THE ISLAMIC GRAVESTONES OF OTTOMAN RETHYMNO:

PRELIMINARY REMARKS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT THEM

Antonis Anastasopoulos*

Rethymno (Ott. Resmo) was conquered by the Ottoman army in 1646, and this event

marks the beginning of the formation of the Muslim community of this town and its
hinterland. Muslim presence persisted for almost three centuries and was brought to an
abrupt end by the 1923 agreement between Turkey and Greece on the exchange of populations, with Muslims departing from Rethymno in 1924. Demographic information and
data from the nineteenth century suggest that at least throughout this period the town of
Rethymno, with a total population of a few thousand people, was heavily dominated by
Muslims.
Apart from archival and literary sources, several monuments, artefacts, and architectural features from the Ottoman period still survive today in Rethymno. Among the most
neglected are the gravestones of the former Muslim cemetery, which was situated to the
south of the town, outside the walls, in the area now occupied by the Municipal Garden
(dimotikos kipos) and around it.
* University of Crete, Department of History and Archaeology Institute for Mediterranean
Studies/Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas.
 According to Sieber, who visited Crete in 1817, Rethymno had about 4,000 inhabitants; F. W.
Sieber, Travels in the Island of Crete, in the Year 1817 (London 1823 [repr.: Athens 1975]), 48.
According to Pashley, who was in Crete in 1834, the population of Rethymno exceeded 3,000
inhabitants, with only about 80 families being Christian; R. Pashley, Travels in Crete, Vol. 1
(Cambridge and London 1837 [repr.: Athens 1989]), 104. According to the census of 1881,
Rethymno and its environs had a population of 9,274 inhabitants, of whom 6,691 were Muslims and 2,444 Christians; N. Stavrakis, Statistike tou plethysmou tes Kretes [Population Census of Crete] (Athens 1890 [repr.: Athens 1978]), 4 (Part II), 78 (Part III).
 On Bonnevals late-eighteenth-century map of Rethymno, the cemetery does not seem to extend to the west of what must be todays Dimitrakaki Street; Ph. De Bonneval and M. Dumas,
Anagnorise tes nesou Kretes: mia anekdote mystike ekthese tou 1783 [Reconnaissance of the
Island of Crete: An Unpublished Secret Report of 1783], ed. and trans. Y. V. Nikolaou and M.
G. Peponakis (Rethymno 2000), 168-169. But if the information, communicated orally, that a
gravestone in fragmentary condition was discovered at a rather elevated and distant spot to the
south of the town (high up on the hill called Mastabas, today part of the town of Rethymno)

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An on-going research project which is funded and carried out by the Institute for
Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H., with the assistance of the 28th Greek State Ephorate
of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Antiquities, has resulted so far in the recording of more
than 330 gravestones from Rethymno. Almost half of these gravestones bear inscriptions, and, as far as those which have a date are concerned (fewer than a hundred), they
cover the period from 1692 to 1900; of these, about 8% were erected prior to 1760, almost 60% come from the years between 1760 and 1820, and the remaining 32% from the
period 1820-1900. Most gravestones belong today to the Ephorate of Antiquities, while
a few are owned by local people. Their state of preservation varies, but many have survived only in part or, even, are no more than a small fragment of the original, or their inscriptions have suffered considerable damage.
The Muslim cemetery most likely ceased to exist in or around 1919, when it was
taken over by the Municipality of Rethymno, which justified its decision on the grounds
of protection of public health, the embellishment of the town, and recovering land for
public utility works and buildings; the existence of a so-called new Muslim cemetery,
situated to the east of the town (on the road connecting Rethymno with Perivolia, today
a suburb of the town), was reported in the local press in 1922. The transformation of
the former cemetery into a Municipal Garden was inaugurated in 1925-1926. The cem-




