Nicholas Stavroulakis: Crete - A Borderland in a State of Denial

Crete has been since early antiquity a borderland save perhaps for the stagnant period that followed on the destruction of Minoan Civilization due to a confluence of natural disasters and the arrival of Greek speaking Mycenaeans and the subsequent Dorian conquest and settlement on the island. From roughly the 13th century BCE until the arrival of the Romans in the 2nd century BCE – Crete’s borders were more or less sealed. The rich tapestry of Minoan civilization, an amalgam reflecting Mesopotamian, Anatolian, North African and Egyptian ethnic, cultural and religious influences, was replaced by a quite sterile and apparently monolithic Dorian culture that appears to have been mainly concerned with control and pursuing the endemic Greek problem of internecine warfare. Having shed any possibility of being a borderland Crete passes out of history save in the accounts that have survived in Greek mythology wherein the Minoans are described as a quite sinister people ruled by a highly dysfunctional and monstrous family. King Minos is described in these legends as a tyrant, demanding annual tribute from subject peoples in the form of captive youths to satisfy the unnatural hunger of his son. His wife, Pasiphae is apparently a compulsively sexually insatiable woman whose appetites were for a moment satisfied when means were found so that she could be credibly disguised as a cow in order to entice the attention of a great bull with which she had become obsessed. Out of this bestial copulation was born the Minotaur, a child so monstrous in appearance and behavior that he was cached away in the depths of a great palace – the Labyrinth – into which the captive youths were fed to satisfy his hunger for human flesh. Ariadne, the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae is no less monstrous as she falls in love with a stranger, Theseus, the son of the Greek king of Attica, aids him in killing her brother the Minotaur and then flees with him to Naxos where, true to his higher values, he abandons her to return home. This view of the other, as encapsulated in Greek myths served as a justification for the total enslavement of the eteo-Minoan population of the island and became the model of state control of populations as evinced in the Cretan (Dorian) Laws that influenced those of Sparta. 

It was only in the wake of the Roman occupation of Crete that we see signs of its borderland character re-appearing. Linked already with Alexandria after its absorption into the world of Alexander the Great, Crete became an important link in the administration of North Africa and Jews began to settle, initially perhaps in the 3rd century BCE and we can assume that these arrived from Alexandria and had close links with the Jews of Thessaloniki. Cities such as Gortys, Knossos and Kissamo to the west of the island became important centers of international trade between Egypt, the northern Aegean and Rome. Crete’s fate, however, for centuries was going to be determined by the fortunes of the Roman State. Religion changed dramatically with the imposition of Christianity in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. With the breakup of Roman unity after the division of the Empire, it was administered badly under the Byzantines who, were distracted by Slavic invasions into the Balkans and then by the loss of all its eastern provinces to the Arab Islamic invasion of the 7th century. 

Little remains of this period other than hints that Crete may well have become a passage for refugees, especially monks who fled the Islamic expansion into Anatolia and many of which may well have passed on to Sicily and then southern Italy as we shall see shortly. 

Interestingly enough it is only in the early 9th century that Crete re-asserts its ancient maritime identity and even more interestingly is the fact that its revival was a consequence of conquest by a borderland people. Toward 810 the emir of Cordoba, Abu Hafs Umar Aysi, was driven from his city along with some 10,000 followers and after taking to the sea landed in Egypt where they seized Alexandria and after negotiations with the Fatimid Caliph they set their sights on Crete. The possible collusion between Abu Hafs and the Fatimids is still a matter of scholarly debate as Crete had long been sought after by Egypt – a natural extension of its northern border as it were. After an initial reconnaissance of the island a concentrated attack was made in 826 and after landing with some 40 ships possible near the bay of Messara on the southern coast, the ships were burnt so as to sharpen appetites to remain and the Muslim band set itself on the conquest of key positions on the island in a remarkably short time – the most important being toward the east where they established a fortress surrounded by a great moat that gave rise to its name – Candia out the Arabic Rabdh al-Khandak – the present day Herakleion. Crete became, under its Muslim emirs who ruled from 826 until the island was taken again by the Byzantines in 961, once again a thalassocracy. Annual raids along the coast of the Aegean and as far east as Beirut brought great loot and it is more than likely that there was not only considerable conversion to Islam but also active participation in these raids. Piracy in itself is a lucrative borderland economic activity and after several decades of neglect by the Byzantines, the island prospered during the Arab emirate. 

