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94-584: The system produced a considerable number of grand viziers from the 1400s to the 1600s. This was the second most powerful position in the Ottoman Empire, after the sultan. Initially, the grand viziers were exclusively of Turk origin, but after there were troubles between Sultan Mehmed II and the Turkish grand vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha the Younger , who was the first grand vizier to be executed, there

188-458: A few exceptions. However, some Muslim families managed to smuggle their sons in anyway. The devshirme levy was not applied to the major cities of the empire, and children of local craftsmen in rural towns were also exempt, as it was considered that conscripting them would harm the economy. According to Bernard Lewis , the janissaries were mainly recruited from the Slavic and Albanian populations of

282-512: A hundred or more to walk to Constantinople, where they were circumcised and divided between the palace schools and the military training. Anyone not chosen for the palace spent years being toughened by hard labor on farms in Anatolia until they were old enough for the military . The brightest youths who fit into the general guidelines and had a strong primary education were then given to selected Muslim families across Anatolia to complete

376-529: A need to "counteract the power of (Turkic) nobles by developing Christian vassal soldiers and converted kapıkulu as his personal troops, independent of the regular army." This elite force, which served the Ottoman Sultan directly, was called Kapıkulu Ocağı (The Hearth of the Porte Servants). They were divided into two main groups: cavalry and infantry. The cavalry was commonly known as

470-428: A pact to assassinate him by night, saying “If we kill this Turkish dog, then all of Christendom will be freed [from Ottoman tyranny]; but if we are caught, then we will become martyrs before God with the others.” When their plot was exposed, and Murad inquired what caused them to “dare attempt this,” they responded, “None other than our great sorrow for our fathers and dear friends.” He had the children slowly tortured over

564-718: A position of supreme power in the Empire. It was during the Köprülü era that the Ottoman Empire reached its largest geographic expansion across Europe, Asia Minor, and Africa. In Ottoman legal theory, the Sultan was supposed to conduct affairs of state exclusively via the Grand Vizier, but in reality, this arrangement was often circumvented. As the Ottomanist Colin Imber writes, the sultan "had closer contact with

658-518: A recruit was between 10 and 20 years of age. Mehmed Refik Beg mentioned that a youth with a bodily defect, no matter how slight, was never admitted into palace service, since Turks believed that a strong soul and a good mind could be found only in a perfect body. The selected children were dressed in red so that they could not easily escape on their way to Constantinople . The cost of the devshirme service and their clothes were paid by their villages or communities. The boys were gathered into cohorts of

752-461: A strong state. Grand Viziers gained immense political supremacy in the later days of the Ottoman Empire. Power was centralized in the position of the Grand Vizier during the Köprülü era . Köprülü Mehmed Pasha was a powerful political figure during the reign of Mehmed IV, and was appointed to the office of Grand Vizier in 1656. He consolidated power within the position and sent the Sultan away from

846-451: Is no prophet and that the Turkish religion is false. If there is one among them who has some little book or can teach them in some other manner something of God's world, they hear him as diligently as if he were their preacher. Greek scholar Janus Lascaris visited Constantinople in 1491 and met many janissaries who not only remembered their former religion and their native land but also favored their former coreligionists. The renegade Hersek,

940-415: Is some evidence that urban Christian and Muslim parents resorted to bribery or sending their children to the country to assure the advancement in life that devshirme recruitment could bring. The boys were forced to convert to Islam. Muslims were not allowed into the system (with some exceptions), but some Muslim families smuggled their sons in anyway. According to Speros Vyronis, "The Ottomans took advantage of

1034-444: Is urgently necessary” and were made to “pray together without fail at four prescribed times every day.” As “for any little offense, they beat them cruelly with sticks, rarely hitting them less than a hundred times, and often as much as a thousand. After punishments the boys have to come to them and kiss their clothing and thank them for the cudgelings they have received. You can see, then, that moral degradation and humiliation are part of

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1128-654: The Kapikulu Sipahi (The Cavalry of the Servants of the Porte ) and the infantry as the janissaries ( Yeni Çeri , meaning "the New Corps"). The devshirme conscripts were set apart from the janissaries in that they were not a cavalry group, rather exclusively infantry. At first, the soldiers serving in these corps were selected from the slaves captured during war. However, a new system commonly known as devshirme

1222-689: The Albanians of Himarë in the year 1581, addressed to the Pope reads: "Holiest father, if you could convince him and save us and the children of Greece, that are taken every day and are turned into Turks, if you could only do this, God may bless you. Amen”. In 1456 Greeks living on the western coast of Anatolia appealed to the Knights Hospitalers of Rhodes for help. We, who do dwell in Turkey ... inform your lordship that we are heavily vexed by