is accurate, maybe then the cemetery or at least some graves gradually extended over a rather
wide area.
For a brief description of the project, see A. Anastasopoulos, Islamic Tombstones of Rethymno, Crete, in S. Gven (ed.), Common Cultural Heritage: Developing Local Awareness
Concerning the Architectural Heritage Left from the Exchange of Populations in Turkey and
Greece (Istanbul 2005), 222-223. Collaborators on the project include Ms Photeini Chaireti,
Ms Eirini Kalogeropoulou, Ms Marianna Liaskou, Ms Katerina Limnidi, Dr Marinos Sariyannis, Ms Niki Spanou, Ms Maria Varoucha, Dr Athanasios Vionis, and Mr Zois Xanthopoulos.
I wish to thank them all for their conscientious work, as well as Dr Nicolas Vatin of the CNRS
EHESS, who was kind enough to visit Rethymno and help us with checking our readings of
the epitaphs of the gravestones.
The database of the Islamic gravestones of Rethymno has been incorporated in the Digital
Crete: Mediterranean Cultural Itineraries project and webpage of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (http://digitalcrete.ims.forth.gr). However, it is sadly still (December 2008) unavailable on-line, because the Greek Ministry of Culture has not yet granted the required permission, even though the relevant application was submitted in 2006.
According to documents kept in the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre in Istanbul,
the Prefecture of Rethymno asked for the transformation of the cemetery into a public model
farm (dimosion agrokipion) as early as in 1917, and the expropriation by the Municipality took
place in 1918. I would like to thank the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre, and in
particular Ms Lorans Tanatar Baruh, for the permission to use these documents.
Ch. Papadakis, Ta Chasapia tou Rethymnou kai ochi mono [The Butchers Shops in Rethymno
and More] (Rethymno 2005), 179 (according to Papadakis, what was expropriated in 1919 was
the largest part of the Muslim cemetery); cf. Rethymnos newspaper Kretike Epitheoresis
[Cretan Review], issue No. 602 (24 December 1921), 2.
Kretike Epitheoresis, No. 612 (7 March 1922), 3.
Papadakis, Chasapia, 179-180; the creation of a Municipal Garden was decided upon in 1923

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319

eterys exact size is unknown, but, according to a newspaper item from 1931, the area
taken over by the Municipality amounted to about 70,000 square metres (c. 17.3 acres).
In Heraklion (Candia, Ott. Kandiye), a much bigger town, the Muslim cemetery occupied
in the early twentieth century an area of several hundreds of thousands of square metres,
according to a contemporaneous testimony.10
There is no concrete information about the provenance of most of the surviving Islamic gravestones, that is, whether they all come from one or more urban or village cemeteries, or, as may be the case, from the courtyards of mosques.11 For instance, a gravestone belonging to el-Hac Kara Musa Paazade Ali, dated 1170/1756-1757,12 stood, before the restoration works in this monument (2008), in the courtyard of the mosque which
bears the name of his ancestor, Kara Musa Paa;13 however, we do not know if it was


10

11

12

13

(Kretike Epitheoresis, No. 668 [1 July 1923], 2), but was mentioned as early as in 1921 as one
of the original purposes of the expropriation of the cemetery (ibid., No. 602 [24 December
1921], 2); works in the Garden began in 1926 (ibid., No. 1089 [19 June 1932], 3). For the
disappearance of Ottoman cemeteries, cf. M. Kiel, Little-Known Ottoman Gravestones from
Some Provincial Centres in the Balkans (Eriboz/Chalkis, Nibolu/Nikopol and Rusuk/Russe), in J.-L. Bacqu-Grammont and A. Tibet (eds), Cimetires et traditions funraires dans le
monde islamique/slm Dnyasnda Mezarlklar ve Defin Gelenekleri, Vol. 1 (Ankara 1996),
319.
Kretike Epitheoresis, No. 1040 (5 May 1931), 1. According to the same item, the Municipal
Garden occupied more than 25,000 square metres, that is, only part of the area which was expropriated.
S. Xanthoudidis, Chandax Herakleion: historika semeiomata [Chandax Heraklion: Historical Notes] (Heraklion 1927), 136-137. Lady Mary Montagu commented about Istanbul that
the burying fields about it are certainly much larger than the whole city; M. Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters (London 1994), 99.
Cf. Xanthoudidis, Chandax Herakleion, 135-136; N. Vatin and S. Yerasimos, Les cimetires
dans la ville. Statut, choix et organisation des lieux dinhumation dans Istanbul intra-muros
(Istanbul and Paris 2001); E. Eldem, Death in Istanbul: Death and its Rituals in Ottoman Islamic Culture (Istanbul 2005), 20. In Istanbul some people were even buried in the gardens of
their houses (N. Vatin, Linhumation intra-muros Istanbul lpoque ottomane, in G. Veinstein (ed.), Les Ottomans et la mort: permanences et mutations [Leiden-New York-Kln 1996],
159).
Gravestone No. 168; for an Ali Odaba, descended from Kara Musa Paa, in 1749, see N.
Stavrinidis, Kara Mousa Pasas, ho santzak vees tes Rethymnes [Kara Musa Paa, the Sancakbeyi of Rethymno], in Pepragmena tou IIIou Diethnous Kretologikou Synedriou (Rethymnon,
18-23 Septemvriou 1971), Vol. 3 (Athens 1975), 309-310. In Istanbul, burials within the city
walls were relatively rare prior to the last quarter of the eighteenth century; on the other hand,
el-Hac Kara Musa Paazade Ali met the legal criteria to be entitled to be buried in the courtyard
of the mosque of his ancestor (Vatin, Linhumation intra-muros, 163-166).
The establishment of this mosque is often attributed to Kara Musa Paa, kaptan- derya from
late January to June 1647; see, for instance, A. Malagari and Ch. Stratidakis, Rethymno: hodegos gia ten pole kai ta perichora tes [Rethymno: A Guide to the City and its Environs] (Athens
1991 [3rd ed.]), 31. However, Nikolaos Stavrinidis argument that this mosque bears the name
of a late-seventeenth-century governor of Rethymno is more convincing; Stavrinidis, Kara
Mousa Pasas, passim, esp. 298 n. 17.

