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159-543: In the 11th century Seljuq Turks arriving from Central Asia conquered the region, beginning its gradual shift in language and religion. In 1923, following the mass killing of Christian Ottomans across Anatolia , the surviving Cappadocian communities were forced to leave their native homeland and resettle in Greece by the terms of the Greek–Turkish population exchange . Today their descendants can be found throughout Greece and

318-734: A Greek presence in Cappadocia. As a result, Greek became the lingua franca of the region's natives. It would become the sole spoken language of the region's inhabitants within three centuries and would remain so for the next one thousand years. After the death of Alexander the Great, Eumenes of Cardia , one of the Diadochi of Alexander the Great, was appointed satrap of Cappadocia, where he set up Greek settlements and distributed cities to his associates. Eumenes left behind administrators , judges and selected garrison commanders in Cappadocia. In

477-475: A Greek state. Herodotus gave a famous account of what defined Greek (Hellenic) ethnic identity in his day, enumerating By Western standards, the term Greeks has traditionally referred to any native speakers of the Greek language , whether Mycenaean , Byzantine or modern Greek . Byzantine Greeks self-identified as Romaioi ("Romans"), Graikoi ("Greeks") and Christianoi ("Christians") since they were

636-531: A bio-genetic affinity and continuity shared between both groups. There is also a direct genetic link between ancient Greeks and modern Greeks. Today, Greeks are the majority ethnic group in the Hellenic Republic , where they constitute 93% of the country's population, and the Republic of Cyprus where they make up 78% of the island's population (excluding Turkish settlers in the occupied part of

795-729: A break during the Greek Dark Ages from which written records are absent (11th- 8th cent. BC, though the Cypriot syllabary was in use during this period). Scholars compare its continuity of tradition to Chinese alone. Since its inception, Hellenism was primarily a matter of common culture and the national continuity of the Greek world is a lot more certain than its demographic. Yet, Hellenism also embodied an ancestral dimension through aspects of Athenian literature that developed and influenced ideas of descent based on autochthony. During

954-530: A common Greek identity. In the historical period, Herodotus identified the Achaeans of the northern Peloponnese as descendants of the earlier, Homeric Achaeans. Homer refers to the "Hellenes" ( / ˈ h ɛ l iː n z / ) as a relatively small tribe settled in Thessalic Phthia , with its warriors under the command of Achilleus . The Parian Chronicle says that Phthia was the homeland of

1113-816: A derogatory exonym for the Byzantines who barely used it, mostly in contexts relating to the West, such as texts relating to the Council of Florence , to present the Western viewpoint. Additionally, among the Germanic and the Slavic peoples, the Rhōmaîoi were just called Greeks. There are three schools of thought regarding this Byzantine Roman identity in contemporary Byzantine scholarship : The first considers "Romanity"

1272-481: A dialect of the Greek language known as Cappadocian Greek . Cappadocian Greek diverged from the other Byzantine Greek dialects early, beginning with the Turkish conquests of central Asia Minor in the 11th and 12th centuries, and so developed several radical features, such as the loss of the gender for nouns. However, having been isolated from the crusader conquests ( Fourth Crusade ) and the later Venetian influence of

1431-494: A direct consequence of this situation, Greek-speakers came to play a hugely important role in the Ottoman trading and diplomatic establishment, as well as in the church. Added to this, in the first half of the Ottoman period men of Greek origin made up a significant proportion of the Ottoman army, navy, and state bureaucracy, having been levied as adolescents (along with especially Albanians and Serbs ) into Ottoman service through

1590-506: A few poems in Cappadocian Greek. These verses are one of the earliest literary attestations of the spoken Cappadocian vernacular. The Cappadocian Greek-American immigrant and renowned Hollywood director Elia Kazan wrote a book "America, America" about his uncle, who grew up in Cappadocia in an environment of increasing persecution. Sent on foot by his father as a teenager, with the entire family savings, to Istanbul, Elia's uncle

1749-725: A gradual process of acculturation, as a result many Greeks of Anatolia had accepted the Turkish vernacular and some of whom later became known as Karamanlides . This name derives from the city called Karaman by the Turks in honor of the Turkish chieftain Karamanoglu , though the Greeks continued to call the region Laranda , its ancient Greek name. These Turcophone Greeks lived primarily in the region of Karamania although there were also significant communities in Constantinople and in

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1908-615: A law that allowed members of the diaspora to vote in Greek elections; this law was repealed in early 2014. In ancient times, the trading and colonizing activities of the Greek tribes and city states spread the Greek culture, religion and language around the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins, especially in Southern Italy (the so-called " Magna Graecia "), Spain, the south of France and the Black sea coasts . Under Alexander

2067-621: A lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea . They also form a significant diaspora ( omogenia ), with many Greek communities established around the world. Greek colonies and communities have been historically established on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea , but the Greek people themselves have always been centered on the Aegean and Ionian seas, where

2226-625: A matter of course on being recruited through the devshirme —were to be found in Crete ( Cretan Turks ), Greek Macedonia (for example among the Vallahades of western Macedonia ), and among Pontic Greeks in the Pontic Alps and Armenian Highlands . Several Ottoman sultans and princes were also of part Greek origin, with mothers who were either Greek concubines or princesses from Byzantine noble families, one famous example being sultan Selim

2385-450: A nation in the meaning of an ethnos , defined by possessing Greek culture and having a Greek mother tongue , not by citizenship, race, and religion or by being subjects of any particular state. In ancient and medieval times and to some extent today the Greek term was genos , which also indicates a common ancestry. Greeks and Greek-speakers have used different names to refer to themselves collectively. The term Achaeans (Ἀχαιοί)

2544-630: A part of their historic homelands, Peloponnese , from the Ottoman Empire . The large Greek diaspora and merchant class were instrumental in transmitting the ideas of western romantic nationalism and philhellenism , which together with the conception of Hellenism, formulated during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire , formed the basis of the Diafotismos and the current conception of Hellenism. The Greeks today are

2703-509: A primarily Muslim and Turkish center. Several Armenian royal families, which included Gagik of Ani and Adom and Abu Sahl of Vaspurakan , sought vengeance on the local Greek Orthodox population after persecutions of the Armenians and Syriac Monophysites by the Byzantines. They used the opportunity provided by the Seljuq conquest to target the Greeks, they tortured and then assassinated

2862-400: A reputation throughout Asia Minor for energy and commercial activity ; there are few towns in which a merchant from Kaisariyeh is not to be found; and the rocky nature of the country drives even the poorer classes to seek their living elsewhere. Perhaps the most interesting trait in the character of these Greeks is their intense love of their native country; the great ambition of every man

3021-411: A sense of religious and cultural difference and exclusion (the word barbarian was used by 12th-century historian Anna Komnene to describe non-Greek speakers), a sense of Greek identity and common sense of ethnicity despite the undeniable socio-political changes of the past two millennia. In recent anthropological studies, both ancient and modern Greek osteological samples were analyzed demonstrating

3180-524: A significant number of the Karamanlides even converted to Islam during this period. As with other Greek communities, these converts to Islam were considered "Turks", as being a Muslim was synonymous with being Turkish to the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire. Greek writers would erroneously describe Greek converts to Islam as tourkeuoun (τουρκεύουν) ' becoming Turks ' . European visitors to

