Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [234]
37. In the case of the Greek Revolution, I do not intend to discuss the uprising in Moldavia and Wallachia, or the later conduct of the war, but to focus on the events of 1821–22.
38. As they could in other clan societies—the feud between the Campbells and the MacDonalds in Scotland originated in 1297.
39. This too had its echo in local customary law, which assumed collective and clan responsibility for any act. This could be found just as readily among the Arabs of Jordan and the Arabian peninsula, in the Druze and Maronite Christian communities of Lebanon, and in Italy and Spain.
40. See Petrovich, History, vol. 1, p. 84.
41. See Stevan Pavlowitch, “Society in Serbia 1791–1830,” in Clogg (ed.), Balkan Society, p. 144.
42. Gordon, History, vol. 1, pp. i–ii.
43. He gave many examples of individual Turks who had behaved with a great sense of honor, better than the Greeks.
44. Gordon, History, vol. 1, p. 143.
45. See W. Alison Phillips, The War of Greek Independence 1821 to 1833, London: Smith Elder, 1897, p. 48.
46. Gordon, History, vol. 1, p. 149.
47. At Patras, on Palm Sunday, the Turks “amused themselves at their leisure in impaling or beheading prisoners and circumcising Christian children”; ibid., p. 156.
48. Ibid., pp. 244–5.
49. “Their [the Greeks’] insatiable cruelty knew no bounds, and seemed to inspire them with a superhuman energy for evil … Every corner was ransacked to discover new victims and the unhappy Jewish population (even more than the Turks an object of fanatical hatred) expired amid torments which we dare not describe. During the sack of the city, the air was close, dull and oppressively hot”; ibid.
50. “Never were firmans obeyed with more alacrity; intelligence of the revolt of Scio [Chios] excited very strong feeling throughout Asia Minor, detachments of troops covered the roads, and the ancient fervour of Islamism seemed to revive. Old and young flew to arms, and a regiment composed entirely of Imams was seen to march through the streets of Smyrna”; ibid., p. 356.
51. Ibid., p. 192.
52. “Those who are best acquainted with the Greeks cannot fail to remark the numerous and striking features of resemblance that connect them with their ancestors … The Grecian character was, however, long tried in the furnace of misfortune, that the sterling metal had mostly evaporated and little but dross remained; having obliterated whatever was laudable in the institutions of their forefathers, their recent masters had taught them only evil”; ibid., p. 32. It was the “worthiest” of the Athenians who sought to prevent the deliberate massacre of the civilian Turks in the city, while “the system of the worst and most degraded Greeks, of exterminating, per fas et nefas [by fair means and foul] every disciple of Islam who fell into their hands”; ibid., pp. 414–15.
53. Ibid., p. 4.
54. Ibid., p. 231.
55. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, canto 2, stanza 84.
56. Ibid., stanza 77.
57. For a new insight into Byron’s attitudes, see Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism, pp. 136–7: He notes Byron’s comment: “The Ottomans are not a people to be despised. Equal, at least, to the Spaniards, they are superior to the Portuguese. If it be difficult to pronounce what they are, we can at least say what they are not: they are not treacherous, they are not cowardly, they do not burn heretics, they are not assassins …”
58. On the pamphlet literature see St. Clair, That Greece, pp. 372–3. At that time the publications in English and German diminished. He also noted how there was a flood of books on Greece after Byron’s death, and in a number of these Byron and Missolonghi were mentioned in the title; see ibid., pp. 386–7.
59. The stronghold of the revolution was not in Greece itself, but in the Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, where the ruling class was made up of Greeks from Constantinople, many of whom patronized secret Hellenic