Rums (Rumlar) and Greeks (Yunanlar)

The header of the Ottoman translation of the Greek Declaration of İndependence indicates that this proclamation was addressed to the ‘Rum milleti’ (Rum milletine hitaben). However, inside the text the Greek nation was described as ‘Yunan milleti’.

Recent works have demonstrated that, prior to the Greek Revolution, the word was rather a concept of ethnoreligious community than an institutionalized system.Footnote ¹⁶ By contrast, Yusuf Karabıçak, who has studied a comprehensive body of primary sources produced in the period after the French Revolution, has argued that millet had acquired the modern meaning of nation before the outbreak urst of the Greek Revolution.Footnote ¹⁷

In the late eighteenth century, the prevailing meaning of the term Rum milleti was an empire-wide religious community with the Patriarch.Footnote ¹⁸ The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Istanbul was increasingly incorporated into the Ottoman administration system and the authority of the Patriarch of Istanbul was extended after the abolition of the autocephalous archbishoprics of Achris and Ipekion in 1766 and 1767 and the incorporation of their suffragans into his jurisdiction.Footnote ¹⁹ In this perspective, the term included all subjects of the Sultan who were Greek Orthodox, irrespective of their ethnic origin. Yet at the same time, in the context of the Greek Revolution, the word was used to describe a group of former Christian Orthodox subjects who rebelled against the empire and it was considered to be a separate entity, a nation.Footnote ²⁰

The translator of the Declaration used Rum and Yunan (literally Ίωνες/Ionians) interchangeably to refer to the rebels. The Ottoman intelligentsia adopted the old Near Eastern designation of the Greeks, Yunan (‘Ionians’) in order to describe ancient Greek history and civilization. Muslim intellectual tradition lacked a precise notion on where to locate the Yunan, except for some vague generalities such as Athens being the glorious city of the ancient Greek philosophers or Macedonia being the country of Alexander the Great.Footnote ²¹

Under this influence, Ottoman scholars exalted the ancient Greeks, a ‘race’ (kavim) that had been wiped out from history, and gave their civilization a prestigious, albeit semi-mythical, place of glory, wisdom, and virtue.Footnote ²² Various Ottoman chroniclers cited the most eminent ancient Greek philosophers. For example, Taşköprülüzade Ahmet Efendi (1495–1561), in his work entitled Sciences of Government (Mevzuatü’l-ulûm), characterized Plato and Aristotle as ‘masters of wisdom’. Likewise, the polymath Katib Çelebi (1609–1657) composed A Guide to the History of [Ancient] Greeks, Romans, and Christians for the Perplexed (İrşâd-ûl-hayârâ ilâ târîh-ûl-Yunân ve Rûm ve Nasara, 1665) and The Steps to the Knowledge (Süllemü’l-vüsûl), in which he argued that ‘thanks to Aristotle, science had progressed in several Muslim countries’.Footnote ²³

The celebrated Ottoman explorer and traveller Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682) included in his Travels (Seyahâtname) Yunan to refer to ancient Greece and its inhabitants, as also lisan-ı Yunan (Greek language) to describe the ancient Greek written language and its application in the discipline of epigraphy.Footnote ²⁴ In the same vein Mahmud Efendi, the mufti of Athens, who lived in the city for several years, compiled in 1738 the History of the City of Philosophers (Tarih-i Medinetü'l Hukema) in which he discussed the history of ancient Athens. A striking feature of his book is the use of contemporary terms such as Sultan and jizya for rulers and institutions of ancient Athens. Mahmud Efendi's ‘Ottomanization’ of the text reflects his attempt to render his text comprehensible to his contemporaries so they could take lessons from his story.Footnote ²⁵

During the last decades of the eighteenth century the term Yunan underwent a conceptual shift and a spatial delimitation in some texts by Ottoman chronographers. Ahmed Cavid (d. 1803), a high-ranking bureaucrat and protégé of Sultan Selim III, composed the chronicle The Garden of Facts (Hadîka-yı Vekâyi) in which he described the events of the years 1790 and 1791 during the Russian–Ottoman War of 1787–1792. In his narration he used the phrase vilayat-ı Yunan (Greek provinces) as equivalent to the Balkan territories of the empire.Footnote ²⁶ Another scholar and diligent observer of his era, Kethüda Said Efendi, commenting in his account The History Kethüda Said Efendi (Kethüda Said Efendi Tarihi) on Ottoman–Russian relations and the projects of Catherine the Great, argued that ‘the consequences of the sedition instigated by the Empress of Moscow, will be the creation of Greek republics (Yunan cumhurlarını) that had once dominated over the “Roman lands” (Rum-ili).’Footnote ²⁷ According to the imagined spatial demarcations of these texts, the term Yunan started also to be identified with the territories of the Balkan peninsula, where numerous subjects of the Sultan were of Greek origin. Nonetheless, the term did not abolish its traditional meaning and continued referring to the ancient Greeks.