1316-479: The Balkans . Scouts were recruiting youngsters according to their talent and ability with school subjects, in addition to their personality, character and physical perfection. The Enderûn candidates were not supposed to be orphans or the only child in their family to ensure that the candidates had strong family values. They also had to not have already learned to speak Turkish or a craft or trade. The ideal age of

1410-768: The Deccan had substantially weakened. Asaf Jah I, however, refused to grant Chauth to the Maratha Confederacy during its onset in 1718 and in 1721, after the nobility of the Mughal Empire had the two Sayyid Brothers assassinated. However, the Marathas had already expanded up to the Narmada River , and entrenched themselves in that region thereafter. Baji Rao I later instigated war by collecting Chauth in 1723, and trying to expand Maratha rule in

1504-516: The Mughal Empire during the reign of Akbar . Saadullah Khan , Grand Vizier of the Mughal Empire during the reign of Shah Jahan made the biggest contribution to the organization and administration of the Mughal Empire, he is considered the best of the long line of Mughal Grand Viziers. During the reign of Aurangzeb, Ali Quli Khan was bestowed this title. Later general Zulfiqar Khan Nusrat Jung became Grand Vizier, his fame as one of

1598-583: The Seljuks or the contemporary European palace schools, Enderûn was unique with respect to the background of the student body and its meritocratic system. In the strict draft phase, students were taken forcefully from the Christian population of the Empire and were converted to Islam . Jews and Gypsies were exempted from devshirme and so were all Muslims . Those entrusted to find those children were scouts, who were specially-trained agents, throughout

1692-432: The enculturation process. They would later attend schools across Anatolia to complete their training for six to seven years to qualify as ordinary military officers . They would get the highest salaries amongst the administrators of the empire and very well respected in public. White eunuchs were sometimes recruited from among the devshirme. Unlike the black eunuchs, who were usually castrated in their place of origin,

1786-435: The harem , many eunuchs of devshirme origin went on to hold important positions in the military and the government, such as grand viziers Hadım Ali Pasha , Sinan Borovinić , and Hadım Hasan Pasha . Ottoman officials would take male Christian children, aged 7 to 20, from Eastern , Southern and Southeastern Europe , and relocate them to Istanbul, where they were converted, circumcised, assimilated and trained to serve into

1880-553: The 'slaves' to become both powerful and wealthy." According to Cleveland, the devshirme system offered "limitless opportunities to the young men who became a part of it." Basilike Papoulia wrote that "the devishirme was the 'forcible removal', in the form of a tribute, of children of the Christian subjects from their ethnic, religious and cultural environment and their transportation into the Turkish-Islamic environment with

1974-415: The 15th century and later, decades after the actual event. One Western source states that during the first hours of the battle, Murad I was assassinated by Serbian nobleman and knight Miloš Obilić by knife. Most Ottoman chroniclers (including Dimitrie Cantemir ) state that he was assassinated after the finish of the battle while going around the battlefield. His older son Bayezid , who was in charge of

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2068-427: The 1650s, the number of janissaries had increased to 50,000, but by this time, the devshirme had largely been abandoned as a method of recruitment. The BBC notes the following regarding the devshirme system: "Although members of the devshirme class were technically slaves, they were of great importance to the Sultan because they owed him their absolute loyalty and became vital to his power. This status enabled some of

2162-642: The 19th century, the Grand Viziers came to assume a role more like that of the prime ministers of contemporary Western monarchies. Forty nine Grand Viziers of Albanian ethnicity served the empire during the Ottoman period and most of them were southern Albanians ( Tosks ). Bairam Khan was the Grand Vizier of the Mughal Empire, who led the forces of Akbar to victory during the Second Battle of Panipat . Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak , Grand Vizier of

2256-631: The 8th century AD. This position was later adopted by the Ottomans in the early 14th century, by the Seljuks of Anatolia. During the nascent phases of the Ottoman state , "vizier" was the only title used. The first of these Ottoman viziers who was titled "Grand Vizier" (French spelling: grand-vézir ) was Çandarlı Halil Pasha the Elder . The purpose in instituting the title "Grand Vizier" was to distinguish

2350-665: The Balkans. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Encyclopaedia of Islam , in the early days of the empire, all Christians were enrolled indiscriminately. Later, those from Albania , Bosnia and Bulgaria were preferred. What is certain is that devshirme were primarily recruited from Christians living in the Balkans, particularly Serbs and Bosnians, as well as others from the Balkans region, such as Albanians and Greeks . Since Muslim Bosnians were

