Dursteler | 183Whether her marriage was voluntary or coerced, Maria never converted to
Islam and continued to live as a devout Christian. She funded the construction of
several chapels and claimed she had “always had the desire to come to Christian
lands.” She baptized her daughters without their father’s knowledge and raised
them secretly as Christians, which was common among women in mixed mar-
riages. Though baptized as infants, Islamic law nonetheless considered the girls
Muslim, and all three acknowledged that they had been brought up as such. As
Eminè stated, “For appearance we pretended to observe the Turkish rite, but se-
cretly we observed Christianity’s rite.”
Hassan’s death in 1634 placed Maria in a difficult situation. As the Christian
wife of a Muslim, she already occupied a liminal position on Milos; the commu-
nity’s Orthodox leaders had obtained a sultanic order forbidding all “Turks” from
inhabiting the island, with the exception of the kadi, and as a result had repeatedly
entreated her and her daughters to leave. More important was the status of Maria’s
eldest daughter, Aissè, who at age nine had been married by her father to Mustafa
Efendi, Milos’s kadi. Given the limited marriage options for a Muslim girl on a
Greek island on the periphery of the empire, from her father’s perspective, Aissè’s
match with Mustafa was clearly a good one. Despite this, the marriage appears
not to have been close. Mustafa was significantly older than his bride, his official
duties took him away from Milos regularly, and he and his young wife may never
have actually lived together or even consummated their union.
The precipitating factor in the marriage’s dissolution, however, was Mustafa’s
pending transfer to the Black Sea, which would require Aissè to leave her family
and home. In theory she could have sought a divorce; however, since, as the kadi
and the only Muslim judicial official on the island, Mustafa would have had both
to consent to and adjudicate his own divorce, Aissè’s options were limited. In the
end, instead of pursuing a divorce, Aissè, her sisters, and her mother chose to
leave Milos because, as Maria explained, “I expected Mustafa Efendi, husband of
[Aissè], to return to claim her soul, [and thus] I fled with my three daughters, as I
had wanted to do for many years.” She preferred, she said, to “suffer martyrdom”
rather than remain another day on the island that had been her home for over
two decades.
The convergence of Mustafa’s absence, Maria and her daughters’ long-stand-
ing desire to live as Christians, and the presence of the Venetian fleet created
the ideal situation. Touched by their plight, the fleet’s quartermaster appealed to
Captain Mocenigo on the women’s behalf, and he agreed to grant them passage.
Once aboard the captain’s galley, the women settled into “the most comfortable”
lodging on the vessel. They brought with them just a few bags containing cloth-
ing and other personal effects, though the following night, with the captain’s
permission, crew members went ashore to retrieve three additional chests of be-
longings.