Christianity in the Ottoman Empire#Persecution

File:OttomanMillets.jpg

Under Ottoman rule, dhimmis (non-Muslim subjects) were allowed to "practice their religion, subject to certain conditions, and to enjoy a measure of communal autonomy" (see: Millet) and guaranteed their personal safety and security of property.Lewis (1984) pp. 10, 20 In exchange for the guarantee of said security, citizens who fell under the category dhimmis paid a jizya, which was a tax exclusive to dhimmis.{{Cite book|last=Sharkey|first=Heather J|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/987671521|title=A history of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East|date=2017|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-02845-5|location=Cambridge|pages=65–66|oclc=987671521}} In addition, Dhimmis had certain rules to follow that other Muslim citizens did not. For example, Dhimmis were forbidden from even attempting to convert Muslim citizens to their religious practice,{{Cite book|last=Sharkey|first=Heather J|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/987671521|title=A history of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East|date=2017|isbn=978-1-139-02845-5|location=Cambridge|pages=40|oclc=987671521}} and during some periods, the state decreed that people of different millets should wear specific colors of, for instance, turbans and shoes — a policy that was not, however, always followed by Ottoman citizens.{{Cite book |last=Mansel |first=Philip |title=Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453–1924 |date=1997 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-14-026246-9 |location=London |pages=20–21 |author-link=Philip Mansel}} The Ottoman Empire was therefore not a state with legal equality of religions, non-Muslims were inferior, legally, to Muslims.Todorova Maria, "The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans", in Carl L. Brown (ed.), Imperial Legacy: The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East, New York, 1996, p. 47. While recognizing this inferior status of dhimmis under Ottoman rule, Bernard Lewis, professor emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, states that, in most respects, their position was "very much easier than that of non-Christians or even of heretical Christians in medieval (Catholic) Europe."Lewis (1984) p. 62, Cohen (1995) p. xvii For example, dhimmis rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and with certain exceptions, they were free in their choice of residence and profession.Lewis (1999) p.131

Image:Gennadios II and Mehmed II.jpg receives Gennadius II Scholarius (Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 1454 to 1464)]]

The Ottoman Empire constantly formulated policies balancing its religious problems. The Ottomans recognized the concept of clergy and its associated extension of religion as an institution. They brought established policies (regulations) over religious institutions through the idea of "legally valid" organizations.

The state's relationship with the Greek Orthodox Church was mixed, since the Orthodox were not killed, they were, in the beginning, the vast majority and taxpayers, they were encouraged through bribes and exemptions to convert to Islam. In turn, they could not proselytize Muslims. The church's structure was kept intact and largely left alone (but under close control and scrutiny) until the Greek War of Independence of 1821–1831 and, later in the 19th and early 20th centuries, during the rise of the Ottoman constitutional monarchy, which was driven to some extent by nationalistic currents. Other churches, like the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć (1766) and Archbishopric of Ohrid (1767), were dissolved and their dioceses placed under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Eventually, Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire (contracts with European powers) were negotiated, protecting the religious rights of Christians within the Empire. The Russians became formal protectors of the Eastern Orthodox groups in 1774, the French of the Catholics, and the British of the Jews and other groups.{{Cite web|url=https://www.rienner.com/uploads/53e278dea4631.pdf|title=Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Abridged Edition|last=Braude|first=Benjamin|date=2014|website=Lynne Rienner Publishers}}

{{see also|Forced conversion#Ottoman Empire}}

Historians Apostolos Vakalopoulos and Dimitar Angelov give assessment on the first Ottoman invasions of Europe and their imposition of Islam to the Native Balkan Christians:{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y_ceAAAAMAAJ | title=Origins of the Greek Nation: The Byzantine Period, 1204-1461 | isbn=9780813506593 | last1=Vakalopoulos | first1=Apostolos Euangelou | year=1970 | publisher=Rutgers University Press }}

There is insufficient documentation of the process of conversion to Islam in Anatolia before the mid-15th century. By that time it was about 85% complete according to an Ottoman census, although it lagged in some regions such as Trabzon. In the Balkans, the general trend of conversion started slowly in the 14th century, reached its peak in the 17th century, and gradually petered out by the end of the 18th century, with significant regional variations.{{cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QjzYdCxumFcC&pg=PA145|chapter="Conversion"|author=Tijana Krstić|title=Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire|editor= Ed. Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Alan Masters|publisher=InfoBase Publishing|year=2009|pages=145–147|isbn=9781438110257}}

