The Christian Population of 16th-Century Ottoman Anatolia: An Overview and Preliminary Observations on Its Location and Numbers in the 1520s

What is it about?

By the times of the early Ottoman period in Anatolia (15th-16th centuries), the transformation of the land into a Turkish Muslim country was completed. What remained of the Christian population was especially weak in most of the country, in absolute numbers as well as in analogy to the Muslim element, even fully absent in large tracts of the land. This general picture is long known in scholarship, yet no effort has been done to date to better clarify the Christian presence in Anatolia in an overall perspective. In this respect, this study provides a preliminary overview to the location and the relative strength or weakness of the Christian presence in the different regions of Anatolia, based on the data from Ottoman fiscal registers that reflect the situation in the 1520’s.

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