page_title: Greek Muslims
section_title: Cretan Muslims
hierarchical_section_title: Greek Muslims / Cretan Muslims
caption_attribution_description: English: Cretan Muslims. Early b&amp;w PPC (E.A. Cavaliero) unused Français&#160;: Costume turc crétois
context_page_description: Greek Muslims, also known as Grecophone Muslims, are Muslims of Greek ethnic origin whose adoption of Islam dates to the period of Ottoman rule in the southern Balkans. They consist primarily of the descendants of the elite Ottoman Janissary corps and Ottoman-era converts to Islam from Greek Macedonia, Crete, northeastern Anatolia and the Pontic Alps. They are currently found mainly in western Turkey and northeastern Turkey
context_section_description: The term Cretan Turks (Turkish: Girit Türkleri, Greek: Τουρκοκρητικοί) or Cretan Muslims (Turkish: Girit Müslümanları) covers Greek speaking Muslims who arrived in Turkey after or slightly before the start of the Greek rule in Crete in 1908 and especially in the framework of the 1923 agreement for the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations and have settled on the coastline stretching from the Çanakkale to İskenderun. Prior to their resettlement to Turkey, deteriorating communal relations between Cretan Greek Christians and Grecophone Cretan Muslims had made the latter identify with Ottoman and later Turkish identity. Some Grecophone Muslims of Crete also composed literature for their community in the Greek language such as songs and wrote it in the Arabic alphabet, although little of it has been studied. Today in various settlements along the Aegean coast elderly Grecophone Cretan Muslims are still conversant in Cretan Greek. Amongst younger generations of Cretan Grecophone Muslims, many are fluent in the Greek language. Often members from the Muslim Cretan community are unaware that the language they speak is Greek. They often name the language as Cretan (Kritika (Κρητικά) or Giritçe) instead of Greek. The Grecophone Cretan Muslims are Sunnis of the (Hanafi) rite with a highly influential Bektashi minority that helped shape the folk Islam and religious tolerance of the entire community. Significant numbers of Cretan Muslims were re-settled in other Ottoman controlled areas around the eastern Mediterranean by the Ottomans following the establishment of the autonomous Cretan State in 1898.  Most ended up in coastal Syria and Lebanon, particularly the town of Al-Hamidiyah, in Syria, (named after the Ottoman sultan who settled them there), and Tripoli in Lebanon where many continue to speak Greek as their mother tongue.  Others were resettled in Ottoman Tripolitania especially in the east side cities like Susa and Benghazi, where they are distinguishable by their Greek surnames. Many of the older members of this community still speak Cretan Greek in their homes. A small community of Grecophone Cretan Muslims still resides in Greece in the Dodecanese Islands of Rhodes and Kos. These communities were formed prior to the area becoming part of Greece in 1948 when their ancestors migrated there from Crete and are integrated into the local Muslim population as Turks today.
caption: Cretan Muslims, 19th-20th century.
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