The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam From Jihad to Dhimmitude
By: Bat Ye’or
Forward by Jacques Ellul
CHAPTER 3
Dhimmitufe: Legalistic Foundation and Historic Conditioning (Pages 69-70)
The position of the conquered peoples was neither final nor uniform, but varied with local conditions, the policies of the administrations and the interaction of economic and political factors, such as wars, invasions and uprisings.
These conquered populations had mastered the techniques of civilization: state administration, agriculture, trade, architecture, and various crafts, while their elites were proficient in the complex and varied activities specific to city life and the international econo-poloitical relations of great empires.
The two pillars of the nascent Islamic state in the conquered lands were the army-formed of Arab tribes and the slaves taken as spoils converts, a workforce which fed the economic sector. The third pillar-juridical power was being elaborated. It would undertake the balance and rectify the enormous demographic disparity between the conquered Peoples of the Book and the Muslims. Sometimes allied with the political power and sometimes antagonistic, the legal institution would formulate a collection of laws which gradually whittled away the rights of the dhimmis and confined them to a cramped condition, by transferring to the umma all the key positions that the dhimmis had formerly held.
The legal status of the dhimmis appears at two levels: one mobile and enmeshed in history; the other, fixed in legal dogma.
THE CHARACTERS OF THE CONQUERED LANDS (Pages 70-71)
The Islamization of the conquered lands was both a principle of religious dogma and, in practice, a political and economic process.
Religious Character
All territory taken from infidels became the property (fay) of the state. It formed the dar al-Islam, lands administered by Islamic law for the benefit of Muslims and their descendants. This principle established by the Arab conquest, instituted a political and legal dogma rooted in theology. The introduction of Islamic law into a country consequently implied the status of dhimmitude in all its aspects and regulations.
Islamic law forbade non-Muslims the ownership of land property and transferred it to the Muslim public treasure administered by the caliph.
Dar al-Islam (House of Islam)
Dar al-Islam (Arabic: دار الإسلام literally house/abode of Islam; or Dar as-Salam, house/abode of Peace; or Dar al-Tawhid, house/abode of Union) is a term used by Muslim scholars to refer to those countries where Muslims can practice their religion freely. These are usually Islamic cultures wherein Muslims represent the majority of the population, and so the government promises them protection. Most Dar al-Islam areas are surrounded by other Islamic societies to ensure public protection.
Muslim scholars maintain and believe that the labeling of a country or place as being a part of Dar al-Islam revolves around the question of religious security. This means that if a Muslim practices Islam freely in his place of abode despite that the place happens to be secular or un-Islamic, then he will be considered as living in the Dar al-Islam.
Dar al-Islam is also known and referred to as Dar al-Salam, or house/abode of Peace. The term appears in the Koran in 10.25 an 6.127 as a name of Paradise.[4]
According to Abu Hanifa, considered to be the originator of the concept, the two requirements for a country to be part of Dar al-Islam are:[1][2]
- Muslims must be able to enjoy peace and security with and within this country.
- It has common frontiers with some Muslim countries.
If the former does not apply then physical means such as Jihad can be used to correct the situation and in the latter case, individuals are required to do hijra to where they can practice their religion.
Fiscal Character (Pages 71-77)
The whole mass of land confiscated from non-Muslims (Kharaj Lands)
In the same way as Muhammad had reduced the Jews of Khaybar to the status of tributaries liable to taxation in money and kind for the benefit of the umma, so the conquered population of both East and West became tributaries bound to hand over a percentage of the produce to their soil to the umma.
The Kharaj was the tax that the Muslim state, owner of the land through jihad, levied on the conquered populations who retained possession of their land as tributaries and usufructuaries.
All Kharaj lands were originally lands of booty and war (dar-al-harb); confiscated from the infidels, they henceforth constituted the permanent property of the umma.
Dar al-Harb (House of war)
Dar al-Harb (Arabic: دار الحرب "house of war"; also referred to as Dar al-Garb "house of the West" in later Ottoman sources; a person from "Dar al-Harb" is a "harbi" (Arabic:حربي)) is a term classically referring to those countries where the Muslim law is not in force, in the matter of worship and the protection of the faithful and Dhimmis. Territories that do have a treaty of nonaggression or peace with Muslims are called dar al-ahd or dar al-sulh.[5][dead link]In Reliance of the Traveller, point w43.2, a hadith is referred to containing the exact word Dar al-Harb. Scholars have, nevertheless, disagreed on its reliability as is commented in Reliance of the Traveller.[citation needed]
The taxable area and the state’s revenues diminished considerably. In order to stem this dual source of impoverishment, the Umayyad and the first Abbasid caliphs took measures to attach the Kharaj tax to the land. The dhimmi peasantry, the main source of taxable productivity, were thereby protected against usurpation and pillage.
