441

 AEGEAN IN A STATE OF FLUX: A STUDY ON THE MOREOT
MIGRANTS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Anahtar Kelimeler: Mora, Yunan Bagımsızlık Savası, Osmanlı Imparatorlugu, göç,
Moralılar, Ege Denizi
1821’de Mora Yarımadası’nda on yıl içerisinde bir Yunan ulus devletinin kurulmasıyla
sonuçlanacak olan bir dizi gelisme yasandı. On yıllık savas döneminde binlerce
Moralı Müslüman Batı Anadolu sahillerine göç etmek zorunda kaldı, bırakıldı.
Bu tez Moralı Müslüman göçerlerin hikayesini takip etmektedir. Özellikle on
dokuzuncu yüzyılın ikinci yarısında Batı Anadolu sehirlerinde ve toplumlarında yerlesik
duruma geçen Moralılar özellikle sosyal, ekonomik ve politik alanlarda izlerini
bırakmıslardır. Moralı Müslümanlar Avrasya’da teknoloji, siyaset ve kurumsallasma
alanlarında meydana gelen gelismeler baglamında modern kitle hareketlerinin erken
bir örnegini teskil etmektedir. Bu tez Osmanlı Imparatorlugu’nun modernlesme
deneyiminin bir kısmını Moralı Müslüman göçerler üzerinden incelemektedir. Onların
deneyimleri ise ulus, toplumsal kimlik ve modern kurumsallasma kavramlarına
ve süreçlerine dair izlenimler sunmaktadır. Bu izlenimlerin kökleri ise Mora Yarımadası’ndaki
iliskiler, göçün niteligi ve on dokuzuncu yüzyılın ikinci yarısında olusan
Moralı yasam biçiminde aranmaktadır.
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Indeed, with every difficulty there is relief. Now at the end of this journey, I am
filled with a deep sense of gratitude to those who helped me find it. First and
foremost, I would like to present my sincerest compliments to my advisor Ayse Ozil
for helping me find my way among my many ideas, teaching me the intricacies of
academic research as well as courtesy. Without her guidance, this thesis would not
come to being and it is a blessing to be her student. I am obliged to Selçuk Aksin
Somel for letting me benefit from his vast experience and knowledge of the history
of the Ottoman Empire during our many meetings. Special thanks to Tülay Artan
for teaching us the intricacies of the historian’s craft and be not just criticizing but
also appreciative of the past scholarship. I am indebted to Ferenc Peter Csirkes
for being the most supportive instructor and always being there when I turned for
help and advice. Ever since my junior year at Bogaziçi University, Yasar Tolga
Cora supported me in my studies and guided me through not just the gates of
academia but life as well, for which I can never express my gratitude adequately. I
would like to extend my sincere thanks to Abdurrahman Atçıl, Christine Philliou,
Yusuf Hakan Erdem, Abdülhamit Kırmızı, Ahmet Ersoy, Yücel Terzibasoglu, Yavuz
Aykan, Evmorfia Pegnioglou and Charalampos Minasidis for their help and support.
I would like to express my kindest regards for Ömer Koçyigit who read my thesis
and offered insightful comments. My special thanks to Abdullah Güloglu for making
my time at Sabancı University a most memorable and fun one with his amazing
friendship. I would like to extend my gratefulness to Isa Ugurlu and Ardit Gjeli for
always being ready to help and also for welcoming me among them so easily. Many
thanks to my friends Çagdas Salih Öztas, Jean Philippe Bombay, Ahmet Zahid
Garip, Saliha Taspınar, Yavuzhan Danısman, Seyda Sakar and Deniz Uyar for the
friendship we have since our first year at Bogaziçi. My unexpected thanks should
go to Mehmet Tayyip Demir, who appeared in my life out of nowhere and not only
helped immensely with the technical details of my thesis but also made life easier
in so many aspects.
Last but not at all the least, I would like to pay my special regards to my incredible
family. Thanks to you, I feel the luckiest person on Earth. I have the best sister
one could ever imagine, Zeynep Ilgın, whom I hope will dedicate her master’s thesis
to me one day. My amazing parents, Özler and Necati, supported me from day one,
even when I wanted to be an Egyptologist-archeologist at age 9. Everything I do is
vi
for you. Thank you for respecting my thoughts and feelings and teaching me to be
mindful of those of others. Even though my grandparents are no longer physically
with us, I want to acknowledge their presence in the making of this thesis. When I
was but a child, my beloved grandfather, Ziya, told me numerous stories about his
Moreot ancestors and made me laugh many times with his funny Greek. This thesis
is inspired by you, dede.
vii

viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
1. INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1. Who are the Moreots? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2. Scholarship on Moreots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3. Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4. Overview of the Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5. Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2. A GENERAL VIEW OF THE MOREA BEFORE THEWAR AND
ON THE EVE OF THE EXODUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1. Population and Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.1.1. A Detailed Description: The Muslims of Methoni . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2. War, Famine and the Threat of Extermination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3. ACROSS THE AEGEAN: THE JOURNEY OF THE MOREOTS
AND SETTLEMENT IN ANATOLIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.1. Crossing the Aegean: Organization of the Movement, Means of Transportation
and the Perils of the Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.2. Between Old and New: The Logistics of the Moreot Migration . . . . . . . 30
3.3. Migrant Management: Actors, Places and Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4. MOREOT LIFE IN ANATOLIA: SOCIETY, STATE AND HERITAGE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.1. Language and Communal Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.2. Heritage, Identity and Relations with the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.3. A Case Study of Social and Economic Relations: the Moreots of Antalya 46
4.3.1. Rivalry and Privilege: Formation of a Moreot Dynasty? . . . . . . . 48
4.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
ix
5. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
APPENDIX A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
APPENDIX B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
x
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1. Map of the Morea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Figure A.1. Map showing the points of departure and arrival. . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Figure A.2. Close section of map showing the points of departure and arrival. 61
Figure B.1. Photograph showing Moreot women and children in Antalya
in 1915. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
xi
1. INTRODUCTION
“The context betwixt the Greeks and Turks has employed so many pens,
that he who now ventures to write on that hackneyed, and apparently
exhausted subject must begin by explaining his reasons for travelling a
beaten road. . . ”1
Such is the way that Thomas Gordon, major-general in the British Army deployed
in the Morea during the War of Independence, starts his narrative of the events of
the Greek War of Independence. Indeed, much has already been said and written
regarding the grueling details of the combat, the ruination of the lands, and the
massacres that were committed by both sides of the war. In fact, both the Turkish
and the Greek scholarship have long crystallized an official narrative of the events
that would appeal to a broader audience, highlighted the exploitation of victims
according to their respective ethno-religious affiliation, and diminished or completely
reduced the appearance of some groups in compliance with the same classification.
Mobility of large groups of people plays a seminal role in the lives of empires. Displaced
people in the nineteenth century are often deemed as victims of emergent
nations and burdens to the local and central administrations for they required care,
diminished central and local treasuries, and sometimes incited rebellions in the places
they were settled in. Moreover, in political histories, which have long dominated
scholarship, dislocated people do not receive credit as actors and they are not granted
historical agency per se. However, it has been recently shown by several historians in
different contexts that people on the move were far from being helpless. In fact, they
were able to negotiate with the central and local administrations on many matters
that ranged from tax liability to official or communal identifications.2
1Thomas Gordon, History of the Greek Revolution, and of the Wars and Campaigns Arising from the Struggles
of the Greek Patriots in Emancipating Their Country from the Turkish Yoke, (Edinburgh: Blackwood,
1832), i.
2Resat Kasaba, A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants, and Refugees, (University of Washington
Press, 2009), 10.
1
This thesis follows the story of one such group, namely the Moreots who migrated
from the Morea (Peloponnese) to Western Anatolia and Istanbul at the time of
the Greek War of Independence and the following few decades around the midnineteenth
century. Several of them left their mark on the Ottoman society by
becoming landowners, officers, and politicians. However, most importantly with
their distinct cultural identification, they carried the Moreot heritage for generations
in Western Anatolian towns and elsewhere. Their experience provides us with an
early example of modern mass movement of a people in the Eurasian space. Directly
embedded in the emergence of a nation-state out of an old land-empire, examining
the history of the Moreots provides clues to issues of subjecthood, nation, and
identity formation in the modern period.
1.1 Who are the Moreots?
Prior to delving into a long narrative on the fate of the Moreots, a clarification of
who are specifically referred to as “the Moreots” in this thesis is in order. Moreot
is an umbrella term that is used both by contemporaries and modern scholars to
describe the ethno-religiously diverse population of the Peloponnesian peninsula.
Contemporary historians of the Greek War of Independence such as George Finlay,
Thomas Gordon and John Comstock utilized this term as an adjective by placing it
before religious or ethnically defining words such as in Moreot Christians or Moreot
Turks. Muslim was another identification that was used synonymously with Turk.
In the Ottoman archives, in the nineteenth century, these labels took the form
of Moralı reaya (Moreot non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Sultan) to refer to
Moreot Christians and Moralılar (Moreots) to refer to Muslim inhabitants of the
peninsula.
Official chroniclers of the empire such as Ahmet Cevdet Pasa most often referred
to the folk that relocated towards Western Anatolia as the Turks. Although a
fascinating topic, the conceptual distinction of the identification of Muslim and
Turk within the general denomination “Moreot” must be left out of the scope of this
thesis. Therefore, it should suffice to state that in this thesis the term “Moreot”
will refer specifically to those who (were) identified as Muslim, were part of the
community known as “Turks” in the early nineteenth century, and relocated to
Western Anatolia.
2
Mobility in the Aegean continued throughout the first half of the nineteenth century,
even after the war between the Ottomans and the Greeks in the Morea was officially
finalized through the London Protocol of 1830. The Moreot Muslims’ migration
is part of a broader context. What started as an internal relocation within the
borders of the Ottoman Empire transformed into an international migration after
the establishment of a national Greek state, raising questions about their official
status.3 In the later decades of the nineteenth and even at the beginning of the
twentieth century they were still acknowledged as “the Moreots” by themselves, the
state and travelers, indicating the formation of a distinct communal identity.
1.2 Scholarship on Moreots
Moreots did not attract significant attention in modern Ottoman historiography
for several reasons. In most works, the migrations from the Caucasus to Anatolia
and other regions of the Empire first as a consequence of the Crimean War in
1856 and later the Russo-Ottoman War of 1878 are presented as the first major
mass movements the Ottomans experienced in the nineteenth century.4 Similarly,
the establishment of nation-states and ethno-religious conflicts in the Balkans led
to two wars taking place consecutively which resulted in dramatic forced migrations
towards Anatolia. The highlighting of the population displacements between
1856-1913 was due to the state-centered scholarship’s emphasis on the causes and
circumstances of the dissolution of the Empire5 Still, these works provide valuable
data and insight into the ways in which the forced migration played a role in the
making of a Muslim majority in Ottoman society and how this feature came to affect
the social, political, administrative, and intellectual outlook in the Ottoman Empire
in the long nineteenth century.
The few monographs on the Moreot migration commonly meshed it with long recitations
of the political events that took place during the Greek War of Independence,
3The reason behind the utilization of the term evacuation-migration and evacuee-migrant instead of refuge
and refugee lies in the fact that refugee status was mostly attributed to those who were subject or naturalized
citizens of other states. Therefore, as the Morea was still within the borders of the Ottoman dominion
during the war, the term migrant or evacuee is preferred over refugee.
4Nedim Ipek, Rumeli’den Anadolu’ya Türk Göçleri (1877-90), (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları,
1994).
5Paschalis Kitromilides and Alexis Alexandris, Ethnic Survival, Nationalism and Forced Migration: The
Historical Demography of the Greek Community of Asia Minor at the Close of the Ottoman Era, (Athens:
Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1984), 10.
3
from the viewpoint provided principally by the Ottoman archives. They highlight
many valuable points of information about the Greek War and its toll on the Ottoman
administration as well as the people of the Morea. For instance, an earliest
instance of a monograph focusing solely on the migration from the Morea, a finishing
dissertation by Vasıf Gökpınar, could be dated to 1972. The events are narrated from
the Ottoman archival perspective while the socio-cultural analysis of the migrants’
life after their settlement in Anatolia is not included.6
In comparison, a larger and more recent volume by Ali Fuat Örenç approaches to
the matter of migration from the Morea from a broader range of sources, albeit
remaining accordant with the statist viewpoint.7 The book uses an abundance
of archival documents and official historiographies and highlights many valuable
materials that presents the political atmosphere of the war and expulsion of the
Muslims. The narrative concludes with the end of the Greek War of Independence
and the border and property transactions made between the two sovereign states.
The Moreots are presented mostly as victims and there is little mention of their
experiences in Anatolia.
Migration and migrants from the Morea, Attica and Euboea were discussed in Nedim
Ipek’s comprehensive book Imparatorluktan Ulus Devlete Göçler. Ipek’s work is significant
in terms of the categorization and periodization of modern migrations. He
regards the Moreot migration as the first great mobility within the Ottoman domains
in the nineteenth century. From archival documents to population surveys,
he assembles a variety of sources to present the Moreot presence in Western Anatolia.
Ipek’s other publications focus on the Moreots’ journey to and life in Anatolia
in specific cities such as Izmir and are valuable contributions towards acknowledging
of the Moreot migration as part of the Ottoman Empire’s nineteenth-century
experience. However, they, too, neglect the agency of the Moreots as individuals
and groups who were able to negotiate for their places and desires with the state
and the community in which they lived.
On the other hand, Evren Dayar contributes to the scholarship by using a local historical
approach to examine the lives of the Moreots in Anatolian cities, specifically
in Antalya, in the second half of the nineteenth century. In his doctoral dissertation,
he examines the relations between the central government and the notables
of Antalya which the several Moreot families were a part of. Tracing court and
property records, travelogues, and consular reports, Dayar presents a picture of the
6Vasıf Gökpınar, “Mora Muhacirleri Meselesi.” Unpublished Finishing Dissertation, (Istanbul Üniversitesi
Merkez Kütüphânesi, Nr. 6973, 1973.)
7Ali Fuat Örenç, Balkanlarda Ilk Dram: Unuttugumuz Mora Türkleri ve Eyaletten Bagımsızlıga Yunanistan,
(Istanbul: Babıali Kültür, 2009.)
4
socio-economic life of the Moreots in Antalya. In fact, despite not being the central
point of the research, the life they built for themselves in Antalya is a well-examined
aspect of this work.8
However, neither of the abovementioned works bring together a comprehensive account
of the Moreots’ experiences in the Morea and Anatolia. Despite drawing
attention to many singular aspects of their story, the research so far has excluded
the agency of the Moreots, treating them as remote and unchanging masses that
remained as victims-migrants throughout the nineteenth century. However, the analytical
reading of the works cited and the careful examination of the primary sources
that are listed in the upcoming sections present a quite different picture that is rich
in detail which this thesis attempts to relay.
Overall in the migration and demographic studies in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman
domains, the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923 played a
principal role. In terms of Greek historiography, the Center for Asia Minor Studies
played a great role in the preservation of the refugee culture and memory, as it categorized
the sources and thereby constituted a model for migration studies. After
the 1980s, collaborations between the Turkish and Greek historians made possible
the proliferation and pluralization of the sources possible.9 Thanks to the diversification
in both the source materials and their utilization, the migrant-refugee
experience, regardless of ethno-religious divisions, was added to the demographic
data and theories of nation-building.10 The methods employed by the historians of
the Greco-Turkish population exchange set a good example to situate the Moreot
case into the social-administrative context of the Ottoman Empire which was on the
verge of several notable transformations instigated by the Greek War.
