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103-476: The word Kouloughli or Kuloglu referred to children of janissaries and local women. Some sources refer to Kouloughlis as children of any Ottoman man and a North African woman. It was only those from acemi ocagi or devshirme that could become Kul or Kouloughli, in fact it was a rule to not allow anyone but those from devshirme or acemi ocagi to be the “kul” of the sultan. The title of Kouloughli went from father to child. For example Ahmed Bey of Constantine

206-568: A distinction between /a/ and /i/ and allow /a/ to appear at the beginning of a word, e.g. /aqsˤarˤ/ "shorter" (standard /qsˤərˤ/ ), /atˤlaʕ/ "go up!" (standard /tˤlaʕ/ or /tˤləʕ/ ), /asˤħaːb/ "friends" (standard /sˤħab/ ). Long /aː/ , /iː/ and /uː/ are maintained as semi-long vowels, which are substituted for both short and long vowels in most borrowings from Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Long /aː/, /iː/ and /uː/ also have many more allophones than in most other dialects; in particular, /aː/, /iː/, /uː/ appear as [ɑ], [e], [o] in

309-456: 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

412-516: A full vowel. For example, /bidˤ-at/ [bedɑt͡s] "eggs" ( /i/ and /a/ both affected), /tˤʃaʃ-at/ [tʃɑʃæt͡s] "sparks" (rightmost /a/ not affected), /dˤrˤʒ-at/ [drˤʒæt͡s] "stairs" ( /a/ usually not affected), /dˤrb-at-u/ [drˤbat͡su] "she hit him" (with [a] variable but tending to be in between [ɑ] and [æ] ; no effect on /u/ ), /tˤalib/ [tɑlib] "student" ( /a/ affected but not /i/ ). Contrast, for example, Egyptian Arabic, where emphasis tends to spread forward and backward to both ends of

515-518: 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

618-428: 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

721-407: A phoneme /ə/ (however, some speakers maintain a difference between /a/ and /ə/ when adjacent to pharyngeal /ʕ/ and /ħ/ ). This phoneme ( /ə/ ) was then deleted entirely in most positions; for the most part, it is maintained only in the position /...CəC#/ or /...CəCC#/ (where C represents any consonant and # indicates a word boundary), i.e. when appearing as the last vowel of a word. When /ə/

824-400: 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

927-464: A sonorance hierarchy. Similarly, and unlike most other Arabic dialects, doubled consonants are never simplified to a single consonant, even when at the end of a word or preceding another consonant. Some dialects are more conservative in their treatment of short vowels. For example, some dialects allow /u/ in more positions. Dialects of the Sahara, and eastern dialects near the border of Algeria, preserve

1030-783: A substantial Berber stratum that increases from the east to the west of the Maghreb, making Moroccan Arabic dialects the ones most influenced by Berber. More recently, the influx of Andalusi people and Spanish-speaking– Moriscos (between the 15th and the 17th centuries) influenced urban dialects with Spanish substrate (and loanwords). The vocabulary of Moroccan Arabic is mostly Semitic and derived from Classical Arabic . It also contains some Berber , French and Spanish loanwords. There are noticeable lexical differences between Moroccan Arabic and most other Arabic languages. Some words are essentially unique to Moroccan Arabic: daba "now". Many others, however, are characteristic of Maghrebi Arabic as

1133-494: A whole including both innovations and unusual retentions of Classical vocabulary that disappeared elsewhere, such as hbeṭ' "go down" from Classical habaṭ . Others are shared with Algerian Arabic such as hḍeṛ "talk", from Classical hadhar "babble", and temma "there", from Classical thamma . There are a number of Moroccan Arabic dictionaries in existence: Some loans might have come through Andalusi Arabic brought by Moriscos when they were expelled from Spain following

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1236-583: A word, even through several syllables. Emphasis is audible mostly through its effects on neighboring vowels or syllabic consonants, and through the differing pronunciation of /t/ [t͡s] and /tˤ/ [t] . Actual pharyngealization of "emphatic" consonants is weak and may be absent entirely. In contrast with some dialects, vowels adjacent to emphatic consonants are pure; there is no diphthong-like transition between emphatic consonants and adjacent front vowels. Phonetic notes: Through most of its history, Moroccan vernacular Arabic has usually not been written. Due to

