page_title: History of the Cyclades
section_title: Conquest and administration of the islands
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Cyclades / Ottoman period / Conquest and administration of the islands
context_page_description: The Cyclades are Greek islands located in the southern part of the Aegean Sea. The archipelago contains some 2,200 islands, islets and rocks; just 33 islands are inhabited. For the ancients, they formed a circle around the sacred island of Delos, hence the name of the archipelago. The best-known are, from north to south and from east to west: Andros, Tinos, Mykonos, Naxos, Amorgos, Syros, Paros and Antiparos, Ios, Santorini, Anafi, Kea, Kythnos, Serifos, Sifnos, Folegandros and Sikinos, Milos and Kimolos; to these can be added the little Cyclades: Irakleia, Schoinoussa, Koufonisi, Keros and Donoussa, as well as Makronisos between Kea and Attica, Gyaros, which lies before Andros, and Polyaigos to the east of Kimolos and Thirassia, before Santorini. At times they were also called by the generic name of Archipelago.
  The islands are located at the crossroads between Europe and Asia Minor and the Near East as well as between Europe and Africa. In antiquity, when navigation consisted only of cabotage and sailors sought never to lose sight of land, they played an essential role as a stopover. Into the 20th century, this situation made their fortune and their misfortune.
context_section_description: Hayreddin Barbarossa, Grand Admiral of the Ottoman Navy, took the islands for the Turks in two raids, in 1537 and 1538. The last to submit was Tinos, in Venetian hands since 1390, in 1715.
  This conquest posed a problem for the Sublime Porte. It was not possible, financially and militarily, to leave a garrison on each island. Moreover, the war it was conducting was against Venice, not against the other Western powers. Thus, as Sifnos belonged to a Bolognese family, the Gozzadini, and the Porte was not at war with Bologna, it allowed this family to govern the island. Likewise, the Sommaripa had Andros. They argued that they were in fact French, originally from the banks of the Somme (Sommaripa being the Italianised form of Sommerive), so as to pass under the protection of the capitulations. Elsewhere too, it was easier, using this model, to leave in place the ruling families who passed under Ottoman suzerainty. The largest of the Cyclades kept their Latin seigneurs, but paid an annual tax to the Porte as a sign of their new vassalage. Four of the smallest islands found themselves under direct Ottoman administration. Meanwhile, John IV Crispo, who governed the Duchy of Naxos between 1518 and 1564, maintained a sumptuous court, attempting to imitate the Western Renaissance. Giovanfrancesco Sommaripa, seigneur of Andros, made himself hated by his subjects. Moreover, in the 1560s, the coalition between the Pope, the Venetians and the Spaniards (the future Holy League that would triumph at Lepanto) was being put in place, and the Latin seigneurs of the Cyclades were being sought out and seemed ready to join the effort (financially and militarily). Finally, the Barbary pirates also continued to pillage the islands from time to time.  Eventually the islanders sent a delegation to Constantinople to plead that they could no longer continue to serve two masters. The Duchy of Naxos, to which Andros had been added, was passed to Joseph Nasi, a confidant of the Sultan in 1566. He never visited “his” islands, leaving their administration to a local nobleman, Coronello. However, as the islands were his direct and personal holding, Ottoman administration was never imposed there. Landed properties were left untouched, unlike in other Christian lands conquered by the Ottomans. Indeed, they were left in the hands of their ancient feudal owners, who kept their traditional customs and privileges.
  After Nasi died, several seigneurs of Naxos followed, more and more virtual in nature, and little by little, the islands slid under normal Ottoman administration. They were granted to the Kapudan Pasha (grand admiral of the Ottoman navy), which is to say that their income went to him. He only went there once a year, with his entire fleet, to receive the sum total of taxes owed to him. It was in the Bay of Drios, to the southeast of Paros, that he would drop anchor.
  At the same time, the Divan only very rarely sent officers and governors to direct the Cyclades in its own name. There were attempts to install kadis and beys on each large island, but Christian pirates kidnapped them in such great numbers to sell them to Malta that the Porte had to abandon such plans. Afterward, the islands were only ruled from afar. Local magistrates, often called epitropes, governed locally; their principal role was tax collection. In 1580, the Porte, through an ahdname (agreement), granted privileges to the largest of the Cyclades (those of the Duchy of Joseph Nasi). In exchange for an annual tribute that comprised a poll tax and military protection, the Christian landowners (Catholic and Orthodox) kept their lands and their dominant position, negotiating taxes for their community.
  Thus a specific local law came into being, a mixture of feudal customs, Byzantine traditions, Orthodox canon law and Ottoman demands, all adapted to the particular island's situation. This legal idiosyncrasy meant that only native-born authorities could untangle cases. Even the language of the documents issued was a mixture of Italian, Greek and Turkish. This was an additional reason for the 
caption: Barbarossa
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