CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE DEVSH!RME: VEH!CLE FOR SOC!AL ADVANCEMENT OR AN INHUMANE ACT
A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of The School of Continuing Studies and of The Graduate School of Art and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Liberal Studies
By Lela Ivankovic, B.S.
Georgetown University Washington, D.C. November, 2013
UMI Number: 1556280
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CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE DEVSH!RME: VEH!CLE FOR SOC!AL ADVANCEMENT OR AN INHUMANE ACT Lela Ivankovic, B.S. MALS Mentor: Elizabeth Zelensky, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the nature of the devshirme system - the forcible removal of Christian male children in the form of a tribute, imposed by the Ottomans on their conquered Christians territories, and how it appeared from the prospective of the Ottomans, the Christian parents, and the abducted devshirme youths. The Ottoman Empire established the devshirme institution as a response to the empire’s increasing needs for qualified military men to be employed by the sultans in their private army, the janissary corps. The Christian families looked at the devshirme system as an inhumane act aimed to permanently cut off their children from their ethnic and cultural environment. From the point of view of the devshirme youths, the process of the devshirme was more complex and intricate. The devshirme system could be a vehicle toward social advancement or an inhumane act depending on the devshirme youth’s ability and willingness to build a new national and religious identity. This thesis will examine the phenomena of the devshirme system within the framework of the following question; was the devshirme system an inhumane act or a path toward social advancement? Or both?
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................... ii INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: THE OTTOMAN EMIRE ......................................................................................... 3 CHAPTER TWO: THE BALKANS ...................................................................................................... 19 CHAPTER THREE: THE DEVSHIRME INSTITUTION ....................................................................... 36 CHAPTER FOUR: THE DEVSHIRME YOUTHS ................................................................................ 51 CHAPTER FIVE: CONTEMPRORARY VIEW ON THE DEVSHIRME .......................................... 78 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 85 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 88
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INTRODUCTION The devshirme system established in the early period of the Ottoman expansion, at the end of the fourteenth century, was a unique innovation of the Ottoman Empire. The system was founded as a response to the empire’s extensive need for qualified military men, the future soldiers in the Janissary corps, the Yeni Cheri, or “New Troops.” The Turkish term, devshirme means “to collect.” The phrase refers to the forceful separation of the Christian male children from their families in the form of a tribute. The children were selected based on their physical strength and intelligence. This forceful act, called blood levy or child tribute in Western societies, was followed by an immediate conversion to Islam. Upon conversion, the devshirme children were disciplined mentally to expunge their national and religious identities, as well as their family background and cultural environment. Ultimately, they were trained to construct new identities, practice Islam, and become accustomed to life with Muslim tradition and customs. Based on their intellectual capacity, skills, and individual talents, the devshirme youths were classified into two distinctive groups. The scholarly group was composed of devshirme youths conversant in several languages, knowledgeable in Qur’an and political affairs, with highly developed skills of service and loyalty to the sultan. This group began their careers in the sultan’s palace working on various positions as members of his personnel. The military group was composed of the devshirme youths who mastered fighting skills, and army discipline, and were well prepared for physical endeavors, with complete obedience and veneration to the sultan. This devshirme group ended in the sultan’s prestigious Janissary corps, at that time the best infantry troop in the region.
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The devshirme system contributed to the development of a special bond between the sovereigns and their slaves. The sultan’s absolute power depended on the devshirme youths since they were the sultan’s most loyal and obedient servants. The life and future of the devshirme youths depended entirely on the sultan. While the devshirme system removed devshirme youths from their ethnic, religious, and cultural environment, it provided conditions for an unmatched education and opportunities for successful professional careers. Because of this, some devshirme youths held the highest positions within the Ottoman administration, such as the post of the Grand Vizier, the equivalent of the prime minister today. However, the majority of the devshirme youths became members of the sultan’s Janissary corps risking their lives for the Ottoman Empire and its primary goals—expansion of the empire and the abode of Islam. Despite having the same treatment, the devshirme youths had different experiences and, thus, different views concerning the Ottoman Empire. Some of them considered their new life in the glorious empire as a gift from God. Others could never accustom themselves to their foreign state, and accept the new religion or their status as slaves. To explain and understand the true nature of the devshirme system, the organization of the Ottoman state, society and particularly the administrative-military organization must be explained and examined. In addition, the social and religious circumstances in the Balkans will be explained specifically in Serbia and Bosnia to provide context for the devshirme system. The devshirme system was an exceedingly complex institution and should be analyzed from various points of view.
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CHAPTER ONE THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE From one small principality in Anatolia, the Ottomans built a powerful empire, covering the region from Vienna to the upper Arab Peninsula. The Ottomans built a multi-ethnic state, whose inhabitants spoke different languages and were of different religions. The Ottoman state, founded at the beginning of the fourteenth century, reached its zenith in the sixteenth century under the reign of the sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. The Ottoman Empire lasted for more than six centuries. The foundation of the Ottoman state is wrapped in a veil of legend. It started with a dream of Osman, the founder of the Ottoman state, and its first sultan. The legend says that Osman received revelations one night while sleeping at the house of a devout Muslim and mystical leader who left the Qur’an in Osman’s room referring to prophet Muhammed who gave that book to the world. While reading the Qur’an, Osman fell asleep in the early morning hours, a time which is believed in the Muslim tradition to be the best time for prophetic dreams. Osman dreamed about Malkatum, a girl who lived in a nearby village. Malkatum was the daughter of Sheikh Edebali who refused to give her permission to be married. While sleeping, an angel emerged and spoke to Osman: “Since thou has read my eternal word with so great respect, thy children, and the children of thy children shall be honored from generation to generation.”1 Soon after, Osman had his second revelation, when he dreamed that the
1
Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries : The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (New York: Perennial An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, 1977), 1.
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moon ascended from Sheikh Edebali’s breast and descended straight into his own Breast. Lord Kinross related: … then from his loins there sprang a tree, which as it grew came to cover the whole world with the shadow of its green and beautiful branches. Beneath it, Osman saw four mountains ranges—the Caucasus, the Atlas, the Taurus, and the Balkans. From its roots there issued four rivers, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Danube. The fields were rich with crops, the mountains thick with forests. In the valleys were cities adorned with domes, pyramids, obelisks, columns, and towers, all surmounted by the Crescent. When he awoke, Osman described his dream to Sheikh Edebali. The holy man interpreted his dream as a sign from God, and predicted that Osman would have a career as a great leader of the greatest Empire. As a reward, Sheikh Edebali agreed to let his daughter Malkatum marry Osman. 2 The first Turcoman tribes, soon to become Ottomans, settled in Asia Minor in the thirteenth century in the territory conquered by the Seljuk Empire. They were forced to leave their homeland in central Asia after the invasion of the Mongol hordes. At the time of their settlement, the early Ottomans had not accepted Islam yet, although Islam arrived in Asia Minor with the wave of Seljuk Turks in the eleventh century. The Ottomans were one of many Turkic tribes who fought for supremacy in Anatolia, which is the region between the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. This vast area was part of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire.3
2
Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries , 23-24.
3
Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream : The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 3.
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Two major factors responsible for the foundation and rise of the Ottoman state were the sultans’ accentuation of the concept of the holy war, or gazi in Turkish, and a mass migration of people into the newly founded Ottoman state. However, to the early Ottomans, their concept of a state had a broader meaning. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the early Ottomans were nomadic warriors and regardless of whether they were gazis, they were all predatory raiders who enjoyed plundering and looting. Their attacks were directed toward Christians and Muslims alike. The gazi warriors sometimes formed temporary alliances with Christians and joined fighting actions. Upon plundering different regions in Anatolia, especially the Christian Byzantine Empire, they shared the ill-gotten gains. 4 Osman, the first Ottoman sultan was a gazi, meaning a warrior who was fighting in the name of holy war. Osman’s goal was to expand his territory in accordance with the convictions of holy war, which meant to fight against all nonbelievers or against all non-Muslims. The empire founded on these principals was an Islamic state. The main task of the Ottomans was to defend Islam as the supreme faith and to spread its domain (i.e. Dar al-Islam against the Dar al-Harb, “the domain of war,” where the subjects ready to fight Islam resided). Osman’s principality was one of many small frontier principalities in Anatolia, located in its northwestern region, at the edge of the Byzantine Empire closest to the Balkans. Osman ruled over his small territory with the support of his father-in-law, Sheikh Edebali, under whose influence Osman brought Islam into his principality, and
4
Gabor Agoston and Bruce Masters, Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Facts on File, 2009), 232.
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spread the religious enthusiasm among his followers. The struggle for religious glory in the Osman principality was very attractive for many Anatolian warriors. Thus, the
gazis poured in from numerous villages across a vast region of Anatolia and settled in cities in Osman’s principality. Osman had a reputation as an excellent soldier as well as a good administrator. Gradually, Osman gained popularity and respect from many surrounding tribal gazis who willingly placed their principalities under Osman’s command. As Kinross said, “his followers came to serve and to work with him in harmony, conscientiously helping to lay for this small growing state in its social cohesion such a foundation as to guarantee its endurance.”5 Osman principalities were quickly transformed from a tribal region into a nontribal territory, with loyalty to one
gazi warrior, Osman himself. 6 The establishment of the house of Osman was one of the essential elements in the rise of the Ottoman state because “under the house of Osman, traditional nomad attachment to successful commanders became institutionalized as a dynastic loyalty, and nomadic mentality gave away to state stability.”7 Eventually, Osman ruled over a large territory in Anatolia, and became the first sultan. His descendants, supporters, and followers called themselves Osmanlis, “the Ottomans,” and the house of Osman officially was established. Osman was a very successful sultan who preferred justice to power and his success was possible because of his kind nature and sympathetic character, and the fact that he did not rule with an iron fist. On the contrary, Osman “was a wise, patient ruler, whom men revered and
5
Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, 23-24.
6
Dennis P. Hupchick, The Balkans: From Constantinople to Communism (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 102. 7
Ibid., 103. (
loved to serve, not as a warrior, least of all for any Islamic semi-divine status, but for his calm, compelling personality as a leader of his own people.” 8 As a patient ruler, aware of the Byzantine power and the weakness of his own army, Osman was not eager to expand the domain of his principality immediately. Osman waited and planned his military action for twelve years before he decided to act. The decisive moment in his career was his famous victory over the Byzantine army in 1301, at the battle at Koyun Hisar, the Baphaeon in Greek. This victory brought more fame and veneration to Osman. Consequently, more and more Anatolian
gazis put their service under Osman’s flag, proud to be called the Osmanlis. The Osman principality, now strongly established, expanded its borders. At the end of Osman’s life, his successor and son Orphan established a capital in Bursa. The exact date of the formation of the Ottoman state was not as important as the fact that the state was destined to grow into a powerful empire. According to Caroline Finkel, Osman’s dream represents the most enduring myth of the Ottoman Empire, “conjuring up a sense of temporal and divine authority and justifying the visible success of Osman and his descendants at the expense of their competitors for territory 9
and power in the Balkans, Anatolia, and beyond.” Many factors contributed to making Osman’s dream a reality. The most important ones are creation of an autocratic state with the sultan’s supreme power and a slave-based administrative-military system, which had its genesis in the devshirme— the subject of this thesis. Although, the devshirme institution was established primarily 8
Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, 25.
9
Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream , 2.
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for the empire’s military demands, the same institution became the cornerstone for the empire’s political establishment and continuity of Osman’s dynasty. In that sense, the devshirme system greatly contributed to the creation of the powerful Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire had a strong autocratic organization, which could be explained by the empire’s central administration where the sultan was the absolute leader in whose hands lay all political, religious, and military power. As Hupchick said, “the sultan became the protector and proprietor of the state, the head of the Islamic community, the sole source of civil law, and the controller of all state offices.”10 According to established Turkish belief, the appointment of the sultan was in God’s hands. Islamic law did not regulate the right of inheritance of the throne and sultans were restrained from naming their successor because they did not want to act against God’s judgement. For this reason, the sultan’s successor was determined by the principle of fratricide. Any outcome of a fratricidal battle was considered a Divine judgement. This concept was replaced by the principle of seniority at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In terms of its political, religious, and military characteristics, the organization of the Ottoman state was in the shape of a pyramid. On the top was the sultan as head of state and the leader of the Ottoman dynasty. The middle section was comprised of the military and ruling class, the askeris, who were considered the highest administrative officials. The lowest section belonged to reaya, meaning “the flock.” This derogatory term referred to the low social status of the reaya population.
10
Hupchick, The Balkans, 125.
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The Ottoman sultans ruled strictly by sharia, or Islamic law. In addition, the sultan was allowed to legislate laws based on rational principles instead of religious ones. These laws, known as kanuns, were primarily applied to the non-Muslim population. Kanuns were primarily intended to serve in areas of public and administrative law. As a supreme leader of the Ottoman state, the sultan’s residence, his palace, was the physical center of government. The palace, comprised of many buildings, had four main sections. Aside from the sultan’s living area, administrative center, and the area for palace servants, there was a center for education of the devshirme youths known as Endurun. When the sultan traveled, the physical center of government moved wherever he happened to reside. The fundamental element of the sultan’s power, as well as the cornerstone for the development of the Ottoman Empire, was the Ottoman’s adoption of the administrative-military concept of government based on kul, the slave system. The Ottomans adopted this slave system during an early period of their rule. Except for the sultan, his children, and family members, religious instructors, and members responsible for his entertainment, such as dwarfs, mutes, or wrestlers, all other palace administrators and military members were the sultan’s slaves. Initially, the primary source of slaves was prisoners of war. Later on, there were several sources for obtaining slaves during the Ottoman’s period. The Islamic law, sharia, allowed sultans to enslave a fifth of the prisoners of war. Sultans could purchase slaves too. In addition, the Ottomans transformed into slaves the aristocratic children from their newly conquered territory whom they took as hostages. From the
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end of fourteenth century, the devshirme system or recruitment of the Christian youths from newly conquered territory in the Balkans became the chief source for obtaining slaves. The treatment of the sultan’s slaves in his palace was the direct responsibility of the sultan’s carefully chosen instructors. For every devshirme youth, formal education and training was provided. Once, they completed their training and merged fully into the Muslim way of life, the devshirme youths went through the process of selection. Then they were classified into two distinctive groups based on their intellectual and physical ability. The well-educated group was composed of devshirme youths conversant in several languages, knowledgeable in the Qur’an and political affairs, with highly developed skills of servitude and loyalty to the sultan and the empire. The army group was composed of the devshirme youths who mastered fighting skills and military discipline, were thoroughly prepared for physical endeavors, and gave absolute obedience and veneration to the sultan. The well-educated devshirme youths continued their career at the sultan’s palace or divan, serving in assorted positions as his personal cadres. The military-positioned youths ended up in the Janissaries’ corps, a distinguished military force, at that time the preeminent infantry corps in Europe. The loyal and obedient service of the devshirme slaves helped the sultan to secure his absolute power. At the same time, the service in the sultan’s palace or his Janissary corps provided many advantages for the devshirme youths. It is important to emphasize that for the Ottomans, the institution of slavery was observed and judged in a completely contrasting way from the contemporary idea of slavery in the West. Hupchick explained:
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… entry into the sultan’s slave household opened the door to immense power, wealth, social position, and public honor for any slave with the natural abilities and dedication to rise through the ranks. The emphasis placed on individual merit for filling important offices, with little regard for birth status or social position…to be the sultan’s slave was to possess the opportunity to rise in military-administrative standing as far as skill and ability would permit, 11
including the office of grand vezir—second only to the sultan in authority. It is not surprising that Halil Inalcik observed “in the Ottoman society, to be a slave of the sultan was an honor and privilege.”12 Islamic law is very clear regarding eligibility for enslavement. The enslavement of Muslims is forbidden, but, when non-Muslims convert to Islam, they do not lose their slave status. However, the children of Muslim slaves did not retain slave status. Islamic law divides the world into two major groups: Muslims and nonMuslims. In every aspect, Muslims were in a superior position in relation to nonMuslims subjects. For example, Islamic law does not protect the life and property of non-Muslims living in non-Muslim domains. This means, according to Colin Imber, “that it is permissible to kill or enslave non-Muslims living under a non-Muslim sovereignty.” However, if non-Muslims live under the Muslims’ sovereignty, their status is quite different. Because non-Muslims were obliged to pay property taxes as well as a tax levied on male youths, the devshirme, they gained some form of protected status, and their life and property are protected by Islamic law.13
11
Hupchick, The Balkans, 130.
