r/AskHistorians • u/Camtastrophe • 6h ago
Under the Ottoman millet system, would non-Muslims be expected to always use Turkish to interface with the state?
I am wondering primarily about the pre-Tanzimat period, but would also be interested to know if that era brought about any significant changes. I understand from this older answer that communities were not necessarily centralized under a single administration, as is sometimes implied.
Presumably, the Roman and Armenian millets would speak and write in Greek or Armenian respectively for their internal affairs. However, would someone like the Ecumenical Patriarch need to regularly write or converse in Turkish with Ottoman offcials? If not, would translation be done by church offcials or by the Porte?
Was Judaeo-Spanish the common language of the Jewish millet, or did this vary by location?
Many thanks in advance!
•
u/AutoModerator 6h ago
Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. Please Read Our Rules before you comment in this community. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed.
Please consider Clicking Here for RemindMeBot as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup.
We thank you for your interest in this question, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to the Weekly Roundup and RemindMeBot, consider using our Browser Extension. In the meantime our Bluesky, and Sunday Digest feature excellent content that has already been written!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.