The topic I propose to investigate concerns the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of Crete in late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on the period from 1897 to 1923. The material I work on, therefore, is from a period when the Cretan Muslims became a “minority” in Crete, in terms of numbers, and were treated as such, in terms of state policies. The objective of my research is twofold. Firstly, it focuses on the change of roles between the Greek-Orthodox and Muslim communities of Crete, during the period under scrutiny. Secondly, it aims to compare, in chronological or territorial terms, this particular 30 year period of Cretan history to different --and yet relevant--case-studies of co-existence. To be more specific, it examines Ottoman Crete in comparison to Greek Crete, and focuses on the relationships developed, at the turn of the century, within two different polities: The Ottoman Empire, trying to be self-legitimized in the world of the nation-states, and the Greek nation-state, trying to expand and to transform into an Empire. To be more specific, this paper shall address a period when the continuous negotiations and conflicts around Eastern Mediterranean resulted in reasserting group-based practices, both at a state, and at a local level. At the same time, however, group-categories were not constructed in abstraction from subjectivity; individual identities were used simultaneously to group-ones, in order to inspire a more intimate version of loyalty between state actors and potential citizens. Furthermore, personal socio-economic interests and individual practices contradicted with and, at the same time, influenced the group-paradigms. In order to illustrate this argument, this paper examines the shaping of the Muslim minority of Crete as part of a local transformation, the characteristics of which revealed the hidden depths of European modernity --as reflected on the Eastern Mediterranean-- and the vast field of possibilities that contradicted with the national, linear understanding of the past. As to the sources of our research, they consist mainly of the archives of the Cretan Muslim pious foundations, which are used in order to demonstrate how both ottoman and post-ottoman Crete was shaped by the interaction of the Muslim with the Greek-Orthodox Cretans on a local basis. Hence, we believe that late 19th century Crete offers a telling example of multi-identities and of inter-communal practices challenging dichotomies such as “centre” versus “periphery,” “modern” versus “traditional,”“communal” versus “individual,” or “national” versus “imperial.”