Critical studies on Greco-Ottoman relations have been multiplying as the Ottoman
archives began to be used by Greek-speaking scholars and vice versa. Especially the
political developments and their extensive repercussions concerning the two countries
were interpreted through a wider range of sources and analyzed in broader
contexts. Roughly two decades before the second centennial anniversary of the
8Evren Dayar, “19. Yüzyıl Antalya’sında Mora Göçmeni Bir Aile: Moraviler”, Toplumsal Tarih, 292, April
2018; Dayar, “Antalya’da Devlet ve Esraf Iliskileri (1839-1908)”, Unpublished PhD dissertation, ( Akdeniz
Üniversitesi, 2016).
9Especially the cataloguing of the rich archives composing of written and oral sources have been impactful
on the diversification of research on the migration from Asia Minor to Greece. See H 'Exodoc, tìmoc A'.
MarturÐec apì tic eparqÐec twn Dutik¸n Parali¸n thc MikrasÐac [I Exodos, tomos A. Martyries apo tis
eparchies ton Dytikon tis Mikrasias], (Athens, 2016); For applications of similar approaches see Evangelia
Balta, The Exchange of Populations: Historiography and Refugee Memory, (Istanbul: Istos Yayınları,
2016); Renee Hirschon (ed), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange
Between Greece and Turkey, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003).
10Ibid.
5
Greek War of Independence, the interest in reviewing the war as a multifaceted
phenomenon that resulted not only in the birth of a modern Greek state but also
that of a modern Turkish state has begun to increase steadily. By historians such as
Yusuf Hakan Erdem, Marinos Sariyannis, Sophia Laiou and Sükrü Ilıcak, the war
is now being observed as a mediating agent, as the bearer of radical transformative
agendas which would affect the conceptual and practical minds of the Ottoman elite,
leading them to create new institutions and terms, and negotiate the transition from
subjecthood to citizenship.11 The conceptual and pragmatic shifts that were caused
by the emancipation of Greece as the condition subsequent of the old Ottoman order
are now being examined politically, militarily, and intellectually.12 In fact, according
to Erdem, the Greco-Ottoman War could have been the incentive for the Ottomans
to style their own empire as Turkey or Türkistan.13 This hypothesis opens up further
fields of inquiry for the historian, especially regarding the understudied topic
of Moreot migrants and the concepts of nation, individual and collective identity.
1.3 Research Questions
The Greek War of Independence, in the words of Sükrü Ilıcak, “necessitated a radical
rethinking of the [Ottoman] Empire.”14 Other historians also offer terms like
“reinvention of the empire” or “self-reinvention” to describe the change the empire
was going through.15 As a group that was immediately impacted by this “event”,
where did the Moreot migration and migrants stand in this process? More broadly,
the world was on the threshold of a change at this time. National states were
11Yusuf Hakan Erdem, “’Do not think of the Greeks as agricultural labourers’: Ottoman responses to the
Greek war of independence", Citizenship and The Nation-State in Greece and Turkey, Birtek, Faruk and
Dragonas, Thalia (eds.), (London: Routledge, November 2005), 67-84.
12One could cite the The Greek Revolution of 1821: A European Event, ed. Petros Pizanias, (Istanbul:
Isis Press, 2011); Citizenship and The Nation-State in Greece and Turkey, eds. Faruk Birtek and Thalia
Dragonas, (London: Routledge, November 2005); Ottoman Rule and the Balkans, 1760-1850: Conflict,
Transformation, Adaptation: Proceedings of An International Conference Held in Rethymno, Greece, 13-
14 December 2003, eds. Elias Kolovos and Antonis Anastasopoulos, (Rethymno: University of Crete,
Department of History and Archaeology 2007); Sükrü Ilıcak, “A Radical Rethinking of Empire: Ottoman
State and Society during the Greek War of Independence (1821-1826),” Unpublished PhD dissertation,
(Harvard University, 2011).
13Yusuf Hakan Erdem, "The Greek revolt and the end of the old Ottoman order", The Greek Revolution of
1821: A European Event, ed. Petros Pizanias, (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2011).
14Two main components of the transformation were the disbandment of Janissary Corps and the Deayanization
Project. Sükrü Ilıcak, “A Radical Rethinking of Empire: Ottoman State and Society during the Greek
War of Independence (1821-1826),” Unpublished PhD dissertation, (Harvard University, 2011), 2.
15Mostafa Minawi, The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz,
(Stanford University Press, 2016), xiv, 92, 145.
6
emerging, modern concepts of administration, bureaucracy and modern institutionalization
were becoming issues that affected all industries, and the socio-political,
economic and intellectual life of even the civilian population in the Ottoman Empire
was moved by this process. As the Greek War would further instigate and pour
on the speed of the process of modernization of the Empire, old systems would be
reconsidered.
This thesis aims to follow the story of change by focusing on the Moreots as they
moved from Greece to Anatolia in the first half of the nineteenth century. Their
movement can be situated between the old and new systems of governance. While
they were expelled from the lands they were born in due to earliest examples of
nationalism in the Ottoman lands, their migration was conducted with traditional
modes of organization and transportation. Therefore, the contextualization of the
Moreot migration in the broader transformation of the Aegean region is one of the
key aspects of this research.
The formation of the Moreot identity is yet another aspect under scrutiny in this
thesis. What could be the motivations and elements that led the Moreots to preserve
their connection with the peninsula, even if it remained as an epithet only, and how
did they negotiate for it with the state? If they were using more regional or local
identifications before, how did it evolve into the more general, common denomination
of “Moreots”? The distinctive characteristics of the Moreots in the prewar era and
their continuation or discontinuation are discussed in the context of identity-making.
The economic opportunities that are presented as a result of the aforementioned
reform agenda, especially with regards to the deayanization project, are taken up by
the Moreots in the second half of the nineteenth century. These opportunities and
the ways in which the Moreots made themselves available actors to the state service
in the places they settled constitutes a major point of discussion in this thesis, as
it moves the migrants away from their “victim” status and highlights their active
agency.
1.4 Overview of the Chapters
Although violence has been sporadically inflicted upon Muslim folk ever since the
news of a revolution attempt in the Danubian Principalities reached Morea in 1821,
the Moreot Muslims and Christians were not always on two sides of a war. In fact, in
7
some parts of the peninsula, they were connected with familial ties. The first chapter
examines the demographic spread of the Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Morea
and characteristics of the Moreot Muslims such as the language they spoke, their
occupations and the nature of their relations with their Christian neighbors in the
pre-war era. A town in the southern coast, Methoni, is selected as a case study
where the investigation zooms into the inhabitants and life of the town.
The chapter further investigates the causes and possible motivations of the migration
are made within the context of the War of Independence. The relocation of Muslims
to Anatolia had not been planned initially by them nor by the Ottoman central
administration. In fact, the Moreot Muslims’ first instinct against the peaking
violence was to seek protection in a fortified town.16 Inland and coastal towns
throughout the Morea fell to the hands of the Greeks in the span of almost a decade.
The inhabitants of these towns were either slain or expelled from their homes. This
thesis specifically focuses on the Moreot Muslims from coastal towns such as Methoni
(Ott. Modon), Koroni (Ott. Koron), Monemvasia (Ott. Benefse) and Nafplio (Ott.
Anabolu) who benefited from their towns’ geographic position and took the sea
route to reach Anatolia.
The second chapter is concerned with the journey and the arrival. The organization
and logistics of mobility in the context of migration and technology are assessed.
The surviving eyewitness accounts and reports are presented with regards to the
journey and its perils, such as disease, piracy, and famine. Next, the organization
of settlement is examined. Following their arrival, Moreot migrants were tended
to mostly by the local administrators in the southwestern coasts of Anatolia who
corresponded with the Ottoman central government. Other actors and processes
of the settlement are examined in this chapter alongside the initial reaction of the
local and central governments. Finally, practices regarding the inner relocation of
the Moreots and forms of control exerted by the central government are presented.
The third chapter focuses on the Moreot settlements in Anatolia. The life they built
around themselves is examined through its materialization in the form of neighborhoods,
occupations and relations they developed with the Rum and the state. The
Moreots who were settled in the town of Antalya are presented as a case study
whereby the prior remarks about identity and heritage are scrutinized. Moreover,
the persistence of the epithet Moreot is investigated within the context of a possible
Moreot heritage, a patronymic that was passed from father to son. Lastly, the
16The initial lack of zeal to fight off the enemy (insurgent Greeks) shown by the Muslims of Morea and
Thessaly and the indifference of the officers in field as well as at the Capital caused a great distress for
Mahmud II. Sükrü Ilıcak, “A Radical Rethinking of Empire: Ottoman State and Society during the Greek
War of Independence (1821-1826),” Unpublished PhD dissertation, (Harvard University, 2011).
8
relations with the state and how several prominent Moreots played a role in the
changing dynamics throughout the second half of the nineteenth century in Antalya
is observed.
1.5 Sources
Ever since the Greek Kingdom rose as a sovereign state by separating itself from
the Ottoman Empire, chroniclers and historians both from the Ottoman and Greek
sides have been compiling a considerable amount of data regarding the conditions
of the war and the positions of the parties. It should be acknowledged that in
most of these narratives, whether Ottoman, Turkish, or European, the plight of
the Muslims who had been killed, taken prisoner, or forced to evacuate their lands
and possessions have been expressed to some extent.17On the Greek side, the story
proceeded as a European event,18 and the Muslim experience was mostly excluded
from the narratives or presented as a necessary consequence of war.19
In terms of primary sources, a variety of archival and non-archival sources were
employed in order to present a comprehensive of image of the life Moreots maintained
on the pre-war peninsula and in post-war Anatolia. Accounts of travelers
and historians such as George Finlay, Thomas Gordon, William Martin Leake and
William Gell were used intensively in describing the characteristics of the subject
group, their relations with the non-Muslim communities on the peninsula and their
socio-economic standings.
Eyewitness accounts of the Ottomans, as rare as they are, were found and presented
17The narration of the events, including the evacuations, during the Greek Revolt could be found in Ahmed
Lütfi Efendi, Vak’a-Nüvis Ahmed Lütfi Efendi Tarihi, v.2-3, transcr. ed. M. Münir Aktepe, (Ankara: Türk
Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1989); Ahmet Cevdet Pasa, Tarih-i Cevdet vol.11-12. (Dersaadet: Matbaa-i Osmaniye,
1309); Ahmedpasazâde Mir Yusuf, Mora Vak’asına Dair Ba’zı Malumât, Fatih Millet Kütüphanesi,
Ali Emiri, TY, nr. 564; Theodoros Kolokotronis, The Klepht and the Warrior; Sixty Years of Peril and
Daring, An Autobiography, trans. Elizabeth Edmonds, (London: T. Fisher Unwin.); George Finlay, History
of the Greek Revolution, (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1832); Finlay, A History of Greece
from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time B.C.14 to A.D. 1864, (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1877); John L. Comstock, A History of the Greek Revolution, (New York: Willliam W. Reed & Co., 1828);
Sofia Laïou and Marinos Sariyannis, Othomanikes Afigiseis Gia Tin Elliniki Epanastasi: Apo ton Giousouf
Bei ston Achmet Tzevntet Pasa [Ottoman Narratives of the Greek Revolution from Yusuf Bey to Ahmed
Cevdet Pasa], (Aj na: Institouto Istorikwn Ereunwn Ejniko Idruma Ereunwn, 2019.)
18Petros Pizanias, “From Reaya to Greek Citizen, Enlightenment and Revolution, 1750-1832”, in The Greek
Revolution of 1821: A European Event, (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2011), 11-84.
19Theodoros Kolokotronis, The Klepht and the Warrior; Sixty Years of Peril and Daring, An Autobiography,
trans. Elizabeth Edmonds, (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1891), 156-158; George Finlay, History of the Greek
Revolution, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
9
as a direct look into the circumstances of the Moreots during the war in the Morea.
Among them Mir Yusuf Bey’s narrative of the war and migration was particularly
significant in conveying the more personal details of the displacement. In addition,
documents from the Ottoman state archives (Basbakanlık Osmanlı Arsivleri) constituted
yet another pillar, especially with regards to the processes of migration and
how the settlement of the people was organized. In this context, correspondence of
the Ottoman local and central administrations was vital in understanding the scale
of the movement and the actors that were concerned with it.
Even though newspapers had just begun to make an appearance in the Ottoman
territories, the international press was fairly interested in the events that transpired
in the Aegean. In addition to papers such as Le Moniteur Universel of France and
London Times of Britain, local newspapers like Courrier de Smyrne by the Levantine
lawyer-journalist Alexandre Blacque of Izmir were also immersed in reporting the
details of the combat and actions taken by the involved parties. Although the news
from Greece often made it to the frontpage, the Moreot migrants found very little
space in this large agenda of the press. International journalism gravitated towards
highlighting the heroes and were less keen on relaying the migration of the Moreots
towards Anatolia. Nevertheless, they were notably helpful in providing an insight
into the atmosphere within which the migration took place, as well as some of the
actors who were involved in the lives of the Moreot migrants.
Lastly, alongside travelers’ impressions and newspapers, the court registers, otherwise
known as sijils, contain a wealth of information regarding the circumstances of
the Moreots after they settled in and took root in the Anatolian cities and towns.
The secondary literature that contains the transliterations of these registers in Antalya
were useful in detecting the socioeconomic conditions of the Moreots in the
second half of the nineteenth century. Stipend requests and travel permits from
the Ottoman state archives were helpful in tracing the Moreot presence in Western
Anatolia and the way they self-identified and were identified by the state.
10
2. A GENERAL VIEW OF THE MOREA BEFORE THE WAR
AND ON THE EVE OF THE EXODUS
With revolution, there came massacres. It was one of the realities of the struggle
for the independence of a nation. The outbreak of the revolt in the Morea, or
Peloponnese, in early 1821 had major consequences for the entire population of the
peninsula. Many townsfolk, especially those on the coasts, witnessed the violence of
the war and suffered through plunder, death, and relocation. There was not enough
space for large non-Greek groups to live in a Hellenic nation-state. The political
ideology that was in place when independence was gained from the Ottomans was
not permissive in the first place for the celebration of multicultural society and
ethno-religious diversity.
In the case of Greece, communities were divided according to affiliation with the
Ottomans or Greeks and their allies.1 Smaller groups such as Jews were caught in
between the Muslims and Christians and ultimately subjected to the same persecution
as the Muslims in most places.2 While it is attested by a commander of Greek
armies, General Makriyannis,3 that the klephtic force took its toll on the lay Greeks
too, it was not as severe or extensive as that against the Muslims or Jews.4 In
some of the towns, the Muslims and Jews were subjected to mass killings whereas
in others, after surrendering the citadels where they had taken refuge, they were
released on the condition that they would leave the peninsula.
There are numerous eyewitness accounts that shed light on the ways in which Muslim
inhabitants lived in the pre-war era and how they were treated after the fall of
the fortresses. The war and its toll on the local people found wide coverage in the
newspapers of the era as well. The Moreots and their relocation out of the peninsula
1George Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1832), 177.
2Katherine E. Flemming, Greece: A Jewish History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 15.
3Ioannes Makriyannis, The Memoirs of General Makriyannis, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966),
30-57.
4John L. Comstock, History of the Greek Revolution, 214.
11
were occasionally mentioned in these short reports. Apart from some of the larger
inland towns, such works usually provided information regarding the coastal populations,
for reasons ranging from their recognition as hubs of transregional trade to
antiquarian tourism.
The abundance of the sources about coastal towns such as Nafplio, Monemvasia,
Methoni and Koroni helped specify the inhabiting Moreot Muslims as those who
relocated to Anatolia by sea route and it facilitated the process of tracing mobility
and settlement. This feature of the towns made their inhabitants the main group of
interest for this thesis. The common characteristic of these towns was their direct
access to the sea, which proved to be a disadvantage as well as a blessing. On
the one hand, the coastal towns were exposed to threats that came from the sea,
which was the forte of many Greek islands that participated in the war against the
Ottomans such as Hydra (Çamlıca) and Spetzes (Suluca). At the same time, the
opening provided the Muslims a way to run from the threat of persecution and even,
in certain places, extermination and relocate to Anatolia.
