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154-521: The Janissaries were first created by the Ottoman Sultans in the late 14th century and were employed as household troops. Janissaries began as an elite corps made up through the devşirme system of child slavery , by which young Christian boys, notably Serbs , Albanians , Bulgarians , Croats , Greeks , and Romanians were taken from the Balkans , circumcised, converted to Islam , and incorporated into

308-456: A few exceptions. However, some Muslim families managed to smuggle their sons in anyway. The devshirme levy was not applied to the major cities of the empire, and children of local craftsmen in rural towns were also exempt, as it was considered that conscripting them would harm the economy. According to Bernard Lewis , the janissaries were mainly recruited from the Slavic and Albanian populations of

462-555: A fight between Zeus and the monster/titan Typhon . Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhon's blood fell on the mountains, giving them their name. The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, in which the Haemus Mountains are referred to as Balkan . The first attested time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria

616-514: A high of 8 million in the late 16th-century to only 3 million by the mid-eighteenth. This estimate is based on Ottoman documentary evidence." Most of the Balkan nation-states emerged during the 19th and early 20th centuries as they gained independence from the Ottoman or Habsburg empires: Greece in 1821, Serbia, and Montenegro in 1878, Romania in 1881, Bulgaria in 1908 and Albania in 1912. In 1912–1913,

770-507: A low profile and taking ordinary jobs. Immediately after the Janissaries had been disbanded, Mahmud II ordered the court chronicler, Mehmet Esad Efendi , to record the official version of events. This account, Üss-i Zafer ("Foundation of Victory"), was printed in Istanbul in 1828 and served as the main source for every other Ottoman account of this period. The incident had a negative impact on

924-617: A member of the Axis, Germany, with Bulgaria, invaded both Greece and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia immediately disintegrated when those loyal to the Serbian King and the Croatian units mutinied. Greece resisted, but, after two months of fighting, collapsed and was occupied. The two countries were partitioned between the three Axis allies, Bulgaria, Germany and Italy, and the Independent State of Croatia ,

1078-518: A need to "counteract the power of (Turkic) nobles by developing Christian vassal soldiers and converted kapıkulu as his personal troops, independent of the regular army." This elite force, which served the Ottoman Sultan directly, was called Kapıkulu Ocağı (The Hearth of the Porte Servants). They were divided into two main groups: cavalry and infantry. The cavalry was commonly known as

1232-428: A pact to assassinate him by night, saying “If we kill this Turkish dog, then all of Christendom will be freed [from Ottoman tyranny]; but if we are caught, then we will become martyrs before God with the others.” When their plot was exposed, and Murad inquired what caused them to “dare attempt this,” they responded, “None other than our great sorrow for our fathers and dear friends.” He had the children slowly tortured over

1386-414: A privileged hereditary class, and their exemption from paying taxes made them highly unfavorable in the eyes of the rest of the population. The number of Janissaries grew from 20,000 in 1575 to 135,000 in 1826, about 250 years later. Many were not soldiers but still collected pay from the empire, as dictated by the corps since it held an effective veto over the state and contributed to the steady decline of

1540-453: A puppet state of Italy and Germany. During the occupation, the population suffered considerable hardship due to repression and starvation, to which the population reacted by creating a mass resistance movement. Together with the early and extremely heavy winter of that year (which caused hundreds of thousands of deaths among the poorly fed population), the German invasion had disastrous effects in

1694-400: A recruit was between 10 and 20 years of age. Mehmed Refik Beg mentioned that a youth with a bodily defect, no matter how slight, was never admitted into palace service, since Turks believed that a strong soul and a good mind could be found only in a perfect body. The selected children were dressed in red so that they could not easily escape on their way to Constantinople . The cost of

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1848-617: A revolutionary organization with predominantly Serb and pro-Yugoslav members, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital, Sarajevo . That caused a war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, which—through the existing chains of alliances —led to the World War I. The Ottoman Empire soon joined the Central Powers becoming one of

2002-685: A whole and southern parts of Slovenia. The Province of Trieste in Italy, although by some definitions on the peninsula, is generally excluded from the Balkans. Hungary and Moldova are occasionally included in discussions of the Balkans due to cultural and historical affiliation, but are generally excluded. The term Southeast Europe is also used for the region, with various definitions. Individual Balkan states can also be considered part of other regions, including Southern Europe , Eastern Europe , and Central Europe . Turkey, including its European territory,

2156-534: Is generally encompassed in the region known as Southeast Europe . Italy currently holds a small area around Trieste that is by some older definitions considered a part of the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the Balkans by Italian geographers, due to their definition of the Balkans that limits its western border to the Kupa River. The borders of

2310-704: Is generally included in Western Asia or the Middle East . The Western Balkans is a political neologism coined to refer to Albania and the territory of the former Yugoslavia, except Slovenia , since the early 1990s. The region of the Western Balkans, a coinage exclusively used in pan-European parlance, roughly corresponds to the Dinaric Alps territory. The institutions of the European Union have generally used

2464-455: Is in wide use, from over 1,000 dams. The often relentless bora wind is also being harnessed for power generation. Metal ores are more usual than other raw materials. Iron ore is rare, but in some countries there is a considerable amount of copper, zinc, tin , chromite , manganese , magnesite and bauxite . Some metals are exported. The Balkan region was the first area in Europe to experience

2618-666: Is mostly unsuccessful because of the mountains, hot summers and poor soils, although certain cultures such as olive and grape flourish. Resources of energy are scarce, except in Kosovo , where considerable coal , lead , zinc , chromium and silver deposits are located. Other deposits of coal , especially in Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia, also exist. Lignite deposits are widespread in Greece. Petroleum scarce reserves exist in Greece, Serbia and Albania. Natural gas deposits are scarce. Hydropower

2772-704: Is no longer Balkan proper, but the cradle of our Western civilization. Most of the area is covered by mountain ranges running from the northwest to southeast. The main ranges are the Balkan Mountains (Stara Planina in Bulgarian language ), running from the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria to the border with Serbia , the Rila - Rhodope massif in southern Bulgaria, the Dinaric Alps in Bosnia and Herzegovina , Croatia and Montenegro ,

2926-501: Is no prophet and that the Turkish religion is false. If there is one among them who has some little book or can teach them in some other manner something of God's world, they hear him as diligently as if he were their preacher. Greek scholar Janus Lascaris visited Constantinople in 1491 and met many janissaries who not only remembered their former religion and their native land but also favored their former coreligionists. The renegade Hersek,

3080-572: Is seen on the Adriatic coasts of Albania, Croatia and Montenegro, as well as the Ionian coasts of Albania and Greece, in addition to the Aegean coasts of Greece and Balkan Turkey (European Turkey) . Over the centuries, forests have been cut down and replaced with bush . In the southern part and on the coast there is evergreen vegetation. Inland there are woods typical of Central Europe ( oak and beech , and in

