Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence by David Brewer

from the mainland and the Aegean islands. By 1540 the Turks had taken over Venice’s mainland outposts at Navplion, Methóni, Koróni and Monemvasía, and all the islands of the Cyclades except for Venetian- held Tínos were under Turkish control. The Turks completed their dominance of the eastern Mediterranean with the conquest of Cyprus in 1570, and the only significant Venetian possessions remaining were Crete until 1669 and the Ionian islands for a further century. So outside those two areas Italian records can no longer help us.
    Foreign residents in Greece were a rarity, limited to a few British or French consuls in major towns and some Jesuit or Capuchin priests. There were a few foreign travellers, though nothing to compare with the increasing numbers of those who came in the following century. But the seventeenth-century visitors usually had their own concerns, often archaeology or botany, or touched at Greece briefly on the way to somewhere else, as William Biddulph did en route to serve as Protestant chaplain at Aleppo. So these travellers often had little opportunity to observe Greek life, even if they had an interest in doing so.
    In spite of these limitations there is enough evidence to give us a picture of Greek life in the towns of the period, which was strikingly different from life on the land as described in Chapter 4. As one historian puts it: ‘The contrast which exists between the rural community and the city in every society was rarely more striking than in the medieval Islamic world. Here it was not merely a contrast between isolation and congregation, between the dispersed economy of the village and the concentrated economy of the town, between oppressed poverty and relative freedom and wealth, between producer and consumer. It was a contrast of civilizations.’ 2 One of the main contrasts was in the working day. The agricultural labourer, provided he paid his taxes, could work as he wished, whereas the townsman’s working life was tightly regulated through the guild system.
    All craftsmen, that is those using local or imported raw materials to make goods and sell them, had to belong to a guild, for example the guild of furriers, potters, or producers of cloth or ironware. The leading members of the guild were the master craftsmen, who appointed four officers. One was elected from their own members to run the business side of the guild and represent his fellows in dealings with other guilds. Another was appointed to apportion the tax quota among the guild members and deliver the total to the government. He also represented the guild when taking grievances to the local capital or to Constantinople. A third officer acted as buying agent for the guild’s raw materials and a fourth was responsible for quality and price control. All four had to be selected before a guild could be registered. Only the master craftsmen could open their own establishments, of which the number was strictly limited. Below the master craftsmen and working for them were the skilled craftsmen who could not open their own shops, the ordinary craftsmen, and at the lowest level the apprentices.
    The guilds would operate in and around the great market in the centre of town, which also typically included the main mosque, a major square and various institutions that were supported by charitable foundations, such as Islamic colleges, inns, public baths and fountains. Guild members, who might be Muslim and Christian in the same guild, did not live in the centre but in one of the self-contained quarters of the town. These usually contained 25 to 50 houses and Muslims, Greeks and Jews lived in different quarters. The division of a city into such quarters was of course common elsewhere, for instance in Siena where the 17 contrade districts, those which remain of the original 59, still fiercely contest twice a year the dramatic bareback horse race, the Palio, in the Piazza del Campo.
    There were three important limitations on the