2444-512: The Book . The practice of devshirme also involved forced conversions to Islam. This is disputed by Turkish historian Halil İnalcık , who argues that the devshirme were not slaves once converted to Islam. Some scholars point out that the early Ottoman Empire did not care about the details of sharia and thus did not see any problems with devshirme. During this time, the Ottomans believed that the Qanun ,

2538-813: The Christian parents thought of the Janissaries: You understand, then, my lords and Christian gentlemen, what sorrow the Greeks bear, the fathers and the mothers who are separated from their children at the prime of life. Think ye of the heartrending sorrow! How many mothers scratch out their cheeks! How many fathers beat their breast with stones! What grief these Christians experience on account of their children who are separated from them while alive, and how many mothers say, “It would have been better to see them dead and buried in our church, rather than to have them taken alive in order to become Turks and abjure our faith. Better that you had died!” Stephen Gerlach gives

2632-680: The Deccan and beyond, causing the outbreak of the Later Mughal-Maratha Wars . Qamaruddin Khan was handpicked to be the Grand Vizier of the Mughal Empire, by Asaf Jah I. He successfully repelled Baji Rao I during the Battle of Delhi (1737), and negotiated peace after the occupation of the Mughal Empire by the forces of Nader Shah . He fell in battle after being struck by a stray artillery shell, in battle against Afghan forces in

2726-416: The Elder reformed the role of the vizier in several ways. Several viziers before him held an equivalent, but differently named office; he was the first who held the position of "Grand Vizier", during the reign of Murad I . He was the first advisor with a military background – his forerunners had come from a more scholarly class of men. It is also significant that he was the first of a political family that, at

2820-502: The Janissaries: "The conquered are slaves of the conquerors, to whom their goods, their women, and their children belong as lawful possession". According to scholars, the practice of devshirme was a clear violation of sharia or Islamic law. David Nicolle writes that since the boys were "effectively enslaved" under the devshirme system, this was a violation of the dhimmi protections guaranteed under Islamic law to People of

2914-560: The Janissary infantry corps or palace duties. Devshirme were rarely sold, though some could end up as slaves in private households. The fact that they were taken forcibly from their parents made the devshirme system resented by locals. However, revolts were rare, with the exception of a revolt against the devshirme in Albania in 1565. Ordered to cut all ties with their families, some managed to use their positions to help their families. There

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3008-486: The Ottoman Empire. However, after there were troubles between the Turkish grand vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha the Younger and Sultan Mehmed II (who had him executed), there was a rise of slave administrators ( devshirme ). These were much easier for the sultans to control, as compared to the free administrators of Turkish aristocratic origin. The term vizier was originally used in the Abbasid Caliphate in

3102-477: The Ottoman court until Mehmet II (see Çandarlı Halil ), the Ottoman ruling class slowly came to be ruled exclusively by the devshirme, creating a separate social class. This class of rulers was chosen from the brightest of devshirme and handpicked to serve in the palace institution, known as the Enderûn . They had to accompany the Sultan on campaigns, but exceptional service would be rewarded by assignments outside

3196-467: The Ottoman history, the Grand Viziers have also been termed sadr-ı âlî ( صدر عالی , "sublime vizier"), vekil-ı mutlak ( وكیل مطلق , "absolute attorney"), sâhib-ı devlet ( صاحب دولت , "holder of the State"), serdar-ı ekrem ( سردار اكرم , "most noble [commander-in-]chief"), serdar-ı a’zam ( سردار اعظم , "grand [commander-in-]chief") and zât-ı âsafî ( ذات آصفی , "vizieral person"). Halil Pasha

3290-520: The Ottoman invasion. Vladimir Minorsky states, "The most striking manifestation of this fact is the unprecedented system of devshirme, i.e. the periodic conscription of 'tribute boys', by which the children of Christians were wrung from their families, churches, and communities to be molded into Ottoman praetorians owing their allegiance to the Sultan and the official faith of Islam." This system as explained by Çandarlı Kara Halil Hayreddin Pasha , founder of

3384-595: The Sultan and admonishing against the kidnapping of boys: Be damned, O Emperor, be thrice damned For the evil you have done and the evil you do. You catch and shackle the old and the archpriests In order to take the children as Janissaries. Their parents weep and their sisters and brothers too And I cry until it pains me; As long as I live I shall cry, For last year it was my son and this year my brother. The Tübingen manuscript written by Andre Argyros and John Tholoites and given to Martin Crusius in 1585 shows what