On the other hand, the impact of the Enlightenment on Greek political thought provided the catalyst for the transition to a new national and liberal ideology, championed by the radical representatives of the Greek Enlightenment in the last decades of the eighteenth century. The awakening of a sense of a distinct identity among the multiethnic populations of the Ottoman milieu was one of the most significant and enduring implications of the cultural changes brought about under the influence of the European Enlightenment and the waves of revolution across the Mediterranean and the Americas.Footnote ²⁸ Gregorios Konstantas and Daniel Philippides, the co-authors of A New Geography (Νεωτερική Γεωγραφία), criticized the identity advocated by the Patriarchate. They also tried to provide a precise delimitation of modern Hellas and disapproved of Rum as being identified ‘with the terminology and the rhetoric of their tyrants’.Footnote ²⁹

These new ideas are reflected in the text of the Declaration of Independence. The rebels claimed their right to political self-determination ‘as the descendants of the wise and ‘beneficent’ nation of the Hellenes, contemporaries of the enlightened and well governed peoples of Europe’ (Απόγονοι του σοφού και φιλανθρώπου Έθνους των Ελλήνων σύγχρονοι των πεφωτισμένων και ευνομουμένων λαών της Ευρώπης). The nationalized reconstruction of the past was the core ideology of the Greek movement of independence.Footnote ³⁰ The translator of the Ottoman text employed the term Yunan milleti to describe this distinctiveness of a part of subordinated subjects who claimed to be privileged with moral virtues and humanitarian values and whose loyalties to imperial institutions had suffered significant erosion (‘Dirayet ve irfan ve merhamet ve şefkatı meşhur olmuş Yunan milletinin hakları ve cem'i umurlarını kavaid ve kavanın-ı müstahkemeye tatbık ile muntazam ül hal olan Avrupa milletlerinin hem-muasırları’).

This differentiation in the definition describes the awareness that the Ottoman state elite had of the emergence and the independence of part of the Rum milleti. After the first years of the Greek Revolution, Ottoman chronographers and the documents compiled by the empire's statesmen used more frequently the term Yunan to refer to their insurgent subjects. For example, Şânizâde, the chronographer of the Porte, argued that the Greek Revolution ‘was incited by teachers, preaching the idea of freedom and clergymen who recruited their eschatological prophecies concerning the foundation of an independent Greek state (Zuhur-i Devlet-i Yunan)’.Footnote ³¹

In an imperial decree sent to the Ottoman commanders and governors of the north Balkan provinces, advising them to be extra vigilant with regard to a possible war against Russia, Mahmud II asserted that ‘if we withdraw the Muslim troops from Wallachia and Moldavia and appoint Rum voivodes, their kind would gather around them, because of the millet-wide character of their sedition and the Rums have rallied around the fallacious idea of capturing the so-called Greek realms (‘Rumların zum-ı batılları gûya Yunan memalikin zabt itmek üzere ittifak oldukları derkâr’)’.Footnote ³² In the years that followed, the Ottoman authorities employed the term muhibb-i Yunan to describe the Philhellenic committees set up to collect money, provide ammunition, and send medical and food supplies for the benefit of the Greeks.Footnote ³³ In 1828, after the destruction of the Ottoman fleet anchored in Navarino Bay and prior to the start of hostilities against Russia, Sultan Mahmud II made a jihad-like public declaration in order to mobilize the Muslims of the empire. The declaration highlighted that:

Independent nation (millet-i müstakile), liberty (serbestiyyet) and fatherland (vatan)

