Talk:Sarakatsani
Quality of this page
Again, I deleted the phrase "in which residual Vlach language words and syntax can still be traced" because it does not make any sense. The definition of Greek language is sufficient for anyone interested in the lingustic details of the language.
I deleted the phrase "to some extend mixed with Aromanian words" because it has no meaning. It only implies that the Sarakatsani might have been speeking Aromanian at some point of time which is not the case. Besides, what language in the world is not mixed with words from other languages. Is Aromanian a pure language which does not include words from other languages? The Sarakatsani dialect is an idiom of Greek language which icludes words from many languages of their surrouding people. Turkish words, albanian words, even words from western european languages can be found as well as Aromanian words. Is this supposed to mean something? I dont think so.
This page is pretty much all wrong. I will try to explain
1. "The Sarakatsani are a group of Greek (and Greek-speaking) transhumant shepherds" correct
2. "mainly located in the Pindos Mountains" it should be "mainly located in the Pindos mountains and in particular, the Agrafa mountains which is the southern part of Pindos untill the beginning of the 1900s.
3. "The Sarakatsani traditionally spent the summer months in the Rhodope Mountains, in what is today Bulgaria" this may be said only about the so called "anatolites"(easterners) or "polites"(comes from the word Poli meaning Constantinople). This part of Sarakatsani used to spend their summers in either the Rhodope Mountains or the mountains of Falakro in Serres and Drama perfecrures of Greece and either returned to the coast of western (today Greek)Thrace and eastern(today Turkish)Thace or went west to the coast of the Black Sea.
4. "The migration would start on the eve of Saint George's Day in April and the return migration would start on Saint Demetrius' Day, October 26th" sounds too poetic to be true. First of all Saint George's Day does not have a standard date in Greek calendar. It is true though that they used to leave for(and return from) the mountains depending on the weather around these dates
5. "After 1947, certain groups of Sarakatsani were not allowed to leave Bulgaria and enter Greece" True, but only refers to these Sarakatsani that have stayed in Bulgaria. I must empasize the fact that most of the Sarakatsani are in Greece
6. "They were subsequently settled in Bulgaria and they became partly Bulgarized. In Bulgaria these Sarakatsani are known as Karakachans" true
7. "while in Romania they are called Saracaciani" may be true but as far as i know there are absolutely no Sarakatsani in Romania
These are some comments for the first paragraph. This first paragraph does not include any comments about the Sarakatsani who live in Greek Thrace and Eastern Macedonia, Greece(very much related to these Sarakatsani In Bulgaria), Central Macedonia, Greece and FYROM(the so called "Kasandrinoi" because they used to spend their summers in Halkidiki(Kassandra)), in Thessaly, Ipeiros, Sterea Ellada, Peloponnese and so on. It seems to me that you are implying that Sarakatsani only live in Bulgaria.
To be continued...
This page needs a lot of work. Most of the content seems to have been copied from various Web sources uncritically. I have removed the most flagrant copyright violations / plagiarism, but a lot of the remaining substance seems to be paraphrases. What's more, many of the quoted sources appear not to have been read by the writers of this article, but quoted second-hand without attribution (especially from the two articles mentioned in External links). Several of the quoted sources are from travel writers, not scholars, and do not seem particularly reliable. Let's work on it and improve it! --Macrakis 04:55, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
The initiator of this article is [Deucalionite] whose text I rectified several times. I found him a bit too biased and too pro-Greek. Nevertheles he did not mind when I inserted the passage in which I mention the three contradictory hypotesis as to the origins of the Sarakatsani (Dorians? Vlachs? Yuruks?). He wiped off quite a good external link [Vlach, Yuruk, Sarakatsani confluences in the Balkans] because he thought of it as 'Romanian propaganda'. I did not reinstate it for the sake of not wanting to seem biased myself too. There're plenty of books published on the Sarakatsani both in Greece (alas, all out of print) and elsewhere such as that of Maurogiannēs Dionysēs - Hoi Sarakatsanoi tēs Thrakēs, tēs Kentrekēs kai Anatolikēs Makedonias : epitopia koinōniologikē ereuna apo Evro heos Thessalonikē, Athēna : Ekdoseis "Dōdōnē", 1998. The latest book is Richard Clogg's 'Minorities of Greece' (Hurst, London 2002) where there is an article about Sarakatsani. See also a recent conference which debated on them and which took place in France in 2003 at [Conference]--Apostolos Margaritis
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. If you think the vlachophiles.net link is useful, let's get it back in. It is not bias to represent multiple points of view, it is the core value of Wikipedia, NPOV. It would be interesting to summarize the information from the Clogg book and the conference, also, which are surely better sources than any of the ones used so far. --Macrakis 16:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
You are perfectly right, we can add these links and summaries but then as you very well know there is always the question of the lenghth of a Wikipedia article. This topic is a difficult one and how can you be brief and accurate in the same time? The question of the Sarakatsani is a puzzle in its own way, a hard nut to crack. They seem to have 'multiple' origins. Is this really possible? Or maybe the Sarakatsani were different things at different stages of their history. This brings us back to the thorny issue of the identity of the tribes, nations etc. and to what is an ethnicity? To add insult to injury I just found out that an Italian professor, Antonio Baldacci who visited the area inhabited by the Sarakatsani (including the putative place of their origin, the village of Sakaharetsi -today renamed 'Perdikaki'- in the province of Baltos or Valtos around the market town of Vonitza) thought they were remnants of the left behind Spanish mercenaries who for half a century or more, annexed this province (via the Kingdom of Naples). This sounds a bit fantasist to say the least. Again, too many leads and no clear answers. Apostolos Margaritis 10:40, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree that we don't want to make the article unnecessarily long. I think we don't need to lengthen it much if we both edit the existing material judiciously and add new material. --Macrakis 21:38, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Merge proposal
