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.
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