Ottoman History Podcast - Neither Muslim Nor Christian

Episode Date: April 29, 2013

with Zeynep Türkyılmaz hosted by Chris Gratien and Vedica Kant Stories of insincere conversion under duress and secret Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire give the impression that many Christians lived in hiding from a Muslim majority. However, as Zeynep Türkyılmaz argues in this podcast, the phenomenon of Crypto-Christianity is really more complex, as diversity and heterogeneity among the Ottoman Empire's rural communities gave rise to "in-between" groups that did not conform to categories of identity being formulated in the center. In this episode, we focus on the Trabzon region in order to understand how local communities sought to define their participation in a rapidly transforming society and economy of the nineteenth century. « Click for More »

Hello and welcome to another installment of the Adam History Podcast. I'm Chris Grayton. And I'm Vedika Kant. and welcome to another installment of the Adam History Podcast. I'm Chris Grayton. And I'm Vedika Kant. Today our guest is Dr. Zeynep Türkülmaz, an assistant professor of history at Dartmouth College. Hi.

Zeynep, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you for inviting. Today our topic is crypto-Christianity in the Ottoman Empire. Before we get into your research, which is heavily focused on the 19th century and the latter Ottoman period, could you give us a sense of what we mean when we're talking about crypto-Christianity in the Ottoman Empire as a whole? Yeah, sure. It's actually one of those delicate questions I've been struggling with from the very beginning of my research. I actually started my project not intending to study crypto-Christianity. I was focusing on mostly Qazilbash communities, Yazidis and Nusayris,

Arab-Alawites in different parts of the empire, and I was hoping to find stories about them. But when I was doing my research, I came across a lot of references to these groups that were practicing both Islam and Christianity. And it was, at first, you know, I was trying to look to the other side and try to focus on my research and completely turning the other way. Then I came across this reference about a priest at a Muslim funeral and then some Ottoman officials coming and claiming the, you know, the corpse. coming and claiming the corpse. At first, it was a big question mark for me, but then I realized that there were some crypto-Christian communities in Trabzon, what they called crypto-Christian communities in Trabzon.

Yozgat, Akta, Madeni, Arnavutluk, Albania, Ishbat, Mount Lebanon, and Cyprus and Crete. And then I realized that I'm actually dealing with a bigger phenomenon than I thought. And the crypto-Christianity as a term is actually a political one as much as a religious and social term. I was going to ask that. It seems to imply that they are in hiding. It implies several things. It means that there was a secret

inner and truthful life uh that that it's that's authentic as opposed to their you know outwardly fake cover identities so there's that kind of an truthful and real genuine inner self as opposed to some sort of outwardly thing that they had to perform all the time when they're out there, right? And there is also an assumption that there were two separate things that these communities knew that they were separate, like Christianity and Islam were two completely separate things for them. And then they tried to go back and forth between these two identities. When doing my research, actually, I found that we really need to question those kind of notions,

and especially if you are away from the city centers, you know, especially if you are like the miners I work on, on top of a mountain, about 2,000 meters, top of a mountain about 2,000 meters, things get a little blurry. Identities get a little blurry. Religions get a little blurry. And what I ended up, how I ended up defining these communities is that crypto-Christianity as a concept, as a claim, emerges at the very time that these communities become open and declare, make a political claim. Whereas when they were living their lives, you know, the crypto-Christian lives, quote-unquote, they are referred to in different ways. In Trabzon, around Trabzon, Gümüşhane, they are known as Maçkalı or Kurumlu. In Akdamadini, they are known as Istavri. Their differences are marked, but they are not marked as part of that crypto-Christianity,

this ambiguous category and quite problematic category that we impose on them after the 19th century. I just wanted to kind of build on some of the things you mentioned there. In your research, just was wondering if there is any particular moment when these groups really start popping up in terms of their history? When do crypto-Christians, have they always existed throughout the empire? Do they pop up at a certain time and become more visible? Okay, that's actually a very interesting question. And my senses, my understanding is this is a phenomenon that happened around 17th century. And we really need to do more research on the 17th century. We know that Islamization took place as a gradual process and kind of reached its peak point around the 17th century.

