Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1921.djvu/1388

 Sivas (Sebasteia).

65,000

Bitlis.

40,000

Trebizond

55,000

Diarbekr

38,000

1336 TURKEY

In the small European territory now remaining under Turkish rule Moslems preponderate. Other races represented are Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, Gipsies, Jews. In Asiatic Turkey there is a large Turkish element, with some four million Arabs, besides Greeks, Syrians, Kurds, Circassians, Armenians, Jews, and numerous other races.

The population of the chief towns still remaining under Turkey is approxi- mately as follows : — Constantinople. . 1,000,000 Brussa .... 110,000 Kaisarieh. . . 54,000

Konia- .... 45,000

Religion.

Mahommedanism is the established State religion. The Sultan as Caliph is Supreme Head. The chief ecclesiastical dignitary is the Sheikh-ul-Islam, but his functions are judicial and legal rather- than spiritual. He is a member of the Cabinet.

Mahommedans form the vast majority of the population in Asiatic Turkey, but only one-half of the population in the provinces which con- stituted European Turkey before the Balkan War ofl912-13. Recognised by the Turkish Government are a number of non-Mahommedan native communities or 'millets,' namely : 1. Latins or Catholics, who use the Roman Liturgy, consisting of the descendants of the Genoese and Venetian settlers in the Empire, and other native Catholics of the Latin rite ; 2. Orthodox Greeks under various separately recognised Patriarchs, of whom the principal is the CEcumenical Patriarch at Constantinople ; 3. Armenians, under their Patriarch at Constantinople, but under the supreme spiritual control of a Catholicos at Echmiadzin, in the Russian Caucasus. In 1903, the old dignity of Catholicos of Sis, in Cilicia, was restored and a new appointment made. There still remains in abeyance the seat of the Catholicos of Akhtamur (Van), an ancient dignity ; 4. Armenian Catholics, under a Patriarch at Constanti- nople ; 5. Chaldean Catholics, under a Patriarch at Mosul ; 6. Protestants, consisting of converts chiefly among the Armenians ; 7. Syrian Catholics, under a Patriarch at Mardin ; 8. Syrian Jacobites, under a. Patriarch at Mardin ; 9. Melchites, under a Patriarch at Damascus; 10. Jews • of two rites, now separately recognised; 11. Bulgarian Catholics; 12. Maronites, chiefly in the Lebanon ; and 13. Nestorians, or Assyrian Christians, under the Patriarch Mar Shimun of Kochannes. The last two are, however, only semi-ofhcially recognised as independent communi- ties. These religious denominations are invested with the privilege of possessing their own ecclesiastical rule. The. spiritual heads ol the recognised communities possess in varying degrees civil lunctions, which in some eases, and more especially in that of the Greek Patriarch, are of considerable importance.

In Constantinople about half the settled inhabitants are Mussulman, the other half being made up mostly of Orthodox Greeks, Armenians, Roman Catholics, Armenian and other Uniates, and Jews. There is, besides,' a very large foreign population of various professions. In the Islands of the Mgea.ii Sea the population is mostly Christian.

A priesthood in the strict sense of the term cannot be said to exist in Mahommedan Turkey. The Ulernu, however, or persons connected in one way or another with the official ministrations of Islam, form a separate .lass. The principal charges in connection with mosques, theological schools, &c, are to a large extent hereditary.