The re-conquest of Crete by the Byzantines was carried out with ferocious intensity and was followed by not only a reorganization of the island administratively but also the settlement of large numbers of Armenians and Bulgarians – who as Christians may have been brought in to counter-balance Cretan conversions to Islam though there is some evidence to indicate that the Cretan Muslims were forcibly returned to Orthodoxy. 

We know nothing of the inter-action of these communities though it would appear that theirCretanization was complete by the time of the arrival of the Venetians after their purchase of Crete from the Genoese following on the infamous Fourth Crusade. 

An easy and comparatively cheap acquisition, the Venetians set little value on the island initially as their main objectives were the establishment of outposts throughout the Aegean coastlands and even into the Ionian Sea. Crete was treated as a colonial outpost and its Cretan inhabitants fared badly as they were seen as schismatics and tensions ran high between the Orthodox Cretans and the Catholic Venetians. It was only after a quite massive revolt in the 14th century that Venetian interests in the Island became more concentrated and it was given almost an independent status with its own Rector. Greater involvement in local government as well as reaching a kind of modus vivendi on a religious level Cretans began to actively involve themselves in the arts. Scattered across Crete are some 600 small churches hidden for the most part in olive groves and hillsides. Hardly any of them show any dependence on the grand tradition of Byzantine architecture that emanated out of Constantinople even more striking is that their interior wall paintings, many executed by itinerant painters, show and iconographic dependence on early Palestinian Christian art that had reached fruition in Cappadocia. There is little doubt that wandering monks from eastern Anatolia, fleeing the Arab invasions and then later the creation of a Seljuq Turkish Sultanate passed through the island leaving in their wake a tradition quite unique in many ways. Under Venice Cretans were also given the possibility of participation in the Renaissance as it was developing in Italy. Several Cretan painters, the most notable being Domenikos Theotokopoulos, El Greco. Though passing beyond borders settling eventually in Toledo, his art is a strange syncretic fusion of styles, iconography and even technique that reflects the rich borderland that Crete had become. Even the relatively small Jewish communities of the island show a perhaps more varied involvement in the new borderland that Crete had become. Cretan Jewish farmers, shepherds and vintners produced kosher cheeses and wines that became famous through the Mediterranean and via Venice and Jewish middlemen, they entered Jewish markets in Europe. Several doctors and rabbis made their way to Pisa and Florence where they taught Aristotelian philosophy, Greek and even studied physics as did Elia Delmedigo under Galileo. Another R. Solomon Delmedigo had a rich career as Talmudist, physician and after studies in Egypt eventually made his way to Frankfort via Florence and ended his life in Prague as a doctor – his quite monumentally ornate tomb can still be seen in the cemetery of the city. 

Mention should also be made of the influx of intellectuals and painters who fled to Crete after the fall of Constantinople in 1453…either from the City or from Mistra. Much of what I have been touching upon is but a preamble to the more important part of my presentation as modern Crete and its reverse fortunes will be the main focus of my paper. 

*** 
During the late 15th until the early 17th century the rising Ottoman Empire and Venice were involved in a struggle that was perhaps unevenly matched as Venice’s grasp on the economic wealth of the Aegean was encroached upon by the expanding Ottomans. By the late 15th century Venice had lost almost all of its main port cities along the Aegean and Crete remained its major holding. Between 1645 and 1669, after seizing Hania and much of western Crete, the city of Candia (Herakleion) held out in what is credited as being the longest siege in history and under Turkish Ottoman rule Crete enters into its pre-modern stage of development and one that ironically dominates its present condition in the 21st century. 

As I have but limited time I can only outline what I believe are the most important aspects of Ottoman Crete as it became a new borderland. 1) The mass conversion of Cretans to Islam 2) Ownership of property and 3) Inner demographic problems that ended by being defined 4) in the vocabulary of nationalism in vogue in the 19th century and aggressively pursued by the Greek State on the mainland. 

