the best-known example of a colonization organized by central power in order to increase the city’s population (sürgün). Populations from newly taken over Aegean islands (e.g. Thasos, Samothrace, Imbros, Limnos and Lesbos) were also moved towards the capital.

A series of measures aiming to increase population of some Aegean islands were adopted by the Ottoman administration though, which knew that growth of the islands’ sparse population was a necessary condition for its power to be stabilized. That is what happened on Rhodes when was taken over in 1522. The same happened after the battleship of Nafpaktos (1571), as the Ottoman systematically tried to re-colonize Samos, Agios Efstratios and Myconos and increase their population. At the same time, there was a gradual increase of the Northern Sporades and Psara populationwith others coming from Thessaly and Euboea.

The example of the Arvanites (Albanians that had lived in Greece for some centuries) is the last one of the colonization chapter. In 1402, Arvanites from Attica and Boeotia settled on Euboea after being invited by the island’s Venetian authorities. In 1418 Lord of Ios, Marco Crispo I, moved Arvanites from the Peloponnese to the island so that its up to then uninhabited part would be inhabited. In 1558, Ios was deserted again because of Muslim pirates’ incursions, and another colonization by Arvanites in 1575 was therefore launched again, this time by Ottoman rulers. Arvanites from Attica and the Peloponnese were used at the same time for the colonization of Kea and Kythnos, the Argosaronic gulf islands and finally Samos when the