3478-568: The Sultan themselves and practically formed their own aristocracy. The primary objective of the Palace School was to train the ablest children for leadership positions, either as military leaders or as high administrators to serve the Devlet . Although there are many resemblances between Enderûn and other palace schools of the previous civilizations, such as those of the Abbasids ,

3572-488: The Turk, and that they take away our children and make Muslims of them ... For this reason we beseech your lordship to take council that the most holy pope might send his ships to take us and our wives and children away from here, for we are suffering greatly from the Turk. The children were taken from their families and transported to Istanbul. Upon their arrival, they were forcibly converted to Islam, examined and made to serve

3666-548: The Turks and running away by ourselves among the mountains,” he writes, “but our youth did not permit us to do that.” Once when he and a group of other boys broke free and escaped, “the whole region pursued us, and having caught and bound us, they beat us and tortured us and dragged us behind horses.” It is said that: "Even those personally chosen by the Sultan found nothing admirable about their lot." After Ottoman Sultan Murad II took eight Christian youths into his service, they made

3760-458: The Younger , who became the first grand vizier to be executed, there was a rise of slave administrators devshirme. They were much easier to control for the sultans, as compared to free administrators of Turkish noble origin. They were also less subject to influence from court factions. From the very beginning, the Turcoman were a danger that undermined the Sultan's creation of a strong state. Thus,

3854-604: 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." Accordingly, Papoulia agrees with Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb and Harold Bowen, authors of Islamic Society and the West , that the devshirme was a penalization imposed on the Balkan peoples since their ancestors had resisted

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3948-404: The army, rather than sons from Christian families. In 1594, Muslims were officially allowed to take the positions held by the devshirme and the system of recruiting Christians effectively stopped by 1648. An attempt to re-institute it in 1703 was resisted by its Ottoman members, who coveted the military and civilian posts. Finally, in the early days of Ahmet III 's reign, the practice of devshirme

4042-552: The case of a Greek Mother from Panormus in Anatolia who had two boys and begged God every day to take them away because she would soon be forced to give up one of them. The distress expressed here was motivated not only by religious considerations, but also by the low opinion the Byzantines held for Turks (whom they called barbarians). In desperation the parents would appeal to the Pope and western powers for help. A petition of

4136-502: The city on hunting trips, thus stopping Mehmed's direct management over the state. Next, he forcibly removed any officers suspected of corruption; those who did not leave were executed. He also conducted campaigns against Venice and the Habsburgs, as well as quelling rebellions in Anatolia. On his deathbed five years later, he convinced Mehmed to appoint his son (Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha) as the next Grand Vizier, thus securing his dynasty

4230-422: The course of a year before beheading them. On the other hand, since the devshirme could reach powerful positions, some Muslim families tried to have the recruiters take their sons so that they could achieve professional advancement. Sometimes people of both religion, or family in great needs, attempted to bribe scouts to take their children. In Epirus , a traditional folk song expressed this resentment by cursing

4324-448: The devshirme also served as a unifying factor for the Ottoman Empire. Greeks, Armenians, Albanians, and other ethnicities would see that the Sultan was Turkish, but his viziers were Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek and other ethnicities. The ethnic diversity in high-level and powerful positions of the Ottoman Empire helped to unite the diverse groups under its jurisdiction. They also prevented a hereditary aristocracy from forming but held sway over

4418-456: The devshirme such as: marrying the boys at the age of 12, mutilating them or have both father and son convert to Islam. Conversion to Islam was used in Bosnia and Herzegovina to escape the system. In Albania and Epirus the practice led to a Christian revolt where the inhabitants killed the recruiting officials in the year 1565. In Naousa , after killing the recruiting officials the parents fled to

4512-714: The devshirme were castrated at the palace. The palace eunuchs who supervised them often came from the same background as the devshirme (the Balkans). A considerable number of eunuchs of devshirme origin went on to hold important positions in the government and the military, and many of them became grand vizier , like Hadım Ali Pasha , Sinan Borovinić , Hadım Hasan Pasha , Hadim Mesih Pasha and Hadım Mehmed Pasha . Others, like Sofu Hadım Ali Pasha , Hadım Şehabeddin , Hadım Yakup Pasha of Bosnia , Hadım Ali Pasha of Buda , Hadım Suleiman Pasha and his namesake Hadım Suleiman Pasha , became prominent admirals and generals. According to

