Search Results (14)

This paper argues that the Armenian genocide, the genocide of the Greeks of Pontus and the Greek Catastrophe, and the Nestorian and Assyrian genocide, all of which took place during the late Ottoman Empire, were not isolated historic incidents, but rather different phases of a broader agenda of Christian extermination in Asia Minor. The early 19th-century Ottoman Christian scepticism over the established status quo of the millet system, which had served as a platform of religious conflict resolution and intercultural dialogue but dictated subordination to Islam, was perceived as defiance by Ottoman Muslims, who interpreted the Christian strife for social equality as the loss of their privilege, thus creating bottom-up pressure for violence, resulting in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the majority of Ottoman Christians between 1822 and 1922. Full article

This study analyzes the award-winning documentary film Searching for Rodakis, directed by Kerem Soyyilmaz, produced in 2023. The aim of this study is the historic comprehension and analysis of this filmic narrative in the field of social–semiotic literacy and its utilization in historical studies for approaching issues of conflict in modern history, otherness, collective experience and trauma, and collective memory. The research material is the documentary Searching for Rodakis (produced by Denmark, Turkey 2023; screenplay/director, Kerem Soyyilmaz; duration, 57’), which received the following awards: Adana Golden Boll FF 2023 Turkey | Best Documentary, Thessaloniki International Doc. Festival 2023 Greece, Greek Film Festival Los Angeles 2023 USA, and Istanbul Documentary Days 2023 Turkey. As regards the historic context, the year of production, 2023, coincides with the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, where Turkey’s current borders were set and the “population exchange” legally sealed, i.e., the violent expulsion of 400,000 Muslims, citizens of Greece, many of whom spoke only Greek, and 200,000 Orthodox citizens of Turkey, who in the majority spoke Turkish. At the same time, the Treaty of Lausanne ratified and finalized the expulsion of approximately one million Orthodox who were forced to leave the Ottoman Empire, as well as 120,000 Muslims who had fled Greece since the beginning of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). About two million people were deported and lost their citizenship and property, in the context of “national homogeneity” (which connotes an ethnic cleansing), with the official states ignoring the criticisms of lawyers and academics who spoke of violations of constitutional rights. Mohammedan Greeks, estimated at around 190,000 as early as 1914, based on ecclesiastical statistics in the Pontus region, did not receive attention from the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne, even though linguistically and culturally (origin, customs, culture and traditions) they did not differ in any way from the Orthodox Greeks. In Turkey, there was general indifference to the thousands of desperate people who arrived, with the exception of a few academics and the Lausanne Exchange Foundation. The filmic scenario is as follows: as a Greek tombstone of unknown origin is discovered underneath the floorboards in an old village house in Turkey, an almost forgotten story from the country’s creation unravels—the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. The engraved Greek letters tell of a woman, Chrysoula Rodaki, who died in 1887. Thus the search for her descendants begins. It leads director Kerem Soyyilmaz to local archives, where his own family’s role in history is laid bare; to abandoned ghost towns, and through the memories of older villagers—all while Soyyilmaz meets massive support for his quest from Greeks on the other side of the border. The stone becomes a portal to the past—and for a while, the trauma becomes redeemed when the previous owners of the village house return. Searching for Rodakis is a movie that reconnects people, culture, and the stories that were discarded in order to build a strong, nationalist state—told through the director’s personal experiences. The research questions, as they arise from the cinematographic material itself, are as follows: How is the historical memory of traumatic events of the previous century, such as the exchange of populations according the Treaty of Lausanne, recorded in the cinematographic narrative? What are the historical sources? To what extent did the origin, ethnicity, and geographical location of the narrators as participants influence the preservation of historical memory and the historical research? What are the criteria of the approach of the creator, and what are the criteria of the participants? Methodologically, we apply historic and socio-semiotic analyses in the field of public and digital history. The results: The types of historical sources found in filmic public discourse include the oral narration of testimonies, of experiences and of memories, as well as the director’s historical research in state archives, the material cultural objects, and the director’s digital research. Thus, historic thematic categories occur, such as the specific persons and actions in Turkey/Greece, actions on-site and in online research, and the types of historical sources, such as oral testimonies, research in archives, and objects of material culture. Sub-themes such as childhood, localities and kinship also emerge. These cinematic recordings of biographical oral narratives as historical and sociological material help us understand the political ideologies of the specific period, between the years 1919 and 1923. The multimodal film material is analyzed to provide testimonies of oral and digital history; it is utilized to approach the historical reality of “otherness”, seeking dialogue in cross-border history in order to identify differences, but above all the historic and cultural similarities against sterile stereotypes. The historic era and the historic geography of the Greek and Turkish national histories concern us for research and teaching purposes a hundred years after the Treaty of Lausanne which set the official borders of the countries. Full article

