Boy reading

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Depiction of the Devşirme in the Süleymanname

As Knabenlese , Germanized from Dewschirme ( Ottoman دوشيرمه Devşirme , from devşirmek  /دوشيرمك / ' Pluck , collect'), also known as boys ' interest , is the name given to the system of evacuation or forced recruitment and conversion practiced in the Ottoman Empire from the late 14th to the early 18th century, in which Christian, predominantly male youths are abducted from their families and were Islamized in order to subsequently use them in prominent positions in the military and administrative service of the empire; especially the Ottoman infantry, the elite troop of the Janissaries , were at times mainly recruited from the boys' harvest, "one of the strangest phenomena in Turkish history".

History and Practice of Devşirme

First mention, eviction procedure

Devşirme was first mentioned in a speech by the Metropolitan of Thessaloniki in 1395; the second oldest document is a letter from Sinan Pascha to the inhabitants of Ioannina from 1430, under Murad II. (1404-1451) it is already systematized. In the process, the Christian subjects of the empire, especially in the Balkans , but also in Anatolia , were imposed on young men at irregular intervals (annually, every five years, every four years, etc.) and with varying degrees of intensity (every 40th family) in the Age from eight to a maximum of 20, mostly at 14 years of age. The population of the semi-autonomous client states such as Moldova or Wallachia were not affected. The main recruiting areas were Bosnia , Herzegovina and Albania .

The selection usually took place according to a fixed procedure: a senior Janissary officer, the Yayabaşı , accompanied by a secretary and some soldiers, traveled to the individual judicial districts ( kaza ), where the (Orthodox) priests had to present the baptismal register in the presence of the fathers in order to baptize only Christian Select children (see picture above). The boys were not allowed to be the only son, not a Turk, not a Muslim and not an orphan, and they had to have a good reputation.

The parents' armed resistance could be punished with execution on the threshold of the house. Jews, Muslims and Gypsies were exempt from the Devşirme. The urban population, especially in the European part of the empire, was generally considered exemt ( Constantinople , Galata , Nauplia ). Here, too, there were exceptions, so that u. a. and Athens was affected. The Greek islands, especially Chios and Rhodes , as well as certain professional groups (craftsmen) were excluded .

In groups of 100 to 150, the approximately 10,000 boys from Devşirme were led to Istanbul , where they voluntarily or against their will made the Islamic creed and were circumcised.

Education, career

Subsequently, the excavated were divided into two groups, of which the wiser, prettier and stronger were sent for further training to one of the sultan's palaces in Galata , Adrianople and Istanbul ( Ibrahim Pasha Palace ). There they were given careful physical and mental training, usually lasting more than 14 years. The palace schools ( Enderun ) were completely shielded from the outside world and taught not only Turkish, Persian and Arabic but also calligraphy, literature, theology and law. Physical training was also part of the curriculum (archery, horse riding).

The rest were assigned to Turkish peasant and soldier families in Anatolia and Rumelia , the European part of the empire, where they did three to seven years of forced service and got to know the Turkish way of life and language. Although they were now "Ottomanized", they were considered acemi oglanlar ("strange boys"). Then they were sent back to the capital, where they had to do hard work in the sultan's gardens or in the shipyards, some also in the palace, in hard discipline; if they went out, they were feared for their licentiousness. They were then released when they were around 22 years old. Many became sipahi (horsemen with fiefs) and part of the cavalry, where they often made the highest officers; the rest was divided among the various Janissary corps. As a permanently paid troop, they had legally regulated rights, such as free accommodation in their own barracks, food, retirement benefits and pay even in the event of illness and incapacity, tax exemption, etc.

