Calendars of Exopraxis

Abstract

In the nineteenth-century Ottoman empire, Cappadocia, in the heart of Anatolia, was one of the last regions where Rum Orthodox Christians cohabited with Muslims in rural areas. Among the main aspects of everyday coexistence were the beliefs and ritual practices that, shared by Muslim and Christian individuals, blurred religious belonging as it is traditionally defined. Anthropologists and ethnologists have studied exopraxis broadly, while historians have neglected the topic until recently. In the case of anthropologists, studies have mostly focused on the spatiality of sharing that is characteristic of exopraxis. This article, based largely on testimonies collected in the Oral Tradition Archives of the Center for Asia Minor Studies in Athens, analyzes the temporality of exopraxis and inquires into the different but shared calendars that ordered the ritual life of Muslims and Orthodox Christians in Cappadocia. These testimonies, taken from Orthodox Christians who lived in Turkey prior to the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece in 1923, help us to understand how the sharing of religious calendars resulted in feelings of belonging to a single collectivity.