Massacres during the Greek War of Independence Massacres during the Greek War of Independence There were numerous massacres during the Greek War of Independence perpetrated by both the Ottoman forces and the Greek revolutionaries. The war was characterized by a lack of respect for civilian life and prisoners of war on both sides of the conflict. Massacres of Greeks took place especially in Ionia, Crete, Constantinople, Macedonia and the Aegean islands, while Turkish, Albanian, Greeks, and Jewish populations identified with the Ottomans inhabiting the Peloponnese suffered massacres particularly where Greek forces were dominant. Settled Greek communities in the Aegean, Crete, Central and Southern Greece were wiped out,
Transmission of the Greek Classics of scholarship in the Mediterranean region, many were translated into Syriac, Arabic, and Persian during the Middle Ages and the original Greek versions were often lost. As the Arab caliphates absorbed Greek/Roman knowledge, the medieval Islamic world gradually became the dominant intellectual center in the Mediterranean region. Subsequent efforts at Latin translations of Arab scholarship, including the Greek classics, began what would later be known as the "Renaissance" in the West. With increasing Western presence in the East due to the Crusades, and the gradual collapse of the Byzantine Empire during the later Middle Ages, many Byzantine Greek scholars fled