MACEDONIA (GREECE)

'Macedonia' (IPA , Greek: 'Μακεδονία', ''Makedonia''), is the largest and second most populous region of Greece. Together with the regions of Thessaly and Thrace, it is often referred to unofficially as ''northern Greece''. It is located at coordinates .
Its territory covers most of the region of ancient Macedonia, the birthplace of Alexander the Great. Its name was later imparted to a wider Balkan region that became known in modern times as Macedonia of which it forms 52.4% of the land and 52.9% of the population. It was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912. In 1913, most of the Ottoman lands in Europe (including Macedonia) were divided between the surrounding countries of Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Albania and Montenegro.

Contents

History

Modern History

Etymology

Local government

Geography

The capital

Climate

Economy and Transport

Culture

Macedonian cuisine

Macedonian music

Demographics

See also

Notes and references

External links

History

:''Main articles: Macedonia (region), Kingdom of Macedon and the rise of Macedon''
The history of Greek Macedonia is very long, from ancient to modern Greece. It started with the Kingdom of Macedonia, (that was reorganised by Philip II), through the empire of Alexander the Great, continues within the Roman and Byzantine empires, the domination of the Ottomans (from 14th century until 1912) and the Balkan Wars.

Modern History

:''Main articles: History of Modern Greece, History of Modern Macedonia, Macedonian Struggle, Balkan Wars, Greek Civil War and the Macedonian Question''

Etymology

:''Main article: Etymology of the name of Macedonia and Makednos''
There are three theories for the etymology of the name 'Macedonia':
#According to ancient Greek mythology, 'Macedon' was the name of the first ''phylarch'' (tribal chief) of the tribe that initially settled western, southern and central Macedonia and founded the kingdom of Macedon.
#According to Herodotus, the ''Makednoí'' were a tribe of the Dorians. The name probably derives from the Doric noun '' ''mākos'' (Attic and modern Greek '' ''mákros'' and '' ''mēkos''), meaning "length", and the Doric adjective '' ''makednós'', meaning "tall", since both the Macedonians (''Makedónes'') and their ''Makednoí'' tribal ancestors were regarded as tall people. The adjective is used by Homer in Odyssey (7.105f), to describe a tall poplar tree, and by Aristophanes in his comedy ''the Birds'', to describe a wall built around their imaginary city.
#An unattested hypothesis suggests that the name ''Makedónes'' may mean "highlanders", from a hypothetical Macedonian bahuvrihi '
★ ' ''
★ maki-kedónes'' "of the high earth". However, there is serious argumentation against this hypothesis.

Local government

Macedonia is divided into three peripheries comprising thirteen prefectures or ''nomoi''. The prefectures are further divided into ''demoi'' (municipalities) or ''koinotetes'' (roughly equivalent to British or Australian shires). The geographical region of Macedonia also includes the male-only autonomous monastic republic of Mount Athos, but this is not part of the Macedonia precincts. Indeed, Mount Athos lies outside the jurisdiction of most Greek and European laws. Due to the whole mountain's monastic status, it is inaccessible to women.
The three Macedonian peripheries and their prefectures are:

Map of Macedonia	Number	Periphery	Capital	Area	Population
	Total	'West Macedonia' ( comprising: )	'Kozani'	'9,451 km²'	'303,857'
	1	Kastoria Prefecture	Kastoria	1,720 km²	53,584
	2	Florina Prefecture	Florina	1,924 km²	55,210
	3	Kozani Prefecture	Kozani	3,516 km²	156,807
	4	Grevena Prefecture	Grevena	2,291 km²	38,256
	Total	'Central Macedonia' ( comprising: )	'Thessaloniki'	'18,811 km²'	'1,931,870'
	5	Pella Prefecture	Edessa	2,506 km²	148,190
	6	Imathia Prefecture	Veria	1,701 km²	144,835
	7	Pieria Prefecture	Katerini	1,516 km²	134,739
	8	Kilkis Prefecture	Kilkis	2,519 km²	91,828
	9	Thessaloniki Prefecture	Thessaloniki	3,683 km²	1,099,598
	10	Chalkidiki Prefecture	Polygyros	2,918 km²	109,587
	11	Serres Prefecture	Serres	3.968 km²	203,093
	Total	'East Macedonia' ( Part of East Macedonia and Thrace, comprising: )	'Kavala'	'5,579 km²'	'254,255'
	12	Kavala Prefecture	Kavala	2,111 km²	147,884
	13	Drama Prefecture	Drama	3,468 km²	106,371
	-	Mount Athos (Autonomous)	Karyes	390 km²	2,250
	'Total'	'Macedonia'	'Thessaloniki'	'34,231 km²'	'2,492,232'[1]

