Aspects of muslim culture in the Ottoman Balkans: A view from eighteenth-century Salonica

This chapter explores the question from the angle of one case study: the cultural life and perspectives of eighteenth-century Muslims who inhabited the Ottoman port city of Salonica and its hinterland. It explores the cultural interaction between Greece and the Balkans from the angle: Salonica as a major urban centre of Ottoman learning and Muslim Orthodoxy and the local Muslims' perspectives on the cultural world of the masses who lived around them. One of the important issues relating to the Balkan Muslims is whether we can single out a distinct Islamic culture or cultures that developed in the Balkans based, to some extent, on the absorption and islamization of earlier local pagan or Christian cultures. When looking for a symbol that represented high culture for the Salonican elite, the honorific place given to the book is clearly evident. An interesting comparison can be made between food designated for the elite and the "deserving poor" and food consumed by ordinary Salonicans.