individuals or groups. There were also practical difficulties. In the early days of Ottoman rule, many churches and monasteries were destroyed or converted into mosques, public baths, warehouses or barracks. Unfortunately, among the restrictions imposed on the Christians was that the building of new monasteries or churches was forbidden (although this rule was not always enforced, especially in villages). Even repair and maintenance work required special permits, which were extremely expensive. As a result of this rule, for many years there was no cathedral in Candia. The metropolitan had to tour the area, holding services in any village church or monastery that would allow him. It was not until 1735 that he finally got permission to restore the derelict church of Saint Minas and make it his cathedral.
Sometimes permits for restoration were refused point blank. During the Cretan War, the abbot of Agarathos monastery near Candia had built a fence around the monastery, bearing the heads of decapitated Ottoman soldiers. When, in 1684, the current abbot applied for a permit to restore the monastery, his request was refused brusquely (and perhaps understandably).
The war had taken a heavy toll on olive oil and wine production, with many trees and vines cut down or burned. However, the population decline resulted in plentiful grain supplies. For a brief period, Crete was able to export wheat, mainly from Ierapetra and Lassithi. Most of the exports were to North Africa, probably in response to famine, although there were also exports to France during crop failures in 1678. As other forms of farming took over from grain, it again became necessary to import wheat from Constantinople. In the first few years of Ottoman rule, trade in general was very limited, but two years after the conquest a Venetian consulate was established in Candia to oversee what trade with Venice still existed. This was followed in 1674 with a French consulate in Chania. Salt continued to be a major export and, perhaps surprisingly in a Muslim empire, wine production continued. This was primarily for local use or export within the empire; international exports to England and France declined substantially. Grapes were also used to produce raisins, which were highly prized in Constantinople. With the decline of Cretan shipbuilding, described below, international trade was largely in the hands of French merchants using French ships.
The biggest change was probably in olive farming. From a slow start after the war, there was a rapid expansion of olive production, the olives being used primarily for olive oil to make soap. By the early eighteenth century, the French traders were exporting twice as much oil as wine and, between 1720 and 1741, oil exports increased by 50%. Initially, the oil was shipped to Constantinople and Marseilles, where the soap was manufactured, but a soap production industry soon developed in Crete. This grew from two workshops across Crete in 1717 to over twenty-five in 1732, and then to twenty in Candia alone in 1749. The Ottomans turned over the old cathedral of Chania to soap production, while, in the same town, the Ela Taverna today still shows the structure of its origins as a soap factory. Crete’s soap factories were almost entirely owned by Muslims, although, as production increased, Christians became more involved.
Once some sort of normality was restored after the end of the Cretan War, there was a steady increase in trade, still mainly conducted with the French, and involving many new products. Exports now included almonds, chestnuts, honey, wax, cheese, rice, cotton, wool, flax and silk. Medicinal and aromatic herbs were again highly prized, together with laudanum and saffron. Cretan fabrics, especially from the convents, were exported to Europe. Imports were mainly luxury goods like sugar and coffee from Yemen, but salt fish and caviar from Constantinople were still popular, especially during Lent. Interestingly, timber shifted from being an export to an import, largely due to extensive deforestation by the Venetians. In spite of the antagonism between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, trade with Venice continued, and Venetian merchants were still based in Chania. Among the main imports from Venice were metal goods, luxury textiles, leather, paper, glass and books, mainly ecclesiastical.
Shipbuilding continued, although on a much smaller scale. The large state shipyards of Venetian times were gone, but a small fleet was still maintained in Sfakia and there were a number of one-man operations. The latter were mainly used for local coastal trade. For example, the Holy Trinity monastery on the Akrotiri peninsula north of Chania had its own shipyard for boats to bring supplies from the city. The Sfakian ships did range around the Aegean and as far as the Black Sea, but overseas trade was left mainly to French ships, as noted above. The harbour of Candia was completely neglected throughout the eighteenth century. Several travellers report that it was severely silted up and, although big enough for thirty to forty merchant vessels if dredged, could only hold eight or nine in practice. With a de facto depth of only eight or nine feet in the harbour, even those few ships had to be lightened before entering. The procedure was to anchor off the island of Dia, about 11 km north of Candia, where the bulk of the cargo would be unloaded onto small lighters.
