Homer Pavlos@HomerPavlos
For 300 years the Muslim Turks were stealing kids from their mothers and putting taxes on the Christians. Before Jizya, in Greece we had the "haraç" (charatsi). It was a form of land tax imposed by the Muslim Turks on "non-Muslim subjects", from the 15th century until the empire's reforms in the 19th century (20–50% of income). Originating from the Islamic "kharaj" (a tax on agricultural land), it evolved into a poll-like tax levied on individuals based on their ability to pay, often tied to land ownership or household wealth. In principle, it served as a counterpart to the "zakat" (charitable tax) paid by Muslims, but in practice, it functioned as a discriminatory burden on "dhimmis" (protected non-Muslims) under the Ottoman millet system, which granted limited autonomy to religious communities like the Greek Orthodox in exchange for fiscal obligations.
Collection was reformed in 1834 during the Tanzimat era, shifting to a more centralized commission-based system, and it eventually merged with the "Jizya" (head tax) by the late 19th century.
Now, combine all these practices from the muslims: Collecting children (devşirme), insane taxes (haraç), tortures like skinning alive and other practises to convert Christians, and also the slave trade.
Greek population in Anatolia & Aegean islands fell -30% via enslavement, tortures or conversion.
Harac + slave raids drained villages of labor. Greece under the Ottoman occupation was -50% below Western Europe by 1800. We Greeks, call the Ottomans as "the Grand Masters of Torture". Millions of Greeks died or became muslims. Many of them are calling themselves "Turks" today. These people are the most fanatics against the Christians and the Greeks because they were raised with lies to hate their own ancestral bloodline and history.
The devshirme was the greatest wound inflicted on Hellenism during the period of Turkish rule. 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.
For 300 years the Ottoman Turks were stealing 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 the them. The devşirme 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. 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.
Historians estimate the total number of Christian boys taken across the entire Ottoman Empire around 300.000 kids. From those kids 150.000 were Greek kids (over 300 years). It means the half of the total kids that were stolen were only Greek. It's insane. For example in 1540, a levy in territories 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.
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 system accelerated Islamization in Greek regions, reducing Christian populations and creating a class of "Greek Muslims" (for example in Pontus or Crete). It fueled revolts and the Greek War of Independence (1821), where devşirme grievances were invoked.
