Talk:Sarakatsani

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[edit] Quality of this page

Again, I deleted the phrase "in which residual Vlach language words and syntax can still be traced" because it does not make any sense. The definition of Greek language is sufficient for anyone interested in the lingustic details of the language.

I deleted the phrase "to some extend mixed with Aromanian words" because it has no meaning. It only implies that the Sarakatsani might have been speeking Aromanian at some point of time which is not the case. Besides, what language in the world is not mixed with words from other languages. Is Aromanian a pure language which does not include words from other languages? The Sarakatsani dialect is an idiom of Greek language which icludes words from many languages of their surrouding people. Turkish words, albanian words, even words from western european languages can be found as well as Aromanian words. Is this supposed to mean something? I dont think so.

This page is pretty much all wrong. I will try to explain

1. "The Sarakatsani are a group of Greek (and Greek-speaking) transhumant shepherds" correct

2. "mainly located in the Pindos Mountains" it should be "mainly located in the Pindos mountains and in particular, the Agrafa mountains which is the southern part of Pindos untill the beginning of the 1900s.

3. "The Sarakatsani traditionally spent the summer months in the Rhodope Mountains, in what is today Bulgaria" this may be said only about the so called "anatolites"(easterners) or "polites"(comes from the word Poli meaning Constantinople). This part of Sarakatsani used to spend their summers in either the Rhodope Mountains or the mountains of Falakro in Serres and Drama perfecrures of Greece and either returned to the coast of western (today Greek)Thrace and eastern(today Turkish)Thace or went west to the coast of the Black Sea.

4. "The migration would start on the eve of Saint George's Day in April and the return migration would start on Saint Demetrius' Day, October 26th" sounds too poetic to be true. First of all Saint George's Day does not have a standard date in Greek calendar. It is true though that they used to leave for(and return from) the mountains depending on the weather around these dates

5. "After 1947, certain groups of Sarakatsani were not allowed to leave Bulgaria and enter Greece" True, but only refers to these Sarakatsani that have stayed in Bulgaria. I must empasize the fact that most of the Sarakatsani are in Greece

6. "They were subsequently settled in Bulgaria and they became partly Bulgarized. In Bulgaria these Sarakatsani are known as Karakachans" true

7. "while in Romania they are called Saracaciani" may be true but as far as i know there are absolutely no Sarakatsani in Romania

These are some comments for the first paragraph. This first paragraph does not include any comments about the Sarakatsani who live in Greek Thrace and Eastern Macedonia, Greece(very much related to these Sarakatsani In Bulgaria), Central Macedonia, Greece and FYROM(the so called "Kasandrinoi" because they used to spend their summers in Halkidiki(Kassandra)), in Thessaly, Ipeiros, Sterea Ellada, Peloponnese and so on. It seems to me that you are implying that Sarakatsani only live in Bulgaria.

To be continued...


On the contrary I would say that the first paragraph is too greek-focused, as if the karakatchani only live in Greece but a part of them were somehow by chance stuck in Bulgaria recently (and indeed that they inhabit other parts of the Balkans is not mentioned at all)! As a Bulgarian my impression about the karakatchani has been quite different. The sentence "The Sarakatsani are a group of Greek shepherds" sounds quite a lot like greek propaganda to me. They are greek-speaking (with their own archaic dialect, in fact) but this does not imply greek ethnicity for the last centuries. The karakatchani in Bulgaria do NOT consider themselves greeks (no, not bulgarians either, and I dont see how this could be a result of governmental policy). Maybe the present-day "greekness" of the karakatchani in Pindos could be a result of purposeful assimilation by the state of Greece where they were stuck after it closed its borders? As you see this argument can work both ways based on the mutual mistrust of our peoples. More crossreading and NPOV needed! For now, please, replace the "greek (and greek-speaking)" with "greek-speaking" only. Koliokolio 01:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

~ I disagree with the above stating that the karakatsani were not "greek" to begin with - since the greek tribes were often divided by city states and region. They may have been of the greek tribes. My family are from the karakatsanoi of greece and they moved to central greece from Thessaly and foot of Pindos to avoid the Turks. Their lifestyle is correctly protrayed to have been divided between mountains and plains. Even though uneducated due to lifestyle - they spoke Greek (no other language as far as I know) and avoided the Turks by moving about in the highlands. Some settled in Peloponese and changed their names. So, perhaps they should refer to Greek sarakatsani and Bulgarian sarakatsani separately if that's a problem. ~~ApplesnPeaches~~