The earliest converts to Islam came from the ranks of the Balkan nobility and military elites, who helped the Ottomans administer their native provinces. Although conversion was not required to obtain these posts, over time these local ruling elites tended to adopt Islam. Some scholars view proselyting Sufi mystics and the Ottoman state itself as important agents of conversion among broader populations. Other scholars argue that intermarriage and professional patronage networks were the most important factors of the religious transformation of the broader society. According to Halil İnalcık, the wish to avoid paying the jizya was an important incentive for conversion to Islam in the Balkans, while Anton Minkov has argued that it was only one among several motivating factors.{{cite journal | last=Tramontana | first=Felicita | title=The Poll Tax and the Decline of the Christian Presence in the Palestinian Countryside in the 17th Century | journal=Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient | volume=56 | issue=4–5 | year=2013 | pages=631–652 | doi=10.1163/15685209-12341337 }}

From the late 14th to the mid-17th century, the Ottomans pursued a policy of imposing a levy of male children (devşirme) on their Christian subjects in the Balkans with the goal of supplying the Ottoman state with capable soldiers and administrators. The compulsory conversion to Islam which these boys underwent as part of their education is the only documented form of systematic forced conversion organized by the Ottoman state.

For strategic reasons, the Ottomans forcibly converted Christians living in the frontier regions of Macedonia and northern Bulgaria, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries. Those who refused were either executed or burned alive.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JFEeAAAAMAAJ|title=Histoire de la Bulgarie: des origines à nos jours |page=251,259|isbn=9782717100846 |last1=Duĭchev |first1=Ivan |year=1977 |publisher=Horvath }}

According to Islamic law, the religion of the children was automatically changed after their parents converted. Many families collectively converted and their petitions as per Islamic customs for monetary help to the Ottoman Imperial Council are known. As marriages between non-Muslim men and Muslim women were forbidden under Sharia law, the refusal of husband to convert to Islam resulted in a divorce and the wife gaining custody of the children. Seventeenth-century sources indicate that non-Muslim women throughout the empire used this method to obtain a divorce.

The Ottomans tolerated Protestant missionaries within their realm, so long as they limited their proselytizing to the Orthodox Christians.The Crimean war: A holy war of an unusual kind: A war in which two Christian countries fighting a third claimed Islam as their ally, The Economist, September 30, 2010. With the increasing influence of Western powers and Russia in the 18th century, the process of conversion slowed down, and the Ottomans were pressured to turn a blind eye to re-conversion of many of their subjects to Christianity, although apostasy was de jure prohibited under penalty of death.

The main idea behind the Ottoman legal system was the "confessional community". The Ottomans tried to leave the choice of religion to the individual rather than imposing forced classifications. However, there were grey areas.

File:Illustration from Views in the Ottoman Dominions by Luigi Mayer, digitally enhanced by rawpixel-com 1.jpg in Constantinople, painted by Luigi Mayer]]

Ottoman practice assumed that law would be applied based on the religious beliefs of its citizens. However, the Ottoman Empire was organized around a system of local jurisprudence. Legal administration fit into a larger schema balancing central and local authority.Lauren A. Benton “Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900” pp.109-110 The jurisdictional complexity of the Ottoman Empire aimed to facilitate the integration of culturally and religiously different groups.

There were three court systems: one for Muslims, another for non-Muslims (dhimmis), involving appointed Jews and Christians ruling over their respective religious communities, and the "trade court". Dhimmis were allowed to operate their own courts following their own legal systems in cases that did not involve other religious groups, capital offences, or threats to public order. Christians were liable in a non-Christian court in specific, clearly defined instances, for example the assassination of a Muslim or to resolve a trade dispute.