A remarkable amount of work on the study of Islamic ethical thought is published annually, covering an unprecedented variety of topics and themes. Yet despite the strides made, these debates have not addressed vital questions about how Islamic ethical thought can contribute to ongoing discourses that affect not only the Muslim community but society at large. In other words, how can we bring Islamic ethical thought into systematic engagement with modern philosophy? Specifically, how can Islamic ethical thought learn from contemporary philosophy, as it learned from Greek philosophy in the Middle Ages? And how might it be possible to develop Islamic ethical thought that can withstand both religious and rational scrutiny? In this programmatic overview, I respond to these questions by engaging with responsibility ethics within and beyond the Islamic tradition. As much as the debate about ethics has reached new heights in contemporary philosophical discourses, so too has the debate about responsibility re-emerged in theological discourses. In this paper, I bring into conversation the thought of Taha Abdurrahman on responsibility, which is nested within his larger paradigm of contemporary Islamic ethics, and Jewish thinker Hans Jonas’ concept of an ethics of responsibility. I argue that orchestrating this scholarly dialog between a 20th-century German Jewish thinker (Jonas) and a contemporary Muslim thinker (Abdurrahman) can lead to both a productive and constructive elaboration of Islamic ethical thought. Furthermore, I suggest that Habermas’ philosophy can serve as a bridge in this discussion, facilitating a comparative exploration of the ethical frameworks presented by both thinkers. By engaging with Habermas, we can highlight how Islamic thought can approach modernity, including philosophical debates, in a manner similar to that of 20th-century Jewish scholars like Jonas. This engagement not only enhances our understanding of responsibility within these traditions but also underscores the potential for interdisciplinary dialog in navigating contemporary ethical challenges. Full article

This article conducts a thorough examination of the demographic structure, naming conventions, and anthropometric characteristics of the Muslim and Christian communities in Bilecik in 1843. The study utilizes qualitative content analysis methods, employing population registers from the Ottoman Archives and other contemporary documents. The findings reveal that Muslims predominantly opted for names of Arabic origin, while Armenian and Greek Christian communities enhanced regional diversity through names reflecting their religious and cultural identities. Anthropometric analyses demonstrate that both communities exhibited similar average heights. Furthermore, the use of beards and mustaches reflects cultural differences; among Muslim men, these features were significant symbols of religious identity and social status, whereas among Christian men, they signified age-related esthetic choices and cultural diversity. Ultimately, this research illuminates the social and cultural framework of 19th-century Anatolia, providing detailed documentation of Bilecik’s religious and ethnic diversity. Full article

The journey of Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras and his stay in Florence at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries has been celebrated as an event that decisively shaped the course of European humanism. The later return of Enlightenment humanism to Ottoman lands in the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries can be described as the return of Chrysoloras. This return is generally known in a fragmentary form as a regional phenomenon: the story of Greek, Arab, Turkish and Jewish nationalisms and of the Ottoman reforms. It is also framed historically as the evolution from a traditional and theological society to new forms of epistemic, literary, civic and national communities, while often leaving aside failures and later contradictory transformations. The present essay offers an integrative study of modern humanism in late Ottoman and post-Ottoman contexts. The migration of Enlightenment humanism to the Middle East raised a wide range of expectations, projecting a new national or imperial organization within a harmonious diplomatic relationship with Christian Europe and the Americas. Yet, the more the revivalist and reformist projects evolved, the more they involved ethnic and religious conflicts and colonial intervention. This article illuminates the rise and fall of humanism in Middle Eastern contexts. Full article

This is an opinion article, based on a lifelong syncretic study of the dialogical paths taken by Eastern theologians, Greeks and Arabs. At the crossroads of three continents, in direct relation with the Byzantine and Syriac traditions, with the Mediterranean and its Greco-Roman culture, but also with the Asian and African hinterland, Arab and Arabic-speaking Christian theologians have formed a culture of dialogue. They managed to engage with Islam in shapes and forms that are of very great interest and could point the way to a different approach to Islam today. The article, written by a Greek author, proposes a better integration of Arabic Orthodox theology as an enrichment to Orthodox theology as a whole, serving at the same time a broader connection between the Greek and Arab worlds. The article also proposes that discovering the heritage of the Orthodox East is interesting for Christian theology on a global scale. In primarily Christian/Western academia, one should be open to a genuine encounter with the Islamic world beyond geopolitics and other concerns extrinsic to religion; this is an encounter that would open up paths beyond the “clash of civilisations” impasse and allow for the rediscovery of the humanizing factor of religion. This is of interest to Christian and Muslim theologians as well as serving humanity and creation as a whole. Full article