Fiscal reasons account for this paradoxical policy. The vanquished non-Muslims formed the fay-the caliph’s spoils or wars-bound to pay him tribute, while the Arabs, having contributed to victory, claimed from the caliph a share of the booty or allowance. The measures of restitution of property to the native inhabitants and their maintenance in their villages consequently increased the caliph’s land and his receipts.
The accommodation and maintenance of the tithe owners and tax collector and the gifts they demand from their hosts completed the ruin of the villages.
In Egypt at the same period, the dhimmis, ruined by taxation, abandoned their lands and villages. Pursued by the tax collectors, they were brought back by force. Taking advantage of the right of conquest over non-Muslims, the state recouped its loses from the insolvent Coptic peasantry by enslaving their children.
Anxious to preserve productivity from the land and the volume of taxation, the Ottomans protected the peasants. In remote and in accessible regions of Serbia, the Turkish administration left a large degree of autonomy to the villages, where mayors, elected by the population, allocated taxes and served as intermediaries to the Turks. In this way the Serbian national language and traditions were preserved.
This relatively tolerant and enlightened policy toward their Christian raya subjects on the part of the Ottomans explains the survival of an indigenous peasantry in European Turkey after centuries of Muslims domination, while in the Arabize regions, with the exception of Egypt, the Christian and Jewish peasantries had been almost totally eliminated.
JIZYA (Pages 77-79)
The basis for the injunction to participate in the jihad and to exact the jizya are found in the Koranic verse 9:29
“Fight those who believe not in God/Allah and the Last Day, and do not forbid what God/Allah and His Messenger has forbidden-such men as practice not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Good-till they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled.”
The poll tax was extorted by torture. The tax inspectors demanded gifts for themselves; widows and orphans were pillaged and despoiled. “They mercilessly struck honorable men and old hoary elders.” These evils afflicted the whole Abbasid empire.
***According to some jurists, the poll tax had to be paid by each person individually at a humiliating public ceremony; while paying it, the dhimmi was struck either on his head or on the nap of his neck. This blow to the neck, a symbol of the non-Muslim’s humiliation, was repeated over the centuries and survived unchanged till the dawn of the twentieth century, being ritually performed in Arab-Muslim countries.***
***When traveling it was compulsory in the Middle Ages for dhimmis to bear the jizya receipt, a piece of parchment worn around the neck or a seal worn on the wrist or on the chest; a dhimmi traveling without this receipt risked death. The seal of the jizya, characteristic of the dhimmi, was soon regarded as a stigma. In the Ottoman Empire, the receipt had to be produced at the demand of tax collectors or pain of immediate imprisonment, for the dhimmis were easily recognizable by their distinctive costume and could be controlled in the street.***
OTHER TAXES (AWARID: IRREGULAR TAXES) (Pages 79-80)
Apart from taxes, considerable ransoms were arbitrarily extorted from the communities, generally by the imprisonment and torture of their representatives, prelates, or notables. If tribute was not given, the women and children were reduced to slavery. It was not only the state that levied taxes. Nomadic tribes and all the rebels and heads of bands-those floating, migrant, or displaced populations without a stable habitat and professional occupation-satisfied their needs by pillage and ransoming dhimmis.
***Over the centuries, paying for their security and survival became the characteristic of the dhimmi communities and the prime condition of their tolerated existence in their own countries. However, instead of buying their survival from the state-the sole representative of the umma-regional fragmentation and the weakness of the authorities allowed the various clans to practice their pillage.***
PUBLIC OFFICE (Pages 80-81)
The exclusion of dhimmis from public office was based on numerous verses of the Koran (3:27, 114-115; 5:56) and on hadith which forbade either a Christian or a Jew from exerting authority over a Muslim.
INEQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW (Pages 81-83)
All litigation between a Muslim and a dhimmi was under the jurisdiction of Islamic legislation, which did not recognize the validity of the oath of a dhimmi against that of a Muslim. It determined the chronic corruptibility of Muslim judges and witnesses, bribed by dhimmis, who were thereby forced to purchase their innocence.
According to hadith, the refusal to accept the testimony of the dhimmis was based on the belief in the perverse and mendacious character of the infidels since they stubbornly persisted in denying the superiority of Islam.