Trades and businesses for the most part continued much as before, except that the most profitable were usually carried out by Muslims. In 1685, thirty-one of the thirty-eight bakeries in Candia were owned by Muslims, with similar proportions for butchers’ shops. Trades in the larger towns were organised into associations or guilds, under a president recognised by the authorities. Janissaries or their associates played a large part in the guilds, their connections guaranteeing certain judicial privileges and access to the joint funds of janissary regiments. Nevertheless, the guilds in Crete were nowhere near as powerful as under Venetian rule, or indeed in other parts of the Ottoman Empire. In the villages also, Muslims were usually involved in farming, baking, confectionery and knife making, leaving the more “humble” professions to Christians or Ethiopian and Arab immigrants.
The early years of Ottoman rule saw a steep decline in the Christian rural population due to plague, war, emigration and conversion to Islam. There are no reliable figures, but one estimate in 1687 puts the total population of the island as low as 80,000, of whom 50,000 were Christian. This compares with a total population of just under 300,000 in 1644. A fairly reliable source gives the population of Candia at the end of the seventeenth century as 2,000 Muslims, 800 Christians and 1,000 Jews. So great was the depopulation of Candia that Christians and Jews were allowed to own property within the city, in contrast to the situation in Chania and other cities, where Christians were confined to suburbs outside the walls. In the early eighteenth century, the population began to climb again, and by the end of that century the total figure was 350,000, of whom 200,000 were Christians and 150,000 Muslims. There are varying interpretations of the large number of Muslims in Crete. Some historians assume large-scale immigration from Anatolia, as happened in other Greek areas ruled by the Ottoman Empire, such as the Balkans, but there is actually no evidence for this. Most modern historians now agree that the vast majority of the Muslims were, in fact, Cretans who had converted to Islam. By the same token, it is sometimes forgotten that the invading army and subsequent settlers included Arabs, North Africans and Albanians as well as ethnic Turks.
The extent of the Islamisation of Crete is disputed, and it is still difficult to sort out the exact situation. That there were frequent conversions to Islam is pretty clear, as are the reasons: to reduce the tax burden and harsh treatment, in response to social pressure, or to enjoy legal and financial privileges. It is also likely that some conversions were for genuine religious reasons, but it is impossible to know the extent of this. An English traveller, writing in 1739, even found some examples of people converting in order to take revenge on individual Muslims, since for a Christian to strike a Muslim resulted in severe penalties. Conversion was also the gateway to a military career in the janissaries, and even many of the imperial janissaries were recruited from among Cretan Muslims. Although most of these converts remained in the ranks, there were cases where some rose quickly to becoming highranking officers, offering to others the prospect of prestige and wealth. Individual conversion could not be easier: the applicant merely had to recite the Muslim confession of faith and change his name. Often the conversion was recorded in the qadi court, in order to obtain official evidence, but this was not a requirement. Converts were generally adult Orthodox Christians, although a small number of Catholics and Jews are also believed to have converted. If a married man converted, he was expected to take his wife with him into the new faith, although this was not always enforced. If a married woman converted and her husband remained Christian, she was obliged to divorce him, since Islamic law did not allow Muslim women to be put under the authority of non-Muslim men. She retained legal control over any children.