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placed there originally, or was transferred in recent decades by the Ephorate of Antiquities, or, maybe somewhat earlier, after the dismantling of the Muslim cemetery. The
gravestones of Kara Musa Paa himself, dated 1692/1693, and of another Kara Musa
Paazade, dated 1261/1845, lie at a storage area of the Ephorate in Misiria, several kilometres away from both the cemetery and the Kara Musa Paa Mosque, and had previously been in the courtyard of the Venetian Loggia, then the Archaeological Museum
of Rethymno and in the Ottoman period also a mosque.14 Another offspring of a prominent family whose gravestone stands in the courtyard of the Kara Musa Paa Mosque is
a certain Mehmed from the rose garden of the illustrious prl family (hanedan-
Kprilinin glistanndan), who died in 1134/1721-1722 on the way to Bursa.15 Here
again, we do not know whether Mehmed was buried by the mosque (if the grave is not
actually a cenotaph16) instead of in the public cemetery. Recent excavations (2007-2008)
around the former Gazi Deli Hseyin Paa (Neratze) Mosque brought to light 20 grave
stones of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but it is again unknown if they lay there
originally or were transferred from the old cemetery; on the one hand, there is evidence
of graves and burials around the mosque, but, on the other, we know that gravestones of
the former main cemetery were transferred in around 1920 to the Muslim Girls School,
very near the Gazi Deli Hseyin Paa Mosque.17
The destruction of Rethymnos Muslim cemetery poses a serious problem to research,
since we are obliged to study the gravestones as isolated artefacts and texts, really out
of the context that their placement within a cemetery provides. Actually, in most cases
we are unable to even match the head and foot gravestones of a given grave. Moreover, we are prevented from studying the social distribution of graves across the cemetery, but also between the cemetery and the mosques; for instance, we do not know if
prominent families were buried together in a specific section of the cemetery or if social
stratification was reflected on the spatial arrangement of the cemetery, as happens elsewhere.18 And obviously, we are unable to follow the historical development of the cemetery through time.
All surviving gravestones are made of marble, with the exception of extremely few
made of local limestone, a material which is much less durable than marble. We do not

14 Gravestones Nos 231 and 233; Stavrinidis, Kara Mousa Pasas, 297-298.
15 Gravestone No. 150.
16 See, for instance, E. Eldem and N. Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane musulmane (XVIe-XXe sicles).
Contribution une histoire de la culture ottomane (Paris-Louvain-Dudley, Mass. 2007), 11.
17 Information on the graves and burials comes from Mr Kostas Yapitsoglou, archaeologist of
the 28th Ephorate of Antiquities; information on the storage of gravestones in the Girls School
comes from a document of 1924 kept in the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre in
Istanbul.
18 On the arrangement of graves according to the social importance of the deceased in the Sokollu
Mehmed Paa cemetery in Istanbul, see J.-L. Bacqu-Grammont, H.-P. Laqueur and N. Vatin,
Stelae Turcicae II. Cimetires de la mosque de Sokollu Mehmed Paa Kadrga Liman, de
Bostanc Ali et du trbe de Sokollu Mehmed Paa Eyb (Tbingen 1990), 15. Cf. Eldem and
Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane, 11.