The Ottomans introduced a new administrative system-the mejjel (1840) –which dealt with civil and criminal affairs according to modified codes of law derived from European, mainly French, jurisprudence. This change provided the base of a different system of justice that recognized the dhimmis’ testimony.
Muslim law applies the lex talionis:
In retaliation there is life for you, men possessed of minds; haply you will be God fearing. (Koran 2:175).
The lex talionis could be applied only between equal parties, that is between Muslims. It was not applicable between a Muslim and a dhimmis, due to the latter’s inferior status as a human being.
WORSHIP (Pages 83-87)
Places of Worship
***In theory the laws concerning places of worship depended on the circumstances of the conquest and the terms of the treaties. Construction of new churches, convents and synagogues was forbidden, but restoration of pre-Islamic places of worship was permitted, subject to certain restrictions and on condition that they were neither enlarged nor altered.***
Political motives dictated the restrictions affecting the indigenous Jewish and Christian religions. Islam was an alien religion, still uninstitutionalized and in a minority throughout the dar al-Islam. It needed to be protected against the seduction of the ancient and brilliant civilization of the People of the Book.
WORSHIP (Pages 83-87) (continued)
Places of Worship
Through the intermediary of Christians close to the caliph, the “people of the dhimma” (Jews and Christians) were able to recover their property, places of worship, houses, domains-confiscated by al Mudabbir in Egypt and Syria-Palestine.
But the repeated destruction caused by nomads or bands of brigands, an endemic evil throughout the empire, escaped all control. Acting as a kind of modern bank, the monasteries became the object of endlessly repeated plundering that caused them to resemble remote strongholds, entrenched behind high walls.
Churches and synagogues were rarely respected. Regarded as places of perversion, they were often burned or demolished in the course of reprisals against infidels found guilty of overstepping their rights.
Ritual (Pages 87-88)
***Dhimmi religious ceremonies and burials had to take place discreetly. Muslims graves had to be distinguished from those of dhimmis. As the infidels cemeteries warranted no respect, they were frequently razed to the ground and the graves desecrated, practices which still continue today in certain Muslim counties.***
As in Christendom in the Middle Ages, apostasy and blasphemy were punished by death. Whether true or false, an accusation of blasphemy against Islam or the Prophet often provoked summary executions of dhimmis.
FORCED CONVERSIONS (Pages 88-91)
The Koran forbids forced conversions. However, the wars and the requirements of Islamic domination over the conquered lands and populations relegated this principle of religious tolerance to the realm of theory. At no period of history was it respected. The jihad, or rather the alternative forced on the Peoples of the Book-namely, payment of tribute and submission to Islamic law or the massacre and enslavement of survivors-is, in its very term, a contravention of the principle of religious freedom.
Persecution under the caliph al-Hakim (996-1021), and later under the Seljuks, provoked the Crusades and brought about the return of intolerance and fanaticism. In Antioch around 1058, Greeks and Armenians were converted by force, torture being used to persuade the recalcitrant’s. After the defeat of the Mongols by the Mamluks in Syria (1260), the Christians of Damascus were pillaged and slaughtered, others were reduced to slavery, and churches were destroyed and burned down.
FORCED CONVERSIONS (Pages 88-91)
During the centuries of Muslim expansion, a continuous flow of non-Muslim peoples supplied the slave markets. The trauma resulting from captivity or slavery prompted unransomed prisoners who had lost family, money, and friends to convert to Islam.
Governed by strict discriminatory laws, the dhimmi condition itself was a religious constraint. As in most cases of massive conversion-which the Koran forbade-religious freedom was eventually restored. A law of 1656 gave Jews or Christian converts to Islam exclusive rights of inheritance. This law was alleviated for the Christians as a concession to Pope Alexander VII but remained in force for Jews till the end of the nineteenth century.
For strategic reasons, the Turks forcibly converted the populations in the frontier regions of Macedonia and northern Bulgaria, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Those who refused were executed or burned alive. In fact, the whole history of the Islamic conquests is punctuated with force conversions.
The abduction of Jewish and Christian dhimmi children also represented a form of forced conversion. Although illegal, there is substantial evidence that it occurred throughout the course of history, either sporadically-ransoming, supplying harems or as a contribution to the tribute-or in an institutionalized way, as in the devshirme system that functioned over three centuries in the Balkans for Christian children (Pages 113).
