of the Flanginian School) and many others. Additionally, the community founded the confraternity Scuola dei Greci in 1493. The Venetians also ruled Crete, the Ionian Islands and scattered islands and port cities of the former empire, the populations of which were augmented by refugees from other Byzantine provinces who preferred Venetian to Ottoman governance. Crete was especially notable for the Cretan School of icon-painting, where El Greco came from and which after 1453 became the most important in the Greek world. Nearly all of these Byzantine Greeks fell under Turkish Muslim rule by the 16th century. A notable group were the Phanariots, they emerged as a class of wealthy Greek merchants (of mostly noble Byzantine descent) during the second half of the 16th century, and were influential in the administration of the Ottoman Empire's Balkan domains and the Danubian Principalities in the 18th century. The Phanariots usually built their houses in the Phanar quarter to be near the court of the Patriarch. Many retained their identities, eventually comprising the modern Greek and Cypriot states, as well as the Cappadocian Greek and Pontic Greek minorities of the new Turkish state. These latter groups, the legacy Byzantine groups of Anatolia, were forced to emigrate from Turkey to Greece in 1923 by the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Other Byzantine Greeks, particularly in Anatolia, converted to Islam and underwent Turkification over time. Additionally, those who came under Arab Muslim rule, either fled their former lands or submitted to the new Muslim rulers, receiving the status of Dhimmi. Over the centuries these surviving Christian societies of former Byzantine Greeks in Arab realms evolved into Antiochian Greeks (Melkites) or merged into the societies of Arab Christians, existing to this day. Many Greek Orthodox populations, particularly those outside the newly independent modern Greek state, continued to refer to themselves as Romioi (i.e. Romans, Byzantines) well into the 20th century. Peter Charanis, who was born on the island of Lemnos in 1908 and later became a professor of Byzantine history at Rutgers University, recounts that when the island was taken from the Ottomans by Greece in 1912, Greek soldiers were sent to each village and stationed themselves in the public squares. Some of the island children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like. ‘'What are you looking at?’’ one of the soldiers asked. ‘'At Hellenes,’’ the children replied. ‘'Are you not Hellenes yourselves?’’ the soldier