Employment of Slaves in the Classical Ottoman Empire

In all Islamic societies private individuals could own slaves and in a great number of them slaves provided soldiers and administrators, while in some they virtually comprised the ruling class. In the Ottoman Empire, too, slaves rose to pre-eminence and gradually came to constitute part of the ruling class. Nevertheless, they stopped short of turning the state into a mamiuk sultanate by grasping the reins of power for themselves. The Ottomans greatly improved upon the classical Islamic system of military-governmental slavery by introducing the devşirme system in apparent contradiction of the religious law, theŞeriat. Here it will be argued that such a contradiction did not exist at the introductory stages of the devşrme. In this chapter I shall also look at the employment of slaves as soldiers and administrators and briefly discuss their status.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Contradiction · Empire · Islam · Ottoman empire · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Ruling class · State (computer science) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy

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