Devshirmeh

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"Blood tax" (from Topkape Saraj); gravure that depicts young boys forcedly taken from their families to grow up in captivity and later become the elite of the Ottoman army.

Devshirmeh (Turkish devşirme, Greek, παιδομάζωμα, paedomazoma, "collection of children"; Romanian: tribut de sânge; Serbian danak u krvi or Bulgarian кръвен данък, kraven danak, "blood tax") was the system of collection of young boys from conquered Christian lands by the Ottoman sultans as a form of regular taxation in order to build a loyal slave army (formerly largely composed of war captives) and class of (military) administrators: the Janissaries, or other servants such as tellak in hamams. The word devşirme means "collecting, gathering" in Ottoman Turkish. Boys delivered to Ottomans in this way were called ghilmán or acemi oglanlar ("novice boys"). This practice today would be considered genocidal.

[edit] History

The devshirmeh was similar to a system used by earlier Islamic dynasties, such as the Abbasids who used slaves to build armies — especially guard troops — intended to be loyal to the ruler and thus provide a steady pool of manpower that was outside of local politics, but in many cases they ended up supporting or staging coups. This also has a basis in the Quran, surat 8, verse 41, which provides for the enlistment a fifth of the campaign captives.

The descendants of these slaves would form the Mamluk dynasties. Despite the intentions of the Abbasid rulers, the Mamluks would eventually grow in power, reducing the Caliph to a virtual puppet.

The devshirmeh was an outgrowth of this system, but it also proved to be more efficient and effective at achieving its goals. Under the Ottomans, the system was first instituted by Murad I who needed a large pool of manpower from which the Sultan could build armies to fight in seemingly never-ending wars on many fronts and put down insurrections.

Under the Ottomans, newly conquered lands were "taxed" of their youth, with each province ordered to present a certain number of peasant sons aged 12 to 16 to the Sultan. Initially, these boys came from Christian families. The boys would not be forced to convert to Islam (however, since the vast majority of them were very young and permanently cut off from their original families, they did in the end convert), but their children would be Muslims, and thus their children would not be allowed to enter the devshirmeh. This was intended to keep the system from generating a hereditary class, such as the Mamluks.

Boys were collected every year, from Christian lands, first mainly in the Balkans (mainly Greeks, Croats, Bulgarians, Serbians and Albanians), in the 17th century more from Ukraine and southern Russia. They were initially billetted with Turkish farming families to learn the language and toughen up physically before being transferred to the capital or another specialised garrison for training.

Training of these acemi ocağı involved physical preparation in the arts of war, as well as the study of culture, such as calligraphy, theology, literature, law and languages. Despite the rigors of training, while students, the recruits were not allowed to leave. Of the Janissary corps' 196 orta (companies), no less then 14 in Rumelia (Europe) and 17 in Anadolu (Asia) were specifically devoted to their training; after the abolition of devshirme, only four such cadet companies remained.

Upon reaching adulthood, the brightest were set aside for a career within the palace itself where the very ablest could aspire to attaining the very highest office of state, that of Grand Vizier, the Sultan's immensely powerful chief minister and military deputy. The rest were assigned to the various units of the Janissaries and other elite palace troops.

The devshirmeh declined in the 16th and 17th century due to a number of factors, including the inclusion of free Muslims in the system. Since 1568 the 'boy harvest' was only occasionally made and in 1648 it was officially abolished; attempts to reintroduce it failed due to the resistance of the new Turkish members of the Janissary corps in 1703, who wanted the coveted posts exclusively for their own families.

The families of those taken in Christian countries often reviled it as forced servitude and loss of ancestral identity, fearing that their children were never to be seen again and that some boys were fated to become sexual servants to Turkish high officials (see pederasty in the Islamic world), and did their best to hide their eligible sons. This practice was called "the blood tax" in many Balkan languages, and was considered to be one of the worst manifestations of the oppression affecting Christian peoples in the empire.

There are accounts, however, of Muslim families attempting to smuggle their offspring into the levy, which was strictly forbidden. Although the devshirmeh made boys into the Sultans' state slaves, some considered it an honor as it conversely led to a highly privileged position in Ottoman society, but inevitably led to their conversion to Islam (a price many adult Christians paid voluntarily for social promotion). The system also had specific limits on who and how many could be taken. The seizure of sons whose absence would cause hardship and difficulties was not permitted.

Another aspect is that recruiting Christians for the military and administration counterbalanced the grip of the old Turkish nobility, which was largely chanelled to education, law, Muslim religion and the provincial cavalry, in the spirit of division of tasks and rights of the millet system which benefitted the cohesion of the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural empire.