3339-410: A strong Greek accent, and there were Cappadocian Greeks who only spoke the Turkish language and had given up the use of Greek centuries earlier, known as the Karamanlides. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Cappadocian Greek language still had a strong presence at Gülşehir (formerly Arabison/Arapsu) north-west of Nevşehir , and in the large region southward as far down as Niğde and Bor . Greek

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3498-590: A strong level of influence in the region, such as the Eldiguzids . In 1194, Toghrul III was killed in battle with the Khwarezm Shah , who annexed Hamadan. Kerman was a province in southern Persia. Between 1053 and 1154, the territory also included Umman . or 1074 (before Sultan Shah) Muhammad abandoned Kerman, which fell into the hands of the Oghuz chief Malik Dinar . Kerman was eventually annexed by

3657-581: A third of the Greek population of the island in 1974, there was also an increase in the number of Greek Cypriots leaving, especially for the Middle East, which contributed to a decrease in population that tapered off in the 1990s. Today more than two-thirds of the Greek population in Cyprus is urban. Around 1990, most Western estimates of the number of ethnic Greeks in Albania were around 200,000 but in

3816-546: A time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great , in 323 BC (some authors prefer to split this period into "Classical", from the end of the Greco-Persian Wars to the end of the Peloponnesian War, and "Fourth Century", up to the death of Alexander). It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras. The Classical period

3975-703: A young Christian woman is popular with tourists; the blonde haired mummy is believed to be a nun and dates from the Byzantine era, from the 6th to the 11th century. It was discovered in a sixth-century Greek chapel in the Ihlara Valley of Cappadocia. During the tenth century the Byzantine Empire had pushed east into formerly Arab-ruled lands, including most of Armenia , and had resettled thousands of Armenians into various regions of Cappadocia . This population shift intensified ethnic tensions between

4134-494: Is a large and flourishing village, inhabited almost exclusively by Greek-speaking Greeks. The Greeks are numerous all through the western part of Cappadocia, and generally cling to their language with great tenacity, a fact worthy of notice, inasmuch as the Greeks in other parts of Asia Minor speak only Turkish. Instances of Greek-speaking towns are Niğde , Gelvere , Melegobi (Μελοκοπια) , and Ortaköy in Soğanlı Deresi." During

4293-451: Is also described as the "Golden Age" of Greek civilization, and its art, philosophy, architecture and literature would be instrumental in the formation and development of Western culture. While the Greeks of the classical era understood themselves to belong to a common Hellenic genos , their first loyalty was to their city and they saw nothing incongruous about warring, often brutally, with other Greek city-states . The Peloponnesian War ,

4452-410: Is going on, and the people are vacating, for houses above ground, the subterranean villages, to which they owe the preservation of their faith and language. These villages are known by Greek as well as by Turkish names; in some Greek is spoken by Moslem and Christian, in others a Graeco-Turk jargon, and in others Turkish only; and this mixture is found even in the churches, where the descriptive remarks on

4611-464: Is likely that one of the factors which contributed to the Mycenaean palatial collapse was linked to raids by groups known in historiography as the " Sea Peoples " who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean around 1180 BC. The Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages , but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece

4770-510: Is of displacing people to the interior without taking measures for their survival by exposing them to death, hunger, and illness. The abandoned homes are then looted and burnt or destroyed. Whatever was done to the Armenians is being repeated with the Greeks. In 1924, after living in Cappadocia for thousands of years, the remaining Cappadocian Greeks were expelled to Greece as part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey defined by

4929-679: Is one of the collective names for the Greeks in Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey (the Homeric "long-haired Achaeans" would have been a part of the Mycenaean civilization that dominated Greece from c. 1600 BC until 1100 BC). The other common names are Danaans (Δαναοί) and Argives (Ἀργεῖοι) while Panhellenes (Πανέλληνες) and Hellenes (Ἕλληνες) both appear only once in the Iliad ; all of these terms were used, synonymously, to denote

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5088-586: Is possibly derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *ǵerh₂- , "to grow old", more specifically from Graea (ancient city), said by Aristotle to be the oldest in Greece, and the source of colonists for the Naples area. The most obvious link between modern and ancient Greeks is their language, which has a documented tradition from at least the 14th century BC to the present day, albeit with

5247-579: Is the oldest recorded living language and its vocabulary has been the basis of many languages, including English as well as international scientific nomenclature . Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world since the fourth century BC and the New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. The Greeks speak the Greek language , which forms its own unique branch within

5406-413: Is to earn sufficient money to enable him to build a house and settle down in his beloved Cappadocia. The young men go off to Constantinople for a few years, and then return to marry and build a house; a couple of years of married life sees the end of their savings, and they have to revisit the capital, sometimes remaining there ten or fifteen years, to earn sufficient to support themselves and their wives for

5565-733: The Graikoi (Γραικοί) were named Hellenes. Aristotle notes in his Meteorologica that the Hellenes were related to the Graikoi. The English names Greece and Greek are derived, via the Latin Graecia and Graecus , from the name of the Graeci ( Γραικοί , Graikoí ; singular Γραικός , Graikós ), who were among the first ancient Greek tribes to settle southern Italy (the so-called " Magna Graecia "). The term

5724-582: The 2nd millennium BC has to be reconstructed on the basis of the ancient Greek dialects , as they presented themselves centuries later and are therefore subject to some uncertainties. There were at least two migrations, the first being the Ionians and Achaeans , which resulted in Mycenaean Greece by the 16th century BC, and the second, the Dorian invasion , around the 11th century BC, displacing

5883-768: The Arcadocypriot dialects , which descended from the Mycenaean period. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age and the Doric at the Bronze Age collapse . In c. 1600 BC, the Mycenaean Greeks borrowed from the Minoan civilization its syllabic writing system ( Linear A ) and developed their own syllabic script known as Linear B , providing

6042-710: The Armenians and Assyrians . Ionian and Cappadocian Greek deaths alone totaled 397,000, while Pontian Greek deaths numbered 353,000 people. Turkish official Rafet Bey was active in the Genocide of the Greeks of the Anatolian interior, in November 1916 he stated "We must finish off the Greeks as we did with the Armenians ;... today I sent squads to the interior to kill every Greek on sight ..." During

6201-584: The Byzantine Empire , a name not used during its own time ) became increasingly influenced by Greek culture after the 7th century when Emperor Heraclius ( r.   610–641 AD) decided to make Greek the empire's official language. Although the Catholic Church recognized the Eastern Empire's claim to the Roman legacy for several centuries, after Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne , king of

6360-847: The Franks , as the " Roman Emperor " on 25 December 800, an act which eventually led to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire , the Latin West started to favour the Franks and began to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire largely as the Empire of the Greeks ( Imperium Graecorum ). While this Latin term for the ancient Hellenes could be used neutrally, its use by Westerners from the 9th century onwards in order to challenge Byzantine claims to ancient Roman heritage rendered it

6519-532: The Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) countless numbers of Greeks were deported by the Turks to the Mesopotamian desert where many perished. On January 31, 1917, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg of Germany reported that: The indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element as enemies of the state, as they did earlier with the Armenians. The strategy implemented by the Turks