The Ottoman judicial system institutionalized a number of biases against non-Muslims, such as barring non-Muslims from testifying as witnesses against Muslims. At the same time, non-Muslims "did relatively well in adjudicated interfaith disputes", because anticipation of judicial biases prompted them to settle most conflicts out of court.{{cite journal|author1=Kuran, T. |author2=Lustig, S. |year=2012|title=Judicial biases in Ottoman Istanbul - Islamic justice and its compatibility with modern economic life|journal=Journal of Law and Economics|volume=55|issue=2|pages=631–666|jstor=665537|doi=10.1086/665537|s2cid=222321949}}

In the Ottoman Empire of the 18th and 19th centuries, dhimmis frequently used the Muslim courts not only when their attendance was compulsory (for example in cases brought against them by Muslims), but also in order to record property and business transactions within their own communities. Cases were brought against Muslims, against other dhimmis and even against members of the dhimmi's own family. Dhimmis often took cases relating to marriage, divorce and inheritance to Muslim courts so that they would be decided under shari'a law. Oaths sworn by dhimmis in the Muslim courts were sometimes the same as the oaths taken by Muslims, sometimes tailored to the dhimmis’ beliefs.{{Cite journal |last=Al-Qattan |first=Najwa |title='Dhimmis in the Muslim Court: Legal Autonomy and Religious Discrimination' |journal=International Journal of Middle East Studies |date=1999 |volume=31 |issue=3 |pages=429–44|doi=10.1017/S0020743800055501 }} Some Christian sources points that although Christians were not Muslims, there were instances which they were subjected to shari'a law.A Concise History of Bulgaria, Richard J. Crampton, 2005, p.31 According to some western sources, "the testimony of a Christian was not considered as valid in the Muslim court as much as the testimony of a Muslim".

{{Main|Persecution of Christians#Ottoman Empire}}

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The Ottoman Empire's treatment of its Christian subjects varied during its history. During the golden age of the empire, the millet system promised its Christian subjects better treatment than non-Christian populations experienced in Christian Europe, while during the decline and fall of the empire, the Christian minorities suffered a number of atrocities.{{cite book|author=George A. Bournoutian|author-link=George Bournoutian|title=A Concise History of the Armenian People|publisher=Mazda Publishers|edition=5th|year=2006|page=191|quote=At its best, during the Ottoman golden age, the millet system promised non-Muslims fairer treatment than conquered or non-Christian subjects enjoyed under the Europeans. At its worst, during the decline and fall of the empire, the Christian minorities were subjected to extortion and pogroms.}} Notable cases of persecution include the Constantinople massacre of 1821, the Chios massacre, the Destruction of Psara, the Batak massacre, the Hamidian massacres, the Adana massacre, the ethnic cleansing of Thracian Bulgarians in 1913, the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon and the Armenian genocide, Greek genocide and Assyrian genocide, all of which occurred during the Greek War of Independence or during the last few decades of the empire under the influence of Pan-Turkism.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} The share of non-Muslims in areas within Turkey's current borders declined from 20 to 22% in 1914, or approximately 3.3.–3.6 million people, to around 3% in 1927.{{cite book |last1=Pamuk |first1=Şevket |title=Uneven Centuries: Economic Development of Turkey since 1820 |date=2018 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0691184982 |page=50}} Some Christians in the Empire also suffered the injustice of being forced in a status of concubinage.{{Cite book|last=Sharkey|first=Heather J|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/987671521|title=A history of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East|date=2017|isbn=978-1-139-02845-5|location=Cambridge|pages=67–68|oclc=987671521}}

In the time of the Austro-Turkish war (1683–1699), relations between Muslims and Christians who lived in the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire gradually deteriorated {{vague|date=January 2018}} and this deterioration in interfaith relations occasionally resulted in calls for the expulsion or extermination of local Christian communities by some Muslim religious leaders. As a result of Ottoman discrimination, Serbian Christians and their church leaders, headed by Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III, sided with the Austrians in 1689 and again in 1737 under Serbian Patriarch Arsenije IV. In the following punitive campaigns, Ottoman forces conducted atrocities against the Christian population in the Serbian regions, resulted in the Great Migrations of the Serbs.{{sfn|Pavlowitch|2002|pp=19–20}}

Beginning with Murad I in the 14th century and extending through the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire employed devşirme system.

