Qualla: Destruction of Psara https://qualla.com/destruction-of-psara en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:40:38 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Destruction of Psara https://qualla.com/destruction-of-psara Destruction of Psara: Introduction https://qualla.com/destruction-of-psara/ On a rocky island the size of a large town, perhaps thirty thousand people had crowded together by the summer of 1824. Most were not soldiers. They were fishermen and sailors, the families of Psara, and refugees who had fled earlier massacres elsewhere in the Aegean and believed this place might be safe. On 20 June, the Ottoman fleet appeared off the coast. By the next day the island had been overrun, and most of those people were dead, enslaved, or scattered. This is the story of how a community died, and how it was remembered.

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/5/destruction-of-psara-wp/swf5-destruction-of-psara-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Destruction of Psara: An Island of Sailors https://qualla.com/destruction-of-psara/ Psara was small, treeless, and poor in everything but the sea. Its people lived by fishing and by shipping, and by the early nineteenth century they had built the third largest merchant fleet in revolutionary Greece, behind only Hydra and Spetses. When the Greek revolt broke out ...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/5/destruction-of-psara-wp/swf5-destruction-of-psara-an-island-of-sailors.mp3 0:06 2 full Destruction of Psara: The Refugees https://qualla.com/destruction-of-psara/ By 1824 the island held far more than its own roughly seven and a half thousand people. Survivors of the Chios massacre two years earlier had crossed the water to Psara, along with families displaced from Thessaly, Macedonia, and the towns of the Anatolian coast. Estimates of the...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/5/destruction-of-psara-wp/swf5-destruction-of-psara-the-refugees.mp3 0:06 3 full Destruction of Psara: The Black Ridge https://qualla.com/destruction-of-psara/ The defenders made their last stand at Palaiokastro, the old hilltop fort the islanders called Mavri Rachi, the Black Ridge. Soldiers crowded in alongside women and children, and raised a white banner reading Freedom or Death. As Ottoman troops broke into the fort, a Psariot name...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/5/destruction-of-psara-wp/swf5-destruction-of-psara-the-black-ridge.mp3 0:06 4 full Destruction of Psara: What Survived https://qualla.com/destruction-of-psara/ Some escaped by sea and were scattered across what is now southern Greece. A priest and scholar named Theophilos Kairis gathered many of the orphaned children and built a school to raise them. Psara itself stayed in Ottoman hands until the Greek navy recovered it in 1912, and the...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/5/destruction-of-psara-wp/swf5-destruction-of-psara-what-survived.mp3 0:06 5 full