242 | The Province Goes to the Center
Shortly before the removal of Abdülbaki, the bishops were also stripped of
their tax-collecting functions, having also been found guilty of excessive taxa-
tion. With the discrediting of both the bishops and the governor, Hadjiyorgakis
emerged as the only credible official on the island and was allocated the right to
administer tax collection, leaving the other two poles of power with nominal
political and fiscal authority. In typical Ottoman fashion, the enhancement of
a third locus of power, the dragoman, at the expense of two other rival factions,
was the remedy.
The shifting patterns of power relations among the different loci of author-
ity vividly demonstrate how confessional identity was simply one of the factors
that shaped political alliances. While religion cannot be entirely dismissed, it
was nevertheless not the determining element in the choice of strategic allies at
particular conjunctions. Intercommunal alliances were a common phenomenon
in a mixed society and are evident at the top echelons of power, where the stakes
for political careers and economic gain were too high to be simply circumscribed
by denominational affiliations. Against the backdrop of power reconfigurations
throughout the empire’s provinces during this period, an understanding between
local Muslims and non-Muslims should raise very few eyebrows. Additionally, it
should not automatically be assumed that the interests of members of either com-
munity were homogeneous by virtue of religious solidarity. As with any kind of
organized community, differentiation and competing interests existed within it.
While consensus was certainly part of the picture, this was not always the case,
and it would be naïve to assume otherwise simply on the grounds of a shared
religious identity.
Similarly, consistency was certainly not a feature we would expect to find in
power relations: while Hadjiyorgakis allied himself with Abdülbaki at one point,
they later engaged in a fierce power struggle. Similarly, the dragoman cooper-
ated with the bishops to depose Abdülbaki, only to later successfully marginalize
them to become the sole power holder on the island. In short, the case of Had-
jiyorgakis is particularly useful in understanding the wide spectrum of human
interactions that encompasses tolerance, indifference, interdependence, coopera-
tion, suspicion, tension, and conflict in daily existence.
Beyond the Title of Interpreter
Dragoman Hadjiyorgakis was much more than just an interpreter, and focus-
ing only on the responsibilities of his title obscures much more than it reveals
about his life and times. The literal and descriptive meaning of his title was the
least noteworthy of his activities. Like any major provincial intermediary at the
turn of the nineteenth century, he was concurrently a successful merchant, a
moneylender, an entrepreneur, a landowner, a tax collector, and a major political