THE ISLAMIC GRAVESTONES OF OTTOMAN RETHYMNO

321

know where the marble came from, but in all probability it was
not local. Apparently buying and having a marble gravestone
carved entailed a cost which the poorer social strata could not
meet. According to a late-nineteenth-century foreign visitor to
Rethymno, the poor content themselves with a plank fixed
on the ground or a post, on which they fasten a few strips of
discoloured cloth, yellow, red, or light blue.19 Thus, the surviving gravestones mirror the taste, ideology, conventions and
social etiquette of the middle and upper social strata, and cannot be taken to be representative of the total of the town population.20
The gravestones constitute historical sources both as objects and as texts through their inscriptions. In this short paper I will not dwell on gravestones as objects, valuable as they
clearly are in this respect as well. But a few comments on this
subject are in order here. For instance, what is very noticeable in terms of the appearance of gravestones is their evolution over time. More specifically, there are considerable differences in terms of size, shape, and decoration between gravestones of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
and those of the middle and late nineteenth century; for instance, a comparison between the rather modest gravestone of
el-Hac Musa Paa, the governor of Rethymno, of 1692/1693
and the 1878 lavish gravestone of a young boy from one of
the notable families of Rethymno is rather telling in this respect (Ills 1-2).21 Of course, not all nineteenth-century gravestones were lavish or extravagant, but the general tendency
was towards bigger gravestones and longer and more origiIll. 1: Gravestone of el-Hac [Kara] Musa Paa (1692/1693) (photo by Efi
Moraitaki).
19 Krete 1893.Hoi periegetikes anamneseis tou Vittorio Simonelli [Crete, 1893: Vittorio Simonellis Travel Memoirs], trans. Ioanna Phountoulaki (Rethymno 1996), 122. Cf. W. J. J. Spry,
Life on the Bosphorus: Doings in the City of the Sultan; Turkey, Past and Present Including
Chronicles of the Caliphs from Mahomet to Abdul Hamid II (London 1895), 105, and Eldem
and Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane, 84.
20 Cf. Bacqu-Grammont et alii, Stelae Turcicae II, 17 and n. 36, 18. Bacqu-Grammont notes
that marble became accessible to large segments of the population in the course of the eighteenth century; J.-L. Bacqu-Grammont, Ltude des cimetires ottomans: mthodes et perspectives, in Idem and Tibet (eds), Cimetires et traditions funraires, 1: 136; cf. Eldem and
Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane, 80, 83-84, 142.
21 Gravestone No. 173.

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ANTONIS ANASTASOPOULOS

Ill. 2: Gravestone of Gazarolu Ali Bey (1878)

(photo by Efi Moraitaki).

nal epitaphs.22 The Rethymno gravestones follow trends current all over
the Ottoman Empire, and come in various shapes: they are acute or rounded
on the top, octagonal, cylindrical, rectangular, or ovoid in shape, with flat
or curved backs. As a rule, there does
not seem to be any direct correlation
between particular gravestone shapes,
or decoration styles, and the existence
of inscriptions or not, but this is a preliminary observation which may be revised in the future. As in other localities, it is not known whether gravestones were imported half-ready with
only their texts (or maybe just the personal information about the deceased
and the date) missing, or whether they
were fabricated locally; but shapes and
decorations are in most cases more or
less identical with those from other
Ottoman regions, and can be classified
following the typologies put forward
by Jean-Louis Bacqu-Grammont and
Hans-Peter Laqueur in their various
publications on this subject,23 which
suggests that importation of pre-fabricated gravestones is not unlikely. By a
comparative study of the gravestones
of Rethymno with the published gravestones of Istanbul and other places, but
also with the gravestones of other urban centres in Crete,24 we could detect
not only influences and relationships
in terms of forms and styles, but also
networks with respect to the trade in
gravestones.

22 Cf. Eldem and Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane, passim, esp. 75-108, 161-217.
23 See, for instance, Bacqu-Grammont et alii, Stelae Turcicae II; H.-P. Laqueur, Osmanische
Friedhfe und Grabsteine in Istanbul (Tbingen 1993).
24 Cf. J.-L. Bacqu-Grammont and N. Vatin, Stelae Turcicae IV. Le cimetire de la bourgade
thrace de Karacaky, Anatolia Moderna/Yeni Anadolu, 2 (1991), 10, 12.