The translator of the Ottoman text used millet to describe the modern concept of nation as a political subject of self-determination and added the crucial phrase millet-i müstakıla to describe the emerging independent (Greek) nation. It is important to comment on the term müstakıla, since it determines and defines the modern concept of the millet. The word derives from the Arabic verbal noun istiklal, and in classical Ottoman usage the expression müstakıla was in no sense a political term: it was used of those subjects who used to pay the jizya tax as a distinct group,Footnote ³⁵ as well as to the properties and the lands where access was limited. For example, in an imperial decree dated 1622, a woodland area (koru) that belonged to the glebe of the Xeropotamos Monastery in Ierissos, labeled as ‘private and independent’ (mahsus ve müstakıl) and only the monks had the right to exploit the timber.Footnote ³⁶ In addition, müstakıla was used to convey the notions of ‘separate, detached, unlimited’, or even ‘arbitrary’, and occasionally it could be used in a political context, of a dynasty, a region, or a part of a city not totally subject to a higher authority, From the eighteenth century onwards the term could be also used to designate an absolutist monarchy.Footnote ³⁷

With respect to the French Revolution, müstakıla still bore was its traditional association with the arbitrary: in the view of the Ottomans, the Jacobins were planning ‘to abolish the absolute government (hükûmeti-i müstakile) and to leave the conduct of affairs to the common folk (avam-ı nas)’.Footnote ³⁸ Yet, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, under the influence of European political ideas, the term underwent a conceptual shift and acquired the modern meaning of political sovereignty.Footnote ³⁹ Şânizâde argued in his account that during the First Serbian Revolt (1804–1813) the leader of the rebels, Karađorđević, desired to establish an independent government (müstakıl hükûmet) in the districts inhabited by the Serbian people (Sırp reaya).Footnote ⁴⁰ Thus, in the translation of the Declaration, the new meaning of müstakıl seemed to have prevailed.

Intimately intertwined with that term serbestiyyet (liberty), which the Greek rebels laid claim to in their Declaration (‘bundan evvelce serbestiyyetimizi ilan ve işaa ile’). Serbestiyyet in classical Ottoman usage meant a lack of limitations and restrictions, and most frequently appeared in connection with timars (grants of revenues assigned to the feudal cavalry).Footnote ⁴¹ The term underwent a conceptual shift during the 1760s when it was used to assert political liberty, individual freedom, and even independence: the war against Russia in 1768 was declared for the protection of Poland's serbestiyyet.Footnote ⁴²

The events that took place during and after the French Revolution, especially the abolition of the monarchy and the public execution of Louis XVI, and the export of revolutionary ideas among the Orthodox Christian subjects of the Sultan, after Bonaparte's Italian campaign (1796–1797) and Egyptian expedition (1798–1801), reshaped the Ottoman understanding of the concept of liberty. By the turn of the nineteenth century, serbestiyyet had come to be equated with sedition.Footnote ⁴³

In this regard, Atıf Efendi, the Ottoman chief officer of the foreign affairs (reisülküttab), submitted in 1798 a memorandum to the Porte in which he evaluated the French Revolution just before Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition. He explained that the mob leaders of the ‘sedition’ propagated ‘so called equality (müsavat) and freedom (serbestiyyet) for the attainment of ultimately worldly happiness’.Footnote ⁴⁴

This new concept of serbestiyyet was well established by the Greek Revolution. Es'ad Efendi, the chronographer of the imperial court, argued in his account that ‘Russia and the other Great Powers misled the infidels to sedition, promising that they would taste freedom (lezzet-i serbestiyyet) and guaranteeing the establishment of a Greek Republic (Yunan Cumhuru izhar diyerek)’.Footnote ⁴⁵

The engagement of the Ottoman intelligentsia with the modern ideas of the French Revolution had also another dimension. In his account, Şânizâde gave his advice about how to prevent the disintegration of the empire. This Ottoman chronographer invoked the basic principles of French political vocabulary and favoured their adoption for the salvation of the empire:

Şânizâde underscored the meaning of fatherland (memleket or vatan) and promoted the idea that Ottomans should share devotion to their own patrie. In Ottoman parlance vatan meant merely birthplace, and the idea that it might be populated by a specific nation (millet) was alien to the Ottomans until the mid-eighteenth century. Of course there was nothing exceptional in this, as the language of nationalism was still emerging during this period across the world.