Islamic law allowed marriages between Muslim men and Christian women and, in such cases, the women were allowed to maintain their own religion, as long as the children were brought up Muslim. Mixed marriages were accepted not only by the Islamic courts but, generally, by the local Orthodox clergy as well. A French traveller, writing at the beginning of the eighteenth century, described one such couple:
[They] lived very well and comfortably together, and almost after the Christian Manner, tho’ each kept their own Religion, he went to the Mosque, and she to the Church, but the Children were bred as Mahometans; and when she was busied other ways, he did not scruple to light for her the Lamp before the Panagia’s [Virgin Mary’s] Image.10
One result of widespread intermarriage was that relations between Muslim and Christian Cretans were far more complex than straightforward hostility. The same extended family could contain members of both faiths and, as we have seen, a degree of tolerance even within the nuclear family was not unknown. Many villages had a mixed population of Muslims and Christians who would often share in each other’s religious celebrations and would even appear as witnesses in each other’s cases. It was not unknown for a Muslim to act as a Christian’s koumbaros (best man) at his wedding.
In some cases an entire village, including the priest, would convert. These mass conversions were usually for economic reasons, but in many cases the converts would become fervent, even fanatical, believers, and were looked down on by the local Cretans. On the other hand, some of the converts to Islam were anything but sincere, becoming Muslim in name only but keeping their Christian faith in secret; they were often called crypto-Christians. The Church generally opposed this practice, although there were some bishops who looked on it with sympathy and understanding. In one case, a congregation sought the opinion of the Patriarch of Constantinople on this question, and he rejected the idea totally, but when they appealed to the patriarch of Jerusalem, himself a Cretan, he gave his approval to false conversion on the conditions of “inescapable need” and “pastoral economy” (deviation from the letter of the law in order to adhere to the spirit of the law and charity). Even after converting to Islam, the locals retained their Cretan language and, interestingly, often adapted their new Muslim names to a Greek inflexion. For example, Kemal became Kemalis, or Suleiman became Suleimanis. In many cases, they kept their Greek surnames, so that names like Abdul Kalimerakis were not uncommon. If a Turkish surname was adopted, it was often given a Cretan ending, as in Muladakis.11
Although an element of mistrust and animosity always existed between the Muslim and Christian communities, conversion did not automatically create fierce hatred. Some scholars have argued that the two groups were bound by numerous ties including marriage, family links, a common cultural identity (with Greek as the spoken language) and commercial relations between merchants.12 Even during wartime, relations between merchants of all faiths could be close. Writing of the late nineteenth century in his novel Captain Michalis, Kazantzakis gives a detailed and moving description of this ambivalent relationship, which continued throughout Ottoman rule, even during the periods of rebellion. The up-and-down friendship between the captain and his blood brother Nuri Bey is a particularly poignant example. It has been suggested that the more significant divide in Crete was not between Christian and Muslim, but between local communities and the relatively small number of Ottoman officials sent from Constantinople to rule over them. Perhaps not too much should be made of this, though, given that the Muslim Cretans, encouraged by the janissaries, took an active part in the suppression of the Daskalogiannis revolt, which led to a sharp deterioration in relations between the faiths after 1770.
The Muslims in Crete were mainly Sunni, but about 20%, especially among the janissaries, belonged to the Bektashi Order, an offshoot of the Shia branch of Islam. The Bektashi Order was founded in Asia Minor in the thirteenth century and was related to the Dervish Order. It incorporated aspects of Christianity into its basic Islamic beliefs, including a form of baptism, the veneration of saints and icons, drinking of wine and something like a Communion service. There are also elements of Gnosticism, such as belief in reincarnation and even some remnants of paganism. For this reason, the Bektashi Order is viewed with some suspicion by more mainstream Muslims, but it is likely that the “Christian” elements also attracted crypto-Christian converts.
In the towns, Muslims generally led a normal Islamic life, but in the rural areas there was a much more relaxed attitude. Many drank wine on a regular basis, and even the eating of pork was not unknown, while the muezzin’s call to prayer was sometimes in Greek rather than Arabic. A traveller in 1795 reported:
The Turks of [the island] are almost completely metamorphosed. They live and eat with Christians without any scruple, almost all drink as much wine as they can get, and their women, instead of being in prison or muffled up, walk about with the same dress and freedom as the Greeks.13
This somewhat relaxed attitude to Islam led the pasha of Candia, as early as 1700, to issue two decrees, reminding Muslims of their obligation to pray five times daily and for women not to display their faces in public.
