Features of the Ethno-Religious Situation in Asia Minor in the 14th Century

This article analyses the ethno-religious situation in Asia Minor in the fourteenth century and the position of individual ethnic and religious communities in the territories of Turkish beyliks. The study demonstrates that, despite the loss of all Asia Minor territories by Byzantium in the fourteenth century, a significant part of the Greek population continued to live in the lands occupied by the Turks. Until the middle of the fourteenth century, in remote and sparsely populated areas of Anatolia, the processes of Turkization and Islamization proceeded very slowly. By the end of the fourteenth century small Greek villages in Western Anatolia practically ceased to exist, and their population gradually became Islamized. At the same time, in large cities and administrative centers, the Greeks quite quickly mastered the language and customs of the “infidels” and integrated into the economic system of the Muslim society, because the tax system of the Turks allowed the Romans to retain their religious identity in exchange for paying jizya. It was revealed that the position of other ethnic and religious communities is reflected in the sources only fragmentarily. A specific feature of development of the Asia Minor region in the fourteenth century became the resettlement of numerous groups of Jews in the cities of Anatolia. The economic activity of the Jews was highly valued by the emirs of Asia Minor, who were interested in the normal functioning of the urban community. Jews probably had certain privileges that allowed Jewish communities to coexist comfortably with Muslim customs. It was these factors — the tax benefits provided by the Turks, and the opportunity for non-Muslims to participate in public life — that created conditions in the Anatolian region for the formation of a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional society. It served as the basis for the subsequent integration of the non-Muslim population of Anatolia into the social structures of the Turkic emirates.