About
Halki
The island of Halki has its name variously rendered in
English as Halki, Chalki, Khalki - an attempt to replicate the
aspirated sound of its initial letter ('ch' as in the Scottish
'loch')...
Halki lies some 6kms off Monolithos point on the Western coast
of Rhodes, about half way down, pointing almost directly
East/West, 12 kms long and 3-4 wide. For most of the year, 90%
of the island is bare, barren and rocky, though the early months
of the year bring grass and flowers in the mild weather after
the winter rains. The only current settlement is Emborio,
occupying the harbourside slopes of the bay at the island's
Eastern end.
History in a Nutshell
In ancient times, the water situation was a little better than
now, the higher water table allowing some wells. The island
supported up to 7,000 people, and grew 2 crops of wheat a year,
in small stone-enclosed fields. Halki was also a producer of
copper, which is supposed to account for its name - from the
Greek 'halkos' for 'copper'. Halki was then much allied with
Rhodes, eg in the Peloponnesian War of 412BC.
Later centuries saw occupation by successive imperial powers,
notably the Arabs in the 7th Century AD and later the Venetians
in 1204, which led to the building of the medieval fortresses on
the ancient acropolis site in Halki, and on Alimnia. Turkish
control began in 1523, lasting until the Greek War of
Independence in 1821.
In Medieval and later times, the threat of pirates forced the
inhabitants to live far from the sea, up in the mountains at
Chorio (a feature repeated on many of the islands throughout
Greece). The inconvenience of carrying on a fishing industry
while living up the the mountains can only be imagined, though
one expects the goat herds found it more congenial...
By the early 19th Century, when the piracy problem had receded,
most people had moved down to build their houses in the lovely
amphitheatre of Emborio which we know today, leaving the old
houses of Chorio to fall into ruin.
However, difficulties with the local industry of sponge fishing,
eg high taxes and disease, meant loss of livelihood for many of
the 3,000 inhabitants and 50 boats, and led to successive waves
of emigration, the greatest in 1911-2 to Tarpon Springs in
Florida, where sponge fishing could be continued. It is likely
that another imposition of imperial control had something to do
with this also. The Italians had assumed control of the
Dodecanese in 1911, and later Mussolini in particular had
grandiose plans. Halki owes its Post Office and Police Station
to the Italian building programme which had such an impact on
Rhodes Town. The imposition of Italian schooling also produced
many bilingual Greeks ...
Further losses, mainly of young people,in the 1950s (usually to
the USA) meant that the community was dying - from 3,000 people
in the 19th Century to a couple of hundred at most. So, as the
population dwindled, the beautiful houses in their special
large-windowed Venetian style - influenced by the architecture
the sponge fishermen saw in their travels around the
Mediterrannean - began to decay.
And of course, it is well to remember that a number of the stone
shells are not ruins, but simply unfinished properties which had
to abandoned when the owner had to move elsewhere for his
livelihood. Their ownership had passed to generations whose
lives were based in another country, and the sharing of property
among siblings often meant that no one could agree on the fate
of their crumbling asset far away. However, no Greek ever
forgets his roots. The residents of Tarpon Springs endowed Halki
first with money for its stone clock tower, and, more lately,
with the money to build the road to the Monastery far up in the
mountains - the Boulevard Tarpon Springs, which took about 6
years, being finished in 1995.
Halki's town or Chorio,
as seen by
Giuseppe Gerola, on August 2nd 1912
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