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Klepht
Klephts (; Greek κλέφτης, ''kléftis'', pl. κλέφτες, ''kléftes'', which means "thieves" and perhaps originally meant just "brigand": "Other Greeks, taking to the mountains, became unofficial, self-appointed armatoles and were known as klephts (from the Greek ''kleptes'', "brigand").") were highwaymen turned self-appointed armatoloi, anti-Ottoman insurgents, and warlike mountain-folk who lived in the countryside when Greece was a part of the Ottoman Empire. They were the descendants of Greeks who retreated into the mountains during the 15th century in order to avoid Ottoman rule.: "The klephts were descendants of Greeks who fled into the mountains to avoid the Turks in the fifteenth century and who remained active as brigands into the nineteenth century." Klepht bands also included many ethnic Albanians. They carried on a continuous war against Ottoman rule and remained active as brigands until the 19th century. The terms kleptomania and kleptocracy are derived fro ...
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Armatoloi
The armatoles (; ; ; ), or armatole in singular, were irregular soldiers, or militia, commissioned by the Ottoman Empire, Ottomans to enforce the sultan's authority within an administrative district called an armatoliki ( in singular, , in plural). In Ottoman Greece, Greek regions of the Ottoman Empire, they were composed of Greeks who were either former klephts or village stalwarts who had taken up arms against the klephts in the defense of their district. The Greek armatoles had a semi-independent status all over the Greek peninsula, and armatolikia were created in areas that had high levels of brigandage (i.e. klephts), or in regions that were difficult for Ottoman authorities to govern due to the inaccessible terrain, such as the Agrafa mountains of Thessaly, where the first armatoliki was established in the 15th century. Over time, the roles of the armatoles and klephtes became blurred, with both reversing their roles and allegiances as the situation demanded, all the while ...
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Greece
Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the Geography of Greece, mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Sea of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin, spanning List of islands of Greece, thousands of islands and nine Geographic regions of Greece, traditional geographic regions. It has a population of over 10 million. Athens is the nation's capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city, followed by Thessaloniki and Patras. Greece is considered the cradle of Western culture, Western civilisation and the birthplace of Athenian democracy, democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, historiography, political science, major History of science in cl ...
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Ottoman Greece
The vast majority of the territory of present-day Greece was at some point incorporated within the Ottoman Empire. The period of Ottoman rule in Greece, lasting from the mid-15th century until the successful Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821 and the First Hellenic Republic was proclaimed in 1822, is known in Greece as Turkocracy (). Some regions, like the Ionian islands and various temporary Republic of Venice, Venetian possessions of the Stato da Mar, were not incorporated in the Ottoman Empire. The Mani Peninsula in the Peloponnese was not fully integrated into the Ottoman Empire, but was under Ottoman suzerainty. The Eastern Roman Empire, which ruled most of the Greek-speaking world for over 1100 years, had been fatally weakened since the Fourth Crusade of 1204. Having defeated the Serbs, the Ottomans fall of Constantinople, captured Constantinople in 1453 and soon advanced southwards capturing Athens in 1456 and the Peloponnese in 1460. By the early 16th century, a ...
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Macedonia (Greece)
Macedonia ( ; , ) is a geographic regions of Greece, geographic and former administrative region of Greece, in the southern Balkans. Macedonia is the largest and geographic region in Greece, with a population of 2.36 million (as of 2020). It is highly mountainous, with major urban centres such as Thessaloniki and Kavala being concentrated on its southern coastline. Together with Western Thrace, Thrace, along with Thessaly and Epirus (region), Epirus occasionally, it is part of Northern Greece. Greek Macedonia encompasses entirely the southern part of the wider Macedonia (region), region of Macedonia, making up 51% of the total area of that region. Additionally, it widely constitutes Greece's borders with three countries: Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia to the north, and Bulgaria to the northeast. Greek Macedonia incorporates most of the territories of ancient Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon, a Greek kingdom ruled by the Argead Dynasty, Argeads, whose most ce ...
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Morea
Morea ( or ) was the name of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The name was used by the Principality of Achaea, the Byzantine province known as the Despotate of the Morea, by the Ottoman Empire for the Morea Eyalet, and later by the Republic of Venice for the short-lived Kingdom of the Morea. Etymology There is some uncertainty over the origin of the medieval name "Morea", which is first recorded in the 10th century in the Byzantine chronicles. Traditionally, scholars thought the name to have originated from the word ''morea'' (μορέα), meaning morus or mulberry, a tree which, though known in the region from the ancient times, gained value after the 6th century, when mulberry-eating silkworms were smuggled from China to Byzantium. The British Byzantinist Steven Runciman suggested that the name comes "from the likeness of its shape to that of a mulberry leaf". History After the conquest of Constantinople by ...
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Highwaymen
A highwayman was a robber who stole from travellers. This type of thief usually travelled and robbed by horse as compared to a footpad who travelled and robbed on foot; mounted highwaymen were widely considered to be socially superior to footpads. Rid, Samuel. "Martin Markall, Beadle of Bridewell," in ''The Elizabethan Underworld'', A. V. Judges, ed. pp. 415–416. George Routledge, 1930Online quotationSpraggs, pp. 107, 169, 190–191. Such criminals operated until the mid- or late 19th century. Highwaywomen, such as Katherine Ferrers, were said to also exist, often dressing as men, especially in fiction. The first attestation of the word ''highwayman'' is from 1617. Euphemisms such as "knights of the road" and "gentlemen of the road" were sometimes used by people interested in romanticizing (with a Robin Hood–esque slant) what was often an especially violent form of stealing. In the 19th-century American West, highwaymen were sometimes known as road agents. In Australia, ...
