One of the main themes of my journey through Greece in the autumn of 2012 was visiting former territories of the Venetian Republic: Corfu; Preveza; and Chalkida/ Negropont. I finished this journey at one of the most important and longest standing of Venice’s overseas territories, Crete. Taken during the carve-up of Byzantine territory following the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, Crete was ruled by Venice for more than 400 years. Crete was much more than a trading outpost or a naval base defending the republic’s trade routes to the east. Crete was a colony. Venetian families settled there, and took the best, most productive land for themselves. Sugar plantations were established, in a medieval prototype of the later slave economy of the Caribbean. The slaves were mostly Christians seized in raids by the Crimean Tartars and sold at the Black Sea ports.
For the hordes of tourists who visit Crete, the main historical interest for most is found in the ancient Minoan sites. I had visited Knossos during an earlier stay on the island in 1996, as well as the museum in the nearby capital of the island, Heraklion. Undoubtedly the Minoan remains are remarkable. But I was put off by the garish reconstruction plucked from the imagination of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans. I had been more stirred a few years earlier by the more modest remains from the same period on the Aegean island of Santorini. No reconstruction or guesswork there. You are walking the street where the residents had strolled three and a half thousand years earlier. But on this visit I was more interested in Crete’s later history.
During two visits in 1996, I stayed in the village of Anogia, in the mountains above Heraklion. Here is a very different Crete from that of the coastal towns, with their Venetian, Ottoman and ancient remains. In isolated villages like Anogia in the island’s interior is the Crete of the Greek shepherds and goatherds who had lived there for thousands of years, outliving the comings and goings of one invader after another, their lives revolving around their flocks and their traditions. Anogia is a conservative place. The culture of the blood feud, I was told, had hardly been consigned to history. The blood feud has been, or still is, a feature of a number of such regions in the eastern Mediterranean: mountainous landscapes with pastoral societies. In this respect, there is much in common between the cultures of Montenegro, northern Albania, Sicily and Crete, as even some of the natives recognise. During my second stay in Anogia, with a group of students from around the Balkans, at one point a local Anogia lad embraced a young man from Montenegro, and declared emotionally, ‘Cretans and Montenegrins, brothers.’
Weapons are an important part of life in Crete’s interior. One evening in Anogia, sitting in a café garden, I watched as a man repeatedly walked out from a bar and fired his pistol several times into the air. What was the reason, I asked a Cretan companion? He has just heard that his wife is expecting a child, the reply. Not an occasion to stay and celebrate with his spouse, it seemed. Rather, an evening with his male friends, and his gun.
There was a wedding while I was in Anogia, a huge event, and everyone present in the village was invited, even unknown foreigners like me. They had slaughtered 300 sheep for the occasion. The mutton is boiled, and then the water is reused to cook pasta, imparting the flavour of the meat. The wedding took place in the evening, but the celebrations went on all day. On Crete, it is the groom’s family that hosts the wedding and provides the feast. Throughout the day, visitors were welcomed at his family house. I went along with my companions, a Dutchman and two Greek women from Athens. We were greeted by the groom and by his parents, and sat down to a pasta lunch, washed down with local wine. The village church was small, and most of the guests stood in the square outside, some of them wearing traditional Cretan costumes, the men in high leather boots. As the wedding came to an end, and the couple emerged from the church, the shooting began. And boy did they shoot. I had witnessed weddings involving shooting in Montenegro. Men fired pistols into the air, a dangerous and sometimes tragic practice, as the bullets come down, and from time-to-time people are hit. But in Anogia they used automatic weapons, machine guns blasting away. Afterwards the revellers dispersed around the various tavernas in the village, all of them taken over for the wedding feast. As we ate our supper – more mutton-water pasta, sprinkled with grated feta, the persistent shooting made us rather jumpy.
Anogia is well-known in Greece, owing to a notorious massacre there during the German occupation in World War II, when, as a reprisal for resistance activity, the order was given to slaughter the entire adult male population. Most of the men were away in the mountains, with the resistance, but many were killed, and the village was raised to the ground. It was rebuilt after the war. When I told some Greek friends back in Oxford that I had stayed in a village on Crete, they asked me which one? I did not suppose it likely they had heard of a small village in the mountains. But they had, and they were impressed. ‘Oh, Anogia, Anogia is famous.’
