Abstract:

Among all demographic mobilities in the late nineteenth century Sanjak of Kayseri, the migratory movements of the Greek Orthodox inhabitants came to fore as the ones which left a rather colossal imprint behind. For them migration was such a significant phenomenon that affected their lives in various ways and virtually became a kind of modus vivendi. Architecturally, in the examined period a great deal of Western impressions was observed at the façades of Greek Orthodox civil dwellings. Despite this, we cannot pin down significant foreign influence in their habits of using imported or European home utensils. Certainly the verification of this idea needs us to display tangible, material proofs. Thus, to trace such evidences, various sources such as the Greek Orthodox oral tradition those based on the articulations of the Greek Orthodox of the early nineteenth-late twentieth century Kayseri on everyday life, traveller books, Ottoman provincial yearbooks, the sharia court registers and the missionary sources–the annuals and letters of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions were applied. In the end of this study, which aims to trace to what level the ongoing migrations had influenced the Greek Orthodox local inhabitants’ everyday lives from the perspective of their home equipment preferences; we shall see that towards the last years of the 19th Century more than one factor had given shape to the general tendency of the Greek Orthodox.

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