The long-standing effects of the trauma of war, persecution, and migration impacted
the narration of the story of Muslim presence on the peninsula, often leading to
teleological descriptions as though the Muslims and Greeks were always two opposing
forces in Moreot society. However, they were not always in conflict and they were
part of a larger regional culture that was separated not by language or daily practices,
but mainly religion and political affiliation. Not only data should be presented to
gauge the motives of the Moreot Muslim expulsion; instead, the characteristics of
the inhabitants and the ways in which they maintained their lives before the war
should also hold vital space in presenting a comprehensive view of Moreot life in
the post-war period. Therefore, this chapter is principally concerned with issues
related to the Muslim Moreot population, examining their occupations, networks,
and relations with non-Muslim groups in the places they resided.
2.1 Population and Society
Numbers with regard to the demographic spread of the total population and the
Muslims in the Morea vary according to each account. In 1805, William Martin
Leake, a British diplomat and antiquarian, reckoned the total population of the
12
Morea to be 320,000, less than a quarter of which was constituted of Muslims.5 On
the other hand, historian George Finlay, in his account of the Greek War of Independence,
estimates the Muslim inhabitants of the Morea to have been approximately
twenty thousand in April 1821.6 The population was quite dispersed on the peninsula
and it is likely that Finlay is referring to the heartland of the Morea, Arcadia,
when giving these numbers, for he later states that 15,000 Muslims lived in Laconia
alone, which does not add up to the number Leake gives.7
In a more systematic research, namely that of Emile Kolodny’s La Population des îles
de la Grèce : essai de géographie insulaire en Mediterranée orientale, the number of
inhabitants of Greece appear to be just short of a million in 1821. Seven years later,
towards the end of the war, a census took place, registering inhabitants according to
their confessions.8 Here, the population of Greece is registered as 753,000, suggesting
of a decimation around two hundred thousand. Although it still remains at a level
of estimation, these numbers confirm that the Christians comprised the majority in
most of the peninsula. Jews, on the other hand, were a minority of the population
in most settlements. They are mentioned less frequently in chronicles or travelogues
when compared to the Christians or Muslims of Morea.
While some of the towns were hubs of Muslim settlements, in others there lived
less than a dozen families. For instance, in the administrative capital of the eyalet,
Tripolitsa (Ott. Tripoliçe/Trapoliçe), approximately two and a half thousand Muslims
resided9 , whereas in smaller, fortified towns such as Monemvasia, the number
was less than a thousand.10 Coastal towns such as Methoni, Koroni, Nafplio and
Monemvasia were the origins of most of the Moreots in Western Anatolia. They
were small to medium in terms of the size of the territories; however, the fortified
section constituted a major part of all of the towns. For instance, Leake estimates
the number of Muslims in Methoni to be four hundred in 1805, and apparently they
lived in moderate conditions although they were quite active in the slave trade network
between North Africa and Europe.11 In Koroni, the Muslim population was
5William Martin Leake, Travels in the Morea, vol.1 (London, 1830), 87.
6George Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, vol.1, (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1861),
172.
7Ibid, 186.
8Emile Kolodny, La Population des îles de la Grèce : essai de géographie insulaire en Mediterranée orientale,
(Aix-en-Provence :Édisud, 1974), v.2, 765-767.
9William Martin Leake, Travels in the Morea, vol.1, 87.
10Machiel Kiel, “Benefse” TDV Islam Ansiklopedisi, vol.5, (Istanbul, 1992), 434-436.
11Leake, Travels, 431
13
half of that of Methoni, and most of them resided in the castle and were engaged in
agriculture.12
Figure 2.1 Map of the Morea
Source: William Martin Leake, Peloponnesiaca: a Supplement to Travels in the Morea, (London, J. Rodwell, 1846).
Additional labels are mine.
If ever a generalization were to be made regarding the life of the Moreot Muslims in
these towns, it would contain two main features: an occupation related largely to
agriculture, as well as craftsmanship and trade, and speaking the Greek language as
their native tongue. The history of these characteristics goes back to an early date.
One of the earliest accounts about the Moreot Muslims belongs to the famous traveler
of the seventeenth century, Evliya Çelebi. In his travelogue of the Morea, dated
1669, he writes about large numbers of Muslim Moreots living mostly in castles
where they would have a section that was completely distinct from the neighborhoods
of the Christians.13 According to Çelebi, they were engaged in agricultural
production, as well as artisanry and craftsmanship, took Christian wives, and spoke
Greek.14 Often, it is a difficult and, at times, inessential task to abridge centuries
of historical data when describing a nineteenth-century community. However, the
endurance of some of the features over so many years does shed some light on how
12Leake, Travels, 436.
13Evliya Çelebi, Günümüz Türkçesiyle Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, 8, vol.1, ed. Seyit Ali Kahraman,
(Istanbul: YKY, 2017), 261-307.
14Ibid, 266.
14
the Moreot Muslim communities were in the nineteenth century.
While some of the Moreots resided in the town citadels, others, especially the ones
that were engaged in agricultural production, lived outside the walls dispersed in
throughout the country.15 Olive oil, mulberry, fig, cotton, corn, and small amounts
of silk were among the range of goods cultivated by the Muslim peasantry. In most
areas, there existed at least several Muslim landholders whom Finlay claimed had a
“virtual monopoly over the market.” Those who resided in the citadels had yeomen
who handled and tended to the fields owned by the rich in the country. The tax
collectors and landholders of the port towns were in a more advantageous position to
raise their prices for small quantities of goods due to the appeal of finding adequate
means of transport for the merchants.16
Despite all the affluence and prosperity that is often associated with the Muslims
who were inherently affiliated with the ruling power, both Leake and Gell remark
that they were just as miserable and poor as the Christians in most towns. 17 The
beys from each community who resided in their own towers and mansions across the
country also support the claim that poverty did not differentiate between religions
and was universal on the peninsula.
Leake and Finlay attest that the relations between different ethnic and religious
communities were balanced and full of variations. Clearly, the instability of the
region prior to the Independence War indicate that several groups aligned with various
forces at the time. However, Finlay claims that some facts remained constant
throughout the Ottoman domination of the peninsula. All Muslims (Turks or Albanians)
were considered affiliates of the ruling (and tax collecting) class. Muslim
Albanians were imitating the Turks by dressing up the way they did and also taking
on jobs such as collecting the haraç (poll tax) from the Greeks.18 Despite this traditional
affiliation and alliance, for Finlay, the Turks were left to fend for themselves
when the war broke out since the Muslim Albanians were often prone to form better
relationships with their Christian kin, compared to those the Christians had with
the Turks.19
15George Finlay, The History of Greece under Othoman and Venetian Domination, (Edinburgh: Blackwood,
1856), 149, 172, 325.
16Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, 30
17Leake, Travels, 430-435; Gell, Narrative of a Journey in the Morea, 42-45, 117.
18Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, 180.
19This left the Albanians in a precarious position before the Sultan and the Ottoman administration during
the upcoming years. The shaky relationship between the Muslims and Albanians led Ahmet Cevdet
Pasa, the renowned intellectual and court historian, to speak nonchalantly of the murder of Albanians in
Tripolitsa, implying that they deserved this reckoning for committing treason against their co-religionists.
Of course, Ali Pasa of Janina’s influence cannot be disregarded when discussing the relations between
15
Almost all travelers, from Çelebi to Finlay, talk about the segregated town plans
in which each millet inhabited separate neighborhoods. This isolated scenery has
been much discussed in the scholarship and found not truly reflective of the way
Muslims and Christians lived in reality.20 The communities were still very much
influenced by one another. Leake makes remarks on the use of Turkified family
names like Papasoglu and Barboglu by the Greeks, in order to imitate the ruling
elites in centers such as Tripolitsa.21 Interfaith marriage was not forbidden and was
practiced especially in the large cities where the Greeks and Turks lived in relative
indifference. As a common practice in various parts of the Ottoman Empire and
other Islamic societies, the Muslims never gave their daughters to Christian males,
though they frequently married Christian females.22
Almost all Moreots spoke the same language: Greek. Different claims are made
regarding the distinctive features of the resident communities; however, this claim
regarding language is attested by almost all sources that concern the populations of
the Morea.23 In fact, at times this particular feature created awkward situations between
Turkish-speaking Muslims from Anatolia and Moreots. For instance, Kabudlu
Mustafa Vasfi, a deli soldier (an irregular horseman) who fought in the Morea as
part of Ottoman irregular troops during the Greek War of Independence, gives an
account of his encounter with a group of Greek-speaking women in his memoir as
follows:
“. . . bu çiftlige giderken evler arasında delibasının soytarısına rast gelüp
bunun ile beraber giderken evler içinde büyük konak var idi. Mezkur
arkadasım bendenize eyitdi, “Ey birader, bu konak büyük bir konakdır.
Gel bu konagın içerüsine bakalım ne vardır,” deyü cevap edüp ve bendeniz
münasip görüp atlardan asagı inüp mezkur konagın kapusını açup
these two groups. For further information on this topic, see Hakan Erdem, "Perfidious Albanians and
Zealous Governors: Ottomans, Albanians and Turks in the Greek War of Independence", Ottoman Rule
and the Balkans, 1760-185: Conflict, Transformation, Adaptation, eds. Antonis Anastasopoulos and Elias
Kolovos, (Rethymno: University of Crete, Department of History and Archaeology, 2007), 213-240.
20See for instance, Najwa al-Qattan, "Litigants and Neighbors: The Communal Topography of Ottoman
Damascus," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44 (2002), 511-533.
21Leake, Travels, 87.
22Evliya Çelebi, reports from Patras (Ballıbadra/Balyabadra) that non-Muslims were prohibited from residing
in or even entering some of the sections of the citadel where the Muslims lived. He includes that only
women of Christian faith who were married to Muslim men were authorized to settle in these parts and
they were large in number. Intermarriage, therefore, was a common phenomenon between the Moreots,
regardless of their faith. Finlay also confirms this claim in the nineteenth century, although his primary
focus is the Christian Moreots. Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, 260-267. On marriage of different faiths, see,
Madeline Zilfi, Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era, The
Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage: Politics, Society and Economy, (Leiden: Brill, 1997.)
23Ibid, 266; Charles Texier, Principal Ruins of Asia Minor, (London, 1865), 11; Koçyigit, Tevarih, 163.
16
bakdık. Konak içünde bir otuz karı ve on bes kadar siyah cariye. . .
Bunları kafir karıları zannedüp bunları alıp tasra çıkdık. Bunlara eyitdik,
“Sizler Müslümansız yoksa kafirsiz?” deyü sual etdik. Bunlar Türkçe
bilmeyüp hemen eyidirler “La ilahe illallah!” deyüp, Rumca degisir sey
derler. Biz bunların dilinden bilmeyüp bunları vilayet içüne götürdük.
Bir Rumca bilen adam bulup unlardan haber aldık. Bunlar Müslüman
karıları imis. Erkeklerini kesüp bunları bu konak içüne koyup ates verüp
yandıracaklar imis. Bizler ol gece ova içüne erisince kafirler bunları
bıragup firar etmisler idi. Sonra biz bu karıları bırakub. . . ”24
The Greek language was a distinctive enough feature of the Moreot Muslims to
make it into the memoir of an irregular soldier from Central Anatolia. In Koçyigit’s
transliteration, Kabudlu describes the language spoken by the women as “Rumca
degisir sey” (a type of Greek dialect). The same line was transliterated by Jan
Schmidt as “Rumca deñiseriz”, which he then translated to English as “Can’t we
change to Greek?”25 Rather than Schmidt’s implication that the women felt more
comfortable speaking Greek, it is more likely that Kabudlu did not understand the
language of the women as they did not speak Turkish. Nevertheless, had those
women not uttered the universal confirmation of their Islamic faith, in Arabic,
Kabudlu Mustafa Vasfi and his friends would fail to decipher their identity and
they would most probably be sold as slaves.
It comes as no surprise that only the administrative elite and the intermediaries
between them and the townsfolk spoke Turkish. The civilian population of the
Morea were considerably distant, in every way, from the next place in which Turkish
was the mother tongue to all inhabitants of the region. As languages would play
an instrumental role in the formation and reification of national identities, Greekspeaking
Muslims from the Morea would contribute to the diversification of the
emergent Ottoman identity. This would later play a significant role in the formation
of their life and relations in Western Anatolia, where even the Greeks spoke Turkish,
following their relocation and settlement.26
24Ömer Koçyigit, Kabudlu Mustafa Efendi: Tevarih (Analysis-Text-Maps-Index-Facsimile), (Harvard University:
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 2016), 163-164.
25Jan Schmidt, Joys of Philology, (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2002), 259.
26For further comments regarding the distinctions between the Greeks and Turks in terms of language and
religion, see Marshall Hodgson, Venture of Islam, v.3, (University of Chicago Press, 1974), 249, 262.
17
2.1.1 A Detailed Description: The Muslims of Methoni
Methoni represents one of the well-known towns in the Morea for which there is
information regarding the lives of the Muslims from various economic classes in
both the pre-war and post-war era. Since the Muslim migrants from Methoni in
Western Anatolia will be one of the focal points of the third chapter, their situation
on the peninsula and how they fared before the outbreak of the war will be discussed
in a more detailed manner here. Many travelers stopped by this fortress-town that
was valuable for all powers in the past that wanted to control the peninsula and
recorded their impressions. Especially William Martin Leake and William Gell, an
English archeologist and illustrator who traveled to the peninsula in the years 1804-
1806, wrote detailed descriptions of the town and its inhabitants, following in the
footsteps of Pausanias.
Economic standing varied for all populations of the Morea, and there were a few
wealthy beys in almost every town throughout the peninsula. According to Gell,
in terms of housing, apart from the unnamed bey of the castle who resided in a
mansion surrounded with gardens, both the rich and the poor suffered from the
same shabbiness. Gell humorously remarks that the houses of the mundane rich are
distinguished from those of poor not by the display of large columns or priceless
marbles but by cushions and carpets.27 These few affluent Muslim beys of the
area offered coffee in Dresden china and entertained guests in their well-kept flower
gardens and orchards. Their sons, even at very young ages at home grounds, bore
arms and sabers of splendid quality.
Despite the unfavorable conditions in which most Moreots, both Muslims and Christians,
were living, they still had staple household items that were considered relatively
fancy by the travelers from Europe. For instance, while describing the poverty
of the Muslims in Methoni, Gell remarks on the frequent use of smoking pipes made
from cherrywood or jessamine wood with amber mouthpieces. The reason for the use
of amber was due to the common belief among the Muslims that it was incapable of
carrying and transmitting any disease, particularly the plague.28 Gell comes to the
conclusion that the lack of care for building sturdy housing was due to the climate
that was arid and required light constructions that would function not so differently
than the shadow of a tree to rest under.
Leake and Gell comment on two significant points regarding the characteristics of the
27William Gell, Narrative of a Journey in the Morea, (London, 1823), 45.
28Ibid, 43.
18
Muslims of Methoni. The Muslims of this town were active in many sectors, ranging
from olive oil and silk production to slave traffic. As mentioned earlier, the town was
a particularly important point in the trade between Africa, Greece, and Europe. The
Muslim traders were conducting business with Tunisia, playing a role in the transfer
of African slaves into and throughout Greece and on to Europe.29 Moreover, some
of the beys were able to speak Arabic, a dialect spoken by the Maltese, in addition
to Greek, as pointed out by Gell.30 Despite the profound changes that would take
place in a short while in the lives of the Muslim Moreots of Methoni, some of these
characteristics and businesses would endure and determine their experiences in their
new habitation.