And actually my research also confirms that something happened in the 17th century. It's either Mehmet IV's more zealot policies towards proselytization or decline of the religious institutions of the Christian communities or several other reasons. But it seems like around 17th century, some among these mining communities decided to take the path of Islam, but others did not. So these two communities, those who remain Christian and those who took the path of Islam, coexisted, it seems. I mean, the research shows that they actually coexisted. And I'm also a 19th century historian, so I don't know too much about the early modern period. However, the region I work

on, the Adana region or the broader Cilicia region, has a lot of groups, Armenians and, as you mentioned, Nusayris, who are in ambiguous categories throughout the Ottoman period. And I remember a travel narrative by an Armenian from Poland, Simeon, and he travels through Anatolia during the maybe the maybe the 1630s and he mentions a group which he refers to as half and half Armenians they're half Muslim and half Christian Armenians they were strange to him he's coming from a context where everybody is something yeah one thing yeah and he describes how they celebrate some feasts with their Muslim neighbors, but also do like pilgrimage to Jerusalem as Christians. And one of the things he mentions in that narrative is the effects of the Jalali revolt in Anatolia of depopulating villages, especially Christian villages, where this is what the sources say, at least disproportionately affected by the Jalali revolt.

So I don't know if this could have been another factor. Probably, probably. Actually, it makes a lot of sense because it seems like there was some sort of unusual, maybe some ecological change, I don't know. That's the latest thesis, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, you know, J. That's the latest thesis, right? Yeah, yeah.

Or you know, Celalism can be, obviously, I mean, that's the Sam White's thesis. I don't know. I mean, that's why we really need to look more closely into that. But rather than understanding this as an, you know, Islam imposed on people, or people trying to, you know, keep preserve their ethnic under some sort of foreign invasion or seeing them as the fallen ones. I think we really need to recognize these people as individuals making informed decisions. And some Christians took that path, perhaps in response to some sort of social crisis

around them, political crisis around them, political crisis around them, and others did not. And I think if we can look more closely into the ones that took this decision, I think we will learn a lot more about the Ottoman Empire and how people lived in the Ottoman Empire, not how the states saw these people, but how they actually lived in the empire. And I think that was one of the main questions i had and i still have when i started doing my research right i mean the thing is anywhere we go in in the former ottoman empire during this period if you're talking about the

mountains or some relative place relatively far from the center inevitably you're going to find somebody who some communities that aren't either orthodox sunni or they're going to find some communities that aren't either Orthodox Sunni, or they're going to be deviant from the norms, at least how they were understood in the center. I agree with that. And I actually, I would say that it's not only 17th century, actually early 20th century. Still, yeah, of course.

If you read the reports about Trabzon, If you read the reports about Trabzon written by Ottoman officials around the turn of the century, it's shocking to them to see that. I mean, these places are very heavily still Christian, like in terms of monuments, monasteries, churches, and the Muslim institutional presence is liminal. And very, you know, and, you know, Muslims speak Greek. Their knowledge of Quran is very limited. They don't speak Turkish. And for them, obviously, that's a big question mark. don't speak turkish and for them obviously that's a big question mark they don't they um and they explain uh christianization tanasur by ignorance by the lack of uh state support for the religion and uh but they don't really obviously they're're not PhD students trying to understand what's going on there.

But to me, when I was doing research, it seemed like for these people, the difference between Christianity and Islam, perhaps, was less than what it was in Istanbul or any other city center, even maybe in Trabzon city center. So for them, conversion perhaps didn't mean as big of a change as we think today. I think that'll bring us to our main topic, which is the second half of the 19th century, when these categories get more hardened crypto christianity has not been studied widely in the in the ottoman case so when i started there were a few people who briefly wrote about this briefly touched this

issue and the way it was studied or it was written was, you know, these communities were either responding to conscription, you know, reacting to conscription, or trying to gain the favor of the British and Russian and gain some sort of protection. But my main concern was really to understand why these people, some of them converted into Christianity, declared themselves as Christian in 1857, and the others basically converted, waited until 1882 in Akdamadini, and then declared themselves Christians. So for me, looking closer to these communities, this kind of lack needed some real explanation, not just saying that

