Demographics of Anatolia in the 12th-13th Centuries

Does anyone have a rough estimation of what proportion of the population of the Anatolian plateau in say 1190 was still Orthodox Christian? I know that substantial Armenian Christian and Jewish populations were also present in places such as Konya and Kayseri, but was their not still a very large "Roman" population in the region at that time?


Thanks!
 
Does anyone have a rough estimation of what proportion of the population of the Anatolian plateau in say 1190 was still Orthodox Christian? I know that substantial Armenian Christian and Jewish populations were also present in places such as Konya and Kayseri, but was their not still a very large "Roman" population in the region at that time?


Thanks!

If your talking about the whole of Anatolia, then the coasts would be overall Orthodox and Greek and the Central part is overall Turkish and Muslim. I am quite sure the coasts were more heavily populated at the time, so Anatolia would be more Greek.
 
Central Anatolia was never densely populated anyway at any point, although it was probably enjoying growth alongside the rest of the Empire in the eleventh century. This came to an end after Manzikert, due to slow Turkish conquest (it's a mistake to assume that Anatolia fell rapidly after Manzikert, the process took over a decade) and then warfare caused by attempted Byzantine reconquest, as well as red hot Turk on Turk action.

I've read somewhere that Aleksios Komnenos' government supervised a partial evacuation of central Anatolia in the 1090s, but this should be taken with a pinch of salt: what'll be meant here is "a partial evacuation of those wealthy enough to up and leave". The vast majority of the surviving peasants will have remained long after 1100.

That being so, to answer the OP I'd guess the population at the end of the twelfth century probably tilted slightly further towards a Christian majority, but it would only have been a small one. Further Mongol-induced warfare in the thirteenth century would've further damaged the Christian populations of the plateau, so by 1300 there'd probably have been a comfortable Muslim majority. Thereafter, the trajectory was only downwards for the Christians of what was rapidly becoming Turkey.

As for elsewhere, the coasts retained comfortable Christian majorities for centuries longer: largely Orthodox, although there were pockets of Armenians across the region. I'd guess Muslims probably didn't become a majority in these areas until the eighteenth century or so, and of course the absence of a Christian population now is due to deliberate and forcible ethnic cleansing in the 1920s rather than any natural demographic decline.
 
I think the 1700's is a bit late for the coasts becoming Muslim majority and it's not as simple as inland vs. coasts. There was significant variation among coastal regions, Smyrna for example was Christian majority for centuries after other places.
 
I agree with Thoresby, it's hard to use a broad brush when thinking of Muslim v. Christian in the different regions of Anatolia. Well into the 20th century there were still (Greek) Christian pockets in certain areas of Anatolia that one would have assumed had been Muslim for centuries, and then you travel through the Greek Aegean Islands and you see signs of the significant Muslim communities that lived there before the population exchange in the early 20s.

When thinking about religious adherence in the recently conquered areas of Anatolia in the 12th century, we need to remember that Islam was not quite the aggresively proselytising religion that Christianity was. Before the 13th-14th centuries, with the spread of Islam to sub-Saharan Africa and the East Indies, the religion had always followed the point of the sword. After Muslim conquest of a Christian territory, conversion was a slow and steady progress, driven as much by the fiscal benefits granted to Muslims as anything else. Egypt and the Levant were conquered in the first wave of Muslim expansion in the mid 7th century yet to this day maintain strong Christian minorities. Most of Spain was under Muslim rule for half a millenium yet Islam was always a minority religion in al-Andalus and in many areas almost non-existant outside the ruling class.

Given historical patterns, I'd figure that, once a Mislim force conqueres a certain (well-populated) territory and continues to hold it from then on, you'd need at minimum 50 years before you could begin to assume a Muslim plurality. In a sparsely populated territory, however, there will be instances where the occupying force outnumbers the populace.
 
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