The Orthodox Church of Crete, 1645–1735: a case study of the relation between sultanic power and patriarchal will * Elif Bayraktar Tellan Istanbul The Ottoman policies towards the Orthodox patriarchate and its clergymen have been dis- cussed in a number of articles. For some scholars the relationship is one of purely financial character, with the patriarch being a mere tax collector, whereas for others the patriarch is acting as ethnarch of his millet, as defined by supporters of the millet theory. In this case study, the re-establishment of the Orthodox Church on the island of Crete testifies to the complexity of the relationship between the patriarch and the sultan. The struggle of the metropolitans of Crete to establish their authority from 1651 to 1735 is connected to the history of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate in the Ottoman capital. The war for the control of Crete lasted for twenty-five years, from 1645 to 1669. 1 By 1646, the greater part of the island had been captured, but the strong fortress of Candia was to remain in Venetian hands until 1669. From 1646 to 1669, the prolonged siege and failure to capture the last castle caused distress in the Ottoman capital and added to economic problems. On the other hand, the Ottoman administration was also in the process of being established on the island. In 1650 the first official tax-register [tahrir] had already been completed. 2 * This article was written when I was a PhD student in the History Department of Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. It is a revised and developed version of a part of my unpublished MA thesis, The Implementation of Ottoman Religious Policies in Crete 1645–1735: Men of Faith as Actors in the Kadı Court, Bilkent University, 2005. I am grateful to my advisor Eugenia Kermeli who guided and supported me in many ways in writing my thesis and this article. I would also like to thank Evangelia Balta, Özer Ergenç and Hülya Taş for their valuable comments. 1 For the conquest of Crete by the Ottomans, see E. Gülsoy, Girit’in Fethi ve Osmanlı I ̇ daresinin Kurulması (1645–1670) (Istanbul 2004) 23–184; I ̇ .H. Uzunçarş ılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, III /1 (Ankara 1973) 217–22, 296–8, 326–42, 414–21; C. Tukin, ‘Osmanlı I ̇ mparatorluğ u’nda Girit isyanları: 1821 yılına kadar Girit’, Belleten IX/ 34 (April 1945) 189–94; C. Tukin, ‘Girit’, I ̇ slam Ansiklopedisi (hereafter IA) IV (Istanbul 1940–1987) 791– 804; R. Mantran, ‘Ikritish’, Encyclopaedia of Islam,2 nd edn (hereafter EI 2 ), III (Leiden 1960–2004) 1086–7. 2 Gülsoy, Girit’in Fethi, 225–6. For the records of Rethymnon from the census of 1670, see E. Balta and M. Oğ uz, Το οθωμανικό κτηματολόγιο του Ρεθύμνου (Rethymnon 2007). Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies Vol. 36 No. 2 (2012) 198–214 © 2012 Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham DOI: 10.1179/0307013112Z.00000000012