these people were not good citizens, so they weren't willingly joining the conscription, whereas we assume that Muslims did. So when I started reading documents, I realized that these were all mining communities. reading documents that I realized that these were all mining communities. And even when they were living in different parts of the empire, their main connection was back to Gümüşhane. And then I had to study and understand what Ottoman mining structure was like. And I realized that it was a whole different issue. And it's very, very similar to, you know, all kinds of empires, like world empires, regulation of mining, because mining was an

important, you know, crucial issue for any of these empires for fiscal and military reasons, right? They needed metals. So Ottomans were also very concerned about their metal production. And they developed, some of them they borrowed and inherited from Byzantine Empire and other empires. But the others, they actually perfected their forms and they created a system that's known as maden serbestisi, mining autonomy, where the miners were given some exemptions and privileges for the very hard work

that they were forced to do. And these exemptions and privileges included exemption from conscription, conscription, some of the taxes, especially non-religious, non-sharia taxes, the IRFI ones, and others also granted them some sort of exclusion from outside interference. So we have a very protected mining life, miners' life and mining economy. Could I jump in here and ask you a bit more about, you know, since we are talking about crypto-Christians, I was wondering whether, and the Ottoman Empire, of course, had various kinds of Christians, whether it's Armenian Christians or Greek Orthodox.

I was wondering whether within the mining community there is one particular, what is the makeup of the mining community? They were predominantly Greeks. There were some Armenians, but they weren't as important, as central to the mining economy as the Greek millet was. And I guess that's also a continuity from the Byzantine Empire because, as I mentioned, there was actually an archbishop

that oversaw the meters of the miners, regardless of where they were. You know how the Orthodox Church actually also has its own seas, right? I mean, archbishops divide their own terrain and own communities. But what happens is just like the maden serbestisi, you know, mining autonomy, where basically the state-appointed trust oversees the matters of miners wherever they are in the empire. Greek church also had, Orthodox church also had similar structure where the archbishop of Haldia or Gümüşhane metropoliti basically took care of the businesses of Greek miners regardless of their location. So they could be in Istanbul, but they would be still seen by the Archbishop of Haldia, Gümüşhane metropoliti, and not the local one. So it seems like there was an overlap of institutional protection and separation that kind of created a microcosm of mining in the Ottoman Empire, not emerged, but survived and prospered under these conditions.

Again, I'm not saying much about its emergence, but in terms of how was it possible for these people to live quite an unconventional life in some ways, I think it was the mining industry, mining structures that enabled that kind of a dualist life. There are some Muslims working within this business, but it was predominantly Greek millet. And not every Muslim miner was a crypto-Christian, ended up being a crypto-Christian. But all the crypto Christian miners,

all the crypto Christians I worked on were miners from Gimishani district. So my question is, why were they ever, not crypto to begin with, why were they ever partially Muslim? Yeah, that's a question that we need to do some more research into 16th, 17th century. I don't know.

I really don't know the answer. My census is, I mean, maybe like, you know, Jelali party mentioned, maybe just like how the Greek nationalists see them, they're the Falunmals. I don't know. But it seems like for them, that was a lifestyle of choice. You know, they choose to be that way. But I don't have an answer why. I guess in the absence of being forced to make a choice, they didn't have to.

Maybe they were. We don't know. That's why I don't want to make a conclusive statement about that. Maybe something happened and this particular group of people had to choose to be that way. I don't know. I mean, and it's very frustrating for me to talking about something that I don't know how it started, but I know how it ended. But I mean, there's so little written about these communities in the earlier periods. there's so little written about mining industry in the Ottoman Empire. There's so little written about how Islamization happened in the 17th century Ottoman Empire. So we have these very broad general studies that look at defters and say this many people converted into Islam at this period.