THE ISLAMIC GRAVESTONES OF OTTOMAN RETHYMNO

323

Moving now to the epitaphs of Rethymnos Islamic gravestones, the basic information contained in them is, as everywhere, the invocation to God, the name of the deceased, a request that the fatiha be recited for his/her soul, and the date of death. For the
rest, funerary inscriptions in most cases are based on or fully reproduce a number of specific formulas,25 and become, as noted above, more elaborate, poetical and original in the
nineteenth century. As with the shapes of the gravestones, many of the formulas used in
the epitaphs of Rethymno are the same as those which are found on gravestones from Istanbul and other regions of the Ottoman Empire.26 However, we should not neglect the
fact that much as the formulas preclude the expression of spontaneous or truly personal
feelings and concerns, they still presuppose a procedure of selection on the basis of suitability in terms of particular circumstances and personal (or family, or prevailing social)
taste. Furthermore, epitaphs sometimes contain small or more significant variations of
or additions to the popular formulas, or combinations of formulas. This issue is not only
beyond the scope of this paper but also defies easy conclusions; nevertheless, I strongly
believe that the question of originality versus reproduction of stereotypes is a very important aspect of studying Ottoman gravestones.
Obviously, the aim of carving an epitaph on a gravestone was neither to provide an
exhaustive biography of the deceased nor to give a critical account of his/her deeds; apart
from asking for the fatiha, the inscriptions were aimed at commemorating and praising the dead.27 Still, their most obvious usefulness for modern historians is as sources
of prosopographical information about the deceased and their relatives. Sometimes, it
is also possible to study the continuity and, with luck, the social status of a given family through time, when several of its gravestones are available; a few such cases do exist
in Rethymno.28 If we distance ourselves from particular names, and focus on the way in
which names are cited on gravestones, it is striking though hardly surprising that this
was done in a gender-specific manner: women were almost always identified as daughters and spouses of men,29 while men were identified through their male lineage. It is in
fact noteworthy that if the deceased was male, it was not infrequent, at least for notable
families, to cite next to his name not (or, more rarely, not only) his fathers but the fam25 In the light of corpora of gravestones from Anatolia and the Balkans, Eldem and Vatin,
Lpitaphe ottomane, 95-108, esp. 97, have counted 72 basic formulas and many variations.
26 See ibid., 321-337. On the basis of the formulas which appear in the epitaphs, Eldem and Vatin
(ibid., 132) include Crete in the core area of the Ottoman funerary culture.
27 Cf. W. Diem, The Living and the Dead in Islam: Studies in Arabic Epitaphs. Vol. 1: Epitaphs
as Texts (Wiesbaden 2004), 10, as cited by Eldem and Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane, 12 n. 13.
28 See, for instance, the gravestones of the Gazzazzade/Gazzazolu (gravestones Nos 151
[1275/1858], 172 [1285/1869], 292 [1309/1892]), and of the Cinci Arabolu families
(gravestones Nos 230 [1244/1828-1829], 225 [1275/1858], 223 and 227 [1276/1860],
215 [1293/1876]). There is also the gravestone of a certain Gazarolu (gravestone No. 173
[1295/1878]); his family name could be a misreading for Gazzazolu, but at Koronaiou Street,
Rethymno, there is a small inscription, dated 1210/1795, which commemorates a dedication by
Gazarolu Osman Aa.
29 Cf. Eldem and Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane, 149-155.

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ily name.30 Here we observe a reflection of the phenomenon of aristocratisation of the

Ottoman elites,31 which included the notion of family consciousness and pride. Women
are notably absent from this cult of family identity,32 at least in Rethymno, with only
a few remarkable exceptions, such as the gravestone of 1262/1845-1846 belonging to
Baonopula Aye Hanm, daughter of Hseyin Aa;33 more often women were indirectly
related to their paternal family through a formula of the type X, daughter of Y-zade Z.34
Viewed from another angle, the fact that some, admittedly few, Muslim family names
appear on the gravestones with Greek endings (-aki, -opula), suggests incorporation into
or acceptance of a Greek linguistic culture, and may possibly reflect the conversion in
the past of certain local families to Islam, even though the latter is a far-fetched assumption without other supporting evidence.35 All available examples of names with Greek
endings belong to the nineteenth century; it is maybe not irrelevant to mention here that
there are more than one example of Rethymno houses which were renovated in the same
century, and bear the year of renovation over their entrance doors in both the Islamic and
Christian calendars.
When dealing with gravestones as historical sources we should keep in mind, as
many researchers have pointed out, that the principal purpose of setting up a gravestone
was to address passers-by, who were asked to recite the fatiha for the deceased; it was,
therefore, essential that a gravestone should be visible to onlookers and this was a decisive factor for its orientation, which did not necessarily coincide with the orientation of
30 See, for instance, gravestone No. 98 (Marizade Mustafa Aa bin Hseyin Aa) (no date).
31 M.Zilfi, The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600-1800) (Minneapolis 1988); Ch. K. Neumann, Political and Diplomatic Developments, in S. N. Faroqhi
(ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey. Volume 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839
(Cambridge 2006), 53-54. This phenomenon is not limited to gravestones: provincial ayan dynasties of higher or lower standing proudly display their family names in documents and inscriptions of all kinds all over the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
32 I generally tend to interpret the -zade and -olu types appearing on gravestones as family
names rather than meaning son of so-and-so, even though admittedly the distinction is often
impossible; cf. N. Vatin, La notation du nom propre sur les stles funraires ottomanes, in A.M. Christin (ed.), Lcriture du nom propre (Paris 1998), 140-141.
33 Gravestone No. 153.
34 See, for instance, gravestone No. 284 (Karacazade Mustafa Aann kerimesi merhume ve
mafure cennetmekn erife Raziye) (1260/1844). This formulation sometimes was applied
to men as well: gravestone No. 81 (merhum Ahmed Aa bin Sleyman Aa Karakzolu)
(1226/1811).
35 See, for instance, gravestones Nos 95 (Cinaki, no date), 230 (Saranaki [?], 1244/1828-1829),
and 331 (Monlazaki, 1288/1871). Muslim family names, which appear in the proper -zade/
-olu form in epitaphs, are cited with Greek -aki endings by local Greek scholarship, but also
in formal documents and almanacs of professionals of the early twentieth century (for example,
Tzintzarapaki for Cinci Arabolu, or Aliyizitzidakis for Ali Yazczade) (M. Tsirimonaki, Autoi
pou ephygan, autoi pou erthan: apo ten autonomia os ten antallage [Those Who Left, Those
Who Came: From the Autonomy of Crete to the Exchange of Populations] [Rethymno 2002],
14, 30; Digital Crete [http://digitalcrete.ims.forth.gr], Neoteroi Chronoi [Modern Times]
Section).

