Introduction
The British liberation of the Ionian Islands during the Napoleonic Wars presumably displeased the French, and was no doubt disquieting for the Ottoman imperial government that for over two centuries had occupied the Greek mainland. But it was good news for Hassan. He wanted to be baptised a Christian, and for reasons of his own it was imperative that the Turkish authorities know nothing about it.
IN 1809, British forces liberated the Ionian Islands from Napoleon.* Much of Greece was still under the Islamic government of the Ottoman Empire;* but British policy was for religious liberty, so one day a young man named Hassan, fresh from military service,* left the mainland and slipped over to Ithaca to be baptised a Christian. He took the name John. Afterwards, John returned to Ottoman territory, and lived quietly in Fyteies near Agrinio* as a member of the Christian community.* He married, and settled down to a life of studied obscurity.
For John was hiding a secret. He was no less than the son of the Sheik of Konitsa,* and like his father a dervish, a member of an honoured Muslim ascetic brotherhood. By some means, the Sheik found where his son was hiding, and sent two dervishes to persuade him to come home. John declined, and there the matter might have ended had the town’s governor not heard of the scandal, and written an angry account of it to the Pasha of Agrinio. John was arrested, and brought before the courts.
* See The United States of the Ionian Islands. The French had acquired the islands in 1797 by the capture of Venice, in whose hands they had lain since the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Athens won independence from the occupying Ottoman Empire in the revolution of 1821-32, and Prime Minister William Gladstone duly reunited the islands with liberated Greece in 1864.
* The Turkish Ottoman Empire had captured Constantinople in 1453, bringing an end to the Roman Empire and inheriting the lands that remained to it. They included modern-day Greece as well as much of Eastern Europe and north Africa. See The Fall of Constantinople. By John’s day, the Turks were struggling to maintain their grip. See posts tagged Greek War of Independence (11).
* The Russian Tsars, who were Orthodox Christians like the Greeks, dreamt of liberating the Christian states of Eastern Europe from Islamic rule, and had recently just shaded the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812. It was in this conflict that Hassan had fought for the Turks. He dropped out after his commanding officer, Grand Vizier Yusuf Ziya Pasha (?-1819), was relieved of his duties in 1811, and from that time onwards Hassan began to dress and live like a Christian.
* Fyteies (Mahalas) is a village thirteen miles northwest of Agrinio; Agrinio itself lies towards the western coast of mainland Greece, some 17 miles north of Missolonghi on the upper side of the Gulf of Patras. See Google Maps. Agrinio, known in Ottoman times as Vrachori, was the chief town of the Sanjak of Karleli. Today Agrinio is the largest city of the Aetolia-Acarnania regional unit of Greece.
* “The insulting distinction of Christian and Mohammedan” wrote long-time Turkish resident William Eton in 1799, with characteristic severity (some thought him too partial to the Greeks), “is carried to so great a length that even the minutiae of dress are rendered subjects of restriction. A Christian must wear clothes and head-dresses of dark colors only, and such as Turks never wear, with slippers of black leather, and must paint his house black or dark brown. The least violation of these frivolous and disgusting regulations is punished with death.” See also The Source of Civilisation.
* Konitsa is a town in mainland Greece, up in the northwest near the Albanian border.
Précis
Shortly after the British acquired the Ionian Islands from Napoleon in 1809, a young Muslim crossed over from the Greek mainland to be baptised there, taking the name of John. By such measures, he had hoped to avoid embarrassing his father, a respected Sheik, but the news leaked out, and John was brought before the authorities in Agrinio. (58 / 60 words)
Shortly after the British acquired the Ionian Islands from Napoleon in 1809, a young Muslim crossed over from the Greek mainland to be baptised there, taking the name of John. By such measures, he had hoped to avoid embarrassing his father, a respected Sheik, but the news leaked out, and John was brought before the authorities in Agrinio.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: although, because, despite, if, may, otherwise, unless, until.
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