continuation, beginning in the number 3 (17), 2017

 

By nature itself, the inhabitants of Crete, once dominant in the Mediterranean, were predestined to become seamen, and Cretans, of course, were the people who for centuries formed the sea elite – skippers, and experts in the field of navigation. This stratum was of fundamental importance, creating a possibility for an emergency build-up of naval forces for any state that required supremacy at sea, and this was the task of empires.

The power of Venice added to the inhabitants of Crete a special ethnos –Gasmouloi. So in the late Byzantine society they called children of mixed Byzantine Greek and “Latin” unions. In the overwhelming majority Italian aliens were unmarried boys, and often their stay on Byzantine soil following the Fourth Crusade led to the said unions. The Gasmouloi were socially ostracized and distrusted by both the Byzantines and the Latins, who distrusted their ambiguous identity. If they did not find a suitable application (most often as hired warriors or sailors), they became pirates: a threat to ships and coastal towns of the Latin lands. The Latins cursed the Gasmouloi, whose name itself had a negative connotation, and gave them bad characteristics, but the Byzantines valued their military qualities and recruited them. In the 1260s, when the Byzantine Empire was rebuilt, Gasmouloi served in the Byzantine army, trying, often very successful, to knock out knights and Venetians. For example, the crew of the fleet, built by the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII, consisted mainly of Gasmouloi. At the same time, under the treaty of 1277, which Michael VIII concluded with Venice, the Gasmouloi were recognized as citizens of Venice. By the middle of the XIV century the Byzantine Empire lost all its power and the Gasmouloi as well as their descendants usually professed Catholicism at that time and fully shared the interest of Western European states. The Byzantine historian George Pachymeres noted that the Gasmouloi combined Byzantine forethought and prudence in battles with impetuosity and audacity of the Latins. The Byzantine navy, such as it was during the empire’s last century, continued to use their services. Gasmouloi played a role in the Byzantine civil war of 1341-1347, fiercely supporting their commander, the megas doux Alexios Apokaukos, against John VI Kantakouzenos. After the latter’s victory, many of Gasmouloi of Constantinople must have been dismissed and a part of them went to the Turks: the first Ottoman garrison, stationed in Gallipoli in 1421-1422, consisted of the lightly armed Gasmouloi. Later, in 1474, Ottoman sources mention the existence of two units of Greek-speaking Muslims there. The crews for the first Ottoman fleets were also provided by the Gasmouloi.

A part of Gasmouloi settled on land, another engaged in trade and business. The Italians from the upper and middle strata were not inclined to settle in the Byzantine territories, but the lower-class Gasmouloi completely merged with the local population, losing their own “Latin” identity. Their close Italian roots are evidenced only by their nicknames. A lot of Gasmouloi settled in Crete where, due to specific conditions, the process of Hellenization of the Italics and the formation of this ethnos, which has been forgotten now because has dissolved in the next generations of the islanders, continued in the most active way.

In the XVII century a Cretan Gasmoul woman Eugenia or Evmenia nicknamed Voria (“northern” in Greek) became the successor of the genus of Ottoman sultans. She was the daughter of a Greek woman and a Greek priest Verzizzy from Rethymnon of Venetian origin: such a Greek name is not found, but there is still a common Italian surname Vernizi and a less common Verzini. During the protracted Cretan War around 1657 or in 1659, she was abducted from her parents and taken by the commander of the Ottoman expeditionary corps on Crete Deli Hussein Pasha as a gift to the Sultan. Converted to Islam she conquered the heart of the Sultan’s son, the 19-year-old future Sultan Mehmed IV, half-Russian by blood and the future persecutor of the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire on the pretext that some Greek statesmen and traders had colluded with the Tsar. In harem she was called in Persian Mahpare (meaning a crescent moon), and when she became a concubine of the sultan – Rabia Gulnush: this Arab-Persian combination means “the fourth”, “roses honey”. By the time she became mother of two sons (future sultans Mustafa II and Ahmed III), and another Arabic name was added – Emetullah, which means “praise to Allah”.

To facilitate his task of controlling the island, the Turks restored the Orthodox hierarchy aiming to attract sympathy of the Greek clergy. Much earlier, this has been done by them after the conquest of Constantinople, and never the Greek Orthodox Church was so rich, as during the Ottoman rule. At the same time, the Turks turned many churches into mosques and established a network of waqfs – charitable foundations designed to meet current social needs of inhabitants, and to assert Islam. It began a wide conversion of local population to Islam: whole families and even villages as well as some persons did it in the towns. At first sight it seems strange, given that the island has been conquered relatively late and a meager share of Turkish immigrant on it: only a small number of officials and clergy arrived there with some groups of military settlers who received land. Thus, in Cyprus, conquered from the Venetians earlier, in 1571, the conversion to Islam was minimal. As the more detailed analysis of the documents of that time shows that most of the Cretan Greek converted to Islam from purely economic considerations (inheritance, exemption from payment of jizya – a tax imposed on non-Muslims). Very quickly, the Greek elite of the island was Islamized because of career prospects for children in the new Islamic state, especially for young people searching for wide opportunities in Constantinople. The Cretans wanted only to be granted full rights of citizens: a peaceful work or possibility of military service for those who wanted to risk, since Christians were not taken into army and were taxed with jizya, which was one of the main sources of income for the Ottoman State and greatly hampered the authorities’ desire to Islamize the Dhimmi (the non-Muslims) due to its economic significance. The jizya amount was not the same in different parts of the empire and, presumably, especially expensive for the islanders.