4606-480: The early part of Ahmet III 's reign (1703–1730). After Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, there was a reform movement in Sultan Selim III 's regime to reduce the numbers of the askeri class, who were the first class citizens or military class (also called janissaries). Selim was taken prisoner and murdered by the janissaries. The successor to the sultan, Mahmud II , was patient but remembered the results of

4700-416: The empire's largest single military corps. As a result, by the late 16th century, the devshirme system had become increasingly abandoned for less rigid recruitment methods, which allowed Muslims to enter directly into the janissary corps. In 1632, the janissaries attempted an unsuccessful coup against Murad IV , who then imposed a loyalty oath on them. In 1638 or 1648, the devshirme-based recruiting system of

4794-547: The empire. Exemption from this tribute was considered a privilege and not a penalty." Many scholars consider the practice of devshirme as violating Islamic law . David Nicolle writes that enslavement of Christian boys violates the dhimmi protections guaranteed in Islam, but Halil İnalcık argues that the devshirme were not slaves once converted to Islam. The boys were given a formal education, and trained in science, warfare and bureaucratic administration, and became advisers to

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4888-405: The empire. The system produced infantry corps soldiers as well as civilian administrators and high-ranked military officials." Their village, district and province, parentage, date of birth, and physical appearance was recorded. Albertus Bobovius wrote in 1686 that diseases were common among the devshirme and that strict discipline was enforced. Although the influence of Turkic nobility continued in

4982-481: The enslavement of Christians, Balkan Christians were different because they had converted to Christianity after the advent of Islam. (This was true of most rural Christians in the Balkans, but not the Greeks.) William Gervase Clarence-Smith points out that the reasoning is not accepted in the Hanafi school of law, which the Ottoman Empire claimed to have practiced. Contemporary Ottoman chroniclers had mixed opinions on

5076-504: The establishment of this class counterbalanced the Turkish nobility, who sometimes opposed the Sultan. An early Greek source mentioning devshirme ( paidomazoma ) is a speech by Archbishop Isidore of Thessalonica , made on 28 February 1395, titled: "On the abduction of children according to sultan's order and on the Future Judgment". The speech includes references to the violent Islamization of children and their hard training in

5170-431: The general Christian fear of losing their children and used offers of devshirme exemption in negotiations for surrender of Christian lands. Such exemptions were included in the surrender terms granted to Jannina, Galata, Morea, Chios, etc. Christians who engaged in specialized activities important to the Ottoman state were exempted from the blood tax on their children by way of recognition of the importance of their labors for

5264-542: The giving up of his son for the Janissaries, he is immediately hanged from his door-sill, his blood being deemed unworthy. Sources show that it was not rare for the older youth to attempt to preserve their faith and some recollection of their homeland and their families. For instance, Stephan Gerlach writes: They gather together and one tells another of his native land and of what he heard in church or learned in school there, and they agree among themselves that Muhammad

5358-414: The historian Cemal Kafadar, one of the main reasons for the decline of the devshirme system was that the size of the janissary corps had to be expanded to compensate for the decline in the importance of the sipahi cavalry forces, which itself was a result of changes in early modern warfare such as the introduction of firearms and increased importance of infantry. Indeed, the janissary corps would soon become

5452-412: The holder of the sultan's seal from other viziers. The initially more frequently used title of vezir-ı a’zam ( وزیر اعظم ) was gradually replaced by another one, sadr-ı a’zam ( صدر اعظم from Arabic صَدْر "front part, bosom, forehead, lead, forefront" and أعْظَم "superior, major, maximal, paramount, grand", informally pronounced sadrazam ), both meaning "grand vizier" in practice. Throughout

5546-479: The janissary corps formally came to an end. In an order sent in multiple copies to authorities throughout the European provinces in 1666, a devshirme recruitment target of between 300 and 320 was set for an area covering the whole of the central and western Balkans . On the accession of sultan Suleiman II in 1687, only 130 janissary inductees were graduated to the janissary ranks. The system was finally abolished in

5640-742: The latter to accept Paulos Omeros, a 12-year-old boy from Chios, to save him from the devshirme. The recruitment of children took place every three to four years and at times even annually, according to the needs of the Sultan. The largest loss of children coincided with the peak of Ottoman expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under the rule of Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent. According to historian William Gervase Clarence-Smith , Christian children were taken by Ottoman officials, every four to seven years, their age ranging from 7 to 20. Those younger than 8 were called şirhor (nursling) and beççe (child). One for every forty households

