page_title: Crete
section_title: Notable people
hierarchical_section_title: Crete / Notable people
caption_attribution_description: Elefterios Venizelos
context_page_description: Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus and Corsica. It bounds the southern border of the Aegean sea. Crete lies approximately 160 km south of the Greek mainland. It has an area of 8,336 km² and a coastline of 1,046 km.
  Crete and a number of islands and islets that surround it constitute the Region of Crete, which is the southernmost of the 13 top-level administrative units of Greece, and the fifth most populous of Greece‘s regions. Its capital and largest city is Heraklion, located on the north shore of the island. As of 2011, the region had a population of 623,065. The Dodecanese are located to the northeast of Crete, while the Cyclades are situated to the north, separated by the Sea of Crete. The Peloponnese is to the region's northwest.
  Humans have inhabited the island since at least 130,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic age. Crete was the centre of Europe's first advanced civilization, the Minoans, from 2700 to 1420 BC. The Minoan civilization was overrun by the Mycenaean civilization from mainland Greece.
context_section_description: Notable people from Crete include:
  Nikos Kazantzakis, author, born in Heraklion, 7 times suggested for the Nobel Prize
  Odysseas Elytis, poet, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979, born in Heraklion
  Georgios Chortatzis, Renaissance author
  Vitsentzos Kornaros, Renaissance author from Sitia, who lived in Heraklion (then Candia)
  Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco), Renaissance artist, born in Heraklion
  Nikos Xilouris, famous composer and singer.
  Psarantonis, Cretan folk singer and Cretan lyra player and brother of Nikos Xilouris.
  Nana Mouskouri, singer, born in Chania
  Eleftherios Venizelos, former Greek Prime Minister, born in Chania Prefecture
  Konstantinos Mitsotakis, nephew of Eleftherios Venizelos and Prime Minister of Greece.
  Daskalogiannis, leader of the Orlov Revolt in Crete in 1770
  Michalis Kourmoulis, leader of the Greek War of Independence from Messara.
  Eleni Daniilidou, tennis player, born in Chania
  Louis Tikas, Greek-American labor union leader
  Tess Fragoulis, Greek-Canadian writer, born in Heraklion
  Nick Dandolos, a.k.a. Nick the Greek, professional gambler and high roller
  Joseph Sifakis, a computer scientist, laureate of the 2007 Turing Award, born in Heraklion in 1946
  Constantinos Daskalakis, Associate Professor at MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department.
  George Karniadakis, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Brown University; also Research Scientist at MIT
  John Aniston (Giannis Anastasakis), Greek-American actor, father of Jennifer Aniston
  George Psychoundakis, a shepherd, a war hero and an author.
  Ahmed Resmî Efendi: 18th-century Ottoman statesman, diplomat and author (notably of two sefâretnâme). Turkey's first ever ambassador in Berlin (during Frederick the Great's reign). He was born into a Muslim family of Greek descent in the Cretan town of Rethymno in the year 1700.
  Giritli Ali Aziz Efendi: Turkey's third ambassador in Berlin and arguably the first Turkish author to have written in novelistic form.
  Al-Husayn I ibn Ali at-Turki – founder of the Husainid Dynasty, which ruled Tunisia until 1957.
  Salacıoğlu (1750 Hanya – 1825 Kandiye): One of the most important 18th-century poets of Turkish folk literature.
  Giritli Sırrı Pasha: Ottoman administrator, Leyla Saz's husband and a notable man of letters in his own right.
  Vedat Tek: Representative figure of the First National Architecture Movement in Turkish architecture, son of Leyla Saz and Giritli Sırrı Pasha.
  Paul Mulla (alias Mollazade Mehmed Ali): born Muslim, converted to Christianity and becoming a Roman Catholic bishop and author.
  Rahmizâde Bahaeddin Bediz: The first Turkish photographer by profession. The thousands of photographs he took, based as of 1895 successively in Crete, İzmir, İstanbul and Ankara (as Head of the Photography Department of Turkish Historical Society), have immense historical value.
  Salih Zeki: Turkish photographer in Chania
  Ali Nayip Zade: Associate of Eleftherios Venizelos, Prefect of Drama and Kavala, Adrianople, and Lasithi.
  Ismail Fazil Pasha: (1856–1921) descended from the rooted Cebecioğlu family of Söke who had settled in Crete. He has been the first Minister of Public Works in the government of Grand National Assembly in 1920. He was the father of Ali Fuad and Mehmed Ali.
  Mehmet Atıf Ateşdağlı: (1876–1947) Turkish officer.
  Mustafa Ertuğrul Aker: (1892–1961) Turkish officer who sank HMS Ben-my-Chree.
  Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, alias Halikarnas Balıkçısı (The Fisherman of Halicarnassus), writer, although born in Crete and has often let himself be cited as Cretan, descends from a family of Ottoman aristocracy with roots in Afyonkarahisar. His father had been an Ottoman High Commissioner in Crete and later ambassador in Athens. *Likewise, as stated above, Mustafa Naili Pasha was Albanian/Egyptian.
  Bülent Arınç (born. 25 May 1948) has been a Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey since 2009. He is of Cretan Muslim heritage with his ancestors arriving to Turkey as Cretan refugees during the population exchange between Greece and Turkey at the time of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and is fluent in Cretan Greek. Arınç
caption: Eleftherios Venizelos
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