These are overseen by the national government's Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace.
Macedonia borders the neighboring peripheries of Thessaly, Thrace and Epirus.

Geography

Macedonia covers an area of some 44,231 km². High ground makes up much of the region with mountains reaching up to 2,919 m (6,500 ft); extensive fertile plains lie along the Aegean Sea coast. Macedonia is traversed by the valleys of the Aliakmon, Axios, Nestos, and Strymonas rivers, all of which drain into the Aegean. It borders the countries of Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria, and the Greek regions of Epirus, Thessaly and Thrace. The offshore island of Thasos is within the precincts of Macedonia; together with Samothrace, they belong to the region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace (Ανατολική Μακεδονία και Θράκη)'.^[2]
The region has a population of 2,625,681, and its capital and largest city is Thessaloniki, with a population of around 1,000,000.
Since World War II, Greek Macedonia is sometimes called ''Aegean Macedonia'', a term introduced by Tito in 1945 to lay claim on Greek Macedonia and in the build up to the Greek civil war. Although this term is now used mostly by Macedonian Slavs and occasionally in historical contexts, it is strongly disliked by many Greeks (particularly Macedonians), who remember that after WWII, Tito's communist Yugoslavia began to remove the 'Greek' qualifying term in order to justify territorial claims against Greek Macedonia.

The capital

'Thessaloniki', 'Thessalonica' or 'Salonica' (Greek: Θεσσαλονίκη) is the capital of the Greek region of Macedonia and the second-largest city of Greece. It is also the capital of the Thessaloniki prefecture and the capital of the EU region (or, synonymously, Greek periphery) of Central Macedonia. Today's population of the city's metropolitan area is around 1,120,000.
The city was founded circa 315 BC by Cassander, the King of Macedon (Μακεδών), on or near the site of the ancient town of
Therma and twenty six other local villages. He named it after his wife Thessalonica, the sister of Alexander the Great. She gained her name from her father, Philip II of Macedon, to commemorate her birth on the day of his gaining a victory (Gr. Nike) over the Phocians, who were defeated with the help of Thessalian horsemen, the best in Greece at that time. Thessaloniki means the "victory of Thessalians" (where Thessalians derives from Thessaly which means thesi alos, i.e. "a land that was sea").
The Apostle Paul landed at Thessaloníki ( after Kavala and before Veria) on his second voyage to Europe (Acts, xvi. 11), and in Byzantine times the city was called 'symbasileousa' 'συμβασιλεύουσα' (co-queen) by the Greeks.
Byzantine Greek brothers Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius were born in Thessaloníki.
Thessaloníki was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1430 to 1912.
Thessaloniki was the main "prize" of the First Balkan War, as a result of which it was united with Greece on October 26 1912. This date has an immense importance for the city as, in addition to the aforementioned historic event of the unification, it also marks the nameday of Saint Demetrius, its patron Saint.
Thessaloniki is a thriving, vibrant city and its commercial port is of a strategic importance for Greece. It is a major economic, industrial, commercial and cultural center as well as a transportation hub in southeastern Europe. The city hosts a large student population and it is widely renowned for its large number of monuments of Byzantine architecture as well as its eminent nightlife.