Since the chosen among the forced converts were not brought up to servility ( English for "subordination"), but to authority ( English for "person of respect"), the graduates of the palace school were around 22 years old after their release the highest civil and military posts open: they could become Sandschakbey (provincial governor), Beylerbey (governor of a major province), vizier or even grand vizier . Already . Mehmed II (1432-1481) had designed the Devşirme as gateways to the highest administrative offices: All his grand viziers came from this group. Ascent into the actual sultan's family was also possible when the ruler gave his henchman his sister, one of his daughters or harem ladies as a wife. If the previous “slave” ( qul ) had previously only participated in the agnation and, as a freedman, belonged indirectly to the ruling family, he was now directly related to the ruling house.

The Devşirme was therefore the initial stage of a long-term, systematic education project for the future imperial elite. The remaining subjects, above all all Muslims and all Turks, were thereby excluded from leadership positions and were restricted to careers in jurisprudence and religion; The same naturally also applied to the (Muslim) children of those who rose under the Devşirme; their fathers' careers were denied them. When the Janissaries therefore enforced heredity for their class in 1651, this was a radical intervention to the detriment of military capabilities and the beginning of the end of Ottoman expansion.

Legal status, religious legitimation

The forced converts were initially slaves ( qul ) of their new master, the Padischah , who could convict them at any time without trial and even have them executed on mere orders.

Sura 8, verse 41 in the Koran was used as the basis of legitimation for Devşirme : And you must know: If you steal any booty, the fifth part of it belongs to God and the Messenger and the relatives (i.e. the relatives), the orphans, the poor and the one who is on the way (or: the one who followed the way (of God) (and thereby got into trouble); w. the son of the way). If (differently) you believe in God and (in) what we sent down to our servant (Mohammed) on the day of salvation - on the day when the two heaps collided! God has power over everything. ( Koran translation after Paret ). This should result in entitlement to one in five boys.

However, Islamic law ( Sharia ) saw in this statement of the Koran, which concerned times of war, no reference to the practice of devşirme, and all scholars of Islamic law agreed that the enslavement and forced conversion of Christian subjects of the empire in the midst of peace against the regulations of religious law violated. According to contemporary Muslim legal doctrine, the boy reading therefore lacked any religious legitimation. It is explained solely by the necessity of the state, i.e. H. the sultan's interest in having a new army as an independent source of power, and the legal fiction that the original state of war with the subject has not yet ended, d. H. a perpetuation of the state of war ( jihad ), according to which the continued existence of the population is left to the discretion of the respective ruler.

Scope, impact

The numerical effects of the Devşirme are assessed differently: They range from the statement that they have "only affected a few villages at longer intervals" and "probably remained without demographic effects" to the assumption that there was severe demographic damage; Morea ( Peloponnese ) and Albania lost a good part of their population for this reason, suffered from a shortage of labor and the depreciation of fiefdoms. Much more serious, however, was the moral effect of boy reading: the parents of the abducted, who often feared the sexual abuse of their children, often remained in despair; the subjugated Christian population occasionally offered open or covert resistance, often through the threat of entire sections of the population to turn over to the enemy, but mostly in the form of bribery.

Decline of the Devşirme

The boy harvest became more and more interesting for Islamic families because of its opportunities for advancement; Since the 17th century, more and more Muslims and Turks, but also Jews and Gypsies, smuggled their children into the janissaries on the way via Devşirme. These had already received the marriage permit in 1581; In 1651 they forced their estate to be hereditary and thus excluded newcomers. The result was a decline in military fitness, abandonment of the performance principle, the abandonment of careful upbringing, and widespread relationship mischief, protectionism and corruption. The Ottoman statesman Koçi Bey († around 1650), the " Montesquieu of the Ottomans", himself descended from the Devşirme and adviser to two sultans, therefore complained in a drastic memorandum about the access of vagabonds and the decline of the leadership elite due to the lack of boy reading. Because of the internal resistance of the already privileged people rather than because of the protest of the affected population, the Devşirme has therefore been used less and less frequently since 1600; however, Devşirmes were still ordered at least until the beginning of the 18th century.