*** 
1. The Ottoman Turks were themselves a borderland people and this early experience as they evolved during the 13th through the 16th century is an undercurrent that one can distinguish in many of its institutions and attitudes to conquered peoples. Minorities such as Greeks, Jews and Armenians were treated tolerantly and permitted their official leaders – bishops, priests and rabbis – and a great deal of authority over their communities. 

The rapid growth of the Ottoman people, the Tribe of Osman as it were, reflects a strange lack of concern for ethnicity. Conversions of Byzantines and Latins, added to the initial Turkish core of Osman’s people, (if in fact they had ever constituted a Turkic tribe) and later marriages and alliances determined that even the Ottoman Dynasty was of mixed blood. The institution of the devshirme, the conscription of Christian male children from conquered Balkan peoples plus the acquisition of slaves of European origins was, from the 15th through to the 17th century the source of manpower for both the new army corps, the Yeniceri or Janiseries, as well as providing men of abilities to the engineering corps or to the palaces of the Sultan. After their conversion to Islam and Turkification on estates in Anatolia, these children were fiercely dedicated to not only the Sultan as a personal army but were also members of a somewhat heterodox Islamic religious confraternity the founder of which was said to have been Haci Bektash a 13th century dervish. A select few of these conscripts were fed into the Imperial School that was located in the very heart of the Top Kapi Palace and there, isolated in the male harem, they were given the finest contemporary education and on being graduated were destined to become the ruling elite of the Ottoman Empire. Many were married to daughters of the Sultans. This open attitude to conquered peoples played a part in the conversions of thousands of Cretans to Islam not long after the Ottoman seizure of the island. Under the Venetians conversions to Catholicism were relatively rare and this may reflect not only the deep enmity that characterized Orthodox attitudes to Catholics after the 4th Crusade but there was also a lack of motivation as nothing was gained in the process. Conversion to Islam in its Ottoman form, opened many doors – less taxation, more opportunities for advancement in a highly mobile society (which was not the case with Venice) and membership in the Yeniceri Corps and hence proximity to the sources of power and influence. As in the case of Bulgaria, Bosnia and Albania local languages were left untouched and the Cretan Muslims remained Greek speaking though severed from the rich literary tradition that was rooted in Greek Orthodoxy, or perhaps even in a romantic Greek root in terms of culture linking them to antiquity with pride. On the other hand they, like other convert peoples of the southern Balkans, assumed an Islamic cloak that was highly heterodox and evolved out of schools of Islamic mysticism – not simply Sufi or even Shi’a but, for the most part rooted in highly antinomian traditions that had been absorbed by the Bektashi dervishes themselves, the purveyors of Islam in these regions. Bektashi practices and beliefs were themselves the product of a borderland experience insofar as they absorbed large numbers of Christians in Anatolia who inevitably brought with them aspects of their former religion – with these were also absorbed several other dervish orders such as the Qalandars, Haydaris and Abdals of Rum. 

As a consequence the Cretan Muslims, divorced culturally from their Greek root, speaking Greek, and adhering to a form of Islam that was in itself not reflective of high Ottoman circles were never Ottomanized as in the case of Bosnia, Albania and Bulgaria. As a sizeable presence they lived in a no man’s land between their Greek Orthodox brethren and the Ottoman Turkish administration – hated for being renegades by the former and used as irregulars by the latter – and who were not above abusing their position. They were in effect a borderland phenomenon. 

2. The traditional manner of assessing a new geographic territory that had been absorbed into the Ottoman Empire had been worked out for several centuries. Taxation registers based on population statistics were established and following on this timars, small or large estates, were awarded to members of the cavalry, the Sipahis. Cadis (religious judges) were then established in village and urban centres. Tenure of property by the Sipahis was only for their life span and inevitably this led to abuses in amassing private fortunes for individual families. Crete was one of the last sizeable accessions taken by the Ottomans – and the timar system was not put into effect reflecting both a decline in the use of cavalry but also the interests of high ranking Ottoman officials in Constantinople who were anxious to retain as much control as they could over local resources. Unlike former acquisitions land was sold and bartered irregardless in certain cases as to the religion of the persons involved. Cadilar registers record innumerable cases of litigations carried out within families that found themselves quite divided after conversion to Islam could well determine the direction that a court decision was to be made. Perhaps even more important is the fact that potential ownership of property was an important means of attracting a great number of Jews and Greeks to return to the island. 

