You dont have to kill all of the clergy, just the most influential ones. This will disconnect the people from orthodoxy, not like the likely card anyway. Its also important to get the landed elites and professional classes to convert by economic incentives. It will then be easier for commoners to convert. After all, this is what they did in Persia, and after about 300 years, the majority of Persians became Muslim.
Islamic Greek state?
- Thread starter Cuāuhtemōc
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You dont have to kill all of the clergy, just the most influential ones. This will disconnect the people from orthodoxy, not like the likely card anyway. Its also important to get the landed elites and professional classes to convert by economic incentives. It will then be easier for commoners to convert. After all, this is what they did in Persia, and after about 300 years, the majority of Persians became Muslim.
No, it will make the people outraged that you're attacking the clergy.
And the landed elites and professional classes - how are you encouraging that (beyond OTL Muslim laws on nonMuslims)?
I'm not saying you can't do it, but you need to make it desirable to convert without encouraging rebellion instead.
Flocculencio
Donor
In the long run it doesn't matter. So long as the government can crush unrest effectively enough, slowly over time people will give up their beliefs.
I'm just using the example of the Arab conquest of Persia. The Zoroastrian high clergy were the most rebellious and were the first to get the sword. Most of the nobility (check the Suren family) and professional classes quickly converted to retain their status and wealth. With the high clergy gone, the commoners, while initially outraged, will lose their connection to religious orthodoxy. In seeing the elites converting the commoners will feel more pressure to convert. The elites are the ones that produce lasting cultural artifacts. It's not a quick process and it took a few centuries for the Persians to become a majority Muslim. I suppose with the Greeks the Muslim conquest would have to had happen during the first 4 caliphs. That gives enough time for the elites to convert and to have Greek culture identified with the Islamic faith.
Yes, unless they know that a bloody and crushable rebellion is the easiest way to find out who your enemies are and deal with them. Otherwise, you've got simmering resentment for years, which could potentially be far more dangerous.
Cheers,
Ganesha
With the high clergy gone, there are still the priests that the commoners deal with on a day to day basis.
I just don't see this working as well unless the Muslim presence in Hellenic areas is very strong - making martyrs is a rather ineffective deterrent in a faith that was built on martyrdom. And occupying this area for three centuries is harder than doing so with Iran, which is a lot closer to Arabia.
Ganesha: This isn't that. This is needlessly making enemies, directly contrary to both financial self-interest and to the dictates of the Koran.
I dont agree with that. The time from the Muslim conquest of the Iranian plateau to the rise of the first indigenous Muslim Persian state was about 150 years. Prior to that, including the conquests, there were many Persians who collaborated with the Arab conquest and occupation. I think if the Arabs were successful in conquering Anatolia, and maybe the Balkans too, you would definately see the rise of a Greek Muslim state.
I think that may be the key point. Muslim states often used dhimmis to fill the coffers and thus didn't really encourage mass conversions.
In Iran the mass conversions happened when coupled with the violent political changes in the Caliphate which emboldened various Zoroastrian, pagan and syncretist rebels. Once they were crushed despite everything, you get authentic Persian muslim dynasties.
But if Iran was conquered during a later period, and if the (say Umayyads) stayed stable for a long time, the mass conversions may be delayed for quite a long time, similar to what happened in Spain and Ottoman Balkans.
That said, I don't see the Persian Model as inapplicable to Greece. You just have to have the right combination of events.
Because conditions in Iran, far closer to Arabia, are going to be the same as conditions in the Balkans and Anatolia.
RGB: But how do you get "the right combination of events"? OTL History has rarely favors mass conversion of Muslim or Christian populations (this is not to say an ATL couldn't, just that few to none of the circumstances of OTL have).
The Sandman
Banned
Have the Black Death hit the Greeks much harder. Or have one of the Mongol Hordes put serious effort into crushing Byzantium and delay the death of the khan for long enough that they've finished smashing Greece before they have to turn around and head back to Karakorum to elect a new khan.