2.2 War, Famine and the Threat of Extermination
In less than twenty years after Leake and Gell’s visits, the affairs in the Morea
came to a point of rupture. By mid-March in 1821, news from Alexander Ypsilantis’
campaign in the Danubian Principalities had already traveled down to the peninsula
and was responsible of the general apprehension felt by the inhabitants.31 Both
the Christians and the Muslims, making up the non-military lay population, were
sensing that a great social upheaval was about to unleash and were avoiding any
acts that would hasten the eruption.32 Finlay remarks that the Greeks and the
Muslims, likely referring to the ordinary groups of common folk, were unwarlike
and especially the latter was too scattered on the peninsula to organize groups that
would constitute a threat.
The end of March marked the beginning of a series of events that would change the
geography and population of the Moreot forever. Between the 29 of March and 1
of April, several Muslim Moreot families that lived in the unfortified villages in the
countryside packed up their moveable belongings and loaded them into large houses
which were thought to be capable of defense.33 April 2, 1821 marked the dissemination
of violence throughout the peninsula. According to Finlay, many Muslim
29Leake, 483.
30Gell, 43.
31Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, 172.
32Ibid.
33Ibid, 181.
19
Moreots were killed that day in various places and the communication between each
settlement was cut off permanently. The Muslims of Kalavryta were slain before
they could seek refuge in one of the fortresses in the north. The local Muslim beys
tried to protect the community; however, they failed.34
This was the first group of people that were pushed out of their homes with the terror
of the “long-talked-insurrection of the Greeks”. 35 Those who survived the first
week of the outbreak of the war took refuge in the fortresses on the shores that were
renovated by the Ottoman officials when the rumors of a possible sedition began to
surface in late 1820.36 Laconian Muslims fled to Monemvasia and Tripolitsa, whereas
those on the north sought protection in Patras. The Arcadian Muslims requested
to take refuge in the castle of Tripolitsa as well, which caused a large crowd to
be crammed in there with inadequate means of provision. According to Finlay,
throughout the year, the Muslim population was under the threat of extermination
from the peninsula by means of mass killings, exiles, and the denial of protection and
provision to maintain life.37 Finlay cites the diminutive number of the Muslims as
one reason to wipe the (Turco-) Muslim presence from the peninsula, which would
go on to serve as the first sovereign territory of the Greek Kingdom.38 On the
other hand, the possibility of there being a reinforcement of Muslims sent by the
Ottoman central government is conspicuous as a matter of anxiety for the Greeks
in the historical narratives.
The town of Tripolitsa and its people hold a crucial place in the story of the Moreots.
Although it was the administrative capital of the whole eyalet, its landlocked status
caused one of the most serious cases of violence throughout the war to take
place there. Towards the end of the year of 1821, in September, the fortress of
Tripolitsa, brimful with refugees from nearby towns such as Vardounia, was in dire
condition. Lack of drinkable water and food had already become an insupportable
issue. Resisting the siege since April, the commanders of the town and citadel had
to surrender at the end of September.39 Afterwards, a three-day-long plunder of the
town began. The number of deaths varies according to different records; however,
34Ibid.
35Ibid.
36Ibid, 172.
37Ibid, 149, 187-189.
38Ibid.
39Cevdet Pasa and his source Yusuf Bey of Nafplio emphasize the betrayal of Albanians in the capture of
Tripolitsa by the “infidels”. Ahmed Cevdet Pasa, Tarih-i Cevdet, vol.11, (Dersaadet: Matbaa-i Osmaniye,
1309).
20
the severity of the event is noted even by Theodoros Kolokotronis, the commander
of the forces that committed mass killings of Jews and Muslims.40 Apart from the
immediate families of some of the elites and the Pasas who were saved for ransom,
no one survived.
In 1822, all the fortresses around the Morea were besieged. The rumors of an
impending Greek rebellion had been confirmed and those who had acted early and
left for the protection of fortified towns were still alive, albeit in dire conditions. The
provisions had been diminishing rapidly and even a quick glance at the Ottoman
archival documents in 1821-1822 will reveal that the matter of feeding people and the
army was one of the most urgent issues facing the Ottoman government.41 Koroni,
Patras, Nafplio, Navarin, and Methoni were the fortresses that were still held by the
Muslims.42 They were occasionally able to obtain provisions from foreign merchants
due to their positions by the sea. Monemvasia had already been surrendered to the
Greeks in August, due to the unsolvable problem of famine and disease among the
besieged people.
Nafplio had been under the siege of the Greek-aligned forces since April 1821 too.
The Greeks maintained possession of the small forts nearby Nafplio, while the Ottoman
army seized Argos, a large town nearby. AhmedPasazade Mir Yusuf Bey, a
native of Nafplio and son of the former governor general of the Morea, Ahmed Pasa
of the Morea recorded the events of the siege in a chronicle which he named History
of the Morea. 43 Yusuf Bey was a member of the elite class and the receiver of the
honorary title of the chief musketeer (silahsor-i hassa), who in practice acted as a
tax collector. Up until the surrender in December 1822, he was confined in the Castle
of Nafplio, and one of those who negotiated the surrender with the Greek forces.
His eyewitness status makes him one of the immediate sources from which official
chroniclers such as Esad Efendi and Ahmed Cevdet Pasa derived their information
on the Greek War.44
40Theodoros Kolokotronis, The Klepht and the Warrior; Sixty Years of Peril and Daring, An Autobiography,
trans. Elizabeth Edmonds, (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1891), 311.
41See for example AhmedPasazade Yusuf Bey’s (identified as Yusuf Aga in the document) testament after
he arrives in Anatolia states that castles such as Monemvasia, Navarino and Tripolitsa fell due to lack of
edible food and drinkable water. BOA, C..HR.., 19-926.
42Finlay, History of Greek Revolution, 204.
43Ahmet Aydın, “Mir Yusuf Tarihi: Metin ve Tahlil”, Unpublished MA Thesis, (Istanbul, Marmara University,
2002), 3-21.
44John Alexander, “Yusuf Bey al-Moravi on the Siege and Capture of Tripolitsa in 1821” in Mneme Penelopes
Stathe: Meletes historias kai philologias [Memory of Penelope Stathe: Studies of History and Philology],
eds. Kostas Lappas, Antonis Anastasopoulos, Elias Kolovos, (Research Center for Medieval and Modern
Hellenism of the Academy of Athens & Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Crete University Press, 2010),
142.
21
The lack of provisions and drinkable water in the castle had been putting pressure on
the inhabitants and the refugees in the castle since June 1821, which was when the
earliest negotiations with the Greek insurgents were initiated. According to Thomas
Gordon, the siege of the castles and forcing the Ottomans to yield through famine
was the only choice.45 Developments such as the troops under the command of
Dramali Mahmud Pasa approaching Nafplio had raised some hope for the besieged
population, leading the talks to cease. 46 However, the Greeks and their allies had
been able to blockade the fortress’s outlet to the sea, thereby thwarting the central
Ottoman government’s attempts to send provisions.
A similar story had occurred in Monemvasia, although the castle surrendered in
August 1821, months before Tripolitsa. According to a report issued in 1828, there
resided approximately six hundred Muslim Moreot families in Monemvasia in early
1821 in the southeastern part of Laconia that opens up to the Aegean Sea, which is
referred to as “the guardian of the entrance to the western Aegean”.47 While half
of the officers lived within the town fortifications, some of them were also in the
garrison. In fact, it was here in Monemvasia that the first memos regarding the
impending insurgence and mass murders by Greeks were received and immediately
relayed to the officers deployed in Tripolitsa.48 When the refugees from other towns
in Laconia such as Vardounia were taken in, seven hundred Muslims became confined
in the castle along with a few Greek families.49 After months of siege, Muslim
Moreots surrendered the castle due to the lack of food and water. Some of the
Muslim notables in the fortress were on good terms with the commander of the
Greek army who held the siege.50 An agreement took place, and the Muslims were
allowed to board the ships from the island of Spetzes (Suluca) that would carry
them to Kusadası (Scala Nuova).51
Two remarks made by Finlay contradict each other at this point. In the beginning
45Gordon, History of the Greek Revolution, 382.
46Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, 354.
47Haris Kalligas, Monemvasia: A Byzantine City State, (Routledge, 2010), 94.
48Ibid, 95.
49Ibid.
50For Kalligas, leaving the fortress, and the lands they lived upon for years, was the choice of the Muslims.
Therefore, the mobility ensued was an example of migration, a right granted by the victors, rather than
that of expulsion, for, there were those who opted to remain in their spots in the castle. Ambrosios
Frantzis claims that the small number of Muslims resuming their lives in the castle confirms the good
relations of Muslims and Christians in specific regions. See, Ambrosios Frantzis, Epitom´h thc istor´iac thc
anagennhje´ishc Ell´adoc [History of the Greek Rebirth], (Athens, 1976), p. 418-429; Kalligas, Monemvasia,
95.
51Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, v.2, 261.
22
of his account of the populations of the Morea in the pre-war era, both Muslim and
Christian populations were described to be un-warlike. However, when the narrative
proceeded into recounting a full-fledged war between the Ottoman state and the
Greek insurgents, the majority of the inhabitants of the fortresses, all of which
were situated at the waterfront, were claimed to be accustomed to bear arms.52
Armament of some of parts of the Muslim communities must have taken place
during the period of great tension on the eve of the outbreak of the war. If the
population had started to bear arms, then it does make sense that rather than a
deficit in the military power, it was famine and disease that brought them to the
end and forced the surrender of many of the castles, as the report of Yusuf Bey
and others confirm. On the other hand, the situation in Methoni differed from
the others. The central Ottoman government was successful in replenishing the
provisions of the town occasionally. In fact, the town never fell to the Greeks until
the French captured it from Ibrahim Pasa, son of Mehmed Ali Pasa of Egypt and
the commander of the Egyptian navy, in 1828. Despite the capitulation of the castle
in the later stages of the war, Muslims started to evacuate in 1823-1824 and the
mobility continued until 1828.53
2.3 Conclusion
The Muslims and Greeks of the Morea were not always on two opposing sides of a
conflict. In the centuries preceding the war that resulted in the death and expulsion
of many Muslims from 1822 onwards, the Moreot communities had come to possess
similar features. The intermarriages and common language, Greek, presented a
symbiotic relationship between the communities on the peninsula. The situation of
the Muslims living in the inland or in coastal fortresses at the outbreak of the war
shaped their experience of the war and migration. Although most castles fell due to
the lack of provisions, the folks in the castles that had direct access to the sea were
successful in securing their passage to the western shores of Anatolia.
Tripolitsa witnessed massacre due to its status as the base of the Ottoman administration
on the peninsula, and that it was at a far enough distance from the sea that
a passage out of the warzone could not be arranged. On the other hand, the coastal
52Ibid, 173.
53Nedim Ipek, Imparatorluktan Ulus Devlete Göçler, (Ankara: Serander Yayınları, 2016), 20; 94.
23
towns did not witness massacre, for they were less significant in the eyes of the Greek
fighters. As a consequence, it can be presumed that the ordeal of the Moreots of
the war changed according to the significance and place of the castles they took
refuge in, which culminated in the generation of multiple different experiences of
migration.
24
3. ACROSS THE AEGEAN: THE JOURNEY OF THE MOREOTS
AND SETTLEMENT IN ANATOLIA
“[Mehmed Örfi Efendi and others] have requested me to pen down the
insurgence, that sad event that took place in the Morea. However, the
scorching pain of losing the ones that were so dear to the heart was still
so fresh, the grief that they left behind lingered, reminding fate’s cruel
deception. Thus, I begged pardon and requested to be spared until the
aforementioned [Mehmed Örfi] told me: ‘This booklet that you write
shall become an object lesson from which the next generations draw
examples. These trials should not remain only between me and you.
Others should know the truth about the expulsion and estrangement.
If you do not write, the truth will remain forever hidden. . . ’ Upon his
insistence, I dedicated myself to committing everything that transpired
to paper. . . ”1
It is with these thoughts and this motivation that Ahmedpasazade Yusuf Bey begins
his narrative on the history of the Morea during the Greek War and the expulsion of
the Moreot Muslims from the peninsula.2 Much of what is known about the journey
of the Moreots comes either from his account or from George Finlay’s History of
the Greek Revolution.3 There is a scarcity of Ottoman eyewitness accounts of the
incidents in the Morea, and certainly none from the perspective of a Muslim Moreot
who migrated to the Ottoman lands. It was from Yusuf Bey’s narrative, in the
following years, that Cevdet Pasa and Lütfi Efendi benefited highly, taking entire
chapters or large portions and setting them within their own narratives, mingling
them with their own comments. Yusuf Bey’s narrative is rich in recounting the
1Ahmet Aydın, “Mir Yusuf Tarihi: Metin ve Tahlil”, 24. The translation is mine.
2Ibid.
3Ibid; Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, v.2.
25
details of the war and the siege of Nafplio and nearby fortresses; however, he does
not elaborate and provide the same amount of detail regarding the journey across
the Aegean despite being a migrant himself. Nonetheless, Yusuf Bey’s History of
Morea remains unique in conveying the sentiments of an official whose hometown
was lost to the Greeks.
Drawing on these works, this chapter examines the movement of the Moreots across
the Aegean and their arrival and initial settlement in the Ottoman lands. Three
main aspects of the Moreot migration are examined: modes of transportation, accommodation,
and institutional coordination between the central and the local administrations
at the time the Moreots arrived in Western Anatolia. The actors who
were involved in the management of the migrant influx are discussed in reference to
the Ottoman state documentation that emerged out of the conversations between
the local and central governments and the Moreot migrants.
Reiteration of the fact that even an estimation of the number of Moreot Muslims
who left the peninsula is difficult to give is necessary due to the insubstantial value of
statistics and surveillance in the era when the Moreot migration took place. Ahmed
Lütfi Efendi, the successor of Cevdet Pasa as the official chronicler of the Ottoman
Empire in 1866, comments on the unattainability of accurate information about the
details of the fate of the Moreots during the Greek War of Independence. According
to him, the traditional-official setting of the office of the chroniclers at the time of
the Greek War of Independence required only information regarding the damages
inflicted on the infidels and their casualties to be given.4 The Ottoman government
aimed to keep the condition of the Moreot Muslims confidential in order to prevent
the emergence of an atmosphere of terror and possible outrage in the capital city
and in the provinces.
Recording only the damages and casualties of the Greek side might have been an
appropriate custom in the past; however, at the time Lütfi Efendi penned this
chronicle, the international political conjuncture was becoming keen on accuracy
and precision as well as the value of human life.5 This was true especially after the
Crimean War when the Ottoman Empire was admitted into the “European Concert”
and “subjected to the provisions of international law as applied to ‘civilized
nations.’”6 Therefore, for Lütfi, the Ottoman central government should have been
upfront about the losses of the Muslims in the first place to avoid criticism in the fol-
4Ahmed Lütfi Efendi, Tarih-i Lütfi, vol.1, 38-39.
5Roderic Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876, (Princeton, 1963), 79, 414.
6Kemal Karpat, “The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789-1908”, International Journal of Middle
East Studies, Vol. 3, Issue 3, July 1972, 243-281.
26
lowing decades. Still, the attitude of the Ottoman government is not inconceivable.
When word spread about the plight of the Muslims before the Moreots themselves
made it to Anatolia, it caused unrest within the Muslim society who lived in the
capital and Western Anatolia and resulted in the massacres of the Greeks in various
locations.7 While Moreot Muslims were suffering persecution and expulsion, the
Greeks in certain parts of the Ottoman domains were being subjected to the same
treatment. Word of massacres in Istanbul, Izmir and Chios, in contrast to those
in the Morea, were reaching wide audiences and causing an international, that is,
European, outrage towards the Ottoman government. While these particular violent
attacks towards the Greeks were motivated by causes that did not specifically
stem from the misery of the Moreot migrants, in small places like Kusadası, the
Muslims were enraged by the sight of the Moreots once they debarked from the
ships. Although the scale of murders and attacks was not as severe as those that
took place in Istanbul, Izmir, and Chios, the impact of the Moreot migrants over
the tense situation in the small towns is noteworthy.
