CHAPT^ER V
GOVERNMENT AND TRADE, CHURCHES AND HOUSES nivTe BXa^^ot eva
Tra^api.
Five Vlachs make a market.
Greek Proverb
THE for
it is
Balkan Wars
of
1912-13 and the subsequent
division of the territories that composed Turkey in Europe, have altered the political status of Samarina now included in Greece. Thus it seems worth while
how
and similar Vlach villages w^ere governed in The Vlachs scattered about the Balkan regions will eventually become assimilated to the dominant race of the country in which their homes are incorporated. Under the Turks however owing to the feuds of the rival political propagandas which endeavoured to absorb each for itself the bulk of the inhabitants of European Turkey, the to record
Turkish
it
times.
Vlachs preserved at least the semblance
and
of
a separate national
were in ordinary times almost autonomous. The system of the Turkish government, such as it was, does not seem to have been applied at any one particular time, but rather to have gro\^Ti up gradually and to have been based to some extent on the old local custom, unit,
in their hill villages
kaza of Ghrevena and thus, was a minor unit of the vilayet of Monastir. It lay on the borders of two vilayets, for the two villages immediately to the north and south, Furka and Briaza, were under Yannina. Lying as it does off the track of any main route the village was little troubled by Turkish government officials. The immediate power of the Sublime Porte was represented by a sergeant or a corporal and four
Samarina form^ed part
of the
as a part of the sanjak of Serfije,
other gendarmes.
Occasionally during the 69
summer
patrols