A Karamanlidika Inscription from Mount Athos (1818)

Abstract

Recent years have seen an increase in scholarly interest in the karamanli Christians, that sizeable population of Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians, who were mainly concentrated in Asia Minor, but pockets of whom were to be found in the Crimea-Azov region and in Turkey in Europe. In the absence of extensive written records for the history of these populations, inscriptions in karamanlidika (Turkish karamanlīca), or Turkish written with Greek characters, constitute an important source of historical data; places of origin and places to which they migrated in search of a livelihood; the names in common use among them; the occupations they followed; their membership of guilds; the state of literacy prevailing in the communities in which they lived; some indication of the relative prosperity of the community or the individual; indications as to their life span and, in some cases, the cause of death. Clearly, too, the study of inscriptions in karamanlidika has much the same value for the linguist interested in the historical development of the Turkish dialects, as has the study of printed books and documents written in karamanlidika.