3.1 Crossing the Aegean: Organization of the Movement, Means of
Transportation and the Perils of the Sea
On December 24, 1822, an agreement was reached between the besieging Greek
forces led by Theodoros Kolokotronis and the group of officers and notables from
the castle of Nafplio.8 The contract envisaged the evacuation of the Muslims in the
castle to the remaining Ottoman lands. Despite the conflicts between the Greeks and
Muslims regarding multiple issues, with the help of the British naval officer Captain
Gawen William Hamilton as an intermediator, negotiations were completed.9 On
the 5 of January, the frigate was ready to sail from Nafplio to Izmir. Philip James
Green, the British consul in Zante at the time, reported that the inhabitants of
the castle, which he estimated to be two thousand and five hundred, were divided
7MacFarlane, Travels, 41; John Koliopoulos and Thanos Veremis, Modern Greece: A History Since 1821,
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 21; Nedim Ipek, Imparatorluktan Ulus Devlete Göçler, (Serander Yayınları, 2016),
82-85.
8Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, v.2, 370; Philip James Green, Sketches of the War in Greece,
(London: Hurst and Co., 1827) 133.
9Finlay; History of the Greek Revolution, v.2, 369.
27
into groups and embarked on either the Cambrian or the chartering ships from
Hydra (Çamlıca) and Spetzes (Suluca) arranged by Hamilton. According to Finlay’s
account, nine hundred people boarded Greek ships from the Saronic Islands and the
English captain, who gave away his own lodge for the Moreots, took in five hundred
of them.10 Reports from imperials guards (muhafız) situated in Kusadası and Chios
confirm that ten ships took off from Nafplio towards Western Anatolia.11 Moreot
Muslims who could no longer endure famine, disease, and drought were leaving their
castles around the peninsula and boarding ships of various origins.12
Yusuf Bey recounts that the Muslims wanted to negotiate for the retainment of their
moveable properties. In fact, it was recorded as one of the deal-breakers on the list
of terms, along with the request to have Muslim women searched by female Greeks
when leaving the castle.13 However, it was difficult to negotiate for a population
that was nearly broken with war, famine, and disease. In the end, the Muslims
were allowed to retain a “single suit of clothes, a quilt for bedding, and a carpet
for prayer.”14 They were required to pay in cash before the journey. People from
Monemvasia, on the other hand, were allowed to retain moveable property, and
they were required to pay for their passage as well.15 In contrast to Hamilton’s
protective presence, there was no one to save Monemvasiot Moreots from getting
harassed and even murdered when embarking on the ships.16 Moreover, on the
way to the Western Anatolian shores, they would be stopped on islands such as
Samos and Hydra, where the Greeks would often rob the Moreots and keep them
as hostages until the Ottoman administrator of the nearest town paid the sum for
their release.17
Finlay sometimes uses the term evacuation when giving details about the departure
of the Moreots.18 The modern implication of the verb is affiliated with the presence
of a higher authority such as the state; however, one may easily question the place
10Ibid, 367.
11Ibid.
12Ibid, 363-369.
13One of the conditions of the Greeks was to search the Moreots, although it has not been clarified whether
their intent was to ensure that no harmful item left the castle or that of a valuable one. Ahmet Aydın,
“Mir Yusuf Tarihi”, 21-96.
14Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, v.2, 369.
15Ibid, 261.
16Ibid.
17BOA, HAT, 843-37892.
18Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, 172, 188; Ahmet Aydın, “Mir Yusuf Tarihi”, 21-96.
28
of the Ottoman government in this event. Was the Ottoman state available only
in the field of combat and not in the negotiation or transfer of its subjects?19 A
probable answer would be both affirmative and negative. Before 1860, no specific
institution existed to tend to the affairs of the migrants. These conducts were
achieved mostly by the formation of temporary organizations or committees, often
created by a specific order issued from the center.
In Nafplio during the Greek War, the presence of Ottoman officials and notables,
who were to an extent successful in corresponding with the center, helped organize
an assembly who took on the role of arranging for the passage to Anatolia
in December 1822. Therefore, a surrogate state was formed, taking both the lead
and responsibility of the Moreots in the castle. The terms of the agreement were
recorded, and they survived in the chronicle of Yusuf Bey until this day, representing
a rare piece of information regarding the exodus of the Moreots.20
The situation in Monemvasia constitutes another example. No mention of the officials
is made in the primary accounts of the siege of the southern town and notables
led the approximately seven hundred people who were besieged in the castle to.
Thanks to their amicable former relations with the Greek beys, they were allowed
passage to Anatolia, albeit in unsafe conditions.21 No state official was present to
witness the mistreatment of the Moreots or to assist them to assemble their moveable
properties.22 Therefore, each Moreot migration took place in a different setting,
with various types of leadership and under special agreements.
Hamilton’s offer to board five hundred of the townsfolk in his admirable warship,
Cambrian, was among the many qualities of the admiral that were celebrated in
newspapers and approved by various writers of the history of the Greek Revolution.23
Despite Yusuf Bey’s meticulous writing vis-à-vis the details of the siege and the
agreements, he remains quite tight-lipped in regard to the journey from Nafplio
19Only after the St. Petersburg Protocol of 1826, where the discontinuity of the Muslim presence in Morea
was brought to the table, that state-affiliated powers such as Ibrahim Pasa, the son of Mehmed Ali of
Egypt, were able to properly evacuate Muslims from the peninsula, especially the Muslims of Navarino.
Still, even at the end of the nineteenth century, in places that are historically considered as part of the
Morea, such as Euboea, the Muslim presence was tangible.
20Ahmet Aydın, “Mir Yusuf Tarihi”, 21-96.
21In fact, there are claims that some of the prominent Muslim beys remained in Monemvasia after the
evacuation of the castle. Haris Kalligas, Monemvasia: A Byzantine City State, (London: Routledge,
2010), 94.
22The question of properties was addressed first in the St. Petersburg Protocol in 1826 and in the Treaty
of London in 1827, with the Ottoman Government fully present in the decision-making process. Moreot
Muslims’ properties became a highly intricate issue and continued to be a thorn in the sides of both
the Ottoman Empire and Greece in the upcoming decades, due to wars that lasted throughout the nineteenth
century. Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, v.2, 172; Gabriel Narodounghian, Recueil d’Actes
Internationaux de l’Empire Ottoman, v.2, (Paris, 1897), 114-116.
23John L. Comstock, A History of the Greek Revolution, (New York: Willliam W. Reed & Co., 1828), 338.
29
to Izmir, where Captain Hamilton debarked the surviving Moreots. For instance,
so far, it has proved to be impossible to encounter a mention of the duration of
the passage in his account. Although the date of the finalization of the evacuation
arrangement in Nafplio and the date of the Ottoman administrators’ report upon
the arrival of the Moreots is known, there is no certainty about how long it took the
Cambrian to deliver the passengers to Western Anatolia. Merely an estimation can
be taken thanks to the well-known and recorded features of the Cambrian and based
on the travelogues of the post-war era when the Aegean became relatively safer and
more stable.24
Normally, a ship of the Cambrian’s standards would arrive in Izmir in a week or
slightly longer than that. Moreover, the epidemics that Yusuf Bey and Finlay mention,
albeit briefly, must have created difficulties for the passengers onboard. According
to Finlay’s account, sixty-seven Muslim Moreot passengers died before reaching
Izmir due to typhus and complications of malnourishment.25 Neither Finlay nor
Yusuf Bey provide details regarding this issue. Yusuf Bey only mentions his losses
at the beginning of his narrative, expressing earnestly that the pain was too fresh
to revisit the events that severed the Morea from the Ottoman Empire.26
3.2 Between Old and New: The Logistics of the Moreot Migration
The ship with which the Moreots proceeded to Izmir from Nafplio helps to elucidate
a number of characteristics of the movement and the era in which it took place.
Hamilton’s ship, the Cambrian, was a traditional frigate of the late eighteenth century,
a preeminent vessel in the navy before the arrival of the steamships. It was
still present in the war, carrying ambassadors from Europe to the Ottoman lands,
escorting ships loaded with merchandise and provisions, and transporting Moreots
from one coast to the other in the Aegean. In tandem with the flux in the Aegean,
starting in 1821, the Aegean shores were introduced to the steam-powered ships.27
For instance, the steamer Karteria, known also as Perseverance, was among the
24Rif Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates,
(London: Seaforth, 2007), 127
25Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, v.2, 369.
26Ahmet Aydın, Mir Yusuf Tarihi, 21-96.
27Alexis Heraclides and Ada Dialla, “Intervention in the Greek War of Independence, 1821–32” in Humanitarian
Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century, (Manchester University Press, 2015), 115.
30
most celebrated and up-to-date steam-powered warships of the British Navy. She
patrolled the sea, escorted the merchant ships, and engaged in combat with the
pirates and even the Ottoman and Egyptian navies.28 In fact, she was the first
steamer that ever sailed in the Ottoman territorial waters. However, Karteria never
carried any Moreot Muslim passengers.
The significance of the juxtaposition of the two ships in the Aegean may be indicative
of one of the paradigms of not only the modernization, but also the history of
migration in the Ottoman Empire. In almost every work that is concerned with the
mobility of Muslim groups in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, the Crimean
Tatars’ migration holds a pioneering place as the first modern migration. Although
a discussion over the details of the migration from Crimea is well out of the scope
of this thesis, the details regarding the vehicles of transportation may assist in
connecting the Moreot and Crimean movements against the broader background of
nineteenth-century mobility. The modes of transportation had turned in favor of the
steamers, which into the 1850s had become the mainstream vehicle for sea journeys.
Tatars, leaving the post-war Crimea, were able to relocate to the Ottoman domains
in the steam-powered vessels. Therefore, with modern means of transportation, the
migration of the Tatars earned its place as the marker of the migrations in the
nineteenth century. The early stages of this technological change may well be seen
in the Moreot migration.
As Nile Green and James Gelvin point out, looking at the long nineteenth century,
or the broader paradigm of modernity, through the glass of these technologies, which
would become tools of empires, may lead one to detect diverse patterns and alter
traditional chronologies.29 The vehicles may have been premodern in the sense that
no steam or iron was put to use in the relocation of the Muslims of the Morea to
Western Anatolia. However, from then on, the Ottoman seas and migrants who
would travel by sea had become acquainted with the steam-powered ships. The
Muslims who were either expelled or would voluntarily leave their homes and sail
towards the Ottoman lands would travel faster and safer. Moreover, options would
be augmented and opportunities to travel, migrate, and immigrate would amplify.
This perspective may help in contextualizing the Moreot migration within the nineteenth
century, situating it in the middle of all these categories. The Moreot migrants
were actors in a national movement that was novel to the Eastern Mediterranean in
that it signaled for the end of old regimes and conventional systems. At the same
time, however, they constituted perhaps one of the last links of displacement with
28Ibid; Thomas Gordon, History of the Greek Revolution, 325, 378-384.
29James L. Gelvin and Nile Green, “Introduction”, Global Muslims, 1-6.
31
traditional “means” in the Ottoman Empire.
3.3 Migrant Management: Actors, Places and Institutions
In January 1823, Yusuf Pasa, the imperial guard of Chios at the time, presented
to the Porte his preliminary evaluations of the status of the Moreot Muslims who
arrived on the island. According to his report, out of the ten ships that sailed from
Nafplio, two were permitted to drop anchor in Chios while the remaining eight were
to continue towards Kusadası. Yusuf assured the Porte that the administration
present in the island would do their best to accommodate the Moreots30 , and it
is known that the situation in Chios had been dire since the earlier days of the
outbreak of the war in the Morea.31 One particular concern of the guard was the
families that had been separated when boarding the ships. He cited the names of
several Moreots and informed the Porte that the properties and personal belongings
of these people would need to be retrieved and the families reunited.
Similarly, in February of the same year, Resid Pasa, the imperial guard of Kusadası,
had reported that the first few groups that had been stopped in Samos by the Hydriots
and Spetziots were saved thanks to the intervention of the Russian merchants
and the British Consul of Kusadası. The Pasa mentions with a subdued dismay that
the insurgent crew of the ship demanded an additional cost in order to let go of the
Moreot Muslims. He noted that the passengers had been robbed by the islanders
while en route to their destination. It was the dead of the winter, and this season
is particularly famous for its cold, wet, and windy days in Western Anatolia. In
one of his early correspondences, the imperial guard of Kusadası reported that he
first brought in the Moreot Muslims to his quarters.32 According to his account,
the Moreots were in need of serious care. Many of them were sick with the typhus,
severely malnourished, or in need of proper clothing. The list of items that were
delivered to the Moreot Muslims and a total sum of stipends distributed to the
families from the local treasury are presented in the same document, separately.33
30BOA, HAT, 904-39693
31George Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, v.2, 313-315.
32BOA, HAT, 843-37892
33Ibid.
32
As the Moreot influx became an issue with the arrival of several more ships, Resid
Pasa notified the central government that the sum they received from the center
would fall short in covering the expenses of the Moreots and therefore, they would
have to be assisted financially by the local notables. Accordingly, these notables
would provide provisions to the Moreots who were hosted in coffeehouses, accommodation
they rented, and in the houses of the Greek fugitives who left to fight for
the Greek cause in the Morea.34 As the ships continued to bring more Moreots onto
the island, Resid Pasa found himself in a challenging situation. Neither were there
adequate accommodations to settle, nor sufficient provisions to feed the Moreots in
the Imperial Treasury. In another report, he informed the Porte that the Moreots
were too large a group for this small town and they would have to be dispersed into
other nearby sanjaks such as Saruhan and Aydın. Apparently, the administration in
Kusadası could no longer bear the burden of hundreds of migrants and had to send
groups away to other towns.35 It is not exactly clear what kind of a process followed
this decision, nor is there any information regarding the logistics of the subsequent
relocation of the Moreots towards neighboring towns. However, they all took place
within the decade of the arrival of the migrants.
The situation in Izmir and Antalya was similar. The incoming ships bringing Muslims
were the focal point of many reports sent to the Sublime Porte from these
Western Anatolian towns in the years between 1821 and 1831 when the war ended.
The local governments were receiving information regarding the origin and number
of the Moreot passengers before they arrived and writing to Istanbul, requesting
confirmation of their relocation to inner regions such as Hüdavendigar (Bursa) and
Kütahya.36 Many other were transferred to the seaside towns of Urla and Sıgacık.37
So far, no elimination process or systematized settlement policy was detected in the
management of the Moreots by the local governments. However, a report written by
Ömer Lütfi Efendi, the head of the constabulary offices (ihtisab nezareti) in Izmir,
is indicative of the ways in which migrants were administered.
In a letter to the Sublime Porte in 1828, Ömer Lütfi Efendi informed them that the
migrants from the Morea continued to arrive in the port of Izmir.38 The Moreots
were mostly from Methoni and Patras but along with them, there were others from
Euboea and Athens that were affected by the war. The migrants were being tended
34BOA, HAT, 913-39905.
35BOA, HAT, 850-38091.
36Ibid.
37BOA, HAT, 849-38070
38BOA, HAT, 489-23988.
33
to by the town municipality (sehremaneti) and with the aid of the local notables.39
According to the report, before they were sorted into groups and settled in the houses
of those who could afford additional expenses brought by the Moreots, a preliminary
elimination was conducted among the migrants. The families and men of profession
were spared and settled whereas the ‘vagabonds’ and single males were taken to a
side and boarded on a ship to Cyprus. Ömer Lütfi Efendi expressed that, in time,
the Moreots would actually be able to look after themselves with the assistance of
the offices in terms of living costs, in addition to the stipends they received from
the central government.
Moreots who were able to be moved to Istanbul constitute a good example regarding
the variations in migrant management between the center and the periphery. They
were hosted in houses around one of the most well known neighborhoods of Istanbul,
Eyüp Sultan. They paid no rent and were the recipients of an annual or bimonthly
stipend that came directly from the Sultan’s own treasury (sadaka-i padisahi)40.
