Αγιορείτικη παρουσία στο Βόρειο Αιγαίο: το τουρκικό αρχείο της Ι.Μ. Αγίου Παύλου για τη Λήμνο (15ος-16ος αι.)

Abstract

This article represents the first attempt to evaluate a Turkish monastic archive. On the basis of both the Turkish and Byzantine documents held at the metochion of St. Paul’s Monastery on Lemnos, an attempt is made to assess the socio-economic role of the dependency in the life of the island. The article is also based on a study of the published Byzantine documents of other Atho­ nite dependencies, the published texts of Ottoman kanunnames (regulations) and the data from the first Ottoman record for the island, for the period 1489/90. In this way an attempt has been made to verify the supplementary information supplied by two types of Ottoman sources: the cadastral records (tahrir defterleri) and the loose documents which to a large extent form part of the religious court records (kadi sicilien) since they consist mainly of court documents (hiiccet). The article confirms the recently expressed opinion that the Ottoman conquest of the island acted as a kind of ‘veneer’ on the well- structured Christian substratum, which continued to live and to function throughout the first century of the Ottoman occupation (preservation of Byzantine families, vestiges of communal life). Finally, it appears that the influence of the metochion on the social and economic life of the island was considerable.