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325

the grave.36 This is an important parameter in the study of gravestones, as it means that
they should not be treated only as sources of names and prosopographical information
about particular individuals, but also as conveyors of messages from mostly middle and
upper-class families, first and foremost to contemporaneous society, and, then, to future
generations.37
Moreover, gravestones reveal as much about the attitude and stereotypes of a given
community towards death, as they do about issues unrelated to death, such as sources
of social pride and eminence, as well as ideals and symbols of status, elegance, and finesse.38 As I mentioned above, the use of formulas and elaborate expressions and metaphors suggests that what was recorded on a gravestone most of the times was not the
strictly personal beliefs of the person who had ordered the gravestone, but what was
thought of as appropriate in terms of expressing grief for the loss of a beloved person,
faith in Gods judgment about and pride in the deceased.
The examination of the Rethymno gravestones may, for instance, corroborate the fact
that it was widely accepted on the social level that the notion of martyrdom (ehadet)
applied to many more cases than having been slain in the way of God, that is, combating the enemies of the Islamic faith.39 The afore-mentioned Kprlzade suffered sudden death ehiden on the way to Bursa; the particular circumstances are not revealed,
only that he suffered hardship (meakkat), which seems to be a minimum precondition
for being acknowledged as a martyr.40 Kabakulak el-Hac brahim Paa (d. 1155/1743),
a former Grand Vizier, was beheaded while banished in Rethymno, but this did not prevent those who ordered his gravestone to declare that he had sacrificed his soul in order to obtain martyrdom (ehadet neyline kld feda-y ruh- revan).41 As to another
martyr, Memizade el-Hac Osman Aa (d. 1228/1813), only his piety and faith in God
are stated, without any further explanation as to how he gained his special status (nasb
old[um] ehadet menzili bana ki zikr-i tevhid eyledim).42 Two further examples concern
women: mmglsm Hatun died in suffering, and thus it was hoped that she would
be resurrected and judged by God as a martyr (ne dertlerle helak old[um] ehidlerle
36 Bacqu-Grammont et alii, Stelae Turcicae II, 13-14, 43-44; Bacqu-Grammont, Ltude des
cimetires ottomans, 136; Eldem and Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane, 10-11; Eldem, Death in Istanbul, 24.
37 As Bacqu-Grammont and Vatin note, en un endroit donn, les notables locaux, quel que
ft leur niveau lchelle nationale, affichaient dans le cimetire leur prminence; Bacqu-Grammont and Vatin, Stelae Turcicae IV, 8. Cf. E. Eldem, Urban Voices from Beyond:
Identity, Status and Social Strategies in Ottoman Muslim Funerary Epitaphs of Istanbul (17001850), in V. H. Aksan and D. Goffman (eds), The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the
Empire (Cambridge 2007), 233-255.
38 For a very interesting example of the use of gravestones as a means to enhance the social status
of a relative of the deceased, see Eldem, Death in Istanbul, 142-143.
39 For ehadet and the expansion of its meaning over time, see EI2, s.v. Shahd (E. Kohlberg).
Cf. Eldem and Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane, 16 n. 29, 173, 202-203, 254-255.
40 Gravestone No. 150.
41 Gravestone No. 169.
42 Gravestone No. 190.

