Cretan Muslims

The Cretan Muslims of the Levant descend from Cretans who became Muslim after the Ottoman conquest of Crete in the 17th century and who kept the island's Greek dialect and way of life. During the last Cretan uprisings (1866-1897) and the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, many left the island; Sultan Abdulhamid II settled a group on the Syrian coast at a new village named Hamidiye in his honour, and others made their home in Tripoli and its port, El Mina. When France drew the border between Syria and Lebanon in 1920 the community was split in two: about 6,000-7,000 in Tripoli and El Mina and about 3,000-3,500 in Al-Hamidiyah. Greeks long called them Turkocretans because of their religion, but they call themselves Cretans and claim Greekness through language and custom rather than through the Orthodox Church. They are distinct from the much larger number of Cretan Muslim descendants in Turkiye, who now speak Turkish and count as Turks, and from Arabic-speaking families of Cretan descent in Libya and Egypt. In Lebanon they are Lebanese Sunni Muslims by legal status.

Cretan Greek is the language of the home and of the older generation, mixed freely with Arabic (Greece is 'yunenika', Arabic root with a Greek ending); written Greek is rare because there have been no Greek schools for them. Families keep Cretan songs and mantinades, Cretan dishes built on olive oil, wild greens and herbs, and ties to relatives in Crete through visits and Greek satellite television. They stress monogamy, disapprove of divorce and support girls' education, customs they attribute to their Cretan heritage. Until 1975 the Tripoli community married only within itself; the civil war scattered it, and young people now usually understand Greek without speaking it well.

Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school who worship in the mosques of Tripoli and El Mina and keep the Muslim feasts like their Lebanese neighbours. Their identity is ethnic and linguistic rather than religious, and they describe themselves as tolerant of all faiths; the Cretan association admits members without regard to religion. Folk memory of their Christian Cretan ancestry is part of how they explain their customs.

The full Bible, the Jesus Film and audio recordings exist in Modern Greek, which older speakers understand, and in Arabic, which all speak. No Christian ministry aimed at Cretan Muslims is known. Their contact with Greek Christians in Crete is warm at the personal level but has been marked by Greek official coolness toward them as Muslims.

The file's homeland is Lebanon. Crete, the place of origin, has had no Muslim community since the 1923 population exchange, so a Greece homeland would describe no living people. The Cretan Muslim descendants of Turkiye speak Turkish and belong to the Turks. The Greek-speaking Cretan Muslims who remain a distinct people live in two settlements founded in the same exodus of 1866-1897 in Ottoman Syria and split by the 1920 border: Tripoli and El Mina in Lebanon (about 6,000-7,000, two-thirds of the people, and the seat of their association) and Al-Hamidiyah in Syria (about 3,000-3,500). After 130 years in Tripoli they are native there, so Lebanon is the homeland and Al-Hamidiyah a presence in Syria.