5734-491: The law enacted by the Sultan, superseded sharia even though the latter was treated with respect. The devshirme was just one example in which the Sultan's wishes superseded the sharia (another example is that Ottoman sultans set maximum interest rates even though sharia totally prohibits interest ). James L. Gelvin explains that Ottoman jurists were able to get around that injunction with an extraordinarily creative legal manoeuvre by arguing that although Islamic tradition forbade

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5828-462: The leadership of Lazar at the Battle of Kosovo . There are different accounts from different sources about when and how Murad I was assassinated. The contemporary sources mainly noted that the battle took place and that both Prince Lazar and the Sultan lost their lives in the battle. The existing evidence of the additional stories and speculations as to how Murad I died were disseminated and recorded in

5922-591: The leading Grand Vizier of the Mughal Empire during the Third Battle of Panipat . He was also the Nawab of Awadh , and a loyal ally of Shah Alam II . Murad I Murad I ( Ottoman Turkish : مراد اول ; Turkish : I. Murad, Murad-ı Hüdavendigâr (nicknamed Hüdavendigâr , from Persian : خداوندگار , romanized :  Khodāvandgār , lit.   'the devotee of God ' – meaning " sovereign " in this context); 29 June 1326 – 15 June 1389)

6016-567: The left wing of the Ottoman forces, took charge after that. His other son, Yakub Bey , who was in charge of the other wing, was called to the Sultan's command center tent by Bayezid, but when Yakub Bey arrived he was strangled, leaving Bayezid as the sole claimant to the throne. In a letter from the Florentine senate (written by Coluccio Salutati ) to the King Tvrtko I of Bosnia , dated 20 October 1389, Murad I's (and Yakub Bey's) killing

6110-421: The levy by many scholars, although a 1997 publication that examined Armenian colophons from the 15th to the 17th centuries and foreign travelers of the time concluded that Armenians were not exempt. Boys who were orphans or were their family's only son were exempt. Well-known examples of Ottomans who had been recruited as devshirme include Skanderbeg , Sinan Pasha and Sokollu Mehmed Pasha . The diversity of

6204-465: The most greatest military leaders in the Mughal Empire would lead to his downfall when rogue generals executed him in a power struggle after the death of Aurangzeb. In 1718, Balaji Vishwanath , leader of the antagonistic Maratha Confederacy , secured the right to collect Chauth and Sardeshmukhi from the Subahs of the Mughal Empire by the rogue Vizier Syed Hassan Ali Khan Barha , whose grip over

6298-413: The mountains but were later caught and executed in 1705. Any parent who refused to have their child taken as a slave was put to death, and children who attempted to resist being taken from their families as janissaries by fleeing would lead to the Turks arresting and then torturing their parents to death (Many children who attempted to flee on their own returned after hearing of their parents torture). Such

6392-575: The only Muslim ethnic group allowed to be recruited, an armed guard was required to lead the Bosnians on their way to Istanbul to avoid any Turkish boys from being smuggled into their ranks. The early Ottoman emphasis on recruiting Greeks , Albanians , and South Slavs was a direct consequence of being centred on territories, in northwestern Anatolia and the southern Balkans, where those ethnic groups were prevalent. Jews were exempt from this service. Armenians are also believed to have been exempt from

6486-540: The pages of the privy chamber, the kapi agha , the kizlar agha or with other courtiers than he did with the Grand Vizier, and these too could petition the sultan on their own or somebody else’s behalf. He might, too, be more inclined to take the advice of his mother, a concubine, or the head gardener at the helm of the royal barge, than of the Grand Vizier". After the Tanzimat period of the Ottoman Empire in

6580-400: The palace school ( Enderûn Mektebi ), where they were destined for a career within the palace itself and could attain the highest office of state, Grand Vizier , the Sultan's powerful chief minister and military deputy. In the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, this office was held only by Turks. However, after there were problems between sultan Mehmed II and the Turkish Çandarlı Halil Pasha

6674-484: The palace. Those chosen for the scribe institution, known as kalemiye , were also granted prestigious positions. At the religious institution, İlmiye , all orthodox Muslim clergy of the Ottoman Empire were educated and sent to provinces or served in the capital. The children were subjected to a draconian training system: “They make them drudge day and night, and they give them no bed to sleep on and very little food.” They were allowed to “speak to each other only when it

6768-714: The practice. An Ottoman historian of the 1500s, Mustafa Âlî , admitted that devshirme violated sharia but was allowed only out of necessity. Others argued the Muslim conqueror had the right to one fifth of war booty and could thus take the Christian boys; however, Islamic law allows no such booty from communities that had submitted peacefully to conquest and certainly not from their descendants. The devshirme were collected once every four or five years from rural provinces in Eastern Europe , Southeastern Europe and Anatolia . They were mainly collected from Christian subjects, with

