Central northern Samos between 1500 and 1700

In 1700 most Europeans would still think of Samos as the island of the ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, and, maybe, Polycrates, a powerful tyrant. Some would even be aware of the fact that Samos eventually served as a luxurious Roman resort, where Mark Antony and Cleopatra spent their happiest years. Ancient Samos was reflected in books and maps until the 18th century, but the modern state of affairs on the island was largely unknown. This situation was effectively overturned by a detailed account that was published in 1677 in London by the Greek Orthodox bishop of Samos Joseph Georgirenes. After some time the new data found their way into various travel and geography related texts, often without quoting the original source.

In the almost twenty centuries that interposed between the glorious Roman times and Georgirenes’s update, a lot of water has run under the bridge. The Eastern Roman Empire, better known as Byzantine Empire, lost its capital city (Constantinople) to the Ottomans in 1453. Samos was already before that in the hands of the Genoese, who were not able to hold back the expansion of the Turks in the Aegean Sea, and some islanders chose to leave their homes in view of the arrival of the new conquerors. Thus Samos was almost deserted in 1470. The island was covered by thick forests that camouflaged a few survivors and pirates.

A few years after 1470 Venice sent to the Eastern Mediterranean a fleet manned by mercenaries to push back the Ottomans. The men spent a few days of rest before action on Samos, which they found “deserted … full only of all sorts of animals, an abundance of woodland honey … and springs of sweet and living water that rise in all parts” (see “Surprised by Time” by Diana Gilliland Wright). A soldier was attacked by a bear.

Although Samos occasionally served as a hunting ground for the aristocracy, for almost a century the Ottomans could not decide what to do with the conquered, albeit deserted, island, and they left it more or less unprotected (with the exception of an attempt to build a castle near today’s Pythagorio around 1480). Until 1520 they were busy in various fronts, including St John’s knights, who kept defending their stronghold on the island of Rhodes, and the Venetians, who also kept a number of seaside forts, including Nauplia until 1540 and Candia until 1669. A second attempt to raise a castle in 1558 in Samos also failed. Nevertheless, by 1570 they had improved their overall position in the archipelago and they felt that Samos was underexploited, therefore they decided to re-populate it by giving incentives to possible volunteers. A new population would at least contribute taxes.

The resettlement of different groups was not achieved in a single day. The area was infested with pirates, and the war between Venetians and Ottomans was still in progress. In 1610 the traveler Henry de Beauveau (in his book titled “Relation Journaliere du Voyage du Levant”) and George Sandys (in “A Relation of a Journey Begun an Dom”) have both found only a scant population on the island.

After one century of repopulation (around 1670) bishop Georgirenes was able to describe eighteen villages. However, on the central northern side of the island there was only a single village, namely Vourliotes, whose initial inhabitants had migrated from Vourla, a nearby village in Asia Minor. In 1702 the French botanist Tournefort walked from Karlovassi to Vourliotes οn a rainy winter day and did not notice any other settlements. He also remained for a few days at the Vronta monastery.

Clearly, this area had not changed much in the few centuries before 1700, and it remained mostly uninhabited. It was a forest, which included lots of chestnut trees, and some streamlets, as observed by Piri Reis around 1520.

Schenk’s map: A strange 17th century map of the island of Samos

Around 2004 I decided to dig for the origins of Agios Konstantinos, a coastal village on the island of Samos. An obvious information source would be old maps. After a few months my quest failed to produce any tangible results, since all maps that I had encountered would hardly show any settlements. There was Buondelmonti’s map, drawn around 1420, which featured a few mountains and a ruined city. It was clear that Buondelmonti had hardly set foot on the island. Then there was admiral Piri Reis’s map, which was definitely more detailed, but it only focused on locations that might be of interest to the Ottoman navy.