1339-501: 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,

1442-495: Is no universally standard written system for Darija. There is also a loosely standardized Latin system used for writing Moroccan Arabic in electronic media, such as texting and chat, often based on sound-letter correspondences from French, English or Spanish ('sh' or 'ch' for English 'sh', 'u' or 'ou' for English 'oo', etc.) and using numbers to represent sounds not found in French or English (2-3-7-9 used for ق-ح-ع-ء, respectively.). In

1545-404: Is not deleted, it is pronounced as a very short vowel, tending towards [ɑ] in the vicinity of emphatic consonants , [a] in the vicinity of pharyngeal /ʕ/ and /ħ/ (for speakers who have merged /a/ and /ə/ in this environment), and [ə] elsewhere. Original short /u/ usually merges with /ə/ except in the vicinity of a labial or velar consonant. In positions where /ə/ was deleted, /u/

1648-418: 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

1751-627: Is the dialectal , vernacular form or forms of Arabic spoken in Morocco. It is part of the Maghrebi Arabic dialect continuum and as such is mutually intelligible to some extent with Algerian Arabic and to a lesser extent with Tunisian Arabic . It is spoken by 90.9% of the population of Morocco. While Modern Standard Arabic is used to varying degrees in formal situations such as religious sermons, books, newspapers, government communications, news broadcasts and political talk shows, Moroccan Arabic

1854-657: Is the predominant spoken language of the country and has a strong presence in Moroccan television entertainment, cinema and commercial advertising. Moroccan Arabic has many regional dialects and accents as well, with its mainstream dialect being the one used in Casablanca , Rabat , Tangier , Marrakesh and Fez , and therefore it dominates the media and eclipses most of the other regional accents. SIL International classifies Moroccan Arabic, Hassaniya Arabic and Judeo-Moroccan Arabic as different varieties of Arabic. Moroccan Arabic

1957-444: 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

2060-429: Is writing: ka-ye-kteb She is/it is writing: ka-te-kteb We are writing: ka-n-ketb-u You (plural) are writing: ka-t-ketb-u They are writing: ka-y-ketb-u The stem kteb turns into ketb before a vowel suffix because of the process of inversion described above. Between the prefix ka-n-, ka-t-, ka-y- and the stem kteb , an e appears but not between the prefix and the transformed stem ketb because of

2163-633: 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

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2266-657: The Karagöz puppet show, which concerns the adventures of two stock characters: Karagöz (meaning "black-eyed" in Turkish) and Hacivat (meaning "İvaz the Pilgrim"). Evening performances of the show are particularly popular during Ramadan in North Africa. Devshirme Devshirme ( Ottoman Turkish : دوشیرمه , romanized :  devşirme , lit.   'collecting', usually translated as "child levy" or "blood tax" )

2369-669: 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

2472-474: 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

2575-614: The Christian Reconquest or, alternatively, they date from the time of the Spanish protectorate in Morocco . Note: All sentences are written according to the transcription used in Richard Harrell, A Short Reference Grammar of Moroccan Arabic (Examples with their pronunciation) .: (Transliterated) (Transliterated) (Transliterated) The regular Moroccan Arabic verb conjugates with a series of prefixes and suffixes. The stem of

2678-755: The Maliki school . Today the Hanafi school is still followed by the descendants of Turkish families who remain in the region. Traditionally, their mosques are in the Ottoman architectural style and are particularly identifiable from their Turkish-style octagonal minarets . Words and expressions from the Turkish language , to varying degrees, are still used in most varieties of the Maghrebi derjas and spoken Arabic in North Africa and

2781-777: The Middle East . For example, in Algeria an estimated 634 Turkish words are still used today in Algerian Arabic . Approximately 800 to 1,500 Turkish loanwords are still used in Egyptian Arabic , and between 200 and 500 in Libyan and Tunisian Arabic . Turkish loanwords have also been influential in countries which were never conquered by the Ottomans, such as in Moroccan Arabic . Furthermore,

2884-602: 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

2987-624: 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

3090-543: 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

3193-790: The diglossic nature of the Arabic language , most literate Muslims in Morocco would write in Standard Arabic, even if they spoke Darija as a first language. However, since Standard Arabic was typically taught in Islamic religious contexts, Moroccan Jews usually would not learn Standard Arabic and would write instead in Darija, or more specifically a variety known as Judeo-Moroccan Arabic , using Hebrew script. A risala on Semitic languages written in Maghrebi Judeo-Arabic by Judah ibn Quraish to