But we don't really know why. When you talk about it like that, my question then would be whether it is a certain politicization or a period in time in the late 19th century where they have to actually make a decision about coming out and have to actually give a definition to themselves as opposed to just living this this lifestyle is that moment the moment when uh in the the tanzimat period we have a clearer definition of citizenship is that what is the driving force

here there are a number of things first of all, mining industry collapsed by early 19th century. There are signs that they're not making a lot of money. There wasn't much revenue going to the center. The metal production dropped. And it was also a time that European, obviously, metal production was at height and peak. And obviously, they have lower transportation costs. And due to over-exhaustion, many of the mines in the Gümüşhane district were actually shut down. Some of them had gas, some of them had water.

shut down. Some of them had gas, some of them had water, so it was impossible for these mines to, you know, continue forever. And the Ottoman Empire was not willing to invest at that time and continue with the old system, because this was a time that they were introducing universal conscription, more universal forms of taxation. And these kind of autonomies and even, I would say, extraterritoriality granted to its subjects was becoming a problem. That was part of the story from the state's perspective. From the miners' perspective, obviously, it was very simple. They couldn't feed themselves. They couldn't feed their families. And they needed to go other places elsewhere to be able to make money and continue their lives as they knew it.

And some of the ones that stayed around Gümüşhane, around the mining districts, but basically all they could do was apples and pears. I mean, they grew apples and pears, but, you know, that didn't make a lot of money. So they went to places like Konya, Ankara, and some of them went to Trabzon to work at the Trabzon port that was becoming very important at the time. So what happens, I believe, at that time by their, you know, leaving their, in a way, homeland of the Christianity or, you know, these kind of places that accommodates this kind of non-conventional, non-Orthodox way of life,

suddenly in these new places they became unusual, unconventional. They're marked as unconventional lifestyles. First of all, even if they kept their Muslim identity, they were speaking Greek. So, I mean, obviously in Ankara, that's an anomaly. That wasn't an anomaly in Trabzon, but that was an anomaly in Konya and other places. And also, somehow, even in the city center,

according to the British consul in Trabzon at that time, people knew that, for example, they were not performing circumcision, or that they only occasionally go to mosques and somehow he also claims that when they appear at the courts even as witnesses they're you know they were not

counted as regular Muslims so it seems like there was some sort of a stigma that was attached to these people once they were in the city center and that also in a way pushed them to make a decision so i mean to stress that this is not a exotic thing per se it's not for the period i could give an example of a document i found where when they're doing conscription in places that haven't usually been supplying soldiers, maybe Albania and the Balkans or somewhere where people had not been brought into the fold until recently, they actually have to do mass circumcision of all of the new soldiers because we have this, you know, people outside of what is considered the standard practices in the center. And we can give the case of Nusayris in Syria, where during the 19th century, suddenly there's this big push,

I guess, that they have to make a choice. Are they Muslims or not? Only in response to their protestantization. Exactly. So this fits within a larger framework of, I guess... It does and it doesn't. In some way, I still think that there is something quite unusual about that. And in the way that actually...

What fascinates me about this group is their originality, actually. I mean, they're very confident. They're rough guys that are quite persistent and strong-willed people who knew what they want. And it seems like what they want was to really bring their hidden half to the surface rather than getting rid of what was seen as their cover. Exactly. And I agree with this whole standardization, what we expect about the practice of Islam in different parts of the empire. I completely agree with that. And on top of that, I think what I would say is, Trabzon, perhaps city center can be a place where you see some sort of orthodoxy, right? I mean, it's an Islamic learning center.

But even, I mean, they should be familiar with this kind of widespread, you know, Muslim being Muslim, but not necessarily practicing circumcision. But it seems like there was still some sort of stigma attached to Krumous and Machkalis, that they were not necessarily attaching to other Greek-speaking Muslims. That's why, for example, even after mid-19th century, when they declared themselves as Christians and claiming that they are going back to their original creed, what they did

was not completely get rid of their Muslim identity, but they added their Christian identity to their Muslim identity. And there's this quite fascinating creation, neologism, that appears around this time. And they actually apparently call themselves, there's a phenomenon called Bucuk Islamiyet. And Bucuk Islamiyet refers to apparently a practice of Islam in the Gümüşhane Highlands, where basically these recently Christianized populations go to mosque on Fridays and the church on Sundays. And that's their understanding of practice.

And you're working on the 19th century so how did you find this term was it in the archival record yes it was in our it was written by actually an Ottoman official obviously very frustrated to see this and he was saying that uh there were a few ulema in in this you know in this area in Gümüşhane, and what they immediately requested to me to be moved somewhere else because it became such a widespread phenomenon that these basically communities are quite comfortable with what they're doing.