Largest Macedonian towns and cities

Towns / Cities Greek Name Population (2001) ' M a c e d o n i a '   Modern Macedonia in Modern Greece.   Ancient Macedonia in Ancient Greece. 1. Thessaloniki Θεσσαλονίκη 1,000,000 2. Kavala Καβάλα 63,774 3. Katerini Κατερίνη 56,434 4. Serres Σέρρες 56,145 5. Drama Δράμα 55,632 6. Kozani Κοζάνη 49,812 7. Veria Βέροια 47,411 8. Ptolemaida Πτολεμαΐδα 36,393 9. Giannitsa Γιαννιτσά 31,442 10. Edessa Έδεσσα 25,619 11. Kilkis Κιλκίς 24,815 12. Naoussa Νάουσα 22,288 13. Aridaia Αριδαία 20,213 14. Alexandria Αλεξάνδρεια 19,283 15. Nea Moudania Νέα Μουδανιά 17,032 16. Florina Φλώρινα 16,771 17. Kastoria Καστοριά 16,218 18. Skydra Σκύδρα 15,564 19. Grevena Γρεβενά 15,481 20. Polygyros Πολύγυρος 10,721

Climate

Economy and Transport

Despite its rugged terrain, Macedonia possesses some of the richest farmland in Greece in the plain of Drama and the valleys of the Strimon and Axios. A wide variety of foodstuffs and cash crops are grown, including rice, wheat, beans, olives, cotton, tobacco, fruit, grapes, wine and other alcoholic beverages. Food processing and textile weaving constitute the principal manufacturing industries. Tourism is a major industry along the coast, particularly in the Chalcidice peninsula, the island of Thasos and the northern approaches to Mount Olympus. Many tourists originate from Greece's immediate neighbors.
Thessaloniki is a major port city and industrial center; Kavala is the other harbor of Macedonia. Apart from the principal airport at Thessaloniki (Makedonia Airport), airports also exist in Kavala (M.Alexandros Airport), Kozani (Filippos Airport), and Kastoria (Aristotelis Airport). The "Via Egnatia" motorway crosses the full distance of Macedonia, linking its main cities.

Culture

Main articles: Culture of Greece

Macedonian cuisine

:''Main article: Macedonian cuisine.

Macedonian music

Main articles: Music of Macedonia

Demographics

The inhabitants are overwhelmingly (98%) ethnic Greeks (Greek Macedonians) and most are Greek Orthodox Christians . From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, the ethnic composition of the region of Macedonia is characterized by uncertainty both about numbers and identification. The 1904 Ottoman census of Hilmi Pasha recorded 373,227 Greeks and 204,317 Bulgarians in the vilayet of Selânik (Thessaloniki) alone, while it makes no mention of a Macedonian Slav ethnicity (which at the time was regarded as Bulgarian). According to the same census, Greeks were also dominant in the vilayet of Manastır (Bitola), counting 261,283 Greeks and 178,412 Bulgarians. Hugh Poulton, in his ''Who Are the Macedonians'', notes that "assessing population figures is problematic" ^[3] for the territory of Greek Macedonia before its incorporation into the Greek state in 1913 ³. The area's remaining population was principally composed of Ottoman Turks and also some Jews, and at much smaller numbers of Roma, Albanians and Vlachs.
During the first half of the twentieth century, major demographic shifts took place, which resulted in the region's population becoming overwhelmingly ethnic Greek. In 1919, Bulgaria and Greece signed the Treaty of Neuilly, which called for an exchange of populations between the two countries. According to the treaty, Bulgaria was considered to be the parent state of all ethnic Slavs living in Greece. Most ethnic Greeks from Bulgaria were resettled in Greek Macedonia; most Slavs were resettled in Bulgaria but a number, remained, most of them by changing or adapting their surnames and declaring themselves to be Greek so as to be exempt from the exchange. In 1923 Greece and Turkey signed the Treaty of Lausanne, and hundreds of thousands of Greeks from Anatolia were resettled in the region replacing Macedonian Turks and other Muslims (of Albanian, Greek, Roma, Slavic and Vlach ethnicity) under similar terms.
Macedonian cities during Ottoman rule were often known by multiple names (Greek, Slavic or Turkish by the respective populations). After the partition of Ottoman Europe, cities in Greece became officially known only by their Greek names, and cities in Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia became likewise officially known only in the languages of their respective states. After the population exchanges, many locations were renamed to the languages of their new occupants.
The population was badly affected by the Second World War through starvation, executions, massacres and deportations. Nazi-aligned Bulgaria's occupation forces persecuted the local Greek population and settled Bulgarian colonists in their occupation zone in eastern Macedonia and western Thrace, deporting all Jews from the region. Total civilian deaths in Macedonia are estimated at over 400,000, including 55,000 Greek Jews. Further heavy fighting affected the region during the Greek Civil War which, combined with post-war poverty, drove many inhabitants of rural Macedonia to emigrate either to the towns and cities, or abroad. Even today, many parts of Macedonia are fairly sparsely inhabited.
Greek is by far the most widely spoken and the only official language of public life and education in Macedonia. There are also some smaller linguistic communities, including speakers of Macedonian Greek, Pontian Greek, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Arvanitic, Armenian, Slavic, Turkish, Russian, Ladino and Romani.
Since the fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a large number of economic refugees and immigrants from Greece's neighboring countries, Albania, Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania and Serbia, as well as from more distant countries such as Russia, the Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia, have arrived in Greece (including Macedonia) to seek employment.
The exact size of the minority groups of Macedonia is unclear, as Greece has not conducted a census on the question of mother tongue since 1951. The main minority groups in Macedonia are:

