Oroville Mercury-Register

Monastery manuscript­s tell new story of Ottoman rule

- By Costas Kantouris

MOUNT ATHOS, GREECE >> A church bell sounds, the staccato thudding of mallet on plank summons monks to afternoon prayers, deep voices are raised in communal chant. And high in the great tower of Pantokrato­r Monastery, a metal library door swings open.

There, deep inside the medieval fortified monastery in the Mount Athos monastic Orthodox Christian community, researcher­s are for the first time tapping a virtually unknown treasure — thousands of Ottoman-era manuscript­s that include the oldest of their kind in the world.

The libraries of the selfgovern­ed community, establishe­d more than 1,000 years ago on northern Greece’s Athos peninsula, are a repository of rare, centuries-old works in several languages including Greek, Russian and Romanian.

Many have been extensivel­y studied, but not the Ottoman Turkish documents, products of an occupying bureaucrac­y that ruled northern Greece from the late 14th century — well before the Byzantine capital, Constantin­ople, fell to the Ottomans in 1453 — until the early 20th when the area became Greek again.

Byzantine scholar Jannis Niehoff-Panagiotid­is says it’s impossible to understand Mount Athos’ economy and society under Ottoman rule without consulting these documents, which regulated the monks’ dealings with secular authoritie­s.

“Ottoman was the official language of state,” he told The Associated Press from the library of the Pantokrato­r Monastery, one of 20 on the heavily wooded peninsula.

Niehoff-Panagiotid­is, a professor at the Free University of Berlin, said the oldest of the roughly 25,000 Ottoman works found in the monastic libraries dates to 1374, or 1371. That’s older than any known in the world, he said, adding that in Istanbul, as the Ottomans renamed Constantin­ople when they made the city their own capital, the oldest archives only go back to the late 15th century.

“The first documents that shed light (on the first period of Ottoman history) are saved here, on Mount Athos,” he said, seated at a table piled with documents and books. Others, the more rare ones, are stored in large wooden drawers.

These include highly ornate Sultans’ firmans — or decrees — deeds of ownership and court decisions.

“The overwhelmi­ng majority are legal documents,” said Anastasios Nikopoulos, a jurist and scientific collaborat­or of the Free University of Berlin who’s been working with Niehoff-Panagiotid­is on the project for the past few months.

And the manuscript­s tell a story at odds with the traditiona­l understand­ing in Greece of Ottoman depredatio­ns in the newly-conquered areas, through the confiscati­on of the Mount

Athos monasterie­s’ rich real estate holdings. Instead, the new rulers took the community under their wing, preserved its autonomy and protected it from external interferen­ce.

“The Sultans’ firmans we

saw in the tower ... and the Ottoman state’s court decisions show that the monks’ small democracy was able to gain the respect of all conquering powers,” Nikopoulos said. “And that is because Mount Athos was

seen as a cradle of peace, culture ... where peoples and civilizati­ons coexisted peacefully.”

Nikopoulos said that one of the first actions of Murad II, the Ottoman ruler who conquered Thessaloni­ki —

the closest city to Mount Athos — was to draw up a legal document in 1430 protecting the community.

“That says a lot. The Ottoman sultan himself ensured that the administra­tive system of Mount Athos was preserved and safeguarde­d,” he said.

Even before that, Niehoff-Panagiotid­is added, a sultan issued a mandate laying down strict punishment for intruders after a band of marauding soldiers engaged in minor thieving from one of the monasterie­s.

“It’s strange that the sultans kept Mount Athos, the last remnant of Byzantium, semi-independen­t and didn’t touch it,” he said. “They didn’t even keep troops here. At the very most they would have a local representa­tive who probably stayed at (the community’s administra­tive center, Karyes) and sipped tea.”

Another unexpected revelation, Niehoff-Panagiotid­is said, was that for roughly the first two centuries of Ottoman rule no effort was made to impose Islamic law on Mount Athos or nearby parts of northern Greece.

“Mount Athos was something like a continuati­on of

Byzantium,” he said.

The community was first granted self-governance through a decree by Byzantine Emperor Basil II, in 883 AD. Throughout its history, women have been forbidden from entering, a ban that still stands. This rule is called “avaton” and the researcher­s believe that it concerns every form of external administra­tive or secular interventi­on that could affect Mount Athos.

Father Theophilos, a Pantokrato­r monk who is helping with the research, said the documents show the far-flung influence of Mount Athos.

“Their study also illuminate­s examples of how people can live with each other, principles that are common to all humanity, the seeds of human rights and respect for them, democracy and the principles of social coexistenc­e,” he told The Associated Press.

The research project is expected to continue for several months, even years.

“What could emerge in the long term I’ll be able to say when we have catalogued and digitized all the documents,” Niehoff-Panagiotid­is said. “Right now, nobody knows what’s hidden here. Perhaps, even older documents.”

 ?? ?? Father Theophilos, a Pantokrato­r monk, left, Byzantine scholar Yiannis NiehoffPan­agiotidis, center, and Anastassio­s Nikopoulos, a jurist and scientific collaborat­or of the Free University of Berlin, check a manuscript at the library of Pantokrato­r Monastery in the Mount Athos, northern Greece, on Oct. 13.
Father Theophilos, a Pantokrato­r monk, left, Byzantine scholar Yiannis NiehoffPan­agiotidis, center, and Anastassio­s Nikopoulos, a jurist and scientific collaborat­or of the Free University of Berlin, check a manuscript at the library of Pantokrato­r Monastery in the Mount Athos, northern Greece, on Oct. 13.
 ?? PHOTOS BY THANASSIS STAVRAKIS — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? A view of Pantokrato­r Monastery from above in the Mount Athos, northern Greece, on Oct. 13.
PHOTOS BY THANASSIS STAVRAKIS — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A view of Pantokrato­r Monastery from above in the Mount Athos, northern Greece, on Oct. 13.
 ?? ?? A monk using a mallet and plank to summon monks and visitors to the afternoon prayers pauses at the Pantokrato­r Monastery in the Mount Athos, northern Greece, Oct. 13.
A monk using a mallet and plank to summon monks and visitors to the afternoon prayers pauses at the Pantokrato­r Monastery in the Mount Athos, northern Greece, Oct. 13.
 ?? ?? Father Theofilos, a Pantokrato­r monk, shows a manuscript at the library of Pantokrato­r Monastery in the Mount Athos, northern Greece, on Oct. 13.
Father Theofilos, a Pantokrato­r monk, shows a manuscript at the library of Pantokrato­r Monastery in the Mount Athos, northern Greece, on Oct. 13.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States