Reflections on the diachronic impact of government on the life of the island by Dimitris Krallis

With the arrival of the Greek fleet in Mytilene in 1912, Admiral Kountouriotis issued a communiqué to the local population in which as representative of the Kingdom of Greek he clearly referred to the imperative to maintain the island’s property regime and to secure the rights to individual, private property. The Greek government’s interest in private property expresses here a liberal sensibility which was by now deeply rooted in the legal and economic consciousness of the inhabitants of Greece. But the reality in Lesvos had for years been much more complex. In fact, for centuries, both during the Byzantine period and under Ottoman rule, the relationship of the population to the land had been quite different from what we find in the 19th c. and in the time of the island’s integration to Greece. 

With the guidance of Konstantinos Kabouridis, whose book on the subject guides us through the Ottoman tax registers, we travel to the sixteenth century, in a rather different administrative and socio-economic geography [1]. In northern Lesvos then, we find both important continuities and dramatic discontinuities. Molyvos itself was part of the Sultan’s domains (hâss in Turkish, in Greek hasi). The villages of Vafya, Komano, and Halika were also Sultanic possessions. In the cadasters we recognize settlements which are very much still present on the map today. The settlements of Hlyo and Oskudaro, were granted as tithe to sipahis (cavalrymen of the Ottoman army). Kehranda, a wealthy village with a considerable income, 175 Christian and 3 Muslim households, was a source of commonly shared tribute for 17 of the defenders of Mytilene’s castle. The census of 1581 refers to “Kehranda, other name Filya”, which has since 1548 increased both its population (by about twenty households), as well as its revenues. Kehranda is now a timar of the soldiers serving in the castle of Molyvos. The village of Ligona was a timar [2] for the commander of the fortress of Molyvos and his deputy, while Lasyona paid for the salaries and lifestyle of the religious officials of the castle of Molyvos. Petra, with its remarkable agricultural bounty, and Petri and Chilio Pigadi supported the 36 defenders of the castle of Molyvos