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6678-539: The Greek diaspora worldwide. The area known as Cappadocia today was known to the Ancient Persians as Katpatuka , a name which the Greeks altered into Καππαδοκία (Cappadocia). The word is essentially of unknown etymology, but some have argued that it means "the land of beautiful horses". Before Greeks and Greek culture arrived in Asia Minor, the area was controlled by another Indo-European people,

6837-525: The Greek language has been spoken since the Bronze Age . Until the early 20th century, Greeks were distributed between the Greek peninsula , the western coast of Asia Minor , the Black Sea coast, Cappadocia in central Anatolia, Egypt , the Balkans , Cyprus, and Constantinople . Many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and

6996-420: The Hittites . Mycenaean Greeks set up trading posts along the west coast around 1300 BC and soon started colonizing the coasts, spreading Hellenic culture and language. In the Hellenistic era , following the conquest of Anatolia by Alexander the Great , Greek settlers began arriving in the mountainous regions of Cappadocia at this time. This Greek population movement of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC solidified

7155-415: The Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic . They are part of a group of classical ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an "archetypal diaspora people". The Proto-Greeks probably arrived at the area now called Greece, in the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula , at the end of the 3rd millennium BC between 2200 and 1900 BC. The sequence of migrations into the Greek mainland during

7314-417: The Indo-Greek and Greco-Bactrian kingdoms, Greco-Buddhism was spreading and Greek missionaries would play an important role in propagating it to China . Further east, the Greeks of Alexandria Eschate became known to the Chinese people as the Dayuan . Between 168 BC and 30 BC, the entire Greek world was conquered by Rome, and almost all of the world's Greek speakers lived as citizens or subjects of

7473-490: The Italian Renaissance . The interest in the Classical Greek heritage was complemented by a renewed emphasis on Greek Orthodox identity, which was reinforced in the late Medieval and Ottoman Greeks' links with their fellow Orthodox Christians in the Russian Empire . These were further strengthened following the fall of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, after which and until the second Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29 hundreds of thousands of Pontic Greeks fled or migrated from

7632-565: The Khwarezmid Empire in 1196. To the Artuqids Sultans / Emirs of Damascus : Damascus seized by the Burid Toghtekin The Seljuk line, already having been deprived of any significant power, effectively ended in the early 14th century. ( Tokhara Yabghus , Turk Shahis ) Greeks The Greeks or Hellenes ( / ˈ h ɛ l iː n z / ; Greek : Έλληνες , Éllines [ˈelines] ) are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece , Cyprus , southern Albania , Anatolia , parts of Italy and Egypt , and to

7791-407: The Kinik branch of the Oghuz Turks , who in the 8th century lived on the periphery of the Muslim world; north of the Caspian Sea and Aral Sea in their Oghuz Yabgu State in the Kazakh Steppe of Turkestan . During the 10th century, Oghuz had come into close contact with Muslim cities. When Seljuk , the leader of the Seljuk clan, had a falling out with Yabghu , the supreme chieftain of

7950-511: The Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, using the Greek Alphabet and Turkish language. Cappadocian Greeks from different regions would specialize in a particular profession, such as the caviar trade. Demetrius Charles Boulger later describes their work character, "Each village is connected with some particular guild in Constantinople; one supplies bakals or small storekeepers, another sellers of wine and spirits, another dryers of fish, another makers of caviare, another porters, and so forth."’ In

8109-447: The Paulician heresy. Because they were living in such a volatile region, the Cappadocian Greeks created elaborate underground cities in the volcanic formations of eastern Cappadocia and would take refuge in them during times of danger. The Cappadocian Greeks hid in these rock-cut underground towns from many raiders over the next millennium, from 9th century Arab invaders to 11th century Turkish conquerors to 15th century Mongols. As late as

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8268-457: The Pontic Alps and Armenian Highlands to southern Russia and the Russian South Caucasus (see also Greeks in Russia , Greeks in Armenia , Greeks in Georgia , and Caucasian Greeks ). These Byzantine Greeks were largely responsible for the preservation of the literature of the classical era. Byzantine grammarians were those principally responsible for carrying, in person and in writing, ancient Greek grammatical and literary studies to

8427-429: The Roman Empire , they became secondary to religious considerations, and the renewed empire used Christianity as a tool to support its cohesion and promote a robust Roman national identity. From the early centuries of the Common Era , the Greeks self-identified as Romans ( Greek : Ῥωμαῖοι Rhōmaîoi ). By that time, the name Hellenes denoted pagans but was revived as an ethnonym in the 11th century. During most of

8586-438: The Saljuqids , was an Oghuz Turkic , Sunni Muslim dynasty that gradually became Persianate and contributed to Turco-Persian culture in West Asia and Central Asia . The Seljuks established the Seljuk Empire (1037–1194), the Sultanate of Kermân (1041–1186) and the Sultanate of Rum (1074–1308), which stretched from Iran to Anatolia and were the prime targets of the First Crusade . The Seljuks originated from

8745-414: The Second World War (1939–1945), the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), and the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus in 1974. While official figures remain scarce, polls and anecdotal evidence point to renewed Greek emigration as a result of the Greek financial crisis . According to data published by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany in 2011, 23,800 Greeks emigrated to Germany, a significant increase over

8904-416: The Treaty of Lausanne was signed between Greece and Turkey in 1923, the two countries agreed to use religion as the determinant for ethnic identity for the purposes of population exchange, although most of the Greeks displaced (over a million of the total 1.5 million) had already been driven out by the time the agreement was signed. The Greek genocide , in particular the harsh removal of Pontian Greeks from

9063-422: The Treaty of Lausanne , the descendants of the Cappadocian Greeks who had converted to Islam were not included in the population exchange and remained in Cappadocia, some still speaking the Cappadocian Greek language . Many Cappadocian towns were greatly affected by the expulsion of the Greeks including Mustafapaşa (Sinasos) , Ürgüp , Güzelyurt and Nevşehir as the Greeks constituted a significant percentage of

9222-401: The devshirme . Many Ottomans of Greek (or Albanian or Serb) origin were therefore to be found within the Ottoman forces which governed the provinces, from Ottoman Egypt, to Ottomans occupied Yemen and Algeria , frequently as provincial governors. For those that remained under the Ottoman Empire 's millet system , religion was the defining characteristic of national groups ( milletler ), so

9381-429: The exonym "Greeks" ( Rumlar from the name Rhomaioi) was applied by the Ottomans to all members of the Orthodox Church , regardless of their language or ethnic origin. The Greek speakers were the only ethnic group to actually call themselves Romioi , (as opposed to being so named by others) and, at least those educated, considered their ethnicity ( genos ) to be Hellenic. There were, however, many Greeks who escaped

9540-432: The lingua franca rather than Latin . The modern-day Griko community of southern Italy, numbering about 60,000, may represent a living remnant of the ancient Greek populations of Italy. During and after the Greek War of Independence , Greeks of the diaspora were important in establishing the fledgling state, raising funds and awareness abroad. Greek merchant families already had contacts in other countries and during

9699-430: The 1990s, a majority of them migrated to Greece. The Greek minority of Turkey , which numbered upwards of 200,000 people after the 1923 exchange, has now dwindled to a few thousand, after the 1955 Constantinople Pogrom and other state sponsored violence and discrimination. This effectively ended, though not entirely, the three-thousand-year-old presence of Hellenism in Asia Minor. There are smaller Greek minorities in

