Image: Alexander Mavrogeni, Ottoman minister to the United States 1887–96, Prince of Samos 1902–04

A lecture by Philip Mansel, co-hosted by the Anglo-Hellenic League and the Levantine Heritage Foundation.

Abstract: After the revolution of 1821, some Greeks continued to serve Ottoman Sultans in such positions as doctors, bankers or photographers to the Sultan, tutor to his sons, or as diplomats. The Oecumenical Patriarch, who had anathematised the Greek revolution of 1821, continued to be part of the Ottoman hierarchy. Members of the Aristarchi, Mavrogeni, Mousouros  and Zarifi families, among many others, preferred to live in Constantinople and serve the Sultan, rather than to reside in the kingdom of Greece. Abdulhamid II (1876–1909) had a Greek doctor named Spyridon Mavrogeni, a Greek banker Giorgios Zarifi whose nephew’s memoirs will be quoted, while the Hamidiye mosque beside his palace at Yildiz was designed by his Greek architect, Nikolo Vasilaki. The title of Prince of Samos could be awarded by the Sultan to Ottoman Greeks as a reward for their services, as the titles of Prince of Wallachia or Moldavia had been awarded to Phanariots before 1821. The nineteenth century was an age of multinational empires as well as nation-states. Many people preferred the former to the latter.

About the speaker: Dr Philip Mansel’s books include Constantinople, City of the World’s Desire (1995), on the Ottoman capital between 1453 and 1924, and Levant, Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (2010), on Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut after 1600. Both books have been translated into Greek. More recently, he published Aleppo: The Rise and Fall of Syria’s Great Merchant City (2016). Dr Mansel is a founding committee member of the Society for Court Studies and the Levantine Heritage Foundation, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Literature. He is currently working on The Power of Courts, a history of Europe in 1814–1918, from the perspective of its ruling dynasties.  

This lecture will take place in person only. To register, click here.