3234-418: Is some evidence that urban Christian and Muslim parents resorted to bribery or sending their children to the country to assure the advancement in life that devshirme recruitment could bring. The boys were forced to convert to Islam. Muslims were not allowed into the system (with some exceptions), but some Muslim families smuggled their sons in anyway. According to Speros Vyronis, "The Ottomans took advantage of

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3388-491: Is ultimately the whole of continental Europe itself that functions as a kind of Balkan Turkish global empire with Brussels as the new Constantinople, the capricious despotic center threatening English freedom and sovereignty. So Balkan is always the Other: it lies somewhere else, always a little bit more to the southeast, with the paradox that, when we reach the very bottom of the Balkan peninsula, we again magically escape Balkan. Greece

3542-444: Is urgently necessary” and were made to “pray together without fail at four prescribed times every day.” As “for any little offense, they beat them cruelly with sticks, rarely hitting them less than a hundred times, and often as much as a thousand. After punishments the boys have to come to them and kiss their clothing and thank them for the cudgelings they have received. You can see, then, that moral degradation and humiliation are part of

3696-633: The Kapikulu Sipahi (The Cavalry of the Servants of the Porte ) and the infantry as the janissaries ( Yeni Çeri , meaning "the New Corps"). The devshirme conscripts were set apart from the janissaries in that they were not a cavalry group, rather exclusively infantry. At first, the soldiers serving in these corps were selected from the slaves captured during war. However, a new system commonly known as devshirme

3850-508: The Aegean Sea in the south, the Turkish straits in the east, and the Black Sea in the northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Musala , 2,925 metres (9,596 ft), in the Rila mountain range, Bulgaria. The concept of the Balkan Peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered

4004-669: The Albanians of Himarë in the year 1581, addressed to the Pope reads: "Holiest father, if you could convince him and save us and the children of Greece, that are taken every day and are turned into Turks, if you could only do this, God may bless you. Amen”. In 1456 Greeks living on the western coast of Anatolia appealed to the Knights Hospitalers of Rhodes for help. We, who do dwell in Turkey ... inform your lordship that we are heavily vexed by

4158-568: The Balkan Peninsula ( Peninsula of Haemus , Haemaic Peninsula ), is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains (Haemus Mountains) that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria . The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the northwest, the Ionian Sea in the southwest,

4312-425: The Balkans . Scouts were recruiting youngsters according to their talent and ability with school subjects, in addition to their personality, character and physical perfection. The Enderûn candidates were not supposed to be orphans or the only child in their family to ensure that the candidates had strong family values. They also had to not have already learned to speak Turkish or a craft or trade. The ideal age of

4466-822: The Baltic Sea are closer to Trieste than Odesa yet it is not considered as another European peninsula. Since the late 19th and early 20th century no exact northern border has been clear, with an issue, whether the rivers are usable for its definition. In studies the Balkans' natural borders, especially the northern border, are often avoided to be addressed, considered as a problème fastidieux (delicate problem) by André Blanc in Géographie des Balkans (1965), while John Lampe and Marvin Jackman in Balkan Economic History (1971) noted that "modern geographers seem agreed in rejecting

4620-569: The First Balkan War broke out when the nation-states of Bulgaria , Serbia , Greece and Montenegro united in an alliance against the Ottoman Empire . As a result of the war, almost all remaining European territories of the Ottoman Empire were captured and partitioned among the allies. Ensuing events also led to the creation of an independent Albanian state. Bulgaria insisted on its status quo territorial integrity, divided and shared by

4774-651: The Korab - Šar mountains which spreads from Kosovo to Albania and North Macedonia , and the Pindus range, spanning from southern Albania into central Greece and the Albanian Alps , and the Alps at the northwestern border. The highest mountain of the region is Rila in Bulgaria, with Musala at 2,925 m, second being Mount Olympus in Greece, with Mytikas at 2,917 m, and Pirin mountain with Vihren , also in Bulgaria, being

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4928-526: The Ottoman army . During the 15th and 16th centuries they were recognized as one of the best-trained and most effective military units in Europe. They became known for their discipline, morale and professionalism. They were paid regularly and were expected to be ready to enter battle at any time. However, by the early 17th century, the Janissary corps had ceased to function as an elite military force, and had become

5082-632: The Ottomans several decades later. Ottoman expansion in the region began in the second half of the 14th century, as the Byzantine Empire continued to lose its grip on the region after several defeats to the Ottomans. In 1362, the Ottoman Turks conquered Adrianople (now Edirne , Turkey). This was the start of their conquest of the Balkan Peninsula, which lasted for more than a century. Other states in

5236-602: The Qanun , the law enacted by the Sultan, superseded sharia even though the latter was treated with respect. The devshirme was just one example in which the Sultan's wishes superseded the sharia (another example is that Ottoman sultans set maximum interest rates even though sharia totally prohibits interest ). James L. Gelvin explains that Ottoman jurists were able to get around that injunction with an extraordinarily creative legal manoeuvre by arguing that although Islamic tradition forbade

5390-749: The Rhodope Mountains to be the northern limit of the Peninsula of Haemus and the same limit applied approximately to the border between Greek and Latin use in the region (later called the Jireček Line ). However large spaces south of Jireček Line were and are inhabited by Vlachs ( Aromanians ), the Romance-speaking heirs of Roman Empire. The Bulgars and Slavs arrived in the sixth-century and began assimilating and displacing already-assimilated (through Romanization and Hellenization) older inhabitants of

5544-624: The Seljuks or the contemporary European palace schools, Enderûn was unique with respect to the background of the student body and its meritocratic system. In the strict draft phase, students were taken forcefully from the Christian population of the Empire and were converted to Islam . Jews and Gypsies were exempted from devshirme and so were all Muslims . Those entrusted to find those children were scouts, who were specially-trained agents, throughout

5698-543: The Sultan . It counterbalanced the Turkish nobility, who sometimes opposed the Sultan. The system produced a considerable number of grand viziers from the 1400s to the 1600s. This was the second most powerful position in the Ottoman Empire, after the sultan. Initially, the grand viziers were exclusively of Turk origin, but after there were troubles between Sultan Mehmed II and the Turkish grand vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha

5852-508: The Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment and the mountain has remained with his name. A reverse name scheme has also been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus (Αἷμος) is derived from a Thracian word *saimon , 'mountain ridge'. A third possibility is that "Haemus" ( Αἵμος ) derives from the Greek word haima ( αἷμα ) meaning 'blood'. The myth relates to

6006-628: The Topkapı Palace . Mahmud II then brought out the Holy Banner of the Islamic prophet Muhammad from inside the Sacred Trust , intending all true believers to gather beneath it and thus bolster opposition to the Janissaries. Turkish historians claim that the counter-Janissary force, which was great in numbers, included the local residents who had hated the Janissaries for years. In the ensuing fight

6160-436: The harem , many eunuchs of devshirme origin went on to hold important positions in the military and the government, such as grand viziers Hadım Ali Pasha , Sinan Borovinić , and Hadım Hasan Pasha . Ottoman officials would take male Christian children, aged 7 to 20, from Eastern , Southern and Southeastern Europe , and relocate them to Istanbul, where they were converted, circumcised, assimilated and trained to serve into

