Elias Kolovos – författare

This volume is a collection of essays written in honor of Professor John C. Alexander on the topic of the Ottoman Balkans and the Ottoman Greek community.

This book, a collection of studies by various different authors, approaches the Ottoman monuments of Greece as the heritage of a historical period that lends itself to multiple readings. The authors approach the subject from a wide range of disciplines, including history of art, archaeology, architecture and urban studies. Through fascinating unpublished archival photographic and epigraphic material, the writers enrich our knowledge of the emblematic Ottoman monuments of Greek cities and foreground unknown aspects of the architecture of rural Greece.In the pages of the book, the stories of places, buildings and people from the Ottoman era come alive. These stories constitute a major contribution to discussion of this special part of modern Greece’s heritage. The critical analyses renew and broaden our awareness of the fields of Ottoman studies and Greek cultural heritage.

Ioannina constitutes a world intertwined with its legends and the elements of nature. A city in which the lake plays a leading role, acting as a scenic artist, but also a narrator. Simultaneously, it is a city which, like the mountains surrounding it, is firmly set on the ground and, at the same time, immersed in the charm of its age-old history. Heroes, religions, myths and memories, all of which are possessions and spoils of this unique Siren, who for thousands of years now has been enticing us into listening to the song of this land.This book attempts to set out on a journey through space and time. With intermediate “stops” at the ages before and after the invention of script, the Byzantine and post-Byzantine times, the city’s conquest by the Ottomans, the reign of Ali Pasha and the Reform period to his demise and the Liberation. With “stops” at the caves of Perama and Kastritsa, Dodona —the Oracle of earth and sky, with the “high-crested” oak tree and the will of Zeus—, the Nissi (Island) —with the significant monastic state and the figures of the ancient Greek philosophers depicted on its wall paintings—, the Castle, the city of the past and the present.Man has always been at the centre of this swirl of events through space and time. It seems that his anxieties, as these were expressed in Dodona’s oracular tablets when he desperately sought prophecies, or when he silently visited a church, a mosque or a synagogue to pray, have barely changed. To him, time is no different than Plato’s perception of it: a moving image of eternity.

Ioannina constitutes a world intertwined with its legends and the elements of nature. A city in which the lake plays a leading role, acting as a scenic artist, but also a narrator. Simultaneously, it is a city which, like the mountains surrounding it, is firmly set on the ground and, at the same time, immersed in the charm of its age-old history. Heroes, religions, myths and memories, all of which are possessions and spoils of this unique Siren, who for thousands of years now has been enticing us into listening to the song of this land.This book attempts to set out on a journey through space and time. With intermediate “stops” at the ages before and after the invention of script, the Byzantine and post-Byzantine times, the city’s conquest by the Ottomans, the reign of Ali Pasha and the Reform period to his demise and the Liberation. With “stops” at the caves of Perama and Kastritsa, Dodona —the Oracle of earth and sky, with the “high-crested” oak tree and the will of Zeus—, the Nissi (Island) —with the significant monastic state and the figures of the ancient Greek philosophers depicted on its wall paintings—, the Castle, the city of the past and the present.Man has always been at the centre of this swirl of events through space and time. It seems that his anxieties, as these were expressed in Dodona’s oracular tablets when he desperately sought prophecies, or when he silently visited a church, a mosque or a synagogue to pray, have barely changed. To him, time is no different than Plato’s perception of it: a moving image of eternity.

A part of the insurrectionary wave of the 1820s, the Greek Revolution remains a neglected episode in the revolutionary history of the period. The contributions included in this volume present the most recent research concerning the social, political and cultural history of this major event. Bringing together specialists in social, intellectual and cultural history, the volume adopts a broader temporal and spatial perspective than most existing analyses. Juxtaposing the views from without and within the Ottoman Empire, the authors reconsider the dialectics of social transformation and revolution and overcome simplistic dichotomies between structural continuities and conjectural ruptures, international context and internal conflicts, social and political aspects, and central state and local power-holders, putting the Greek Revolution squarely back on the agenda of Marxist and revolutionary historiography. Contributors are: Zacharias Antonakis, Dimitris Bacharas, Athanasios Barlagiannis, Simos Bozikis, Aliki Fakoura, Şükrü Ilicak, Elias Kolovos, Phokion Kotzageorgis, Dimitris Kousouris, Dimitris Papastamatiou, Nikos Rotzokos, Mohammet Shariat-Panahi, Panagiotis Stathis, Panagiotis Sotiris, Dionysis Tzakis, and Eleftheria Zei.