And then he advises that, you know, in mosque and elementary school should be opening these areas to correct their belief and basically give them other opportunities but it seems like um i mean that wasn't a very limited phenomenon it was actually very widespread what you just described sounds eerily familiar to what ahmed jevdet pasha described during the 1860s when he went into the Taurus Mountains to, they called it Iskand, to resettle tribes, essentially to pacify both tribes and Armenian villages there. And he described

Muslims who weren't Muslims to him. And of course, he's someone very much associated with the new orthodoxy and the codification of Islamic law during the late 19th century. And it's just interesting to see that whether it's Republican bureaucrats who are still encountering the same kind of surprises or Ahmad Javad al-Basha or Europeans for that matter who come to the Middle East and say half of these Muslims are actually secret Christians. In their eyes they're not real Muslims, they're actually truly Christians and they have their own biases. So whether you're a European seeing Christians who are in hiding,

or you're a Muslim administrator seeing bad Muslims, we can see how probably neither of these views actually reflect the way people saw themselves on the ground. Yeah, and also not the way Muslims and Christians around them saw these communities. not the way Muslims and Christians around them saw these communities. Exactly. Right. And I think I may have given the false impression when I pointed to parallels in the other parts of the Ottoman Empire that all these decisions are the same. I think that actually what we're seeing in your case is a bit more exceptional in that you had people who were nominally Muslims who changed, who... I wouldn't call them nominally Muslims. No no i i actually try not to say that um

i think they were muslims in their own ways um we can't know we can't really read their intentions you have people who are publicly muslims uh saying that they're yeah that they're actually christians this is more unique than groups that are considered heterodox muslims or whatever becoming more uh sunnified that was more of a widespread phenomenon in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. What I try to do overall in my research is to show that actually whether we consider these communities Muslim or not is a very 19th century phenomenon. So when we call these communities nom muslim or heterodox uh muslims we are still working within the paradigm that was created in the second half of 19th century and

actually in response to religious mobilization among these communities still but as far as i understand it when their hand is put to the fire, so to speak, more communities will move towards becoming part of the, quote unquote, let's say, mainstream Islam, rather than saying, no, we're Christians. Like, this is a more exceptional phenomenon, wouldn't you say? Yeah, it is, in the sense that, I mean, I read several interrogation records, right? I mean, and that's something, a criticism I had for the earlier works on this. And there's this assumption that after 1856, it's an easy thing to, you know, emerge as a Christian and say, if you are, you know, appeared, whether nominally or genuinely as Muslim, and then at some point decided to change your religion, that was an easy business. It was not.

then at some point decided to change your religion. That was an easy business. It was not. And all these explanations that basically assumes that this was a pragmatist and opportunist choice on the part of crypto-Christians, I think are doing an unfair reading of intentions. Because if you read their interrogation records, if you look at the policies that are targeted at these communities, you actually see that that was a very bold move. And they had to, you know, confront the state, state officials, sometimes local ones more than the central authorities. And they had to struggle to claim this identity. Sometimes it meant that their, you know, corpse of their loved ones would be taken away from them. Sometimes it meant that they would be the only Christian soldiers,

or only Christianite soldiers, apostate soldiers in the Ottoman army, Muslim army. And other times it was a threat that their children will be all sent to Yemen, right? I mean, it wasn't as easy as we assume. It wasn't just saying that, okay, if I become Christian, British and Russians are going to favor me, and I'll be, you know, granted some privileges, and that would be a great life. It was actually a hard life. I wanted to come back to, I mean, you've talked about some of the state, the Ottoman state's responses to these people coming out uh but i was wondering if there is any sense or any idea we have about how the communities they were living in itself

responded to them coming out as you know crypto christian that's actually a great question and um and that's why um again not not knowing what really happened and why these communities chose to be different than their Muslim or Christian neighbors. But it seems like whatever happened, happened, and they developed a different identity over time. Again, most of the initial reactions comes from, I mean, we get the sources about these initial reactions from the British sources. It's quite striking that there's not much in the Ottoman archives about those reactions. And the British consul in Trabzon says that basically Muslims couldn't care less initially. They kind of knew that there was something odd about these communities. kind of knew that there was something odd about these communities. But he uses a very strong word, actually, coming from the Rummilletin, the Greeks of Trabzon. He claims that they didn't really see it as something to be cherished by the Rums. They didn't see it as a gain, and they actually talk about these Krumlus,

