Fener (Phanar)

Fener, in the Greek form Phanar, is the name of a quarter of Istanbul. According to tradition, the Encyclopaedia of Islam says, it was allotted to the Greeks by Mehmed II after the conquest in 857/1453. ¹ The topography and monuments of the city are treated under the article on Istanbul. ¹

After the conquest the seat of the Greek Patriarch was moved from St Sophia to the Church of the Holy Apostles, and three years later to the nearby Church of the Pammakaristos. ¹ In 994/1586 that church was converted into a mosque, the Fethiye Cami, and the Patriarch moved down into the Fener quarter. He settled finally in 1011/1603 at the Church of St George, rebuilt in 1720, which the article says is still the seat of the Orthodox Patriarchate. ^{1 2}

At an early period the quarter drew the ecclesiastical and secular officials of the Patriarchate, the few old Byzantine families that remained in the city and other distinguished and wealthy members of the Greek community. In the school of the Patriarchate, run by the clergy, the ancient classical studies were kept alive. ² The prominent Greek families are collectively called Phanariots. ²

Because of their links with, and knowledge of, the Christian world, many of them having been educated in Italy, the Porte drew on them for various influential employments, particularly in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Members of these families served as dragomans of the Porte and of the Arsenal, and as contractors supplying furs and meat to the palace. ² Since they were regarded as more reliable than the native princes, for some of whom they had earlier acted as agents at the Porte, it was Phanariots who were appointed, for over a century, as voivodes or hospodars of Moldavia, from 1123/1711, and of Wallachia. ² The article lists among the families the Maurokordatos, Kantakouzenos, Soutsos, Hypsilantes, Mourouzes and others. ² See Istanbul and the Principality of Wallachia.

In the second half of the eighteenth century the Phanariot families began to move from Fener to the more healthful villages along the Bosphorus, such as Kuruçeşme, Arnavutköy and Tarabya, and after the Greek War of Independence some of them migrated to Greece. Descendants of Phanariot families are still found in modern Romania, the article adds. ²

For the Ottoman term for religious communities, see millet.

The tradition that Mehmed II assigned the quarter to the Greeks is given by the article as tradition, not as a documented act. ¹ The article does not give dates for the first Greek settlement of the quarter beyond the Patriarch's move of 1011/1603. ²