Origin and function of the Devşirme: the institution of the "slave armies"

With its peculiar mixture of kidnapping of foreign infidels, forced conversion, intensive indoctrination and subsequent militarization or integration into the ruling class, the devşirme followed a custom practiced throughout the Arab-Islamic region since the first caliphs: the tradition of slave armies. From Omajad Spain to the empires of the Maghreb , Egypt, the Middle East to Persia and India to Bengal , slave guards and armies have existed since the 7th century, whose members also held high positions in the military and administration, right up to the actual royal power. The Tulunids and Mamluks of Egypt, the Abbasids of Iraq, the Samanids in Persia, the Ghurids of Afghanistan , who penetrated as far as Rajasthan and Bengal, the rulers of the Sultanate of Delhi (1206–1288), the Sultanates on the Dekhan Highlands of India, Burids of Damascus , the Zengids in Mesopotamia , the Shahs of Armenia and Khorezmia , the Deys of Algiers and Tunis and many others used the systematic education of forced converts, prisoners of war and foreigners for civil service and the recruitment of slave armies to maintain their rule themselves often of slave origin and ruled over armies of slaves. Accordingly, the Spaniard Juan Sebastián Elcano appropriately described the Bey of Tunis around 1509 as "a despot without freedom, a king of slaves and a slave to his subjects". The Ottomans were even able to take over the establishment of the children's tribute from their immediate predecessors, the Seljuks , as Nizam al-Mulk , "the quintessential vizier" (1018-1092), the Seljuq sultan in his Siyāsatnāma ( Book of Government ) had expressly set up a guard got out of the children's tribute.

For the members of this group, there were exclusive provisions regarding race and belief; the strictest rules applied to the emirs and mamluks of Egypt: they were not allowed to be born Muslims, they had to have come from the Kyptschaktatars and had been slaves. Assuming this, the doors to the highest government offices were open to them in their new homeland, Egypt. The same was true for all other slave dynasties in the Arab-Islamic region as far as Southeast Asia, and indeed since the 7th century.

The main reason for the practice, which is documented from the western Mediterranean to the Bay of Bengal, is the clan structure of Arab society, which opposed the newly acquired power as it had existed since the first caliphs . In this system, the caliph was not perceived as the embodiment of a superordinate concept of the state, but as a supporter of a party, so that the creation of an artificial guard of non-freemen devoted to the ruler and alien to the rulers, who as a new "clan" carries and embodies the state idea , found in this form only in the Islamic states of the Middle Ages and early modern times. The comparison with that of Germans and other peoples interspersed Praetorian Guard , the Roman army of late antiquity or the Byzantine Herkulianer- or Varangian Guard shows how much longer the Devşirme system to "strangeness" and a strong State Education Arab as a system component and Turkish-Muslim rule continued. Even the well-traveled Tunisian Ibn Chaldun (1332–1406) viewed the use of foreign elements in civil service to force the clans and feudal lords into their place very critically: it alienated the subjects from the ruling house and loosened the ties of consanguinity.

The foreign soldiers, often ignorant of the language (therefore sometimes referred to as "the dumb"), intended as bodyguards against the enemy within, often became a plague for the population, regardless of whether they were unbelievers or believers. In contrast to the other Islamic dynasties, the Ottomans knew how to rule for 36 generations - more than half a millennium - without losing power to their military slaves (1281–1826 / 1922). From this point of view, Devşirme represents "the most highly developed form ... of military slavery".

Contemporary statements

The former janissary , the Serb Konstantin from Ostrovitza , himself a victim of boy reading, writes in his memoirs of a janissary :

“Whenever they invade a country and subjugate the population, the Sultan's clerk rides after them, who draws all the boys, however many there may be, to the Janissaries. [...]