This page needs a lot of work. Most of the content seems to have been copied from various Web sources uncritically. I have removed the most flagrant copyright violations / plagiarism, but a lot of the remaining substance seems to be paraphrases. What's more, many of the quoted sources appear not to have been read by the writers of this article, but quoted second-hand without attribution (especially from the two articles mentioned in External links). Several of the quoted sources are from travel writers, not scholars, and do not seem particularly reliable. Let's work on it and improve it! --Macrakis 04:55, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The initiator of this article is [Deucalionite] whose text I rectified several times. I found him a bit too biased and too pro-Greek. Nevertheles he did not mind when I inserted the passage in which I mention the three contradictory hypotesis as to the origins of the Sarakatsani (Dorians? Vlachs? Yuruks?). He wiped off quite a good external link [Vlach, Yuruk, Sarakatsani confluences in the Balkans] because he thought of it as 'Romanian propaganda'. I did not reinstate it for the sake of not wanting to seem biased myself too. There're plenty of books published on the Sarakatsani both in Greece (alas, all out of print) and elsewhere such as that of Maurogiannēs Dionysēs - Hoi Sarakatsanoi tēs Thrakēs, tēs Kentrekēs kai Anatolikēs Makedonias : epitopia koinōniologikē ereuna apo Evro heos Thessalonikē, Athēna : Ekdoseis "Dōdōnē", 1998. The latest book is Richard Clogg's 'Minorities of Greece' (Hurst, London 2002) where there is an article about Sarakatsani. See also a recent conference which debated on them and which took place in France in 2003 at [Conference]--Apostolos Margaritis

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. If you think the vlachophiles.net link is useful, let's get it back in. It is not bias to represent multiple points of view, it is the core value of Wikipedia, NPOV. It would be interesting to summarize the information from the Clogg book and the conference, also, which are surely better sources than any of the ones used so far. --Macrakis 16:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

You are perfectly right, we can add these links and summaries but then as you very well know there is always the question of the lenghth of a Wikipedia article. This topic is a difficult one and how can you be brief and accurate in the same time? The question of the Sarakatsani is a puzzle in its own way, a hard nut to crack. They seem to have 'multiple' origins. Is this really possible? Or maybe the Sarakatsani were different things at different stages of their history. This brings us back to the thorny issue of the identity of the tribes, nations etc. and to what is an ethnicity? To add insult to injury I just found out that an Italian professor, Antonio Baldacci who visited the area inhabited by the Sarakatsani (including the putative place of their origin, the village of Sakaharetsi -today renamed 'Perdikaki'- in the province of Baltos or Valtos around the market town of Vonitza) thought they were remnants of the left behind Spanish mercenaries who for half a century or more, annexed this province (via the Kingdom of Naples). This sounds a bit fantasist to say the least. Again, too many leads and no clear answers. Apostolos Margaritis 10:40, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that we don't want to make the article unnecessarily long. I think we don't need to lengthen it much if we both edit the existing material judiciously and add new material. --Macrakis 21:38, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal

Sarakatsani and Karakachans are two variants of the same word, referring to the same concept. The spelling 'Sarakatsani' tends to be used in Greek contexts, and 'Karakachans' in Bulgarian settings, but as the articles both say, they are the same people. They are listed in a standard dictionary of Greek (Babiniotis) as variants (σαρακατσάνος and καρακατσάνος), probably coming from the Turkish karakaçan < kirkaçan 'who flee to uncultivated land'. So I vote:

  • Merge --Macrakis 04:47, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

You are right in theory but beware, there is scholarly work on the Bulgarian Karakachans too see list of books It could be that the two groups really diverged so much that cannot anymore be viewed as one or put under one umbrella.--Apostolos Margaritis

Understood. But having a single page on a subject does not imply that there aren't different aspects of the subject, or that the subject matter is uniform. To the extent that the Bulgarian Karakachans are distinct, that should certainly be discussed in the merged article. On the other hand, we should be careful about politically-motivated arbitrary distinctions. For example, "Greek coffee" is the same thing as "Turkish coffee", and Arvanites speak an Albanian dialect/language. --Macrakis 16:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I get your point. Why then not merge the two entries providing as you say that the nuances and diffeences between Kara- and Sarakatsans will be discussed in the new, unified article? Apostolos Margaritis 10:30, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merger Complete

Now I know someone is going to have a fit with what I did. Yet, as a disclaimer, I did not perform this merger just because I felt like stirring up the pot of controversy. However, a person out of nowhere will nonetheless probably proclaim that "the Karakachans are ethnically different from the Sarakatsani." Perhaps one might be so bold as to state that I am cruelly insensitive toward the feelings of the Bulgarians, the Romanians, etc. "How dare you do this to my people Deucalionite" or something along those lines. Something to look forward to.

