The Phanariots: Complexity and Cooperation in the Ottoman Balkans

Steven G. Mavromihalis

Today's headlines from Bosnia seem to reinforce an established western European notion about that region which is best illustrated by considering the definition of the term "Balkanization." Bitter conflict and divisiveness are at the core of that definition and it would seem that the historiographies of the post-Ottoman nations which make up the Balkan peninsula support such a notion with respect to their own histories. Yet for centuries prior to the establishment of the peninsula's nation-states these myriad ethnic, religious, and cultural groups coexisted in a heterogeneous Ottoman Empire. In examining certain religious and political institutions and practices of the Ottoman ruling elite which may have encouraged and sustained this coexistence vis-a-vis the state, the Phanar district of Istanbul often appears to be at the geographic center of events. The Greek or otherwise Hellenized inhabitants of the Phanar, known as Phanariots, served the Ottoman Sultans in a variety of functions from the 16th to the 19th centuries. A review of some of the leading Phanariots of this period shall be the focus of this paper. Their intricate webs of complex loyalties and alliances often defy any simple definition. The results they obtained often contradict the much maligned descriptions of the "Phanariot character" as portrayed in the region's post-Ottoman historiographies.

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