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9858-528: The 19th century described the Cappadocian Greeks and their habits. In 1838 British scholar Robert Ainsworth wrote that "The Cappadocian Greeks are, generally speaking, pleasing and unreserved in their manners, and their conversation indicated a very high degree of intelligence and civilization, where there are so few books, and so little education, and consequently, little learning." Sir Charles William Wilson , British consul-general in Anatolia from 1879 to 1882, described their character: The Cappadocian Greeks have

10017-450: The 19th-century British scholar John Pinkerton was informed by the Turkish-speaking Greeks that past Turkish rulers of Anatolia had caused them to lose the knowledge of the Greek language, Pinkerton reported that: ..."the cruel persecutions of their Mahomedan masters have been the cause of their present degraded state of ignorance, even in regard to their native tongue; for that there was a time when their Turkish masters strictly prohibited

10176-446: The 1st century AD, the region of Cappadocia served as a stronghold for Christian Monasticism and was of significance importance in the history of early Christianity. In the early centuries of the Common Era Cappadocia produced three prominent Greek patristic figures, known as the three hierarchs . They were Basil the Great (c. 330–79), Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330–c. 389) (later known as Saint Gregory

10335-433: The 1st century BC, regions of Cappadocia had been ravaged by Armenian King Tigranes the Great , who had relocated a great number of Cilician and Cappadocian Greeks to Mesopotamia (geographically in modern Iraq , eastern Syria and south-eastern Turkey .) Archelaus , who was a Roman client prince, was the last to rule as a king of Cappadocia . He was a Cappadocian Greek nobleman , possibly of Macedonian descent and

10494-496: The 20th century the local Cappadocian Greeks were still using the underground cities as refuges (Greek: καταφύγια) from periodic waves of Ottoman persecution. The most famous of these ancient underground cities are at the Cappadocian Greek villages of Anaku-Inegi (Ανακού) and Malakopi-Melagob (Μαλακοπή). The Greeks were removed from these villages in 1923, and they are now known as Derinkuyu and Kaymakli . These underground cities have chambers extending to depths of over 80 meters. In

10653-493: The 20th century the locals were still using the underground cities to escape periodic waves of Ottoman persecution. Dawkins, a Cambridge linguist who conducted research on the Cappodocian Greek natives in the area from 1909–1911, recorded that in 1909, when the news came of the recent massacres at Adana, a great part of the population at Axo took refuge in these underground chambers, and for some nights did not venture to sleep above ground. Scholars passing through Cappadocia during

10812-408: The 4th century, with some areas such as the southeastern Peloponnese remaining pagan until well into the mid-Byzantine 10th century AD. The region of Tsakonia remained pagan until the ninth century and as such its inhabitants were referred to as Hellenes , in the sense of being pagan, by their Christianized Greek brethren in mainstream Byzantine society. While ethnic distinctions still existed in

10971-465: The 7th and 11th centuries, during this period churches were carved into cliffs and rock faces in the Göreme and Soğanlı region. In the Middle Ages the Cappadocian Greeks would bury their religious figures in and around monasteries. In recent years mummified bodies have been found in abandoned Greek monasteries of Cappadocia, and many, including bodies of mummified babies, are on display in the Nigde Archaeological Museum. A well-preserved mummified corpse of

11130-448: The Anatolian interior. In the centuries following Alexander the Great's death, Ariarathes , the son of a Persian satrap who formerly controlled Cappadocia, gained control of Cappadocia and left it to a line of his successors, who mostly bore the name of the founder of the dynasty . These kings began to intermarry with neighboring Greek Hellenistic kingdoms, such as the Seleucids . During their reign Greek towns were beginning to appear in

11289-449: The Cappadocian Greek churches were converted to mosques after the Greeks left in the population exchange of the 1920s. These include the Church of St Gregory known today as "Buyuk Kilise Camii (Big Church Mosque)". Following the population exchange there was still a substantial community of Cappadocian Greeks living in Turkey, in Constantinople , they had settled there during the Ottoman era and formed enclaves of their native communities,

11448-715: The Cappadocian Greeks and the Armenian newcomers in Cappadocia, and left Armenia largely devoid of native defenders. In 1071 AD the Byzantine Empire suffered a considerable defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in Armenia . This defeat would open the interior of Anatolia to invasion by Central Asian Seljuq Turks who would overrun most of Byzantine Asia Minor. This began the transformation of Asia Minor from an entirely Christian and overwhelmingly Greek-populated region to

11607-591: The Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are officially registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church . Greeks have greatly influenced and contributed to culture, visual arts, exploration, theatre, literature, philosophy, ethics, politics, architecture, music, mathematics, medicine, science, technology, commerce, cuisine and sports. The Greek language

11766-593: The Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization . The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens , Thessalonica , Alexandria , Smyrna , and Constantinople at various periods. In recent times, most ethnic Greeks live within the borders of the modern Greek state or in Cyprus. The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor. Other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to

11925-617: The European cultural revolution, later called the Renaissance. In Greek-inhabited territory itself, Greeks came to play a leading role in the Ottoman Empire , due in part to the fact that the central hub of the empire, politically, culturally, and socially, was based on Western Thrace and Macedonia , both in Northern Greece , and of course was centred on the mainly Greek-populated, former Byzantine capital, Constantinople . As

12084-729: The Great Deluge of Deucalion , a land occupied by the Selloi and the "Greeks" who later came to be known as "Hellenes". In the Homeric tradition, the Selloi were the priests of Dodonian Zeus. In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women , Graecus is presented as the son of Zeus and Pandora II , sister of Hellen the patriarch of the Hellenes. According to the Parian Chronicle , when Deucalion became king of Phthia,

12243-688: The Great's empire and successor states, Greek and Hellenizing ruling classes were established in the Middle East , India and in Egypt . The Hellenistic period is characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization that established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa . Under the Roman Empire, easier movement of people spread Greeks across the Empire and in the eastern territories, Greek became

12402-609: The Greek Orthodox metropolitan of Kayseri and pillaged wealthy Greek owned estates. The local Greek landowners eventually killed the Armenian royal Gagik. By the 12th century all of Anatolia was overrun by Turkmen tribes from Central Asia, these invading nomads had cleared many regions of Anatolia of indigenous Greeks. The Anatolian Greek population rapidly diminished under Turkish rule owing to mass conversions to Islam , slaughter or exile to Greek territories in Europe. Before

12561-553: The Greek alphabet, which became known as ‘Karamanlidika’. This was not a phenomenon that was limited to the Cappadocian Greeks, as many of the Armenians living in Cappadocia were also linguistically Turkified , although they remained Armenian Apostolic (Orthodox) Christians, they spoke and wrote in the Turkish language although still using the Armenian alphabet . Some Jewish inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire were also Turkified and although they retained their religion, they also wrote in

12720-601: The Greek coast, it retained the Ancient Greek terms for many words that were replaced with Romance language ones in Demotic Greek. After centuries of Ottoman rule the Turkish language began to emerge as the dominant language of Cappadocia. Many Greeks began to speak Turkish as a second language and became bilingual, this was the case with the “ Kouvoukliotes ” who were always Greek speakers and spoke Turkish with

