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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
While the number of crypto-Christians among the heterodox tribes of Asia Minor has probably been considerably exaggerated, it cannot be denied that crypto-Christians exist or that cases of forced conversion affecting large sections of the population can be cited. But under the Ottoman Turks at least there is very little historical evidence for conversion on a large scale in Asia Minor.
Exceptionally in the district of Trebizond we have both a credible legend of conversion and an existent population, outwardly Mahommedan, which seems in some cases to retain something from the more ancient faith and in others to practise it in secret. Of the first category may be cited certain villages in the district of Rizeh, which, though Mahommedan by profession, preserve some memories of the rite of baptism and speak, not Turkish, but Armenian.
Crypto-Christians proper, belonging to the Greek rite and Greek by speech, also existed till recent years in the neighbourhood of Trebizond: they were known generally as ‘Stavriotae,’ from a village Stavra in the ecclesiastical district of Gumush-khane. They are said at one time to have numbered 20,000 in the vilayets of Sivas, Angora, and Trebizond: now all have returned to the open profession of their faith.
1 Cf. my ‘Heterodox Tribes of Asia Minor’ in the forthcoming Journ. R. Anthr. Inst.
2 Individual conversions are in a different category and have probably at all times taken place to a greater or less extent. Cf. Burckhardt, , Travels in Syria (London, 1822), p. 197Google Scholar, who cites the case of a Meccan sherif family, which, being entrusted with the rule of the mountain, became crypto Christians in order to have more hold over the Christians of Lebanon. SirBurton, R. (in Lady Burton's Inner Life of Syria, p. 146)Google Scholar records wholesale local conversions in Syria on account of government or private oppression.
3 Cuinet, , Turq. ď Asie, i. 121Google Scholar. These people seem to be identical with the Armenians of the Batoum district, who were converted ‘two hundred years ago’ (Smith, and Dwight, , Missionary Researches in Armenia, 1834, p. 457)Google Scholar.
4 Janin, R. in Échos ďOrient, xiv. (1912), 495–505CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cuinet, (Turq. d'Asie, i. 12Google Scholar) says there are 12,000 to 15,000 Kromlis, living in nine villages not far from Trebizond.
5 Ioannides, S., Ἱστορία Τραπεζοῦντος, pp. 134–5Google Scholar.
6 For the Ophites cf. Deffner, M., Πέντε Ἑβδομάδες παρà τοῖς ἀρνησιθρήσκοις ἐν Ὄφει, in Ἑστίο, 1877, No. 87, pp. 547–50Google Scholar.
7 Apparently Ioannides, S., Ἱστορία Τραπεζοῦντος, p. 132 ff.Google Scholar, which is followed by Triandaphyllides, , Ποντικά, p. 56Google Scholar, and preface to the same author's Οἱ φυγάδες. Kyriakides, E. I., Ἱστορία τῆς Μονῆς Σουμελᾶ (Athens, 1898), p. 91 ff.Google Scholar, adds a reference to Papadopoulos-Kerameus, , Fontes Hist. Trapez., i. 150–165Google Scholar, for a contemporary poem. David's history of Trebizond may be the source of all. For the Christian practices of the Stavriotae of Lazistan (the Ophite crypto-Christians?), see Pears, , Turkey, p. 266 f.Google Scholar; Ramsay, , Impressions, p. 241Google Scholar.
8 The Trapezuntine crypto-Christians are also mentioned casually by Hamilton, , Asia Minor, i. 340Google Scholar; Smith and Dwight, op. cit., p. 453; Flandin, et Coste, , Voyage en Perse (1840–1841), i. 38Google Scholar, who call the sect Kroumi (from Kromna, one of their villages) or Messo-Messo (‘half-and-half’). The best and most recent account of them is given by Janin, in Échos d'Orient, xiv. (1912), 495–505CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He draws for their early history on the Greek authors mentioned above, and for recent events on local sources, describing the gradual return of the cryptoChristians to open profession of their faith. They are now said to be undergoing a forced re-conversion to Islam (Πατρίς, April 16, 1915).
