The Crimean War: A Hisory

by Orlando Figes

But the Ottomans were pragmatists, not religious fundamentalists, and in their Christian lands, the richest and most populous in the empire, they tempered their ideological animosity towards the infidels with a practical approach to their exploitation for imperial interests. They levied extra taxes on the non-Muslims, looked down on them as inferior ‘beasts’ (rayah), and treated them unequally in various humiliating ways (in Damascus, for example, Christians were forbidden to ride animals of any kind).7 But they let them keep their religion, did not generally persecute or try to convert them, and, through the millet system of religious segregation, which gave Church leaders powers within their separate, faith-based ‘nations’ or millets, they even allowed non-Muslims a certain measure of autonomy.