SEGREGATION AND HUMILIATION (Page 91-99)
***The dhimma required the humiliation of the dhimmis, who were accused of falsifying the Bible by deletions, distortions, and omissions of the prophecies heralding Muhammad’s mission. Their persistence in error, regarded as the mark of a diabolical nature, condemned them to degradation. The tributaries were generally assigned special quarters where their houses had to be inferior, shabbier, and smaller than those of Muslims. Often those houses considered higher than authorized were demolished. Dhimmis could not have Muslim servants nor possess arms, although exceptions seem to have been made much, such as for some of the Jewish tribes in the Moroccan Atlas and central Asia and for the Maronites in Lebanon.***
***In 1697, a Frenchman visiting Cairo noticed that Christians could ride only donkeys and had to dismount when passing distinguished Muslims, “for a Christian must only appear before a Muslim in a humiliating position.” A Jew had to dismount from his donkey when passing a Muslim. An oversight authorized the Muslim to throw him to the ground.***
***In some legal opinions (fatwas), jurists required dhimmis to walk with lowered eyes when passing to the left-the impure side-of Muslim’s, who were encouraged to push them aside. In the presence of a Muslim, the dhimmi has to remain standing in a humble and respectful attitude, only speaking in a low voice when given permission. Jews and Christians were humiliated and maltreated in the streets.***
SEGREGATION AND HUMILIATION (Page 91-99) (continued)
***In Persia and Yemen, at the beginning of the twentieth century, foreigners noticed the low doors that forced the dhimmis-as an additional humiliation-either to stoop or knock their heads when entering their own homes.***
The restrictions imposed on foreign Christians could be even more severe than those applied to the local dhimmis. Nineteenth-century European travelers, who for reasons of security were obliged to reside among the Jews, have left abundant and detailed descriptions of their wretched existence.
The Jews was often the property of his Muslim master and was unable to leave him. Only this condition of servitude guaranteed survival; the master exploited-yet also protected-his Jews against aggression from other tribes, in the same way as he protected his property, tents and flocks.
It is noteworthy that the protection by the Muslim master guaranteed the life of his Jewish serfs. This shows-in its purest form-the Arab notion of protection, which supersedes the principle of the natural rights of the individual. Muslim protection-aman for the foreigner, dhimma for the tributary-governed and circumscribed the rights of non-Muslims and established their ties of dependence.
***A number of laws regulated the dhimmis’ clothes (color, shape and length), the way their hair was cut (Christians had to shave the front of their heads), the shape of their turbans, footwear, and saddles, as well as the attire of their wives, children, and servants. In some regions (Persia, Ifriqiyya), the dhimmis were barred from public bathes; in others, such as Egypt and Palestine, they had to wear small bells to signal their identity in the absence of clothing.***
Often a community fled from persecution in one regions and succeeded in surviving by placing itself under the authority of a more kindly Muslim prince. For example, dhimmis who were oppressed in Persia often took refuge in Afghanistan, and, in certain periods, the Jews of the Maghred and Yemen emigrated to the more tolerant Ottoman Empire.
It was in fact common practice, during campaigns, for Muslims princes, caliphs, sultans, and emirs to take the children of the Christian Kings hostage in order to neutralize them, ensure their obedience, and – should the occasion arise – meddle in dynastic quarrels and place their pupils, duly converted, on the throne.
The application of the dhimma varied according to economic and political circumstances and the extent to which the Islamic power favored one community at the expense of another. The legislation relating to the impurity of Jews and Christians was particularly harsh in Yemen and Persia but not in the Ottoman Empire.
SEGREGATION AND HUMILIATION (Page 91-99) (continued)
The conditions of life differed, depending on whether the area was rural or urban and on the composition of the surround majority: Muslim or dhimmi. Even the geographical relief of the land determined the map of dhimmitude, mountains offered refuge, but plains, open to nomadic depredation, were abandoned by the population.
The dhimmis; condition also depended on the code of legislation applied in each country.
***This system of oppression and humiliation covered vast areas and periods. The practice of contempt molded customs and shaped traditions, the collective consciousness and behavior.***
Arab-Muslim sources rarely refer to the dhimmis, as they were conveniently rejected into nothingness. For this reason, the history of these indigenous peoples of lands which were integrated into the dar al-Islam through jihad could not be described with all its diversity in works by Muslim authors, imbued with the prejudices of their time and acting as apologist for the system. Even the evidence from dhimmi sources would benefit from an assessment based not only on a psychological conditioning in which the notion of collective protection supplanted the notion of individual rights, but also highlighting the antagonisms that opposed dhimmi communities among themselves-even the social conflicts within each of these specific communities.