Apart from being a starting point for visits to Knossos, most people do not rate Heraklion highly as a tourist destination. Indeed, other towns on the island, such as Rethymno and Chania, are more attractive. Yet Heraklion boasts some of the most impressive Venetian remains on the island. In Venetian times, this was Candia, the island’s capital, whose name was also usually applied to the whole island. Much of the massive city walls built by the Venetians, interspersed by huge bastions, remain intact. Protecting the old harbour is the 16th century Venetian fortress of Rocca al Mare, or Koule, as it came to be known under Ottoman rule. On the fortress, as on the city walls, big stone plaques of the Lion of St Mark, symbol of Venice, remain in place. Close to the fortress, the Venetians built long, vaulted, tunnel-like shipyards, where their galleys could be built or repaired. Most have been demolished, but some remain, although no longer open to the sea. Similar shipyards are also found at Chania, at the western end of the island. The most elegant building in the city is the 17th century Loggia, the centre of civic life in Venetian times, and nowadays the town hall. Close by is the Morosini fountain, an elegant monument of now worn stone, with lions standing guard around a central bowl. It is another memento of the cultural flowering the island enjoyed during the Venetian period.
There are reminders of the period of Ottoman rule too. The Ottomans invaded Crete in 1645, after a ship carrying eminent Ottoman subjects home from their pilgrimage to Mecca was taken by the Knights of St. John, from Malta. The captors tried to land on Crete, but were turned away by port after port, eventually abandoning the vessel. Crete’s Venetian rulers did not want to risk Ottoman displeasure. Despite this, the Sultan took advantage of the opportunity to order the invasion of Crete in reprisal. With most of the island taken, the Ottoman army laid siege to Candia in 1647. The siege was to last for 22 years. The Venetian fleet attempted to seal of the Dardanelles, to prevent the supply of the Ottoman besieging force, and managed to frustrate Ottoman attempts at a naval blockade of Candia. The Venetians even won some notable naval victories.
During the siege, Crete received little support from the rest of Europe, now much less concerned with the eastern Mediterranean since its focus had shifted to the Atlantic. France, under Louis XIV, maintained good relations with the Sublime Porte, while allowing French volunteer forces to join the fight in 1668-69. To no avail, the French withdrew after they failed to push the Ottomans back, followed by other small forces from elsewhere. Finally, in 1669 the Venetians surrendered. They were granted honourable terms by the Grand Vizier, Ahmed Koprulu, an Albanian, and allowed to leave the town. Venetian power in the eastern Mediterranean had been all-but-snuffed out, despite the retention of a few bases. Venice did, however, manage to push the Ottomans back a little in Dalmatia, capturing the strategically important fortress of Klis, just inland from Split.
Crete was in Ottoman hands for more than 200 years. It was the island’s second experience of Muslim rule. For 150 years in the 9th and 10th centuries it was the Emirate of Crete, having been conquered by Arabs from Al Andalus, modern Spain. The island had been retaken for Byzantium in 960-61. There were repeated revolts against Ottoman rule by the island’s Christian population. Following the Congress of Berlin, in 1878, the island became semi-autonomous, with a Christian governor. But tensions between the island’s Christian and Muslim communities continued. Following a massacre in 1898 of several hundred Greeks, as well as 17 British soldiers and the British Consul, Ottoman forces were ordered off the island by the great powers, and replaced by four occupying powers, Britain, Russia, France and Italy. Nominally, Crete remained under Ottoman suzerainty, with a High Commissioner appointed by Athens. But Ottoman rule had effectively come to an end, and the island was incorporated into Greece in 1913.
Many Cretan Greeks had converted to Islam during the Ottoman period, and some estimates put the Muslim population of the island at almost half by the early 19th century. Some of them remained crypto-Christians in the privacy of their homes, and subsequently reverted to Christianity, while others left for mainland Turkey during the repeated violent conflicts of the 19th century. By the beginning of the 20th century, Muslims are reckoned to have made up not much more than 10 per cent of the population, the last of them leaving during the population exchange in 1924.