Seriously now, both articles about the Sarakatsani and the Karakachans have been stuck in a state of limbo for a long time. No one seemed interested in solving the so-called "merger dispute". So, in order to help everyone move on with their lives, I thought it would be more efficient to have the history of the Sarakatsani be presented on one page. Besides, the Karakachans article pretty much had the same information one could find on the Sarakatsani article.

As far as I am concerned, the only main difference between the Sarakatsani and the Karakachans is merely etymological. Sarakatsani is a Greek term and Karakachans is a Turkish/Bulgarian nomenclature that represents the same people. I mean should we put a separate article for each foreign linguistic nomenclature that a single ethnic group possesses? I don't see a Saracaciani page entailing how the Romanians perceive the Sarakatsani. Why is that though? Well, because no matter what you call the Sarakatsani, you are ultimately talking about the same group of people (be they transhumant sheperds or not).

Sarakatsani strikes me as a fairly typical greek reading of a foreign (probably turkish) word. Greeks often have difficulties with the sound "tch" pronouncing it as "ts" instead. Koliokolio 01:26, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


The Karakachans and the Sarakatsani are one in the same people. Granted a portion of the Sarakatsani populace was "Bulgarianized" and could have very well developed a different ethnic identity by upholding their Bulgarian nomenclature of "Karakachans." Yet, what if they did not? What if the Karakachans still retain to this day their identity without necessarily deeming themselves as ethnically Bulgarian (even if they are Bulgarian citizens).

If Bulgarian scholarship wants to provide information pertaining specifically to the Karakachans, then that information should be placed within a subsection of the overall Sarakatsani article. The same thing should be said for Romanian scholarship, German scholarship, Chinese scholarship or whatever scholarship anyone is willing enough to provide.

If anyone feels that this merger is wrong, then go ahead and create two "different" articles possessing (more or less) the same information. Redundancy is unnecessary and could lead to needless confusion among readers. Of course, I do not expect anyone to agree with me or to assume that my reasons for performing the merger were sound and honest. In the end, someone is going to have to put an end to this "merger dispute" stuck in limbo. Over and out. - Deucalionite 5/2/06 12:12 P.M. EST

I changed some parts of the article since they seemed too NPOV and clearly a part of simple vlach/romanian propaganda ( I recognized some of the arguments from the page vlachophile.com ). Anyway, I am a member of two greek Sarakatsani unions, and I can say for sure that we are 100% non- Vlachs. I am not sure if the other theories ( Turkish tribes) should be stated as an ewually plausible theory.
Thank you for your contributions. Just so you know, the Vlachs were latinized Greeks and some Romanian propagandists took it upon themselves to consider the Vlachs in Greece as "Romanians" only based on language. As I have said a million times before, language does not define ethnicity. The Vlachs, just like the Sarakatsani, have ethnic Greek origins and have contributed enormously to the development of the modern Greek nation-state (even though they were already a part of the Greek "genos" and "ethnos" for a very long time). Of course, don't expect everyone to see things this way. Again, thank you for your contributions and take care. Over and out. Deucalionite 17:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
What the hell are you talking about Deucalionite? Vlachs=Greek? i am an Aromanian living in Romania and i wonder why did my grandfathers (as in both of them) always talk about Greeks in vulgar terms ,even using "Greek" as a derogatory term in certain expressions, IF Vlachs are "latinised Greeks"? i even know of an old folk song about a boy whose father gets killed by Greeks and his mother tells him to "never forgive them". Ofcourse i'm saying this since you seem to completely disconsider the linguistc evidence of their Latin origin.

Regarding the article... why is the "Sarakatsani are not Vlachs" thing repeated over and over till it begins to sound as patethic propaganda? What is the purpose of this elaborated thesis to contradict the Vlach Origins theory of the Sarakatsani if the freaking Vlach Origins theory isn't even presented in the article?

[edit] "Doric"?

Re the addition and re-addition of the claim that the Sarakatsani speak a "Doric" dialect ([1]): this claim is indeed highly surprising, since it is communis opinio that all modern Greek dialects except Tsakonian derive from Attic Koiné. I'd like to see an exact quote in context for this claim. Maybe what the source said was that they speak a "northwestern" dialect of Modern Greek? That would not be the same as "Northwestern Greek" in the context of the ancient dialects. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I just put this link to inform the reader about what a northwest dialect is. Since it's mentioned in the text I think we should put this. Of course it doesn't mean that their modern dialect is a pure doric one, but it stresses some kind of relationship between the ancient and the modern northwest dialect. - Sthenel 12:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Wait, I'm not sure you understood my point. Ancient "northwestern Greek" is a form of Doric, true. Modern northwestern dialects (such as Epirote or Roumeliote Greek) have nothing to do with Doric. There's no continuity between them. They are descendants of Koiné just like all other modern dialects. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that "northwest" for the modern dialects is just a geographic term. For example I have read articles in the past about Roumeliote dialects, in which Roumeliotika have preserved some elements of older dialects in the region. This is something that happens in every region, that's why the local dialects differ enough from the modern Dimotiki language. - Sthenel 13:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Some of them may have conserved isolated admixtures of local dialectal words, possibly. But the overall phonological system of them, like of all other modern dialects, is solidly Attic. That's consensus in the literature. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:10, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Greek and/or Greek-speaking