{{see also|Taxation in the Ottoman Empire}}

Taxation from the perspective of dhimmis was "a concrete continuation of the taxes paid to earlier regimes"Cl. Cahen in Encyclopedia of Islam, Jizya article{{page needed|date=June 2017}} and from the point of view of the Muslim conqueror was a material proof of the dhimmis' subjection.{{dubious|date=November 2017}} {{Cite book|last=Sharkey|first=Heather J|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/987671521|title=A history of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East|date=2017|isbn=978-1-139-02845-5|location=Cambridge|pages=67|oclc=987671521}} Christians were forced to pay disproportianaley higher taxes than Muslims within the empire, including the humiliating poll-tax. Even pregnant mothers had to pay jizya on behalf of their unborn children.{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qQpaC_ttluQC | isbn=9780822382553 | title=The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia under the Influence of Turkish Rule |pages=26, 80n11 |date=22 January 1991 | publisher=Duke University Press }} In Aleppo in 1683, French Consul Chevalier Laurent d'Arvieux noted that ten-year-old Christian children were forced to pay the jizya.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RLt2zQEACAAJ |title=Memoires du chevalier d'Arvieux, envoyé extraordinaire du Roy à la Porte, Consul d'Alep, d'Alger, de Tripoli, & autres Echelles du Levant. Contenant Ses Voyages à Constantinople, dans l'Asie, la Syrie, la Palestine, l'Egypte, & la Barbarie, la description de ces Païs, les Religions, les moeurs, les Coûtumes, le Négoce de ces Peuples, & leurs Gouvernemens, l'Histoire naturelle & les événemens les plus considerables, recüeillis de ses Memoires originaux, & mis en ordre avec des réfléxions. Par le R.P. Jean-Baptiste Labat, de l'Ordre des Freres Prêcheurs. Tome premier [-Tome sixième]|page=439 |last1=Arvieux |first1=Laurent d' |date=1735 }} Jizya collected from Christian and Jewish communities was among the main sources of tax income of the Ottoman treasury.{{cite book |last=Peri |first=Oded |title=Ottoman Palestine, 1800–1914 : Studies in economic and social history |publisher=E.J. Brill |year=1990 |isbn=978-90-04-07785-0 |editor-last=Gilbar |editor-first=Gad |location=Leiden |pages=287 |chapter=The Muslim waqf and the collection of jizya in late eighteenth-century Jerusalem |quote=the jizya was one of the main sources of revenue accruing to the Ottoman state treasury as a whole.}}

The Ottoman Empire regulated how its cities would be built (quality assurances) and how the architecture (structural integrity, social needs, etc.) would be shaped.

Prior to the Tanzimat (a period of reformation beginning in 1839), special restrictions were imposed concerning the construction, renovation, size and the bells in Orthodox churches. For example, an Orthodox church's bell tower had to be slightly shorter than the minaret of the largest mosque in the same city. Hagia Photini in İzmir was a notable exception, as its bell tower was the tallest landmark of the city by far. They also needed not exceed mosques in grandeur or elegance. Only some churches were allowed to be built, but this was considered suspect, and some churches even fell into disrepair.

• History of the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Ottoman Empire
• Christianity in Turkey

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book|title=Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages|author=Cohen, Mark R.|author-link=Mark R. Cohen|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=1995|isbn=978-0-691-01082-3}}
• {{Cite book|last=Frazee|first=Charles A.|title=Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire 1453-1923|year=2006|orig-year=1983|location=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X6DM4szwUpEC|isbn=9780521027007}}
• {{cite book|last=Lewis|first=Bernard|title=The Jews of Islam|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W0EbKFRxrT4C|year=1984|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-00807-3}}
• {{cite book|last=Lewis| first=Bernard| title=Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice|year= 1999|publisher= W. W. Norton & Company press| isbn=978-0-393-31839-5}}
• {{Cite book | first=Bernard | last=Lewis | author-link=Bernard Lewis | title=The Arabs in History | publisher=Oxford University Press | location=Oxford | year=2002 | isbn=978-0-19-280310-8 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/arabsinhistory00bern }}
• {{Cite book|last=Pavlowitch|first=Stevan K.|author-link=Stevan K. Pavlowitch|title=Serbia: The History behind the Name|year=2002|location=London|publisher=Hurst & Company|isbn=9781850654773|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w-RuLDaNwbMC}}

• {{cite web|url=https://repository.kallipos.gr/bitstream/11419/2889/1/kef8_Gkara.pdf|title=Κεφάλαιο 8. Τα χριστιανικά κράτη και οι υπήκοοί τους στον οθωμανικό χώρο|language=el|access-date=2019-09-17|archive-date=2019-09-17|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190917135500/https://repository.kallipos.gr/bitstream/11419/2889/1/kef8_Gkara.pdf|url-status=dead}} ("Chapter 8. Christian States and their Nationals in the Ottoman Territory")

{{Ottoman Empire topics}}

Category:Culture of the Ottoman Empire

Category:Religion and geography

Category:Christianity and Islam