The Tenassur Incidents in Ottoman and Russian Accounts: The Trabzon Case

This article investigates the phenomenon of tenassur — the reconversion of former Christian converts to Islam back to Christianity — through a focused case study of the Istavris community in the province of Trabzon during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing upon previously unused Russian consular reports alongside Ottoman archival sources, it offers a comparative and multi-perspectival account of these contested religious identities. While earlier scholarship has highlighted hidden Christian practices and local strategies of dissimulation, this study demonstrates that the Istavris’ public declarations of Christianity were shaped not only by the Tanzimat and Reform Edicts, which proclaimed religious equality, but also by the fiscal and military burdens imposed on Ottoman subjects. Their attempts to secure exemption from conscription by reclaiming Christian status provoked divergent responses from civil and military authorities, ranging from cautious tolerance to coercive repression. The analysis further reveals how foreign consular interventions, particularly by Russian officials, complicated Ottoman governance of these populations. By situating tenassur incidents at the intersection of law, religion, diplomacy, and military policy, the article underscores the tension between imperial reformist ideals and the pragmatic imperatives of state control. In so doing, it contributes new evidence and perspectives to debates on conversion, identity, and state-society relations in the late Ottoman Empire.

tenassur, conversion, Ottoman Empire, Trabzon, Istavris community, religious identity, military conscription, Tanzimat reforms, Russian consular reports, state-society relations