Christianity in the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire was, in a broad sense, tolerant towards its non-Muslim subjects; it did not, for instance, attempt to forcibly convert many of them to Islam. The sultans took their primary duty to be service to the interests of the state, which could not survive without taxes and a strong administrative system.
Ottoman State and Organized Religion
The state's relationship with the Greek Orthodox Church, for example, was largely peaceful, and the church's structure was kept intact and largely left alone but under close control and scrutiny until the Greek War of Independence of 1821–1831 and, later in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the rise of the Ottoman constitutional monarchy, which was driven to some extent by nationalistic currents. Other churches, like the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, were dissolved and placed under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Church. On the other hand, the empire often served as a refuge for the persecuted and exiled Jews of Europe, as for example following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, when Sultan Beyazid II welcomed them into Ottoman lands.
Religious Freedoms
Although the Ottoman state did not directly and harshly pursue a policy of forced individual conversion[citation needed], it did decree that, for reasons of outward distinction, the people of the different millets wear specific colors of, for instance, turbans and shoes—a policy that was not, however, always followed by Ottoman citizens[1]. Moreover—from the time of Murad I through the 17th century—the Ottoman state also put into effect the devşirme (دوشيرم), a policy of filling the ranks of the Ottoman army and administrative system by means of forcefully collecting young Christian boys from their families and taking them to the capital for education and an eventual career either in the Janissary military corps or, for the most gifted, the Ottoman administrative system. Most of the children thus collected were from the empire's Balkan territories, where the devşirme system was referred to as the "blood tax". The children themselves were not forcefully converted to Islam—though{citation needed} they ended up becoming Islamic due to the milieu in which they were raised—but any children that they had were considered to be free Muslims[2].
Notes
- ^ Mansel, 20–21
- ^ "Devsirme", Encyclopaedia of the Orient