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Chiflik (Ottoman Empire)
Chiflik, or chiftlik (Ottoman Turkish: ; ; , ''chiflik''; , ''čiflig''; , ''tsiflíki''; /''čitluk''), is a Turkish term for a system of land management in the Ottoman Empire. Before the chiflik system the Empire used a non-hereditary form of land management called the timar system. As the Empire began to collapse, powerful military officers started to claim land from the sultan's holding allowing them to pass the land onto their sons, thus creating the chiflik system. This form of land management lasted from the 16th century until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1919. Background In the Ottoman Empire, before the chiflik system was adopted, the timar system was official Ottoman policy. The system was one in which the projected revenue of a conquered territory was distributed in the form of temporary land grants among the Sipahis (cavalrymen) and other members of the military class including Janissaries and other servants of the Sultan. These land grants were given ...
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Eyalets
Eyalets (, , ), also known as beylerbeyliks or pashaliks, were the primary administrative division, administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire. From Fall of Constantinople, 1453 to the beginning of the nineteenth century the Ottoman local government was loosely structured. The empire was at first divided into states called eyalets, presided over by a beylerbey (Imperial, royal and noble ranks, title equivalent to duke in Turkish language, Turkish and Amir al-umara, Amir al Umara in Arabic) of three tails (feathers borne on a state officer's ceremonial staff). The grand vizier was responsible for nominating all the high officers of state, both in the capital and the states. Between 1861 and 1866, these eyalets were abolished, and the territory was divided for administrative purposes into vilayets (provinces). The eyalets were subdivided into districts called Sanjak, livas or sanjaks, each of which was under the charge of a pasha of one tail, with the title of mira-lira, or san ...
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Roumelia
Rumelia (; ; ) was a historical region in Southeastern Europe that was administered by the Ottoman Empire, roughly corresponding to the Balkans. In its wider sense, it was used to refer to all Ottoman possessions and vassals in Europe. These would later be geopolitically classified as "the Balkans", although Hungary and Moldova are sometimes excluded. In contemporary English sources, Rumelia was known as Turkey in Europe. Etymology ''Rûm'' in this context means 'Roman' and ''ėli'' means 'land', and thus ''Rumelia'' (, ''Rūm-ėli''; Turkish: ''Rumeli'') means 'Land of the Romans' in Ottoman Turkish. It refers to the lands conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, most of which formerly belonged to the Byzantine Empire, known by its contemporaries as the Roman Empire. Although the term ''Byzantine Empire'' is used by modern historians, the empire's citizens and emperors called themselves Romans, meaning Greek-speaking Eastern Romans, and embraced a Christian identity. ...
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Sanjaks
A sanjak or sancak (, , "flag, banner") was an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans also sometimes called the sanjak a liva (, ) from the name's calque in Arabic and Persian. Banners were a common organization of nomadic groups on the Eurasian Steppe including the early Turks, Mongols, and Manchus and were used as the name for the initial first-level territorial divisions at the formation of the Ottoman Empire. Upon the empire's expansion and the establishment of eyalets as larger provinces, sanjaks were used as the second-level administrative divisions. They continued in this purpose after the eyalets were replaced by vilayets during the Tanzimat reforms of the 19th century. Sanjaks were typically headed by a bey or sanjakbey. The Tanzimat reforms initially placed some sanjaks under kaymakams and others under mutasarrifs; a sanjak under a mutasarrif was known as a mutasarriflik. The districts of each sanjak were known as kazas. These were init ...
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Militia
A militia ( ) is a military or paramilitary force that comprises civilian members, as opposed to a professional standing army of regular, full-time military personnel. Militias may be raised in times of need to support regular troops or serve as a pool of available manpower for regular forces to draw from. When acting independently, militias are generally unable to hold ground against regular forces. Militias commonly support regular troops by skirmishing, holding fortifications, or conducting irregular warfare, instead of undertaking offensive campaigns by themselves. However, militias may also engage in defense activities to protect a community, its territory, property, and laws. For example, naval militias may comprise fishermen and other civilians which are organized and sanctioned by a state to enforce its maritime boundaries. Beginning in the late 20th century, some militias (in particular officially recognized and sanctioned militias of a government) act as profe ...
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Turkish Language
Turkish ( , , also known as 'Turkish of Turkey') is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, a member of Oghuz languages, Oghuz branch with around 90 million speakers. It is the national language of Turkey and one of two official languages of Cyprus. Significant smaller groups of Turkish speakers also exist in Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Greece, other parts of Europe, the South Caucasus, and some parts of Central Asia, Iraqi Turkmen, Iraq, and Syrian Turkmen, Syria. Turkish is the List of languages by total number of speakers, 18th-most spoken language in the world. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish language, Ottoman Turkish—the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Persian alphabet, Perso-Arabic script-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet was repl ...
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