To: miltonim
"A Muslim scholar states that the Muslims controlled Greece while allowing freedom of religion for the Christians. Would you consider that a true statement?
You can take the fifth. It will not be held against you."
Well, if you take the statement within the context of the times, it is partially true. The Greeks were held in a state of dhiminitude which most times meant that they were subject to one petty (or not so petty) insult after another. Rather like in Egypt today. Occasionally there were real pogroms. At others we were not allowed to educate our children in the Faith or history of the Greek people and developed the "Secret Schools" to teach the children. The kids would travel by moonlight to a cave somewhere where the priest would teach them about the Faith, how to read and write etc. If the children were caught, it was off to Turkey with them and the if the priest were caught, death. At some times, the Turks would come to a village and kidnap the most handsome and strong young boys and the prettiest girls and take them off to Constantinople, the boys to be converted to Mohammedans and made into Janissaries and the girls thrown into the harem. One of my ancestresses was carried off to the harem but escaped and walked, at night, all the way back to her village in Southern Greece. If a Greek converted to Mohammedanism and then wanted to convert back to Orthodoxy, he or she would uniformly be executed, throughout the entire period of the Turkokratia. By the late 1700s a Greek political consciousness had developed and that, along side the Orthodox Faith is what gave rise to the Greek Revolution.
All of the foregoing notwithstanding, most of the time the Turks pretty much left the Greeks alone. Frankly, Greek overlords might, save in the religious arena, have been nearly as bad as the Turks on a day to day basis.
To: Kolokotronis
Efharisto poli! Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.
130 posted on
11/14/2004 4:09:50 PM PST by
miltonim
(Fight those who do not believe in Allah. - Koran, Surah IX: 29)
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