The Vallahades (Greek: Βαλαχάδες) or Valaades (Greek: Βαλαάδες) are a Greek-speaking Muslim population who lived along the river Haliacmon in southwest Greek Macedonia, in and around Anaselitsa (modern Neapoli) and Grevena. They numbered about 17,000 in the early 20th century. They are a frequently referred-to community of late-Ottoman Empire converts to Islam, because, like the Cretan Muslims, and unlike most other communities of Greek Muslims, the Vallahades retained many aspects of their Greek culture and continued to speak Greek for both private and public purposes. Most other Greek converts to Islam from Macedonia, Thrace, and Epirus generally adopted the Ottoman Turkish language and culture and thereby assimilated into mainstream Ottoman society.
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👉 Vallahades in the context of Greek Muslims
Greek Muslims, also known as Grecophone Muslims, are Muslims of Greek ethnic origin whose adoption of Islam (and often the Turkish language and identity in more recent times) dates either from the contact of early Islamic caliphates with the Byzantine Empire or to the period of Ottoman rule in the southern Balkans and Anatolia. In more recent times, they consist primarily of descendants of Ottoman-era converts to Islam from Greek Macedonia (e.g., Vallahades), Crete (Cretan Muslims), and northeastern Anatolia (particularly in the regions of Trabzon, Gümüşhane, Sivas, Erzincan, Erzurum, and Kars).
Despite their ethnic Greek origin, the contemporary Grecophone Muslims of Turkey have been steadily assimilated into the Turkish-speaking Muslim population. Sizable numbers of Grecophone Muslims, not merely the elders but even young people, have retained knowledge of their respective Greek dialects, such as Cretan and Pontic Greek. Because of their gradual Turkification, as well as the close association of Greece and Greeks with Orthodox Christianity and their perceived status as a historic, military threat to the Turkish Republic, very few are likely to call themselves Greek Muslims. In Greece, Greek-speaking Muslims are not usually considered as forming part of the Greek nation.
Vallahades in the context of European Islam
European Islam, or Euro-Islam, is a hypothesized new branch of Islam that historically originated and developed among the European peoples of the Balkans (primarily Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and European Turkey, but also in Bulgaria, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, countries with sizable Muslim minorities). These communities, alongside those in some republics of Russia, constitute a large population which constitute large populations of European Muslims. Historically significant Muslim populations in Europe include Azerbaijanis, Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians, Balkan Turks, Bosniaks, Böszörmény, Chechens, Circassians, Cretan Turks, Crimean Tatars, Gajals, Gorani, Greek Muslims, Ingush, Khalyzians, Kazakhs, Lipka Tatars, Muslim Albanians, Muslim Romani people, Pomaks, Torbeshi, Turks, Turkish Cypriots, Vallahades, Volga Tatars, Yörüks, and Megleno-Romanians from Notia today living in East Thrace, although the majority are secular.
The terms "European Islam" and "Euro-Islam" were originally introduced at a conference that took place in Birmingham in 1988, presided by Carl E. Olivestam, senior lecturer at Umeå University, and subsequently published in the Swedish handbook Kyrkor och alternativa rörelser ("Churches and Alternative Movements"). "European Islam" defines the ongoing debate on the social integration of Muslim populations in Western European countries such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. There are three Islamic scholars who participate in the debate on "Euro-Islam": Enes Karić, Bassam Tibi, and Tariq Ramadan, who adopted the term in the second half of the 1990s but use it with different meanings. The foremost Western, Non-Muslim scholars of political science and/or Islamic studies involved in the debate on "Euro-Islam" are Jocelyne Cesari, Jørgen S. Nielsen, and Olivier Roy.