6314-543: The 'slaves' to become both powerful and wealthy." According to Cleveland, the devshirme system offered "limitless opportunities to the young men who became a part of it." Basilike Papoulia wrote that "the devishirme was the 'forcible removal', in the form of a tribute, of children of the Christian subjects from their ethnic, religious and cultural environment and their transportation into the Turkish-Islamic environment with

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6468-428: The 1650s, the number of janissaries had increased to 50,000, but by this time, the devshirme had largely been abandoned as a method of recruitment. The BBC notes the following regarding the devshirme system: "Although members of the devshirme class were technically slaves, they were of great importance to the Sultan because they owed him their absolute loyalty and became vital to his power. This status enabled some of

6622-629: The Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. The term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for Rumelia in the 19th century, the parts of Europe that were provinces of the Ottoman Empire at the time. It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, which was further promoted during the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in

6776-494: The Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region. In pre-classical and classical antiquity , this region was home to Greeks , Illyrians , Paeonians , Thracians , Dacians , and other ancient groups. The Achaemenid Persian Empire incorporated parts of the Balkans comprising Macedonia , Thrace (parts of present-day eastern Bulgaria ), and the Black Sea coastal region of Romania beginning in 512 BC. Following

6930-542: The Balkans and eventual creation of a joint military staff for the three countries. When the pact was signed, Turkey and Greece were members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), while Yugoslavia was a non-aligned communist state. With the Pact, Yugoslavia was able to indirectly associate itself with NATO. Though, it was planned for the pact to remain in force for 20 years, it dissolved in 1960. As

7084-403: The Balkans are due to many contrasting definitions disputed. There exists no universal agreement on the region's components. The term by most definitions fully encompasses Albania , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Bulgaria , Greece , Kosovo , Montenegro , North Macedonia , European Turkey , Romanian coast , most of Serbia and large parts of Croatia . Sometimes the term also includes Romania as

7238-528: The Balkans by using its protectorate Albania to invade Greece . After repelling the attack, the Greeks counterattacked, invading Italy-held Albania and causing Nazi Germany's intervention in the Balkans to help its ally. Days before the German invasion, a successful coup d'état in Belgrade by neutral military personnel seized power. Although the new government reaffirmed its intentions to fulfill its obligations as

7392-410: The Balkans inhabitants who were pagan beforehand. Initially, it was adopted by the Bulgarians and Serbs, with the Romanians joining a bit later. The Albanians , on the other hand due to their isolation in their mountain settlements, were not immediately affected by the spread of Christianity. The emergence of the First Bulgarian Empire and the constant conflicts between the Byzantine Empire and

7546-480: The Balkans is dominated by its geographical position; historically the area was known as a crossroads of cultures. It has been a juncture between the Latin and Greek bodies of the Roman Empire , the destination of a massive influx of pagan Bulgars and Slavs , an area where Orthodox and Catholic Christianity met, as well as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity. Albanic , Hellenic , and other Palaeo-Balkan languages , had their formative core in

7700-483: The Balkans place their greatest folk heroes in the era of either the onslaught or the retreat of the Ottoman Empire. As examples, for Greeks, Constantine XI Palaiologos and Kolokotronis ; and for Serbs, Miloš Obilić , Tsar Lazar and Karadjordje ; for Albanians, George Kastrioti Skanderbeg; for ethnic Macedonians , Nikola Karev and Goce Delčev ; for Bulgarians, Vasil Levski , Georgi Sava Rakovski and Hristo Botev and for Croats , Nikola Šubić Zrinjski . In

7854-442: The Balkans region, such as Albanians and Greeks . Since Muslim Bosnians were the only Muslim ethnic group allowed to be recruited, an armed guard was required to lead the Bosnians on their way to Istanbul to avoid any Turkish boys from being smuggled into their ranks. The early Ottoman emphasis on recruiting Greeks , Albanians , and South Slavs was a direct consequence of being centred on territories, in northwestern Anatolia and

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8008-399: The Balkans. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Encyclopaedia of Islam , in the early days of the empire, all Christians were enrolled indiscriminately. Later, those from Albania , Bosnia and Bulgaria were preferred. What is certain is that devshirme were primarily recruited from Christians living in the Balkans, particularly Serbs and Bosnians, as well as others from

8162-402: The Book . The practice of devshirme also involved forced conversions to Islam. This is disputed by Turkish historian Halil İnalcık , who argues that the devshirme were not slaves once converted to Islam. Some scholars point out that the early Ottoman Empire did not care about the details of sharia and thus did not see any problems with devshirme. During this time, the Ottomans believed that

8316-694: The Christian parents thought of the Janissaries: You understand, then, my lords and Christian gentlemen, what sorrow the Greeks bear, the fathers and the mothers who are separated from their children at the prime of life. Think ye of the heartrending sorrow! How many mothers scratch out their cheeks! How many fathers beat their breast with stones! What grief these Christians experience on account of their children who are separated from them while alive, and how many mothers say, “It would have been better to see them dead and buried in our church, rather than to have them taken alive in order to become Turks and abjure our faith. Better that you had died!” Stephen Gerlach gives

8470-410: The First Bulgarian Empire significantly weakened the Byzantine control over the Balkans by the end of the 10th century. The Byzantines further lost power in the Balkans after the resurgence of the Bulgarians in the late 12th century, with the forming of their Second Bulgarian Empire . After the collapse of the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Byzantine's Empire grip on power was prolonged by the inability of

8624-437: The Great Powers next to the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) in other boundaries and on the pre-war Bulgarian-Serbian agreement. Bulgaria was provoked by the backstage deals between its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on the allocation of the spoils at the end of the First Balkan War. At the time, Bulgaria was fighting at the main Thracian Front. Bulgaria marks the beginning of Second Balkan War when it attacked them. The Serbs and

8778-399: The Greeks repulsed single attacks, but when the Greek army invaded Bulgaria together with an unprovoked Romanian intervention in the back, Bulgaria collapsed. The Ottoman Empire used the opportunity to recapture Eastern Thrace , establishing its new western borders that still stand today as part of modern Turkey. World War I was sparked in the Balkans in 1914 when members of Young Bosnia ,

8932-449: The Janissaries: "The conquered are slaves of the conquerors, to whom their goods, their women, and their children belong as lawful possession". According to scholars, the practice of devshirme was a clear violation of sharia or Islamic law. David Nicolle writes that since the boys were "effectively enslaved" under the devshirme system, this was a violation of the dhimmi protections guaranteed under Islamic law to People of

9086-409: The Janissary barracks were set ablaze by artillery fire, resulting in 4,000 Janissary deaths; more were killed in the heavy fighting on the streets of Constantinople (the capital of the Ottoman Empire and the center of the Janissary order). The survivors either fled or were imprisoned, their possessions confiscated by the Sultan. By the end of 1826 the captured Janissaries, constituting the remainder of