12
Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 (London: Phoenix Press,
2000), 87. 13
Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650 (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 130-131.
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Ottoman society was divided into two distinctive classes. This classification depended on whether its members worked for the state. Askeris were the military and ruling class, consisting of the high administrative officials, either in the armed forces, or ulema, the members of religious authority, while reaya was the working class. The
askeri class was strictly Muslim, since only Muslims were allowed to be part of the Ottoman ruling elite. Reaya was composed of all Muslims without ruling power, members of the Christian faith from conquered Balkan territory, and some Jews.
Reaya also included all conquered Christian leaders, now vassals of the Ottoman Empire, who paid taxes to the sultan and consequently, kept their leadership over their Balkan states. Reaya included 90% of the population; its primary purpose was to provide economic support to the sultan. The executive power belonged to the imperial assembly or divan. The imperial council included the Grand Vizier and the highest representatives of the religious establishment. The head of the divan was a Grand Vizier (minister of the state), the second most influential person in the empire, after the sultan. The viziers were responsible for the political division of administration, which included protection of the sultan and his family, defense of the state from external enemies, and ensuring national security. The judicial branch had the task of distributing justice and it was considered the most important branch of the government. The third division was the financial branch, responsible for all financial transactions in and out of state. The role of the religious members, or ulema was to administrate the law, education, and to oversee Muslims’ moral and spiritual life.
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Ottoman society was feudal, although quite different from the European system of feudalism. The deference refers to the ownership of feudal property. The Ottoman feudal owners were allowed to cultivate the land and to collect revenue from the property. They also had a right to pass the property to their descendants. However, there were no private properties, the only owner of the land was the state, and the land stayed in the state’s possession forever. The Turkish feudal system knew various kinds of property. The largest property, called has, belonged to sultan, and was considered an imperial private property. It could be distributed only among the sultan’s family and senior officials. The most numerous properties, called timars, were distributed among sipahiliks (cavalry soldiers) and their commanders . Although timars brought the smallest revenue, they were the largest in number, and because of that, the entire socio-economic system in the Ottoman Empire, was called the timar system. Sipahi warriors were allowed to use the property as long as they fulfilled a commitment to the state. They were expected to answer every sultan’s call regarding military missions, wherever the sultan decided to fight. If they did not respond to the sultan’s request, they would lose their fiefs, which would be further distributed to another sipahi solder.
Vakif was a feudal property, an endowment of religious Muslims, built with the purpose of providing charity. Although, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational state with three religions, Islam was the dominant state religion. Religiously, Ottoman society was divided into Muslims and zimmis, “the non-Muslim population.” While the Ottoman administrative code provided privileged status to Muslims, the legal and social status of Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire implied their inferior status. Christians and Jews had
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relative religious freedom because they were allowed to practice their religion under certain conditions. First, the zimmis had to acknowledge the supremacy of Islam. Then, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire had to pay the land use tax, called
harac. In addition, the devshirme obligation was applied on conquered Christian populations. None of these taxes were applicable to Muslim subjects. Because the
zimmis paid these discriminatory taxes, the Ottomans had a clear practical reason to tolerate the non-Muslim subjects on their conquered territory. Those taxes represented the most lucrative source of income for the Ottoman state, and it was in the state’s interest to possess non-Muslim subjects in large numbers. Further, the zimmis were exposed to a number of discriminatory social restrictions. For example, the Ottomans restricted the height and size of zimmi religious buildings and their houses as well as limited the zimmi clothing style regarding permissible colors and textiles. Possession of horses and weapons were forbidden for the zimmis, and in any legal dispute between Muslim and Non-Muslim subjects, the zimmis were always in an inferior position. The Islamic law, sharia was not applicable to non-Muslims populations. Because of that, the sultan had to incorporate laws that already existed in conquered territories, into his kanuns. Thus, the sultan’s secular laws solved all legal problems of the non-Muslim population. The Ottomans allowed the Christian and Jewish local religious leaders to implement these laws, and to solve the legal issues among nonMuslim subjects. When the population of non-Muslim subjects outnumbered the Muslims, the Ottomans created a millet system, which was based exclusively on religious affiliation. The establishment of the millet institution by the sultan Mehmed in 1454 was based on the sultan’s calculation that the different religious laws of non-
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Muslim subjects could be used to administrate them, as the Islamic law sharia administers Muslims. In conformity with this concept, the Ottomans divided nonMuslim subjects into three millet groups, based strictly on religious affiliation and administrated by their religious leaders. This division separated the population of the empire more deeply, into full and second-class citizens. The largest and ultimately the most economically valuable millet group were the Orthodox Christians, established in 1454. Their religious leader was the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Orthodox Christians millet was comprised of nations with different ethnic srcins such as Serbian, Greek, Bulgarian, Macedonian, or Romanian, but were all of the same religion. The Jews represented the second millet group, established 1453; their religious leader was an elected member of the rabbinical council in Istanbul. The third millet group was the Armenian Christians, established in 1461; their religious leader was an Armenian patriarch in Istanbul. Although each millet group was an integral part of the Ottoman administration, the fact that the sultan allowed the local administration to maintain control over cultural and religious autonomy as well as judicial affairs, helped the Ottomans successfully to control and rule over the Christian Balkan states for centuries. While the Ottomans supported conversion to Islam, the Muslims were not allowed to change their faith under any circumstances, even death. The devshirme system was the only form of forced conversion in the Ottoman Empire, and there is much evidence that mass conversion to Islam did occur during Ottoman times. This thesis is focused only on the devshirme system in two Balkan states, Serbia and Bosnia
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where the conversion through the devshirme institution was known to occur on a large scale. In the Balkans, the Christian population converted to Islam in large numbers under different circumstances. Once converted, the converts went through a completely new set of social and psychological transformations. They had to adopt and learn to practice a new way of living and behaving based on Muslim ways of life arising from Islamic law. The new set of obligations separated the converts from their Christians coreligionists, for whom they simply became the foreigners and were called the “Turks” along with the native-born Muslims. The conversion to Islam in the Ottoman state was a gradual process and it occurred during the entire period of Ottoman rule. The conversion process brought many benefits to zimmi subjects such as elimination of discriminatory taxes, social restriction, and avoidance of the devshirme collection. The major reasons for conversion in the Balkan Peninsula were economic, social, and religious factors. Economically, the hardship of taxes was an enormous burden imposed on the Christian population. Socially, the Christian aristocracy converted to Islam to protect their property and continue to enjoy a privileged status in the society. Many historians indicated religious factors as a very important source for conversion during Ottoman rule, specifically in the Balkans. Because of the long lasting encounter of Christians and Muslims, there had been many Christian influences upon Islam, which led to similarities in practicing folk religions. These similarities made conversion from Christianity to Islam much easier. In addition, Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam incorporated some Christian rituals in their doctrine such as
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veneration of babas, often considered the equivalent of saints in Christianity, worship of icons, and rarely, baptism. Between the various Sufi orders, the most influential one was the Bektashi order, which contributed greatly to the process of conversion and islamization in the Balkans, especially in Bosnia. This order emerged in Anatolia during the fourteenth century and was prevalent in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans. The Bektashis did not have a difficult time accommodating the local Balkan population with their mixture of Christians and pre-Islamic rituals and practices. For example, a new member in their order was welcomed with wine, bread, and cheese, the symbols of Holy Communion in Christianity and the order allowed women to participate in their rituals without covering their faces. Thus, the Bektashis were popular among many Christians who converted to Islam because of their rituals and practices.14 From Osman, the first sultan, the Osmanli or Ottoman dynasty would provide thirty-five more sultans during the entire period of Ottoman rule. The prosperous development and rapid expansion of the Ottoman state stems from a highly centralized rule of the sultans as well as their innovation and adoption of the administrativemilitary government based on the slave system and comparative religious tolerance. For the Ottoman’s incessant conquest and longevity of their empire, the establishment of the devshirme system was essential. The devshirme youths, either in the Janissary corps or in the sultan’s palace, represented the highest Ottoman administrative-military establishment. The sultan’s autocratic power was guaranteed and the empire’s military
14
Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804 Washington Press, 1977), 52-54.
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(Seattle: University of
power was possible in large part because of the establishment of the devshirme institution. The expansion of the Ottoman Empire was a continual and unstoppable process in the first two centuries after its establishment. The Ottoman Empire reached its peak in the sixteenth century in the period known as the “golden age.” By that time, the Ottoman conquest included nearly all of the Balkan Peninsula. The Ottomans ruled for more than four hundred years over Serbia and Bosnia. During that period, the devshirme system was imposed on a large scale, especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The empire’s expansion stopped in the seventeenth century when the empire was not as strong as it had been previously. Gradually, it began to decline in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with its fatal collapse at the beginning of the twentieth century. The empire lasted for six centuries and is considered one of the longest lasting empires in history.
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CHAPTER TWO THE BALKANS The Balkan Peninsula is a mountainous region between the Black, Aegean, and Adriatic seas. The name “Balkan” is derived from the Turkish word for a chain of forested mountains. Slavic tribes inhabited the peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries. The Serbs, Bulgarian Croats, and Slovenes belonged to the subgroups of the South Slavs who accepted Christianity in the ninth century. The Serbs and the Bulgarians, under the influence of the Byzantine Empire, accepted Orthodox Christianity and used the Old Church Slavonic language in their liturgy. The Croats and the Slovenes accepted Catholicism and used Latin in their service. The Ottomans invaded the Balkans at the end of the fourteenth century and changed the region demographically, religiously, and culturally. Two neighboring states, Serbia and Bosnia, the setting for this thesis, had quite different political situations and spiritual conditions before the arrival of the Ottomans. This is especially important to emphasize because their different state administrations and religious environments produced a different reaction to the Ottoman conquest, especially on the issues of conversion and the devshirme system. While Serbia had a strong Christian Orthodox religious affiliation embodied in the Serbian Orthodox church, this was not the case in Bosnia. In Bosnia, there were three parallel religions with no central Bosnian Church. This is most probably one of the major causes of the mass conversions to the new religion of Islam, which happened on a much larger scale in Bosnia than in Serbia. As a result, the Ottoman Empire left different cultural and
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religious influences in Serbia and Bosnia, which in turn affected the demographic distributions of each country as well. At the time of the Slav migration, at the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh century, the Serbs settled in the central Balkans. They were polytheists in a Christian environment, between the West and the East Roman Empire. By the early ninth century, the various Serbian tribes fell under the dominance of the Bulgarians. From the ninth to twelfth centuries, the Serbian subjects were under control of the Byzantine Empire, the influence of which would leave a lasting trace in Serbian religious and cultural life. The Serbs accepted Orthodox Christianity, thanks to the Greeks Cyril and Methodius, who preached Christianity in the Slavic language. Cyril composed the first Slavic alphabet, Glagolitic , in 860, which was modified at the end of the ninth century and transformed into the first Serbian alphabet, Cyrillic, at the beginning of the tenth century. The conversion to Christianity played a significant role in helping the Serbs to establish their first states. In adopting the same religion, Orthodox Christianity, the various Serbian tribes developed a strong bond in their personal relationships, which helped them to develop their first two states, the Raska and the Zeta, in the twelfth century with Stefan Nemanja as their first leader (1166-1196) and founder of the Nemanjic dynasty. Thus, Nemanja’s rule is considered the beginning of the first Serbian state in the Middle Ages. The Nemanjic dynasty would remain in power for the next two centuries, the period marked as the beginning of Serbian history when the Serbs gained independence for the first time. Stefan Nemanja was a devoted Orthodox Christian who created the state based on a close link between the Serbian state and its
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church. As Anzulovic explained in his book Heavenly Serbia, the state organized on this principle followed the Byzantine model of the close partnership between the church and the state. It is important to emphasize that all future Serbian kings followed 1
the same model of state organization, which included a strong state-church union. Nemanja’s youngest son Rastko established an autocephalous Serbian national church. Rastko became a monk when he was 18 years old and took the name Sava. As a monk, Sava actively participated in all state affairs and diligently worked on establishing and gaining autonomy for the Serbian Orthodox Church. Thanks to Sava’s productive work on church organization as well as his missionary work, the Serbian national church received autocephalous status from the Byzantine emperor and the Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople in 1219. Its founder Sava became the first Serbian archbishop. In his organization of the Serbian national church, Sava followed the same principal of the close relationship between the Serbian church and state as his father Nemanja in his work on organization of the Serbian state. The church participated in state affairs and considered the state not just a political organization but the guarantor of an ethical and moral order as well. Because of this, the nation and church were very closely interlocked in the Serbian vision. The establishment of an autocephalous Serbian national church is considered one of the most important events in the history of the Serbian people. Sava had a tremendous influence among the Serbian people and church leaders and his reputation as their first spiritual reformer is emphasized further by his writings concerning church
1
Branimir Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 21.
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laws and jurisdiction. Sava brought the Nomocanon, the “collection of ecclesiastical and civil laws regarding church administration and jurisdictions”2 from Byzantium and arranged its translation into Serbian Church Slavonic. The Nomocanon, based on Byzantine legal texts, inspired Sava to create a basic code of the Serbian Orthodox Church, called Krmcija. The Krmcija was intended to instruct church leaders how to organize the church better, its orders, and regulations. In addition, with this basic church code, Sava wanted to improve the already established close relationship between the Serbian church and state. Because of this, with the creation of the Serbian national church closely linked with the Serbian independent state, Sava is considered the founder of the Serbian national identity. The monastery Zica was srcinally designated as the seat of the Serbian archbishopric but later this was relocated to the Kosovo town of Pec, where the spiritual center of the Serbian church would remain for centuries. In the whole territory of the Serbian state, Sava founded eight more dioceses where he appointed bishops and sent liturgical manuscripts and religious books. Blessed with great moral and spiritual qualities, Sava gained the status of saint in his lifetime and is considered the most sacred figure in the Serbian Orthodox Church as well as in Serbia. With the Nemanjic dynasty, Orthodox Christianity became a state religion tightly interlocked with the Serbian medieval state. With their direct association began the tradition of medieval endowments in Serbia. Initially, those endowments were “intending to guard the tomb of their founder, and the monastery brotherhood held
2
Sima M. Cirkovic, The Serbs (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 43.
