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Devshirme and Shari'a

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

MY purpose is to draw attention to the rather puzzling problem laid before the student of early Ottoman history by the apparently complete incompatibility of the devshirme with the shari'a. The periodical forced levy of children from the Sultan—s Christian subjects for the recruiting of his standing army, and the forced conversion of those children to Islam must, indeed, appear—as it always did—as a flagrant disregard of the Holy Law which accords to the Christian subjects the status of dhimmi, implying personal liberty and the right to keep, and exercise freely, their religion. Only recently, making himself the voice of Muslim conscience, Professor Massignon has branded the devshirme as ‘un manquement à la Dhimmat ar-rasul’2

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1955

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References

page 271 note 1 Communication made 24th August, 1954, to the 23rd International Congress of Orientalists at Cambridge.

page 271 note 2 Jn Oriens, VI, 1953, p. 13 (in his article on texts relating to the conquest of Constantinople).

page 271 note 3 Bulletin of the John Eylands Library, xxxv/2, March, 1953, pp. 448–481, especially pp. 464–8.

page 272 note 1 Quoted in full, op. cit., p. 466.

page 272 note 2 See J.A.B., Palmer, ‘Fr. Georgius de Hungaria, O.P., and the Tractatus de Moribus, Condicionibus et Nequicia Turcorum’, in Bulletin of the John Sylands Library, xxxiv/1, September, 1951, pp. 44–68.Google Scholar

page 272 note 3 Hammer, Staatsverfassung, i, p. 213. Zenker, Wörterbuch, s.vv

page 272 note 4 For the passage here alluded to see below, p. 273, n. 3, the second paragraph. The qanunname in question, emanating in appearance from Sulayman I, contains many later additions, some of them dating from the end of the 17th century.

page 273 note 1 I wonder if we might not consider a derivation from zupan (i.e. the local lord): either *zupanye or, with Turkish suffix, *zupan-ja, both meaning ' belonging to the local lord ', the prothetic i causing change into the frontal vowel group.

page 273 note 2 For the ispenje, cf. Nes'et Cagatay (in his study on the taxes of the non-Muslims) in Dil ve Tarih-Cografya Dergisi, \J5, 1947, pp. 507 sq

page 273 note 3 Milli tetebbil'ler, I, l&l, p. 109: ‘The ispenje has been imposed upon the heads of the Infidels; be they married or single, landed or landless, 25 aqche a head are to be taken.’ ‘Qanun of the ispenje. It [sc. the ispenje] is 22 aqche for the Muslim, 25 for the Infidel. At present the ra'aya pay their fixed kharaj under the name of “yoke money” and their kharaj on the produce under the name of “tithe”. The “fixed kharaj”, for which they say in Turkish “yoke due”, is in the language of the Infidels called ispenje.’ My colleague Mr. V. J. Parry kindly draws my attention to Theodoro Spandugino, Commentari, Florence, 1551, p. 149, where the ispenje (la spanza; but the version in Sathas, Documents inédits, ix, pp. 224–26 has throughout ‘la spenza’) is mentioned as follows: ‘Nondimeno nessuno é, que non paghi la spanza, cioé un presente di trenta aspri, che per ciascuno anno paga ogni Christiano, et ciascun Turco ne paga venticinque. Similmente ogniuno cosi Turco come Christiano paga la decima di tutto il grano, et di qual si voglia altro frutto, etc.’ Cf. the French version (Th. Spandouyn, Petit Traicté, ed. Ch. Schefer, Paris, 1896, p. 142), where spanza is curiously deformed into depense: ‘Et oultre avec la depense qui est de present, chascun Chrestien paye trente aspres et chascun Turcq en paye vingt cinq, etc’ Ib., p. 143 corresponds to Gommentari, p. 150 without however rendering the two further mentions of spanza found in the Italian.