Records containing information on rent relief and stipend reservation for Moreots
can be encountered in various courts in Istanbul, thereby indicating that the qadis
were among the actors who played a role in the supervision of the migrants.41
As the port towns became crowded with incoming migrants, demands from Moreots
who wanted to move from the places they were settled to relocate to Istanbul were
increasing. The government hastened the efforts to stop the movement within the
borders of the country, a phenomenon that had the potential to become a constant
nuisance in the eyes of the state in the upcoming decades. As it coincided
with several radical events that would change the course of the Empire in the nineteenth
century, Moreot migration also became affected from the regulations and
measures that were put into use by the Sublime Porte. Therefore, when the Ihtisab
Nizamnamesi (Constabulary Regulations) were introduced in 1826, an old practice
was revised: the mürur tezkiresi (travel permit). Although this document can be
roughly translated as a permit for mobility, historians such as Nalan Turna and
Christoph Herzog have termed it as a preliminary form of an internal passport.42
The primary aim of this regulation was to control the mobility towards and out of
39Ali Fuat Örenç, Balkanlarda Ilk Dram: Unuttugumuz Mora Türkleri ve Eyaletten Bagımsızlıga Yunanistan,
(Istanbul: BKY, 2007), 254.
40Nedim Ipek, Imparatorluktan Ulus Devlete Göçler, (Serander Yayınları, 2016), 85.
41BOA, C..DH.., 157-7818.
42Nalan Turna, 19.yy’dan ve 20.yy’a Osmanlı Topraklarında Seyahat Göç ve Asayis Belgeleri: Mürûr Tezkereleri,
(Istanbul: Kaknüs Yayınları, 2013); Christoph Herzog, “Migration and the state: On Ottoman
regulations concerning migration since the age of Mahmud II” in The City in the Ottoman Empire: Migration
and the Making of Urban Modernity, Ulrike Freitag, Malte Fuhrmann, Nora Lafi and Florian Riedler
(eds.), (London: SOAS/Routledge, 2011), 119-120.
34
Istanbul, and with the abolishment of Janissary Corps in 1826 in addition to the
events in the Morea, it became a necessary action to be taken by the center.43 In
the following years, Moreots, even if they were part of a family or literate males,
were subjected to this particular practice and thus, they slowly began to settle in the
places they arrived or were relocated to places other than Istanbul. It is suggested by
both Herzog and Turna that the Ottoman state’s formalization of prescriptions and
definitions of migrants and how to manage them was indicative of a new state perception
regarding the surveillance of communities and their control by the Ottoman
government.44
The Porte was in close contact with the local governors regarding the fate of the
lands and the Moreots, however, not so much as to be able to act as an imposing
figure during the exodus itself. Most of the documents about this were issued by
the administrators of Western Anatolian towns and cities. The reports contain
information regarding the number, places of departure, and general situation of the
Moreots, following with a list of provisions and services that were provided to them.
Sultan Mahmud II was interested in the situation of the Moreot Muslims, extending
his assurance that their homeland would be reclaimed, and most of the documents
concerning this in the archive comprise of his orders and answers to the reports and
requests by the local governors.
At least two conjectures can be drawn from these examples. First of all, there were no
specific institutions for migrants and their management at the time of the exodus of
the Moreots. An official institution specifically designed to manage migrant groups
would only be created in 1857, the Muhacirin Komisyonu (The Commission of the
Muhajirs), with the advent of large groups of migrants and refugees from Crimea
to the Ottoman lands.45 Up until that point, all of the superintendence of the
personal, administrative, and economic issues related to migrants was conducted by
local administrators who were in relatively close contact with the central government
and the Sultan himself. Even in Istanbul, just as in Chios, Kusadası, Izmir, and
Antalya, it was mostly the local constabulary offices, imperial guards, and official
tax collectors who supervised the influx of the Moreots. Although they usually
requested and received funds from Istanbul, sometimes they were aided by the local
notables too.
43Nalan Turna, “Pandemonium and Order: Suretyship, Surveillance and Taxation in Early Nineteenth-
Century Istanbul,” New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 39 (2008), s. 167-189.
44Ibid; Herzog, “Migration and the state”, 119-120.
45Isa Blumi, Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939: Migration in a Post-Imperial World, (London: Bloomsbury,
2013), 45; Brian Glyn Williams, “Hijra and Forced Migration from Nineteenth Century Russia to the
Ottoman Empire: A Critical Analysis of the Great Tatar Emigration of 1860-1861”, Cahiers du monde
russe, 41/1, (2000).
35
Secondly, the Moreot exodus emerges as one among a series of events that reshaped
the Ottoman administrative thought.46 One of the visible consequences of this
turmoil was the reinterpretation of old regulations such as the mürur tezkiresi, in
order to halt mobility within the domains of the Empire. The traditionally makeshift
organization of the internal and external mobility would also be subject to a serious
reconsideration and would take on a new shape after the Crimean War. In that
regard, Moreot migration stood in the middle of a threshold between the old and
new. Surveillance of the entries and exits and statistics of the presents would gain
importance.
Following their settlement, the Moreots started to correspond actively with the central
and local administrators. There is an abundance of petitions for stipends, tax
waivers, employment, and even assistance for performing the hajj.47 The state had
been absent during their expulsion from the Morea; however, in the span of a few
years, it had become a tangible figure in their lives whom they turn to in times of
need. Most of these requests were signed with specific denominations that established
a connection with the particular places the Moreots migrated from, such as
“Anabolu muhacirlerinden”, “Modon muhacirlerinden” or “Badra muhacirlerinden”.
However, in time, the majority of these regional denominations disappeared and left
one common epithet in their place: “Moralı” or “Mora muhacirlerinden”, signaling
the modification of local identifications to a more common identification that belonged
to a larger group. These titles were still in use to describe a person or his or
her lineage decades after the war came to an end and the Morea became part of the
national Hellenic state. The next chapter observes the process in which the epithet
itself would become an inseparable part of the Moreot identity and inheritance.
46Sükrü Ilıcak counts the abolition of janissary courts in 1826 and the deayanization process that stretches
over several decades in the nineteenth century as key events that were the consequences of a “radical
rethinking” of the empire. He claims that the Greek War was the catalyst that necessitated this transformation.
Sükrü Ilıcak, “A Radical Rethinking of Empire: Ottoman State and Society during the Greek
War of Independence 1821–1826”, Unpublished PhD Thesis, (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2016)
47Some of the examples are: BOA, A.MKT.,34-236; A.MKT.UM..,90-338; A.MKT.NZD., 45-50;
A.MKT.UM..,50-107.
36
3.4 Conclusion
The organization of the migration changed from one town to the other, depending on
its size, administrative significance, and situation during the war. While the British
naval officers were effective in the negotiations in some of the larger towns, local
notables took the lead in the smaller ones. Each Moreot migration took place in a
different setting and in independent conditions. Regardless of the types of assemblies
that conducted negotiations, the central Ottoman government was absent in the
totality of the process, which was related to the lack of an institution specifically
dedicated to the affairs of migrants and migration.
The Moreot migration reflected new motives for displacement such as nationalism,
and yet was conducted via traditional modes of transportation and without the assistance
of institutions. The local administrators bore the responsibility of rescuing
stranded migrants from the insurgents, uniting them with their families, arranging
accommodation, providing food and clothing and, perhaps most importantly, dispersing
them into the southern and inner regions of Anatolia so as not to cause a
migrant inflation in one center. In accordance with this, it was yet again the local
administrators who subjected the Moreots to an elimination process, whereby those
who had the potential to disrupt the public order in the town would be sent away.
In addition to the means of the local treasury, they were at times aided by the local
notables as well. In the end, it was the apposition of these conditions that situated
the movement in between the old and new in the context of Ottoman modernization
in the nineteenth century.
37
4. MOREOT LIFE IN ANATOLIA: SOCIETY, STATE AND
HERITAGE
In all the places they settled, the Moreots left impressions. Several groups stayed
put and took up residences in the port towns such as Izmir, Kusadası and Antalya,
where the majority of the Anatolia-bound ships from the Morea debarked. When the
number of the incoming Moreots exceeded the available space and provisions in these
towns and cities, the local administrators adhered to the orders of the center and
began to relocate the migrants, who moved either voluntarily or by coercion, towards
the northern and eastern parts of Western Anatolia. In addition to those who were
dispersed into vilayets such as Mentese (Mugla) and Hüdavendigar (Bursa), the
permission to relocate to Istanbul was granted to selected groups. Despite the
lack of adequate documentation of the internal relocation, some information can be
gathered regarding the presence of Moreots in these places from documents in the
state archives and court records.
In the span of a few decades, the Moreots as a distinct community in each of the
aforementioned places became more prominent. By building neighborhoods from
scratch, continuing old professions in new areas, establishing networks with the
state and making strategic moves to create strong bonds between themselves and
the prominent families of the cities they settled in, Moreots negotiated the formation
of an identity and heritage. Naturally, some of the Moreot communities were more
visible, due to factors such as the number of migrants, their contribution to the town
life and relations with the state in the form of central and local governments.
Since they were dispersed in a broad geography and were already comprising of
diverse groups from various towns in the Morea, they demonstrated a different
appearance in each place. In some of them, such as Antalya, the Moreot life could
be traced with considerable ease, due to the large number of inhabitants and the
influence they gained in the administrative, economic and social affairs of the city.
However, in the north of Izmir, their presence was less documented and barely
38
survived, for which the reasons remain unclear.1
Starting with the general features of the Moreot life in the Western Anatolia with
occasional instances from the Moreots who settled in Istanbul, the primary focus of
this chapter is the aftermath of their arrival in terms of the formation of settlements,
communities and identities. Largely based on evidence from the second half of the
nineteenth century, the main aim is to examine the features that brought the Moreot
community together and allowed them to create conglomerations in the forms of a
neighborhood or collective identity. What makes a Moreot a Moreot? Firstly, the
effect of the linguistic differences and abilities is discussed here, for the role the
Greek language played a major role in bringing the Moreots together.2
Into the second half of the nineteenth century, the Moreots started to increase their
direct attempts to establish relations with the state. They introduced and therefore
identified themselves in order to receive stipend, secure travel permits or be assigned
to various jobs and administrative posts. With the increase of documents regarding
the Moreots, the questions of visibility and identity became more observable, which
are examined in this chapter. Why would the future generations of the Moreots,
who never experienced the war, expulsion, and the journey, would take on such a
label? Is it possible to speak of a Moreot identity and heritage? The petitions
for the obtainment of stipends (maas) from the central government and requests
for their transfer to the non-migrant Moreot descendants –who still identified as
Moreot migrants, are studied as instances of encounters between the state and the
individual.
Thirdly and lastly, the chapter concludes by concentrating on the Moreot community
in Antalya as a case study to examine particularly their social and economic
relations in particular. In this case study, there is also reference to Moreot presence
in local administrative bodies. Thanks to the well-documented and researched status
of several individual figures in Antalya, the case study should offer a perspective
into fields such as entrepreneurship, accumulation of wealth and power and the relationship
between the state and the select Moreot community members in the second
half of the nineteenth century.
1For some of the few examples see, BOA, HAT, 849-38070, 850-38091.
2Linguistic differences made them distinguishable and identifiable as Moreots by the foreign travelers in the
places they settled. For some of the examples see: Victor Bérard, La Turquie et l’Hellénisme Contemporain,
(Paris, 1897), 238-239; Leon Alishan, Sissouan, ou L’Arméno- Cilicie: Description Géographique et
Historique, avec Cartes et Illuistirations, (Venice, 1899), 359.
39
4.1 Language and Communal Relations
When the French historian and traveler Charles Texier visited the vilayet of Aydın
in the early 1830s, he described Sıgacık as a town of three thousand inhabitants
where “. . . almost every inhabitant possesses a field or garden in the vicinity of the
town; so that, on the whole, the people are in a thriving condition. As many of
them are Turks who were expelled from the Morea, they commonly speak Greek,
and associate with the ghiaour to a greater extent than is generally the case in the
Turkish provinces.”3
Sıgacık is a small town in the north of the vilayet. As shown in the previous chapter,
several groups of Moreots were relocated either voluntarily or by coercion to the
northern and eastern sections of Aydın.4 The Moreot inhabitants of Sıgacık must
have, then, first landed in either the port of Izmir or Kusadası, and then transferred
towards the north, close to the westernmost point of Izmir. Although the place of
origin of the inhabitants of Sıgacık is difficult to determine, the description of Texier
confirms the claim of this thesis regarding the characteristics of the Moreot community
that endured through time and space, particularly in terms of language and
livelihood. Moreover, yet another insight is gained regarding their social relations.
It appears that the Moreots did not present negative relations with the Rum of
their town, contrary to the strong sentiments and disastrous events that took place
in Western Anatolia between the Muslims and the Rums during the war, as seen in
the second chapter.
Historians with a primary interest in the social history of Antalya have made similar
remarks regarding the amicable relations between the Rums and the Moreots.
The massacre of the Rums at Chios and Ayvalık are among the well-acknowledged
examples of the violence between Muslims and Rums in this period, albeit not the
only ones. Vehement outbreaks between these two communities continued as the
locals of Kusadası and Izmir witnessed the conditions of the Moreots when they
disembarked the ships.5 In some cases, the Moreots were settled in the houses of
the Rum fugitives, who had left for the Morea to fight for the Greek cause.6 It might
be possible that the Moreots and the Rums were aware that they were not the ones
3Charles Texier, Principal Ruins of the Asia Minor, (London, 1865), 11.
4Nedim Ipek, Imparatorluktan Ulus Devlete Göçler, 83.
5Charles MacFarlane, Constantinople in 1828: A Residence of Sixteen Months in the Turkish Capital and
Provinces, v.1, (London: Saunders and Otley, 1829), 28-34.
6Nedim Ipek, Imparatorluktan Ulus Devlete Göçler, 83-86.
40
who committed to the respective murders of Muslims and Christians in the Morea
or Anatolia. Hostility between the Moreot and Rum communities in Anatolia might
only be a figment of the foreign travelers’ expectation and imagination as well.
The hostility or cordiality between the two communities in the Morea was a point
of discussion for the foreign travelers before the War of Independence too. For
example, in his account of the social make-up of the Morea in 1804, Sir William Gell,
a British archeologist, offers an interesting outlook towards the relations between the
Muslims and Christians of the peninsula. Commenting principally on the views of
the Muslims towards Christians, he remarks that the nature of the communications
between the two communities notably differed in the city and countryside. Gell
states that all Moreot Muslims regarded the Greeks as a faithless folk, mostly in
cities, where the sentiments were kept extant by the religious figures such as the
dervishes and mullahs. His words show that he regarded the Muslim Moreots who
resided in such places as easily provoked, in contrast to those living in the rural
areas.
The Muslims who lived in the remote corners of the peninsula, away from the influence
of the aforementioned group, were less interested in “adding more principles
to their faith” and thus “unacquainted with all the motives of religious persecution”
that found place in the larger urban settlements. In fact, Gell described the Muslims
of the countryside as “deists,” most likely pointing out at the lack of daily clashes
with non-Muslim communities under the name of jihad.7 Therefore, rather than
making a statement regarding the faith of the rural Muslims, Gell’s claim can be
clarified as “indifferent” towards the Christian faith and lacking a reaction toward
the preaches supposedly delivered in the city. Gell does not specifically point to a
location; however, Patras and Tripolitsa were the cities that were considered large
urban settlements by the travelers. Therefore, these claims should apply to them,
rather than the small fortress-towns such as Monemvasia, Methoni or Koroni.