3. The effect of conversion to Islam created an inevitable rift between the new-Muslims and the Greek Orthodox who had, under the Venetians, a long standing history of opposition framed in religious terms. The rate of conversion to Islam was especially high amongst urban dwellers, land-owners and farmers and almost non-existent amongst the people who lived in less accessible areas, especially shepherds and people living in close proximity to the mountains. Hania, for example, by the beginning of the 18th century had but one Orthodox church within its walled area and one small Catholic church. Neighborhoods that had been, for the most part, delineated into quarters with the amenities for parish life by the Venetians now were organized around neighborhood mosques with their accompanying baths, charitable foundations, fountains or tekkes – dervish religious houses. Under the Ottomans the Jewish ghetto had been abolished and the Jewish Quarter expanded itself to the west and encroached upon a Muslim neighborhood in such a manner that Jewish housewives would greet their Muslim counterparts immediately on opening their doors in the morning…and on festivals – either Muslim or Jewish there was a quite natural exchange of customs and sharing even of common elements of life. 

Many of the port towns such as Hania, Candia (Herakleion) and Rethymnon along the northern littoral of the island were now focused on trade with Izmir, Rhodes and Istanbul and those on the south coast such as such as Ierapetra were in close commercial connection with North African ports such as Bengazi and Alexandria. There was a noticeable increase in the size of the Jewish community of Hania that is evident in family names such as Constantini, Angel, Minervo, Sezanes, Politis etc. – and others that indicate Jewish arrivals from not only North Africa but even Zakynthos, Corfu and perhaps the Peloponessos – of Jews who fled the destruction of Jewish communities there in the first years of the Greek Revolt of 1821. 

What is especially noticeable during this period is singular decline in the Greek Orthodox community on the island who were, for the most part, led by a quite ignorant clergy, and Monasteries on the other hand prospered and even expanded their land tenure. Cretan Orthodox intellectuals in exile were active – especially in Venice and the Ionian Islands and it is through them that news filtered into Crete of the French Revolution and the creation of the Philiki Etairea which became the early expression of Greek national identity in modern terms. But for the most part the Cretan Orthodox lacked in organization and defined goals and comprehensive leadership – a state that is summed up by Panagiotis Nikolaides in 1824. It is most distressing that one think that even the smallest Greek island can boast of at least two native born men of education and learning, while in Crete, the largest of them all, there appears to be none worth mentioning. 

The first signs of revolt on Crete took place in 1770 when a ship owner, Yannis Daskaloiannis, urged on by the Russians led a revolt in Sphakia that was savagely put down by the Ottomans. This revolt and its lack of direction, unified support and even intelligible ideological format was the sad beginning for a series of revolts that were to mark the entire history of the 19th century in Crete. For the most part they were all instigated and even funded by mainland Greeks who, by 1840 had achieved a Greek State that was quite limited in size and bent on irredentist aspirations that were to lead Greece into several tragic encounters with the Ottomans. Interestingly enough the main supporters of these revolts were the mountaineering Greek Orthodox shepherd people and their failure was almost always a consequence of mixed interests and ambitions on the part of the leaders. Crete entered into a period that became a period of civil war with Cretan Muslims turned on Cretan Orthodox in a confusion of kaleidoscopic manipulations of players and leaders. In the course of time, until 1912 when Crete was formally annexed to the Greek Kingdom, two borderland communities, the Cretan-Muslims and the Jews found themselves more and more isolated and marginalized. Already by 1897 when Crete was declared an independent republic, large numbers of Creto-Muslims left the island and a noticeable depletion in the size of Jewish communities saw the closure of at least 3 synagogues in Herakleion. This process was finally resolved in 1924 when all of the remaining Creto-Muslims were removed from the Island and when the Jews of Crete numbered less than 300. Arriving roughly at this time were some 30,000 Anatolian Greek Christians as part of the exchange of populations stipulated by the Lausanne Conference and who fell victim immediately to the full weight of the consequence of a growing monolithic and xenophobic mindset that reflects the essential nature of modern Greek nationalism. The destruction of the Jews of Crete by the Nazis in 1944 served to finally remove from sight the evidence ofotherness which so characterized Crete for millennia. What is, to my mind, especially noticeable during the period, leading up to the Second World War and until contemporary times, is a staged denial of the complex inner history of Crete as an authentic and quite autonomous expression of the island’s borderland character and in doing so has stolen its identity. 