★ Vlachs (Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians), who largely identify as Greeks and belong to the Greek Orthodox Church. In the 1951 census they numbered 39,855 in all Greece (the number in Macedonia proper is unknown).

★ Slavophones, who largely identify as Greeks and belong to the Greek Orthodox Church. In the 1951 census they numbered 41,017 in all Greece, mostly in Western Macedonia. The linguistic classification of the dialects spoken by these people oscillates from Bulgarian to Macedonian Slavic depending on location, although the people themselves call their language Slavic. This group has received a lot of attention in recent years due to the claims of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia that these people are in fact an ''ethnic Macedonian'' minority in Greece. A political party promoting the concept and rights of what they describe as the "Macedonian minority in Greece" - the Rainbow (Ουράνιο Τόξο) - was founded in September 1998, and received 2,955 votes in Macedonia in the latest (2004) elections. Similarly, a pro-Bulgarian political party, known as Bulgarian Human Rights in Macedonia (Βουλγαρικά Ανθρώπινα Δικαιώματα στη Μακεδονία) was established in June 2000, promoting the concept and rights of what they describe as the "Bulgarian minority in Greece". This party has yet to participate in elections.
Other minority groups include Arvanites (who like the Vlachs identify ethnically as Greeks), Jews (Sephardim and Romaniotes), Armenians and Roma.

See also

★ Macedonia (region)

★ Macedonia (terminology)

★ Peripheries of Greece

Notes and references

1. 2001 census
2. EUROPA - The EU at a glance - Maps - Greece - Anatoliki Makedonia ke Thraki
3. Who Are the Macedonians?, , Hugh, Poulton, Indiana University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-253-21359-2

External links

★ Ministry for Macedonia–Thrace

★ Region of Central Macedonia

★ Region of Western Macedonia

★ Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace

★ Macedonian information center

★ The truth about Macedonia

★ Macedonian Press Agency

★ Museums of Macedonia

★ Nikolaos Martis - Macedonia's Hellenism: Empirical documents and sources

★ Why Macedonia is Hellenic

★ University of Macedonia

★ University of Western Macedonia

★ An online review of Macedonian affairs, history and culture

★ Pan-Macedonian Network

★ #Macedonia on IRC EFnet

★ Animated Map of the History of Macedonia

★ Macedonia, The Historical Profile of Northern Greece

★ Serres Prefecture

★ Macedonia, Greece - History And Politics - eBook Greek Language (ISBN:960-6-0337-5)

★ Map of Makedonia

★ City of Thessaloniki

★ City of Edessa

★ City of Serres

★ Technological Educational Institution of Serres

★ Department of Physical Education Science & Athletics of Serres

★ Alistrati Cave in Serres

★ Lake Kerkini in Serres - Kerkini Wetland (Ramsar & Natura 2000 Protected)

★ Map of Macedonia

★ Macedonia guide for visitors

★ Macedonia On The Web

★ Roman province of Macedonia

★ Macedonia.com

★ Macedonia

★ Information of Macedonia

★ Travel info of Macedonia