Recorded shortly before the outbreak of the war in the Morea, Gell’s impressions
were reiterated by Finlay. Considering that most of the migrants were from small
coastal towns, Gell and Finlay’s remarks may present a view on the probable causes
of the mild relations between the Rums and the Moreots in the Western Anatolian
towns and villages in the post-war era. Nevertheless, descriptions of the pre-war
associations do not suffice in explaining the amicability that ensued after the trauma
of the war and relocation. Unknown events at the time of the Moreots’ arrival or
in the period that precedes Texier’s observation might have led to the development
of relations between the Moreots and Rums as well. Regardless of the matter, the
7Sir William Gell, Narrative of a Journey in the Morea, (London, 1823), 117.
41
Moreots were in a different location and might have established similar or dissimilar
relations with their Christian neighbors to the past.
It can be gathered from the previous chapters that language had an important place
in describing the Moreots and it continued to be a significant component in their
life in Western Anatolia throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. The
Moreots of the other cities had been known for speaking Greek several decades after
the relocation as well. Dimitri Danieloglou, a local from Antalya who belonged to
the Rum community, narrates an encounter he had with a young Turkish man who
understood Greek perfectly in his travelogue of the broader region of Pamphylia and
its ancient heritage. The young man, who assisted Danieloglou and his fellows in
their journey to some of the remote parts of the region, could speak and understand
Turkish, Greek and Arabic so well that the author quickly guessed that he must be
a Moreot.8 Although the young man’s answer to his inquiry was negative, Danieloglou’s
prediction after consideration of the man’s linguistic and religious attributes
confirms that the combination of a Muslim and Greek speaking identity principally
made the members of the Moreot community in Western Anatolia distinct.
The majority of the travelogues or memoirs that speak of the presence of a Moreot
community in various parts of Western Anatolia describe them as a Greek-speaking
group, even at the end of the century. For instance, in the 1890s, Victor Berard,
the French Hellenist and diplomat, took on an expedition to Antalya and he, mildly
surprised, comments on the Greek-speaking Muslims from Methoni who resided in
the outer parts of the city, that is, the castle of Antalya.9 It has been acknowledged
before that the Muslims spoke almost exclusively Greek in the pre-war Morea. Indeed,
the remarks of Ernest Lloyd Harris, the US consul in Izmir who traveled
through Western Anatolian shores in the 1910s, regarding the distinctive linguistic
features of the Moreots confirms that the language continued to be one of the
enduring characteristics of this group even into the twentieth century.10
8Dimitri Danieloglu, 1850 Yılında Yapılan Bir Pamfilya Seyahati, trans. Ayse Ozil, (Antalya: AKMED,
2010), 18. Regarding Arabic, William Gell mentions that there were Muslims in Methoni who understood
the bad Arabic that was spoken by the Maltese, to the author’s surprise. Therefore, Arabic may be
added to the list of languages that is spoken or at least comprehended by the Moreots, at least those from
Methoni. Sir William Gell, Narrative of a Journey in the Morea, (London, 1823), 43.
9Notably, the Greek language and Muslim identity continued to define the Moreots as a separate group in
Western Anatolian societies throughout the nineteenth and even into the twentieth century. For some of
the examples at the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, see: Berard, La Turquie et
l’Hellénisme Contemporain, 238.
10Ernest Lloyd Harris, “Historic Islands and Shores of the Aegean Sea”, The National Geographic Magazine,
28, (1915), 260. Harris interestingly describes the group as a Turkified tribe that had migrated from
Greece due to the war. A comparative reading of the travelogues of the era suggests strongly that they
were actually the Muslim Moreots in Antalya who had migrated from Methoni and Koroni.
42
4.2 Heritage, Identity and Relations with the State
The Moreot affiliation preserved its importance into the second half of the nineteenth
century which can be observed with the abundance of documents that are created
in their name. The archives are rich with petitions for stipends or residency permits
by people identifying themselves as Moreots –for example, Moreot Fatma or Moreot
Mehmet. In the majority of these, the subjects are not direct witnesses of the
exodus, but their descendants, especially in the few decades into the second half of
the nineteenth century. The second, third and even fourth generations continued to
attach the label Moreot to their names. There might be a number of possible causes
behind the persistence of the name and practice.
Sultan Mahmud II paid close attention to the Moreot migrants, providing them aid
in the form of bestowing stipends, employment and easy terms of rent payment on
them.11 In the beginning, the mere condition to receive a stipend was to be a Moreot
and registered as alive.12 However, for decades, the right to receive a stipend from
the state passed on from one generation to the other. It is likely that the aid from the
state provided one more point of motivation in addition to the shared origin, for the
title Moreot to become a fixed attachment to the migrants and their descendants’
names, almost like a prefix, even if they were not the ones who migrated from the
peninsula themselves.13
Numerous examples of such petitions in the state archives and Muslim court records
are indicative of the financial aspect of the Moreot inheritance. For instance, in a
petition from 1852, the stipend of a certain Serif Efendi, who had passed away
recently, is the topic of discussion among the interested administrative parties and
the family of the deceased.14 His wife and son requested the continuation of the
stipend and its fair division between the two. Even though Serif Efendi’s place
of origin on the peninsula or when he migrated to Anatolia were not indicated on
the document, several Moreots continued to receive financial aid from the Imperial
Treasury.15 In the end, the wife and son were allowed to retain a large portion of
11Ali Fuat Örenç, 179.
12BOA, C..ML.., 216-8928.
13It should be reminded here that both in the archival and court records, the Moreots appeared as Mora
muhacirleri (Moreot muhajirs). Therefore, they could be easily distinguished from others who were born
in the Morea but not migrants.
14BOA, I..DH.., 259-16061.
15After the 1840s, various documents indicate that the stipends were no longer sent out from the Imperial
43
Serif Efendi’s stipend, and the rest was confiscated. Similar petitions and responses
of grants of Moreot stipends can be found in the archives, dating back mainly to
the second half of the nineteenth century.
At the same time, the Moreots congregated together, especially in Western Anatolian
cities, leading to the formation of distinct communities. There is not enough
evidence to suggest that the Moreots corresponded with each other and relocated
to other towns voluntarily to be with their kin once they made it to Anatolia, apart
from the letter of Yusuf Pasa of Chios. However, their conglomerations became
neighborhoods and even large villages that bore the name of the Moreots.
In Aydın, for instance, the village of Moralı still continues its existence. For the
purpose of this research, I was able to visit the village, which, today, is located within
the borders of the town of Germencik. Several people from the vicinities confirm
that the name of the village came from the Moreot migrants who had settled there
sometime in the nineteenth century, although it would be impossible for them to
provide a specific date. Despite the perseverance of the village’s name, the evidence
to support the claim regarding its founders has so far eluded. It is, therefore, in this
blurriness that Antalya stood out as an example that is rich in records and has visible
patterns that reflect the pre-migration characteristics and their interaction with new
opportunities that the changing dynamics in the nineteenth century brought forth.
Apart from the practical explanations for the creation and preservation of a Moreot
identity and heritage, the theoretical framework of the concept of citizenship in the
late nineteenth century gives another idea regarding why and how such persistence
took place. It has been argued by Ebru Akcasu that, especially after the procession
of the Tabiiyet-i Osmaniye Kanunnamesi (Ottoman Nationality Law) in 1869, an
inner expansionist policy was followed with regard to the identity of subject-citizens.
In the process of creating an all-encompassing Ottoman identity, the diversity of the
Empire’s population was taken into consideration. The state created and altered a
system in which the constants of an Ottoman identity were deliberated. According
to Ebru Akcasu, this system operated in two realms: territorial and extraterritorial.
Significantly, the migrants stood in the middle of the two realms; as in the words
of Herzog, they were neither foreign nor totally homegrown. The first generation of
the Moreots might be an early example to be situated in this framework that would
reach its pinnacle in the second half of the nineteenth century, as seen in the next
subheading.
Even though it became certain that the Morea was forever lost to the Ottomans
Treasury but distributed from the revenues of several institutions. See: BOA, C..ML.., 351-14445, 382-
15684.
44
in the second half of the nineteenth century, the complex affiliation of the Moreots
connected them to what was now Greece and as well as to the Ottoman Empire.
Therefore, they had a connection with the “nation” as well as with one of its recently
emancipated territories. Whether these claims of descent are fictitious or
truthful, the Moreot migration’s position as one of the first consequences of the age
of nationalism allowed them room to create, claim and alter their identity.
The benevolence of the Sultan that is materialized in the form of stipends, rent reduction
and positions within the reconfiguration of the Ottoman system can be seen
as a precursive development in the state’s administrative mind with regard to the
creation of an Ottoman identity. The Moreots were claimed as belonging to the Ottoman
state, just as once the peninsula did. The state’s permissive approach to the
local community identifications like “The Moreots” culminated in the formulation
of a “collective” Ottoman identity, rather than an imposed “tempered atomization
of identity schemes.”16
16Ibid.
45
4.3 A Case Study of Social and Economic Relations: the Moreots of
Antalya
The information regarding the lives of the Moreots is rather scattered and hazy.
Indeed, one can easily encounter the denomination Moreot in the Ottoman archives
after the Greek War ended; however, these mentions are sporadic and too isolated to
make generalizations regarding the Moreot life in the broader Western Anatolia. On
the other hand, there are specific towns and sanjaks in which the Moreot presence
became prominent enough to observe without interruption, one of which would be
the sanjak of Teke, specifically the town of Antalya on the coast of the Mediterranean
Sea in southern Anatolia. Several factors played a role in the making of the Moreots’
visibility in the local history, earning the town the potential to be a convenient case
study for this specific part of the research. In this section, therefore, the spotlight
is on the Moreots of Antalya, shedding light on their communal characteristics and
the ways in which they created a habitat.
Continuing their past habits and attempting to maintain a similar lifestyle to that
of in the Morea would not be implausible for the Moreots or any other migrant
group. However, the changing dynamics of the Ottoman Empire and its impacts on
the peripheries allowed room for the Moreots to take on new roles in the society.
Moreover, they had become much more active in their communications with the state
and could be considered as alternative agents of the state in Antalya, in opposition
to the old ayan families (notable beys).
Although most sources describe a rough start for the Moreots, it seems possible to
claim that some of them fared quite well in the years following their settlement in
Antalya. Looking at these documents, it can be observed that the Moreots were
active members of the Antalya society, establishing relations with other migrant
groups and advancing their connections with the state by using the opportunities
that emerged as a result of the changing dynamics in the economic and social policies
of the Ottoman Empire in the era following the Tanzimat Edict. In addition to
income and taxation registers (temettüat defterleri), several examples drawn from
the court records from the years 1860-1865 are presented as a general view of the
Moreot aspect of life in Antalya in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Moreots had arrived in Antalya in the years 1822-1823 and were mainly from
Methoni. According to Dimitri Danieloglu, the Moreots constituted a community of
46
four hundred hanes (households) as of the year 1850.17 Initially, the migrant influx
into the town forced the local administrators to settle the Moreots in coffeehouses
and other public spaces.18 After a while, some of the districts were to become
hubs for the Moreots before they built their own neighborhoods. Dayar, in his
comprehensive analysis of the relations between the notables of Antalya, compiles
a large body of data in which he draws a map of the neighborhoods that were
inhabited by the Moreots. One of these neighborhoods, called Sarampol (literally
stockade or ditch) constituted the heart of the town for the poorest of the Greekspeaking
migrants in the mid-nineteenth century. Dayar points out that this part
of the town was the first stop for most of the migrants and that the Moreots lived
here in houses with thatched roofs, suggesting at their meager standards of life.19
In the early records, there are a number of hanes where the family did not own any
other property other than the one house in which they were residing.20 However, not
every migrant was subject to the same dire circumstances and as the time passed,
the scenery changed for several Moreots.
In the decades following their arrival, the Moreots were able to build a neighborhood
on their own, called Kızılsaray. Displaying similar standards to that of Sarampol,
Kızılsaray was one of the most densely inhabited districts of the town. Despite being
the largest and founding group in the neighborhood, the population of Kızılsaray did
not comprise homogenously of the Moreots. In fact, the characteristics of the midnineteenth
century neighborhoods were visible here as well. The religious segregation
had left its place to economic standards. Alongside the Moreots, manumitted slaves
and Jews resided in this part of the town.
The richer and more prominent Moreots, among them many notable merchants,
preferred to live in another quarter that they contributed to founding nearby in the
north, and also inside the Citadel. From the look of it, the Moreots became divided
into groups based on economic value and dispersed into the city accordingly. Despite
being valuable in understanding the Moreot character of the urban fabric, this
information does not imply that the rich were detached from the poor completely.
For instance, when the terekes (property registers of the deceased) are examined, it
is seen that many Moreots either owed or lent an amount of money to one another,
suggesting at the possible kinships that can be better confirmed with more direct
17Dimitri Danieloglu, 1850 Yılında Yapılan Bir Pamfilya Seyahati, 141.
18Dayar, “Antalya’da Devlet ve Esraf Iliskileri”, 452.
19Ibid.
20Babacan, “Temettüat Kayıtları”, 203.
47
cases.21
4.3.1 Rivalry and Privilege: Formation of a Moreot Dynasty?
In the previous sections, we have seen that the Moreots were owners of agricultural
fields and orchards around the castles they lived in and that they engaged in the
cultivation of many crops before they relocated to Anatolia.22 Moreover, some of
the port towns that were situated at the southern-most corner of the peninsula were
engaged in African slave trade. William Martin Leake, right before the outbreak
of the war, had described the town of Methoni as a hub of trade, holding a pivotal
space in the exchange of black slaves from mainly North Africa as well as agricultural
products from the same region and their transportation to European countries and
Anatolia.23 Thus, it was likely and yet interesting to come across records about
the Moreot slave traders in Antalya who apparently continued their previous line of
work.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Moreot merchants and slave traders
in Antalya came to occupy increasingly significant positions in the society. They
were the primary mediating actors between the transfer of black slaves initially from
Alexandria in Egypt to Anatolia, and then to various European countries. Thanks
to the court records, there is a significant body of research regarding the merchants
and slave traders specifically in Antalya.
In the court records, the names of these Moreots appear frequently.24 Among them,
it is possible to encounter the names of the Moreot slave traders Süleyman Aga,
Ahmed Aga, Mustafa Aga, Kara Ahmed and Ibrahim Aga as trusted witnesses in
the records of the cases seen in the court. According to Dayar, the Moreots played
a key role in the transfer of the slaves that were dealt by the Arabic traders to the
Morea and, from there, to Europe. Moreover, the Moreots were personally involved
in purchasing the black slaves in Egypt, their transfer to Central Anatolian towns,
as well as their sale. Holding a chief place in the trade network between Egypt
21See Ruken Tanrıseven, “12 No’lu Antalya Ser’iyye Sicili Defterine Göre 1862-1864 Yılları Arasında Antalya
Sehrinin Idarî ve Sosyo-Ekonomik Durumu”, Unpublished MA Thesis, (Antalya: Akdeniz University, 2007),
690-91, 704, 710, 711.
22Leake, Travels in the Morea, 11, 221.
23Ibid, 431.
24Dayar, “Antalya’da Devlet ve Esraf Iliskileri”, 48.
48
and Anatolia and as influential members of the Antalya society, the Moreots came
to establish economic and familial connections with other chief groups such as the
Arabs of Antalya who had migrated from Alexandria.
The Moreots of Methoni in the pre-war period were put under scrutiny in the first
chapter. It was observed that the town was a hub for slave dealers and merchants
who conducted business with Malta and North African towns, especially in Tunisia.
In fact, due to this network, some of the notables were known to speak Arabic.