*** 
Hania is my home and where I have been able to observe the effects of nationalism in its ability to transform a society and a town into something that is almost unrecognizable. This has been accomplished by an overt policy of erasing any memory of otherness and replacing it with an abstract identity that stands nowhere. Crete is an autonomous region, well defined, well isolated but also well in touch with the world about it – it is also rich in natural produce. Governed from Athens it is shackled to ministries and a bureaucracy that little suit either its size or its capabilities and potential. The disappearance of an urban proletariat – the Muslims, Armenians and Jews, left all of the main towns, between 1912 and 1950 – vulnerable to the arrival of villagers, shepherds, refugees and at present a quite noticeably present foreign worker community made up of Georgians, Rosso-Ponti, Albanians, Syrians and others. Mention must also be made of the quite enormous settlement of Europeans who have taken up permanent residence in Crete. Nothing has been done to either integrate these people into an urban society or even to educate them in assuming an active role in it or to seeing themselves as part of a Cretan continuum that could be creatively the cause of a re-birth of the island’s identity as a borderland.

Perhaps the most pernicious presence in Crete is that of commercialized tourism which brings fair revenue (mostly to its own interests) but also leaves little in its wake. It might be construed, as it is often, that tourism is a rich borderland zone that sees the over-lapping of native residents with a continuous and ever changing exploitable population that is not only transient but that also contributes to exposure to the other as a source of enriching one’s native human environment. In fact this is not the case. The ubiquitous modern tourist is, for the part, little interested in local culture and the natives find the normal tenor of life disrupted. A good example in Hania is it’s at one time, quite famous covered market. Built in 1912 within an enormous cruciform space this market was constructed roughly at the point where formerly had stood the quite grand Venetian Rethymnon Gate. The very fact of its destruction is indicative of the lack of concern and interest in anything that was not Greek at this point and was part of a general program that saw the destruction of innumerable Venetian monuments in Hania, (not to mention Ottoman structures), and Crete in general. For at least two generations the new market was an important agora in which was sold village produce, meats, fish and cheeses. Not but 10 years ago two new boutiques were introduced that sold leather goods and jewelry to be followed by still others that catered to tourist attracting spice products. Within two years it had become a tourist attraction and one by one the vegetable markets, coffee shops and cheese sellers as well as the fish marts were forced to close and now it is all but forsaken by the local Haniote population. 

One of the more interesting examples of a state of denial can be found in the re-naming of streets in Hania. Once named after some quite interesting urban benefactors of Creto-Muslim identity most have been re-named after recent Greek mainland politicians and public figures. The large metropolitan church of Hania, essentially, its cathedral, stands somewhat grandly in a square in the old city. Given a grant by Sultan Abdul Aziz it was erected by Mustapha Giritli Pasha, a Cretan Muslim though no mention is made of this uncomfortable fact. More grossly, the Venetian originally Catholic church of St. Nicholas, re-dedicated as the Mosque of Ibrahim not long after the conquest of Hania by the Ottomans in 1645, was taken over in 1912 and converted to Greek Orthodoxy. Today it proudly bears a sign that claims that it was a Greek Orthodox Church that had become a mosque and then was restored to Orthodoxy in 1912! 