With oppressive taxation, predatory janissaries and authorities largely concerned only with their own comfort, there seems to have been a general decline in moral standards during Ottoman rule. In the countryside, lawlessness was rampant, and theft – particularly rustling – was prevalent. In the towns, prostitution increased. One aspect of the general immorality which the authorities tried to stamp out was the keeping of kapatma, Christian girls taken into Muslim homes as mistresses, a practice strictly against Qur’anic law. Illegitimate children resulting from these liaisons were usually abandoned at the doors of mosques or public baths. In 1763, a pasha issued a decree ordering the leaders of the mosques to find and deal with kapatma:
Search and discover the houses of those who are unlawfully living with an adopted non-Muslim partner within the town, and all those who show a willingness to enter into marriage let them proceed to wed with proper sanctity, whether the partner is a second, third or fourth wife; for those women whom the man refuses to marry and who are in an interesting condition, you must designate a sum for maintenance, and return them to their guardians or relatives. Whichever women do not wish to marry, yet do not wish to stop their relations with the man, or who have nowhere else to go and are wholly helpless, you must hand over to their priests.
This fairly enlightened approach was rare, although several other pashas did arrange limited care and protection of abandoned women and their children if they were the illegitimate offspring of Muslims.
With the fall of Candia, the Cretan Renaissance came to an abrupt end. Many of the émigrés took their books and manuscripts with them into exile, and those left in the great libraries were largely destroyed. This massive brain drain meant that education among even the elite Christian population was again limited to basic reading and writing being taught in the monasteries. For a long time, even the higher clergy were poorly educated. There were some Muslim madrasas (Islamic schools) in the towns, but since the main subject was Islamic sacred law and theology, and the teaching language was primarily Turkish, the Muslim Cretans fared little better. In short, for the general population, both Christian and Muslim, education was virtually nonexistent. Things began to improve from the mid-eighteenth century, when primary schools started to appear in Sfakia; by the end of the century, schools were being founded in the towns. A wider range of subjects was taught, including grammar, logic, poetics and rhetoric and, to a lesser extent, maths, art, music, history and philosophy. At the same time, the libraries in the larger monasteries were restored and expanded, and a few private individuals began to build up their own extensive libraries.
The icon workshops ceased to exist, and most of the artists moved to the Ionian Islands or other Greek areas not under Ottoman rule. Thus, the Cretan School of iconography more or less died out after 1700, with some notable exceptions. In the monastery of Myriokephala, south-west of Rethymnon, there is a superb icon of the Virgin Mary, painted by a monk called Iakovos early in the eighteenth century. Another highly influential painter was Georgios Kastrophylakas (born in 1723), many of whose impressive icons are on display in the Museum of Saint Katherine in Iraklion. Perhaps one of the greatest icons of eighteenth-century Crete, and certainly one of my favourites, is the magnificent Lord Thou Art Great by Ioannis Kornaros (born in 1745). This is a composite icon comprising sixty-one scenes from the Old and New Testaments, based on the prayer of the Blessing of the Waters, part of the Theophania (Epiphany) service of 6th January. What makes this piece unique, apart from the sheer quality of the painting, is that, instead of each miniature being separate, the whole picture is unified by streams of water flowing through and between the sections. Intriguingly, it also includes non-Orthodox images – for example, signs of the zodiac and allegorical representations of the four elements. The icon can be seen in Toplou monastery, near Siteia.