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har eyle).43 Fatma, on the other hand, was a ten-yearold girl, an avid student of the Quran, who, having died
of an illness that doctors failed to cure, was also considered to be a martyr (Ill. 3).44 Thus, it is only Sfyan Aa
(d. 1246/1831)45 and Kokinaki Hasan (d. 1314/1896)46
who were martyred fighting against the enemies of Islam (merhum el-mafur ehid [Sfyan]/heda bezmine
katld ruh [Hasan]).
The inscriptions of the gravestones of the two lastnamed persons coming from the turbulent nineteenth
century are, I think, interesting in yet another respect.
They are 65 years apart, the first having been erected
in 1831 and the second in 1896. According to the 1831
gravestone, Sfyan Aa sacrificed his life in the battle
against the enemies of the true faith and for the benefit
of the eternal, sublime state, while, in 1896, Kokinaki
Hasan was called a patriot, someone who loved his
country (muhibb-i vatan). Furthermore, in a damaged
gravestone, which is in all probability the top part of the
stone which bears Hasans name, this man is referred
to as a fighter of the faith (mcahid), who (in what,
I think, can be interpreted as a combination of old religious and new patriotic/national ideals) sacrificed his life
in the gaza and the service of his country (vatana hidmet
etmek).47 The substitution of vatan for devlet-i aliye-i
ebed could be coincidental, as I base my interpretation
on only two gravestones, but it seems to me that it very
likely reflects an ideological development rather than a
mere difference of nomenclature.48 Another modern
notion is recorded in another late-period gravestone, da

Ill. 3: Gravestone of the ten-year-old Fatma (1852) (photo by Efi

Moraitaki).
43 Gravestone No. 230 (1244/1828-1829). On women who died prematurely while pregnant or in
childbirth and ehadet, see Bacqu-Grammont et alii, Stelae Turcicae II, 19 n. 59, 20, 22.
44 Gravestone No. 149 (1268/1852); cf. Eldem and Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane, 335 (No. 62).
45 Gravestone No. 229. Sfyans monument is the only funerary monument which survives in
Rethymno, and in every way the most impressive among the Rethymno gravestones; the deceased was an adopted son of the then governor of Kandiye (gravestones Nos 229, 234, 235,
255, 311).
46 Gravestone No. 125.
47 Gravestone No. 129.
48 Cf. Eldem and Vatin, Lpitaphe ottomane, 203-208.

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327

ted 1306/1888: yzba Hseyin Aa is praised for having suffered for years many afflictions for the millet, which should, I
think, in this period and context be translated as nation rather
than as religion or the community of Muslims.49 I find this
inscription interesting for one more reason: I may be reading
too much into it, but it seems to me that it somehow reflects a
spirit of pessimism and melancholy at a time when the Ottomans, and the Muslims of Crete in particular, were under pressure. Despite the fact that Hseyin was a military man, there is
nothing heroic about his gravestone. He is not called a martyr
or a gazi; on the contrary, he is described as someone who in
life suffered a lot for the nation and in death found peace, may
God have mercy on him and accord him a place in paradise (as
it is put in the epitaph).
Archival and literary sources allow us to place the Rethymno gravestones in context, beyond the, seemingly or really, limited information that each one of them individually provides.
For instance, it is known from archival and literary sources
that Rethymno was in the eighteenth century a place of exile
for high officials. This information explains why the gravestones of such persons have been found in this town. These include the gravestones of former Grand Viziers Kabakulak elHac brahim Paa (d. 1155/1743) (Ill. 4),50 and Tiryak el-Hac
Seyyid Mehmed Paa (d. 1164/1751) (Ill. 5),51 and of the Bosnian el-Hac Mehmed Paa, former governor of Bosnia, Yanya, and Kandiye (d. 1174/1761) (Ill. 6).52 A number of entries
survive in the kad registers of Kandiye about the last-named
pasha; according to them, he was removed from office shortly after his appointment and before reaching the city, and ordered to settle in Rethymno with a retinue of no more than
ten persons following accusations of misconduct.53 Kabakulak brahim was executed after a ten-year stay in Rethymno,54
Ill. 4: Gravestone of the former Grand Vizier Kabakulak el-Hac brahim
Paa (1743) (photo by Efi Moraitaki).
49
50
51
52
53

Gravestone No. 287; EI2, s.v. Millet (M. Ursinus).