6862-628: The princes of Serbia and Bulgaria as well as the Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos to pay him tribute. Murad I administratively divided his sultanate into the two provinces of Anatolia ( Asia Minor ) and Rumelia (the Balkans). According to the Ottoman sources, Murad I's titles included Bey , Emîr-i a’zam (Great Emir ), Ghazi , Hüdavendigâr , Khan , Padishah , Sultânü’s-selâtîn (Sultan of sultans), Melikü’l-mülûk ( Malik of maliks), while in Bulgarian and Serbian sources he

6956-400: The siege was won by Mehmed II , the Younger was executed for his opposition. After his death, the position of Grand Vizier was chosen nearly exclusively from the kul system. Often, the men who were chosen had a Byzantine or Balkan background. According to Gábor, this was usually a political move, designed to appease powerful European factions to Ottoman supremacy. In fact, it was easier for

7050-692: The state; the viziers in conference were called " Kubbealtı viziers" in reference to their meeting place, the Kubbealtı ('under the dome') in Topkapı Palace . His offices were located at the Sublime Porte . Today, the Prime Minister of Pakistan is referred to in Urdu as Wazir-e-azam , which translates literally to grand vizier. Initially, the grand viziers were exclusively of Turk origin in

7144-404: The sultan to control an enslaved and non-Turk administrator. In the Ottoman Empire, executing a Grand Vizier of Turkish origin (in the event they were rebellious) and an enslaved foreigner would also give rise to different reactions. Further, the devshirme were less subject to influence from court factions. From the very beginning, the Turcoman were a danger that undermined the Sultan's creation of

7238-463: The sultan's relative by marriage, told him that he regretted having left the religion of his fathers and that he prayed at night before the cross which he kept carefully concealed. In his memoir, Konstantin Mihailović (1430–1501), a Serbian who was abducted in his youth and marched away by the Turks, saw nothing “prestigious” or “lucrative” about becoming a janissary. “We always thought about killing

7332-478: The sultan, elite infantry, generals in the army, admirals in the navy, and bureaucrats working on finance in the Ottoman Empire. They were separated according to ability and could rise in rank based on merit. The most talented, the ichoghlani (Turkish iç oğlanı ) were trained for the highest positions in the empire. Others joined the military, including the famed janissaries . The practice began to die out as Ottoman soldiers preferred recruiting their own sons into

7426-451: The time, rivaled the Ottoman dynasty itself. Several of Çandarlı Halil Pasha the Elder's kin went on to hold the office of Grand Vizier in the decades following his death. Çandarlı Halil Pasha the Younger , the grandson of Pasha the Elder, was also highly influential in shaping the role of the Grand Vizier. During the reign of Mehmed II, the Younger opposed the siege of Constantinople and the ongoing hostilities with Christians. Two days after

7520-471: The training system,” writes 16th century Italian diplomat Giovan Francesco Morosini (cardinal) . They were “degraded to the level of animals” and showed a “dog-like devotion to the sultan”, writes Vasiliki Papouli. Many possibly suffered from Stockholm Syndrome. Tavernier noted in 1678 that the janissaries looked more like a religious order than a military corps. The members of the organization were not banned from marriage, as Tavernier further noted, but it

7614-693: The uprising in 1807. In 1826, he created the basis of a new modern army, the Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye , which caused a revolt among the janissaries. The authorities kept the janissaries in their barracks and slaughtered thousands of them. That development entered the Ottoman history annals as the Auspicious Incident . Grand vizier Grand vizier ( Persian : وزيرِ اعظم , romanized :  vazîr-i aʾzam ; Ottoman Turkish : صدر اعظم , romanized :  sadr-ı aʾzam ; Turkish : sadrazam )

7708-744: The use of dogs and falcons. A reference to devshirme is made in a poem composed c.  1550 in Greek by Ioannes Axayiolis, who appeals to Emperor Charles V of Germany to liberate the Christians from the Turks. The text is found in the Codex Vaticanus Graecus of 1624. In another account, the Roman Catholic bishop of Chios in 1646 writes to the director of the Catholic Greek Gymnasion of Rome asking