Eventually I acquired a book titled “ports and settlements in the archipelago of piracy”, authored by Nikos Bellavilas. In the book there was a map of Samos drawn by the German cartographer Petr Schenk, who lived in Amsterdam. The map was full of hills, mountains, trees, villages, even rivers, monasteries and castles, along with labels indicating their names. I considered myself lucky. However, there was a trivial problem to be solved yet: the resolution of the map was just below the required level that would allow me to read the labels. I grabbed a magnifying glass, but all my attempts to make out the inscriptions were to no avail. Apparently I should find a better copy.

I looked for images on the Internet, I even wrote an email to the author, asking for his help. However, the resolution of the few available pictures was uniformly disappointing. I was obliged to leave the quest for a more pertinent time.

Then I traveled to Samos for the summer, having almost forgotten the map issue. Eventually I visited the national archive offices in the city of Samos. It was my first ever visit. I pushed my way through a heavy wooden door, which was closed albeit unlocked, into a dark corridor. I was about to knock on the director’s door to my left, when I noticed a large frame on the wall. My surprise was truly immense when I realised that the image in the frame was Schenk’s map. Back in 2004, when phone cameras were of low quality, I had to use a real camera. Being sort of tourist I carried one, but I hesitated for a moment. Somebody could appear and reprimand me for taking pictures. However the temptation was very strong as my object of desire was hanging just over my head at arm’s length. Bottomline, I did not intend to publish or commercially use the picture; my only intention was to read the labels. In a hurry I took two or three pictures, only to make sure that one of them would be clear enough for my purposes. Then I knocked on the director’s door.

In the afternoon, at the ease of my home, I inspected the booty on the display of my computer. Indeed, I could clearly read everything. However, my immediate two findings were that (a) the village I was looking for was clearly not there, and (b) all other villages were placed on the map as if somebody had thrown them on the island from the sky at random. For example, today’s main towns, Vathi and Karlovassi, were both on the eastern coast, close to Turkey and close to each other. In the real world they are located far from each other on the northern coast. The contour of the island was also quite deformed, but this was the least of my concerns since deformation was a common trait in all medieval and renaissance maps. In fact most old cartographers were unscrupulous plagiarists and mistakes would easily propagate.

At the same time their western European clients were worshipers of the ancient Greek spirit. Subsequently makers of maps of the Levant decorated the terrain with ancient Greek geographical features mainly taken from Strabo. As far as Samos is concerned, these features would be ruins of the ancient capital city (now known as Pythagorion), river Imvrassos, cape Mykale, and one or two mountain names.

Schenk’s map of Samos was created some time before 1700 and was most probably the first map in its time to use real world village names. Therefore the map raised expectations of real detail and accuracy. However, the map looks like a joke, since everything is in the wrong place, including of course the coastline. A really accurate map appeared twenty years later and was a byproduct of the oriental journey of the French botanist Tournefort.

An explanation of Schenk’s map can be found in events that happened twenty years earlier, i.e. around 1680, in London. Joseph Georgirenes was the Greek Orthodox bishop of Samos of the time, but he became increasingly frustrated by the situation on the island, which had been conquered by the Ottoman empire, and migrated to Europe together with a few families from Samos and Milos (his own birthplace). Georgirenes tried to set up an Orthodox community in London and his attempt to build a church was partially funded by the English royal family. In order to raise money for his project Georgirenes wrote “a description of the present state of Samos, Nicaria, Patmos, and Mount Athos”, which he dedicated to prince James Stuart, duke of York (and future king). This story has been written in sufficient detail by Sir Steven Runciman in his book titled “the Great Church in captivity”.

To make a long story short, Schenk based his map on Georgirenes’s description. However, the information that was included in the text was less than sufficient and Schenk attempted to fill the gaps by making a series of arbitrary, albeit unfortunate, assumptions. He ended up with a real mess, which he printed as the new map of Samos.

Therefore Agios Konstantinos does not appear on this map as a consequence of the fact that it does not appear in Georgirenes’s description. It does still not appear on Tournefort’s vastly more accurate map that was printed a few decades later. The central northern coast of Samos was a chestnut tree forest at that time.