I think that this introductory phrase violates the right of self-identification of Sarakatsani in Greece, who are the main Sarakatsani group of Balkans. Stating that they (all the Sarakatsani) are Greeks or Greek-speaking, automatically, we dispute the origin of a people (Sarakatsani of Greece) who always spoke Greek and they didn't use any other language along with the Greek. So, I think that we should write something else in the introduction breaking them into two subgroups: a) the Sarakatsani of Greece who identify as Greeks (Greek-speaking of Greek origin) and b) the Sarakatsani of Bulgaria and any other country who maybe don't identify them as Greeks, in order to avoid generalization. Just an idea. - Sthenel 21:31, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Sthenel: All of us, the Sarakatsani, whether in our homeland (Greece) or elsewhere are Greek (both by ancestry, language or any other "metric" of Greekness) and identify as Greek. Including the Sarakatsani of Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government though, since the cold war has been trying to categorise the Sarakatsani as a separate identity.
Our kin (συνάφι) frοm Bulgaria are invited and attend our yearly gatherings (ανταμώματα) in Greece which are the greatest celebration of Greekness that can be and are often attended by Greek Presidents as well. Why would we be inviting people who would have turned their back on their Greek identity? Why would these people come all the way from Bulgaria to attend either?
Likewise, Σαρακατσάνοι from Greece go in Bulgaria to attend similar festivities. Would they consider themselves so dear to people denying their Greekness? No, they would want nothing to do with them.
Is how the Bulgarian census holder interprets (i.e. twists) their reply in the census, evidence that my kin in Bulgaria do not identify as Greeks?
Can anyone, at last, come up with something about us that is un-greek?
Nevertheless, I will not ruin my Easter over this. Wikipedia can wait. In fact I will try avoiding this page for the next month or so. We, the Sarakatsani, have all the time in the world to prove that we are not elephants.
Ήμαρτον Παναγία μου...
Regards, Contributor175 21:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you. You misunderstood what I said. The phrase "Greek or Greek-speaking" (it means that they are Greeks or non-Greeks who speak greek) disputes the greekness of all the Sarakatsani, and this because of the bulgarian census. Btw groups of people who are bilingual and historically identify as Greeks, are clearly of not greek origin according to the self-identified "bosses" of wikipedia (e.g. Arvanites are Albanians because they speak an albanian dialect, Vlachs have not greek origin because they speak aromanian) but in this case, Sarakatsani who always spoke only greek are Greek-speaking, not Greeks. So, if you speak Greek and Arvanitika you originate from Albanians while if you speak only Sarakatsanika Greek you are a Greek-speaking of unknown origin. - Sthenel 21:50, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reliable sources and NPOV

May I suggest you find solid third-party sources for:

"However, according to a theory, the Sarakatsani were not always nomads but only turned to harsh nomadic mountain life to escape Ottoman rule."

The current sources are not very good, and are certainly not third-party. (see Wikipedia:Reliable sources). Though it is plausible that the Sarakatsani were "not always nomads", the part about "escaping Ottoman rule" sounds unlikely.

It would also be helpful to find third-party sources for other assertions made in the article. For example, who are the modern "Western European scholars" who "endorse" the theory that the "Sarakatsani are lineal descendants of the Dorian tribes". That sounds like typical 19th-century romantic nationalism. The alternative theories also need to be reported in a more WP:NPOV way.

It's also surprising that the article doesn't mention the best-known ethnographer of the Sarakatsani in English, John Campbell (Honour, family, and patronage; a study of institutions and moral values in a Greek mountain community, Oxford, 1964). --Macrakis 22:51, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Karakachani means for donkey in Turkish. And also it uses for disrtrict Karakoçan (karakochan)

Karakoçan —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 3210 (talk) 21:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC).


[edit] Possible conection with Albanians???

Is there any possible relation between Sarakatsans (and generally many parts of Greece, especially Peloponesian, or "Stereoelladites") and Albanians?? I am greek and sarakatsanos myself. I have never heard of ANY theory connecting us to the Albanians. But taking in account the "fustanella" wich was used both by Sarakatsans and other south Greeks AND Albanians, and the almost common music with Albanians (polyphonic AND "klarina") can somebody write about that topic if he/she has some further knowledge?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.130.43.28 (talk) 18:04, 17 May 2008 (UTC)