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A Karamanlidika Inscription from Mount Athos (1818)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Richard Clogg
Richard Clogg*
Affiliation:
University of London, King’s College
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Extract

Recent years have seen an increase in scholarly interest in the karamanli Christians, that sizeable population of Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians, who were mainly concentrated in Asia Minor, but pockets of whom were to be found in the Crimea-Azov region and in Turkey in Europe. In die absence of extensive written records for the history of these populations, inscriptions in karamanlidika (Turkish karamanlīca), or Turkish written with Greek characters, constitute an important source of historical data; places of origin and places to which they migrated in search of a livelihood; the names in common use among them; the occupations they followed; their membership of guilds; the state of literacy prevailing in the communities in which they lived; some indication of the relative prosperity of die community or the individual; indications as to dieir life span and, in some cases, the cause of death. Clearly, too, the study of inscriptions in karamanlidika has much the same value for the linguist interested in the historical development of the Turkish dialects, as has the study of printed books and documents written in karamanlidika.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 1 , 1975 , pp. 207 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1975

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References

1. See, for instance, S. Salaville and E. Dalleggio, Karamanlidika, Bibliographie analytique d’ouvrages en langue turque imprimés en caractères grecs, I (1584-1850) (Athens, 1958); II (1851-1865) (Athens, 1966); J. Eckmann, Die karamanische literatur, in J. Deny, et al., ed., Philologiae Twrcicae Fundamenta, II (Wiesbaden, 1964), pp. 819-35; F. Halkin, ‘Acolouthies gréco-turques à l’usage des Grecs turcophones d’Asie Mineure’, Mémorial Louis Petit (Archives de l’Orient Chrétien, I) (Bucharest, 1948), pp. 194-202; R. Clogg, ‘The Publication and Distribution of Karamanli Texts by the British and Foreign Bible Society before 1850’, pts. i and ii, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XIX (1968), 57-81, 171-93. Valuable information on the origins of the karamanlides is contained in S. Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamizationfrom the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Los Angeles, 1971).

2. (Der Saadet (Istanbul), 1898), (Zincidere kariyesinde bulunan Ioannis Prodromos Manastīrī yahut Moni Flavianon), pp. 437ff.

3. (Athens, 1909), pp. 397ff.

4. Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Rendiconti della Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, series Vili (1953), 69-75. Cf. F. V. J. Arundell, Discoveries in Asia Minor, including a Description of the Ruins of Several Ancient Cities, and especially Antioch of Pisidia (London, 1834), I, p. 350. See also V. Kandis, (Athens, 1883), p. 144; I. Ioannidis, (Der Saadet (Istanbul, 1896), p. 114; A. M. Levidis, (Constantinople, 1899), pp. 74-5; F. Sarre, Reise in Kleinasien (Berlin, 1896), p. 151; B. Pace, ‘Ricerche archeologice nella regione di Conia, Adalia, e Scalanova (1914 e 1919)’, Annuario della …Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente, VI-VII (1923-4), 427-8; G. dejerphanion, Mélanges d’archéologie anatolienne; monuments préhélléniques, gréco-romains, byzantins et musulmans de Pont, de Cappadoce et de Galatie (Beirut, 1928), I/II, p. 292; V. Ph. Adamantiadis, VIII (1959), 106-7; E. Vei-Khatzidaki, VIII (1959), 60-73; S. Eyice, ‘Konya ile Siile arasīnda Ak Manastīr, Manākib Al-‘Ārifin ‘deki Deyr-i Eflatun’. Şarkiyat Mecmuasī, VI (1965), 158-9. A tombstone with an inscription in Turkish written with Armenian characters from Bursa has been published by A. R. Yalgīn in ‘Bursa müzesinde enteresan bir mezar taşī’, Türk Folklor araştīrmalarī, I (1950), 95-3.

5. Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, XCI (Paris, 1904), pp. 141-2, inscription no. 423.

6. Niğde, Bor, and Incesu are all in the region of Kayseri, where there was a heavy concentration of karamanli Christians.

7. Literally, ‘son of the shroud maker’.

8. See, e.g., A. M. Schneider, ‘Yedikule und Umgebung’, Oriens, V (195s), 207-8.

9. Numerous guides to die main centres of Orthodox pilgrimage were published in karamanlidika, see, e.g., Salaville and Dalleggio, op. cit., I, and R. Clogg, ‘Notes on some Karamanli books printed before 1850 now in British libraries, with particular reference to die Bible translations of the British and Foreign Bible Society’, XIII (1967), 545. There is an exceptionally fine copy of me (Azim Padişsh Manastīr Kykkonum…) (Venice, 1816) in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. This was given to die British archaeologist D. G. Hogarth in July 1888 by die igoumenos of the Kykko monastery who informed him that ‘die monastery used to distribute copies to pilgrims of distinction’.