Devshirme (, usually translated as "child levy" or "blood tax")Ingvar Svanberg and David Westerlund, Islam Outside the Arab World, Routledge, 1999, p. 140 was the Ottoman practice of forcibly recruiting soldiers and bureaucrats from among the children of their Balkan Christian subjects and raising them in the religion of Islam. Those coming from the Balkans came primarily from noble Balkan families and rayah classes. It is first mentioned in written records in 1438, but probably started earlier. It created a faction of soldiers and officials loyal to the Sultan. It counterbalanced the Turkish nobility, who sometimes opposed the Sultan.
The system produced a considerable number of grand viziers from the 15th century to the 17th century. This was the second most powerful position in the Ottoman Empire, after the sultan. Initially, the grand viziers were exclusively of Turk origin, but after there were troubles between Sultan Mehmed II and the Turkish grand vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha the Younger, who was the first grand vizier to be executed, there was a rise of slave administrators (devshirme). They were much easier for the sultans to control, compared to free administrators of Turkish aristocratic extraction. The devshirme also produced many of the Ottoman Empire's provincial governors, military commanders, and divans from the 15th to the 17th century. Sometimes, the devshirme recruits were castrated and became eunuchs. Although often destined for the harem, many eunuchs of devshirme origin went on to hold important positions in the military and the government, such as grand viziers Hadım Ali Pasha, Sinan Borovinić, and Hadım Hasan Pasha.
Ottoman officials would take male Christian children, aged 7 to 20, from Eastern, Southern and Southeastern Europe, and relocate them to Istanbul, where they were converted, circumcised, assimilated and trained to serve in the Janissary infantry corps or for palace duties. Devshirme were rarely sold, though some could end up as slaves in private households. The fact that they were taken forcibly from their parents made the devshirme system resented by locals.bbc.co.uk "...and point out that many Christian families were hostile and resentful about it—which is perhaps underlined by the use of force to impose the system.". However, revolts were rare, with the exception of a revolt against the devshirme in Albania in 1565. Ordered to cut all ties with their families, some managed to use their positions to help their families. Muslims were not allowed into the system (with some exceptions), but some Muslim families smuggled their sons in anyway. According to Speros Vryonis, "The Ottomans took advantage of the general Christian fear of losing their children and used offers of devshirme exemption in negotiations for surrender of Christian lands. Such exemptions were included in the surrender terms granted to Jannina, Galata, Morea, Chios, etc. Christians who engaged in specialized activities important to the Ottoman state were exempted from the devshirme on their children by way of recognition of the importance of their labors for the empire. Exemption from this tribute was considered a privilege and not a penalty."
Many scholars consider the practice of devshirme as violating Islamic law. David Nicolle writes that enslavement of Christian boys violates the dhimmi protections guaranteed in Islam, but Halil İnalcık argues that the devshirme were not slaves once converted to Islam.Halil Inalcik, "Ottoman Civilisation", p. 138, Ankara 2004. The boys were given a formal education, and trained in science, warfare and bureaucratic administration, and became advisers to the sultan, elite infantry, generals in the army, admirals in the navy, and bureaucrats working on finance in the Ottoman Empire. They were separated according to ability and could rise in rank based on merit. The most talented, the ichoghlani (Turkish iç oğlanı) were trained for the highest positions in the empire. Others joined the military, including the famed janissaries.Basgoz, I. & Wilson, H. E. (1989), The educational tradition of the Ottoman Empire and the development of the Turkish educational system of the republican era. Turkish Review 3(16), 15.
The practice began to die out as Ottoman soldiers preferred recruiting their own sons into the army, rather than sons from Christian families. In 1594, Muslims were officially allowed to take the positions held by the devshirme and the system of recruiting Christians effectively stopped by 1648. An attempt to re-institute it in 1703 was resisted by its Ottoman members, who coveted the military and civilian posts. Finally, in the early days of Ahmet III's reign, the practice of devshirme was abolished.
History The devshirme (from the Turkish word meaning 'to collect') came up out of the system of slavery that developed in the early centuries of the Ottoman Empire, and which reached this final development during the reign of Sultan Bayazit I. The were mostly prisoners from war, hostages or slaves that were purchased by the state. The Ottoman Empire, beginning with Murad I, felt a need to "counteract the power of (Turkic) nobles by developing Christian vassal soldiers and converted as his personal troops, independent of the regular army." This elite force, which served the Ottoman Sultan directly, was called (The Hearth of the Porte Servants). They were divided into two main groups: cavalry and infantry. The cavalry was commonly known as the (The Cavalry of the Servants of the Porte) and the infantry as the janissaries (, meaning "the New Corps"). The devshirme conscripts were set apart from the janissaries in that they were not a cavalry group, rather exclusively infantry.
