A Cretan dagger with a turkish inscription

eftihis · 6th May 2021, 02:44 PM

Τhank you so much kwiatek!
In Crete there was never a colonisation of Muslims from mainland Turkey after the ottoman conquest. Instead, we had the change of faith of maybe 40% of the Christian population. These became the Cretan muslims or the "Turcocretans", fearsome in battle and firm supporters of the Ottoman rule. However they never became either "proper" muslims (they continued to eat pork and drink wine), neither "proper" Turks! They continued to speak only the Cretan dialect of the Greek language. They learned the turkish language after the population exchange with Turkey in 1924, were the last ones left for Turkey, in exchange with Greek refuges from Asia minor. Some of their descentents still understand Greek today. So in addition to the difficulty of translating the meaning from Arabic to Turkish, here we had the additional difficulty that the meaning had to be communicated to the muslim owner in Greek!

6th May 2021, 02:44 PM	#4
eftihis Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Chania Crete Greece Posts: 511	Τhank you so much kwiatek! In Crete there was never a colonisation of Muslims from mainland Turkey after the ottoman conquest. Instead, we had the change of faith of maybe 40% of the Christian population. These became the Cretan muslims or the "Turcocretans", fearsome in battle and firm supporters of the Ottoman rule. However they never became either "proper" muslims (they continued to eat pork and drink wine), neither "proper" Turks! They continued to speak only the Cretan dialect of the Greek language. They learned the turkish language after the population exchange with Turkey in 1924, were the last ones left for Turkey, in exchange with Greek refuges from Asia minor. Some of their descentents still understand Greek today. So in addition to the difficulty of translating the meaning from Arabic to Turkish, here we had the additional difficulty that the meaning had to be communicated to the muslim owner in Greek!