Abstract

The Ottoman existence in the present-day Greece began in 1361 AD, when the Ottomans took possession of Didymoteichon. The Ottomans ruled the present-day Greek territories for periods almost ranging between three and five centuries as the case in Thrace, Macedonia and Thessaly.

Highlights

  • The Ottoman existence in the present-day Greece began in 1361 AD, when the Ottomans took possession of Didymoteichon

  • This paper provides a statistic inventory of the extant inscriptions of the ottoman buildings in Greece

  • There are 367 foundation/restoration inscriptions, either full or short, of the Ottoman buildings in Greece comprising 54 in Arabic, 210 in Ottoman Turkish, 60 inscriptions in Greek, 4 inscriptions in Byzantine, 3 inscriptions in modern Turkish, two inscriptions in French, 9 inscriptions representing dates recorded in numbers only, and 25 inscriptions-some represent foundation inscriptions, others are informal personal inscriptions-written in more than one language, will be studied in detail in the second part of this research, bilingual and trilingual inscriptions

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Summary

Introduction

The Ottoman existence in the present-day Greece began in 1361 AD, when the Ottomans took possession of Didymoteichon. There are 367 foundation/restoration inscriptions, either full or short, of the Ottoman buildings in Greece comprising 54 in Arabic, 210 in Ottoman Turkish, 60 inscriptions in Greek, 4 inscriptions in Byzantine, 3 inscriptions in modern Turkish, two inscriptions in French, 9 inscriptions representing dates recorded in numbers only, and 25 inscriptions-some represent foundation inscriptions, others are informal personal inscriptions-written in more than one language, will be studied in detail in the second part of this research, bilingual and trilingual inscriptions This group of Arabic foundation inscriptions (54) composes a considerable number, especially if compared to any other country in the Balkans. The largest amount of surviving Ottoman inscriptions is found in the Aegean Islands (224 inscriptions), Thrace (211 inscriptions), Crete (101 inscriptions), Macedonia (70 inscriptions), and the last group (78 inscriptions) in Epirus, Thessaly, Central Greece, Attica and Peloponnese. This obviously reflects Ioannina’s own historical contexts, which were different from other Greek regions either during the Ottoman rule or after the incorporation into the Greek State in 1913

A Suggested Methodology in Cataloguing the Corpus of Inscriptions
Regional Unit Name
Deciphering “Text”
Commentary
Full Text
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