At first, the soldiers serving in these corps were selected from the slaves captured during war. However, a new system commonly known as devshirme was soon adopted. In this system, children of the rural Christian populations of the Balkans were conscripted before adolescence and were brought up as Muslims. Upon reaching adolescence, these children were enrolled in one of the four imperial institutions: the palace, the scribes, the Muslim clergy, and the military. Those enrolled in the military would become either part of the Janissary corps (1363), or part of another corps. The most promising were sent to the palace school (), where they were destined for a career within the palace itself and could attain the highest office of state, Grand Vizier, the Sultan's powerful chief minister and military deputy. In the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, this office was held only by Turks. However, after there were problems between sultan Mehmed II and the Turkish Çandarlı Halil Pasha the Younger, who became the first grand vizier to be executed, there was a rise of slave administrators devshirme. They were much easier to control for the sultans, as compared to free administrators of Turkish noble origin. They were also less subject to influence from court factions. From the very beginning, the Turcoman were a danger that undermined the Sultan's creation of a strong state. Thus, the establishment of this class counterbalanced the Turkish nobility, who sometimes opposed the Sultan.
An early Greek source mentioning devshirme () is a speech by Archbishop Isidore Glabas, made on 28 February 1395, titled: "On the abduction of children according to sultan's order and on the Future Judgment". The speech includes references to the violent Islamization of children and their hard training in the use of dogs and falcons.Papadopoulos I. Stefanos, "Account of paedomazoma in Thessaloniki during the first occupation of the city by the Turks, ... ", Thessaloniki, 1992, pp. 71–77 (Παπαδόπουλος Στέφανος Ι., Μνεία παιδομαζώματος στη Θεσσαλονίκη κατά την πρώτη κατοχή της πόλης από τους Τούρκους, Χριστιανική Θεσσαλονίκη ... (11ος-15ος μ.Χ.), Θεσσαλονίκη 1992, σ. 71–77) (in Greek).
A reference to devshirme is made in a poem composed in Greek by Ioannes Axayiolis, who appeals to Emperor Charles V of Germany to liberate the Christians from the Turks. The text is found in the of 1624. In another account, the Roman Catholic bishop of Chios in 1646 writes to the director of the Catholic Greek Gymnasion of Rome asking the latter to accept Paulos Omeros, a 12-year-old boy from Chios, to save him from the devshirme.Zoras Th. Georgios, "Some accounts on Paedomazoma", Parnassos, vol. 4, 2 (1962), pp. 217 – (Ζώρας Θ. Γεώργιος, "Μαρτυρίαι τινές περί το Παιδομάζωμα" (in Greek). On the Axayioli poem, pp 217–221. On the letter of bishop of Chios, pp 221–223. Original letter in Italian.
The recruitment of children took place every three to four years and at times even annually, according to the needs of the Sultan. The largest loss of children coincided with the peak of Ottoman expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under the rule of Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent.A. E. Vacalopoulos. The Greek Nation, 1453–1669, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 1976, p. 41; Vasiliki Papoulia, The Impact of Devshirme on Greek Society, in War and Society in East Central Europe, Editor—in—Chief, Bela K. Kiraly, 1982, Vol. II, pp. 561—562.
The life of the devshirme According to historian William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Christian children were taken by Ottoman officials, every four to seven years, their age ranging from 7 to 20. Those younger than 8 were called (nursling) and (child). One for every forty households was chosen, they had to be unmarried and once taken were ordered to cut all ties with their family.
Christian parents undeniably resented the forced recruitment of their children, as a result they would beg and often seek to buy their children out of the levy. The Balkan peasantry tried to evade the tribute collectors, with many attempting to substitute their children in Bosnia.Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition, Norman Itzkowitz, p. 49 Many sources (including Paolo Giovio) mention different ways to avoid the devshirme such as: marrying the boys at the age of 12, mutilating them or have both father and son convert to Islam. Conversion to Islam was used in Bosnia and Herzegovina to escape the system. In Albania and Epirus the practice led to a Christian revolt where the inhabitants killed the recruiting officials in the year 1565. In Naousa, after killing the recruiting officials the parents fled to the mountains but were later caught and executed in 1705.
Any parent who refused to have their child taken as a slave was put to death, and children who attempted to resist being taken from their families as janissaries by fleeing would lead to the Turks arresting and then torturing their parents to death (Many children who attempted to flee on their own returned after hearing of their parents' torture). Such was the case of an Athenian boy who returned from hiding to save his father's life but chose to die himself rather than abandon his faith and convert to Islam. A firman in 1601 gave strict orders to Ottoman officials to kill any parent that resisted:
Sources claim that it was not rare for the older youth to attempt to preserve their faith and some recollection of their homeland and their families. For instance, Stephan Gerlach writes:
Greek scholar Janus Lascaris visited Constantinople in 1491 and met many janissaries who not only remembered their former religion and their native land but also favored their former coreligionists. The renegade Hersek, the sultan's relative by marriage, told him that he regretted having left the religion of his fathers and that he prayed at night before the cross which he kept carefully concealed.