The Ottoman Empire was an Islamic empire
which lasted from the 14th to early 20th centuries.
Under the Ottomans,
Christians, Muslims and Jews were living together,
coexisted in many cities and towns of the Empire.
They lived separately in their communities,
but they were also having common
experiences in places like this.
We are in Athens,
where we can see
behind me a mosque and a church side by side.
People were meeting in the markets,
the bazaars, and were having relations
friendly or
other relations during the centuries of Ottoman rule.
Under the Islamic empire, Christians and Jews were allowed to have
their churches, their congregations, their properties,
and they were living more or less peacefully with Muslims
and with the Muslim community, which were
the predominant community under the Ottomans.
So churches were allowed
and behind me, you can see the Monastiraki
church, a small
monastery side by side to the Mustapha Agha
mosque in Athens built in the 18th century.
Relations between Muslims, Christians
and Jews were not always good.
However, in general, we can say that the communities
coexisted more or less peacefully during the centuries.
While the relations between
all the communities were generally fixed against
and within the framework of the pact,
the famous pact between Muslims, Muslim
rulers and Muslim communities and their non-Muslim subjects,
each place, each period had its own specifics.
So during the conquest, of course, there was confrontation,
and the first decade sometimes saw rising of the non-Muslims
against the or some resistance
or even uprisings or
siding with the enemies of the Ottomans. During the 16th
and 17th centuries
gradually, the communities
found their ways of living together.
Probably not very smooth, always.
Sometimes we have even
such explosions of
hostility or like the new martyrs.
But not only new martyrs, confrontation.
Sometimes we see very peaceful collaboration
about taxes, working in one guild in the market
or living together in one neighborhood.
Although it was the natural tendency of people
to live together, to group together around the church or the synagogue
the case of Sophia, for example, shows that
Christians at some point had to move out of the center,
but their churches remained in the center.
So they will be going for services outside their neighborhoods,
while the neighborhoods were already
building mosques
and the we don't see until 19th century
purely Christian, purely Muslim neighborhoods.
I'm talking about Sophia.
There were, however, other places where you see,
especially in the 19th century, already a little bit more
of a division, segregation, but
let's say voluntary segregation, willing to stay out,
not to cause problems and not to receive the hostile
sometimes attitude, to meet the hostile attitude.
So, we can't say that
it was always happy living together, but we can't say that
it was a very confrontational life together,
as I said, being in the market,
being in the production, even buying properties.
I mean, people sometimes chose to buy a property
in entirely Muslim environment
or a muslim would buy a house around
well surrounded by Christian houses.
Jews were a little bit more careful to stay together
but that's always, uh, there are always exceptions
which prove that there was no established pattern
who lives where they were. There were times in which Muslims get upset
and they want the non-Muslims to go out to be
expelled from the neighborhood.
But sometimes the authorities
sided with the Christians, sometimes not.
So it's a variety of cases that we can have of living together,
which was both peaceful, but sometimes loaded with tensions.