A town in Syria that speaks Greek! (video)

The Mediterranean Sea is synonymous to large scale population movements throughout the history of mankind. At one point in antiquity the ‘middle sea’, which is what its name means, was scattered with Greek colonies, reaching from Anatolia in the eastern part all the way to the west in Spain and France. Many might have heard of the first Greek settlers who colonised Marseilles in southern France, but few know of the ancestors of Cretans living in the town of Al-Mamidiyah, in Syria close to the borders with Lebanon. The town, which was founded by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II around 1897 to serve as a refugee for Greek speaking Muslim Cretans, who were forced to leave the island during the Greco-Turkish wars of 1897-98. The unique thing about this community is their strong bond with their Cretan heritage, unlike other ethnic minorities. They take great pride in hanging on to the forefathers’ language and culture, while in contrast to other Muslims, they only marry one wife and consider it a shame to divorce! According to a 2004 Syrian government census the town had a population of 7,400, a large part of which were of Cretan lineage.