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3296-436: 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

3399-543: 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

3502-428: 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

3605-555: The Arabic language adopted several technical terms of Turkish origin as well as artistic influences. The cultural interaction between the Arabs and Turks influenced the music of the Arab provinces significantly. New maqamat in Arabic music emerged (i.e. Makam , a Turkish system of melody types), such as al-Hijazkar, Shahnaz and Naw’athar, as well as technical music terminologies. The Turks introduced

3708-543: 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

3811-519: 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

3914-449: 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

4017-802: 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

4120-503: 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

4223-556: 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

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4326-570: The Jews of Fes dates back to the ninth-century. Al-Kafif az-Zarhuni's epic 14th century zajal Mala'bat al-Kafif az-Zarhuni , about Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman al-Marini's campaign on Hafsid Ifriqiya , is considered the first literary work in Darija. Most books and magazines are in Modern Standard Arabic ; Qur'an books are written and read in Classical Arabic , and there

4429-524: 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

4532-518: 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

4635-591: 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

4738-557: 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 ,

4841-484: 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

4944-690: The Turks also introduced words from the Persian language to the region, which were originally borrowed for the Ottoman Turkish language . The majority of Turkish loanwords in Arabic are used for private life (such as food and tools), law and government, and the military. Ottoman rule left a profound influence on the cuisine of North Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Even today, many dishes produced in different countries throughout these regions are derived from

5047-497: 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

5150-504: 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,

5253-482: 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

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5356-641: 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

5459-406: 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

5562-543: 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

5665-484: The conjugated verb may change a bit, depending on the conjugation: The stem of the Moroccan Arabic verb for "to write" is kteb . The past tense of kteb (write) is as follows: I wrote: kteb-t You wrote: kteb-ti (some regions tend to differentiate between masculine and feminine, the masculine form is kteb-t , the feminine kteb-ti ) He/it wrote: kteb (can also be an order to write; kteb er-rissala: Write

5768-425: 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

5871-449: 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

5974-495: 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

6077-455: 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

6180-807: 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

6283-622: The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, many upper-class women in Libya were of Turkish origins. This Turkish elite held a deep kinship for the Ottoman state, which increased further during the Italo-Turkish War in favour of the Ottoman state. The majority of Turkish-speaking Ottoman Muslims adhered to the Hanafi school of Islam , in contrast to the majority of the North African subjects, who followed

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6386-419: 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

6489-550: 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

6592-407: 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

6695-432: 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

6798-501: 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

6901-422: The extent to which emphatic consonants affect nearby vowels) occurs much less than in Egyptian Arabic . Emphasis spreads fairly rigorously towards the beginning of a word and into prefixes, but much less so towards the end of a word. Emphasis spreads consistently from a consonant to a directly following vowel, and less strongly when separated by an intervening consonant, but generally does not spread rightwards past

7004-431: 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

7107-479: 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

7210-483: 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

7313-415: 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

7416-452: 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

7519-485: The last few years, there have been some publications in Moroccan Darija, such as Hicham Nostik 's Notes of a Moroccan Infidel , as well as basic science books by Moroccan physics professor Farouk El Merrakchi . Newspapers in Moroccan Arabic also exist, such as Souq Al Akhbar, Al Usbuu Ad-Daahik, the regional newspaper Al Amal (formerly published by Latifa Akherbach ), and Khbar Bladna (news of our country), which

7622-502: The later era of the Beylik of Tunis janissaries were less used, and replaced by more modern infantry units and Mamluks . Turkish-speaking Anatolians were considered ideal migrants to ensure the Turkification of the region. Furthermore, the authorities initially banned Turkish speakers from using the Arabic language ; this allowed the Turkish language to remain the prestigious language of

7725-741: 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

7828-412: The letter) She/it wrote: ketb-et We wrote: kteb-na You (plural) wrote: kteb-tu / kteb-tiu They wrote: ketb-u The stem kteb turns into ketb before a vowel suffix because of the process of inversion described above. The present tense of kteb is as follows: I am writing: ka-ne-kteb You are (masculine) writing: ka-te-kteb You are (feminine) writing: ka-t-ketb-i He's/it

7931-559: The migration of Arab nomadic tribes to Morocco in the 11th century, particularly the Banu Hilal , which the Hilalian dialects are named after. The Hilalian dialects spoken in Morocco belong to the Maqil subgroup, a family that includes three main dialectal areas: One of the most notable features of Moroccan Arabic is the collapse of short vowels. Initially, short /a/ and /i/ were merged into

