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Out of the Balkans

by Jason C. Mavrovitis

Part 1: Out of the Balkans

Chapter 2:
Dimitraki: Out of Macedonia

Notes

  1. Kaimakam, an Ottoman government official. [Return to the text at note 1.]
  2. Andartes, Greek guerilla fighters; andarte is the singular. [Return to the text at note 2.]
  3. A Turkish Lira was a gold coin valued at about four dollars, a considerable sum in 1912. [Return to the text at note 3.]
  4. Mavrovo, sometimes spelled Mavrobo in western maps, now has the names Mavrohori or Mavrohorion. The change in name may have been out of a desire not to have the village confused with the town of Mavrovo on Lake Mavrovo just 80 to 100 miles north in what is now the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. [Return to the text at note 4.]
  5. "In modern times Macedonia had never formed a racial, linguistic or political unit, and prior to 1902 it had not been thought of as an administrative area. Nor indeed was Macedonia a definite geographical term." Douglas Dakin, The Greek Struggle in Macedonia, 1897-1913 (Thessaloniki, Greece: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1966). [Return to the text at note 5.]
  6. When asked where he was from, Jimmy (Dimitraki) invariably responded: "Mavrovo, Kastoria, Macedonia." If asked where that was he would hesitate, and then answer: "Greece." Mavrovo and Kastoria did not become part of Greece until the end of the Second Balkan War. Before 1913 ship manifests of Greek speaking people arriving at Ellis Island from Macedonian frequently listed their ethnicity as Greek and their nationality as Turkish.
     
    Jimmy and his friends from Kastoria referred to themselves as "Romni" or "Romoi", i.e., Romans. The language they spoke they did not describe as Greek, but Romaiko, or Roman. This identification reflects the heritage of Rome's eastern empire, Byzantium. [Return to the text at note 6.]
  7. Kastoria was also known and shown in maps and documents as Celetrum, Celetron, Keletron and Castoria; by the Romans as Justinianopolis; and by the Turks as Kesrieh and Kesriyeh. See: Courtlandt Canby and Gorton Carruth, The Encyclopedia of Historic Places (New York, N.Y.: Facts on File Publications, 1984), I:467. [Return to the text at note 7.]
  8. Kastõr [Castor]: son of Zeus; kastõr: beaver (Herodotus). [Return to the text at note 8.]
  9. Photo of Kastoria and the promontory, A.D. 1930. Photo of Kastoria and the promontory, A.D. 2000. [Return to the text at note 9.]
  10. Hammond, A History of Macedonia, 1,27. [Return to the text at note 10.]
  11. At the time of this writing, a modern Via Ignatia, a multi-lane highway, is under construction along the same route. [Return to the text at note 11.]
  12. Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C. : A Historical Biography, Hellenistic Culture and Society ; 11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 142. [Return to the text at note 12.]

     
  13. Anglo-Saxon and Viking mercenaries served the Emperors of Constantinople. [Return to the text at note 13.]

     
  14. Norwich, A Short History of Byzantium, 252-54. [Return to the text at note 14.]

     
  15. Nicaea was located inland, across the Bosphorus and southeast of Constantinople, in the province of Bithynia. It became an independent state in 1204, after the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade. [Return to the text at note 15.]

     
  16. Nicholas K. Moutsopoulos, Kastoria, the Virgin of Mavriotissa (Athens: Friends of Byzantine and Ancient Monuments of Kastoria, 1967), 85. [Return to the text at note 16.]

     
  17. Mesonisiotissa translates as "in the middle of the island." In ancient times, the promontory of Kastoria was a virtual island. The Monastery of Virgin Mary in the Middle of the Island. Mavriotissa translates as "of Mavrovo."; thus, The Monastery of the Virgin Mary of Mavrovo. [Return to the text at note 17.]

     
  18. Two photos of the outside of the monastery are available in the book on CD. [Return to the text at note 18.]

     
  19. Justin McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923 (New York: Longman, 1997), 107. [Return to the text at note 19.]

     
  20. A millet was a relatively autonomous "nation" whose members were of one religious community. The Turks organized the millet-i-Rûm to include all Eastern Orthodox regardless of ethnicity. The Turkish word Rûm derives from the Greeks being called Romioi (Romans). My father when asking about a person would often ask, "Enai Romios?" ~ "Is he a Roman (Greek)?" [Return to the text at note 20.]

     
  21. McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923, 127-29. [Return to the text at note 21.]

     
  22. The Phanar was the district in Constantinople where lived the Patriarch, his immediate religious, and the powerful Greek administrators of the Porte. It exists still. [Return to the text at note 22.]

     
  23. Schevill, The History of the Balkan Peninsula, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 385. [Return to the text at note 23.]

     
  24. Dakin, The Unification of Greece, 1770-1923, 21-23. [Return to the text at note 24.]

     
  25. The Ottoman military organization was the model or design on which its civil organization of conquered territory was based. The conquest in Europe, the Balkan region, was called Roumelia and governed by a beyrlebey (governor-general). By the nineteenth century, Roumelia was divided into provinces call vilâyets, which in turn were divided into sub-provinces called sanjaks. A sanjak might be governed by a mutasarrif or a kaimakam (kaymakam). [Return to the text at note 25.]

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