Cretan Greek in the context of "Vitsentzos Kornaros"

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.

The Cretan Muslims or Cretan Turks (Greek: Τουρκοκρητικοί or Τουρκοκρήτες, Tourkokritikí or Tourkokrítes; Turkish: Giritli, Girit Türkleri, or Giritli Türkler; Arabic: أتراك كريت) were the Muslim inhabitants of the island of Crete. Their descendants settled principally in Turkey, the Dodecanese Islands under Italian administration (part of Greece since 1947), Syria (notably in the village of Al-Hamidiyah), Lebanon, Palestine, Libya, and Egypt, as well as in the larger Turkish diaspora.

Cretan Muslims were descendants of ethnic Greeks who had converted to Islam after the Ottoman conquest of Crete in the seventeenth century. They identified as Greek Muslims, and were referred to as "Turks" by some Christian Greeks due to their religion; not their ethnic background. Many Cretan Greeks had converted to Islam in the wake of the Ottoman conquest of Crete. This high rate of local conversions to Islam was similar to that in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, parts of western Greek Macedonia (such as the Greek Muslim Vallaades), and Bulgaria; perhaps even a uniquely high rate of conversions rather than immigrants. The Greek Muslims of Crete continued to speak Cretan Greek. European travellers' accounts note that the "Turks" of Crete were mostly not of Turkic origin, but were Cretan converts from Orthodoxy.

Georgios Chortatzis or Chortatsis (Greek: Γεώργιος Χορτάτζης/Χορτάτσης; c. 1545 – c. 1610) was a Greek dramatist in Cretan verse. He was, along with Vitsentzos Kornaros, one of the main representatives of a school of literature in the vernacular Cretan dialect that flourished in the late 16th and early 17th centuries under Venetian rule. His best-known work is Erofili (or Erophile), a tragedy set in Egypt.

Erotokritos (Greek: Ἐρωτόκριτος) is a romance composed by Vikentios Kornaros in early 17th century Crete. It consists of 10,012 fifteen-syllable rhymed verses, the last twelve of which refer to the poet himself. It is written in the Cretan dialect of the Greek language. Its central theme is love between Erotokritos (only referred to in the work as Rotokritos or Rokritos) and Aretousa. Around this theme, revolve other themes such as honour, friendship, bravery and courage. Erotokritos and Erophile by Georgios Hortatzis constitute classic examples of Greek Renaissance literature and are considered to be the most important works of Cretan literature. It remains a popular work to this day, largely due to the music that accompanies it when it is publicly recited. A particular type of rhyming used in the traditional mantinades was also the one used in Erotokritos.

El-Hamidiyeh (Arabic: الحميدية, romanized: el-Hamidiyye, Greek: Χαμιδιέ) is a town on the Syrian coast. The town was founded in a very short time on the direct orders of the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamit II around 1897, to serve as a refuge for the Greek-speaking Muslim Cretan community, forced to leave Crete during the 1897–98 Greco-Turkish War and resettled by the Sultan in Hamidiyeh and other coastal areas of the Levant and as far as Libya. The majority still speak Cretan Greek in their daily lives. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, el-Hamidiyeh had a population of 7,404 in the 2004 census.