Perhaps this feature, the language, may give clues regarding the establishment of
good relations with the Arabs and continuance of the old economic networks, which
were altered accordingly. While the Methonian Muslims were trading primarily with
Tunisia, once in Antalya, their interest shifted to Alexandria in accordance with the
origins and networks of the Arab merchants in the town.25 Thanks to the alliance
between the two migrant groups, the Moreot and Arab merchants in Antalya, the
was an important intermediary point in the trade of black slaves who were brought
from Alexandria.26
According to a survey in the year 1860, the Moreots and the Arabs established two
of the most crowded neighborhoods in Antalya and Kızılsaray was one of them,
as inhabited by Moreots.27 In these neighborhoods, despite non-existent religious
segregation, a community distinction was visible. The Arabs did not reside in Kızılsaray,
and the Moreots did not reside in the former’s neighborhoods. However, the
richer segment of the Antalya society, namely the abovementioned Arab and Moreot
slave traders and merchants, resided in the same neighborhood, that is, Kaleiçi (the
Citadel).
Surveying the deceased Moreots’ terekes, it is possible to come across debt certificates
that belong to the Arabs and other Moreots. Such strong economic links between
the two migrant communities should lead to the establishment of social relations as
well. The members of the elite sections of the Moreot and Arab communities were
conducting arranged marriages that brought these two groups together as families.
For instance, the two of the most influential families, that of Moreot Ibrahim Aga
and Arab Suleyman, became connected through marriage when Ibrahim’s daughter,
Zeyneb, married Suleyman.28
25Ibid, 48.
26Ibid, 121.
27Hasan Babacan, “Temettuat Kayıtlarına Göre Antalya’daki Mora Göçmenleri”, Geçmisten Günümüze Göç
Bildiri Kitabı, vol.1 (Samsun, 2017), 197-205.
28Dayar, “Antalya’da Devlet ve Esraf Iliskileri”, 121.
49
The alliance between the Moreots and the Arabs became even stronger with the
help of a common rival: the Tekeliogulları, a local, non-migrant and powerful family
of Antalya. Once the Moreot merchants, along with Arabs, became even more
prominent in the trade of cereals from Egypt to Anatolia, the rivalry between the
migrants and the locals became heated.29 Moreover, the position of the state in this
competition would affect the lives of the Moreots for the upcoming decades of the
nineteenth century. For instance, their active role in the deayanization project is
indicative of this.
Deayanization was a process of breaking the social, political, economic and military
monopoly of power several families held in different parts of the Ottoman domain
in the early nineteenth century. It was one of the radical thoughts that were in the
agenda of the bureaucratic elite in the center. Tekeliogulları was one such family in
Antalya, which the central government was not happy with. Therefore, the Moreots
were supported as a rising group to be put against the actors of the Ottoman ancien
régime in the changing scenery of the Ottoman modernization.30 In order to break
the economic and political monopoly of the Tekeliogulları in Antalya, as part of the
deayanization process, the center bestowed the Moreot and Arab merchants with
the special status of tüccar-ı hayriyye31 , a privileged class of merchants that were
protected by the state.32
With this title, the Moreot merchants, along with the Arabs, gained an exalted
status as merchants, had the opportunity to benefit from the same opportunities and
privileges as the European merchants that were under the protection of the Ottoman
Sultan and became even more influential in the peripheral politics. For instance, a
slave trader mentioned above, Moreot Ibrahim Aga, was one of those bequeathed
with the title of tüccar-ı hayriyye. In addition to this grant, he was appointed as the
sehbender vekili (the representative of the British Consul) in Antalya.33 Increasing
his influence on the trade of multiple goods and slaves, Moreot Ibrahim Aga came
to possess a substantial wealth that rivaled the total fortune of the Tekeliogulları.
Ibrahim only possessed more than one million gurus at the time of his death in
29Ibid, 47-48.
30See Sükrü Ilıcak, “A Radical Rethinking of Empire: Ottoman State and Society during the Greek War of
Independence (1821-1826),” Unpublished PhD dissertation, (Harvard University, 2011).
31Literally means “auspicious merchants”. They were also sometimes referred to as tüccar-ı muhacir (migrant
merchants); Dayar, “Antalya’da Devlet ve Esraf Iliskileri”, 121.
32Ibid, 48; Ilıcak, “The Radical Rethinking”; Musa Çadırcı, “II. Mahmut Döneminde (1808-1839) Avrupa ve
Hayriye Tüccarları”, Türkiye’nin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Tarihi (1071-1920), (Ankara, 1980), 237-241.
33Dayar, “Antalya’da Devlet ve Esraf Iliskileri”, 47
50
1855, which accounted to half of what the Tekeliogulları owned.34 The events that
followed the death of Ibrahim Aga are even more significant in terms of the issues
of inheritance and heritage that these wealthy Moreots created.
Due to the affluence and privileged status that was acquired by several Moreot merchants,
the creation of an time-honored dynasty (hanedan-ı kadim)35 took place in
Antalya in the following decades. Ibrahim’s son Ahmed Pertev became a member
of the city council, demonstrating that the Moreots were benefiting from the
opportunities of the changing dynamics in the nineteenth century yet again. Ali
Muhlis Aga, another wealthy merchant that was involved in the trade of cereals
was also one of the Moreot members of the council. All these people contributed
to the formation of the so-called dynasty that was also de facto acknowledged by
the center, although never officially recognized.36 Appearing strong in the Council
of Commerce, the Moreots were established firmly as the notables in Antalya. After
Ibrahim Aga, Moralı Süleyman Efendi was appointed to the position of deputy
consul in the region.37 Although temporally it is beyond the scope of this thesis, it
should be mentioned that, at the end of the nineteenth century, as part of the Ottoman
administration the Moreots played a role in the management of other migrant
groups as well.
After the significant Ottoman territorial losses in the Caucasus in the second half
of the nineteenth century, many Circassians migrated to the south, towards the
lands controlled by the Ottomans. At this point in time, the Ottomans had become
experienced in migration and migrant management, assembling functioning
committees solely for the needs of migrants and refugees much more rapidly than
the way they did during the Moreot migration. A significant number of the Circassians
were settled in Antalya and one of the notables, none other than Moralı
Cemal Bey, the son of Ali Muhlis Aga, an exceptionally wealthy merchant of cereals
that had acquired his wealth as a tüccar-ı hayriyye, was the chair of the Committee
of Migrants (Muhacirin Komisyonu) in the broader Teke sanjak.38 Although it is
impossible to discern whether the central government considered a migrant past or
heritage as an advantage in bestowing Cemal Bey with this prominent position, for
this research, the links between the concept of migrant and experience of migration
34Ibid.
35Also known as esraf-ı hanedan (notable dynasty) in the city. Dayar, “Antalya’da Devlet ve Esraf Iliskileri”,
119.
36Ibid, 46-47, 116.
37BOA, A.}MKT.NZD., 30-285; BOA, DH.MKT.,1933-12.
38Dayar, “Antalya’da Devlet ve Esraf Iliskileri”, 245.
51
are non-negligible.
Cemal Bey, just as the other prominent members of the so-called dynasty did four
decades ago, established commercial links between his family and the new migrant
communities, that is, the Circassians, thereby extending his and the Moreots’ sphere
of influence in addition to strengthening the Moreot presence by campaigning for
the appointment of his relatives to the local administrative offices.39 Cemal Bey
was initially bestowed with rewards for his efforts in the settlements of the migrants
in this region.40 However, when the complaints regarding his exploits (namely his
corrupt morals and greed to rule over the communities of Antalya), he defended
himself as a member of the exalted Moreot migrant dynasty, who had worked for
decades for the prosperity of Antalya and the broader Teke region. According to
him, it was unacceptable to think that the respectable Moreot migrant merchants
could ever be considered in the same position as the ordinary merchants of timber
in Antalya.41
Cemal Bey was clearly referring to a past heritage that must have a degree of
credibility in the eyes of the central government. The Moreot identity that formed
in the post-war era had taken down roots and had actually become a name that
was esteemed enough to support the integrity of an associated person. It would also
appear that, within the larger Moreot identity in Antalya, there existed fractions
sorted according to economic affluence, whereof some of the more prominent families
described themselves as a notable dynasty, separating from ordinary Moreots. It is
equally interesting that the officials permitted the negotiation of the formation of
such an identity.
The wealth and authority the Moreots accumulated in the second half of the nineteenth
century, and their recognition as a large group of notables definitely created
the notion that they were able to observe and use opportunities to their advantage,
taking roots in the area firmly and deepening the Moreot heritage even further until
the beginning twentieth century. The Greek language definitely played a role in
the discernibility of this community among the many other migrant or local groups,
allowing the Moreot heritage to survive until the end of the Ottoman Empire in
travelogues and photographs as well as official documents.
The Moreots were able to put the past professional experience they accumulated
in the Morea, specifically in Methoni, into use in the places they settled, namely
39Ibid, 236, 248.
40BOA, DH.MKT.,12-1933.
41Dayar, “Antalya’da Devlet ve Esraf Iliskileri”, 253.
52
Antalya. Their experience in trading valuable goods and black slaves between Africa
and the European sphere allowed them to seize the opportunities that showed up
as part of the dynamics of the nineteenth-century modernization and the aspiration
of the state to find new agents in the periphery that would break the influence of
the old notable families. Forming alliances with other migrant groups throughout
the nineteenth century, the Moreots increased their notability in the peripheral
politics and in the eyes of the central government, leading to their appointment
and selection to newly established reforming institutions such as the Committee
of Migrants, the City Council and Council of Commerce in Antalya. Despite the
outstanding affluence of a number of certain Moreot families, the debt certificates
found in the terekes of the wealthier ones suggest that relations were still existent
between the richer and poorer sections who lived in separate neighborhoods.
4.4 Conclusion
The Moreots left marks on the places they inhabited. These traces were materialized
in the form of the neighborhoods they built, the previous professional networks they
maintained and the alliances they formed with the state and other migrant groups
in the area. In this context, their communal characteristics, namely the epithet “the
Moreot” and the Greek language, made them distinct in the Ottoman society. Their
active contribution to the socio-economic life evolved as they seized opportunities
that were created by new developments in the administrative agenda, altered and
advanced their positions and thereby identity and heritage in the Ottoman society.
The commercial links they previously had with the populations of North Africa
helped them come together with the Arab migrants in some of the port cities of
Anatolia. As a consequence of their increasing influence as active agents of the
bureaucratic elite’s deayanization program, the Moreots established themselves as a
serious rival group to the existing holders of the power. Gradually, with the power
and recognition, the Moreot identity evolved from a local to common identification
that was taken up by the descendants of the migrants in the later parts of the
nineteenth century. As a result, these negotiations and developments culminated in
the survival of this particular group and its identity until the twentieth century.
53
5. CONCLUSION
“Later in the day I rambled through the town and explored a fine old
Turkish garden, with fountains and orange-trees, and a magnificent mulberry,
which had often shaded from the heat of the noontide sun its
former master. I often experience a melancholy sensation in gazing on
the beautiful though crumbling works of a race of men who, recently
lords of the soil, have now no more a breathing space through the whole
land, and who have lost their sunny and delicious homes without any
compensation. Such generally is the case with the Moreote Turks. They
were judged by the stern law which their fathers had established, that
conquest gives to the conqueror a right to the lands of the conquered,
indefeasible save by the sword again. Before the revolution, the Argolid
was covered with stately cypresses, which gave it the appearance of a
continuous garden. These have vanished, and the scene would be destitute
of beauty, were it not for the unchanging sea and the imperishable
mountains.”1
Henry Herbert, the Third Earl of Carnarvon, noted with melancholy how the lands
vacated by the Moreot Muslims looked destitute in 1839. The scenery had changed
dramatically, the gardens of the Muslims were no longer adorning the continuous
fields and their houses were taken and resided in by the Greeks. The earl found
peace in gazing at the Aegean Sea, which he deemed to be the one unchanging
entity despite the war. He was shortsighted in his assessment. The Aegean Sea
was in flux with migrants, frigates and steamers as never before. Two sovereign
states, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Greece were now responsible for
the constant movement of individuals, groups or entire populations.
Despite the primary cause of this flux in the region, the primordial antagonism
1Henry John George Herbert Carnarvon, Reminiscences of Athens and the Morea: Extracts from a Journal
of Travels in Greece in 1839, (London: J. Murray, 1869), 78-79.
54
between the rulers and rebels, the Muslims and Christians were not always at war
against one another. In fact, they were family, neighbors and commercial partners
who lived and worked together. They were not separated by language or quotidian
customs but by religion and thus, political affiliation. Nonetheless, aspects of the
culture they formed in the Morea endured the war and were adapted to the life
and community in Anatolia by the Moreot migrants. In fact, these characteristics,
such as speaking the Greek language as mother tongue, played a major role in the
formation of a distinct group identity in the places they settled, implied, for instance,
by the special attention the foreign travelers paid to the Moreots whenever they came
across.
The Moreot migration, in terms of logistics and settlement, represented one of the
last instances of old systems of mobility management. Contrary to what the secondary
literature often suggests, the Ottoman state was not always present during
the transfer of the Muslims from the Morea to Anatolia. There were no institutions
that facilitated the departure, the journey or the settlement of the forced migrants.
As a result of this, the organization of the movement was conducted by the migrants
themselves. As every negotiation committee composed of different types of members,
the migration experience varied accordingly. Moreover, while in some towns,
some of the Muslim beys remained after they negotiated others’ transfer, and in
others, the Muslim population was expelled completely.
Apart from the capital city, in almost all of the towns they arrived, the migrants were
tended to by the local administrators such as imperial guards or constabulary officers
as there was no specific institution dedicated to migrant management at the time of
the exodus. Only after the Crimean War and the mass migration of the Tatars to
Ottoman lands in the second half of the nineteenth century, an organization formed
solely for the affairs of the migrants. Still, the Moreot migration brought forward the
anxiety of a constant mobility within and out of the Ottoman borders. Therefore, in
tandem with the Moreots’ internal relocation we see significant developments in the
law enforcement and travel regulations imposed by the state, for which the mürur
tezkiresi is one example.
The most important point this thesis argues is that the Moreots were not a remote
and unchanging group and they did not always remain in a helpless and subordinate
condition. We have seen that in some of the towns, they were particularly an active
community who built neighborhoods, established trade links with different regions
and made alliances with other migrant groups against common rivals. In time,
the Moreots became agents of the change and structural reformation in Ottoman
administration in these places.
55
Furthermore, the ways in which they negotiated their group identity offered valuable
perspective into the broader nineteenth-century experience of the Ottoman Empire.
After the resettlement in Anatolia, the local, regional identities of the Moreots
transitioned into a more common one. At points of encounter with the state and the
migrants, which increased incrementally in the decades following the movement, the
Moreots chose to define themselves as part of a larger group that was acknowledged
by the state. As a result, this particular group identification and heritage survived
until the later parts of the nineteenth century in various ways. In this research
Antalya was chosen to reflect this process and the Moreots’ role in it. For further
research agendas, other vilayets and towns could be studied in a similar manner
which may open up space for broader generalizations regarding the Moreot culture
in Anatolia.
Although in this thesis the main focus was on the Muslim Moreots who migrated
to Anatolia, there are many implications that there were other groups who journeyed
from the Morea to various parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. This brought
forward some questions that were not answered in this thesis but promises exciting
new research points. Why did the aforementioned beys choose to remain and live
under Christian rule while the majority of their community left? What happened
to the Muslim communities that remained in the Morea after the Greek state was
established? During my research, I have come across some important leads that
could shed light on these questions. I believe the story of a larger and more diverse
Moreot migrant community can be unearthed in future works. In fact, not only the
travel of people but also material culture from the Morea to Anatolia is an issue that
can open up new paths in the history of migration and even local microhistories.
56
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APPENDIX A
Figure A.1 Map showing the points of departure and arrival.
The routes are estimated by me based on the accounts of historians and travelers.
Figure A.2 Close section of map showing the points of departure and arrival.
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APPENDIX B
Figure B.1 Photograph showing Moreot women and children in Antalya in 1915.
This photograph was taken by Ernest Lloyd Harris, the American Consul of
Smyrna during his journey through the Asia Minor.
c National Geographic
Society
62