1. General Information – History

The village of Muradiye or Hamidiye (modern Muradiye) was situated in the valley of the Hermos River, on the railway line and the road connecting Smyrna with Magnisia. It was within 31 km NE of Smyrna and 10 km NW of Magnisia.

Both above place names came from sultans. The Muslims initially called their village Gavur Köy, for it included only Christians.¹ It is also said that the metropolitan of Ephesus Agathangelos asked from Sultan Hamid to change the offensive name Gavur Köy. The sultan gave the village the name Hamidiye after his own name, thus rewarding the metropolitan for the volunteer Christian groups formed in the Russo-Ottoman war of 1877-1878. In the years of Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909) the village was named Hamidiye,² while after he was dethroned it was renamed Muradiye.

The village has been reported since the 16^th c. as Kafirboz Köy, including both Christian and Muslim populations. In the 1575 census the village included 14 Muslim households with 10 unmarried villagers and 27 Christian households with 3 unmarried villagers.³ It used to be a wakf of the Muradiye mosque of Magnesia (built between 1613 and 1616 by Sultan Murad III). It had previously been a timario (fief). However, the village towards the late 19^th and the early 20^th centuries included mainly Turkish-speaking Orthodox people. Besides, it is very likely that Orthodox refugees settled in the village during the migrations from the Peloponnese to western Asia Minor in the late 18^th and the early 19^th c. on the initiative of the Karaosmanoğlu family.⁴ In this case, it could be supported that the Greek language of the settlers was absorbed by the natives. According to refugee testimonies, most of the Orthodox inhabitants were from Magnesia.⁵ Around 1875, Muradiye allegedly included “more than three hundred families”,⁶ while in the early 20^th century there were 7000-8000 inhabitants.⁷ According to a more moderate estimate, there were 5000 people.⁸ The 1905 statistics report 4000 villagers.⁹

The village belonged to the kaymakamlık of Magnisia,¹⁰ the mutasarrıflık of Magnisia and the vilayet of Aydin, while no müdürlük is reported. There was also a police station. The village Church was under the jurisdiction of the diocese of Ephesus.

After 1922 about four hundred families settled in Nea Magnesia of Thessaloniki, while the rest scattered in various places of Greece like Nea Ionia of Volos, Poros Island, Athens, Piraeus and Crete.

2. Society – Economy

The village spread over a forested low valley and was divided into two parts by a tributary of the river Hermos. In the 16^th century the Christian inhabitants paid a head tax amounting to between 20 and 25 akçe.¹¹ They were farmers and produced wheat, barley, sesame and garden produce. They also had vineyards and three mills. There was a flour mill inside the village, while another three mills owned by Muslim millers operated outside the village. Towards the late 19^th and the early 20^th c. the inhabitants, who were only Orthodox, were landowners and were farming the land producing cotton, tobacco, opium, sesame, grain and raisins. To a less extent they were involved with stock-breeding (cattle, sheep and goats). Moreover, the villagers collected liquorice growing in the fields near the Hermos. With the exception of Turks, a large number of foreigners worked in the fields in summer months. Part of the rural production was absorbed by Smyrna, while most economic transactions were conducted with the city of Magnisia.

Inside the village there was a church dedicated to St. Nicholas. It was a domed single space with a wood-carven iconostasis. It was inaugurated in 1856 and was supposedly built on the ruins of an ancient church.¹² Outside the village and near the banks of the Hermos was the Church of St. George. The information says that this church was built on the ruins of an old monastery founded by the Byzantine Emperor John Doukas Vatatzes.¹³ It had an enclosed yard surrounding the school and the cells that served as church offices, the houses of teachers and priests as well as rooms accommodating foreign workers. Beside the church entrance there was a agiasma in the form of a chapel.

The village had schools for boys and girls as well as a nursery school. In 1905 the boys’ school had five grades with three teachers and a hundred students, while the girls’ school had three grades with one female teacher and thirty-five students. Their budgets amounted to 160 and 25 Turkish liras respectively.¹⁴ The villagers backed the church and the schools through church fundraising –most important being that taking place at midday on Easter Sunday, during the so-called “Second Resurrection” of Orthodox Easter.

3. Popular Religiosity

On the celebration day of St. Barbara (December 4) the women would gather in the neighbourhoods early in the morning. They boiled wheat, various pulses, raisins, pomegranates, cinnamon and sugar in large iron pots before they distributed the concoction to the villagers. They called it “hasilasi” (the Greek-speaking called it “barbara”) and believed that in this way St. Barbara would protect the children from smallpox.