Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

by Raymond Ibrahim

When already-enslaved Christians were not enough to satisfy the sultan’s war-making needs, he instituted the devshirme. From the late fourteenth century on, all subject Christian families from the Balkan region—Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians, Macedonians, and others—were compelled, on pain of death, to make an annual “blood tribute,” payable in their own flesh, that is, their sons, some as young as eight.* It was collected variously. Sometimes Ottoman officials would go door to door, other times fathers were ordered to bring their sons to the public squares. After the boys were examined, the very best—the handsomest and halest—were hauled off, often torn from the grips of their hysterical mothers.† Any father who dared offer resistance was executed on the spot, and armed revolts against the levy-collectors were not unknown.‡ Many parents did what they could to prevent the snatching of their sons’ bodies—which could further “end up as victims of Turkish pederasty,”26 or the “Turkish Disease”—and souls.§ Some parents mutilated their boys in ways that would make them useless to their new masters. Sometimes “the children ran away on their own initiative, but when they heard that the authorities had arrested their parents and were torturing them to death, returned and gave themselves up.” In one instance, “a young Athenian who returned from hiding in order to save his father’s life… chose to die himself rather than abjure his faith.”