12879-521: The Greek communities of central Anatolia were becoming actively involved in affairs of the Eastern Roman Empire and some Greek Cappadocians such as Maurice Tiberius (r. 582–602) and Heraclius would even serve as Emperors . The region became a key Byzantine military district after the advent of Islam and the subsequent Muslim conquest of Syria led to the establishment of a militarized frontier zone (cf kleisoura and thughur ) on

13038-526: The Greek enlightenment, the Greek expression of the Age of Enlightenment , contributed not only in the promotion of education, culture and printing among the Greeks, but also in the case of independence from the Ottomans , and the restoration of the term "Hellene". Adamantios Korais , probably the most important intellectual of the movement, advocated the use of the term "Hellene" (Έλληνας) or "Graikos" (Γραικός) in

13197-412: The Greeks in Asia Minor even from speaking the Greek language among themselves, and that they cut out the tongues of some, and punished others with death, who dared to disobey this their barbarous command. It is an indisputable fact, that the language of their oppressors has long since almost universally prevailed, and that in a great part of Anatolia even the public worship of the Greeks is now performed in

13356-506: The Greeks in Pontus and the western coastal regions of Turkey. Once in Greece though, they started using the modern Greek language , causing their ancestral Greek dialect, the Cappadocian Greek language, to go to the brink of extinction. The Cappadocian Greek language was believed by some scholars to have been extinct for many years. The language was then declared alive in 2005, when descendants of Cappadocian Greeks were discovered still speaking

13515-510: The Grim ( r.   1517–1520), whose mother Gülbahar Hatun was a Pontic Greek . The roots of Greek success in the Ottoman Empire can be traced to the Greek tradition of education and commerce exemplified in the Phanariotes . It was the wealth of the extensive merchant class that provided the material basis for the intellectual revival that was the prominent feature of Greek life in

13674-570: The Hellenes and that this name was given to those previously called Greeks ( Γραικοί ). In Greek mythology , Hellen , the patriarch of the Hellenes who ruled around Phthia, was the son of Pyrrha and Deucalion , the only survivors after the Great Deluge . The Greek philosopher Aristotle names ancient Hellas as an area in Epirus between Dodona and the Achelous river, the location of

13833-653: The Homeric tradition of ancient Greece. A distinct Greek identity re-emerged in the 11th century in educated circles and became more forceful after the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. In the Empire of Nicaea , a small circle of the elite used the term "Hellene" as a term of self-identification. For example, in a letter to Pope Gregory IX , the Nicaean emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes (r. 1221–1254) claimed to have received

13992-529: The Indo-Greek kingdoms lasted for a few more decades. This age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state. These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi . Greeks, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity

14151-475: The Middle Ages Cappadocia had hundreds of settlements and Byzantine rock-cut churches were carved out of the volcanic formations of eastern Cappadocia and decorated with painted icons, Greek writing and decorations. Over 700 of these Churches have been discovered and date from the period between the 6th century to the 13th century, many of these monasteries and churches continued to be used until

14310-723: The Middle Ages, the Byzantine Greeks self-identified as Rhōmaîoi ( Ῥωμαῖοι , "Romans", meaning citizens of the Roman Empire ), a term which in the Greek language had become synonymous with Christian Greeks. The Latinizing term Graikoí (Γραικοί, "Greeks") was also used, though its use was less common, and nonexistent in official Byzantine political correspondence, prior to the Fourth Crusade of 1204. The Eastern Roman Empire (today conventionally named

14469-531: The Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece (e.g. Zeus , Poseidon and Hades ) became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of later antiquity. The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC. According to some scholars, the foundational event was the Olympic Games in 776 BC, when

14628-743: The Oghuz, he split his clan from the bulk of the Oghuz Turks and set up camp on the west bank of the lower Syr Darya . Around 985, Seljuk converted to Islam. In the 11th century, the Seljuks migrated from their ancestral homelands into mainland Persia , in the province of Khurasan , where they encountered the Ghaznavids . The Seljuks defeated the Ghaznavids at the Battle of Nasa Plains in 1035. Seljuk's grandsons, Tughril and Chaghri, received

14787-402: The Ottoman era, Cappadocian Greeks would migrate to Constantinople and other large cities to do business. By the 19th century, many were wealthy, educated and westernized . Wealthy Cappadocian Greek businessmen built large stone mansions in regions of Cappadocia such as Karvali (modern Güzelyurt ) many of which can still be seen today. The Cappadocian Greeks wrote the earliest published novels in

14946-422: The Ottoman era, such as the town known as ‘Hagios Prokopios’ in the Middle Ages, and renamed ‘ Urgup ’ by the Turks was still called ‘Prokopion’ by the local Greeks of the early 20th century. Although the Karamanlides abandoned Greek when they learned Turkish , they remained Greek Orthodox Christians and continued to write using the Greek alphabet . They printed manuscript works in the Turkish language using

15105-476: The Roman Empire. Despite their military superiority, the Romans admired and became heavily influenced by the achievements of Greek culture, hence Horace 's famous statement: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit ("Greece, although captured, took its wild conqueror captive"). In the centuries following the Roman conquest of the Greek world, the Greek and Roman cultures merged into a single Greco-Roman culture. In

15264-522: The Seljuks adopted the Persian culture and used the Persian language as the official language of the government, and played an important role in the development of the Turko-Persian tradition which features "Persian culture patronized by Turkic rulers". Today, they are remembered as great patrons of Persian culture , art , literature , and language . The "Great Seljuks" were heads of

15423-527: The Theologian) and Gregory of Nyssa (died c. 394). These Cappadocian Greek fathers of the fourth century revered the ancient Greek cultural pursuit of virtue, even studying Homer and Hesiod and “ stood squarely in the tradition of Greek culture ”. By the fifth century the last of the Indo-European native languages of Anatolia ceased to be spoken, replaced by Koine Greek . At the same time

15582-525: The Turkish language but using Hebrew script . The Cappadocian Greeks , Armenians and Jewish minorities of the Ottoman Empire had created Graeco-Turkish, Armeno-Turkish, and Judeo-Turkish literatures by developing their own written traditions. Despite the fact that they had lost all knowledge of their own languages after they had been Turkified, the majority of Karamanlides and many Turkophone Armenians eventually revived their original native tongues. While most Cappadocian Greeks had remained Orthodox Christians

15741-465: The Turkish migration into Anatolia, Greeks as well as smaller numbers of Armenians, Syrians, and Georgians were all Christians, but by the 15th century more than 90% of Anatolia was Muslim, according to some researchers largely because of Christian conversions to Islam. Many Byzantine Greek leaders were also tempted to convert to Islam in order to join the Ottoman Turkish aristocracy, although in

15900-684: The Turkish tongue. The following works, in the Turkish language, but all in the Greek character, afford further proof of what I have now stated...” ( John Pinkerton , 1817) In the 1920s when the Cappadocian Greeks arrived in Greece, the Cappadocian Greek spoken by them was hardly intelligible with the Demotic Greek used in mainland Greece, as it had been cut off from the rest of the Greek-speaking world for centuries. The Cappadocian Greeks were more linguistically Turkified than

16059-576: The West during the 15th century, giving the Italian Renaissance a major boost. The Aristotelian philosophical tradition was nearly unbroken in the Greek world for almost two thousand years, until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. To the Slavic world, the Byzantine Greeks contributed by the dissemination of literacy and Christianity. The most notable example of the later was the work of

16218-592: The abandoned stone mansions built centuries ago by wealthy Cappadocian Greek businessmen. Today, more than 700 Greek Orthodox churches and over thirty rock-carved chapels, many with preserved painted icons, Greek writing and frescos, some from the pre-iconoclastic period that date back as far as the 6th century, can still be seen. As of 1985 these Greek cave churches were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site . Greek diaspora Constantinople and Asia Minor : Africa : Other regions : Other groups : Other languages The Cappadocian Greeks traditionally spoke

16377-513: The beginning of the 20th century, the proportion of Christians in Anatolian population was more than 20%. During the centuries of Turkish rule in Asia Minor many Greeks and other peoples of Anatolia such as Armenians and Kurds adopted the Turkish language , converted to Islam, and came to be identified as Turks. Despite the turmoil in Anatolia, by the 13th century the Greeks of Cappadocia , Lycaonia and Pamphylia remained numerous, even under

16536-639: The border of Cappadocia. This lasted from the mid-7th to the 10th century during the Arab–Byzantine wars , immortalized in Digenis Akritas , the Medieval Greek heroic epic set in this frontier region. During this period Cappadocia became crucial to the empire and produced numerous Byzantine generals, notably the Phokas clan, warlords (see Karbeas of Tephrike ), and intrigue, most importantly

16695-549: The city of Athens. Greeks from Cyprus have a similar history of emigration, usually to the English-speaking world because of the island's colonization by the British Empire . Waves of emigration followed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, while the population decreased between mid-1974 and 1977 as a result of emigration, war losses, and a temporary decline in fertility. After the ethnic cleansing of

16854-406: The country). Greek populations have not traditionally exhibited high rates of growth; a large percentage of Greek population growth since Greece's foundation in 1832 was attributed to annexation of new territories, as well as the influx of 1.5 million Greek refugees after the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. About 80% of the population of Greece is urban, with 28% concentrated in

17013-567: The court title of general ( amir arzi ) in the army of the Seljuq sultan of Konya, Mesud II . He dedicated a church in the Peristrema ( Belisırma ) valley where his portrait, which was painted from life still survives to this day. 13th century Cappadocian Greek artists were renowned for their naturalistic paintings and were employed throughout the Seljuk Empire . Cappadocian Greeks were also employed as architects, such as Kalo Yianni, who

17172-630: The creation of colonies and trade routes along the way. While the Alexandrian empire did not survive its creator's death intact, the cultural implications of the spread of Hellenism across much of the Middle East and Asia were to prove long lived as Greek became the lingua franca , a position it retained even in Roman times . Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria , Antioch and Seleucia . The Hellenistic civilization

17331-400: The descendants of Greeks and Romans. Before the establishment of the modern Greek nation-state, the link between ancient and modern Greeks was emphasized by the scholars of Greek Enlightenment especially by Rigas Feraios. In his "Political Constitution", he addresses to the nation as "the people descendant of the Greeks". The modern Greek state was created in 1829, when the Greeks liberated

17490-723: The descendants of the Cappadocian Greeks can be found throughout Greece, as well as in countries around the world particularly in Western Europe, North America and Australia as part of the Greek diaspora . The modern region of Cappadocia is famous for the churches carved into cliffs and rock faces in the Göreme and Soğanlı valleys. The region is popular with tourists, many of whom visit the abandoned underground cities, houses and Greek churches carved and decorated by Cappadocian Greeks centuries ago. The formerly Greek town of Güzelyurt (Karvali) has become popular with tourists who visit

17649-643: The disturbances many set up home around the Mediterranean (notably Marseilles in France , Livorno in Italy , Alexandria in Egypt ), Russia ( Odesa and Saint Petersburg ), and Britain (London and Liverpool) from where they traded, typically in textiles and grain. Businesses frequently comprised the extended family, and with them they brought schools teaching Greek and the Greek Orthodox Church . As markets changed and they became more established, some families grew their operations to become shippers , financed through

17808-441: The early 20th century, Greek settlements were still both numerous and widespread throughout most of today’s Turkey. The provinces of Cappadocia and Lycaonia had a large number of Greek settlements and sizeable populations in urban centres such as Kayseri , Nigde , and Konya . According to 1897 estimations, the sanjak of Konya had a total Greek population of 68.101 (6.6%) and according to Ottoman population statistics of 1914 ,

17967-532: The family; in theory their authority extended over all the other Seljuk lines, although in practice this often was not the case. Turkic custom called for the senior member of the family to be the Great Seljuk, although usually the position was associated with the ruler of western Persia. The rulers of western Persia, who maintained a very loose grip on the Abbasids of Baghdad . Several Turkic emirs gained

18126-589: The first and oldest written evidence of Greek . The Mycenaeans quickly penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes , Crete , Cyprus and the shores of Asia Minor . Around 1200 BC, the Dorians , another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus . Older historical research often proposed Dorian invasion caused the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization , but this narrative has been abandoned in all contemporary research. It

18285-628: The following centuries the Seleucid Greek Kings founded many Greek settlements in the interior of Asia Minor, and this region would become popular for the recruitment of soldiers. Unlike other regions of Asia Minor where Greeks would settle in cities, most of the Greek settlements in Cappadocia and other interior Anatolian regions were villages. The Hellenistic Kings would make new Greek settlements in Cappadocia and other surrounding regions in order to secure their hold on this volatile region; under their rule Greek settlements would increase in

18444-427: The gift of royalty from Constantine the Great, and put emphasis on his "Hellenic" descent, exalting the wisdom of the Greek people. After the Byzantines recaptured Constantinople, however, in 1261, Rhomaioi became again dominant as a term for self-description and there are few traces of Hellene (Έλληνας), such as in the writings of George Gemistos Plethon , who abandoned Christianity and in whose writings culminated

18603-573: The half century and more leading to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Not coincidentally, on the eve of 1821, the three most important centres of Greek learning were situated in Chios , Smyrna and Aivali , all three major centres of Greek commerce. Greek success was also favoured by Greek domination in the leadership of the Eastern Orthodox church. The movement of

18762-640: The holy pictures are often in Turkish written in Greek characters. By the early 1900s the region of Cappadocia was still inhabited by Christian Cappadocian Greeks as well as Muslim Turks and also communities of Armenians and Kurds. By the beginning of the First World War , the Greeks of Anatolia were besieged by the Young Turks . Thousands of Greeks were massacred, approximately 750,000 Anatolian Greeks were massacred in an act of Genocide and 750,000 exiled. The Greeks were targeted prior to and alongside

18921-484: The idea of a common Hellenism among the Greek tribes was first translated into a shared cultural experience and Hellenism was primarily a matter of common culture. The works of Homer (i.e. Iliad and Odyssey ) and Hesiod (i.e. Theogony ) were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos, history and mythology. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period. The classical period of Greek civilization covers

19080-537: The insignias of governor, grants of land, and were given the title of dehqan . At the Battle of Dandanaqan , they defeated a Ghaznavid army, and after a successful siege of Isfahan by Tughril in 1050/51, established the Great Seljuk Empire . The Seljuks mixed with the local population and adopted the Persian culture and Persian language in the following decades. After arriving in Persia ,

19239-573: The language fluently in central and northern Greece. Today it is still spoken by mainly elderly Cappadocian Greeks in various regions of Greece including in Karditsa, Volos, Kilkis, Larisa, Thessaloniki, Chalkidiki, Kavala, and Alexandroupoli. Some Cappadocian Greeks who converted to Islam, allowing them to avoid the population exchanges of 1923, still speak the language in their traditional homeland in Turkey. The Cappadocian Greeks have been isolated from

19398-408: The large scale civil war between the two most powerful Greek city-states Athens and Sparta and their allies , left both greatly weakened. Most of the feuding Greek city-states were, in some scholars' opinions, united by force under the banner of Philip 's and Alexander the Great 's Pan-Hellenic ideals, though others might generally opt, rather, for an explanation of " Macedonian conquest for

19557-466: The later years of the Eastern Roman Empire, areas such as Ionia and Constantinople experienced a Hellenic revival in language, philosophy, and literature and on classical models of thought and scholarship. This revival provided a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage. Throughout their history, the Greeks have retained their language and alphabet , certain values and cultural traditions, customs,

19716-720: The local Greek community, notably with the aid of the Ralli or Vagliano Brothers . With economic success, the Diaspora expanded further across the Levant , North Africa, India and the USA. In the 20th century, many Greeks left their traditional homelands for economic reasons resulting in large migrations from Greece and Cyprus to the United States , Great Britain , Australia , Canada , Germany , and South Africa , especially after

19875-535: The majority of whom also migrated to Greece following the Anti-Greek Istanbul Pogrom riots of 1955. On their arrival in mainland Greece, many Cappadocian Greeks settled in villages similar to their original Cappadocian villages; the new settlements were named after towns and villages left behind in Cappadocia, with the addition of the word “Nea” (New). For example, Cappadocian Greeks from Sinasos (present Mustafapaşa near Ürgüp ) who settled in

20034-435: The mode of self-identification of the subjects of a multi-ethnic empire at least up to the 12th century, where the average subject identified as Roman; a perennialist approach, which views Romanity as the medieval expression of a continuously existing Greek nation; while a third view considers the eastern Roman identity as a pre-modern national identity. The Byzantine Greeks' essential values were drawn from both Christianity and

20193-406: The northern part of the island of Euboea in Greece named their new settlement Nea Sinasos "New Sinasos". Other examples include Nea Karvali in northern Greece, and Neo Prokopi in central Greece. The regions of Greece with significant settlements of Cappadocian Greeks include the cities of Karditsa , Volos , Kilkis , Larisa , Chalkidiki , Kavala , Alexandroupoli and Thessaloniki . Today

20352-400: The number is closer to just below five million. Integration, intermarriage, and loss of the Greek language influence the self-identification of the Greek diaspora ( omogenia ). Important centres include New York City , Chicago , Boston , Los Angeles , Sydney , Melbourne , London , Toronto , Montreal , Vancouver , Auckland , and Sao Paulo . In 2010, the Hellenic Parliament introduced

20511-409: The period of Ottoman rule. Subsequent to the 1571 Ottoman conquest of Cyprus , the Ottoman Sultan Selim I decided to transfer Greeks from Cappadocia, particularly from the Kayseri region, to Cyprus . During this period the architect Sinan , who was born of Greek parentage and a native of Cappadocia wrote a letter to the Sultan asking for his family to be spared from this population transfer. During

20670-410: The place of Romiós , that was seen negatively by him. The relationship between ethnic Greek identity and Greek Orthodox religion continued after the creation of the modern Greek nation-state in 1830. According to the second article of the first Greek constitution of 1822, a Greek was defined as any native Christian resident of the Kingdom of Greece , a clause removed by 1840. A century later, when

20829-439: The political heirs of imperial Rome , the descendants of their classical Greek forebears and followers of the Apostles ; during the mid-to-late Byzantine period (11th–13th century), a growing number of Byzantine Greek intellectuals deemed themselves Hellenes although for most Greek-speakers, "Hellene" still meant pagan. On the eve of the Fall of Constantinople the Last Emperor urged his soldiers to remember that they were

20988-482: The population exchange between Greece and Turkey 1920s. The Greek inhabitants of these districts of Cappadocia were called Troglodytes . In the 10th century Leo the Deacon recorded a journey to Cappadocia by Nikephoros Phokas , in his writings he mentions that its inhabitants were called Troglodytes, in view of the fact that they “went underground in holes, clefts and labyrinths, as it were in dens and burrows”. The Byzantines re-established control of Cappadocia between

21147-432: The preparing of wind-cured meats known as pastirma , a delicacy called in Byzantine times "paston", along with the use of the ubiquitous Central Anatolian spinach-like herb madimak to make dishes such as a variant of spanikopita . The Cappadocian Greek-American immigrant and renowned Hollywood director Elia Kazan made an Academy Award-winning movie America, America about his uncle, who grew up in Cappadocia and then

21306-425: The pressure of the Turkmen nomads, possibly constituting majorities in some urban centers. During this chaotic period there is evidence that some native Cappadocian Greeks had joined the invading Turkish nomads. Some even managing to rise to levels of prominence in the Seljuq Sultanate of Rum , such as Basil Giagoupes (Bασίλειος Γιαγούπης), a wealthy Cappadocian Greek feudatory lord of a strongly Greek district who held

21465-439: The protection of a cosmopolitan middle class. The economy of Cappadocia was largely based upon agriculture and mining and the rural centers which lay upon the valleys and plains. The Cappadocian Greeks have distinctive traditional songs and dances which are still performed in Greece. The Persian poet Rumi (1207–1273), whose name means "Roman", referring to his residence amongst the "Roman" Greek speakers of Cappadocia, wrote

21624-404: The region of the Black Sea . Cappadocian Greeks living in remote less accessible villages of Cappadocia remained Greek-speaking and Christian, as they were isolated and consequently less affected by the rapid conversion of the bordering districts to Islam and Turkish speech. The Greek Cappadocians retained the original Greek names of many regions of Cappadocia which were renamed Turkish names during

21783-419: The religious sphere, this was a period of profound change. The spiritual revolution that took place, saw a waning of the old Greek religion, whose decline beginning in the 3rd century BC continued with the introduction of new religious movements from the East. The cults of deities like Isis and Mithra were introduced into the Greek world. Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenized East were instrumental in

21942-438: The remainder of their lives…The people have no marked political aspirations such as those which prevail amongst the Greeks of the west coast; they dream, it is true, of a new Byzantine Empire, but any sympathies they can spare from an all-absorbing love of money and gain are devoted to the Russian. The south Cappadocian district, in which St. Gregory of Nazianzus once ministered, shows many signs of growing prosperity ; building

22101-500: The rest of the Balkan countries, the Levant and the Black Sea states, remnants of the Old Greek Diaspora (pre-19th century). The total number of Greeks living outside Greece and Cyprus today is a contentious issue. Where census figures are available, they show around three million Greeks outside Greece and Cyprus. Estimates provided by the SAE – World Council of Hellenes Abroad put the figure at around seven million worldwide. According to George Prevelakis of Sorbonne University ,

22260-483: The rest of the Greek-speaking world for centuries and this has made their culture , way of life, and customs somewhat distinctive. Their culture has been strongly influenced by the topography of its different regions. In the middle of the 18th century, after the Hatt-i humayun , the Greek feeling was stimulated, more schools were founded in the area and Greek was taught above. In commercial cities like Kayseri and Malakopea upper-level education and arts flourished under

22419-421: The sake of conquest" or at least conquest for the sake of riches, glory and power and view the "ideal" as useful propaganda directed towards the city-states. In any case, Alexander's toppling of the Achaemenid Empire , after his victories at the battles of the Granicus , Issus and Gaugamela , and his advance as far as modern-day Pakistan and Tajikistan , provided an important outlet for Greek culture, via

22578-409: The sanjak of Niğde had a total Greek population of 58.312 (20%) and the sanjak of Kayseri had a total of 26.590 (10,1%). The Cappadocian Greeks of the 19th and 20th centuries were renowned for the richness of their folktales and preservation of their ancient Greek tongue. The underground cities continued to be used as refuges ( Cappadocian Greek : καταφύγια) from the Turkish Muslim rulers. As late as

22737-536: The second-class status of Christians inherent in the Ottoman millet system, according to which Muslims were explicitly awarded senior status and preferential treatment. These Greeks either emigrated, particularly to their fellow Orthodox Christian protector, the Russian Empire , or simply converted to Islam, often only very superficially and whilst remaining crypto-Christian . The most notable examples of large-scale conversion to Turkish Islam among those today defined as Greek Muslims —excluding those who had to convert as

22896-562: The secular tendency in the interest in the classical past. However, it was the combination of Orthodox Christianity with a specifically Greek identity that shaped the Greeks' notion of themselves in the empire's twilight years. In the twilight years of the Byzantine Empire, prominent Byzantine personalities proposed referring to the Byzantine Emperor as the "Emperor of the Hellenes". These largely rhetorical expressions of Hellenic identity were confined within intellectual circles, but were continued by Byzantine intellectuals who participated in

23055-406: The southern regions of Cappadocia. Ariarathes V of Cappadocia who reigned from 163 to 130 BC is considered to have been the greatest of the Kings of Cappadocia. He was predominantly Greek by descent; his father Ariarathes IV of Cappadocia was half Greek Macedonian and Persian , and his mother was Antiochis , the daughter of the Seleucid Greek King Antiochus III of the Seleucid dynasty . By

23214-420: The southern shore area of the Black Sea, contemporaneous with and following the failed Greek Asia Minor Campaign , was part of this process of Turkification of the Ottoman Empire and the placement of its economy and trade, then largely in Greek hands under ethnic Turkish control. The terms used to define Greekness have varied throughout history but were never limited or completely identified with membership to

23373-408: The spread of early Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and Christianity's early leaders and writers (notably Saint Paul ) were generally Greek-speaking, though none were from Greece proper. However, Greece itself had a tendency to cling to paganism and was not one of the influential centers of early Christianity: in fact, some ancient Greek religious practices remained in vogue until the end of

23532-433: The sultans' realms would also subjectively label any Muslim a "Turk" regardless of his or her mother tongue. The Greeks believed that by converting to Islam and losing his or her original Christian religion, the individual was also stepping out of the Greek national community. This way of thinking was even popular years after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Many shifts of population took place in central Anatolia during

23691-457: The towns population. The Cappadocian Greeks were taken to the coastal town of Mersin in order to be shipped to Greece. Many would lose all of their belongings due to corrupt officials and looters. The Cappadocian Greeks who were migrating from Cappadocia were replaced by Muslims migrating from mainland Greece, mainly from Thrace; some of these Muslims were Greeks (see Greek Muslims ), although most were of Slavic, Turkish and Gypsy origin. Many of

23850-466: The two Byzantine Greek brothers, the monks Saints Cyril and Methodius from the port city of Thessalonica , capital of the theme of Thessalonica , who are credited today with formalizing the first Slavic alphabet . Following the Fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453, many Greeks sought better employment and education opportunities by leaving for the West , particularly Italy , Central Europe , Germany and Russia . Greeks are greatly credited for

24009-410: Was a native Greek, born in Cappadocia and is considered to have been one of the foremost surgeons in antiquity. He was the first to distinguish between diabetes mellitus and diabetes insipidus , and the first to provide a detailed description of an asthma attack . By late antiquity the Cappadocian Greeks had largely converted to Christianity . They were so thoroughly devout to Christianity that by

24168-523: Was also still spoken at Silli north-west of Konya , in Pharasa (today Çamlıca village in Yahyalı district) and other villages in isolated communities in the interior of central Turkey prior to the Genocide of 1915 and subsequent population transfers. Many Cappadocian Greeks completely abandoned Greek when they learned Turkish, although in the western regions of Cappadocia many Greeks still retained their native language. John Robert Sitlington Sterrett travelled through Cappadocia in 1884 and noted: " Melegobi

24327-436: Was commissioned to build the Gök Medrese (Sivas) in 1271. Over the course of the 15th century the Ottoman Turks conquered Cappadocia from the Seljuk Turks, the Cappadocian countryside remained largely Greek populated, with a smaller Armenian population even after the Ottoman conquest. During the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murad III (1574 to 1595) the region of Cappadocia became largely Turkified in culture and language through

24486-403: Was contact with barbarian (non-Greek) peoples, which was deepened in the new cosmopolitan environment of the multi-ethnic Hellenistic kingdoms. This led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation. Greek science, technology and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period. In

24645-416: Was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as a glorious era of heroes, closeness of the gods and material wealth. The Homeric Epics (i.e. Iliad and Odyssey ) were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past and it was not until the time of Euhemerism that scholars began to question Homer's historicity. As part of

24804-518: Was sent on foot as a teenager, with the entire family savings, to escape persecution and establish a new life in Istanbul, and eventually, to bring the rest of the family there. Seljuq Turks Great Seljuk : 1194 – Toghrul III was killed in battle with Tekish The Seljuk dynasty , or Seljukids ( / ˈ s ɛ l dʒ ʊ k / SEL -juuk ; Persian : سلجوقیان Saljuqian , alternatively spelled as Seljuqs or Saljuqs), Seljuqs , also known as Seljuk Turks , Seljuk Turkomans or

24963-440: Was supposed to establish a new life and, eventually, to bring the rest of the family to the city. In the end Elia's uncle traveled much further, to America, later fulfilling his filial duty and bringing his family over as well. Kazan made his book into an Academy Award-winning movie America, America in 1963. The Cappadocian Greeks continued a number of Anatolian culinary traditions passed down since Byzantine times. These include

25122-440: Was the first king of Cappadocia of wholly non-Persian blood. He ruled over Cappadocia for many years before being deposed by Tiberius , who took possession of Cappadocia for Rome . The region of Cappadocia produced some notable Greek individuals in antiquity, such as Apollonius of Tyana (1st century ad) who was a Greek Neo-Pythagorean philosopher who became well known in the Roman Empire and Aretaeus of Cappadocia (81–138 AD) who

25281-412: Was the next period of Greek civilization, the beginnings of which are usually placed at Alexander's death. This Hellenistic age , so called because it saw the partial Hellenization of many non-Greek cultures, extending all the way into India and Bactria , both of which maintained Greek cultures and governments for centuries. The end is often placed around conquest of Egypt by Rome in 30 BC, although

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