"Those Infidel Greeks": The Greek War of Independence Through Ottoman Archival Documents

1723 Pages·2021·13.731 MB·English

by  H. Şükrü Ilıcak

“Those Infidel Greeks”
Handbook of Oriental Studies
Handbuch der Orientalistik
section one
The Near and Middle East
Edited by
Maribel Fierro (Madrid)
M. Şükrü Hanioğlu (Princeton)
Renata Holod (University of Pennsylvania)
Florian Schwarz (Vienna)
volume 158/1–2
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ho1
“Those Infidel Greeks”
The Greek War of Independence through
Ottoman Archival Documents
Volume 1
Edited by
H. Şükrü Ilıcak
LEIDEN | BOSTON
This book is a co-publication of Koninklijke Brill NV and the Aikaterini Laskaridis
Foundation.
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permission from the respective copyright holder.
Cover illustration: Title page of BOA/Ayniyat Register 1713 (detail).
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2021033352
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 0169-9423
ISBN 978-90-04-47129-0 (hardback/set)
ISBN 978-90-04-47130-6 (e-book/set)
Copyright 2021 by H. Şükrü Ilıcak. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Contents
Volume 1
Foreword vii
Acknowledgements x
Notes on the Ayniyat Registers xii
Notes on the Translations xiv
Transliteration Systems Followed in This Book xvi
List of Figures xix
Notes on Contributors xx
Introduction 1
Documents 31
1821 31
1822 230
1823 513
1824 704
1825 754
1826 893
Volume 2
Transliterations 931
Ayniyat 573 931
Ayniyat 574 1003
Ayniyat 575 1079
Ayniyat 576 1162
Ayniyat 577 1216
Ayniyat 578 1277
Ayniyat 579 1344
Ayniyat 1713 1397
Ayniyat 1769 1463
Ayniyat 580 1513
Ayniyat 580–1 1556
Ayniyat 581 1580
Ayniyat 582 1609
vi Contents
Appendices 1645
Glossary 1645
Short Biographies of the Important Individuals Mentioned in the
Documents 1649
Bibliography 1661
Index 1670
Foreword
The Greek War of Independence is undoubtedly one of the important events
that marked the nineteenth century. Aside from Greek national pride and
beyond the framework of national historiography constructed to make sense
of the nevertheless crucial events we today unanimously call the Greek War of
Independence, its significance lies in three factors of global impact. The first
and foremost is that the war against the Ottoman administration revealed the
weakened character of the once glorious Ottoman Empire and, even more so,
harmed it significantly. After the uprisings in the provinces of Rumelia and the
Morea, the Ottoman map changed. The prosperous western provinces of the
empire claimed independence, which, besides the territorial loss, clearly sug-
gested that the last vast empire of Eurasia could not carry on as it had in the
previous century. As the West European diplomatic language of the time testi-
fies, the Greek War of Independence led the Ottoman Empire to become “the
sick man of Europe.” What is more, the Greek revolt inspired other Balkan peo-
ple to question the legitimacy and to challenge the authority of the Ottoman
state altogether. In a sense, it shaped the different nationalisms of the Balkan
Peninsula, initiating, one way or another, the period which, after many strug-
gles and conflicts, shaped Southeastern Europe.
The second factor that makes the Greek Revolution a unique event is related
to Western Europe and more specifically to the role “Greece” played in defin-
ing “western civilization” and “western ethics,” alongside the help the war
received from its West European allies. The Greek War of Independence rein-
vented “Greece,” the stepping-stone of “western civilization,” a stereotype that
Romanticism enriched and strengthened. Greek independence became inevi-
table, while Greek valor was an example that traveled as far as the Americas.
The “rebirth of Greece” transmitted ideals and ideas around the globe. In its
own terms, this brought about the dependency of the newly born state on
its European counterparts. The West European powers safeguarded Greece,
establishing, at the same time, their presence in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The last and perhaps most important factor is the concept of self-
determination. Although often neglected or taken as self-evident, this concept is
of extreme importance. Α careful look at the events of the Greek Revolution tes-
tifies to that. Self-determination affected all aspects of the revolts that emerged
around the same time in the same geographical region and which we conceive
of today under the general framework of the Greek War of Independence.
Today, we tend to understand the Greek Revolution as one single event
within certain boundaries. We attribute to it, and rightly so, a very specific
viii Foreword
beginning and a conclusive end, with one part acting in a certain way, while
the other part acted differently. The sources suggest, however, that such a sche-
matic presentation does not do justice to what really happened. The Greek War
of Independence was a particularly complicated series of events of multiple
dynamics, all of which, intentionally or not, proclaimed self-determination,
the various connotations notwithstanding, as the ultimate reason against any
source of power. Self-determination is thus the concept that intermediated the
entry of “Greece” into modernity: a province of the Ottoman Empire becomes
an independent state; or, more accurately in the case of Greece, a state regains
its independence, with reference, of course, to Antiquity.