Ebubekir Ratıb Efendi, the Ottoman ambassador to Vienna during 1791 and 1792, was one of the first Ottomans who recognized the emergence of a new type of state in Europe and connected the concept of nation with that of fatherland.Footnote ⁴⁷

What about the spatial boundaries of the vatan to which the Greek rebels laid claim? The translation of the text of the Declaration was illuminating in this aspect, since the ‘Greek lands’ (Memalik-i Yunaniyye) would be composed of eastern and western Central Greece, the Morea, and the other Aegean islands (‘ibdida canib-i şarkta olan ve saniyen canib-i garbta olan Memalik-i Yunaniyye ve cezire-I Mora ve cezayir-i sairenin’). The spatial boundaries of the Greek fatherland were confined to those areas, and the Ottomans had to intensify their efforts to quell the rebellion in that region.

Natural rights (hukuk), laws (kavaid ve kavanın), and the ‘Turkish Yoke’ (hükümet- i cebbârâne ve kahhârâne -i Osmaniyyeyi)

The Greek rebels declared in Epidaurus that they ‘had been motivated by the principles of natural rights and their desire to be governed by wise laws when they embarked upon their war against the Turks”’(από τοιαύτας αρχάς των φυσικών δικαίων ορμώμενοι, εκινήσαμεν τον πόλεμον κατά των Τούρκων). They also stated that the object of their struggle was to ‘reconquer their rights to individual liberty, property and honour, rights enjoyed by all the well governed neighbouring peoples of Europe’ (O κατά των Τούρκων πόλεμος ημών είναι πόλεμος εθνικός, πόλεμος ιερός, του οποίου η μόνη αιτία είναι η ανάκτησις των δικαίων της προσωρινής ημών ελευθερίας, της ιδιοκτησίας και της τιμής, τα οποία εν ω την σήμερον όλοι οι ευνομούμενοι και γειτωνικοί λαοί της Ευρώπης τα χαίρουσιν).

The translator of the Declaration rendered the ‘national and holy war of the nation’ (πόλεμος εθνικός, πόλεμος ιερός) as a milletçe muharebe, a millet-wide struggle, without reference to its sacredness.When referring to natural rights the translator applied the terms hukuk and imtiyazat (Bu misillü hukuk ve imtiyazat). The term hukuk in Ottoman parlance originated from the Islamic tradition and signified legal rights or claims and corresponding obligations according to sharia.Footnote ⁴⁸ Islamic law differs in various aspects from the modern concepts of human rights and natural laws, which emerged in eighteenth century western Europe and which rely on a secular system of thought that values human want, needs, and experiences over supernatural concerns. On this way of thinking, individual rights of liberty, honour, property, and self-determination were gained through a struggle against an authoritarian state and delegitimized regimes. Islamic law, by contrast, is based on revelation and its raison d'être is the establishment of divine order on earth.Footnote ⁴⁹

One of the first modern uses of hukuk as being equal to rights has been identified as being influenced by the French Revolution. In 1798, Atıf Efendi, the Ottoman chief officer of foreign affairs, in his memorandum to the Porte commenting on the post-revolutionary situation in France, translated the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen as hukuk-u beşer beyannamesi.Footnote ⁵⁰ Likewise, imtiyazat were the commercial privileges and capitulations granted by the Ottoman rulers to foreign merchants residing in the imperial domains or the zimmi subjects of the Sultan.Footnote ⁵¹ In the Ottoman translation of the Greek Declaration of Independence, the term imtiyazat embraced for a first time a political context tantamount to human rights.

The concept of laws was expressed by the phrase kavaid ve kavanin-i müstahkemeye’ (reliable rules and regulations). The terms kavaid and kavanin are the plural forms of kaide (ordinance) and kanun respectively. Ottoman kanun played a crucial role in forging perceptions of imperial authority, combining Islamic principles and secularity. Kanun originated as fermans and embodied the doctrines of Islamic law, customs and laws derived from Central Asia's Mongol and Turkish tribal traditions, and local customs adopted by the multiethnic milieu of the former Eastern Roman Empire. Thus, kanun was sets of regulations issued by individual Sultans on different occasions, in order to establish the authority of the ruler and reinforce the sustainability of the imperial order.Footnote ⁵² The desire of the Greek rebels to govern themselves by ‘just laws’ (‘να διοικηθώμεν με νόμους δικαίους’) was translated as rightful rules (bundan sonra kavaid-i adile ile mahkum olmak). The connection of the notions of kanun and the traditional concept of adalet (justice), which in the ‘pre-modern’ Ottoman Empire meant a personal quality of an ideal ruler rather than a characteristic of a legitimate social order,Footnote ⁵³ indicates that the Ottomans used a kind of ‘secularized’ Islamic vocabulary to understand the attempt of their subjects to create a new order.