page 273 note 4 Ömer Lutfi Barkan, Kanunlar, Istanbul, 1945, p. 103, § 48: Amma kefere-i raaaya ispence vermekle çift resmi vérmemek olugelrniş qanun olub … ‘That the Infidel peasants paying the ispenje do not pay the yoke tax is an old established qanun (and herewith confirmed)’.

page 274 note 1 At least the verb devshirmek is used for the collecting of penjik prisoners in the group Anonymus (ed. Giese, p. 22,1. 12)—Uruj (ed. Babinger, p. 22,1. 4), which seems to reproduce the original source more faithfully than does the group 'Āshiqpashazade (ed. Giese, p. 50, 1. 13)—Neshri (ed. Taeschner, I, p. 45, 1. 8) which has jem' olundu.

page 274 note 2 The text, used already by J. H. Mordtmann in El, art. devshirme, is from Bartholomaeus de Jano, Epistola de Crudelitate Turcorum (in Migne, PG, CLVIII, col. 1066), and reproduced in Palmer's article on the ‘Origin of the Janissaries’, p. 464. There exists, however, a somewhat earlier document in which one can recognize almost with certainty a mention of the devshirme, showing it even as something already well in use and commonly known. In his letter to Ioannina, of 1430, Sinan Pasha invites the town to surrender, promising in return among other things that it should have to suffer no ‘taking of children’. See this document as published by K. Amantos in IX, 1936, p. 119, a more complete text than that in Miklosich and Miiller, Ada et Diplomata, in, p. 282.

page 274 note 3 For this meaning of ‘Rumeli’ see (in my ‘Le Sultan de Rum’) Annuaire de L'lnstitut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientates et Slaves, vi, Bruxelles, 1938, p. 377 sq.

page 275 note 1 Juynboll, Handbuch des islamischen Geselzes, p. 350. Since then, my colleague Professor J. N. D. f Anderson has been kind enough to provide me with the relevant passage in the kitdb al-umm.

page 275 note 2 Cairo edition in 7 vola., 1321–5, vol. iv, p. 97:

page 276 note 1 cf. the individual Muslim's haqq al-tamassuk, the faculty of having recourse to another rite than his own when he thinks the other code to be more favourable for his case.

page 277 note 1 In Abu's-Su'ud's Ma'ruŻat we find several timea recourse to the shafi'i rite forbidden, and once an imperial interdiction is quoted which even gives the impression that it is meant as a general rule and not only for the special case in question:(Horster, P., Zur Anwendung des islamischen Rechts im 16. Jh., Stuttgart, 1935 [= Bonner Orientalistische Studien, Heft 10], p. 31.) This, however, dates from a time when there was a tendency to impose uniformity. Significantly, only recourse to shafi'i (and no other) law is condemned. This seems to show that such recourse, in fact, was made, and also that it was confined to this rite.Google Scholar

page 277 note 2 Besides, the Ottomans must have noticed by themselves how unfavourably the Balkan peoples compared with the Greeks in respect of civilization. All this might account for the, later generalized, use of kafir for ‘Christian’. Kefere ve yahudi, so often encountered in official documents, means ‘Christians and Jews’.

page 278 note 1 I take this occasion to recall Mordtmann's, J. H. masterly ‘Die Kapitulation von Konstantinopel im Jahre 1453’, in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, xxi, 1912, pp. 129144, where the legal difficulties arising from this fact with respect to the status of the Greeks, and the efforts made to overcome them, are set forth. For the analogous case of the Jews see the document published in Ahmed Refik, Hicrî on ikinci asirda Istanbul Hayati, Istanbul, 1930 [= Türk Tarih Eneümeni Külliyati, 17], p. 11, No. 21, as well as in Āvram Ghalanti, Türkler ve Yahüdikr, Istanbul, 1928, p. 34, and translated in Abraham Galanté, Documents officiels turcs concernant les Juifs de Turquie, Istanbul, 1930, pp. 163–166.Google Scholar

page 278 note 2 Risale-i Qochi Bey, [London,] 1277h., p.7: (cf. the German translation by Behrnauer in ZDMG, xv, 1861, p. 284)v