The great revolts took place in Balkh, Shirvan and Khorezm. All of those places are really rather far from Arabia, and some are even far from Baghdad.
If we're still talking about Turks here, how far is Saloniki from Konya relative to Balkh from Baghdad?
Right combinations: larger Greek population, more violent attempts at stamping out Christian leadership. It's hard to really outline it to a satisfactory extent short of writing a full timeline.
Someone should do it.
Not sure. Offhand I suspect the distance is shorter (in time and miles), though.
Right combinations: larger Greek population, more violent attempts at stamping out Christian leadership. It's hard to really outline it to a satisfactory extent short of writing a full timeline.
Someone should do it.
Someone should. Although wouldn't a larger Greek population make rebellions easier, not harder?
I would say the Persian population and land is much larger than anything ever considered Greek, and they were throughly Islamcized. Have a quick Arab victory over Anatolia and that should do the trick. Using the Persian model, there were anti Islamic revolts for centuries after the conquest, independent Zoroastrian polities, and attempts to reclaim the Sassanid throne, but in the end, they became Muslim. The one thing that kept the Islamization going long after the Arabs left (they never really held direct control) was the non-Arab Muslim elite. By making Persian an accepted language of Islam, it helped to engrain Islam as part of the Persian identity.
As someone else posted, the areas of strong Zoroastrian resistance, Greater Khorasan and Taberstan, were rather far from Arabia and Damascus. Anatolia is much closer to Damascus than the Iranian plateau.
I agree... Decapitating the Church wont work... Look what happened in Cyprus in 1821... Cyprus has an autonomous Church without ties to any Patriarchate by ancient prerogative... The Ottoman Governor executed the Archbishop and all senior Bishops in the island along with several priests but al he managed to achieve was to enrage the population even more... As for the Church the Patriarch of Antioch obtained permission from the Patriarch of Constantinople to consecrate a new Archbishop of Cyprus and all other Bishops to replace the executed ones and Church continued to work as usual...
Usually attacking high ranking clergy makes people angrier and also makes them wanting to retaliate... Remember that when the Sultan executed Patriarch Gregory V in 1821 and several other Bishops/priests Greeks retaliated by capturing and beheading the Sheikh-Ul Islam (the highest muslim authority) as he was travelling by sea to Asia Minor.
The land areas is greater. The population . . . according to The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (this figure is from 737 AD for the record):
6 million in areas that can be considered Greek (possibly less depending on the size of the nonGreek Balkan population, but certainly at least five plus).
4 million in areas that can be considered Iranian (counting Azeribaijan). Five if Mesopotamia counts.
They really did hold direct control, or at least direct enough for the Persians to answer to the Caliphate until the mid-9th century (after that we see conflict).
And I think you're overestimating the interest of the Greek elite in converting. I'm not saying they would definitely not, but I think the history of conversion of Christians in areas ruled by Muslims OTL indicates that forcing conversion will not go over well, and merely "rule for centuries" isn't inevitably going to lead to Islamization taking over - even Egypt took quite a while for the Copt population to drop to minor.
But its not so close that fighting rebellion is necessarily going to be easy or manageable.
Especially once you get past the frontier and towards the Marmara.
You could get the Ottomans to be more like Spain when the Granada fall. Have them send ultimatum to the greeks, convert, flee or die. Also if you start killing orthodox clergy, then you have to kill them all, apsolutely all, from the patriarch to the lowliest village priest. Also burn down churches, and burn bibles as well. The priests would be dead, and everyone would be too scared to even think about becoming one. Then start killing the remaining christians and voila, you get muslim greeks with lot of resentment thus giving them a reason to fight for independence. Of course if you want to keep them muslim the strugle for independence would have to come at least 200-300 years after this
It really matters when you do it!!
If you do it in 1500s it would be considered relatively normal.
But if you do it in 1800s it would cause the world to act, and a wide public outrage