The right to honour was translated as ‘ırz and şöhret’. The Sultan's claim to protect the honour of his subjects was one of the legitimizing strategies of the early-modern Ottoman state: the protection of honour was interwoven with the protection of sexual honour and the maintenance of order in society, especially in the provinces where local power brokers and their centrifugal activities were threatening the ‘honour’ of the state.Footnote ⁵⁴ By contrast, the translator omitted to render ‘right to property’.

The ‘harsh scourge of Ottoman rule’ (‘η σκληρή του οθωμανικού κράτους μάστιγα’) was translated ‘hükümet-i cebbârâne ve kahhârâne-i Osmaniyyeyi’.Footnote ⁵⁵ The adjectives cebbâr and kahhâr had been bequeathed to the Ottoman intellectual terminology from the Quran, where they can be traced in various verses. When these words are attributed to God, they bear positive connotations: they indicate the ‘reformer, the invincible, and the absolute source of power’. However, when referring to a person, station, or institution they acquire a negative meaning, that of ‘tyrannical’ and ‘despotic’.Footnote ⁵⁶ A state of this nature produces zulm, oppressive acts of illegal taxation, unruly violence, bribery, corrupt governance, and oppression of reayas by the servants of the sultan.Footnote ⁵⁷

Such a portrayal of the Ottoman state legitimized the Greeks in rising against their imperial government. In the text of the Declaration, the rebels were seeking to link themselves with the ‘civilized nations’ of Europe: countries and peoples were distinguished as either ‘civilized’ or ‘uncivilized’ (‘barbarians’), with Europe the basis of comparison.Footnote ⁵⁸ Against this background, the revolutionaries were justifying their cause, excluding the Ottomans from the ’civilized’ world. The Ottomans were to realize the repercussions of their depiction as ‘barbarians’ when they had to cope with the tremendous impact of the Chios massacre on European public opinion.

The state-building process through the translation of the Declaration

The Provisional Administration (Προσωρινή Διοίκησις) was translated hükümet (government). Additionally, the translator used the word komiti to designate the phrase ‘the only lawful and national Administration’ (η μόνη έννομος και εθνική Διοίκησις) of the original text. Komiti is a loanword from French comité. From the 1840s Ottoman statesmen used the term to refer to ‘seditious organizations’ that undermined the integrity of the imperial territories. For example, Kostakis Musuros, the first Ottoman ambassador to Athens, sent a dispatch to the Porte in which he explained that the Christian subjects of the Sultan who sought asylum in the Greek Kingdom ‘were occupied with the formation of committees for the purpose of inciting the reayas of the Exalted State and encouraging their exodus to Greece (‘cemaat terkibine meşgul olacak komiteler tertib reaya-ı Devlet-i Aliyye'yi taglit ve ihlal ve Yunanistan'a firara teşvik’)’.Footnote ⁵⁹ From middle of the century komiti was used to designate an assembly (meclis), such as a branch of a larger organization, that meets to investigate and discuss an issue of special importance.Footnote ⁶⁰

The phrase ‘to organize a political dispensation our fatherland’ (ανελάβομεν την πολιτικήν της πατρίδος μας διάταξιν) of the original text was designated as ‘vatanımızın hükümet-i mülkiyyesi’. ‘Mülkiyye’ is a derived word from the Arabic mulk (royal power, possession, and therefore governance). Roughly by the 1830s, in the Ottoman Turkish parlance the form mülkiyye became the customary Ottoman term for civil administration. Findley argues that it is not clear exactly when the term acquired this sense and suggests that Muhammad All's reforms in Egypt may have contributed to this development.Footnote ⁶¹ However, the term was already in use before the Greek Revolution,Footnote ⁶² and this explains its use in the text of the translation of the Greek Declaration.