In spite of allowing many of the Venetian walls and fortresses to fall into disrepair, the Ottomans were careful to maintain the fountains and aqueducts. Muslims have a religious obligation to wash frequently, and this ensured that, for example, the Lion Fountain in Iraklion is still with us. After the conquest of the island, many churches were converted into mosques, a few of which still survive, especially in Chania and Rethymnon. In the former, the Mosque of the Janissaries is the oldest mosque in Crete, dating from 1645, while the famous Yiali Tzami still dominates the harbour. The church of Aghios Nikolaos on 1821 Square in Chania was built as a church in 1320, converted to a mosque under Ottoman rule and reconsecrated as a church in 1918. Gloriously cross-cultural, it still has an Orthodox bell tower and a minaret, both on a Venetian Catholic building. In Rethymnon, the Neratze Mosque, the Veli Pasha Mosque and the Ibrahim Han Mosque are all worth visiting. Many of the mosques are now used for cultural events or exhibitions.
There were few significant developments in literature during the eighteenth century, but the oral tradition remained strong. Among the urban Muslim literati, poems and other literary forms were written in Ottoman Turkish, and possibly Farsi and Arabic, but so far these have been little studied and are virtually unknown. Some folk songs and poems, both Christian and Muslim, were written down, and in recent years there has been more study of these. Turkish was the official written language for documents, but Cretan Greek was almost universally used for spoken communication. There were also many examples of text written in Greek but using Arabic characters. Both groups continued to compose mantinades, those written by Christians often taking on a revolutionary tone. Rimes (pronounced with two syllables) were longer narrative compositions, usually anonymous and often describing historical events, especially those relating to fighting, but also natural disasters and events of everyday life. The Ballad of Daskalogiannis is one such rima, while many others described the exploits, good and bad, of the janissaries. Another, written in Cretan Greek but using Arabic characters, describes the janissaries’ downfall. Unusually, it is signed by the writer, Selim from Chania, and seeks to justify the destruction of the janissaries while showing a little regret for the loss of their colourful and swaggering lifestyle:
And where are your treasurers living in comfort,
They who used to wheel and deal with such pompous airs?
Where are your grand benefactors full of good fortune,
The ones all the Turkish dignitaries used to respect so?
Where are your master builders who had their own reserves?
With what a heavy heart they took off their waistcoats and their turbans.
Where are your guards who used to brag?
They used to stroll in the markets and they were like lions.
They are useless idlers, let them cry night and day.14
The bare, matter-of-fact style of the rimes and their descriptions of real events have led to them being sometimes described as “the newspapers of the period”.15
Muslims and Christians also shared a common musical tradition during this period, but, as with poetry, this was mainly restricted to folk music. The Cretan lyra, originally from Anatolia, was introduced in the eighteenth century, adding to the existing instruments the violin and mandolin, which had been introduced in Venetian times. Immigrants from other parts of the empire also brought with them their own ballads and folk songs. One form of folk music that developed during this period can be described as specifically Cretan. The rizitika songs of Sfakia and western Crete probably originated in Byzantine times, and were sung in Venetian times, but they came to much greater prominence during Ottoman rule.16 Although some were songs of love, they were mainly songs of rebellion and war. The main development during this period was that they were often allegorical in nature to hide their true seditious meaning:
—You wild goats and kids, you tamed deer,
Tell me, where do you live, where are you staying in the winter?
—In the precipices we live, the steep peaks are our winter quarters,
The caves in the mountains are our ancestral home.17
Here, the goats are obviously the hains, escaping to the mountains away from the Muslims who mainly lived on the plains. Another rizitiko from Ottoman years is much more direct:
When will the night be starry?
When will it be February?
So I can grab my rifle,
My beautiful cartridge belt,
To descend to Omalos
On the Mousouros road,
To deprive mothers of their sons,
Wives of their husbands,
To deprive new-born babies
Of their mothers,
So they will cry for her breast in the night
And at dawn for milk,
And when the sun rises
They shall cry for their unfortunate motherland.18
This song became an anthem of resistance in Crete, and was adapted during the Battle of Crete in 1941, with “Maleme’s airport” replacing “Omalos” (see chapter 16).