The complexity of the Greek Revolution, the key concepts that emerged and
which the Greek Enlightenment polished, the various dynamics, and the place
of the Greek War of Independence in the international framework are issues
that have been sufficiently addressed by modern scholarship. Disentangling
the study of the Greek War of Independence from traditional perceptions
that invariably attempted to promote the heroic nature of the Greek partici-
pants alongside the evil Ottomans, modern scholars have revised the narra-
tive. For one, they have abandoned ideological conceptualizations and have
returned to sources to make sense of the events and their aftermath. Instead of
marginalized presentations, recent scholarship approaches the Greek War of
Independence within multiple frameworks and from various angles, always in
accordance with current trends and theoretical milieus. Even national histori-
ography has shifted the discussion of the Greek Revolution into more polymor-
phic and complicated approaches.
We still lack, however, one of the most important components regarding
the study of the Greek War of Independence: that of the Ottoman view. One
cannot but wonder, what did the Ottomans think about the Greek War of
Independence? In fact, what did they call it? Did they react instantly? And
then, how did they record the massive events of 1821 onwards? These are all
questions this book aims to address. Including more than 600 unpublished
documents directly from the imperial cabinet, a task that has never been
undertaken before, this publication sheds light on the Ottoman view of the
Greek Revolution. Meticulously commented upon and carefully indexed and
analyzed, this set of documents, which covers today’s Greece, but not only,
brings to scholars fresh information and insight.
It must be said from the outset that this book does not challenge our over-
all perception of the Greek War of Independence. Yet that was not our initial
concern. To make such a statement would mean to fall into the same fallacy
that scholars of previous years have fallen into, that is, to ignore and under-
or overestimate the value of the sources. On the contrary, our concern was to
Foreword ix
return to the principles of history, a long-lasting engagement of the Aikaterini
Laskaridis Foundation. To put it differently, our aim was to examine carefully
an insufficiently studied set of documents and to understand to what extent
sources that have been rarely employed in modern scholarship enrich and/or
change our view of the past. The Ottoman documents presented here highlight
aspects of the Greek War of Independence that have never been thoroughly
addressed or investigated.
In short, with this edition we introduce to the greater public an archival
source that we hope will constitute a source of inspiration for further research
and new findings. Instead of a totemic event, we at the Aikaterini Laskaridis
Foundation intended to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Greek War of
Independence by returning back to it.
Panagiotis C. Laskaridis
President of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation
Acknowledgements
This was not an easy project. The vast number of documents we set out to
translate notwithstanding, it took a great deal of time and resources to find the
right people with the necessary skills to bring the project to fruition. The team
members have changed several times, and eventually none of the members of
the initial team survived the project.
I am indebted to many people who have all contributed in significant ways
to this book. First and foremost, I am most grateful to Panagiotis C. Laskaridis,
President of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, for having the vision
to sponsor this rather unusual project. I would like to thank Konstantinos
Mazarakis-Ainian for facilitating matters at the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foun-
dation. I am also indebted to Konstantinos Thanasakis for tirelessly coordinat-
ing every aspect of this project.
I am genuinely obliged to Kahraman Şakul, who joined the project at a later
stage and fastidiously retranslated and edited a good number of the docu-
ments from scratch. Without his support, this book would not have been com-
pleted in time.
Particular thanks are due to my young colleague Çağrı Erdoğan, who amazed
me with his knowledge of Ottoman paleography and undertook the hefty job
of placing the diacritical marks on the transliterations, as well as transliterat-
ing several registers.
I would like to thank Aysel Yıldız, Mehmet Savan, and Nikola Rakovski most
sincerely for taking this project seriously and working around the clock on the
transliterations and translations.
I warmly thank Alexandra Pel for meticulously editing the English text on a
tight schedule and preparing the final manuscript for publication. My special
thanks to Lydia Papageorgiou-George for preparing the maps and the bibliog-
raphy and to Efi Andrikopoulou for preparing the index.
Candan Badem, Mehmet Mennan, Yusuf Şafak, Himmet Taşkömür,
Ilias Kolovos, Paraskevas Matalas, Alidost Numan, Hara Nassiki, Despoina
Pavlidou, Sinan Kuneralp, Ali Can Batmaz, and Gelina Harlaftis all made
valuable contributions at different stages of the project, and my special
thanks go to them.
I would also like to thank Abdurraouf Oueslati, Acquisitions Editor for
Middle East and Islamic Studies at Brill, and the Brill production team for their
assistance at the final stage of this book.