1. Structure and Content

The publication of Kappadokika, a historical essay describing Ancient Cappadocia, and particularly the provinces of Kaisareia and Ikonio, at the printer house of the newspaper “Anatoli” in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1856 initiated a new era for laymen and scholars interested in the area, the people and the Greek-speaking “literary monuments” of Cappadocia. In this book, the only work of N. Rizos, the author is inspired by “patriotic duty”¹ and aims at reconsidering “the wrong ideas of the ignorant”,² who thought Cappadocia was a completely Turkish-speaking region. In addition, he wanted to designate the region as the inheritor of the Greek culture since the conquests of Alexander the Great. The first part of his work (pp. 1-61) includes an “ancient history of Cappadocia until it was captured by the Ottoman Turks”.³ Rizos persists in the glorious past of the region mainly stressing its devotion and contribution to Christianity: the figures of Basil and Gregory dominate, while the chapter about religion is the longest, “so that the readers could understand the extent of the Christian fervour in Asia in that century”.⁴ He aimed to prove that “Hellenism remains pure and survives from the evils of the atrocious slavery having God and hope at its centre”.⁵ In the second part he gives a “description of contemporary cities and villages of the provinces of Kaisareia [Kayseri] and Ikonio [Konya]”⁶ and provides “a few details about the mentality of the native inhabitants [hoping to] arouse their dutifulness towards kind deeds”.⁷

The writer makes a special mention of his birthplace Sinasos (today Mustafapaşa)⁸ and goes on for six pages praising it by saying that the inhabitants “speak Greek quite well, while most of them do not speak Turkish”.⁹ He also cites two folk songs, the first ever published for Cappadocia,¹⁰ commenting that “they have survived along with several other folk songs known only by women, who preserve the ancient language of the inhabitants with its ancient and strange phrases and words”.¹¹ As for other Greek-speaking communities like Pharasa (today Çamlıca), he thinks that the people either “speak Greek in an inarticulate and unconventional way”¹² or are not active enough for educational matters because they are “indifferent and involved in useless and selfish things”.¹³

2. Evaluation

Although the largest part of Rizos’ book is actually a copy of the work of Kyrillos,¹⁴ the specific directions he follows are more or less an innovation in Cappadocian letters, as they inaugurate what the historian Evangelia Balta calls the second stage of the interest in Cappadocian living monuments.¹⁵ This stage, extending from 1860 until 1890, is described by the gradual “discovery” of the region and its inhabitants with the help of native scholars, who promoted the unknown Greek-speaking communities by insisting on collecting linguistic material and framing an educational policy intending to by all means propagate (to Turkish-speaking populations) or “correct” (in Greek-speaking populations) the Greek language.