Anne Harris Wyckoff

For 300 years the Ottoman Turks were stealing Christian kids from their mothers. This was the most brutal thing humanity ever witnessed. They were waiting for women to birth, raise their kids, and then at the age of 8 were collecting them. The devsirme known as "collection of children" or "blood tax" or in Greek as "paidomazoma", was a systematic practice by the Ottoman Empire from the late 14th century until the mid-17th century, that forced the recruitment of young Christian boys, typically aged 8–18, from Balkan provinces as a form of tribute. The Turkish envoy would appear in the villages and demand that all fathers present themselves before him with their sons. From these, he selected the best-built and strongest to become Janissaries. Initially, the Turks took children aged 6-7 years, and only one child per family. Later, however, recruitment extended to ages 8-10, and gradually the number of children per family increased, until it was possible for all male children to be taken. Christians went so far as to marry off their boys at a young age or convert to the faith voluntarily to avoid the child levy. But even this was not always helpful, since the Turks paid little attention to such details. The child levy was perhaps the greatest wound for Christians during Turkish rule. These boys were taken from their families, converted to Islam, and rigorously trained to serve in the empire's military, administrative, and bureaucratic roles. This created a loyal class of elite soldiers and officials who were dependent on the sultan rather than on hereditary Turkish aristocracy. They were separated according to ability and could rise in rank based on merit. The most promising boys known as "inner boys", received elite education in Constantinople's Enderun School, covering warfare, administration, sciences, and Islamic theology. Many became Janissaries, the empire's elite infantry corps, or rose to high positions like grand viziers, provincial governors, admirals, or financial bureaucrats. We estimate the total number of Christian boys taken across the entire Ottoman Empire (primarily Eastern Europe aka Balkans) around 300.000 kids. From those kids at least 180.000 were Greek kids (over 300 years 1362-1648). It means more than the half of the total kids that were stolen were only Greek. For example in 1540, a levy in the regions of Thessaly & Macedonia took 1.000 Greek boys in one season and in Chios (Greek island) 200 boys taken in 1567 alone. The peak was 5.000 kids/annual from Greece. A generational trauma, with thousands of Greek families losing sons every few years for centuries. The system began under Sultan Murad I (1362–1389) and largely ended by 1648. Greeks, as a major Christian population in the Ottoman Balkans, were heavily affected by the devsirme. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Ottoman control extended over most Greek lands, making Greek Orthodox families prime targets for recruitment. On 28 February 1395, Archbishop Isidore Glabas of Thessaloniki denounced it in a speech as "paidomazoma" (child-gathering), describing the anguish of parents: "mothers scratching their cheeks in grief and fathers beating their breasts and the violent Islamization of children and their hard training in the use of dogs and falcons." A 1550 Greek poem by Ioannes Axayiolis, appealed to Charles V of Germany to liberate the Christians from the Turks (for liberation from this "sorrow"). 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 the latter to accept Pavlos Omeros (lol my name literaly Pavlos Homeros too), a 12-year-old boy from Chios, to save him from the devshirme. Once taken, boys were circumcised, renamed with Muslim names, and forbidden from contact with their families. They were raised as Muslims, effectively erasing their Greek cultural and religious identity to foster loyalty to the sultan. Historical records show Greek-origin devşirme boys rising to prominence, such as Mimar Sinan (chief architect of the Ottomans, possibly Greek) and several grand viziers like Ibrahim Edhem Pasha (from Chios). The devshirme was the greatest wound inflicted on Hellenism during the period of Turkish tyranny. The children who were seized were considered definitively lost. In Epirus, in fact, on the first Sunday after the abduction, their parents would go to church dressed in black, where a funeral service was chanted. In this service, the names of the children were read aloud as if they were dead. Now, I think you understand who the real ancestors of the Muslim Turks are and why they are afraid of DNA tests. Keep in mind that whole villages and cities in Anatolia were wholly Islamized, and they became Ottomans and Muslim Turks (from Christian Greeks, Armenians, etc.) in "one night." This is one of the many reasons Turkey is a paper nation, a sandcastle, a pseudo-nation without historical and genetic continuity. If you want to support me in the effort I’m making, please consider becoming a subscriber to my X account for only $2. I write about the ancient, medieval, and modern history of Greece and what Christians went through because of Islam. Always with primary sources and historical facts. Thanks for reading me and for all the support. - Homer Pavlos