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constant memorial services and prayed for his soul.” 3 Later, those medieval monasteries and churches, whose walls were covered with icons and religious paintings portraying the lives of former Serbian kings and saints, played a very important role at the time of Ottoman domination. Those religious endowments and their priesthood kept the memory of the independent Serbian state alive among the conquered Serbian subjects. Leaving his throne to his middle son, Stefan Prvovencani, the First Crowned, Stefan Nemanja and his wife Ana embraced a monastic life as well. Together, as a monk Simeon and the nun Anastasia retired to the Studenica monastery that Nemanja had built ca. 1183. Soon after, Nemanja went to Greece to join his son St. Sava who was dedicated to his monastic life. Together, father and son founded the Chilandar monastery in Mount Athos in Greece. Nemanja died on Mount Athos on February 13, 1200. He was buried in the Studenica monastery. Upon his death, the cult of St. Simeon was founded, the importance as stated by Cirkovic. Nemanja was placed at the beginning of the “sacred dynasty” or “dynasty of sacred roots,” which later produced other saints. The aura of sanctity that surrounded some members as well as the entire dynasty enabled the gradual creation of a special Serbian tradition as an extension of general Christian tradition, and placed the history of the Serbian people within the common history of salvation. These ideas were nurtured by the church and handed down through the ages, even during periods when there was no dynasty or state.4 Nemanja’s son, St. Sava, the first Serbian archbishop, died in 1236 and soon after the cult of St. Sava was founded “this cult, which was incorporated in the church calendar and in the founders’ portraits in endowed churches, gave the Serbian 3
Ibid., 60.
4
Ibid., 36.
%$ autocephalous church specific characteristic’s and later played an important role in preserving continuity.”5 Today, St. Sava is the patron saint of Serbian schools and schoolchildren. The highpoint of the Serbian state and church occurred under the king and later emperor Stefan Dusan (1331-1355), a Nemanja’s descendent. King Dusan elevated the Serbian state to the status of Balkan Empire and upgraded the status of the Serbian Orthodox Church from an archbishopric to the patriarchate. During Dusan’s reign, Serbia became the most powerful state in the Balkans, covering the territory from the Adriatic Coast in the West, river Danube to the North, and the Aegean Sea to the South. Emperor Dusan ruled over his vast empire by the first written law, called Dusan’s code. It was the first legal system independently written in the Serbian state. This code of laws was intended to organize the government polity and establish the rule of law in the society and the state. Unlike St. Sava’s Krmcija, which every church official had to have and which was an essential tool for administrating the church, the emperor Dusan’s code was intended to coordinate the political system and establish the rule of law in the state. Stefan Dusan, known as Dusan the Mighty, proclaimed himself as an emperor of the Serbs and the Greeks in 1346. Later, emperor Dusan upgraded his title, to include Emperor of the Bulgarians and the Albanians. Dusan’s proclamation as a tsar went parallel with his work on elevation of the Serbian Orthodox Church to the rank of a patriarchate. In The History of the Serbian Orthodox Church , Dr. Slijepcevic clarified that Dusan followed the well-established link from the Byzantine Orthodox 5
Ibid., 46.
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world between the empire and the patriarchate, which simply meant that the empire without a patriarchate was unthinkable. In addition, Dusan’s ordination must be done by the Serbian patriarch. For that reason, the Serbian archbishopric’s station had to be upgraded. Dr. Slijepcevic assumed that for this act Dusan also had a canonical confirmation since Dusan’s empire covered areas previously under the rule of the Byzantine emperor and under the jurisdiction of the Constantinople patriarch whose power ceased once Dusan became the emperor over their territory. In that sense, as the borders of the Serbian state expanded, the borders of the Serbian patriarchate expanded as well.6 Dusan upgraded the status of the Serbian bishop Joanikie and appointed him as a patriarch of the Serbian empire. In addition, Dusan relocated the new seat of the patriarch in the city of Pec, in Kosovo and his capital in Skoplje, Macedonia, where he was ordained. Tzar Dusan’s empire lasted until his death in 1335. Gradually, Dusan’s empire began to collapse because his successor and son Uros lacked the administrative capacity to govern such a vast territory. The Ottomans began invading the Balkan states in the second half of the fourteenth century. At the time of the Ottoman invasion, the head of the state was Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic. The decisive battle between the Serbs and the Ottoman forces took place in Kosovo, at a place known as the Field of Blackbirds, on St. Vitus’s Day, June 28, 1389. While for the Ottomans this struggle represented just one more attempt to conquer more territories in the Balkans, for the Serbs, the same battle represented a major historical juncture in the destiny of their state and nation. The Serbian defeat was explained by an apocryphal tale concerning the decision made by 6
Djoko Slijepcevic, Istorija Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve (Beograd: BIGZ, 1962), 162.
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the Serbian leader, Prince Lazar who had to make a choice between two sets of values, spiritual and secular, and because of his decision, a cultural scheme was set, which has remained a major influence on Serbian self-perception to this day. Prince Lazar’s decision was explained in the following religious legend. Just before the battle, Saint Elias had sent a messenger to Prince Lazar with a question. Which kingdom did he prefer to choose: the earthly kingdom or the heavenly one? If Lazar had chosen the earthly kingdom, he just had to take his army into a campaign to defeat the Turks. If Lazar had chosen the heavenly kingdom, then he had to build a church at Kosovo field, take communion along with his army, and be prepared to lose his life and the lives of his soldiers. Prince Lazar opted for the heavenly kingdom, and supported by the Albanians and Bosnian troops, decided to go into battle facing defeat from the much larger Ottoman army. Memories of the Kosovo battle were preserved in the Serbian culture because of the folk singers who recited their songs using the one string fiddle called a gusli. All of the writings related to the Kosovo battle, which were composed during the thirty years after the battle, referred to Prince Lazar’s destiny as a martyr’s victory. In the Serbian culture during the Middle Ages, as well as for today, Prince Lazar made the right choice because he committed to the heavenly kingdom and rejected the earthly kingdom.7 One of the most famous folk songs is The Downfall of the Kingdom of
Serbia, which clearly describes Lazar’s options and his decision: Oh, Tsar Lazar, of honorable descent, which kingdom will you choose? Do you prefer the heavenly kingdom, 7
Branimir Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia , 11-12.
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Or do you prefer the earthly kingdom? If you prefer the earthly kingdom, Saddle the horses, tighten the girths! You knights, belt on your sabers, and charge against the Turks: the entire Turkish army will perish! But if you prefer the heavenly kingdom, build a church at Kosovo, do not make its foundation of marble, but of pure silk and scarlet, and make the army take Communion and prepare; your entire army will perish, and you, prince, will perish with it. Although, with his choice Prince Lazar assured a certain military defeat, his choice became the best-known myth of heavenly Serbia, which emerged directly after the Kosovo battle. This myth stayed preserved in Serbian historical consciousness until today which still understands the battle at Kosovo as representing a Serbian moral victory over the Ottomans.8 The battle of Kosovo was a standoff in military terms with massive fatalities on both sides, including the death of both leaders, the Serbian Prince Lazar and the Ottomans Sultan Murad. However, the Turkish consolidated their troops much faster, and were ready for new attacks, which the Serbians were not able to quell. The Serbian state was divided onto several counties, each one ruled by its own independent noblemen. To avoid more losses, the Serbian nobles accepted positions as Turkish vassals. This “vassalage” status meant that Serbian nobles continued to rule during the next seventy years with certain financial and military obligations toward the Ottomans. In 1459, the Serbian territory fell totally under Ottoman domination.
8
Ibid.
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With the Ottoman conquest, the union between Saint Sava’s two pillars, the state, and the Church, was gone. The Serbs lost their independent state. The Ottomans imposed many restrictions and social limitation, such as forbidding the Serbs to dress in bright colors or wear weapons. Economically, the burden of paying taxes was imposed on the Serbian subjects. In a religious sense, the Serbian Orthodox Church had a subordinate position. However, the relative religious tolerance of the Ottomans played a significant role in allowing the Orthodox subjects to practice their faith. Under Ottoman domination, the role of the church was contradictory; “it no longer served the Serbian state because that state had ceased to exist; but it served the Ottoman state, and as the only surviving national institution, it became the main carrier of Serbian national identity.”9 When the Ottomans conquered the Serbian territory, the Serbian patriarchate, located in the town of Pec in Kosovo since the rule of the emperor Dusan, lost its authority and went under the jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of Ohrid. Its place in the autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church would be reestablished in 1557 only thanks to the Mehmed Pasha Sokollu, at the time a Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire who was a devshirme boy taken by the devshirme from his Serbian family in Bosnia. The reestablishment of an independent Serbian church placed the Serbian Orthodox Church in a privileged position and as Anzulovic explained it, “because of the close link between the Orthodox church and nation, the reemergence of the autonomous Serbian Orthodox church and the huge expansion of its jurisdiction had very important consequences for the future of Serbia.”10
9
Ibid., 25.
10
Ibid., 42.
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The church continued to fulfill the spiritual needs of the Serbian people and numerous churches and monasteries built before Ottoman domination played the pivotal role in preserving the notion of Christian consciences among the conquered Serbian population. “Sava’s legacy in Serbia was a strong church, which identified itself with the nation”11 contributed greatly in preserving the feelings of national consciousness among the conquered Serbian population. In addition, the cult of St. Sava was deeply embedded in the Serbian mindset and the Serbians were determined to preserve it. In The History of the Serbian Orthodox Church , Dr. Slijepcevic elaborated the cult of St. Sava among the Serbian population. Namely, Sava’s cult gradually grew into an idea. It represents the cult of a Serbian state founded based on Stefan Nemanja’s value and Tsar Dusan’s glory. Through the cult of St. Sava, the conquered Serbian nation under the leadership of their priesthood wanted to resurrect its nationhood.12 The Ottomans were determined to terminate the cult and end the idea of a new Serbian state. For that reason, the Ottomans burned the relics of St. Sava in Belgrade, today the Serbian capital, in 1594. Contrary to their plan, this violent act only further enhanced St. Sava’s cult in Serbia’s vision. From the beginning, the Ottomans did not force the Balkan people to accept Islam, the dominant faith of the empire. However, the Ottoman Empire did provide conditions for conversion to Islam by offering many socio-economic benefits to Christian subjects who converted. The only forced method of conversion was the
11 Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (New Haven: Yale University Press), 81. 12
Slijepcevic, Istorija Srpske Pravoslavne crkve, 131.
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devshirme system, which contributed to the process of conversion as well as islamization in the Balkans. In Serbia, the islamization process did not take the same path and did not occur on a large scale like in Bosnia. The primary reason is certainly the strong presence of the Serbian Orthodox Church, a cornerstone of the Serbian national and religious identity. In Serbia, there were only two alternatives: Christianity or Islam. Since the Serbian church embedded Orthodoxy in state affairs and developed a strong relationship with that state, the Serbian subjects stayed closely connected to their religious roots and did not convert to Islam in large numbers for a variety of socio-economic or religious benefits, as they did in Bosnia. However, the devshirme system contributed to the conversion to Islam in Serbia and Bosnia as well. In Serbia, this forced method of conversion was primarily applied to Serbian male youths from the end of the fourteenth century, soon after the Kosovo battle, and lasted until the beginning of the seventeenth century. However, the devshirme system did not contribute to conversion to Islam en masse as in Bosnia. The Slavs settled in Bosnia during the same era as in Serbia, in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. The Slavic tribes in Bosnia were organized into a variety of small independent counties, called zupas, each ruled by its own leaders called
zupans. This regional division in Bosnia and governance of zupans based on their own tradition and religion, made it difficult for future Bosnian leaders to centralize the Bosnian state and church. In medieval times, Bosnians simple called themselves Slavs. When the Bosnian state was established, the Slav population took the name Bosnians. The Bosnians used a slightly altered Cyrillic alphabet called Bosancica. Their acceptance of Christianity occurred during the ninth century. The majority of the
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Bosnian population accepted Catholicism by the tenth century thanks to the Dalmatian missionaries. When a breach appeared between Byzantium and Rome in the eleventh century, Bosnia became the land of religious division in the Christian world. In contrast to Serbia where Orthodox Christianity was the only religion among the Serbian population, in Bosnia from Medieval times until the arrival of the Ottomans, three separate Christian religions coexisted. This fact made it difficult for Bosnia to have a central state church supported by the entire population and with its own religious leaders. Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and the Bosnian Church all existed as separate entities dominant in different areas of Bosnia with their own religious leaders who most often resided outside of the Bosnian territory. The majority of the population was not religiously intolerant and all three faiths were equally accepted and respected. Different areas of Bosnia were under the political control of neighboring states from the tenth to the twelfth century. Bosnia did not have a royal dynasty and the Bosnian rulers frequently sought to balance themselves between the Catholic and the Orthodox political power. The first Bosnian ruler was Ban Kulin (1180-1204) under whose leadership Bosnia gained independence. During his reign, the Bosnians established an independent Bosnian Church, which “was simply a Catholic nonpreaching order gone into schism with Rome.”13 The pope denounced the Bosnian Church as heretical and the Catholic and Orthodox kings blamed Ban Kulin for providing hospitality to the members of the Bosnian Church and even accused Ban Kulin
13
John Fine, The Bosnian Church: Its Place in state and Society from the Thirteenth to the Fiftieth Century , (London, SAQI), 232.
