The Muslim Community on Cyprus and British Colonial Policy, 1878-1915: The Significance of the Cyprus Evkaf in the Colonisation Process

Abstract

Certain key factors interacted for the forming of the early years of British administration in Cyprus. A significant element that affected the new regime was the form that the Cyprus Convention assumed, mainly due to the conditions under which it was signed. As far as the Muslim community was concerned, the Ottoman government made an effort through special articles in the Convention to safeguard its position in the new regime and maintain its role as the ruling community of the island. However that effort was made by the Ottoman government in haste, thus the British administration was given the opportunity to actually intervene more easily in the community’s affairs and to gradually control and ‘colonialise’ it, from within. The community’s reaction, although not unanimous, was manifested early, initially by the Cypriot Muslim elite of the Ottoman administration. The initial anti-colonial sentiments of the Muslim community were triggered by the infiltration of the British into its social, economic and religious core. In that general context, an effort is made to follow and depict that process in its initial steps until the outbreak of World War One.