If one has not been able to get out so many of a hostile people, one takes them from the Christians in one's own country, if they have boys. [...] "

“The Sultan held back 320 boys and 704 women; The latter he distributed among the heathen, but he drew the boys to his Janissaries and sent them across the sea to Anatolia, where they were reared.I, too, was dragged from that city ( Novo Brdo ) into captivity with my two brothers, myself who I wrote down all of this. "

Famous graduates of Devşirme

literature

  • Encyclopedia of Islam and Muslim World . 2 volumes. New York et al. a. 2004.
  • Suraiya Faroqhi: Culture and Everyday Life in the Ottoman Empire. From the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. Beck, Munich 1995.
  • Cyril Glassé: The Concise Dictionary of Islam . Intr. by Huston Smith. Stacey, London 1989.
  • Renate Lachmann (translation, introduction): Memoirs of a Janissary or Turkish Chronicle. In: Günther Stökl (ed.): Slavic historians, Volume VIII. Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1975.
  • VJ Parry: The Ottoman Empire . In: New Cambridge Modern History , Volume 3 (1968), Chap. 11, pp. 347-376.
  • Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and essence of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963.
  • VL Ménage: Devshirme . In: The Encyclopedia of Islam. New Edition [EI2] . 12 volumes. Brill / Luzac, Leyden / London 1960–2004. Volume 2 (1965), pp. 210-212.
  • Johann Heinrich Mordtmann : Dewshirme . In: The Encyclopedia of Islam [EI1] . 5 volumes. Brill, Leyden 1913-1936. Volume 1 (1913), pp. 952-953.
  • Moritz Brosch: The height of the Ottoman power . In: The Cambridge Modern History . Volume 3 (1904), pp. 104-139.
  • Gülay Yılmaz: Becoming a Devshirme: The Training of Conscripted Children in the Ottoman Empire. In: Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, Joseph C. Miller (Eds.): Children in Slavery Through the Ages. Ohio University Press, Ohio 2009, pp. 119-134 ( academia.edu ).
  • Johann Wilhelm Zinkeisen: History of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. 7 volumes and 1 register volume (by JH Möller). Perthes, Hamburg / Gotha 1840–1863. (Series title: AHL Heeren. FU Ukert: History of the European States. ). - Zinkeisen's work is still an essential source for many details on Devşirme, especially Volume 3, The Inner Life and Future Decline of the Empire up to 1623. (1855), Book IV, Chapter 1, pp. 205–232.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Greek παιδομάζωμα paidomázoma "Kindereinsammeln", Bulgarian кръвен данък kraven danak , Serbo-Croatian  krvni danak / Данак у крви , "Blutzoll"
  2. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 42.
  3. ↑ VL Ménage: Devshirme . In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition [EI2] . 12 volumes. Brill / Luzac, Leyden / London 1960–2004. Volume 2 (1965), pp. 210-212.
  4. ↑ Bursa, Lefke, Iznik, Batum, all of Asia Minor; VL Ménage: Devshirme . In: The Encyclopedia of Islam. New Edition [EI2] . 12 volumes. Brill / Luzac, Leyden / London 1960–2004. Volume 2 (1965), p. 212.
  5. ↑ MV. L. Ménage: Devshirme . In: The Encyclopedia of Islam. New Edition [EI2] . 12 volumes. Brill / Luzac, Leyden / London 1960–2004. Volume 2 (1965), p. 212.
  6. ↑ In this respect, Mordtmann cannot be agreed, who compares the procedure with an "African slave raid"; JH Mordtmann: Dewshirme . In: The Encyclopedia of Islam [EI1] . 5 volumes. Brill, Leyden 1913-1936, Volume 1 (1913), p. 952.
  7. ↑ Karlsruher Türkenbeute, chap. "Boy Reading"
  8. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 110.
  9. ↑ VL Ménage: Devshirme . In: The Encyclopedia of Islam. New Edition [EI2] . 12 volumes. Brill / Luzac, Leyden / London 1960–2004. Volume 2 (1965), p. 210.
  10. ↑ At the surrender of Rhodes in 1522, the exemption of the population from boy reading was one of the surrender conditions.
  11. ↑ Karlsruher Türkenbeute, chap. "Boy Reading"
  12. ↑ "The most exuberant and unrestrained gang and ... therefore more feared in all of Constantinople than even the Janissaries"; Zinkeisen, Volume 3, p. 226.