Τhe entirety of the Greeks (Πανελλήνιον) was given the rendering ‘cem’-i Yunanlılar’ and the National Assembly (Εθνοσυνέλευση) rendered as Millet Cemiyyeti. In the last years of the eighteenth century, after diplomatic integration with Europe through the establishment of residential embassies in major European capitals (London, Vienna, Berlin, and Paris) during the reign of Selim III, Ottoman statesmen and the Sultan became familiarized with the economic, social, military, political, and administrative institutions of the European countries. They also became acquainted with the function of national assemblies and parliaments and with their crucial role in shaping state policies. For instance, the Ottomans were aware of the decision of the French National Assembly to declare the First French Constitution (September 1791) when King Louis XVI informed Selim III that ‘the papers declaring the new order (nizam-ı cedid) that was approved and decided upon by the national assembly of France (cemiyyet-i milliye-i Franca) were submitted to our pure direction and its acceptance was decided by our side as it was the beneficent outcome of the desires of the majority of the nation (millet)’.Footnote ⁶³

A few years later, Mahmud Râif Efendi, the chief secretary of Yusuf Agâh Efendi, the first permanent Ottoman ambassador to Berlin (1793–1797), in his account in French (Journal du voyage de Mahmoud Raif en Angleterre) provided the Porte with useful information concerning British institutions including the constitution, parliament, armed forces, political parties, and trade companies. Commenting on the British constitution, Mahmud Râif Efendi asserted that:

The British constitution recognized the King as a legitimate authority, since it granted him substantial, if limited, executive power and the right to intervene in Parliament's functioning. The situation was different in Greece: sovereignty resided with the people (ahali) and governmental authority emanated from them through their deputies (vekiller). The term vekil comes from the Arabic verbal noun wakala, and it referred to persons appointed to substitute for others, delegates, representatives, and proxies.Footnote ⁶⁵ In the late Ottoman Empire this word was also used for the deputies of the Parliament, and in the text of the translation we can trace one of the earliest known uses with its modern connotations. The same applies to nazır (minister). Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the title was held by middle-rank Ottoman bureaucrats, but during the Tanzimat period was applied to ministers.Footnote ⁶⁶

The translator of the Declaration did not omit to mention the structure of the emerging Greek government. In particular, he wrote that the component bodies of this administration would be three: the executive, the legislatature, and the judiciary (‘İş bu hükümet üç nevi cemiyete münkasım olup bir icra-yı umura memur ve biri umurun istişarine memur ve biri umur-i şer'iyyenin ruyet ve faslına (?) memurdur’). This kind of administration with three separate but equal branches of government, as codified in the United States constitution, was totally alien to the Ottomans, and from this point of view the text of the Declaration was an important contribution to the familiarizing of the Ottomans with modern political notions and systems.

The leaders of the Greeks

The Ottoman Empire, like the other contemporary empires, was an extended polity linked to a central power by indirect rule. The central government exercised military and fiscal control over each major part of its domains and, despite Mahmud II's centralization project on the eve of the Greek Revolution,Footnote ⁶⁷ tolerated the exercise of power through intermediaries, in return for devotion to, as well as compliance and collaboration with, the centre.Footnote ⁶⁸

These intermediaries, the leaders, and especially the Phanariots and the high-ranking clergy were, according to the authorities, the real culprits of the Revolution: either because they ‘seduced the innocent reaya’, or because they failed to prevent the spread of the rebellious spirit. The method adopted by the state to suppress the rebellion was to destroy those who were conspirators but leave the others in peace.Footnote ⁶⁹

The Ottoman statesmen were collecting intelligence to built up a detailed picture about the ‘instigators’ of the rebellion. Thus, at the end of the translation, the translator recorded the names of the signatories and the ministerial appointments, as in the original text of the Declaration. He also added explanatory notes on some names. For example, he mentioned that Alexandros Mavrokordatos was the President of the National Assembly (Aleksandro Mavrokordato reis-i cemiyyet-i millet), and later, at the section of ministerial appointments, provided the additional information that Mavrokordatos was ‘the chief boyars of the firari (fugitive) Karaca (Bu Karaca işaret kılındığı vechle firari Karaca'nın baş boyarıdır).Footnote ⁷⁰ In the same vein, the translator wrote that Theodoros Negris was one of the boyars in the service of the Phanariot ruler of Moldavia, Scarlatos Kallimaki (işaret olunan İskarlat’ın boyarlarındandır). Footnote ⁷¹ The translator also attributed the draft of the Declaration to Anthimos Gazis and Gregorios Konstantas (mersûm için müellif-i ketb olduğu mervidir).