Devshirme

History

The Devshirme 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 origin of the kuls was mostly prisoners from war, hostages or slaves that were purchased by the state.

The Ottoman Empire, beginning with Murad I, felt a need to "counteract the power of (Turkic) nobles by developing Christian vassal soldiers and converted kapıkulları as his personal troops, independent of the regular army." The elite forces, which served the Ottoman Sultan directly, were divided into two main groups: cavalry and infantry. The cavalry was commonly known as the Kapıkulu Süvari (The Cavalry of the Servants of the Porte) and the infantry were the popular Yeni Çeri (transliterated in English as Janissary), meaning "the New Corps".

At first, the soldiers serving in these corps were selected from the slaves captured during war. However, the system commonly known as devshirme was soon adopted. In this system children of the rural Christian populations of the Balkans were conscripted before adolescence and were brought up as Muslims. Upon reaching adolescence, these children were enrolled in one of the four imperial institutions: the Palace, the Scribes, the Religious and the Military. Those enrolled in the Military would become either part of the Janissary corps, or part of any other corps. The brightest were sent to the Palace institution (Enderun), and were destined for a career within the palace itself where the most able could aspire to attain the very highest office of state, that of Grand Vizier, the Sultan's immensely powerful chief minister and military deputy.

The life of the devshirme

The ideal age of a recruit was between 8 and 10 years of age, recruitment of boys younger than 8 was forbidden. Those were called şirhor(nursling) and beççe(child). The devshirme system was at times locally resented and was resisted, even to the point of disfiguring their sons. On the other hand, as the devshirme were recruited to rise up to the grand vizier status (the second most powerful man in the empire), Christian parents in Bosnia were known to bribe scouts to take their children. "The children were taken from their families and transported to Istanbul. Upon their arrival, they were converted to Islam, examined, and trained to serve the empire. This system produced infantry corps soldiers as well as civilian administrators and high-ranked military officials."

Although the influence of Turkic nobility continued in 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 hand-picked to serve in the Palace institution, known as the Enderun. They had to accompany the Sultan on campaigns, but exceptional service would be rewarded by assignments outside the palace. Those chosen for the Scribe institution, known as Kalemiye were also granted prestigious positions. The Religious institution, İlmiye, was where all orthodox Muslim clergy of the Ottoman Empire were educated and sent to provinces or served in the capital.

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 was very uncommon for them. He goes on to write that their numbers had increased to a hundred thousand, but this was because of a degeneration of regulations and many of these were in fact "fake" Janissaries, posing as such for tax exemptions and other social privileges. He notes that the actual number of janissaries was in fact much lower (Shaw writes that their number was 30,000 under Suleiman the Magnificent). By the 1650s the number of janissaries had increased to 50,000, although by this time the devşirme had largely been abandoned as a method of recruitment. Recruits were sometimes gained through voluntary accessions, as some parents were often eager to have their children enroll in the Janissary service that ensured them a successful career and comfort.

Albertus Bobovius wrote in 1686 that diseases were common among the devshirme and strict discipline was enforced.

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 the 'slaves' to become both powerful and wealthy." Yet this system was clearly illegal according to Islamic law, sharia. Halil İnalcık writes that the devshirme were not actually considered to be slaves.

According to Cleveland, the devshirme system offered "limitless opportunities to the young men who became a part of it." Basilike Papoulia wrote that "...the devsirme 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 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 resisted 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 the Janissaries, "The conquered are slaves of the conquerors, to whom their goods, their women, and their children belong as lawful possession".

Ethnicity of the devshirme, and exemptions

The devshirme were collected once every four or five years from rural provinces in Balkans, and with a few exceptions, only from non-Muslims. 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 the Balkans". According to the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Encyclopaedia of Islam, in the early days of the empire all Christians were enrolled indiscriminately. Later, those from Albania, Greece, Bosnia, and Bulgaria were preferred. What is certain is that devshirme were primarily recruited from Christians living in the Balkans, particularly Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians and Slavs. However, Bosnian Muslims were also recruited and sent directly to serve in the Palace (rather than the military), under groups called "potor". Well known examples of Ottomans who had been recruited as devshirme include Skanderbeg, Sinan Pasha and Sokollu Mehmed Pasha. The early Ottoman emphasis on recruiting Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians and south Slavs was a direct consequence of being centred on territories, in northwestern Anatolia and the southern Balkans, where these ethnic groups were prevalent.

Jews were exempt from this service and until recently Armenians were thought to have also been exempt. However, Armenian manuscript colophons from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries and foreign travelers of the time indicate that Armenians were not spared from the devshirme.Boys who were orphans or who were their family's only son were exempt.

Devshirme in the Ottoman Palace School

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, and 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 (although some Christian millets, such as the Armenians, have been traditionally thought to be exempted from it) and were converted to Islam; Jews and Gypsies were exempted from Devshirme, and so were all Muslims, except those coming from Bosnia, who were incorporated into it in groups called potur, in Bosnian.

Those entrusted to find these children were scouts, who were specially trained agents, throughout the Empire's European lands. 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 the candidates had strong family values); they must not have already learned to speak Turkish or a craft/trade. The ideal age of a recruit was between 10 and 20 years of age. Mehmed Refik Beg mentioned that youth with a bodily defect, no matter how slight, was never admitted into palace service (as cited in: ), 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 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 Anatolian farms 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 the enculturation process. They would later attend schools across Anatolia to complete their training for six to seven years in order to qualify as ordinary military officers. They would get the highest salaries amongst the administrators of the empire, and very well respected in public. M. Armağan, defined the system as a pyramid which was designed to select the elite of the elite, the ablest and most physically perfect. Only a very few would reach the Palace School.

Decline

The devshirme system declined in the 16th and 17th centuries due to a number of factors, including the inclusion of free Muslims in the system. After 1568 the "boy harvest" was only occasionally made. 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 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 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 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. This development entered the Ottoman history annals as the Auspicious Incident.