9240-454: The Janissary infantry corps or palace duties. Devshirme were rarely sold, though some could end up as slaves in private households. The fact that they were taken forcibly from their parents made the devshirme system resented by locals. However, revolts were rare, with the exception of a revolt against the devshirme in Albania in 1565. Ordered to cut all ties with their families, some managed to use their positions to help their families. There

9394-569: The Muslim communities in the Balkans , who lost their privileges, as rebellions broke out across Rumelia , especially in Bosnia and Albania . Taking advantage of the temporary weakness in the military position of the Ottoman Empire following the Auspicious Incident, the Russian Empire forced the Ottomans to accept the Akkerman Convention on 7 October 1826. Dev%C5%9Firme Devshirme ( Ottoman Turkish : دوشیرمه , romanized :  devşirme , lit.   'collecting', usually translated as "child levy" or "blood tax" )

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9548-437: The Ottoman Empire . Any sultan who tried to diminish its status or power was immediately either killed or deposed. As opportunities and power continued to rise within the Janissary corps, it began to undermine the empire. Over time it became clear that for the empire to restore its position as a major power of Europe, it needed to replace the Janissary corps with a modern army. Historians suggest that Mahmud II purposely incited

9702-425: The Ottoman court until Mehmet II (see Çandarlı Halil ), the Ottoman ruling class slowly came to be ruled exclusively by the devshirme, creating a separate social class. This class of rulers was chosen from the brightest of devshirme and handpicked to serve in the palace institution, known as the Enderûn . They had to accompany the Sultan on campaigns, but exceptional service would be rewarded by assignments outside

9856-417: The Ottoman foreign ministry or join the new Ottoman Army as officers. Thousands of Janissaries had been killed, and thus the elite order came to its end. The Sufi Order of the Bektaşi Brotherhood , a core Janissary institution, was outlawed, and its followers executed or exiled. A new modern corps, Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye ("The Victorious Soldiers of Muhammad"), was established by Mahmud II to guard

10010-470: The Ottoman invasion. Vladimir Minorsky states, "The most striking manifestation of this fact is the unprecedented system of devshirme, i.e. the periodic conscription of 'tribute boys', by which the children of Christians were wrung from their families, churches, and communities to be molded into Ottoman praetorians owing their allegiance to the Sultan and the official faith of Islam." This system as explained by Çandarlı Kara Halil Hayreddin Pasha , founder of

10164-399: The Ottoman occupied parts of Europe), while Yugoslavian maps also included Croatia and Bosnia. The term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey, the political borders of former Ottoman Empire provinces. The usage of the term changed in the very end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, when it was embraced by Serbian geographers, most prominently by Jovan Cvijić . It

10318-435: The Ottomans for a time (1443–1468) by using guerilla warfare . Skanderbeg's achievements, in particular the Battle of Albulena and the First Siege of Krujë won him fame across Europe. The Ottomans eventually conquered the near entirety of the Balkans and reached central Europe by the early 16th century. Some smaller countries, such as Montenegro managed to retain some autonomy by managing their own internal affairs, since

10472-556: The Persian defeat in the Greco-Persian Wars in 479 BC, they abandoned all of their European territories, which regained their independence. During the reign of Philip II of Macedon (359-336 BC), Macedonia rose to become the most powerful state in the Balkans . In the second century BC, the Roman Empire conquered the region and spread Roman culture and the Latin language, but significant parts still remained under classical Greek influence. The only Paleo-Balkan languages that survived are Albanian and Greek . The Romans considered

10626-411: The Slavs to unite, which was caused by frequent infighting amongst themselves. Bulgaria in the first half of the 14th century was then overshadowed by the new rising regional power of Serbia, which was a result of Stefan Dušan rising up and conquering much of the Balkans to create the Serbian Empire . The Serbian and Byzantine empires continued to be the dominant forces in the region until the arrival of

10780-541: The Sultan and admonishing against the kidnapping of boys: Be damned, O Emperor, be thrice damned For the evil you have done and the evil you do. You catch and shackle the old and the archpriests In order to take the children as Janissaries. Their parents weep and their sisters and brothers too And I cry until it pains me; As long as I live I shall cry, For last year it was my son and this year my brother. The Tübingen manuscript written by Andre Argyros and John Tholoites and given to Martin Crusius in 1585 shows what

10934-476: The Sultan and replace the Janissaries. Many former Janissaries, especially those living in the provinces outside the capital, subsequently became involved in anti-Ottoman political movements demanding greater autonomy. In particular, they incited Christians in the Balkans , inflaming existing hostility to their Muslim neighbors and strengthening armed resistance to the new Turkish armies sent from Constantinople . Some Janissaries, however, survived by merely keeping

11088-557: The Sultan themselves and practically formed their own aristocracy. The primary objective of the Palace School was to train the ablest children for leadership positions, either as military leaders or as high administrators to serve the Devlet . Although there are many resemblances between Enderûn and other palace schools of the previous civilizations, such as those of the Abbasids ,

11242-484: The Turk, and that they take away our children and make Muslims of them ... For this reason we beseech your lordship to take council that the most holy pope might send his ships to take us and our wives and children away from here, for we are suffering greatly from the Turk. The children were taken from their families and transported to Istanbul. Upon their arrival, they were forcibly converted to Islam, examined and made to serve

11396-459: The Turkish suffix -an 'swampy forest' or Persian bālā-khāna 'big high house'. It was used mainly during the time of the Ottoman Empire . In both Ottoman Turkish and modern Turkish , balkan means 'chain of wooded mountains'. From classical antiquity through the Middle Ages , the Balkan Mountains were called by the local Thracian name Haemus . According to Greek mythology,

11550-545: The Turks and running away by ourselves among the mountains,” he writes, “but our youth did not permit us to do that.” Once when he and a group of other boys broke free and escaped, “the whole region pursued us, and having caught and bound us, they beat us and tortured us and dragged us behind horses.” It is said that: "Even those personally chosen by the Sultan found nothing admirable about their lot." After Ottoman Sultan Murad II took eight Christian youths into his service, they made

11704-579: The West, later even spearheaded, together with India and Egypt the Non-Aligned Movement . Albania on the other hand gravitated toward Communist China , later adopting an isolationist position. On 28 February 1953, Greece , Turkey and Yugoslavia signed the treaty of Agreement of Friendship and Cooperation in Ankara to form the Balkan Pact of 1953 . The treaty's aim was to deter Soviet expansion in

11858-492: The Western Balkans, joined the EU in July 2013. The term is criticized for having a geopolitical, rather than a geographical meaning and definition, as a multiethnic and political area in the southeastern part of Europe. The geographical term of a peninsula defines that the sea border must be longer than the land border, with the land side being the shortest in the triangle, but that is not

12012-504: The Younger , who became the first grand vizier to be executed, there was a rise of slave administrators devshirme. They were much easier to control for the sultans, as compared to free administrators of Turkish noble origin. They were also less subject to influence from court factions. From the very beginning, the Turcoman were a danger that undermined the Sultan's creation of a strong state. Thus,