The island contains several Ottoman-era remains. Of particular interest in Heraklion is the Church of St Titus. The earlier Christian church on this site had been converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. However, following its destruction by an earthquake in 1856, a new mosque was built. Following the departure of the last Muslims from Crete, it was in turn converted into a church, but it retains some typically Muslim features, notably ornate little niches in chapels on either side of the entrance, which have been adapted as Christian shrines. Another notable remnant of Ottoman times is the Sebil of Haci Ibrahim Agha, a public fountain, whose builder ordered that snow be brought regularly from the mountains during summer, so that passers-by could quench their thirst with cool, fresh water. Nowadays it houses a café. Next to it is the older Bembo fountain, named after the Venetian governor who had it built. In the run-down narrow streets of the old town are many, often dilapidated houses dating to Ottoman times, typical of that style. On the façade of one shop is an engraved sign in both Ottoman Turkish and Greek.
Rethymno, westwards along the coast from Heraklion, is a very attractive little town. Its old district, mainly dating from the Venetian period, is much better preserved than the island’s capital, with many fine buildings indicating the prosperity of Venetian Crete. In the central square, the Rimondi Fountain was once the centre of the town’s life. The nearby Loggia now houses a shop selling reproductions of classical artwork. On a hill above the old town stands the huge 16th century Fortezza fortress, claimed to be the largest of all Venetian fortresses. It had been intended to hold the entire population of the town within its walls, and at one time included the sumptuous residence of the Rector of the town. Most of the buildings within the walls are gone, but the Ottoman-era Sultan Ibrahim Mosque still stands, minus its minaret.
There are other Ottoman-era buildings in Rethymno. One fine house now has shop windows on either side, but in the middle, above the entrance, is the date, 1844, and inscriptions in Greek and Ottoman Turkish. The elegant Kara Pasha Mosque, near the seafront, nestles among palm trees and bushes, the simple beauty of its domes and arches accentuated by the sunlight playing on it from different angles at different times of the day. The Neratzes Mosque, in the town centre, now houses a music school. Its exterior is graffiti covered, but the minaret is being restored. Nearby, another minaret sits alone amidst a cluster of buildings. A little outside the town centre, the Veli Pasha Mosque is in better shape, and now contains a museum.
Chania, at the western end of the island, is considered by many to be Crete’s most attractive town. It became the island’s capital during the period of the autonomous Cretan state, before unification with Greece. And in Ottoman times the Pasha of Crete resided there Eleftherios Venizelos, a leader of Greek rebellion against the Ottomans on Crete, and later Prime Minister of Greece, was from near Chania, and his final resting place is there. The town’s name originated during the Arab Emirate of Crete, when it was called Al Hanim. To the Venetians it was La Canea.
Chania’s picturesque old harbour surrounds a bay ringed by restaurants and cafés. On one side of the harbour, the Kucuk Hassan Mosque, popularly known as the Yali (Seaside) Mosque, minus its minaret, was built in the 17th century, not long after the Ottoman conquest of the town, following a two-month siege. Jutting out on a long wall protecting the harbour is a Venetian-era lighthouse. Across the harbour from there is the low Firka fortress, where the Greek flag was first raised on the island upon unification in 1913. In the inner harbour several of the long vaulted Venetian dockyards remain.
Away from the harbour area, so popular with tourists, are some very charming quarters. Some sections of the impressive Venetian city walls, as well as bastions, remain. I particularly liked the Spiantza district, not far from the harbour, a maze of colourful lanes. At its heart is a leafy square. In contrast to the cafés of the harbour, when I visited in November, on this square I only saw Greeks, quietly sitting in the shade of the old trees. Old men seated at a café window cheerily sang along to traditional songs, while a couple of Romany boys accompanied them on an accordion. A Greek coffee here cost two or three times less than at the harbour. At one end of the square is the odd hybrid church of Agios Nikolaos. During the Ottoman period, it was converted into a mosque, and while it is now a church again, the minaret is still there, at one corner. Not far away, another minaret stands on its own.
The cultural heritage of Crete is exceptionally rich, spanning civilisations over more than three millennia, from Minoan, to Classical Greek, Byzantine, Arab, Venetian and Ottoman, and through it all, the traditional lives of the hardy Greek villagers of the mountainous interior, outlasting all the island’s varied rulers. Much of this heritage is still there to see, and as elsewhere in Greece, perhaps the more recent Venetian and Ottoman layers, as well as the older Byzantine and ancient remains, are being accorded greater value and respect than was often the case in the past. Crete’s history was frequently troubled, by war, invasion, rebellion and natural disasters. And while invaders were generally not welcome, and their rule was often oppressive, the diversity they bequeathed is today one of the island’s most appealing features.
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