Essays on the Latin Orient

by William Miller

Genealogical Tree:

(The rulers of Lesbos are denoted by Roman, those of Ænos by Arabic numerals.)

V. TURKISH GREECE
1460-1684

From the second half of the fifteenth down to the close of the seventeenth century, a large portion of what now forms the kingdom of Greece formed an integral part of the Turkish Empire, and from the second part of the sixteenth century some of the Ionian Islands and a few of the Cyclades were alone exempt from the common lot of Hellas. Thus, for the first time since the Frank conquest, a dead level of uniformity, broken only by the privileges of certain communities, prevailed in place of the feudal principalities, whose fortunes occupied the annals of the previous two centuries and more. Greece, so often divided against herself, had found unity in the death of her independence; and the victorious Turks, like the conquering Romans, had obliterated the divisions and the liberties of the Greek States at the same moment. Once more the whole Greek world, with few exceptions, depended upon a foreign ruler, whose capital was at Constantinople, and whose officials, like those of the Byzantine Emperors, administered the affairs of his Greek subjects. There is, however, a considerable difference between the two periods into which the Turkish government of Greece was divided. During the first period, down to the Venetian conquest of the Morea, towards the close of the seventeenth century, Turkey was a flourishing and conquering Power—a danger to Europe, and a strong State. During the second period, from the Turkish re-conquest of the Morea down to the close of the War of Independence, Turkey was declining, slowly but surely, in all save the one art which she has never lost even in her political dotage, the art of fighting. For, like the Roman and the Briton, the Turk has ever been a good soldier, but, unlike those two great unintellectual peoples, many of whose qualities he shares, he has never been a good administrator; even when his arrangements have been excellent in theory, as they often are, they have frequently proved to be miserable in practice.

The political organisation of Greece under the Turks was indeed comparatively simple. Before the conquest of the Ægean Islands all their Greek dominions were comprised within the jurisdiction of the beglerbeg (“lord of lords”) of Rumili, who resided at Sofia[651], and were divided into seven sandjaks, so called from the “flag” which was the emblem of each large territorial sub-division, and which recalled the essentially military character of all Turkish arrangements. These seven sandjaks, after the year 1470, when the capture of Eubœa rounded off the Greek conquests of Mohammed II, were Salonika, Negroponte, Trikkala, Lepanto, Karlili, Joannina, and the Morea. Negroponte included not only the island of Eubœa, but also Bœotia, and Attica. Its capital was Chalkis, and Athens, Thebes and Livadia, were among its principal cities. Karlili comprehended Ætolia and Akarnania, as well as Prevesa, and derived its name from Carlo II Tocco, whose dominions there had fallen to the Turks. The capital of the Morea fluctuated between Corinth, Leondari, and Mistra, down to 1540, when the capture of Nauplia from the Venetians made that place the residence of the Turkish Pasha. In 1574, when the conclusion of the war of Cyprus had practically extinguished Latin rule in the Levant, a different arrangement obtained. Salonika, Trikkala, Joannina, Patras and Mistra formed five sandjaks under the beglerbeg of Rumili; while the capitan pasha, in his capacity of beglerbeg “of the sea,” ruled over the seven insular sandjaks of Lemnos, Lesbos, Rhodes, Chios, the former Duchy of Naxos (except a few islands bestowed on the favourite Sultana), Santa Maura (with Prevesa), and Negroponte, besides the three maritime sandjaks of Nauplia, Lepanto and Kavalla. And, after the conquest of Crete, three more sandjaks, named from Candia, Rethymno, and Canea, were carved out of “the great Greek island[652].”

Each sandjak was in turn sub-divided into a number of cazas, or sub-districts, of which there were twenty-three in the Morea. It is now supposed that from 1470 to about 1610, Athens was the chief place of a caza of the sandjak of Negroponte. Just as each sandjak was governed by a Pasha or sandjak-beg, so each caza was administered by a lesser magnate known as a voivode or subashi, who was assisted by a judge, or cadi.

True to the Turkish feuded system, which had been organised in Thessaly at the end of the fourteenth century, and extended to Akarnania and Ætolia on the fall of the Tocchi, Mohammed II distributed Central Greece and the Morea in fiefs to his veteran warriors. These fiefs were of two sorts: the larger fief, known as a zaimet, entailed upon the holder the obligation to provide fifteen horsemen; the smaller, called a timar, involved the equipment of only two[653]. The standard of the sandjak-beg formed the rallying point of all these feudal chiefs and their horsemen in case of need. About the middle of the seventeenth century the whole area of the present Greek kingdom on the mainland, including Negroponte but without Macedonia and Thrace, was portioned out into 267 zaimets and 1625 timars, so that they would represent a force of 7255 horsemen.