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of making the beliefs of the heretics a state religion. When the pope threatened to send crusades against Ban Kulin, he immediately declared Catholicism as his religious affiliation. The next ruler, Ban Stjepan Kotromanic (1318-1353) was most probably an Orthodox Christian who converted to Catholicism. During Ban Stjepan’s reign, Bosnia expanded its territory and advanced economically. Bosnia included parts of Croatia and the region of Hum, previously under Serbian domination. In addition, during the Ban Stjepan reign, the Bosnian Church obtained autonomous status and Ban Stjepan Kotromanic had cordial relations with the Bosnian Church. The next leader, Ban Tvrtko (1377-1391), who was the Ban Stjepan Kotromanic’s nephew, made Bosnia one of the most important states in the Balkan Peninsula at that time. Ban Tvrtko was a devout Catholic and tolerant ruler who allowed all faiths to be equally practiced in Bosnia. Ban Tvrtko proclaimed himself king of Serbia and Bosnia over the grave of St. Sava, in an endowment of the Nemanjic dynasty. Tvrtko’s claim to a Serbian crown was based on his Serbian ancestry from the Nemanjic royal family and his annexation of lands with Orthodox populations. He chose the Monastery Mileseva, the resting place of St. Sava, as the location of his coronation. After his coronation, according to the custom of Serbian rulers, King Tvrko took the name of Stefan Tvrtko but remained Catholic. While Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece were already under Ottoman domination, King Tvrtko ruled independently until he died in 1391. Bosnia did not have a strong central administration and as a result, after Ban Tvrtko’s death, Bosnia fragmented into several counties all governed by their own independent nobles frequently in rivalry and warfare with each other. The Ottoman Empire and the Hungarian kingdom fought over parts of Bosnian territory. During one period, the Bosnian noblemen, King Ostoja was on the
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Hungarian side and fought against Turks and the Bosnian nobleman Hrvoje on the other side. When the Ottomans defeated the Hungarians in Bosnia, they established control over central Bosnia. There was not any decisive battle in Bosnia that marked the fall of the Bosnian state. The Bosnian nobles lacked central organization and an organized resistance against the Ottomans because they literally fought against each other until the Ottoman arrival. Because of its impenetrable mountain landscape, Bosnia was gradually conquered by the Ottomans. The final fall of Bosnia occurred in 1463. To a large extent, religious affiliation determined the settlement of the Bosnian population. The Orthodox population was predominantly in the east and south of Bosnia. This part of Bosnia bordered the Serbian states whose population was Orthodox Christians and under the jurisdiction of the centralized Serbian Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church had little influence in Bosnia during the pre-Ottoman period except for the southern region, the territory of Hum, today Hercegovina. Hum was under Serbian political rule with Orthodox Christian subjects affiliated with the Serbian archbishopric in Pec. The Catholic population was predominantly in the western and northern regions of Bosnia since those areas of Bosnia bordered with Catholic Croatia and the Hungarian state. The Catholics were entirely settled in the urban areas of Bosnia where its clergy founded numerous monasteries before the arrival of the Ottomans. When the Franciscan vicariate of Bosnia was established in 1342, the Franciscan order was the most responsible for spreading Catholicism in Bosnia. The Catholic Christians recognized the pope as their religious authority. However, the Catholic bishop of Bosnia lived outside of Bosnia, in Slavonia and did not play a crucial role for the Catholic subjects. The third religious entity in Bosnia was the Bogomils who settled in the central part of Bosnia and
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joined in large numbers the Bosnian Church established in the mid-thirteenth century. The Bogomils were dualistic in dogma. Their bishop was called djed (grandfather) and its clergy called them krstjanin, meaning Christian. The Bosnian Church never established a strong bond with its members. Although, many Bosnian nobles belonged to the Bosnian Church, the church has never gained a majority of the Bosnian subjects since it lacked proselytizing efforts and because of the presence of two well-established faiths. As a result, the Bosnian Church did not have political power and did not constitute a state church. The Bosnian Church ceased to exist in 1459 when Bosnian King Stefan Tomas under pressure from the pope and Bosnian Franciscans gave an ultimatum to the clergy of the Bosnian Church: to accept Catholicism or to leave Bosnia. A majority converted to Catholicism with a small number moving to Herzegovina who eventually accepted Orthodox Christianity. The church lasted as a separate entity as long as the Bosnian state existed, until the Ottoman conquest. It is important to note that no faith, Orthodox, Catholicism, or Bogomil was able to act as a spiritual or cultural guide to the Bosnian society. Because of the presence of the three separate creeds in Bosnia, the Ottomans categorized the Bosnian subjects by their religious affiliation on 14
Orthodox, Catholics, and Muslims subjects. While Serbia had a state Serbian Orthodox Church, which bound their believers and continued to do so under Ottoman rule, the Bosnians never developed such strong religious feelings since three competing faiths existed at the same time without an organized central church administration and with the absence of priests. Thus, the 14
John V. A. Fine, The Medieval and Ottoman Roots of Modern Bosnian Society, edited by Mark Pinson in The Muslims of Bosnia~ Herzegovina: Their Historic Development from the Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). 7-19.
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weak Bosnian Christian identity, their inability to adhere to any religious community, and absence of religious bonds between the Bosnian population as a whole, directly opened the door for acceptance of Islam as a new religion conveyed by the Ottomans. The Bosnians converted to Islam for political, economic, and/or social reasons. In a political sense, the Bosnians experienced a long fight with the Hungarian Empire and developed a sense of hostility toward the Hungarians, who were Catholic. In addition, for a half a century before the final Ottoman conquest, the Bosnians had encountered the Turks and were acquainted with Islam. Therefore, the alternative in Bosnia was between Turks and Hungarians or Catholicism and Islam. The conversion to Islam for the Bosnian subjects was more logical since Islam became the dominant state religion and the adoption of the new faith brought undeniable benefits and advantages. The Bosnian nobles were the first to convert to Islam because they worried more for their own personal wealth, property, and social status than for the Bosnian state or religion to which they did not have any historical bond at all. Aside from the Bosnian nobles, the Bosnian peasants converted to Islam in large numbers to avoid paying property taxes as well as taxes levied on their male youths. The conversion to Islam in Bosnia did not arise directly after the Ottoman conquest. Rather, the process of conversion began slowly and increased gradually. It lasted for over four hundred years. The last of the Balkan populations to convert, the Bosnians converted to Islam in the largest number. One of the sources of conversion to Islam was the devshirme system.
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CHAPTER THREE THE DEVSHIRME INSTITUTION From the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, as an autocratic leader the sultan was allowed to keep one-fifth of war prisoners as booty. Although Islamic law allowed the sultan to enslave them, kill them, or free them after the payment of bedel (redemption money), the sultan used those prisoners of war as soldiers for the expansion of the empire and ultimately the domain of Islam, which was his primary governmental objective. As the empire continued to grow, the demand for military men increased, particularly with establishment of a new army corps, the Janissaries by Sultan Murad I, who desired to have his own private army loyal only to him. As staffing the ever-expanding army became increasingly difficult, the Ottomans developed a new source of personnel in the devshirme institution. Although, the devshirme system was established to staff the sultan’s prestigious Janissary corps, it proved to have multiple purposes. At first, the system diminished and subsequently eliminated the Turkish noble families as the only potential threats that could jeopardize the sultan’ absolute power. The sultan encircled himself with the devshirme youths since they did not have ties to the capital elites and came without the disadvantages of nepotism. The devshirme youths became the sultan’s closest allies whose loyalty and obedience guaranteed his absolute power. According to Peter Sugar, certain arguments supported the establishment of the devshirme institution. These arguments relate to the fact that the purchase of slaves was expensive while recruitment of the Christian youths was free. Then, when the devshirme system was established at the end of the fourteenth century, there was a
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shortage of slaves available for purchase. Thus, along with his military corps, Sultan Murad I began using slaves in his administration, which resulted in an increased demand for them.1 From the beginning, there was a difference between the slaves of devshirme srcin and those obtained by purchase. Prisoners of war were not forced to convert to Islam or adopt Muslim traditions and culture. They were not obliged to complete the Ottoman education required for the devshirme youths. 2 In addition, the Janissaries collected by the devshirme were allowed to leave their wealth to whomever they wanted, while the property of the slave-purchased soldiers belonged to the sultan. The srcin of the devshirme system was under question until 1954 when the sermon of Isidore Glabas, the metropolitan of Thessaloniki from 1380 to 1396 was discovered. The Glabas’ sermon, dated February 28 1395, is considered the earliest document that refers to the existence of the devshirme. The sermon was saved in a manuscript from the beginning of the fifteenth century, and is entitled, “His sermon concerning the carrying off of the children by the decree of the emir, and concerning the Coming Judgment, delivered on the first Sunday of the Fasts.” 3 As the oldest document related to the devshirme system, Glabas’ sermon is very important for this thesis because it presents an early Christian point of view about the devshirme institution. In his sermon, Isidore Glabas lamented about the capture of the children by the decree of the sultan. The sermon will be analyzed in detail in the last
1
Peter Sugar, Southeaster Europe under Ottoman Rule, 57.
2
Gulay Yilmaz, “Becoming a Devshirme,” in Children in Slavery Through the Ages, ed. Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009), 121. 3
SperosVryonis, “Isidore Glabas and the Turkish Devshirme,” Speculum 31 (July1956): 435.
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chapter but as the earliest known written document about the devshirme system from the Christian point of view, here is a quote from the beginning of Glabas’ sermon. What am I to say, and how am I to consider the magnitude of the present misfortunate? Helplessness has afflicted me from all sides, as if I found myself blocked at a crossroad. I have heard the harsh decree concerning our dearest ones, and I shudder as one before a fire too hot to approach…my voice is cut off… my lips turn to lamentation, my mind is veiled in a cloud of despondency, and I am almost mad. My eyes are filled with tears and can no longer bear to see my beloved ones. In his further words, Isidore Glabas named freeborn Christian boys as the sultan’s slaves and grieved upon their destiny to be forced to convert to a heathen faith and kill Christian subjects in the same land from which they were taken. 4 The founder of the Janissary corps was Kara Halil Chandarly, a Kadiasker in the reign of Murad I (1359-1389). Thanks to Isidore Glabas’ sermon, we now know that the devshirme system and the Janissary corps were established at the same time (i.e. at the end of the fourteenth century). Most scholars agreed that both institutions were established by Chandarly but the Janissaries were preceded by the devshirme. What was the devshirme institution? Dr. Basilike Papoulia gave the most comprehensive definition of the devshirme system. According to her, the devshirme system is as follows: …‘the forcible removal, in the form of a tribute, of children of the Christian subjects from their ethnic, religious, and cultural environment and their transplantation into the Turkish—Islamic environment with the aim of employing them in the service of the Palace, the army, and the state, whereby they were on the one hand to serve the Sultan as slaves and freedmen and on the other to form the ruling class of the state.’5 4
Ibid., 436.
5
Basilike Papoulia, in V. L. Manage, “Some Notes on the “devshirme,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studie 29 (1966): 64.
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Aside from such a comprehensive definition, to understand such a complex structure as the devshirme institution, the whole process of recruitment, education, and employment of the devshirme youths must be explained in detail. The devshirme youths were recruited from non-Muslim societies conquered by the Ottomans and were under the authority of the Ottoman state and Islamic law. Those societies had a zimmi status, which meant a privileged position in comparison to the non-Muslim societies living outside of the domain of Islam. The term devshirme literally “means ‘collection of dhimma-children,’ children of those under Muslim protection.”6 The process of conscription excluded Jews and gypsy children and was applied only to Christian children. The possible explanation could be based on a certain “ethnic stereotyping—for example, considering Jews as unsuitable for warfare or gypsies as unreliable.”7 Goodwin offered a more precise explanation “no Jews or gypsies might be enlisted; the former were townsmen, doctors and accountants who managed the great estate of the pashas and whose faith was as tenacious as that of any Muslim, while the latter were clearly despised.”8 The recruitment process began when the leader of the Janissary corps determines that there is a need for new recruits. Then, the sultan issued a decree for the devshirme collection. When the empire was in its golden age of expansion during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, those requests for the devshirme collection were more frequent and were issued every three to four years. As the empire declined, the decree 6 Alexander Lopasic, “Islamization of the Balkans with special reference to Bosnia,” Journal of Islamic Studies 5:2 (1994): 171. 7
Gulay Yilmaz, “Becoming a Devshirme,” 21.
8
Godfrey Goodwin, The Janissaries (London: Saqi Books, 1994), 34.
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for the devshirme recruitment was issued every five to seven years. Each time, the Janissary officials collected between 1000-3000 male children, usually one child from every forty households. The recruitment was carried out from peasant families in rural areas rather than in towns, since the towns were sources of trade and craft production, which the Ottomans wanted to protect. When the child levy was requested, the recruitment process was done by previously established procedure. Either the leader of the Janissary would send a dispatch to the Balkan village authorities to inform them of the forthcoming recruitment process or the Janissary officials would come to the village, visit a local priest, and ask him for a list of baptized male youths ages ten to eighteen. After gathering youths in a public place, under the supervision of local Ottoman officials, following the strict rules, the selection of children would begin. The youths were selected based on their physical strength, good looks, and intellect. Children who were too tall or too short were excluded from the devshirme as well as any unhealthy boys or those deemed defective (e.g. cross-eyed). Orphans were exempt from the devshirme because they were considered to be lacking in proper nurturance and education. The youths were required to be unmarried and uncircumcised. For economic reasons, the sons of artisans and craft makers were excluded as well as the only child in a family. It was forbidden to take more than one youth from the same family because the others had to cultivate the land and pay taxes. To protect their children from the blood levy, families undertook a series of measures to prevent the Ottoman authorities from selecting them. Some families sent their children into the woods to run and hide so the Janissary officers would not find them. If their children were found, the families were
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harshly punished. Some families falsified their child’s birth certificate. Some families circumcised their children or married them off at early ages. Some even physically disfigured their child’s face to keep him from being selected for the devshirme. Once the conscription process was completed, the devshirme youths immediately became the sultan’s slaves. On their way to the Ottoman Empire, the devshirme children were all dressed in red clothes, with red hats to be recognized easily in case they attempted an escape. They were transported to Istanbul in groups of 100 to 150. Upon arrival to Istanbul, the devshirme children were given two to three days to rest and then they were examined physically and mentally. Directly after, the Christian boys taken by the blood levy were converted to Islam, circumcised and were given Muslim names.9 Upon their conversion, the devshirme boys were mentally disciplined to forget their heritage, Christian religion, and cultural environment. Ultimately, they were trained to forge a new identity, practice Islam, and grow accustomed to living with Muslim traditions and customs. For the first selection procedure regarding the youths’ future education and professional orientation, two major concepts were applied: “on the one hand the strong Turkish belief in the ‘science of physiognomy’ maintained that moral status could be judged by outer appearance, on the other, the recruits were subject to mental examinations similar to modern IQ tests.”10 From the beginning, the devshirme boys had very different educational paths depending on their intellectual abilities and physical appearances. The best physically fit and intellectually brightest youths were 9
10
Gulay Yilmaz, Becoming a Devshirme, 121-122. David Nicole, The Janissaries (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1995), 12.
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ic oglans or pages who comprised the smaller group, which was educated for positions in the sultan’s palace and attended the palace school. They were destined for senior positions within the sultan’s personal administration. The other, much larger group was sent to villages in Anatolia where they stayed with Turkish families for the first part of their education. This group, known as acemi oglans, novices was destined to pursue their careers in the sultan’s kapikulu corps. Among the kapikulu corps, the Janissaries were the best-known corp. The education of the devshirme youths destined for the sultan’s service took place in one of the four palace schools at Bursa, Edirne, Istanbul, and Galata. All of the youths lived in one of the sultan’s palaces under the supervision of the white eunuchs who enforced the rigorous discipline and strictly organized routine. In their daily routine, the devshirme youths had specified times when they slept and woke up, ate or prayed. The times for study and exercise were also specified. In addition, good manners were strictly nurtured in the way they walked or ate, maintained personal hygiene, wore clean-ironed clothes, and performed all five daily prayers required from every Muslim.11 They were forbidden to communicate with anyone outside of the palace and to communicate with each other at will. The youths were carefully observed at all times. If they violated the rules of conduct, they were severely punished by beatings on the soles, expulsion from the palace, or death. Aside from their general education, where the study of Islam was paramount, the study of specific subjects depended on each youth’s interests and unique talents. In accordance with their personal preferences, in religion, military, or the administrative 11
Yilmaz, Becoming a Devshirme , 123.