8 Tr. von Hammer, ii. 45–6. Evliya wrote about the middle of the seventeenth century.
10 Two Cappadocian villages near Nevshehr are said by Oberhummer, to have been converted to Islam ‘a hundred and eighty years ago’ (Durch Syrien und Kleinasien, p. 143)Google Scholar. There was an unsuccessful Turkish campaign in 1677 against the Russians. It is to be noted that Trebizond is particularly accessible to Russian agents.
11 See my ‘Mosques of the Arabs’ (B.S.A. xxii. 162). Cf. also Hobhouse, , Journey through Albania, ii. 976Google Scholar.
12 About the same time Thomas Smith at Constantinople mentions that ‘a certain Prophecy, of no small Authority, runs in the minds of all the People, and has gained great credit and belief among them, that their Empire shall be ruined by a Northern Nation, which has white and yellowish Hair. The Interpretation is as various as their Fancy. Some fix this character on the Moscovites; and the poor Greeks flatter themselves that they are to be their Deliverers… Others look upon the Sweede as the persons describ'd in the Prophecy’ (Ray, Voyages, ii. 80 f.)Google Scholar. This is the ‘Yellow Race’ of the Prophecy of Constantine (Carnoy, et Nicolaides, , Folklore de Constantinople, 48Google Scholar f. etc.) current already in the sixteenth century (cf. Gerlach, , Tage-Buch, 102)Google Scholar. The text was said to have been found in the tomb of Constantine and to have been interpreted by the patriarch Gennadius, , according to the regular machinery of apocryphal ‘discoveries’ (see my ‘Graves of the Arabs’ in B.S.A. xxi., p. 190)Google Scholar. As the Russians are Orthodox and the Swedes Lutheran, the prophecy more probably refers to the former and may have been concocted about the time we first hear of it, as Ivan the Terrible was then showing that the Russians would one day be dangerous. It probably revived regularly when Russia threatened: for instance, Volney, (Voyage en Syrie, Paris, 1825, i. 42)Google Scholar found the prophecy common among the Turks about 1784 during the Turko-Russian war to which the Treaty of Kainardjik put an end. Similarly, Hobhouse heard it during his wanderings in Turkey. The eighteenth century Dapontes, K. speaks of τῆς Ἐλισάβετ τῶν Ξανθῶν μεγίλης Βασιλίσσης (Κῆπος Χαρίτων, p. 195)Google Scholar, presumably with the prophecy in mind. In his time Burckhardt, found that the Syrians made no mystery of it: the ‘Yellow King’ was merely another way of saying ‘Emperor of Russia’ (Travels in Arabia, London, 1822, p. 40)Google Scholar. According to Polites Παραδόσεις ii. 669, drawing on Du Cange, Google Scholar, Glossar.,s.v. flavus), the prophecy appears first in Roger de Hoveden, who says that a prophecy written up over the Golden Gate of Constantinople stated that a Yellow King, who was a Latin, should enter by it. As the Flavian Theodosius built the Golden Gate, there may have been a long Latin inscription, full of abbreviations and containing the word Flavius over the gate. This misread may have originated the idea. It is interesting that the prophecy should have been applied first to a conqueror rather than a deliverer. Something of the same confusion as to the Yellow Race appears in the tenth-century Ὁράσεις of Daniel, (Polites, Παραδόσεις ii. 665 ff.Google Scholar; Migne, , Dict, des Apocryphes, ii. 188)Google Scholar, alleged to have been found by Leo the Wise in the tomb of Daniel, the Daniel in question having been a monk, later confounded with the Biblical prophet. The Ὁράσεις may thus be merely another name for Leo's oracles. Such discoveries of magic books in graves are rather interesting: they add prestige to the books in question: the ‘discovery’ sounds genuine owing to the practice of burying books with the dead; cf. Cahun, L., Excursions sur les Bords de l'Euphrate, p. 263Google Scholar, who found a copy of the Koran in a sheikh's tomb he had opened. I myself heard the same tale at Manisa. In such cases the Koran is possibly intended to help the dead in the examination he undergoes from the two