Greeks under Turkish rule..

[Greece4Ever]

If you dont mind Prokomenos I would like to continue this section on the Greek war of Independence. I asked the owner of Hellenic Life if we can use his material and he said no problem.


Greeks under Turkish Rule

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottomans life for Hellenes changed drastically. Some would say it was the evil era for Hellas and her people. During the rule of the Ottomans, Greeks suffered terribly at the hands of these Turks. Many Greek men, women and children where slaughtered like cattle. Their long lived memories of Hellas diminished. This was a new era for the Greeks of Greece and Asia Minor, 400 years of complete darkness. Thankfully the Greek Orthodox Church was able to keep our people together during those terrible times.



Life for the Greeks under the foreign occupation was a constant nightmare for almost 400 years. Not knowing if they would survive another day or what other tortures awaited them and their people. Thousands of churches , monuments, literature, icons where completely destroyed. Also the Christians who did not convert had to pay heavy taxes to their savage rulers. It would not be hard to believe that's some Greeks most likely converted to Islam in order to spare themselves a harsh life for themselves and their children. In fact in order to give in depth it would impossible for me to put down every detail surrounding all the events for under those 400 years.

One of the biggest issues which incensed the Greeks during the times of Ottoman rule was heavy taxation. Foreigners who visited Greece heard complaints from them about the burden of taxes, also known as the harach (non Muslim tax) or poll tax. During the centuries of this foreign occupation the Greek peasants mostly got the worst of it. They worked as tenants owned by a land lord or by the state. The taxes that they paid was very heavy, and failure to pay lead to either enslavement or death. In addition all the Greeks had to pay the central government taxes at three different levels according to their income. In the sixteenth century conditions worsened for the Greeks. Tax collection was increasingly heavy on the farmers. They paid the bid price over to the treasury, and kept for himself all the taxes he collected. The treasurer could also sell on the tax farming rights at a profit to sub contractors who then needed to be even more rapacious. Tax farmers were know for taking taxes to the maximum, legally or otherwise, from their victims in order to realize their profit. The system became increasingly oppressive. Once it was known that an area was profitable, the tax farming rights were sold for ever higher sums, requiring harsher payments from the peasants.

In the years preceding the revolution, Ali Pasha was a perfect example of a local potentate who increased his private estates at the expense of the long suffering peasants. His plan was sneak but effective. He would establish a foothold in a village by purchasing land, sometimes simply taking as his right. The next step was to put pressure on other villagers to sell to him or by stealing their land. He then would drive them into higher debt at high interest rates through extraordinary measures, and he would set his Albanian soldiers in their houses as a warning. When the peasants could no longer pay their debts, Ali made the village his chiftlik and the villagers in effect his tithe-paying serfs. Ali Pasha and his sons eventually controlled, by one count around, 915 chiftliks. Some areas were favored because the population was on a rise, but Mistra in the Peloponnesus, with a population of 3,000 had to pay the poll tax for 8,500, and the Cycladic island of Milos between 2,000 and 3,000 had to pay for 16,000, and injustice that the Turks took to an extreme. The peasants had no choice but to either flee to the mountains, or took to brigandage, creating a vicious spiral in the Ottoman administration. But as the community population fell, those villagers left the tax burden increased to make up the difference. By the end of the eighteenth century deserted villages were a common site.

Another harsh reality for the Greeks at the time, which still is runs in their national consciousness, was the Turkish system of devshirme: the forcible conscription of young men and their removal to Istanbul ( Constantinople) , to join the imperial service , especially in a military role as jannisaries. From the early days of the Ottoman empire its army had been greatly improved by slave recruits, non Muslim captives from wars of expansion, but as the empire's expansion slowed the source of its troops declined. To make the difference the Ottomans created a compulsory conscription, called devshirme by the Turks and pedhomazoma, or child collection, by the Greeks. Under this system non Muslim youth were forcibly taken as recruits for the so called new troops, the janissaries, which they were brainwashed and converted to Muslim. They became the Sultans personal bodyguard an army.

In 1601 Mehmed III called for a devhirme in Roumeli, northern Greece, ordering the governor-general to make sure that the most good looking, well bodied and spirited youths of the infidels between fifteen and twenty years of age be forcibly taken and sent to the janissary units. The officers in charge of that process were totally ruthless. The infidel parents or anybody else who resisted the surrender of their children, were usually beheaded an then hung in front of their house gate, their blood being considered of no importance. At around 1666 Mehmed IV, increased the age range from 10-20 years old as opposed from 15-20. By the turn of the seventeenth century resistance grew to the devshirme and had become open and violent. In 1705 a Turkish official sent to a northern Greek town of Naoussa to draft fifty new janissaries was killed. The leaders to the resistance fled to the hills but most of them were caught and beheaded in front of all the villagers as an example and then being sent to the governor of Thessalonica. This system was forever and still remembered by all Greeks.

At the end of the eighteenth century the Greeks have been ruled by the Ottoman Empires for 300 years. The Greeks still considered Turks barbarians and foreign interlopers whose occupation of their country would eventually some day have to end. During that same period ideas from abroad began to circulate in Greece.


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