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field, the devshirme youths studied Turkish, Arabic, and Persian language and literature as well as the Quran, Muslim theology, and Islamic law. As future personnel of the sultan, the youths were especially taught to be meek and well mannered. They were required to show reverence to their superiors by kissing their hands and bowing their heads.12 In addition, “great emphasis was also put on honesty, loyalty, good manners, and self-control.”13 The regular school attendance and training period lasted approximately fourteenth years. The devshirme youths stayed in these preparatory schools from seven to eight years. Upon completion, the devshirme youths were subjected to another selection, called cikma and obtained their first professional promotion. The best of them were sent to one of the two chambers in the sultan’s palace, the greater or lesser chamber. The rest were assigned to the kapikulu corps, the sultan’s personal slave army. In the sultan’s chambers, the pages usually stayed for four years where they attended one of the four occupational schools. The curriculum in those schools was chosen carefully and was taught by the best-educated palace tutors whose responsibility was to prepare pages to perform their future administrative tasks to perfection. Each occupational school was concentrated on a specific subject: … the expeditionary force chamber provided mainly musical training but also taught sewing, embroidery, leatherwork, arrow making, and gun repair. The commissariat chamber taught students to prepare royal beverages, whereas Treasure chamber trained pages in financial responsibility. The royal bedchamber trained those who would be responsible for the protection of the Holy Relics.14 12
Ibid.
13
Nicolle, The Janissaries , 13.
14
Yilmaz, Becoming a Devshirme , 123.
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After their graduation, the devshirme youths applied for a post within a variety of palace administrative positions, according to their expertise. The education of the acemi oglans, the future Janissaries, was vastly different and considerably shorter. Their education was strictly military with a focus on obedience. It took place in two stages. First, the devshirme youths were transferred to the Anatolia region where they stayed and worked for their host families for approximately five to seven years. Aside from the basic military training, they learned the Turkish language and Muslim faith. The second phase was more specific when their instruction continued in the training corps or barracks. The training lasted for at least six years and there too, eunuchs were their supervisors. The discipline was very strong and although the youths were allowed to have off-duty hours, they were forbidden to socialize with females. During the second phase of their training, the devshirme youths learned: … literacy, the principle of governance, and the precept of the Qur’an. They were assigned general tasks such as sweeping, carrying, or cooking for themselves and for the city, as well as continuing their training as professional warriors. They were also used on the ships carrying wood and ice to Istanbul. They replaced the Janissaries when they went on campaigns and also served as night watchmen, firemen, and police within the city. When new soldiers were 15
needed selected acemi oglans were enlisted in the kapikulu corps. Of all the kapikulu corps, the Janissary corps was the most famous infantry. The Janissaries would provide a certificate of acceptance to any new novice as well as the unique Janissary hat and coat.16 Every Janissary belonged to one of the regiments, which had its own tutor. In addition, every regiment had its own symbol, which was 15
Yilmez, Becoming a Devshirme , 124.
16
Nicolle, The Janissaries , 13.
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etched as a tattoo on each Janissary’s body. Inside one regiment, the Janissaries developed a close relationship among each other with a high level of trust, friendship, and loyalty. There is one more very specific symbol related to Janissaries. It is the
Kazan. The Janissaries would assemble around a large cooper cooking pot, cook pilav, which is cracked wheat and butter, and they all gathered for one meal a day. The kazan was a highly respected Janissary object. By sitting around the kazan, the Janissaries felt protection and peace. The kazan followed Janissaries in the battle and they took great care of it. If they lost it, their officers would be labeled as dishonored and shameful.17 There were sixteen rules for the Janissary corps prescribed by the Murad I: … total obedience to officers; unity of purpose; strict military behavior; no extremes of luxury or abstinence; strict piety under the Bektashi code; acceptance of only the best recruits; capital punishment of a distinctive sort; punishment by only their own officers; promotion by seniority; looking after their own dependents; no beards for ordinary soldiers; no marriage until retirement; living only in barracks; no other trades; full-time military training; and no alcohol or gambling.18 Rigorous discipline was applied inside the Janissary corps and the punishments for any mistake were very harsh, from lowering the rank of the Janissary officers to corporal punishment and execution. The sultan was the supreme ruler over his Janissary corps. When a sultan died, the Janissaries were without a leader. It was their time for rebellion, when they usually attacked the homes of the non-Muslim population. Their revolt lasted until the new sultan ascended to the throne. The sultan would then allocate a large amount of money to the Janissaries to pay for their loyalty. After at least fourteen years of the preeminent available education and military 17
Ibid.,19.
18
Ibid., 27.
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training in the Ottoman Empire, the finest 10% of the devshirme youths began their careers at the sultan’s palace occupying the highest positions among his administration while the rest of them were sent to serve in the sultan’s military corps. Their future professional careers depended exclusively on their personal qualities and qualified skills. The system of promotion was not based on ethnicity or religious background but on their intellectual capacity, competency, and job productivity. It appears as though the sultan and his devshirme slaves had a mutually symbiotic relationship. The devshirme youths were completely depended on the sultan. Without family background among the Muslims, the devshirme youths considered the service to the sultan to be a privilege and honor. Thanks to their education and prestigious jobs within the sultan’s highest administrative-military service, those abducted and converted Christian youths, become the elite of the Ottoman Empire. The sultan depended on the devshirme servants as well. The devshirme slaves were the sultan’s foremost supporters and the sultan’s major source of trustworthiness, obedience, and fidelity. The administrative-military administration comprised of the devshirme slaves became the most centralized political system in Europe at that time. Only in such a centralized political organization could the sultan’s position be absolutely guaranteed and could he rest secure in his absolute power. The educational system provided the conditions for the establishment of this mutually dependent relationship between the sultan and his slaves. Thus, as the historian Inalcik explained, the fundamental goal of the devshirme education was “to instill complete obedience and loyalty to the sultan. All means were used to inculcate this ideal in the young men who were studying at the palace school and destined to occupy the highest offices of the empire. They learned
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that death in the sultan’s service was the greatest blessing.”19 The devshirme conscription began in the Balkan Peninsula immediately upon its establishment. Serbia had a vassal status for the first 70 years of the Ottoman occupation, until 1459. The vassalage status did not postpone the onset of the devshirme collection that started at the beginning of the fifteenth century. In Bosnia, the devshirme recruitment began later, in the middle of the fifteenth century since Bosnia was thoroughly conquered in 1463. Initially, in both states, the devshirme institution had a negative connotation and conversion to Islam was commonly rejected. However, the view toward the devshirme changed because of the process of islamization, which affected Bosnia much more than Serbia. United by the Serbian Orthodox Church, as the only surviving national institution, the Serbian population saved their faith despite the severe economic and social restrictions imposed by the Ottomans. Thus, the Serbians did not convert to Islam for a variety of economic, social, and political reasons. The view of devshirme conscription among the Serbian subjects was negative from the beginning, disgraceful and alien in nature and despite the fact that the conversion to Islam would exempt the Serbian subjects from paying the child tribute, they did not convert en masse to Islam. As a result, the blood levy in Serbia represents the most painful levy the Serbian subjects had to endure during the 400-year period under Ottoman domination. The Bosnian population held this negative view of the devshirme collection until the end of the fifteenth century when the broader process of islamization gradually began to take place. As the demographic picture of Bosnia changed 19
Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire, 79.
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considerably, the view of the devshirme institution changed noticeably as well. The conversion to Islam began in the 1480s, first in central Bosnia then spread across the state, reaching its peak at the end of the sixteenth century, the time when the Bosnian population had already converted to Islam en masse. As explained above, religion did not play a major role in the life of ordinary Bosnian subjects and the Bosnians were never deeply attached to any of the three churches that existed in their state before the Ottoman arrival. Soon after Bosnia was completely conquered, the Bosnians gradually began to convert to Islam because of the migration of people as well for economic, political, or social reasons. In addition, the conversion allowed the Bosnian subjects to avoid the devshirme collection. The first converts to Islam were members of the Bosnian noble families who as Muslims were exempted from paying the blood levy to the Ottomans and were entitled to keep their property, social status, and political power. A large number of Bosnians converted to Islam when their children who had been taken by the devshirme returned to Bosnia as high Ottoman officials. Many of them converted their parents and cousins to Islam and helped their family members to obtain political positions in Bosnia. For poor Bosnian families who could not see a promising future for their children, the devshirme system was a more rational choice or as Zheliazkova indicated “the peasant raya in Bosnia saw service in the Janissary adjaks and the palace as the only way to bring about some social change and prosperity for their offspring, which is why they offered no resistance to the devshirme, as did the population in other Balkan provinces.”20
20
Antonina Zheliazkova,” The Penetration and Adaptation of Islam in Bosnia from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century,” Journal of Islamic Studies 5:2 (1994): 197.
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Those Bosnian subjects offered their children to the collection to provide a better future for them. The percentage of children voluntarily offered to the devshirme was very small. When the Muslim children were freely given to the devshirme collection, their treatment was different. For example, the youths had to be between fifteen and twenty years old, they were not allowed to mix with the Christian children and they were transported to Istanbul separately. Those children were put into the service within the sultan’s palace only at the request of their parents to avoid being sent back to Bosnia as Janissaries. Those children were listed as circumcised children of
potur ogullari, or children of Bosnian Poturnak. The name poturnak was a derogatory term for former Bosnian Christians who converted to Islam. Overall, despite the fact that some families were giving their children voluntarily to the devshirme, the majority of the Bosnian parents protested against devshirme recruitment and tried to avoid it. In Serbia and Bosnia, whose populations were under the Ottomans for centuries, the way of life under Ottoman domination, full of social restrictions and tax obligations, was difficult and humiliating. Of all the burdens imposed on Christians by their conquerors, the child tribute represents the harshest levy the Christian families had to pay to the Ottomans. However, when it comes to the devshirme youths, there is disagreement about the advantages and disadvantages related to the devshirme system. While the devshirme youths were separated permanently from their family and lost their ethnic, cultural, and religious background, in the Ottoman Empire those Christian youths from rural peasant families had opportunities to receive an excellent education and to obtain
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the most prestigious careers within the most powerful empire at the time. This thesis is focusing entirely on this aspect of the controversy. Was the devshirme institution imposed on the Christian children in the Balkans a path toward social advancement or an inhumane act? The next chapter provides an illustration of this controversy by comparison of life and professional careers of two youths taken by the devshirme. One is a Serbian youth from Serbia while the other is a Serbian youth from Bosnia.
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CHAPTER FOUR THE DEVSHIRME YOUTHS Thousands of Christian youths taken by the blood levy in the Balkan Peninsula faced the same destiny. They were converted to Islam, received Muslim names and Ottoman education, and they were trained to adapt to the Muslim way of life. As part of their assimilation to the Ottoman Empire, the devshirme youths were expected to abandon their national and religious identity, which is Serbian and Christian and develop an Ottoman Muslim identity. Forbidden to have their own family until they were at least thirty years old, the devshirme youths were forced to devote their life and service to only one person, the sultan. The education of the devshirme youths depended on their individual capabilities. Only a small number, approximately ten percent of the brightest and most talented devshirme youths, completed their education in the sultan’s palace. The palace education primarily focused on Islam and Islamic law as well as foreign languages. For those devshirme youths who did not qualify for the palace education, the Ottomans provided education in the form of military training in different regions of Anatolia. Regardless of their educational path, every devshirme youth was taught to obey the sultan with loyalty and veneration. While the blood levy permanently removed devshirme youths from their ethnic, religious, and cultural background, at the same time, it offered an opportunity for devshirme youths to have a successful professional career, which in the future could provide unparalleled political power and prestigious social status. Despite experiencing equal treatment, the devshirme youths did not adapt equally to the
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Ottoman Empire. Two examples of such differences may be found in the fate of Konstantin Mihailovic and Mehmed Sokollu. Konstantin Mihailovic was a Serb from Serbia who gained military training and ended up in the sultan’s Janissary corps. Mihailovic never adjusted to the Ottoman state, nor accepted the role of being the sultan’s slave. Mihailovic was terrified of losing his religious identity and ending up in the world of “heathens,” the term he widely used for Muslims. To return to his native Christian religion, Mihailovic escaped from the Ottoman army. For Mihailovic, the blood levy proved to be nothing more than a painful experience. Mihailovic wrote “Memoirs of a Janissary”1 a chronicle about his service in the Janissary corps and his experience as a devshirme youth. His memoir is one of the few materials about the devshirme system written by a participant and is very useful documentation for this thesis. Others like Bajo Sokolovic, known in the Ottoman Empire as Mehmed pasha Sokollu, was a Serb from Bosnia who completed education in the sultan’s palace and achieved a great career within the Ottoman dominion. Sokollu embraced service within the sultan’s palace as well as the Muslim way of life. Sokollu considered his conversion to Islam as God’s will and although he had great respect for Christianity, he became a zealous Muslim. Mehmed Sokollu was the subject of a great deal of historical research about the Ottoman Empire, as he became its Grand Vizier, the sultan’s highest trusted servant. For Sokollu, the devshirme system represented a path to a very successful career and social advancement. Two useful and comprehensive studies about Sokollu’s life from the time when he was taken by the devshirme until his
1
Konstantin Mihailovic, Memoirs of a Janissary (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2011).
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death are biographies, Mexmed Sokolovic written by the Serbian historian Radovan Samardzic and Sokolovic written by the Axmed Refik, a Turkish historian. My thesis is intended to elucidate the devshirme institution from two different viewpoints. One perspective looks at the devshirme system as a path to career advancement and high social recognition. Another point of view is of the devshirme system as an inhumane act, which brought loss of family as well as national and religious identity to the devshirme youths. Mehmed Sokollu and Konstantin Mihailovic are two devshirme youths whose destinies in the Ottoman Empire may be used as illustrations of two very different outcomes of the devshirme system. Mihailovic belonged to those youths who had a painful and frightening experience as a devshirme. Mihailovic ended up in the Janissary corps or in one of the auxiliaries corps closely connected to the Janissaries. Although Mihailovic’s biographical data is scarce and does not provide enough accurate information about his life before he was taken by the devshirme or his life after his escape from the Ottoman army, we are able to reconstruct some factual data based on his description of several major events that took place during his term in the Ottoman Empire. Mihailovic was captured in 1455 in the city of Novo Brdo, today Kosovo in Serbia, during the reign of Sultan Mehmet II. After eight years in the Ottoman service, Mihailovic managed to escape by surrendering himself to the enemy’s army in 1463, while fighting in Bosnia for the Ottomans. Upon returning to the Christian world, Mihailovic wrote a memoir about his service and life in the Ottoman Empire. In his memoir, written in fifty chapters in the Serbo-Croatian language, Mihailovic described his personal experience among the Ottomans whom he simple called “Turks” and
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mostly wrote about his views on the organization, institutions, and religion of the Ottoman Empire. Mihailovic wrote about Balkan leaders and Christianity as well and often compared the two faiths. Mihailovic was born around 1435 in either Ostrovica or Novo Brdo. His family was from Ostrovica, a medieval city south of Belgrade. However, at the time of his capture, Mihailovic was living in Novo Brdo, which is the southernmost city in Serbia where he was most likely born and raised. Although the purpose of the Mihailovic memoir was to provide Christians information about the Ottomans to help Christians to fight their enemy better, for my thesis, Mihailovic’s narrative is very important because is a significant source of information about the devshirme youths in the Ottoman Empire. To understand how painful the practice of devshirme recruitment was for Mihailovic as well as other Christian youths, I will explain in detail Mihailovic’s experience among the Ottomans and his views of Islam, since Mihailovic saw the greatest enemy of Christianity in the Muslim faith. The importance of Mihailovic’s chronicle for better understanding of the devshirme system is manifold. First, in Mihailovic’s explanation of how the devshirme system worked in the early phase of its establishment, we determine that the devshirme system was different in the early stage of its development, which was in the middle of the fifteenth century, in comparison with the devshirme collection in the sixteenth century when the devshirme system was fully developed and when Mehmed pasha Sokollu was selected. For example, after Mihailovic’s capture and transportation to Istanbul, he did not go through the minimum ten-year formal education and military training in the Ottoman Empire. He was being sent to participate in the Ottoman siege
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of Belgrade in 1456 only a year after his capture. In Mihailovic’s account of his capture in Serbia, we determine that the sultan whom Mihailovic called “emperor” personally selected youths for the devshirme system without any participation of the local priest or Janissary officer. In addition, Mihailovic’s capture with his brother conflicts with the rules of the devshirme in the latter period of its development when the Ottomans collected only one child from the same family. All of these differences regarding the devshirme recruitment and the Ottomans’ rush to send the devshirme youths into battles, suggested that the Ottomans in the early stage of their conquest needed youths in their Janissary corps as quickly as possible and as many as possible to maintain the expansion of their state. As a result, the recruitment process was horrifying not just for the captured youths but also for the Christian communities from which the youths were taken. The following is Mihailovic’s description: … when the city of Novo Brdo had surrendered, the Emperor ordered that the gates be closed and that one small gate be left open… the Turks ordered all the householders with their families, both males and females, to go out of the city through the small gate… and so it happened that they went one after another, and the Emperor himself standing before the small gate sorted out the boys on one side the women on the other side. All those among the men who were the most important and distinguished, he ordered decapitated…the females he distributed among the heathens, but he took the boys for himself into the 2
Janissaries, and sent them beyond the sea to Anatolia. For this thesis, it is particularly important that Mihailovic’s memoir documented the emotional and mental state of the devshirme youths upon their capture as well as their realization of their future positions as slaves and their determination to avoid enslavement. When Mihailovic described the terrible torture that the devshirme youths endured after their attempt to escape, it tells us about the brutality of the 2
Ibid., 50.
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devshirme collection and the Ottomans’ determination to take those youths to Istanbul at all costs. Mihailovic wrote: … wherever we came to forests or mountains, there we always thought about killing the Turks and running away by ourselves among the mountains, but our youth did not permit us to do that; for I myself with nineteen others ran away from them in the night from a village called Samokovo. Then the whole region pursued us, and having caught and bound us, they beat us and tortured us and dragged us behind horses. It is a wonder that our soul remained in us.3 Mihailovic’s strong religious feelings as well as those of the other devshirme youths clearly described in his memoir suggested the concerns the devshirme youths had for their own Christian spirituality as well as Christianity in general. According to Mihailovic, the devshirme youths planned a conspiracy against the sultan directly after their arrival in Istanbul. Their act was motivated by their strong belief that their souls would be saved if they killed the sultan and by this act, Christendom would be saved as well: … the Emperor having arrived at Adrianople, took eight youths of this same group among the chamberlains. These youths agreed to kill the Emperor on night watch, saying among themselves, “If we kill this Turkish dog, then all of Christendom will be freed; but if we are caught, then we will become martyrs before God with the others.4 The plan turned out to be unsuccessful and the sultan’s terrible revenge tells us about the brutality the devshirme youths experienced when they tried any action against the sultan. The sultan’s punishment instilled a great amount of fear into the devshirme youths. The devshirme youths were burned with hot hens’ eggs and beheaded. The Serbian youths were no longer allowed to serve in the sultan’s private
3
Ibid.,51.
4
Ibid.
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chambers. Their genitals were cut off and they continued their service as “eunuchs” guarding the sultan’s wives. What is most important for us is the answer devshirme youths gave to the sultan on his inquiry into who led them to their action. They answered in unison, “none other than our great sorrow for our fathers and dear friends.”5 Their response clearly reflected the desolation and loneliness of the devshirme youths among the Ottomans. Mihailovic emphasized the importance of Christianity at the beginning of his memoir. It was his belief that the Christians should use their religion as a tool against the Ottomans: … all races of man who govern themselves according to the sacred reading of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, we believe and profess one Lord God, Creator of heavens and earth, in three persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Trinity one and indivisible reigning forever and ever. Amen. And as we believe, so do we accept the Holy Cross. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. And after Christ, we call ourselves Christians. O Most Holy Trinity we pray to Thy Holy Grace: Aid the Christians against the accursed heathens.6 Mihailovic repeatedly used the word heathens for Muslims and showed disrespect and intolerance toward their faith. There was only one thing worse than Muslims in Mihailovic’s view. This was converted Christians who upon forced conversion to Islam forgot their Christian religion and worshiped the Muslim’s God. Mihailovic rightly concluded that the process of conversion in the Ottoman Empire contributed greatly to the Turkish expansion as well as the Turkish practice of systematic mixing of the Christians and Muslims. With a very thought provoking
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.,1.
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comparison of the Ottoman Empire and the sea, Mihailovic brought his memoir to an end: Turkish or heathens expansion is like the sea, which never increases nor decreases...Sea water is dense and salty, so that in some regions they make salt of it; nevertheless, without adding a portion of fresh water to the salt water, salt cannot be made. The Turks are also of such a nature as the sea: they never have peace… they round up and bring several thousand good Christians amongst the heathens; having being mixed they are spoiled, like the above-mentioned water. Having forgotten their good Christian faith they accept and extol the heathen faith. And such heathenized Christians are much worse than true-born heathens …This then adds to the expansion of the Turks. 7 Despite a negative view of the Ottomans and their religion, Mihailovic admired Ottoman organization of their state and generously praised the Janissary corps. What is important for my thesis is Mihailovic’a respect toward the Ottomans for their equitable treatment of the devshirme youths concerning their career advancement as well as justice for all: Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Thanks to the Ottomans’ impartial treatment toward the devshirme youths, many of them reached the highest political and social positions in the Ottoman Empire. As I mentioned earlier, Mihailovic’s memoir was intended to help Christians to get to know the Ottomans better so the victory of Islam over Christianity would be stopped. All Mihailovic wanted was to return to the Christian lands and extol his native religion. When he escaped, he was thankful to God for his success. As Mihailovic began his memoir addressing Christianity and praying for help against the heathens, he ended his story in the same way. “Lord God Almighty, help faithful Christians against the ignoble heathens, to wipe them out. Amen.”8
7
Ibid., 96.
8
Ibid., 99.
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In contrast to Mihailovic’s life and career in the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed Sokollu had a different experience. Mehmed pasha Sokollu began his life in the Ottoman Empire as a youth collected by the blood levy around 1523, at the time when the Bosnian youths were already known as reliable palace administrators as well as skilled soldiers. Sokollu belonged to those devshirme youths whom sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, after many years of loyal service in his palace as well as on the battlefield as a military commander granted the highest political and trustworthy position in the Ottoman Empire. Sokollu became Grand Vizier, equivalent to a prime minister today. To understand the scheme of the devshirme collection, which provided opportunities for a political career and social advancement for Sokollu and many other devshirme youths, I will explain in detail Sokollu’s pathway to success, from the time he was taken by the blood levy to the time of his great political leadership and high social recognition. Sokollu was born ca. 1505 in Bosnia in a small town called Sokolovici. His Serbian and Christian name was Bajo Sokolovic. According to legend passed down orally in the Serbian folk tradition, Bajo Sokolovic was destined for a successful political career while he was still in his mother’s womb. When she was pregnant, Bajo’s mother had a dream that a pine tree emerged from her womb and with its branches, provided a protective roof over the world. Since she did not understand her dream, she turned to the eldest member of the family, who, according to Serbian belief, is the most knowledgeable to clarify all seemingly unexplainable phenomena or events. Sadly, Bajo’s grandfather interpreted the dream as a bad sign, because he considered it difficult to believe that his daughter-in-law would give birth to the master of the world.
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He prayed to God for it to end happily.9 It is thought provoking how much the dream of Sokollu’s mother resembles Osman’s dream, the first sultan I mentioned in Chapter One. Both dreams signified successful leadership and the prophecy for both future leaders turned out to be true. The Sokolovic family was well known in the Visegrad district as they belonged to the rank of low nobility that still existed at the beginning of the sixteenth century dispersed in the rural areas of Bosnia. This is significant because when the devshirme collection took place in some districts, the families of noble birth were targeted first. The Ottoman officials knew the Sokolovic family when they came to collect a devshirme tax. The Sokolovic family had experienced the devshirme collection some twenty years earlier when Bajo was selected. One boy from the Sokolovic family, known in the Ottoman Empire as Deli Husrev pasha was already taken by the devshirme. As Deli Husrev pasha made a successful career in the Ottoman Empire, which his title “pasha” suggested, he took his younger brother known as Lala Mustafa pasha to Istanbul around the same time when Sokollu was taken. Therefore, the Janissary officers in charge of the devshirme knew the Sokolovic family when they 10
came to the Visegrad district to collect devshirme.
At the time, Bajo was in the
Miliseva monastery where his uncle was a monk and a tutor, and where Bajo Sokolovic was first educated. He was singing in the church choir when a Janissary officer took him back to the village for the devshirme. Bajo’s parents persistently begged the Janissary officer not to take their child away and with financial support of other family 9
Radovan Samardzic, Mexmed Sokolovic (Zavod za udzbenike, Beograd 2010), 20.
10
Samardzic, Mehmd Sokolovic , 16-17.
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members, his father Dimitrije tried to bribe the Janissary officer. The Janissary official was incorruptible and with dismay in his voice, calling Bajo’s parents dummies, blamed them for knowing nothing about their son’s future. He tried to convince them that their poor son would become an honorable man in the sultan’s service and very happy in the Ottoman Empire because the sultan would take care of him. The Janissary officer predicted that Bajo would be able to make his parents happy and rich too and threated them not to sabotage their son’s destiny because it would bring damnation on their house. All of this prophecy occurred according to the Ottoman official because the Ottoman Empire was a Xumaj bird who fell on the Sokolovic genus and on Bajo’s head. He saw the shadow of that bird, which in the mythological world means a symbol of great happiness. Thus, for Sokollu, there was only one future and that was in the sultan’s service. 11 A Turkish historian, Axmed Refik, also a biographer of Sokollu, talked about the same legend in a different way but with the same outcome. According to Refik, the Janissary officer tried to convince Bajo’s parents by telling them that the brilliance of great happiness was reflected from Bajo’s forehead. He considered it an obvious sign of a successful future, so Bajo’s parents should confidently expect that their son would reach the highest position, next to the sultan. Once that happened, his prediction was that all roads toward the treasure of happiness would be available for Bajo and when his parents got old, he would come to help them.12
11
Ibid.,18-19.
12
Axmed Refik, Sokolovic (Sarajevo: Stamparija Bosanska Posta, 1927), 6.
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In a group of forty children eighteen years of age, Bajo Sokolovic was transported to Edirne where the sultan Suleiman the Magnificent resided at the time. Upon arrival, when all of the devshirme youths were converted to Islam and given Muslim names, Bajo Sokolovic became Mehmed Sokollu. Because of his height and slender physique, Sokollu quickly acquired the nickname Mehmed Tavil (tall). Sokollu was enlisted in icoglane (i.e. in a group of youths who began their education at the sultan’s palace). Thanks to his primary interest in religion and aptitude for foreign languages, Sokollu quickly mastered several languages spoken in the Ottoman Empire and demonstrated exceptional knowledge of Islam and Islamic law. Sokollu’s education lasted for thirteen years and upon completion, Sokollu began his professional career at the sultan’s palace in Istanbul. From his first position, which was financial in nature, as he worked in the royal treasure, Sokollu took the well-trodden path of hard work and continual verification of his abilities and service to the sultan. During the next ten years, Sokollu occupied five positions and accomplished all of them well with unquestioning loyalty to the sultan. As a result, Suleiman the Magnificent promoted Sokollu as his courtier and Sokollu began working in close proximity to the sultan. At first, his position was as a rikabdar, to help the sultan mount his horse. He then followed him on foot on all of his ceremonies and journeys. Sokollu gained a higher position when he became cohadar with responsibility to take care of the sultan’s clothes. At the same time, Sokollu became an aga. This title, as all others used for civil or military officers in the Ottoman Empire, meant that the sultan’s staff members became eligible for more trustworthy tasks in the fields of his administration and military. With this first title,
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Sokollu was in line to climb the palace corporate ladder. When Sokollu completed more responsible assignments and duties, the sultan appointed Sokollu as a silahdar-
aga, commander of the imperial shields. This position entailed responsibility for a sultan’s personal weapons. In addition, at all palace ceremonies and public events, Sokollu walked on the sultan’s right side while carrying his saber on his right shoulder. Sokollu’s next position and title was a cesnegir-pasha, the sultan’s personal escort on all of his journeys and military campaigns. One of the responsibilities Sokollu had in this position was to taste all food and drinks intended for the sultan. When the sultan appointed Sokollu as kapidzi—pasha, Sokollu completed confidential tasks of a political and military nature, such as welcoming foreign envoys before the sultan and accompanying them to the sultan’s private chambers, opening the sultan’s personal letters, and taking various confidential missions. Sokollu was particularly successful in this position since knowledge of foreign languages and law were his greatest strengths.13 Sokollu left the sultan’s palace in 1546 when the sultan appointed him as an admiral of the Turkish fleet. This honorable position was particularly important for Sokollu because it was the first position outside of the sultan’s palace. Upon successful completion, Sokollu was eligible for higher future positions within the sultan’s administration and military. Before Sokollu, this position was in the hands of Hayreddin Barbarossa, a very successful and illustrious commander of the Turkish fleet who accomplished many naval victories and secured the Ottoman domination on the Mediterranean Sea. However, the Turkish sea soldiers were unorganized and divided #%
Samardzic, Mehmed Sokolovic , 29-31.
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into several independent clusters. Sokollu united them and organized the Turkish fleet under one High Command. In addition, Sokollu improved the condition of the sultan’s fleet by building new shipyards for manufacturing galleys of superior quality and improving maritime laws. Sokollu was a commander of the Turkish fleet until 1551, when the sultan appointed him as a beylerbey of Rumeli (the Ottoman Balkans) and in the same year promoted Sokollu to supreme commander in the war with Hungarians and Hapsburgs.14 As the news about Sokollu’s victory on the battlefield spread throughout the empire, Sokollu earned increasing confidence and trust from the sultan. Upon his return to Istanbul, Sokollu was elevated into a prominent political ministers’ circle. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent appointed Sokollu as his third vizier. Sokollu continued to work with diligence and passion until 1565 when Sultan Suleiman appointed him as a Grand Vizier. The title of a Grand Vizier was considered the most prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire. The Grand Vizier had immense political power and responsibility. This position was a source of wealth and respectful social status. The role of viziers was widely described in the historical literature. Therefore, only the highlights of Sokollu’s extensive political authority are covered here: … the Grand Vizier represented the sultan as head of the civil and military administration and as a supreme judge. He appointed the highest officials in these department…he had the care of the imperial seal…he might hold a Divan of his own at his palace in the afternoon…he received visits of state from the Kaziaskers and Defterdars every Wednesday…he received a weekly visit from the Agha of the Janissaries, and a monthly visit from the other viziers…he inspected the city of Constantinople and its markets, escorted by the judge of Constantinople, the Agha of the Janissaries, the provost of the market, and the
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Ibid., 35-37.