angels after death, for which see especially d'Ohsson, , Tableau de l'Empire Othoman, i. 239Google Scholar, and Lane, , Modern Egyptians, ii. 265Google Scholar. The practice among Moslems may derive ultimately from Jewish custom. Jewish rabbis are frequently buried with a pentateuch (a perfect copy is never used): hence discoveries of holy books in Jewish prophets' graves are numerous (cf. Loftus, , Travels in Chaldaea, p. 36Google Scholar, and Migne, , Dict, des Apocryphes, ii. 1309Google Scholar; Deschamps, Émile, Au Pays d'Aphrodite—Chypre, p. 230Google Scholar, and Tischendorf, , Terre-Sainte, p. 201Google Scholar, both mention a gospel found in the tomb of Barnabas in Cyprus). In the Jewish instances, the book, not the holy man, is the essential: as they prohibit images and are eager for knowledge to which the sacred book is the key, this book becomes almost an object of adoration with them. At Tedif near Aleppo a certain synagogue was greatly venerated by Jews on account of an ancient manuscript kept there (Pococke, , Voyages, Neuchâtel, 1772, iii. 495Google Scholar). A pentateuch written by Esdras was preserved in a synagogue of Old Cairo: it was so holy that people could not look on it and live (Carmoly, , Itinéraires de la Terre Sainte, pp. 527, 542–3Google Scholar; cf. Pierotti, , Légendes Racontées, Lausanne, 1869, p. 39)Google Scholar. A glance at the half stone, half flesh image of the Virgin in the Syrian convent of Sidnaya had the same fatal effect (Porter, J. L., Five Years in Damascus, p. 130Google Scholar; cf. Ludolf, , De Itin. Terrae Sanctae, p. 99 ff.Google Scholar, Maundrell, , Voyage, Utrecht, 1705, pp. 220–1Google Scholar, and Baronius, s.a. 870).
13 Triandaphyllides, , Ποντικά (Athens, 1866), pp. 55–92Google Scholar.
14 Constantinople, ii. 335 ff.
15 The heresy of Sabatai Sevi, the seventeenth-century Messiah whose followers turned with him to Islam, had much hold in Smyrna, though its chief connexions are now with Salonica. A follower of his, Daniel Israel, was expelled by the cadi from Smyrna in 1703, but seems to have been still living there in 1717 (Cuper, G., Lettres, Amsterdam, 1742, pp. 396, 398Google Scholar).
16 Crypto-Christians are recorded elsewhere also. Walpole mentions a group of five such Albanian villages in the Morea, (Travels, p. 292Google Scholar). Professor R. M. Dawkins heard in Crete that during the Greek revolution of 1821 many Cretan crypto-Christians declared themselves openly for Christianity and were massacred accordingly. A long article by Micheli, R. in the Nineteenth Century for May, 1908Google ScholarPubMed, describes the Lino-Vamvaki (lit. ‘linen-cotton’) of Cyprus. Hahn, cites the Karamuratadhes of the middle Voyussa in Albania as recent and partial converts to Islam (Albanes. Stud. p. 36)Google Scholar. The alleged date (1760) of their conversion squares well with the accounts of the Valachadhes in Macedonia, S.W., for whom see Wace, and Thompson, , Nomads of the Balkans, p. 29Google Scholar, and Bérard, , La Macédoine, p. 110fGoogle Scholar. Their turning seems to have been part of a considerable movement in the Balkans during the eighteenth century, when the Russian danger caused the Turks to put pressure on their rayah populations to convert. It may be noted that the Valachadhes preserve their churches as they were, especially at Vrostena, Brontiza, and Vinani, and frequent them at certain seasons—or so my informants assert. A community of some 400 souls exists at the present day in the heart of Constantinople itself, in the Top Kapou Serai quarter, which lies between the east end of S. Sophia and the Serai walls: outwardly they are Moslem and attend the mosque, but in secret they have eikons: they are very poor and live by making beads. Crypto-Christians are mentioned in Bosnia, by Boué, (Turquie d'Europe, iii. 407)Google Scholar, and in S. Albania (ibid., iii. 407–8). On the phenomenon in general in Islam see Jacob, G., ‘Die Bektaschijje,’ p. 29 (in Abh. k. Bayr. Ak. xxiv., 1909)Google Scholar.