they refer to them as animals, with no real religious belief or religious creed. So it seems like, at least initially in Trabzon, Greek communities that were not part of the mining networks were less accepting of this change that comes after 1856 than, let's say, some of the local Muslims. It changed over time. And some of the especially local Muslim officers take extra steps that weren't necessarily

advised or asked by the Ottoman state. And then my other question as to the other parties would be, of course, the other imperial powers who were increasingly interfering in the Ottoman Empire at the time. And what was their reaction? Oh, yeah, great again. Obviously, Trabzon is next to Russia, right? And Russia is the protector

of the Orthodox subjects. And these communities appear as the Orthodox subjects. And what they do is, actually, they start giving away passports and IDs for these Krumlus

and Maçkalıs who had difficulty after especially 1859, and they were being conscripted, and they had to go elsewhere to await conscription. So what happens is, using the Gümüşhane archbishop's networks, Archbishop's networks Gümüşhane Archbishop at that time was actually

himself an ex-minor and he saw, he knew about the Krumlu story because he was actually a Christian from Krum the village and then he actually served maybe almost 40 years and he refused

to actually get a promotion because he actually wanted to stay and oversee his spiritual children and their well-being. And he was the one that often gave their baptism papers and smuggled them, helped them, you know, go to Russia. So Russian response was great. You know, there are now knee people, and let's bring some of those people.

And quite interestingly, obviously, this is a time that Russia was expanding southward. So there is a colonization process taking place in the Caucasus. So, you know, some of the, at least not all, but some of the machgalis and krumlus that ended up in Russia actually became part of that colonization process. Not only as the real builders, because they were all, you know, stonemasons and, you know, they knew how to work, how to build, but also in terms of ideological construction of an, you know, orth Orthodox Empire that was just another justification for... So there's this kind of ironic situation where they

are, you know, kind of victimized here and then they become as the heroes on the other side. But what happens is they come back. Most of them actually come back with their, you know, extra papers. So the dualism, if there was one kind of dualism before 1857 in terms of their religious identity and. So the dualism, if there was one kind of dualism before 1857 in terms of their religious identity, and perhaps some other dualism in terms of their names, what happens after 1857 is you see more dualism. So now most of them have both Ottoman and Russian papers,

both Ottoman and Russian passports. And they have two countries, they go back and forth. So, you know, their lifestyle before 1857 enabled and relied on some sort of duality. And after 1857, they just expanded their realm of dualities. But on the other hand, they're living in a changing world. So, I mean, you mentioned the Caucasus and Russian expansion. And, you know, with the mention of this topic I'm wondering what happens to these communities in the 1880s and in the 1890s and in time

periods where on the local level we actually are seeing clashes between Christians and Muslims and other parts of the Empire. I mean what how does this community endure during this period uh are they is revenge taken on them for their ertidat that had taken place earlier how does that play out i haven't seen much clashes definitely not in the sense of you know 1894 pogroms I mean there is nothing like that actually we never talked about numbers but around Gümüşhane and Trabzon the initial declaration 1857

declaration was signed by 44 leading figures from 19 districts and the list that was given with this to the British Council in Trabzon was around 20,000 Krumus. But the idea was that there's a lot more. But we never know. We really don't have the numbers, how many of those actually registered themselves. I guess there were enough difference and

enough acceptance of difference in Trabzon still, at least as far as these communities were concerned. You don't really see much clashes. Sometimes, it's like again, it usually happens at the funerals. Claiming the body was one of the main clashes, areas that you see clashes. And sometimes in terms of right to use medals, and it's a big deal, again, in highlands of tribes on Pontic Highlands. So these kind of issues, you see clashes with the Muslims, and then often the issue becomes one about religion.

It doesn't start as one about religion but it can translate into that kind of a language. Even in Akdamadini where you have a very small community living among Armenians, Muslims and Greeks who weren't

really familiar with the mining networks. I mean, there are clearly outsiders and clearly marked with their difference. Actually, something quite controversial also took place there because Kipchoge, one of the leaders of the movement, was actually really head to professions, one being imam, the other being papas. And he actually prayed, he led the Muslim prayers at mosques. So once he declared himself a Christian, he also joined the Greek Orthodox Church. That was a little bit controversial, as you can imagine.

