Under Ottoman rule, Hymettus lives on in the record mainly through Kaisariani Monastery.
1458. When the Ottomans took Attica, Sultan Mehmed II went to the monastery and, according to the French physician Jacob Spon (1675), was handed the key to the city there. The testimony is Spon's, written well over a century later.
The narthex and the frescoes. The narthex was certainly built before 1602. The katholikon's frescoes are Ottoman: according to the inscription on the western wall, they were painted in 1682 by Ioannis Ypatos from the Peloponnese, funded by the Benizelos family. The old bath house became an olive press during Ottoman rule. Most of the monastery's buildings date to the same period.
Stauropegic status and a school. In 1678 Patriarch Dionysius IV declared the monastery stauropegic, independent of the local metropolitan. In 1792 Patriarch Neophytos VII withdrew the privileges and it returned to the Archbishopric of Athens. It hosted scholars, and from 1722 to 1728 Theophanis Kavallaris taught grammar and sciences there. A Russian pilgrim, Barski, drew the monastery in 1745.
The end of the monastery as a monastery. Greek Wikipedia states that the monastery was closed in 1833, under Bavarian rule, by a decree of von Maurer, because fewer than six monks lived there.
Not verified: (1) All of the above comes from two Wikipedia entries (and from the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium through them). No primary or academic source was read directly. (2) Spon's story of the key to the city is a later account and was not confirmed elsewhere. (3) The claim that from 1824 the monastery was used as a stable, and that library manuscripts were sold to the English or burned during the siege of the Acropolis: the entries mark it as uncited, so we do not state it as fact. (4) The social and economic life of Hymettus (villages, beekeeping, quarries) under Ottoman rule. No sufficient verified source was found. Travellers such as Dodwell remain to be checked and were not read here.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Kaisariani Monastery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaisariani_Monastery
- Wikipedia (Greek), Μονή Καισαριανής: https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Μονή_Καισαριανής
- Gregory, T. E. (1991), "Kaisariane", Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford University Press, p. 1090 (not read directly)
- Philodasiki Enosi Athinon (Athens Reforestation Society), page on the Aesthetic Forest of Hymettus: https://mail.philodassiki.org/aisthitiko-dasos-tou-ymittoy/i-istoria-tou-aisthitikoy-dasous (the forest page, not the dedicated monastery page)