This presentation examines the history of duckweeds in Chinese, Christian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindu, Japanese, Maya, Muslim, and Roman cultures and details the usage of these diminutive freshwater plants from ancient times through the Middle Ages. We find that duckweeds were widely distributed geographically already in antiquity and were integrated in classical cultures in the Americas, Europe, the Near East, and the Far East 2000 years ago. In ancient medicinal sources, duckweeds are encountered in procedures, concoctions, and incantations involving the reduction of high fever. In this regard, we discuss a potential case of ethnobotanical convergence between the Chinese Han and Classical Maya cultures. Duckweeds played a part in several ancient rituals. In one, the unsuitability of its roots to serve as a wick for Sabbath oil lamps. In another reference to its early use as human food during penitence. In a third, a prominent ingredient in a medicinal incantation, and in a fourth, as a crucial element in ritual body purifications. Unexpectedly, it emerged that in several ancient cultures, the floating duckweed plant featured prominently in the vernacular and religious poetry of the day. Full article

The examination of demographic patterns and their variables is essential for our understanding of the anthropological and cultural processes that shape modern societies. Greek Thrace plays an important role in such analyses due to the cultural and socioeconomic variability it presents. This study is based on vital registration data of the 20th century, derived by various populations that inhabit the Department of Rhodopi, which are defined by discrete socio-economic, cultural, and historic backgrounds. We analyze and present various aspects of the social lives observed in these populations: marriage patterns, mean age at marriage of the spouses, mean age of mothers at first and last child, reproductive span, the children ever born, as well as other parameters related to reproduction. Our analyses show that several changes in marriage patterns have been undertaken throughout time, indicating an ongoing fertility transition. In that way, this study contributes to our knowledge on the anthropological populations from this part of Greece in relation to their socio-economic environment and it proposes possible analogies and differences that affected the evolution of the embedded populations. Full article

A comprehensive analysis of Cypriot mosque architecture between the 19th and 21st centuries, from the Ottoman and British colonial periods to the present, does not exist. The phase after 1974, after the division of the island into a Turkish Cypriot, predominantly Muslim north and a Greek Cypriot, mainly Christian south, is especially insufficiently studied. This paper aims to interpret Cypriot mosque architecture and its meaning(s) through a comparative analysis, considering cultural, religious, and political developments. Based on an architectural survey and studies about Muslim Cypriot culture, this study investigates formal and spatial characteristics, focusing on the presence/absence of domed plan typologies and of minarets which, as visual symbolic markers, might express shifting cultural-religious notions and/or identities. Inconspicuous mosques without domes and minarets dominate until 1974. However, with the inter-communal tensions in the 1960s, the minaret possibly became a sign of Turkish identity, besides being a cultural-religious marker. This becomes more obvious after 1974 and is stressed by the (re)introduction of the dome. Since the late 1990s, an ostentatious and unprecedented neo-Ottoman architecture emphasizes visible and invisible meanings, and the Turkish presence in Cyprus stronger than before. The new architectural language visually underlines the influences from Turkey that North Cyprus has been experiencing. Full article

This article investigates the ‘problematisation’ of the recently inaugurated mosque in the city of Athens, the capital’s first ‘official’ mosque since the country was liberated from the Ottoman Empire almost two centuries ago. Building on and developing the existing scholarly literature on the problematisation of mosques in the contemporary European setting, this article generates new knowledge by focusing on the Greco-specific context of that same problematisation: an amalgam of history, geography, religion and culture, that asymmetrically shape and inform how and why the new Athens mosque is—and indeed continues to be—a site of conflict and opposition. Presenting new empirical data, this article uses an innovative and original approach to bring together two separate pieces of fieldwork undertaken first-hand by the authors in 2001/2 and 2019/20. Analysing the two sets of data, a threefold thematic structure is employed that focuses on Greece’s history, Christian Orthodoxy and global terrorism. This article first explores the existing scholarly canon relating to the contemporary problematisation of mosques through a focused overview of Greece’s history, religion and culture appropriate to mosques and in part, Muslims and Islam. From there it sets out the findings from the two periods of fieldwork to illustrate and evidence discourses of opposition towards the mosque and how these serve to function both symbolically and tangibly. Using the thematic analysis, theories relating to the ideological processes of Islamophobia are deployed to elucidate a better understanding of the Athens mosque. In doing so, this article makes a timely contribution. Full article

