MBOT

 https://x.com/archeohistories/status/2095833249012498537?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 "The Ottoman official arrived with armed men and an order from the sultan. Christian families were commanded to bring out their sons. The boys were made to stand in a line while the officials moved among them, examining their faces, teeth, limbs, and bodies. Priests were forced to produce baptismal records. Fathers watched as strangers decided which children were strong enough, handsome enough, and intelligent enough to be taken. The chosen boys were registered by name. Their height, complexion, scars, and other features were recorded so they could be identified if they escaped. Then they were led away. Some mothers followed the columns, weeping and calling after their sons, until the guards forced them back. The boys were bound together or marched under armed watch toward Constantinople. Many would never see their families again. . . . The Ottomans called it the devşirme, meaning “collection.” The Christians of southeastern Europe called it the blood tax. Beginning in the late fourteenth century, Ottoman officials periodically entered Christian villages and took their boys for the service of the sultan. Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Bosnians, Armenians, and other conquered Christians were subjected to the levy. Parents hid their sons, falsified their ages, married them early, or scarred their bodies in hopes that the collectors would reject them. Some boys fled into forests or escaped from the columns carrying them away. Resistance could bring beatings, imprisonment, or worse. Once taken, the boys became the sultan’s slaves. They were circumcised and forced to convert to Islam. Their Christian names were replaced with Muslim ones. They were forbidden to practice the faith of their parents and separated from the language, customs, and people that might remind them who they had been. Many were sent to farms in Anatolia, where they performed hard labor while learning Turkish and Islamic practice. Others entered palace schools. Their training was deliberately merciless. Contemporary observers described hunger, exhaustion, savage beatings, and punishments intended to break disobedience. Enslaved palace boys were also vulnerable to sexual exploitation by powerful men. We cannot know how many suffered it, but their isolation and legal powerlessness left them with little protection from those who owned and supervised them. The empire did not merely want their service. It wanted to erase the Christian child and construct an Ottoman servant in his place. Many of the boys eventually entered the Janissaries, the elite infantry of the Ottoman army. They became disciplined archers, musketeers, palace guards, and assault troops. They stormed breached walls, defended the sultan, and formed the iron center of Ottoman armies. Janissaries helped capture Constantinople in 1453. They fought at Kosovo, Varna, Mohács, Malta, and Vienna. Boys taken from Christian villages were transformed into soldiers of Islam and sometimes sent to conquer or kill people who spoke the languages of their childhood. The system made conquered Christians surrender the children who would help conquer still more Christians. In one documented levy beginning in 1603, Ottoman officials collected 2,604 boys. That was one collection. The levies continued across generations. No complete total survives, but tens of thousands of boys were taken, and probably far more, over nearly three centuries. The devşirme declined during the seventeenth century as Janissary positions became increasingly hereditary and Muslims gained admission to the corps. The systematic taking of Christian boys finally disappeared in the early eighteenth century. For nearly three hundred years, however, Christian parents lived with the knowledge that an Ottoman official might appear, inspect their children, and choose which son they would lose."

 https://x.com/w4dub/status/2093290155285029101?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 

 

 https://x.com/niohberg/status/2093313689411555426?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw