Many have been studied, but not the Ottoman documents, products of a bureaucracy that occupied northern Greece from the 14th century, before Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, until the early 20th — when the area became Greek again.
Father Theofilos, a Pantokrator monk, shows a manuscript at the library of Pantokrator Monastery in the Mount Athos, northern Greece, on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022.
The libraries of the self-governed community, established more than 1,000 years ago on northern Greece's Athos peninsula, are a repository of rare, centuries-old works in several languages including Greek, Russian and Romanian. "Ottoman was the official language of state," he told The Associated Press from the library of the Pantokrator Monastery, one of 20 on the heavily wooded peninsula.
And the manuscripts tell a story at odds with the traditional understanding in Greece of Ottoman depredations in the newly conquered areas, through the confiscation of the Mount Athos monasteries' rich real estate holdings. Instead, the new rulers took the community under their wing, preserved its autonomy and protected it from external interference.
"That says a lot. The Ottoman sultan himself ensured that the administrative system of Mount Athos was preserved and safeguarded," he said.
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