Premodern Ottoman society consisted of four major religious communities—Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Armenian Christians, and Jews; the Muslim and Christian communities also included various ethnic groups, as did Muslim Arabs and Turks, Orthodox Christian Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs who identified, in the first place, with their religious community and considered ethnic identity of secondary importance. Having lived together, albeit segregated within the borders of the Ottoman Empire, for centuries, Bulgarians and Turks to a large extent shared the same world view and moral value system and tended to react in a like manner to various events. The Bulgarian attitudes to natural disasters, on which this contribution focuses, apparently did not differ essentially from that of their Turkish neighbors. Both proceeded from the basic idea of God’s providence lying behind these disasters. In spite of the (overwhelmingly Western) perception of Muslims being passive and fatalistic, the problem whether it was permitted to attempt to escape “God’s wrath” was coped with in a similar way as well. However, in addition to a comparable religious mental make-up, social circumstances and administrative measures determining equally the life conditions of both religious communities seem to provide a more plausible explanation for these similarities than cross-cultural influences. Full article

In Hispania (present-day Spain and Portugal), there are 25 structures documented of classical Roman open-air theatres, of which 10 are in the south, in the Roman Baetica (Andalusia). The Baetica embraced the progress of urbanisation in the time of the Roman emperor Augustus, where theatres, built in stone, were the foci of entertainment, performance, and propaganda of the empire. The Roman theatre in Malaga presents the archaeological remains of the main vestige of the Roman Malaca. It is located in the historical centre of the city, at the foot of the hill of the Muslim Alcazaba and was discovered in 1952. It is a medium-sized theatre whose design corresponds to a mixed construction that combines making use of the hillside for the terraces, in the manner of Greek theatres, with a major construction where rock is non-existent, thereby creating the necessary space for the stands. In this paper, the production process, adjustment, and validation of the 3D model of the theatre are analysed for the creation of a numerical predictive model of its sound field. Acoustic properties of the venue are examined and the effect of the Muslim Alcazaba and the hillside on the various acoustic descriptors is analysed. The results highlight the influence of this large stone surface mainly on the time decay parameters. Full article

The cult of St George in the Eastern Mediterranean is one of the most extraordinary examples of cohabitation among different religious communities. For a long time, Greek Orthodox, Latins, and Muslims shared shrines dedicated to the Cappadocian warrior in very different places. This phenomenon touches on two aspects of the cult—the intercultural and the transcultural—that should be considered separately. My paper mainly focuses on the cross-cultural value of the cult and the iconography of St George in continental and insular Greece during the Latinokratia (13th–14th centuries). In this area, we face the same phenomenon with similar contradictions to those found in Turkey or Palestine, where George was shared by different communities, but could also serve to strengthen the identity of a particular ethnic group. Venetians, Franks, Genoese, Catalans, and Greeks (Ῥωμαῖοι) sought the protection of St George, and in this process, they tried to physically or figuratively appropriate his image. However, in order to gain a better understanding of the peculiar situation in Frankish-Palaiologian Greece, it is necessary first to analyze the use of images of St George by the Palaiologian dynasty (1261–1453). Later, we will consider this in relation to the cult and the depiction of the saint on a series of artworks and monuments in Frankish and Catalan Greece. The latter enables us to more precisely interrogate the significance of the former cult of St George in the Crown of Aragon and assess the consequences of the rulership of Greece for the flourishing of his iconography in Late Gothic art. Full article

The Molla Sali case, recently heard by the ECtHR, concerns the compatibility of the implementation of Sharia in the family and personal relations of the Muslims of Western Thrace, who remained within the boundaries of the Greek State after the exchange of populations under the Treaty of Lausanne, to the ECHR. The applicant, a Greek national of the Muslim minority of Western Thrace, complained that she could not be beneficiary by testament of her deceased husband’s estate, member of the same minority, since, according to the position of the Court of Cassation, due to a series of international agreements and relevant domestic norms, the law of succession applicable to her case was the Islamic Law that prohibits the testament, instead of the civil law. However, the ECtHR found that the applicant was victim of a violation of article 14 of the ECHR in conjunction with article 1 of Protocol no 1. In this case, the ECtHR considered for the first time the question of the compatibility of a religious community’s separate legal status with the ECHR. The rationale behind the decision is within the framework of the core principles of the Court’s case law on the limits of the autonomy of religious communities and acknowledgement of minority rights. The Court, based on the main line of arguments which constitute the corpus of its jurisprudence on religious and minority issues, ruled that the separate legal status of the Muslim minority cannot justify divergences from the application of the General Law, to the extent that such divergences violate the Greek citizens’ rights enshrined in the Constitution and the ECHR and it condemned Greece on the basis of “discrimination by association”. Full article