The Turkish conquest seems to have been very rapidly followed by the conversion of large numbers of the Cretans to Islam. It is not improbable that the same patriotism as made them cling to their old faith under the foreign domination of the Venetians who kept them at arm’s length and regarded any attempt at assimilation as an unpardonable indignity,[236] and always tried to impress on their subjects a sense of their inferiority—may have led them to accept the religion of their new masters, which at once raised them from the position of subjects to that of equals and gave them a share in the political life and government of their country. Whatever may have been the causes of the widespread conversion of the Cretans, it seems almost incredible that violence should have changed the religion of a people who had for centuries before clung firmly to their old faith despite the persecution of a hostile and a foreign creed. Whatever may have been the means by which the ranks of Islam were filled, thirty years after the conquest we are told that the majority of the Muslims were renegades or the children of renegades,[237] and in little more than a century half the population of Crete had become Muhammadan. From one end of the island to the other, not only in the towns but also in the villages, in the inland districts and in the very heart of the mountains, were (and are still) found Cretan Muslims who in figure, habits and speech are thoroughly Greek. There never has been, and to the present day there is not, any other language spoken on the island of Crete except Greek; even the few Turks to be found here had to adopt the language of the country and all the firmans of the Porte and decrees of the Pashas were read and published in Greek.[238] The bitter feelings between the Christians and Muhammadans of Crete that have made the history of this island during the nineteenth century so sad a one, was by no means so virulent before the outbreak of the Greek revolution, in days when the Cretan Muslims were very generally in the habit of taking as their wives Christian maidens, the children of their Christian friends.[239] The social communication between the two communities was further signified by their common dress, [[205]]as the Cretans of both creeds dressed so much alike that the distinction was often not even recognised by residents of long standing or by Greeks of the neighbouring islands.[240]
Recent political events have brought about a considerable diminution in the Muhammadan population of Crete. In 1881 the number of Muhammadans in the island was 73,234; in 1909, in consequence of continual emigrations, it had been reduced to 33,496.[241] [[206]]
[1] This is no place to give a history of these territorial acquisitions, which may be briefly summed up thus. In 1353 the Ottoman Turks first passed over into Europe and a few years later Adrianople was made their European capital. Under Bāyazīd (1389–1402), their dominions stretched from the Ægæan to the Danube, embracing all Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thessaly and Thrace, with the exception of Chalkidike and the district just round Constantinople. Murād II (1421–1451) occupied Chalkidike and pushed his conquests to the Adriatic. Muḥammad II (1451–1481) by the overthrow of Constantinople, Albania, Bosnia and Servia, became master of the whole South-Eastern peninsula, with the exception of the parts of the coast held by Venice and Montenegro. Sulaymān II (1520–1566) added Hungary and made the Ægæan an Ottoman sea. In the seventeenth century Crete was won and Podolia ceded by Poland. [↑]
[3] Finlay, vol. iii. p. 522. Pitzipios, seconde partie, p. 75. M. d’Ohsson, vol. iii. p. 52–4. Arminjon, vol. i. p. 16. [↑]
[4] A traveller who visited Cyprus in 1508 draws the following picture of the tyranny of the Venetians in their foreign possessions: “All the inhabitants of Cyprus are slaves to the Venetians, being obliged to pay to the state a third part of all their increase or income, whether the product of their ground or corn, wine, oil, or of their cattle, or any other thing. Besides, every man of them is bound to work for the state two days of the week wherever they shall please to appoint him: and if any shall fail, by reason of some other business of their own, or for indisposition of body, then they are made to pay a fine for as many days as they are absent from their work: and which is more, there is yearly some tax or other imposed on them, with which the poor common people are so flead and pillaged that they hardly have wherewithal to keep soul and body together.” (The Travels of Martin Baumgarten, p. 373.) See also the passages quoted by Hackett, History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, p. 183. [↑]
[5] Finlay, vol. iii. p. 502. [↑]
[6] Urquhart, quoted by Clark: Races of European Turkey, p. 82. [↑]