Sarakatsani and Karakachans are two variants of the same word, referring to the same concept. The spelling 'Sarakatsani' tends to be used in Greek contexts, and 'Karakachans' in Bulgarian settings, but as the articles both say, they are the same people. They are listed in a standard dictionary of Greek (Babiniotis) as variants (σαρακατσάνος and καρακατσάνος), probably coming from the Turkish karakaçan < kirkaçan 'who flee to uncultivated land'. So I vote:
You are right in theory but beware, there is scholarly work on the Bulgarian Karakachans too see list of books It could be that the two groups really diverged so much that cannot anymore be viewed as one or put under one umbrella.--Apostolos Margaritis
Understood. But having a single page on a subject does not imply that there aren't different aspects of the subject, or that the subject matter is uniform. To the extent that the Bulgarian Karakachans are distinct, that should certainly be discussed in the merged article. On the other hand, we should be careful about politically-motivated arbitrary distinctions. For example, "Greek coffee" is the same thing as "Turkish coffee", and Arvanites speak an Albanian dialect/language. --Macrakis 16:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I get your point. Why then not merge the two entries providing as you say that the nuances and diffeences between Kara- and Sarakatsans will be discussed in the new, unified article? Apostolos Margaritis 10:30, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Merger Complete
Now I know someone is going to have a fit with what I did. Yet, as a disclaimer, I did not perform this merger just because I felt like stirring up the pot of controversy. However, a person out of nowhere will nonetheless probably proclaim that "the Karakachans are ethnically different from the Sarakatsani." Perhaps one might be so bold as to state that I am cruelly insensitive toward the feelings of the Bulgarians, the Romanians, etc. "How dare you do this to my people Deucalionite" or something along those lines. Something to look forward to.
Seriously now, both articles about the Sarakatsani and the Karakachans have been stuck in a state of limbo for a long time. No one seemed interested in solving the so-called "merger dispute". So, in order to help everyone move on with their lives, I thought it would be more efficient to have the history of the Sarakatsani be presented on one page. Besides, the Karakachans article pretty much had the same information one could find on the Sarakatsani article.
As far as I am concerned, the only main difference between the Sarakatsani and the Karakachans is merely etymological. Sarakatsani is a Greek term and Karakachans is a Turkish/Bulgarian nomenclature that represents the same people. I mean should we put a separate article for each foreign linguistic nomenclature that a single ethnic group possesses? I don't see a Saracaciani page entailing how the Romanians perceive the Sarakatsani. Why is that though? Well, because no matter what you call the Sarakatsani, you are ultimately talking about the same group of people (be they transhumant sheperds or not).
The Karakachans and the Sarakatsani are one in the same people. Granted a portion of the Sarakatsani populace was "Bulgarianized" and could have very well developed a different ethnic identity by upholding their Bulgarian nomenclature of "Karakachans." Yet, what if they did not? What if the Karakachans still retain to this day their identity without necessarily deeming themselves as ethnically Bulgarian (even if they are Bulgarian citizens).
If Bulgarian scholarship wants to provide information pertaining specifically to the Karakachans, then that information should be placed within a subsection of the overall Sarakatsani article. The same thing should be said for Romanian scholarship, German scholarship, Chinese scholarship or whatever scholarship anyone is willing enough to provide.
If anyone feels that this merger is wrong, then go ahead and create two "different" articles possessing (more or less) the same information. Redundancy is unnecessary and could lead to needless confusion among readers. Of course, I do not expect anyone to agree with me or to assume that my reasons for performing the merger were sound and honest. In the end, someone is going to have to put an end to this "merger dispute" stuck in limbo. Over and out. - Deucalionite 5/2/06 12:12 P.M. EST
- I changed some parts of the article since they seemed too NPOV and clearly a part of simple vlach/romanian propaganda ( I recognized some of the arguments from the page vlachophile.com ). Anyway, I am a member of two greek Sarakatsani unions, and I can say for sure that we are 100% non- Vlachs. I am not sure if the other theories ( Turkish tribes) should be stated as an ewually plausible theory.
- Thank you for your contributions. Just so you know, the Vlachs were latinized Greeks and some Romanian propagandists took it upon themselves to consider the Vlachs in Greece as "Romanians" only based on language. As I have said a million times before, language does not define ethnicity. The Vlachs, just like the Sarakatsani, have ethnic Greek origins and have contributed enormously to the development of the modern Greek nation-state (even though they were already a part of the Greek "genos" and "ethnos" for a very long time). Of course, don't expect everyone to see things this way. Again, thank you for your contributions and take care. Over and out. Deucalionite 17:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
- What the hell are you talking about Deucalionite? Vlachs=Greek? i am an Aromanian living in Romania and i wonder why did my grandfathers (as in both of them) always talk about Greeks in vulgar terms ,even using "Greek" as a derogatory term in certain expressions, IF Vlachs are "latinised Greeks"? i even know of an old folk song about a boy whose father gets killed by Greeks and his mother tells him to "never forgive them". Ofcourse i'm saying this since you seem to completely disconsider the linguistc evidence of their Latin origin.
Regarding the article... why is the "Sarakatsani are not Vlachs" thing repeated over and over till it begins to sound as patethic propaganda? What is the purpose of this elaborated thesis to contradict the Vlach Origins theory of the Sarakatsani if the freaking Vlach Origins theory isn't even presented in the article?