That was a little bit controversial, as you can imagine. But again, I don't have any records of any kind of violence targeting these communities. My sense is that they were very powerful actors. And they knew what they were doing. And it was very radical in one sense, but it wasn't very radical on the other. I mean, people knew about this. It wasn't expressed, it wasn't openly stated, but it wasn't as hidden as we assume. And most of the controversies I could find was actually with the state officials and not necessarily Volk. I mean, I read two sources, two memoirs that mentions Christianization. One of them is actually

by the mayor of Trabzon. And he says that, you know, Ahmed Mehmet, we were, you know, sharing the desk at the, you know, primary school suddenly Niko Yorgo. And obviously you sense some sort of frustration, but it is what it is. And another one actually, again, a local Trabzon Muslim, he says basically most of these people were those who were forcefully converted into Islam by Hayrettin Pasha in the late 18, you know, around 1840s. So they were converting back. Maybe some of those people were that. So that's why I think, you know, crypto-Christianity once appeared became an umbrella category, you know. Some of them were probably of Turkmen origin.

Some others were like, you know, Alevis or Chepnis of Turkmen origin. Others were those, you know, Alevis or Chepnis of Turkmen origin. Others were those, you know, recent converts. But by and large, I think this phenomenon was not a real hidden, completely cryptic, secretive phenomenon that it wasn't shocking to anybody. And they were very much part of the hierarchies, ethnic hierarchies, religious hierarchies, and they weren't necessarily

pushing those hierarchies. And I guess some of the violence, especially, I mean, you know, probably Bruce Master's work on, you know, Damascus and Aleppo. And you know, they are, he focuses on incorporation into the, you know, world economic system, right? I mean, here you don't really see that kind of attention. I don't think they are necessarily changing the economic equilibrium in the region. It's just that they are making a statement.

Well, I want to ask about another topic before we sort of wind down to the end of this story, the end of the Ottoman period, and I don't want to foreshadow, but we do eventually see some change here. shadow but um we do eventually see some change here uh i want to ask about marriage because if these groups are kind of in between or whatever aren't there isn't there a lot of uh marrying between different religious groups and ethnic groups going on or is that like one of the boundaries okay um they claim that they did not uh one or two biographies available on this issue claim that their daughters never married Muslim men, but a few times they actually brought in Muslim brides.

Big question, Mike. But once they actually convert, not convert, but declare themselves as Christians, one of their standing ground is that they did not intermix with other groups, that they were intermarrying. It was endogamy for them by and large, especially in Trabzon and Gümüşhane district. and large, especially in Trabzon and Gümüşhane district. What is quite interesting about the istavris around Akdamad and in Yozgat and Ankara is actually they weren't as powerful because, you know, there was this, you know, one mining

district and they were a diaspora group there and they were surrounded by, you know, a were surrounded by a different understanding of life and everything. So once they declared themselves as Christians, 30 years after they're members of their community there, they also tried to keep their two names initially but after that they immediately dropped because they realized that it was impossible for them to keep two names and still claim certain rights for what do you mean by two names that they had two first names two first names one christian yes like constantine osman and this is the one i love most because you know osman and constantine so you know the best of both worlds. Two emperors in one person.

So they like those kind of names. And I mean, the assumption was that most of the crypto communities actually took names that appear all in Abrahamic religions, like Solomon or Suleiman. Yeah, Harun, Yahya. But you actually see that a lot of them take Osman, Hussein, Hasan, like clearly actually see that a lot of them take Osman Hussein Hasan, like

clearly Muslim names, and they're proud of that. I mean, there's no question. But the ones in the East, the East Trabri is around Akdamad and he had to drop that right away. And what they do is actually one of their, I think, boundary making strategies was to giving their daughters, to marrying their daughters to Greek community. Again, pushing the boundaries. Full-fledged Greeks.

