Rumiyülibare: Ottoman Visuals and Greek Content in the Orders of the Kapudan Pasha

Abstract

The article is based on the study of a series of bilingual (in Ottoman Turkish and Greek) documents from the Archive of the Monastery of Saint John Theologos on the island of Patmos. Supposedly translations from Ottoman Turkish into Greek made by the dragoman of the Imperial Fleet, these documents, in reality, were the result of a complicated process that involved a more creative procedure than rendering an order in another language. Moreover, the Ottoman script was used in these documents to identify and legitimise the imperial order in the eyes of their subjects; for “translating” the Ottoman imperial orders, however, the Greek language was used in order to convey the message to the local communities. This article argues that the study of these texts reflects a cultural dialogue and interaction between languages and scripts of the Ottoman elite and of their Greek subjects that has been forgotten since the advent of nationalism.