Caria - Dissolution Under The Byzantine Empire and Passage To Turkish Rule

Dissolution Under The Byzantine Empire and Passage To Turkish Rule

In the 7th century provinces were abolished and the new theme system was introduced. The region corresponding to ancient Caria was captured by the Turks under Menteşe dynasty in early 13th century.

There are only indirect clues regarding the population structure under the Menteşe and the parts played in it by Turkish migration from inland regions and by local conversions, but the first Ottoman Empire census records indicate, in a situation not atypical for the region as a whole, a large Muslim (practically exclusively Turkish) majority reaching as high as 99% and a non-Muslim minority (practically exclusively Greek supplemented with a small Jewish community in Milas) as low as one per cent. One of the first acts of the Ottomans after their takeover was to transfer the administrative center of the region from its millenary seat in Milas to the then much smaller Muğla, which was nevertheless better suited for controlling the southern fringes of the province. Still named Menteşe until the early decades of the 20th century, the kazas corresponding to ancient Caria are recorded by sources such as G. Sotiriadis (1918) and S. Anagiostopoulou (1997) as having a Greek population averaging at around ten per cent of the total, ranging somewhere between twelve to eighteen thousand, many of them reportedly recent immigrants from the islands. Most chose to leave in 1919, before the population exchange.

Read more about this topic:  Caria

Famous quotes containing the words dissolution, empire, passage, turkish and/or rule:

    “We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other.”
    —Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

    “Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire. This agglomeration which called itself and still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
    —Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)

    “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
    —Bible: Hebrew Proverbs 29:18.

    President John F. Kennedy quoted this passage on the eve of his assassination in Dallas, Texas. Quoted in Theodore C. Sorenson, Kennedy, epilogue (1965)

    “A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “We’ve only just begun to learn about the water and its secrets, just as we’ve only touched on outer space. We don’t entirely rule out the possibility that there might be some form of life on another planet. Then why not some entirely different form of life in a world we already know is inhabited by millions of living creatures?”
    —Harry Essex (b. 1910)