  13. ↑ "In addition to the wages, they have the assurance that their wages must be given to them unchanged, even if they immediately become paralyzed and unfit for military service [201]". Janissaries, Janissaries Aga. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 14, Leipzig 1735, columns 200-203.
  14. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 3.
  15. ↑ gates Kjeilen: Devsirme. In: Looklex Encyclopedia.
  16. ↑ According Glassé, Dictionary, p 206, the Janissaries were allowed to marry only since 1,581th
  17. ↑ See Faroqhi, Kultur, p. 42.
  18. ↑ Gudrun Krämer: History of Islam. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2005, here: Licensed edition for the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2005, p. 208 f.
  19. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 43 Note 2, p. 110.
  20. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 52.
  21. ↑ Klaus Kreiser: Ottoman Empire (until 1683): Birth and Rise of a World Power . In: Brockhaus multimedial 2007 premium.
  22. ↑ Zinkeisen, History of the Ottoman Empire, Volume 3, p. 220; quoted According to Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and essence of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 110.
  23. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 64.
  24. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 109 f .; Karlsruher Türkenbeute: section “Boy harvest”; www.tuerkenbeute.de
  25. ↑ The last Devşirme took place in Greece in 1705, in 1738 it is mentioned again; Ménage, Devshirme p. 212.
  26. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, Knabenlese p. 12 ff. With references.
  27. ↑ RM Eaton, A Social History of the Deccan, 1300-1761, pp. 105-112
  28. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, Knabenlese, pp. 16–21.
  29. ↑ Mordtmann, Dewshirme, S. 953rd
  30. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 14, p. 57.
  31. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Version 2010.01 sv Nizam-ul-Mulk. Quote: “The wise men have therefore said: 'A servant and serf is better than a son ... A single servant loyal to orders - is worth more than a hundred sons. - The son longs for the father's death, - the servant of the lord desires salvation. '”Nizāmulmulk: The book of statecraft. Siyāsatnāma. Thoughts and stories. Translated from Persian and introduced by Karl Emil Schabinger Freiherr von Schowingen. Edited and with a foreword for the new edition by Karl Friedrich Schabinger Freiherr von Schowingen. Manesse-Verlag, Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-7175-8098-1 , chap. 27, p. 334 (Life of the Alptigīn).
  32. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 20.
  33. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, Knabenlese p. 30 ff.
  34. ↑ “One cannot deny that this Ottoman educational system ... was characterized by two essential advantages, which even very sensible Christian judges at the same time could not deny their recognition and admiration: firstly, the diligence and care that was directed towards a certain goal targeted training of young people was used; and then the strict and careful examination of their physical and mental properties ... In the eyes of Ottoman politicians, this determined the value of the human being, which was generally rated very highly, even higher, as in Christian states. "Zinkeisen, Volume 3, p 212.
  35. ↑ The Chinese examination system (606–1911) represents a successful attempt to counter the established, mostly feudal elites with a counterweight that is dependent on the headquarters . It produced an ineritable merit elite ( meritocracy ), which, however, in contrast to the Devşirme on the free, indigenous population was based.
  36. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 30.
  37. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, p. 33, p. 35.
  38. ↑ In 1826 the Janissary Corps was forcibly dissolved.
  39. ↑ Basilike D. Papoulia: Origin and nature of the "boy picking" in the Ottoman Empire . Munich 1963, Knabenlese p. 22 f.
  40. ^ Renate Lachmann: Memoirs of a Janissary or Turkish Chronicle. Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1975, p. 150.
  41. ^ Renate Lachmann: Memoirs of a Janissary or Turkish Chronicle. Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1975, p. 113.