The Ottomans conquered the town of Candia on the island of Crete in 1669. Thirty years later, el-Hac Ali Pasha, the governor of the town built a mosque in a sparsely populated district by the town walls. Soon, a religiously mixed quarter (mahalle) developed around the mosque. The paper discusses the establishment of the mosque, its connection with the quarter, and urban life in the eighteenth century. It is argued that the construction of the mosque was a political act that combined charitable piety with the confirmation of the Ottomanization of previously Venetian space and the encouragement of urban development. Furthermore, the paper investigates the importance of religion in the daily lives of the inhabitants of the quarter pointing out that the quarter was an entity more complex than the residential space of Muslims and Christians.

Antonis Anastasopoulos is Associate Professor of Ottoman History at the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Crete and Collaborating Faculty Member of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FO.R.T.H. His main research interests concern the Ottoman provinces with an emphasis on political relations in the eighteenth century, the Islamic tombstones of the Ottoman period, and the history of water management. He is vice-president of the International Committee fοr Pre-Ottoman and Ottoman Studies (CIÉPO) and editor-in-chief of Turkish Historical Review.

Image Credit
“Ville de Candie”, photo by Rahmizade Bahaeddin Bey, ca. 1900.
Source: Eleftheria Zei, Χώρος και φωτογραφία. Το Ηράκλειο από την Οθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία στην Κρητική Πολιτεία. Συλλογή Μιχάλη Σάλλα, Athens 2005, p. 208, ill. 4.