12166-482: The Younger , who was the first grand vizier to be executed, there was a rise of slave administrators ( devshirme ). They were much easier for the sultans to control, compared to free administrators of Turkish aristocratic extraction. The devshirme also produced many of the Ottoman Empire's provincial governors, military commanders, and divans during the 1400s–1600s period. Sometimes, the devshirme recruits were castrated and became eunuchs . Although often destined for

12320-545: The aim of employing them in the service of the Palace, the army, and the state, whereby they were on the one hand to serve the Sultan as slaves and freedmen and on the other to form the ruling class of the State." Accordingly, Papoulia agrees with Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb and Harold Bowen, authors of Islamic Society and the West , that the devshirme was a penalization imposed on the Balkan peoples since their ancestors had resisted

12474-598: The area starting falling like Serbia after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, Bulgaria in 1396, Constantinople in 1453, Bosnia in 1463, Herzegovina in 1482, and Montenegro in 1499. The conquest was made easier for the Ottomans due to existing divisions among the Orthodox peoples and by the even deeper rift that had existed at the time between the Eastern and Western Christians of Europe. The Albanians under Skanderbeg's leadership resisted

12628-406: The army, rather than sons from Christian families. In 1594, Muslims were officially allowed to take the positions held by the devshirme and the system of recruiting Christians effectively stopped by 1648. An attempt to re-institute it in 1703 was resisted by its Ottoman members, who coveted the military and civilian posts. Finally, in the early days of Ahmet III 's reign, the practice of devshirme

12782-645: The arrival of farming cultures in the Neolithic era. The Balkans have been inhabited since the Paleolithic and are the route by which farming from the Middle East spread to Europe during the Neolithic (7th millennium BC). The practices of growing grain and raising livestock arrived in the Balkans from the Fertile Crescent by way of Anatolia and spread west and north into Central Europe, particularly through Pannonia . Two early culture-complexes have developed in

12936-520: The broad geographical, social-political and historical context of the Balkans, while the neologism Western Balkans is perceived as a humiliation of Croatia by the European political powers. According to M. S. Altić, the term has two different meanings, "geographical, ultimately undefined, and cultural, extremely negative, and recently strongly motivated by the contemporary political context". In 2018, President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović stated that

13090-428: The case for the Balkan Peninsula. Both the eastern and western sea catheti from Odesa to Cape Matapan ( c.  1230 –1350 km) and from Trieste to Cape Matapan ( c.  1270 –1285 km) are shorter than the land cathetus from Trieste to Odesa ( c.  1330 –1365 km). The land has too long a land border to qualify as a peninsula – Szczecin (920 km) and Rostock (950 km) at

13244-543: The case of a Greek Mother from Panormus in Anatolia who had two boys and begged God every day to take them away because she would soon be forced to give up one of them. The distress expressed here was motivated not only by religious considerations, but also by the low opinion the Byzantines held for Turks (whom they called barbarians). In desperation the parents would appeal to the Pope and western powers for help. A petition of

13398-425: The course of a year before beheading them. On the other hand, since the devshirme could reach powerful positions, some Muslim families tried to have the recruiters take their sons so that they could achieve professional advancement. Sometimes people of both religion, or family in great needs, attempted to bribe scouts to take their children. In Epirus , a traditional folk song expressed this resentment by cursing

13552-449: The devshirme also served as a unifying factor for the Ottoman Empire. Greeks, Armenians, Albanians, and other ethnicities would see that the Sultan was Turkish, but his viziers were Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek and other ethnicities. The ethnic diversity in high-level and powerful positions of the Ottoman Empire helped to unite the diverse groups under its jurisdiction. They also prevented a hereditary aristocracy from forming but held sway over

13706-495: The devshirme service and their clothes were paid by their villages or communities. The boys were gathered into cohorts of a hundred or more to walk to Constantinople, where they were circumcised and divided between the palace schools and the military training. Anyone not chosen for the palace spent years being toughened by hard labor on farms in Anatolia until they were old enough for the military . The brightest youths who fit into

13860-407: The devshirme such as: marrying the boys at the age of 12, mutilating them or have both father and son convert to Islam. Conversion to Islam was used in Bosnia and Herzegovina to escape the system. In Albania and Epirus the practice led to a Christian revolt where the inhabitants killed the recruiting officials in the year 1565. In Naousa , after killing the recruiting officials the parents fled to

14014-807: The devshirme. Unlike the black eunuchs, who were usually castrated in their place of origin, the devshirme were castrated at the palace. The palace eunuchs who supervised them often came from the same background as the devshirme (the Balkans). A considerable number of eunuchs of devshirme origin went on to hold important positions in the government and the military, and many of them became grand vizier , like Hadım Ali Pasha , Sinan Borovinić , Hadım Hasan Pasha , Hadim Mesih Pasha and Hadım Mehmed Pasha . Others, like Sofu Hadım Ali Pasha , Hadım Şehabeddin , Hadım Yakup Pasha of Bosnia , Hadım Ali Pasha of Buda , Hadım Suleiman Pasha and his namesake Hadım Suleiman Pasha , became prominent admirals and generals. According to

14168-755: The dissolution of the union as unconstitutional and the Yugoslav People's Army unsuccessfully tried to maintain the status quo. Slovenia and Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991, which prompted the Croatian War of Independence in Croatia and the Ten-Day War in Slovenia. The Yugoslav forces eventually withdrew from Slovenia in 1991 while the war in Croatia continued until late 1995 . The two were followed by Macedonia and later Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Bosnia being

14322-409: The early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan Peninsula's natural borders does not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula; hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan Peninsula, while historical scholars usually discuss the Balkans as a region. The term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization . The alternative term used for

14476-419: The empire's largest single military corps. As a result, by the late 16th century, the devshirme system had become increasingly abandoned for less rigid recruitment methods, which allowed Muslims to enter directly into the janissary corps. In 1632, the janissaries attempted an unsuccessful coup against Murad IV , who then imposed a loyalty oath on them. In 1638 or 1648, the devshirme-based recruiting system of

14630-550: The empire. Exemption from this tribute was considered a privilege and not a penalty." Many scholars consider the practice of devshirme as violating Islamic law . David Nicolle writes that enslavement of Christian boys violates the dhimmi protections guaranteed in Islam, but Halil İnalcık argues that the devshirme were not slaves once converted to Islam. The boys were given a formal education, and trained in science, warfare and bureaucratic administration, and became advisers to

14784-407: The empire. The system produced infantry corps soldiers as well as civilian administrators and high-ranked military officials." Their village, district and province, parentage, date of birth, and physical appearance was recorded. Albertus Bobovius wrote in 1686 that diseases were common among the devshirme and that strict discipline was enforced. Although the influence of Turkic nobility continued in

14938-553: The end of World War I, the Balkan Pact , or Balkan Entente, was formed by a treaty between Greece , Romania , Turkey and Yugoslavia on 9 February 1934 in Athens . With the start of the World War II , all Balkan countries, with the exception of Greece, were allies of Nazi Germany , having bilateral military agreements or being part of the Axis Pact . Fascist Italy expanded the war in

15092-555: The end of the 18th century, and other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. The concept of the "Balkans" was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered it as the dominant central mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. During the 1820s, "Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers... Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan

15246-480: The enslavement of Christians, Balkan Christians were different because they had converted to Christianity after the advent of Islam. (This was true of most rural Christians in the Balkans, but not the Greeks.) William Gervase Clarence-Smith points out that the reasoning is not accepted in the Hanafi school of law, which the Ottoman Empire claimed to have practiced. Contemporary Ottoman chroniclers had mixed opinions on

15400-501: The establishment of this class counterbalanced the Turkish nobility, who sometimes opposed the Sultan. An early Greek source mentioning devshirme ( paidomazoma ) is a speech by Archbishop Isidore of Thessalonica , made on 28 February 1395, titled: "On the abduction of children according to sultan's order and on the Future Judgment". The speech includes references to the violent Islamization of children and their hard training in

15554-518: The first battleground of the emerging Cold War. The Truman Doctrine was the US response to the civil war , which raged from 1944 to 1949. This civil war, unleashed by the Communist Party of Greece , backed by communist volunteers from neighboring countries (Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia), led to massive American assistance for the non-communist Greek government. With this backing, Greece managed to defeat

15708-640: The force, were put to death by decapitation in the Thessaloniki fort that soon came to be called the "Blood Tower" (but which has been known since 1912 as the White Tower ). Roughly 100 other Janissaries fled to the Cistern of Philoxenos , where many drowned as they tried to cross. The Janissary leaders were promptly put to death. The younger and older Janissaries were either exiled or imprisoned, but those who were competent and showed promise were allowed to take jobs in

15862-431: The general Christian fear of losing their children and used offers of devshirme exemption in negotiations for surrender of Christian lands. Such exemptions were included in the surrender terms granted to Jannina, Galata, Morea, Chios, etc. Christians who engaged in specialized activities important to the Ottoman state were exempted from the blood tax on their children by way of recognition of the importance of their labors for

16016-479: The general guidelines and had a strong primary education were then given to selected Muslim families across Anatolia to complete the enculturation process. They would later attend schools across Anatolia to complete their training for six to seven years to qualify as ordinary military officers . They would get the highest salaries amongst the administrators of the empire and very well respected in public. White eunuchs were sometimes recruited from among

16170-483: The giving up of his son for the Janissaries, he is immediately hanged from his door-sill, his blood being deemed unworthy. Sources show that it was not rare for the older youth to attempt to preserve their faith and some recollection of their homeland and their families. For instance, Stephan Gerlach writes: They gather together and one tells another of his native land and of what he heard in church or learned in school there, and they agree among themselves that Muhammad

16324-415: The historian Cemal Kafadar, one of the main reasons for the decline of the devshirme system was that the size of the janissary corps had to be expanded to compensate for the decline in the importance of the sipahi cavalry forces, which itself was a result of changes in early modern warfare such as the introduction of firearms and increased importance of infantry. Indeed, the janissary corps would soon become

16478-551: The historical and political connotations of the term Balkans , especially since the military conflicts of the 1990s in Yugoslavia in the western half of the region, the term Southeast Europe is becoming increasingly popular. A European Union initiative of 1999 is called the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe . The online newspaper Balkan Times renamed itself Southeast European Times in 2003. In other languages of

16632-401: The janissary corps formally came to an end. In an order sent in multiple copies to authorities throughout the European provinces in 1666, a devshirme recruitment target of between 300 and 320 was set for an area covering the whole of the central and western Balkans . On the accession of sultan Suleiman II in 1687, only 130 janissary inductees were graduated to the janissary ranks. The system

16786-528: The last outpost of the peaceful Mitteleuropa. For Italians and Austrians, it begins with Slovenia, where the reign of the Slavic hordes starts. For Germans, Austria itself, on account of its historic connections, is already tainted by Balkanic corruption and inefficiency. For some arrogant Frenchmen, Germany is associated with the Balkanian Eastern savagery—up to the extreme case of some conservative anti-European-Union Englishmen for whom, in an implicit way, it

16940-466: The late 19th century to the creation of post– World War I Yugoslavia (initially the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918). After the dissolution of Yugoslavia beginning in June 1991, the term Balkans acquired a negative political meaning, especially in Croatia and Slovenia, as well in worldwide casual usage for war conflicts and fragmentation of territory (see Balkanization ). In part due to

17094-741: The latter to accept Paulos Omeros, a 12-year-old boy from Chios, to save him from the devshirme. The recruitment of children took place every three to four years and at times even annually, according to the needs of the Sultan. The largest loss of children coincided with the peak of Ottoman expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under the rule of Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent. According to historian William Gervase Clarence-Smith , Christian children were taken by Ottoman officials, every four to seven years, their age ranging from 7 to 20. Those younger than 8 were called şirhor (nursling) and beççe (child). One for every forty households

17248-414: The mountains but were later caught and executed in 1705. Any parent who refused to have their child taken as a slave was put to death, and children who attempted to resist being taken from their families as janissaries by fleeing would lead to the Turks arresting and then torturing their parents to death (Many children who attempted to flee on their own returned after hearing of their parents torture). Such

17402-491: The mountains, spruce , fir and pine ). The tree line in the mountains lies at the height of 1,800–2,300 m. The land provides habitats for numerous endemic species, including extraordinarily abundant insects and reptiles that serve as food for a variety of birds of prey and rare vultures . The soils are generally poor, except on the plains , where areas with natural grass, fertile soils and warm summers provide an opportunity for tillage. Elsewhere, land cultivation

17556-708: The northern and central Balkans. This migration brought about the formation of distinct ethnic groups amongst the South Slavs, which included the Bulgarians , Croats and Serbs and Slovenes . Prior to the Slavic landing, parts of the western peninsula have been home to the Proto-Albanians . Including cities like Nish , Shtip . This can be proven through the development of the names, for example Naissos > Nish and Astibos > Shtip follow Albanian phonetic sound rules and have entered Slavic, indicating that Proto-Albanian

17710-595: The old idea of a Balkan Peninsula". Another issue is the name: the Balkan Mountains , mostly in Northern Bulgaria, do not dominate the region by length and area as do the Dinaric Alps . An eventual Balkan peninsula can be considered a territory south of the Balkan Mountains, with a possible name "Greek-Albanian Peninsula." The term influenced the meaning of Southeast Europe which again is not properly defined by geographical factors. Croatian geographers and academics are highly critical of inclusion of Croatia within

17864-518: The only non-communist countries, Greece and Turkey were (and still are) part of NATO composing the southeastern wing of the alliance. In the 1990s, the transition of the regions' ex-Eastern bloc countries towards democratic free-market societies went peacefully. While in the non-aligned Yugoslavia , Wars between the former Yugoslav republics broke out after Slovenia and Croatia held free elections and their people voted for independence on their respective countries' referendums. Serbia, in turn, declared

18018-400: The palace school ( Enderûn Mektebi ), where they were destined for a career within the palace itself and could attain the highest office of state, Grand Vizier , the Sultan's powerful chief minister and military deputy. In the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, this office was held only by Turks. However, after there were problems between sultan Mehmed II and the Turkish Çandarlı Halil Pasha

18172-486: The palace. Those chosen for the scribe institution, known as kalemiye , were also granted prestigious positions. At the religious institution, İlmiye , all orthodox Muslim clergy of the Ottoman Empire were educated and sent to provinces or served in the capital. The children were subjected to a draconian training system: “They make them drudge day and night, and they give them no bed to sleep on and very little food.” They were allowed to “speak to each other only when it

18326-458: The partisans and, ultimately, remained one of the two only non-communist countries in the region with Turkey. However, despite being under communist governments, Yugoslavia (1948) and Albania (1961) fell out with the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), first propped up then rejected the idea of merging with Bulgaria and instead sought closer relations with

18480-497: The past several centuries, because of the frequent Ottoman wars in Europe fought in and around the Balkans and the comparative Ottoman isolation from the mainstream of economic advance (reflecting the shift of Europe's commercial and political centre of gravity towards the Atlantic ), the Balkans have been the least developed part of Europe. According to Halil İnalcık , "The population of the Balkans, according to one estimate, fell from

18634-412: The peninsula, is generally excluded. Although they have no territory on the peninsula, Hungary and Moldova are occasionally incorporated into discussions of the Balkans due to cultural and historical affiliations. The origin of the word Balkan is obscure; it may be related to Turkish bālk 'mud' (from Proto-Turkic * bal 'mud, clay; thick or gluey substance', cf. also Turkic bal 'honey'), and

18788-706: The practice. An Ottoman historian of the 1500s, Mustafa Âlî , admitted that devshirme violated sharia but was allowed only out of necessity. Others argued the Muslim conqueror had the right to one fifth of war booty and could thus take the Christian boys; however, Islamic law allows no such booty from communities that had submitted peacefully to conquest and certainly not from their descendants. The devshirme were collected once every four or five years from rural provinces in Eastern Europe , Southeastern Europe and Anatolia . They were mainly collected from Christian subjects, with

18942-664: The region is Southeast Europe . The borders of the Balkans are, due to many contrasting definitions, disputed. There exists no universal agreement on the region's components. The term by most definitions fully encompasses Albania , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Bulgaria , Greece , Kosovo , Montenegro , North Macedonia , European Turkey , the Romanian coast , most of Serbia and large parts of Croatia . The term sometimes includes all of Romania , Serbia and Croatia, and southern parts of Slovenia . The Province of Trieste in northeastern Italy , although by some definitions considered part of

19096-587: The region, Starčevo culture and Vinča culture . The Balkans are also the location of the first advanced civilizations. Vinča culture developed a form of proto-writing before the Sumerians and Minoans , known as the Old European script , while the bulk of the symbols had been created in the period between 4500 and 4000 BC, with the ones on the Tărtăria clay tablets even dating back to around 5300 BC. The identity of

19250-661: The region, the region is known as: The Balkan Peninsula is bounded by the Adriatic Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea (including the Ionian and Aegean seas) and the Sea of Marmara to the south and the Black Sea to the east. Its northern boundary is often given as the Danube , Sava and Kupa Rivers. The Balkan Peninsula has a combined area of about 470,000 km (181,000 sq mi) (slightly smaller than Spain). The peninsula

19404-651: The results of the uprising in 1807. In 1826, he created the basis of a new modern army, the Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye , which caused a revolt among the janissaries. The authorities kept the janissaries in their barracks and slaughtered thousands of them. That development entered the Ottoman history annals as the Auspicious Incident . Balkans The Balkans ( / ˈ b ɔː l k ən z / BAWL -kənz , / ˈ b ɒ l k ən z / BOL -kənz ), corresponding partially with

19558-563: The revolt and have described it as the sultan's "coup against the Janissaries". The sultan informed them that he was forming a new army, the Sekban-ı Cedit , organized and trained along modern European lines, and that the new army would be Turkish -dominated. The Janissaries saw their institution as crucial to the well-being of the Ottoman Empire , especially to Rumelia , and had previously decided they would never allow its dissolution. Thus, as predicted, they mutinied and began to march towards

19712-549: The same territory, used the term Südosteuropäische Halbinsel ('southeastern European peninsula'). Another reason it was not commonly accepted as the definition of then European Turkey had a similar land extent. However, after the Congress of Berlin (1878) there was a political need for a new term and gradually "the Balkans" was revitalized, but in the maps, the northern border was in Serbia and Montenegro without Greece (it only depicted

19866-586: The southern Balkans, where those ethnic groups were prevalent. Jews were exempt from this service. Armenians are also believed to have been exempt from the levy by many scholars, although a 1997 publication that examined Armenian colophons from the 15th to the 17th centuries and foreign travelers of the time concluded that Armenians were not exempt. Boys who were orphans or were their family's only son were exempt. Well-known examples of Ottomans who had been recruited as devshirme include Skanderbeg , Sinan Pasha and Sokollu Mehmed Pasha . The diversity of

20020-491: The southern part, winters are milder. The humid continental climate is predominant in Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Croatia, Bulgaria, Kosovo , northern Montenegro, the Republic of North Macedonia, and the interior of Albania and Serbia . Meanwhile, the other less common climates, the humid subtropical and oceanic climates, are seen on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria and Balkan Turkey (European Turkey) . The Mediterranean climate

20174-463: The sultan's relative by marriage, told him that he regretted having left the religion of his fathers and that he prayed at night before the cross which he kept carefully concealed. In his memoir, Konstantin Mihailović (1430–1501), a Serbian who was abducted in his youth and marched away by the Turks, saw nothing “prestigious” or “lucrative” about becoming a janissary. “We always thought about killing

20328-481: The sultan, elite infantry, generals in the army, admirals in the navy, and bureaucrats working on finance in the Ottoman Empire. They were separated according to ability and could rise in rank based on merit. The most talented, the ichoghlani (Turkish iç oğlanı ) were trained for the highest positions in the empire. Others joined the military, including the famed janissaries . The practice began to die out as Ottoman soldiers preferred recruiting their own sons into

20482-510: The term Western Balkans to mean the Balkan area that includes countries that are not members of the European Union, while others refer to the geographical aspects. Each of these countries aims to be part of the future enlargement of the European Union and reach democracy and transmission scores but, until then, they will be strongly connected with the pre-EU waiting program Central European Free Trade Agreement . Croatia, considered part of

20636-454: The territory was too mountainous to completely subdue. Another small country that retained its independence, both de facto and de jure in this case, was the Adriatic trading hub of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik , Croatia). By the end of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire had become the controlling force in the region after expanding from Anatolia through Thrace to the Balkans. Many people in