The signs of denial are to be found everywhere amidst the skeletal and neglected or obscured Venetian and Ottoman structures in Hania – and Crete in general. Succinctly I think that they are especially evident in: 

1. An indifference to the Old City on the part of authorities. As an urban environment it is but a shadow of what it once was. Some years back a very thorough and well documented and mapped study was made of Hania by A. Kalligas in which he stressed the need for zoning and even proposed the manner in which it could be done taking care to retain the old Venetian and Ottoman quarters that could be created as neighborhoods. The aim of this study was to restore Hania as the living heart of the modern city now spread out about it. Some fifty years have passed, his study is still unique and of sufficient relevance that it is referred to – but not applied. The old city today has no chemist, no fish monger, no butcher – only one bakery and two green grocers who cater mainly for tourists. The most obvious sign of this is this indifference and lack of will or direction is the shell of the Xenia Hotel that was built in the late 60’s on one of the most prominent Venetian bastions. It occupies a site of considerable exploitable interest yet it has been not only closed but in the course of four years has been stripped of all of its furniture as well as window frames and electrical and hydraulic fittings by local looters as well as those from villages near Hania. For a period of time it became a refuge for foreign workers who squatted illegally, was the working space for a number of prostitutes and continues to attract dealers in drugs and narcotics. 

2. Another sign of denial is the indifference that is shown to the religious aspect of Hania. Mosques have been given over to the selling of tourist trinkets, as a public galleries. Two well known 17th centuryturbes – tombs over the graves of two noted Bektashi gazis at what was once the city limits of Hania, have been renovated and occupied by a souvlaki shop. The nearby Mevlevihane – the first tekke of the Konyali dervishes in Crete has been stripped of any recognizable sign of its use or even importance as the place where the whirling dervishes practiced their rites. Recently the entire interior hydraulic system of the early 17th century Turkish bath across from the archaeological museum, was destroyed and the entire structure broken up into tourist shops – again, nothing is apparent that indicates either its use or even its relevance. 
If only one considers that we have in Hania at present a loosely connected Muslim community made up of Albanians, Syrians, Algerians, Moroccans and Egyptians. No means have been taken to renovate any of these buildings for their use. 

3. One of the peculiarities of Ottoman cities was the inter-action of communities – be they Muslim, Christian or Jewish or other in the form of foreign merchants and the like. We have now in Hania a completely dislocated society made up of Haniotes (divided between the Old and New cities), foreign workers as noted above, large numbers of non-Cretan students from the university of Crete, foreign residents and finally tourists. None of these groups inter-act or have a common ground on which to stand. 

4. One of the dangers that dictated changes in the attitudes to agriculture in Crete by the Venetians and Ottomans, was the danger of Crete becoming a mono-economy. Time does not permit me to say more than that essentially Crete and its major cities have been sacrificed to a mono-economy in the terms of contemporary tourist industry. The gross exploitation of tourist potential – (Crete is described succinctly in a recent Tourist Ministry projection as a national marketing product) has resulted in a proliferation of cafes, bars, restaurants, taverns, hotels, trinket shops and pensions that all but obscure the very physical fabric of these cities and all but destroyed its urban life. 

If and how this process can be reversed is a massive and difficult task that requires vision and also considerable courage on the party of local leadership. It also requires a re-evaluation of Cretan history and restoring its own autonomous history which has been, for the most part, belittled. At present it has become like the goose that laid golden eggs and already the knife is at its throat. 

Selected Bibliography: 
Bierman I. (ed.), The Ottoman City and its Parts, Caratzas 1991. 
Detorakis Theocharis, History of Crete, Hirakeion 1999. [This book must be read with great care as it is an excellent example of revisionist history that aims at extirpating the legitimacy of multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi religious life from Cretan history as being either relevant or essential. Written from a completely nationalistic point of view Crete is looked upon as being but an appurtenance to Greece.] 
Eldem Goffman and Masters, The Ottoman City Between East and West, Cambridge 2001. 
Goffman D., The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge 2002. 
Green Mollie, A Shared World – Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean, Princeton 2000. 
Greek Economy and Markets 07: Reinventing the tourism product, June 2007. 
Kalligas A., Topographical Study of Hania, 3 vols. Athens 1959. 
Karamustafa A., God’s Unruly Friends, Oxford 2006. 
Stavroulakis N., Unpublished series of two lectures on the Ottoman and Jewish Monuments of Hania given to the Society of Cretan Engineers and Architects, Hania Crete 1993.