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prefect of the city he received a weekly visit of state from various magistrates and Sanjak Beys.15 Aside from all of the political power and public recognition, the Grand Viziers’ position was short lived, because “the post was a dangerous one; for the possessor, with all his greatness was the sultan’s kul (slave)… liable to summary execution if he failed to give satisfaction.”16 Sokollu was a Grand Vizier for fifteenth years, during the reign of three sultans during the golden age of Ottoman expansion and success, during the sixteenth century. Sokollu held the Grand Vizier position until his death on October 11, 1579. Sokollu’s life was tragically ended by the hand of a dervish who came to the vizier’s chamber to protest the lost timar or property he was given as a compensation for military service. Sokollu’s intelligence, hard work, absolute loyalty to the sultan, and successful outcomes for every duty and responsibility he had it in the sultan’s palace and on the battlefield, brought him the most prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire. If we only look at the devshirme system through Sokollu’s successful career, the logical conclusion would be that the devshirme system was a path to social advancement. However, if we look at Sokollu’s relationship with his parents, family, and native country, as well as his respect for the Christian religion, we may question whether the devshirme system was a vehicle for social advancement or something else. This might become clearer as we consider Sokolovic’s dedication to his family and native land.
15 Albert Howe Lybyer, The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent , (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913), 165-166. 16
Ibid., 167.
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Mehmed Sokollu felt pride and honor in his Serbian srcin and Christian religion and his national and religious background were enhanced with Sokollu’s advancement in his political and social career. Sokollu found his parents and family and converted them to Islam, surrounded himself with Serbian compatriots whom he generously supported, maintained a strong bond with the Serbian Orthodox Church and in his old age began claiming his descent from the Serbian despots. All of these facts are vital and should be explained in detail because they underscore the fact that despite the devshirme youths having positive experiences in the Ottoman Empire and achieving great professional success, they did not forgot their parents and families, religion, and native country. When Sokollu went on his first military commission, as the sultan’s highest military commander, he arrived with the Turkish troops in Belgrade. What he found in Belgrade was military aid from Serbs who in large part joined the Ottoman military and greatly contributed to the Turkish military victory. This military support by the Serbs turned out to be one of the most important reasons for Sokollu’s subsequent decision to reopen the Serbian patriarchy in Pec, on Kosovo. At that time, the Serbians had been under the Ottoman conquest for nearly 100 years and their participation in the Ottoman army helped them to obtain some relief from the Ottoman obligations such as high property taxes and social limitation. During this first military crusade, as well as throughout his career, Sokollu did not hide his Serbian srcin. Quite the opposite, Sokollu insisted in communicating in the Serbian language and using the Cyrillic alphabet in all of his diplomatic correspondence with Hungarian diplomats. In addition, Sokollu demanded from all of
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his political or military opponents to respond in the same language and alphabet to him. Sokollu used his native language in the sultan’s palace as well and communicated with members of his family and other Serbians from Bosnia and Serbia in the Serbian 17
language. Along with his career advancement, Sokollu began to inquire intently about his family back in Bosnia. When he found out from the Janissary officer who collected the devshirme in Bosnia that his parents were still alive, Sokollu contacted his family and converted his parents and cousins to Islam. Sokollu’s father Dimitrije became Jemaludin Sinan-Beg and obtained property and management duties of one of the Muslim endowments that Sokollu founded in Bosnia. Sokollu brought his mother to Istanbul and when she died, buried her with the highest honor. Many of his close relatives ended up in Istanbul where they made successful careers thanks to Sokollu’s help and support. Sokollu appointed many of his cousins to various command positions all over Bosnia and Serbia. His nephew Mustafa, for example, gained a job collecting devshirme taxes in Bosnia and later when Sokollu became the Grand Vizier, he appointed Mustafa as Bosnian Sanjak-Bey.18 Aside from supporting and helping his relatives to make careers in the Ottoman Empire, Sokollu generously supported and helped all of his compatriots from the village of Sokolovic and surrounding areas in the Visegrad district who came to Istanbul and asked for help. As Sokollu’s career advanced, especially when he became a Grand Vizier, the number of his cousins and compatriots increased noticeably at the 17
Samardzic, Mehmed Sokolovic, 52.
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Ibid., 33-34.
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sultan’s palace. Sokollu always made time for his relatives and compatriots and was always willing to listen to their problems and complaints related to improving justice in Bosnia, more land, famine, the restoration of their old or damaged mosques or churches, or their need for a new bridge or fountain. As Sokollu helped his family members and compatriots make prosperous careers in the palace, they became Sokollu’s loyal and obedient supporters. 19 It was well known that Sokollu’s genus had more members in the sultan’s palace than any other palace officials who were taken by the devshirme in the Balkans. It is worth mentioning that Sokollu did not force anyone to convert to Islam. Christians who kept their faith were welcomed to his vizier’s chamber as well as Muslims.20 Sokollu respected Orthodox Christianity and generously supported the Orthodox churches and monasteries. His relationship with the Christian faith was clear and consistent. Sokollu had great respect toward Orthodox Christianity and considered his knowledge of Christianity as a prerequisite for his superior understanding of Islam and Islamic teaching of God and faith. One of the reasons why Sokollu passionately adopted his new religion was the fact that Sokollu’s understanding of Islam exceeded his knowledge of Christianity. Sokollu never showed any sign of mystic mixture of those two faiths. On the contrary, Sokollu fought against all Islamic heresy and mystic teachings with the zeal of a man turned toward true religion. 21 Although Sokollu was a devout Muslim for whom Islam and Islamic law was paramount in life as well as in his
19
Ibid., 14.
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Ibid., 108.
21
Ibid., 107.
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political career, Sokollu was firm in his support of Christian Orthodoxy as well as the Serbian sacred places. As a result, aside from his commitment to reestablishment of the Serbian patriarchy, Sokollu generously supported the Mileseva monastery, the same monastery from which he was taken as a boy by the devshirme. The Mileseva monastery, famous for keeping the relics of the holiest man in the Serbian tradition, Saint Sava, where Serbians would gather for solace and cures, flourished during Sokollu’s years as a vizier. Sokollu greatly supported the monastery financially, granted more land, and provided opportunities for an extensive printing of the holy books. Thanks to Sokollu’s close relationship with this monastery, which lasted until the end of his life, in the sixteenth century, Mileseva became the holy place for converted Christians, now Muslim subjects as well. Unfortunately, after Sokollu’s death, the Turks feared that the Serbs could raise a rebellion against them from this holy place. By the order of Sinan pasha, the relics of Saint Sava were removed from Mileseva and burned in Belgrade. By this act, the Turks destroyed the greatest shrine of the Serbian population and tried to eliminate any connection of Muslims with their former faith.22 By the viziers’ decree, the Serbian patriarchy in Pec was reestablished in 1557, 94 years after it was abolished in 1463. The patriarchy was reestablished thanks to Sokollu’s influence as the third vizier of the sultan’s palace. According to Serbian historian Samardzic, the primary reason for Sokollu’s persistent campaign for reopening of the Serbian patriarchy in Kosovo was the Serbian military aid to Sokollu’s troops in a war against the Hungarians. Although Sokollu’s decision was 22
Ibid., 108.
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guided by the interest of the Ottoman state, since the benefits of the Serbian military support in the Balkan was obvious, this act served more to strengthen the Serbian population than the Ottoman state.23 For the Serbian subjects the reestablishment of the patriarchy was the most important historical event in the time of the Ottoman domination. The patriarchy helped the Serbians to restore their weakened spiritual unity while it also became the institution of a state character and in that way replaced the Serbians’ lost independent state. Although the patriarchy had an obligation to cooperate with the Ottomans and was guided by the Turkish influence in choosing its heads, the patriarchy still made the Serbian subjects politically accountable and had as a goal to preserve Serbian traditions and customs as well as to prevent Serbians from conversion to Islam. Sokollu appointed Makarije Sokolovic, his cousin with whom he had a close relationship throughout his political career, as the new Serbian patriarch. Sokolovic’s dynasty remained at the head of the Serbian patriarchy for the next 30 years.24 At the time when Sokollu became a Grand Vizier, he expressed a tremendous determination as well as obligation to leave a legacy in the Balkan states. Although Sokollu built many mosques in Istanbul and constructed many caravansarays across the empire, the majority of endowments were in Serbia and Bosnia. One of the first places Sokollu economically supported was Belgrade, where Sokollu destroyed abandoned churches and from their stones created the city’s free and closed markets, inns, and caravansarays. In addition, Sokollu constructed cobblestone roads and a fountain, 23
Ibid., 20.
24
Ibid., 109-114.
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which still exists in Belgrade and is named “Vizier’s Fountain” after Sokollu. The largest and the most important endowment Sokollu built at the end of his life was the bridge over the river Drina in Visegrad, a city in Bosnia, close to his native town of Sokolovici. The river Drina is the same river Sokollu crossed when he was collected by the devshirme. For this project, Sokollu hired the most prestigious architect of that time, the famous Mimar Sinan. The Grand Vizier never saw his largest and most important endowment completed. Today, the bridge on river Drina symbolizes Sokollu’s return home through his great deeds. In Bosnia, Sokollu also built a great number of mosques and churches, among which the Piva monastery is the most famous. Sokollu erected many more small bridges over Bosnia, vakufs or religious endowments, covered markets, inns, and fountains as well. Despite the same srcin and religious background, Mehmed Sokollu and Konstantin Mihailovic had completely different experiences in the Ottoman Empire. Their individual destinies are reflected in their disparate views of the Ottomans, their state, and religion. Although, both former devshirme youths set their goals in two completely different directions, one intended to return to the Christian world, another chose to stay; one continued to fight against the Ottomans, another chose to fight on their side, there is one common thread that connected their disparate endings. Regardless of their positive or negative experience in the Ottoman Empire, the devshirme youths could not forget their families, native country, and Christian religion. In this sense, the idea of the devshirme system as a means permanently to eradicate national and religious background of the devshirme youths was erroneous in its essence.
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Before we finish examining the devshirme system from the perspectives of two devshirme youths, one more point of view must be analyzed. What was the experience of the devshirme parents? The devshirme system was a traumatic experience not just for the youths but their parents as well. For every parent, their children are their greatest source of joy and happiness but also their largest responsibility. They had rights to raise their children in accordance with their own wish, religion, and family tradition. When their children were taken away, the parents lost their parenting rights and the future of their children became unknown to them. This certainly painful situation for the parents of the devshirme youths is increased further by the parents’ powerlessness to prevent the forcible removal of their children. As I mentioned in the third chapter, some desperate parents took actions against the Ottomans, which resulted in them being killed. The agony, desperation, and helplessness of the parents’ positions is increased by their awareness that they would never see their male children again and that their children would end up in an enemy country, converted to a foreign religion, with Muslim names, and devoting their lives to the sultan. The fact that some of the devshirme youths achieved social advancement cannot ethically justify the devshirme system. Thus, the experience of the devshirme parents was painful and made the devshirme system an inhumane act from the parents’ point of view. The devshirme system was organized in such a way as to expunge the national and religious identity of the abducted Christian youths from the Balkans and to make of them loyal Muslims whose life should be devoted only to the sultan and dedicated to the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. When it comes to Mihailovic, it is worth remembering that Mihailovic was a Serb from Serbia where the Serbian Orthodox
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Church was strongly established and represented the cornerstone of Serbian national identity. The Serbian population in Serbia was very religious in the Middle Ages because of its founder Nemanja, who established a state based on a strong church-state relationship. Since the Serbian subjects under Ottoman domination lost their independent state and political dynasty, only the Serbian Orthodox Church remained and continued to maintain a national identity alive through providing spiritual support for the Serbian subjects. When the Ottomans defeated Serbia, the religious feelings of the Serbian population were magnified. The Serbian subjects looked at their church as the only path toward their salvation, often equating salvation with independence and freedom. It is no wonder that Mihailovic was a deeply religious man whose strong religious feelings made him see in Christianity his own path to salvation, which for him meant return to the Christian faith and life among Christians in a Christian land. Thus, the conversion to Islam and loss of the Christian religion for a deeply religious man like Mihailovic was his greatest fear and anxiety, and caused his a very negative experience as a devshirme youth. In addition, when we look at Mihailovic’s frightening capture as well as the Ottoman punishment for attempted escape, it is no wonder that Mihailovic had a very traumatic experience as a devshirme youth. The Mihailovic case proved that heritage and religion of the devshirme youths could not be expunged or forgotten. Conversion to a new religion and adoption of a new nationality were degrading for the devshirme youths as well as painful and fearful. Thus, the devshirme system ended as a very negative phenomenon of the Ottoman Empire from the point of view of the converted devshirme youths who could not accept
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the loss of their national and religious identity. Thus, Mihailovic’s experience as a devshirme youth proved that the devshirme institution was an inhumane act. In contrast, when we examine Sokollu’s experience in the Ottoman Empire, the picture is quite different. Sokollu embraced life in the Ottoman Empire, accepted his new religion, and accommodated himself to the Ottomans and their way of life. In Sokollu’s case, there are certain facts that contributed to his quick accommodation within the Ottoman Empire as well as his unconditional acceptance of Islam. As I mentioned earlier, the Sokolovic family had already experienced islamization before Sokollu was taken by the devshirme. Their continuing enjoyment of the status of low nobility indicates that some of their members must have converted to Islam or collaborated with the Ottomans in some way. Thus, Sokollu may have experienced some familiarity with the Ottomans before he was taken to the Ottoman Empire, which could have contributed to his relatively rapid adaptation to the Ottoman way of life.25 In addition, the timing and manner of recruitment of the devshirme youths contributed greatly in ameliorating the painful experience of the devshirme system for Sokollu. In contrast with Mihailovic, Sokollu was recruited some 70 years later. The recruitment took place at the time of the greatest Ottoman expansion, when the local priest and the Janissary officer both participated in the process of devshirme selection. Thus, Sokollu did not have the terrible experience of forced capture as Mihailovic did. In addition, upon arrival to Edirne, Sokollu was selected for education in the sultan’s palace, which is considered a less difficult treatment than training for the Janissary corps.
25
Ibid., 20.