20790-402: The third at 2915 m. The karst field or polje is a common feature of the landscape. On the Adriatic and Aegean coasts, the climate is Mediterranean , on the Black Sea coast the climate is humid subtropical and oceanic , and inland it is humid continental . In the northern part of the peninsula and on the mountains, winters are frosty and snowy, while summers are hot and dry. In

20944-471: The three empires participating in that alliance. The next year Bulgaria joined the Central Powers attacking Serbia, which was successfully fighting Austro-Hungary to the north for a year. That led to Serbia's defeat and the intervention of the Entente in the Balkans which sent an expeditionary force to establish a new front , the third one of that war, which soon also became static. The participation of Greece in

21098-644: The timetable of the planned invasion in Russia causing a significant delay, which had major consequences during the course of the war. Finally, at the end of 1944, the Soviets entered Romania and Bulgaria forcing the Germans out of the Balkans. They left behind a region largely ruined as a result of wartime exploitation. During the Cold War , most of the countries on the Balkans were governed by communist governments. Greece became

21252-476: The training system,” writes 16th century Italian diplomat Giovan Francesco Morosini (cardinal) . They were “degraded to the level of animals” and showed a “dog-like devotion to the sultan”, writes Vasiliki Papouli. Many possibly suffered from Stockholm Syndrome. Tavernier noted in 1678 that the janissaries looked more like a religious order than a military corps. The members of the organization were not banned from marriage, as Tavernier further noted, but it

21406-660: The use of dogs and falcons. A reference to devshirme is made in a poem composed c.  1550 in Greek by Ioannes Axayiolis, who appeals to Emperor Charles V of Germany to liberate the Christians from the Turks. The text is found in the Codex Vaticanus Graecus of 1624. In another account, the Roman Catholic bishop of Chios in 1646 writes to the director of the Catholic Greek Gymnasion of Rome asking

21560-404: The use of the term "Western Balkans" should be avoided because it does not imply only a geographic area, but also negative connotations, and instead must be perceived as and called Southeast Europe because it is part of Europe. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek said of the definition, This very alibi confronts us with the first of many paradoxes concerning Balkan: its geographic delimitation

21714-582: The war three years later, in 1918, on the part of the Entente finally altered the balance between the opponents leading to the collapse of the common German-Bulgarian front there, which caused the exit of Bulgaria from the war, and in turn, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ending the First World War. Between the two wars, in order to maintain the geopolitical status quo in the region after

21868-829: The word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion. The word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its general meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan , Čatal-Balkan , and Ungurus-Balkani̊ , but it was especially applied to the Haemus mountain. The name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary (Balkan Mountains) and the Balkan Region of Turkmenistan . The English traveler John Bacon Sawrey Morritt introduced this term into English literature at

22022-416: Was abolished. The devshirme (from the Turkish word meaning 'to collect') came up out of the kul system of slavery that developed in the early centuries of the Ottoman Empire, and which reached this final development during the reign of Sultan Bayazit I . The kul were mostly prisoners from war, hostages or slaves that were purchased by the state. The Ottoman Empire, beginning with Murad I , felt

22176-461: Was chosen, they had to be unmarried and once taken were ordered to cut all ties with their family. Christian parents undeniably resented the forced recruitment of their children, as a result they would beg and often seek to buy their children out of the levy. The Balkan peasantry tried to evade the tribute collectors, with many attempting to substitute their children in Bosnia. Many sources (including Paolo Giovio ) mention different ways to avoid

22330-570: Was done with political reasoning as affirmation for Serbian nationalism on the whole territory of the South Slavs , and also included anthropological and ethnological studies of the South Slavs through which were claimed various nationalistic and racialist theories. Through such policies and Yugoslavian maps the term was elevated to the modern status of a geographical region. The term acquired political nationalistic connotations far from its initial geographic meaning, arising from political changes from

22484-483: Was finally abolished in the early part of Ahmet III 's reign (1703–1730). After Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, there was a reform movement in Sultan Selim III 's regime to reduce the numbers of the askeri class, who were the first class citizens or military class (also called janissaries). Selim was taken prisoner and murdered by the janissaries. The successor to the sultan, Mahmud II , was patient but remembered

22638-430: Was in a letter sent in 1490 to Pope Innocent VIII by Buonaccorsi Callimaco , an Italian humanist, writer and diplomat. The Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, although other Turkic tribes had already settled in or were passing through the region. There is also a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of

22792-490: Was never precise. It is as if one can never receive a definitive answer to the question, "Where does it begin?" For Serbs, it begins down there in Kosovo or Bosnia, and they defend the Christian civilization against this Europe's Other. For Croats, it begins with the Orthodox, despotic, Byzantine Serbia, against which Croatia defends the values of democratic Western civilization. For Slovenes, it begins with Croatia, and we Slovenes are

22946-519: Was soon adopted. In this system, children of the rural Christian populations of the Balkans were conscripted before adolescence and were brought up as Muslims. Upon reaching adolescence, these children were enrolled in one of the four imperial institutions: the palace, the scribes, the Muslim clergy, and the military. Those enrolled in the military would become either part of the Janissary corps (1363), or part of another corps. The most promising were sent to

23100-519: Was spoken prior to the Slavic invasion of the Balkans. During the Early Middle Ages , The Byzantine Empire was the dominant state in the region, both military and culturally. Their cultural strength became particularly evident in the second half of the 9th century when the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius managed to spread the Byzantine variant of Christianity to the majority of

23254-426: Was the Ottoman practice of forcibly recruiting soldiers and bureaucrats from among the children of their Balkan Christian subjects and raising them in the religion of Islam . Those coming from the Balkans came primarily from noble Balkan families and rayah (poor) classes. It is first mentioned in written records in 1438, but probably started earlier. It created a faction of soldiers and officials loyal to

23408-432: Was the case of an Athenian boy who returned from hiding to save his father's life but chose to die himself rather than abandon his faith and convert to Islam. A firman in 1601 gave strict orders to Ottoman officials to kill any parent that resisted: To enforce the command of the known and holy fetva [fatwa] of Seyhul [Shaikh]-Islam. In accordance with this whenever some one of the infidel parents or some other should oppose

23562-632: Was the preferred term". In European books printed until late 1800s it was also known as Illyrian Peninsula or Illyrische Halbinsel in German. The term was not commonly used in geographical literature until the mid-19th century because, already then, scientists like Carl Ritter warned that only the part south of the Balkan Mountains could be considered as a peninsula and considered it to be renamed as "Greek peninsula". Other prominent geographers who did not agree with Zeune were Hermann Wagner , Theobald Fischer , Marion Newbigin , and Albrecht Penck , while Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn , in 1869, for

23716-414: Was very uncommon for them. He went on to write that their numbers had increased to a hundred thousand but only due to a degeneration of regulations, with many of them in fact being "fake" janissaries, posing as such for tax exemptions and other social privileges. He noted that the actual number of janissaries was in fact much lower. Shaw writes that their number was 30,000 under Suleiman the Magnificent . By

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