With the rapid growth of the Muslim community in the XVII and XVIII centuries (Turkish sources report that ⅔ of the island’s population were Muslims), the remaining Christians are beginning to feel gradually increasing pressure from the Ottoman state. The conflict potential on the island is growing. For example, in one of the villages, neophyte Muslims complain of annoying service in a neighboring church, surrounded by courts of 25 families converted to Islam, and the authorities decide to close it. The situation gets even worse when the Turkish authorities in Constantinople hear rumors that not all Muslims on the island are concerned about observing the religion rules. Thus, most of the “Muslims” on the island continue to lead a double life, men drink wine and refuse to circumcise (it must be said that for the first Christian Jews circumcision had been compulsory, and only St. Paul as a goy has succeeded in abolishing this custom for all neophytes), and women continue to preserve the custom of dowry accumulation. In mosques local Muslims pray to Christ and the Virgin Mary (a common custom in Turkish Anatolia); Turkish language is still poorly represented in the life of the islanders. Before the Greek War of Independence, the number of Muslims and Christians were equal in Crete, and during the period of Cretan uprisings, the Muslims were greatly affected by the Cretan Christians. As the liberation movement on the mainland grows, this leads to a strong split in the Cretan society: the idea of enosis (reunification with Greece) embraces the islanders. After the events of 1828-1830, it begins a wide emigration of Cretan Muslims to Anatolia and Constantinople, although the island is still a part of the Ottoman Empire: actual until 1908, formally until 1912. After 1830, the island plunges into chaos: the Orthodox Greeks begin guerilla warfare, during which most Muslims, fearing for their lives, are forced to take refuge behind the fortress’ walls of 4 cities on the north coast.

In most countries of the world religious intolerance led to terrible bloodshed even among compatriots. In the XIX century, after a new uprising, the Turkish Sultan Abdul-Hamid II was forced to move Cretan Muslims to the Levant. He adopted a resettlement program, and in 1886 in Syria they founded the first settlement, which was named Amidya in honor of the Sultan. The landing of great powers’ forces on Crete and armed support for the Ottoman Empire prevented the attempt of Greek volunteers, occupying the mountainous part of the island, to join Crete to Greece, and led to the next wave of immigration: Muslims from Crete settled in continental Turkey in 1908. The majority moved to Turkey where their descendants became part of the Turkish ethnos. The self-name of this group is Cretan Muslims. Those who left Crete in the late XIX-early XX century settled largely along Turkey’s Aegean and Mediterranean coast; other waves of refuges settled in Syrian cities like Damascus and Aleppo. In Lebanon it was Tripoli, in Palestine – Haifa; Alexandria and Tanta (in delta of Nile) in Egypt, and Apollonia (modern Susah) in Libya. While some of this people have integrated themselves with the population around them over the course of the XX century, the majority of them still lived in tightly knit communities preserving their unique culture, traditions and their Cretan Greek dialect. A large part of the Greek Muslims, who have moved from Crete, lives now on the so-called Northern Cyprus, captured by Turkey, where they have now almost assimilated with the local Turks. By 1920, before the exchange of population between Turkey and Greece, the Cretan Muslims accounted only 7% of the population in Crete. In 1923, during the exchange of population, they were settled in the Cydonia town (modern Ayvalik in Turkey), where the Greek Christians have been massacred twice: in June 1821 by the Sultan and in September 1922 by Atatürk (mass deportation and death in the camps): the Turkish authorities gave the Cretan Turks localities where vineyards left by the departed Greeks were found, since this capital was bound to be lost in the hands of cultivators with no prior knowledge of viniculture.

Before the current civil war, the town of Al-Hamidiyah (formerly settlement Amidya), which has been now torn apart, had more than 3,000 inhabitants, 60% of whom were Cretan Muslims. According to various sources, in northern Lebanon, in the city of Tripoli, their number reaches 8,000. It’s noteworthy that the marriages of Cretan Muslims living in Syria and Lebanon took place within their own community, and they preserved the Greek language, and customs unlike other compatriots exported from Crete to Turkey. In the past, many of Greek Muslims, who lived in Turkey, spoke a distorted Turkish. Only old people speak there in the Greek dialect of the island of Crete. The granddaughter of a Cretan Muslim, Ayşe Şensılay, manages a little chain of restaurants “Girit Mutfağı” (Cretan Cuisine) in Istanbul and Bodrum, and Ayşe Ün has such eateries in Izmir. In the field of maritime industries, the pioneer of gulet boats construction (it’s the Bodrum type of two-masted wooden sailing vessel used now almost universally a diesel engine for considerations of crew economy and popular for tourist charters), that has become a vast industry in Bodrum in our day, Ziya Güvendiren was a Cretan Muslim, as are many of his former apprentices who themselves have become master shipbuilders and are based in Bodrum or Güllük today.

Oleg Loginov.

November 2017