7802-440: The year 1748. After defeating Ahmad Shah Durrani , the new Mughal emperor, Ahmad Shah Bahadur , posted Safdarjung , Nawab of Oudh as Mughal Grand Vizier, Feroze Jung III as Mir Bakshi and Muin ul-Mulk (Mir Mannu) , the son of late Grand Vizier Qamaruddin Khan , as the governor of Punjab . Safdarjung 's efforts to defend the reign of Ahmad Shah Bahadur from treacherous subjects failed. Shuja-ud-Daula served as

7896-599: Was defeated on September 26, 1371 , by Murad's capable second lieutenant Lala Şâhin Paşa , the first governor ( beylerbey ) of Rumeli . In 1385, Sofia fell to the Ottomans . In 1386, Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović defeated an Ottoman force at the Battle of Pločnik . The Ottoman army suffered heavy casualties, and was unable to capture Niš on the way back. In 1389, Murad's army fought the Serbian Army and its allies under

7990-412: Was a rise of slave administrators ( devshirme ). They were much easier for the sultans to control, compared to free administrators of Turkish aristocratic extraction. The devshirme also produced many of the Ottoman Empire's provincial governors, military commanders, and divans during the 1400s–1600s period. Sometimes, the devshirme recruits were castrated and became eunuchs . Although often destined for

8084-414: Was abolished. The devshirme (from the Turkish word meaning 'to collect') came up out of the kul system of slavery that developed in the early centuries of the Ottoman Empire, and which reached this final development during the reign of Sultan Bayazit I . The kul were mostly prisoners from war, hostages or slaves that were purchased by the state. The Ottoman Empire, beginning with Murad I , felt

8178-509: Was chosen, they had to be unmarried and once taken were ordered to cut all ties with their family. Christian parents undeniably resented the forced recruitment of their children, as a result they would beg and often seek to buy their children out of the levy. The Balkan peasantry tried to evade the tribute collectors, with many attempting to substitute their children in Bosnia. Many sources (including Paolo Giovio ) mention different ways to avoid

8272-478: Was described. A party of twelve Serbian lords slashed their way through the Ottoman lines defending Murad I. One of them, allegedly Miloš Obilić , had managed to get through to the Sultan's tent and kill him with sword stabs to the throat and belly. Murad's internal organs were buried in Kosovo field and remain to this day on a corner of the battlefield in a location called Meshed-i Hudavendigar which has gained

8366-573: Was referred to as Tsar . In a Genoese document, he was referred to as dominus armiratorum Turchie (Master lord of Turks). Murad fought against the powerful beylik of Karaman in Anatolia and against the Serbs , Albanians , Bulgarians and Hungarians in Europe. In particular, a Serb expedition to expel the Turks from Adrianople led by the Serbian brothers King Vukašin and Despot Uglješa ,

8460-523: Was soon adopted. In this system, children of the rural Christian populations of the Balkans were conscripted before adolescence and were brought up as Muslims. Upon reaching adolescence, these children were enrolled in one of the four imperial institutions: the palace, the scribes, the Muslim clergy, and the military. Those enrolled in the military would become either part of the Janissary corps (1363), or part of another corps. The most promising were sent to

8554-571: Was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1362 to 1389. He was the son of Orhan Gazi and Nilüfer Hatun . Murad I came into the throne after his elder brother Süleyman Pasha 's death. Murad I conquered Adrianople , renamed it to Edirne , and in 1363 made it the new capital of the Ottoman Sultanate. Then he further expanded the Ottoman realm in Southern Europe by bringing most of the Balkans under Ottoman rule, and forced

8648-430: Was the case of an Athenian boy who returned from hiding to save his father's life but chose to die himself rather than abandon his faith and convert to Islam. A firman in 1601 gave strict orders to Ottoman officials to kill any parent that resisted: To enforce the command of the known and holy fetva [fatwa] of Seyhul [Shaikh]-Islam. In accordance with this whenever some one of the infidel parents or some other should oppose

8742-616: Was the title of the effective head of government of many sovereign states in the Islamic world . It was first held by officials in the later Abbasid Caliphate . It was then held in the Ottoman Empire , the Mughal Empire , the Sokoto Caliphate , the Safavid Empire and Cherifian Empire of Morocco . In the Ottoman Empire, the grand vizier held the imperial seal and could convene all other viziers to attend to affairs of

8836-413: Was very uncommon for them. He went on to write that their numbers had increased to a hundred thousand but only due to a degeneration of regulations, with many of them in fact being "fake" janissaries, posing as such for tax exemptions and other social privileges. He noted that the actual number of janissaries was in fact much lower. Shaw writes that their number was 30,000 under Suleiman the Magnificent . By

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