Exactly. And again, assimilating into the ranks of Greek millet by showing another form of irtidad, right? I mean, you can't really marry your daughter off to, you know-fledged greek but that's my question you said that they claimed in this period that they hadn't been marrying their daughters to muslims and so and also not christians is that do you think that's a reasonable uh to believe or do you think that also in that time period there must have been i mean do you think that that was a claim made to assert as christian identity or based on what you know about early modern anatolia is it possible that they weren't

i mean i have my doubts about that especially in the highlands i think several things were happening and they had to forget those to make their claims about exclusive identity but i think after 1857 in one case and 1882 in the other, marriage was a strategy to assert their different identity. In Iran, for the Krumlus and Machkalas, they had to keep intermarrying to preserve their exclusive identity from Greeks and Muslims by and large. Only after I guess they fully became recognized they felt more comfortable about the other opportunities.

But in the case of Istavris they really needed to prove that they are Christians. And obviously before 1882 I think there were very little room for them to marry other Christians or Muslims in the neighborhood. Because they really wanted to preserve their difference.

Well, we can maybe imagine where so many of these turkus about star-crossed lovers, boys and girls who aren't allowed to be together. In a context like this, it's easy to see where these songs come from. So we're going to have to fast forward a little here because i want to get to the end of the ottoman period and i think what you've been stressing here in this podcast and it's something we should keep in mind when we talk about identity is that identities are really a product of people choosing some kind of option that they have and so options for identity vary depending on the historical context. And you don't always get to define what your options are in terms of identity. So in the mid-19th century, we get the sense that one of your options was you had to be Christian, Jew, Muslim, but you had to be one of these categories, right?

So at the end of the Ottoman period, we see the emergence of ethnic nationalism. And we see that the options are changing. Ottoman period, we see the emergence of ethnic nationalism, and we see that the options are changing. And, you know, to refer to an analogous case, maybe the Karamanlis of Western Anatolia, who were Christians, but spoke Turkish, and had this kind of Anatolian identity, they become part of the population exchanges, and are sent to Greece without any Greek language. And of course, we see the same thing, Muslims coming from Crete or Bulgarian speaking Muslims coming from Bulgaria to modern Turkey who don't speak any Turkish. So what happens with... Quite ironically and quite sad, actually, these ex-crypto-Christian, new Christian communities actually were fully recognized as Christian for the first time with the population exchange,

to be expelled from the country. And I find that quite ironic. I mean, their whole struggle. It's tragic. It's tragic. And, I mean, their whole struggle was actually to stay in their homes, in their towns, in their villages. And each time, actually, when i read these uh reports um sometimes police reports uh complaining about these uh you know coming back from russia you know you really get the sense that they want to live in this place.

That was their homes. And their struggle was not to go and work for another. They were trying to betray any cause as it's often presented in the nationalist historiography or nationalism, Turkish nationalism, and to an extent in the Greek nationalism. They were just being themselves. But that their identity became tools,

became mediums in the hands of the state with the population exchange to expel them and not give them any option. Yeah, and the population exchanges are really bizarre in some way because it's about nationalism, but it's done along religious lines. And in this case, right, I mean, the state struggles so long not to recognize them as Christians, and the minute that there's this, then they're all suddenly Christians. Yeah, and you mentioned that whether Christian or Muslim,

you have this sense that there is an attempt to maintain continuity of whatever this community is, that there is a community that is trying to reproduce itself and protect itself, and kind of almost like they're surfing on waves of different tides of history, trying to stay afloat. But in the end, you know, within nation state period, this is one period where we see a destruction of a lot of such in-between communities. Well, we've been all over the place in our discussion today, and we've talked about a lot of topics that I thought I knew something about. I'm not sure if I know more about them now or I know that I know less about them now. You know what I mean? I mean, when we open up a topic like this that, one, not everybody wants to talk about, but two, that is so hard to study because it's very cryptic, you know, not to make any bad puns. But you just see how complex Ottoman Anatolia or the Ottoman Empire was in ways that, you know,

our narratives that we've received really have not done justice to it. So I hope that at the very least, we've come away with that lesson that things were very complex. Yes, I agree. But in any case, I really enjoyed having you on the podcast. It was a great conversation. And I hope our listeners enjoyed as well. for those who are interested in finding out more we've got a bibliography on the website the publications of

Dr. Zeynep Türkilmaz along with some other useful secondary sources for the topic that's all for this episode of the Adam in History podcast

until next time take care