8034-414: 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

8137-400: 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

8240-486: 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

8343-631: The population in Ottoman Tripolitania . In other territories such as the Regency of Algiers the number of janissaries progressively got lower. During the 17th century for example, more than 12,000 janissaries were stationed in Algiers, but by 1800 only 4,000 janissaries were Turks, with the majority of the janissaries being Kouloughlis and renegades, with some Algerians. In the Regency of Tunis, especially during

8446-706: 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

8549-403: The region till the nineteenth century. Koloğlu has estimated that approximately a million Ottoman soldiers from Anatolia , and the Balkans migrated to the Regency of Algiers, the Regency of Tunis , and Ottoman Tripolitania, usually from the port of İzmir . The majority of these troops arrived during the 16th and 17th century, and by the 18th and 19th century their numbers were lower. Although

8652-747: 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 . Moroccan Arabic Moroccan Arabic ( Arabic : العربية المغربية الدارجة , romanized :  al-ʻArabiyyah al-Maghribiyyah ad-Dārija lit.   ' Moroccan vernacular Arabic ' ), also known as Darija ( الدارجة or الداريجة ),

8755-420: The same name, usually a variation of a Turkish word (such as baklava or dolma ). The capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople ( Istanbul ), was the central location where specialists in art, literature, and the scientists from all over the provinces would gather to present their work. Hence, many people were influenced here and would borrow from the masterpieces they came into contact with. Consequently,

8858-586: 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

8961-463: 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

9064-481: 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

9167-451: The term "köleoğlu" implied the term "son of", the Turkish population in North Africa was not solely made up of men. Indeed, Ottoman women also migrated to the region, although in much lower numbers than men. There also existed Kouloughlis born of North African men, and Turkish women, such as Ibn Hamza al-Maghribi , an Algerian mathematician. Moreover, the offspring of Turkish men and North African women would have included females too. Up until

9270-476: 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

9373-708: 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

9476-402: The vicinity of emphatic consonants and [ q ] , [ χ ] , [ ʁ ] , [ r ] , but [æ], [i], [u] elsewhere. (Most other Arabic dialects only have a similar variation for the phoneme /aː/ .) In some dialects, such as that of Marrakech , front-rounded and other allophones also exist. Allophones in vowels usually do not exist in loanwords . Emphatic spreading (i.e.

9579-416: 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

9682-412: Was also deleted, and is maintained only as labialization of the adjacent labial or velar consonant; where /ə/ is maintained, /u/ surfaces as [ʊ] . This deletion of short vowels can result in long strings of consonants (a feature shared with Amazigh and certainly derived from it). These clusters are never simplified; instead, consonants occurring between other consonants tend to syllabify, according to

9785-510: 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

9888-483: 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

9991-670: Was formed of several dialects of Arabic belonging to two genetically different groups: pre-Hilalian and Hilalian dialects. Pre-Hilalian dialects are a result of early Arabization phases of the Maghreb , from the 7th to the 12th centuries, concerning the main urban settlements, the harbors, the religious centres ( zaouias ) as well as the main trade routes. The dialects are generally classified in three types: (old) urban, "village" and "mountain" sedentary and Jewish dialects. In Morocco, several pre-Hilalian dialects are spoken: Hilalian dialects ( Bedouin dialects ) were introduced following

10094-625: Was published by Tangier-based American painter Elena Prentice between 2002 and 2006. The latter also published books written in Moroccan Arabic, mostly novels and stories, written by authors such as Kenza El Ghali and Youssef Amine Alami . Moroccan Arabic is characterized by a strong Berber , as well as Latin ( African Romance ), substratum . Following the Arab conquest , Berber languages remained widely spoken. During their Arabisation , some Berber tribes became bilingual for generations before abandoning their language for Arabic; however, they kept

10197-519: 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

10300-426: 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

10403-432: 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

10506-533: Was the son of a Kouloughli, and thus he himself was a Kouloughli. Because of this, many Kouloughli families formed independent of native North African and Turkish ones. According to the Turco-Libyan historian Orhan Koloğlu , throughout the 400 years of Ottoman rule in the Maghreb and more generally North Africa , the Ottoman administration ensured that Ottoman soldiers from the Odjak of Tripoli, formed at least 5% of

10609-414: 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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