The 'Second Phanar': Constantinople Greeks and Ottoman Sultans, 1821 to 1914
Philip Mansel on the Greek families who went on serving the Ottoman court after 1821 — doctors, bankers, diplomats and the Patriarch who anathematised the revolution.
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The Greek revolution of 1821 did not empty Constantinople of Greeks, and Philip Mansel’s subject is the ones who stayed and rose. Doctors, bankers, court photographers, tutors to the Sultan’s sons, ambassadors: the Aristarchi, Mavrogeni, Mousouros and Zarifi families among many others chose life in the Ottoman capital over the new kingdom of Greece.
Abdulhamid II kept a Greek physician, Spyridon Mavrogeni, and a Greek banker, Giorgios Zarifi. The Oecumenical Patriarch, who had anathematised the revolution, remained inside the Ottoman hierarchy throughout. Mansel calls the arrangement a second Phanar, after the quarter that produced the first, and follows it to 1914.
The Anglo-Hellenic League co-hosts with the Levantine Heritage Foundation, in King’s Great Hall on the Strand. Six until eight.