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Sokollu’s life and career shows that the devshirme youths could reach the pinnacle within the sultan’s autocratic state and soar high politically, socially and publicly. Looking at Sokollu’s successful career in the Ottoman Empire, the logical conclusion would be that the devshirme system was a vehicle for social advancement. However, that vehicle could only take the brightest devshirme youths into a life of political power and social progress. The majority of the devshirme youths ended up in the sultan’s Janissary corps risking their lives for the sultans and their expansionist goals. Sokollu’s care and support for his family and compatriots in Bosnia sheds new light on the devshirme system and places under question the statement that the devshirme system was more a path to social success than a painful act. Social advancement in the Ottoman Empire demanded from the devshirme youths rejection of their national and religious identities and the adoption of new ones. Sokollu replaced his family with loyalty and servitude to the sultan, embraced Islam with passion and zeal, and showed adoration toward the glory of the Ottoman Empire he had a privilege to serve. However, when he became one of the viziers and reached high social status in the Ottoman Empire, Sokollu found his parents, maintained contacts with his family, and generously supported his place of birth. What do these facts tell us? They demonstrate that devshirme youths who achieved great success were never able or willing to abandon completely their srcinal national identity despite the fact that they adopted a new one in the Ottoman Empire. Further, Sokollu generously supported Christian churches and monasteries and erected many new ones throughout the
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Balkans, not just in his native state of Bosnia. This fact tells us that, despite adoption of the Islamic religion with passion and zeal, Sokollu wanted or needed to maintain ties with his former Christian faith. Thus, in case of Sokollu, the devshirme system ended up being an inhumane act because it demanded that the devshirme youths eliminate something that was never supposed to be eliminated and that is family, srcin, and faith. The devshirme system was a unique invention of the Ottoman Empire. The idea of the devshirme institution was not to aid or in any way endorse the devshirme youths in their endeavor to succeed within their new state and provide better social status for themselves. From the moment when Osman established the first Ottoman principality to the time when the Ottoman state became the most powerful state in the Eurasian region, the state required from all of its subjects the subordination of their existence to the realization of the state’s primary goal, which was to spread Islam and empower the empire under the Osman dynasty. The devshirme system was strategically organized in a way to exploit those youths to realize this basic idea of the state. Although the Ottoman state provided opportunities for their career advancement, the devshirme youths were just the sultans’ slaves, used for his personal battle against the Turkish aristocracy, his main threat in the creation of an autocratic state. Thanks to the devshirme institution, sultans secured their positions as absolute leaders by surrounding themselves with the brightest and most gifted youths, who were absolutely loyal and obedient in their servitude. Certainly, the devshirme system was not established for any kind of success for the devshirme youths, rather for their loyal service in the sultan’s private army, his Janissary corps. From the point of view of the
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political establishment of the Ottoman Empire, the devshirme system was an essential tool for expansion of the Ottoman Empire and extension of Islamic territory. If we take into account all of these points of view concerning the devshirme system, the logical conclusion would be that the devshirme system, while both an inhumane act, and a path to social advancement, when judged objectively was simply part of the survival strategy of the Osman dynasty as it headed the unprecedented expansion of the Ottoman state.
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CHAPTER FIVE CONTEMPRORAY VIEW ON DEVSHIRME As a unique innovation of the Ottomans, the devshirme institution was established to fulfill the staffing needs of the sultan’s prestigious military corps. However, the idea of using slaves as military personnel was practiced in many places throughout the Islamic world. From the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, a large number of long lasting Muslim dynasties (e.g., Abbasids, Buyids, Fatimids, Seljuks, Mamluks, and the Safavids) based their military organizations on slave soldiers. Turks themselves experienced military slavery under the Abbasid Caliphate when they “have been captured, taken as tribute or purchased as slaves, from the nonMuslim steppes of Central Asia, brought up as Muslim converts, then trained in Baghdad as soldiers and administrators.”1 Thus, when Murad I formed his private army based on slaves in the mid-fourteenth century, it represented some kind of continuation of well-established practice of using slaves either obtained as bounty or purchased for military purposes. As an Islamic state, the Ottoman Empire based its administrative-military organization on sharia or Islamic law. Under Islamic law, the Muslims were allowed to enslave prisoners of war from non-Muslim populations and in that sense, the Ottoman action was legal since it was done in accordance with Islamic law. However, when it comes to the devshirme system, the Ottoman actions were illegal and in opposition to the sharia.
1
Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries , 51.
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The devshirme youths were recruited from non-Muslim societies conquered by the Ottomans and under the authority of the Ottoman state and Islamic law. Those societies had a zimmi status, which meant an advantageous position in comparison to the non-Muslim societies found outside of the domain of Islam. The term devshirme meant collection of dhimma-children (i.e. children of non-Muslim populations living under Muslim protection). Paul Wittek states: … the levy of dhimmi children was not only contrary to the Sharia, but also contrary to well-established custom. For three centuries, in their Anatolian homeland, the Turks had been ruling over non-Muslims and had applied to them the prescriptions of the Sharia; the status of dhimmi was therefore commonly known and respected.2 Why the Ottomans acted in opposition to Islamic law when it came to collection of the devshirme youths is still an open question. The possible answer may be found in the shafi legal school since according to this Islamic school only those who were “people of the book” prior to 622 (i.e. who professed their religion since the time before the prophet Muhammad) were entitled to zimmi status. Since the population of the Balkans converted to Christianity after the time of the prophet Muhammad, they should be denied the status of dhimmi. 3 Unfortunately, this theory cannot legally justify the devshirme system applied to the Christian youths in the Balkans for one simple reason. The Jews as well as the Greeks and Armenians professed their religion a long time before the Muslim professed Islam. However, only the Jews were exempted from the devshirme collection and that is because they were townspeople
2 Paul Wittek, “Devshirme and shari’a,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 17, no. 4 (1955): 275. 3
Ibid., 271-278.
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working as craft makers and in other businesses that the Ottomans wanted to preserve. The Greeks or Armenians were not exempted from the devshirme collection. Thus, the Ottomans could not have any explanation for collection of the devshirme youths from the non-Muslim population with zimmis status. Their action was against the sharia or Islamic law. The view of the devshirme system among the Christian population in the Balkans is part of a general view of the Ottoman Empire and its conquest of the Balkan states. Namely, the span of several centuries under Ottoman domination is considered the most tragic period in the history of the Balkan people. The Balkan subjects lost their independence and ruling dynasties. They were obliged to pay poll taxes and the blood levy. The blood levy was the most painful levy the Christians communities had to pay to the Ottomans. While the medieval Christian sources openly resisted and opposed the devshirme system, contemporary historians are divided in their opinion about the devshirme institution. The sermon of Isidore Glabas, as mentioned in the third chapter, addressed for the first time the devshirme collection at the end of the fourteenth century, clearly shows an opposing view of the devshirme institution from three different perspectives. Isidore Glabas began his sermon from the parents’ point of view and questioned: …what would a man not suffer were he to see a child, whom he had begotten and raised…carried off by the hands of foreigners, suddenly and by force, and forced to change over to alien customs and to become a vessel of barbaric garb, speech, impiety, and other contamination, all in a moment…or what would happen…if a man were to find himself as if cut into two parts; and if he were to see the one dismembered section of his body, his son, become a substance of
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baseness and not used for any good purpose; and to see the remaining section, himself that is, not only useless but dead and full of lamentation and agony?4 Glabas could not determine whose pain was greater and who was more devastated by the devshirme system, the abducted child, or the abandoned father. In his sermon, Isidore questioned: … which one shall the father lament, himself or his son…because the light of his eyes has perished? Because he will not have his son to send him to his grave in fitting manner, and to perform the other rites and honors? Because he sees that seed which he hoped to offer to God changed into an offering to the devil?5 Glabas lamented upon the fact that the freeborn Christians lost their freedom and became slaves in the hands of foreigners: … or shall he lament his son because a free child becomes a slave? Because being nobly born he is forced to adopt barbaric customs? Because he who was rendered so mild by motherly and fatherly hands is about to be filled with barbaric cruelty? Because he attended matins in the churches…is now taught to pass the night in murdering his own people…but the worst of all the evils is that, he is shamefully separated from God and has become miserably entangled with the devil, and in the end will be sent to darkness and hell with the demons.6 As mentioned in previous chapters, the Christian families were very resistant in their opposition to the devshirme system and tried to protect their children by all means. The parents married their sons at an early age, send them into the forest, tried to bribe the Janissary officials not to spirit their child away, and in some cases, even disfigured their children’s faces. However, the fact that some families in Bosnia offered their children to the devshirme collection to provide a better future for them
4
Vryonis,“Isidore Glabas and the Turkish Devshirme,” 436-437.
5
Ibid., 437.
6
Ibid.
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and the fact that the life and career in the Ottoman Empire provided a path toward social advancement within Ottoman society, made some modern historians conclude that the Christian’s response to the devshirme system was less tragic and more passive. For example, Caroline Finkel described the professional career of one devshirme youth who was sent back to Bosnia as Ottoman governor after forty years of service throughout the Ottoman Empire. She concluded: … his brilliant career was a clear demonstration of the opportunity open to a boy such as he, removed from a poor peasant family. No doubt there were tears on both sides as such boys left home and family, but the youth-levy appears not to have aroused much resistance among the Christians subject to it—it almost seems that it may have been regarded as a legal duty owed to a legitimate monarch, rather than a tyrannical imposition. 7 It is well known that the opportunities in a sphere of political power or social prominence existed for the devshirme youths but it is wrong to conclude that this fact made the Christian population passive in their action against the devshirme system. In his sermon, Isidore Glabas did not mention any political career or social advancement for the devshirme youths, rather he underlined the tragedy of the devshirme youths who were born as free Christians and were about to become slaves. This view of Ottoman rule in the Balkans today is reflected in folk literature. Folk songs were composed by ordinary people singing with the tune of a gusle, the one-string fiddle. Songs were passed down orally from the Middle Ages to the present day. The epic poetry of Serbia represents the most famous and the best-known reference for knowledge of the common people’s view of the history of the Serbian people. The first Balkan ballads were created in medieval times describing the glory of
7
Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream , l23.
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the Serbian kingdom and royal dynasty. During the time of the Ottoman occupation, Serbian folk poetry depicted the circumstances under the Ottoman conquest, loss of independence, Serbian resistance, and determination to gain back their freedom, state, religion, and culture. It was a common practice to create songs based on the hajduk personality (i.e. a guerrilla who is successfully fighting against the Ottomans). As Stavrianos explained: … the Serbian heroes in these epics were adopted by the neighboring South Slavic peoples and glorified in their respective literature. This is particularly true of the burly, blustering, impulsively chivalrous haiduk, Marko Kraljevich…he is strong, self-willed, capricious, at time cruel, but always brave, always fighting and hating the Turks, and always protecting the weak and the friendless.8 The folk literature expressed the commonly held negative view of the Ottoman occupation. Although, one may assume that the blood levy represented in the mind of the Serbian subjects was the most painful levy imposed by the Ottomans, the traditional folk literature did not address the devshirme system apart from the generally negative outlook on the period of the Ottoman occupation and suppressed religious activity. However, the memories of famous devshirme youths such as Mehmed Pasha Sokollu or Konstantine Mihailovic are still very much present in the mind of the contemporary Serbian people in Serbia as well as in Bosnia. Although, the Sokollu legacy is much more substantial and his life is better known, both Serbs have a special place in the history of the Serbian people. Of all devshirme youths who made more or less successful careers in the Ottoman Empire, only these two Serbs made an 8
L. S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958), 108-
109.
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impression on the historical memory of the Serbian people as represented in popular Serbian literature and culture. As a person who grew up in the former Yugoslavia, I must say that the biographies of these two devshirme youth were quite popular. The schools regularly took children on excursions to visit some of Sokollu’s endowments such as the fountain in Kalemegdan Park in Belgrade or the bridge on the river Drina that Sokollu built in Bosnia. The subject of the Nobel Prize-winning book, The Bridge on the Drina is the history of Sokollu’s bridge built it in the Visegrad city in Bosnia. This book by Ivo Andric was mandatory reading in the school system of the former Yugoslavia. For the Serbian population, Sokollu and Mihailovic were symbols of Ottoman inhumanity and their ultimate defeat. Looking through the prism of forcible removal of their children as the embodiment of their loss of religious and national identity intensified the tragedy of the Serbian defeat. Thus, the fact that Konstantine Mihailovic returned to the Christian fold and Mehmed Sokollu continued to generously support the Serbian Orthodox Church and people could be viewed as a defeat of the devshirme system and ultimately a victory for Serbian national identity.
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CONCLUSION The devshirme system or blood levy was imposed on Balkan territory conquered by the Ottomans at the end of the fourteenth century. The Ottoman Empire invented the devshirme system out of a need for qualified, and most importantly, loyal military men who would fill the Janissary corps or sultan’s personal slave-based army. However, from its very inception, this institution was fraught with contradictions. From its non-conformity with Islamic law and breach of the zimmi status of the devshirme youths—a greatly debated topic in the historiographical literature dealing with the Ottoman Empire—to the curious silence that surrounds the institution in Serbian folklore—the devshirme continues to confound modern scholars to this day. The forcible removal of the most precious possession of the parents—their children, would be an act of unspeakable trauma for any family. The Balkan Christian tragedy was enhanced by the fact that their children, the most vulnerable part of any society, were forced to mentally and emotionally transform themselves to fit into a Muslim way of life and act as slaves for the rest of their lives. For this reason, the devshirme system is considered an inhumane and heinous act down to the present day by the Christian communities that were exposed to the devshirme collection in the Middle Ages. However, some contemporary western historians today justify the existence of the devshirme system because it provided social mobility, political career, and wealth for the devshirme youths who came from poor peasant families. For this reason, some wrongly looked at the Christian communities as passive opponents to the devshirme collection.
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I intentionally chose Mehmed Sokollu and Konstantine Mihailovic as two representatives of the devshirme youths who had completely different career paths and destinies in the Ottoman Empire. While these two Serbs and Christians were both trained as slaves with the purpose of serving the sultan and the Ottoman Empire, their views on the Ottoman Empire and vision of their future were in opposition. For Mihailovic, the loss of his Christian identity was unacceptable and humiliating. Making a career among the Muslims was never his intention. To escape from the “heathens,” his expression for Muslims, was his only objective. On the contrary, Sokollu embraced Islam as a gift from God and saw in his slavery an opportunity for a political career and social advancement. The different views of the devshirme youths on their life and career in the Ottoman Empire are later reflected in the different points of view in contemporary historical works. No one can defend the brutal removal of children from their parents, country, and religion. However, no one can diminish the fact that the devshirme system was both a career path as well as slave institution. Thus, when we consider this institution from the various points of view, we must consider the devshirme system as both a subjective and an objective phenomenon. Objectively, the Ottoman Empire established the devshirme system out of a need for qualified military men. The emerging need for a larger army came at a time when the Ottoman Empire was expanding. The Ottomans did not have any other goals related to the devshirme youths and their future except to continue the legacy of Osman, the first Ottoman sultan, which was to spread Islam and expand the Ottoman Empire.
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This was the primary goal of the Ottomans. The devshirme youths were used for realization of that goal. Subjectively, the Christian parents lost their children permanently, knowing that their most precious gift was forced to eradicate their Christian and Serbian identity and live as slaves serving Muslim conquerors. Some devshirme youths made successful political careers and established prestigious social status within the Ottoman Empire. Depending on their own vision of their new life and willingness to transform their national and religious identity, for the devshirme youths this institution could be a vehicle toward social advancement as well as an inhumane act. In my opinion, the devshirme system, as any institution, has the potential to be viewed as negative, positive, or neutral depending on context or point of view. This is why I found the devshirme institution so fascinating topic to study.
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