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Dinesh club

Posted: 19 Nov 2023

Taken: 19 Nov 2023

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THE HISTORY OF WESTERN SOCEITY •
Volume I •
McKay, Hill, Buckler •
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The Otoman Slave Tax

The Otoman Slave Tax
This contemporary drawing shows Ottoman officials rounding up male Christian children in the Balkans. The children became part of a special slave corps, which served the sultan for life as soldiers and administrators. The slave tax and the slave corps were of great importance to the Ottoman Turks in the struggle with Austria (The British Museum)

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
The Ottoman Empire was originally built on a fascinating and very non-European conception of state and society. . . . .

. . . . Every year the sultan levied a “tax” on one of the three thousand male children of the conquered Chistian populations in the Balkans. These and other slaves were raised in Turkey as Muslims and trained to fight and to administer. The most talented slaves rose to the top of the bureaucracy, the less fortunate formed the brave and skillful core of the sultan’s army, the so-called janissary corps.

As long as the Ottoman Empire expanded, the system worked well. As the sultan won more territory, he could impose his slave tax on large populations. Moreover, he could amply reward loyal and effective servants by letting them draw carefully defined income from conquered Christian peasants on a strictly temporary basis. For a long time, Christian peasants in eastern Europe were economically exploited less by the Muslim Turks than the Christian nobles, and they were not forced to convert to Islam

A History of Western Society
5 months ago. Edited 5 months ago.

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