On the occasion of traveling to Athens for the conference Grecs d'Anatolie et d'Istanbul de 1821 à 1964, taking the train via Thessaloniki, a colleague and I chose to make a brief stopover in northern Greece’s cities of Kavala and Xanthi (Iskece). One motive for visiting the former was to take a glimpse at the restored imaret complex built by Kavala’s most famous native, Mehmet Ali of Egypt, for the purportedly superb revitalization of the building had received some media attention (1), as reported earlier on this weblog. (read the full text by clicking on "more" below)