Gravestone No. 169.
Gravestone No. 164.
Gravestone No. 232.
See, for instance, Stavrinidis, Metaphraseis, V: 135 (No. 2687), 138 (No. 2691), 144 (No.
2701), 146-147 (No. 2705), 154-155 (No. 2717); Mehmed Sreyya, Sicill-i Osman/Osmanl
nlleri, Vol. 4, ed. N. Akbayar (Istanbul 1996), 1053.
54 Ibid., 3: 782.

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ANTONIS ANASTASOPOULOS

but the inscription on his gravestone is, as already noted,

full of praise for him. Tiryak Mehmed is reported to have
suffered a natural death;55 his gravestone is rather plain,
and the inscription only bears the formula el-muhtac ila
rahmet-i rabbihil-gafur [he who is in need of the grace of
God All Merciful], even though it does refer to him as being a former Grand Vizier. Bosnian Mehmeds inscription
is almost identical to that of Tiryak Mehmed, that is, very
simple, but the gravestone of the disgraced pasha, who had,
like the other two, been stripped of the rank of vizier, is
decorated with a kallavi turban. The three gravestones are
similar to one another in terms of shape, and we may rather
safely assume that all three must have been crowned with
the same headgear.56
However, the majority of Rethymnos male gravestones belong to people who were neither pashas nor high
officials, and may be described as members of prominent
local families and the middle class: merchants, craftsmen,
petty officials, dervishes, and military men. Furthermore,
we should not overlook the fact that many of the surviving
gravestones belong to women, apparently coming from the
same social groups; in fact, as the gravestones by necessity
reflect demographic trends, we may be right in remarking
that women of these strata are better represented in gravestones than in archival or literary sources, which record
specific political, social, and economic acts (from which
women are largely excluded).57 The gravestones provide
information about men and women within the limitations
of available space and social etiquette briefly described
above, and can undoubtedly be best exploited in combination with other sources about local society. The history of
Ottoman Rethymno is still largely unknown, but in recent
Ill. 5: Gravestone of the former Grand Vizier Tiryak el-Hac Seyyid
Mehmed Paa (1751) (photo by Efi Moraitaki).
55 Ibid., 4: 1075.
56 It would be useful to compare the inscriptions of these gravestones with those of pashas and
Grand Viziers who did not die in disgrace, in order to see if those were any more elaborate. For
the gravestone of a vizier who died in a provincial town at a later time (1811), see Kiel, LittleKnown Ottoman Gravestones, 322-324; the text is longer than the last two cited here, even
though neither it nor the gravestone are elaborate at all.
57 But see the comments of Eldem, Urban Voices, 250-251.

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329

years there have been some important contributions regarding

the town and its hinterland in the Ottoman period.58 When more
becomes available and/or published, it is certain that gravestones
will find their place in the larger picture, and contribute towards
drawing the profile of Rethymniot society. Until then and in concluding this short paper, I believe that at this relatively early stage of the study of Ottoman Rethymno we may observe
that the Rethymno gravestones are valuable not only as sources
for the members, mentalities, tastes, and fashions of the society
which ordered and had them carved and inscribed, but also, and
more particularly, as sources and relics of the fate of a community which passed from a position of strength and domination to
the status of a minority and eventually to forced migration and
(relative?) oblivion. In other words, they reflect in broad outlines the creation, development, and disappearance of the Muslim community of Rethymno.

Ill. 6: Gravestone of the Bosnian el-Hac Mehmed Paa, former governor of

Bosnia, Yanya, and Kandiye (1761) (photo by Efi Moraitaki).
58 See, for instance, the studies of Nkhet and Nuri Adyeke collected in A. N. Adyeke and N.
Adyeke, Fethinden Kaybna Girit (Istanbul 2006); Y. Z. Papiomytoglou (ed.), Eggrapha hierodikeiou Rethymnes, 17os-18os ai.: hoi metaphraseis tou Vematos Rethymnes [Documents
of the Kad Court of Rethymno, Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries: Translations of the Vima
Newspaper of Rethymno] (Rethymno 1995); A. N. Adyeke, XVII. Yzyl Girit (Resmo) eriye Sicillerine Gre htida Hareketleri ve Giritte Etnik Dnm, in XIV. Trk Tarih Kongresi.
Ankara: 9-13 Eyll 2002. Kongreye Sunulan Bildiriler, Vol. 2, Part 1 (Ankara 2005), 557-569;
E. Balta and M. Ouz (eds), To othomaniko ktematologio tou Rethymnou: Tapu-Tahrir 822
[The Ottoman Cadastral Register of Rethymno: Tapu Tahrir Defteri 822] (Rethymno 2007).