CHAPTER 4
THE CONQUERED LANDS:
Processes of Islamization (Page 100)
The term “Islamization” here designates a complex political, economic, cultural, religious, and ethic process whereby Islamized Arabs or Turks supplanted those indigenous peoples, civilizations, and religions in the countries which they invaded. In this process one distinguishes factors of fusion-absorption of local cultures by the invaders, conversions of the natives to Islam-and conflicting factors: massacres, slavery, deportation, and the systematic destruction of the cultural and religious expressions of the native civilizations. This evolution does not exclude the simultaneous coexistence of situations both of conflict and of fusion.
It would appear that the Islamization of the conquered lands developed in two states. The first phase consists of a military conflict defined by specific rules, the jihad. The second phase represents the dhimma, or the government of the conquered peoples. While the jihad stipulated the modalities of dividing the booty (land, property, conquered peoples), function to the dhimmis, which consists of supplying the needs of the Muslim community. It was within this functional economic structure that, as in a matrix, the process of Islamization developed.
The extinction of the dhimmi people was the consequence of a multitude of complex factors, either of a fluctuating or permanent nature. These factors took root in an interdependent ensemble: the jihad, as already mentioned; the depredations of the nomads in zones of settled habitation; the stabilization of Islamic jurisdiction over the lands of dhimmitude.
THE NOMADS: FACTORS OF ISLAMIZATION (Pages 100-108)
***The Islamization of the nomads transformed their permanent conflict with the settled populations into a religious conflict: Arab Muslims on the one hand; and on the other, the People of the Book, against whom the Islamic stated discriminated.***
Even though a jurisprudence, codified two centuries after the conquest, theoretically ensured to the dhimmis the conditional inviolability of their lives and property, the actual situation was governed by force, not ethics.
From the beginning of the conquest, as has already been noted, Umar Ibn al-Khattab pressed Arab tribes, particularly those converted to Islam, to migrate to the conquered lands as a means of ensuring the control and loyalty of these tribes. He awarded them land and pensions taken from the dhimmis property. This Arabization began in 638 and expanded systematically under the caliph Uthman.
***One notes that the demographic decrease in the dhimmi populations, the agricultural decline the abandonment of villages and fields, and the gradual desertification of provinces-densely populated and fertile during the pre-Islamic period-are phenomena linked to the immigration of Arabic, Berber (in Spain), and later Turkoman nomadic tribes. The spread of the nomads engendered insecurity, depopulation, and famine.***
It was around the mid-ninth century that most of the monasteries bordering the desert were abandoned. In fact, as the Arabs knew the dates of Christian religious festivities, they used to come down from Upper Egypt in secret to raid them and take booty and slaves from among the pilgrims. The chronicle continues with a description of events in the days which followed and the terror of the Copts, besieged by Arabs who threatened to kill them or to lead them into slavery.
The same chronicle gives a faithful description of the conduct of the nomads in the lands they invaded. At that period, Muslims from Alexandria formed a band to which large numbers of Bedouins rallied. They set fire to towns, killed the people, and collected taxes from the regions they controlled. “They were greater murderers than any peo0ple and they could not be withstood.” They seized the property and domains of the churches which they pillaged in the region of Alexandria and in other places.
THE NOMADS: FACTORS OF ISLAMIZATION (Pages 100-108)[continued]
Deprived of their means of existence the Arab tribes attacked the caliph’s representatives and reimbursed themselves for the unpaid pensions by pillaging the dhimmi populations.
The constant intrusion of the nomadic-Arab world reached its peak with the invasion by the Banu Hilal in the tenth century. Coming from the Arabian peninsula these tribes reduced settled habitation still further by wreaking destruction over an area stretching from the Sudan toward the Near East and as far as the Maghreb.
***The chronicles indicated that even if the conquered populations theoretically enjoyed a protected status under the treaties, they were in fact subject to pillage and violence from rebel or uncontrollable Arab clans, when such assaults did not come from the government itself, as strategic or political needs dictated.***
***In the nineteenth century insecurity still prevailed in all the regions controlled by the nomads. Foreigners and even indigenous dhimmis and Muslims only traveled under armed escort of in a caravan, and no one escaped the “protection money” levied by every chief over the portion of territory he controlled.***
SLAVERY: DEMONGRAPHIC, RELIGIOUS, AND CULTURAL ASPECTS (Pages 108-115)
In this section, only a survey of the Islamic slave system, as it affected one category of the jihad’s victims, will be mentioned and not the slave trade itself.
The jihad slave system included contingents of both sexes delivered annually in conformity with the treaties of submission by sovereigns who were tributaries of the caliph.
However, the main sources of the supply of slaves remained the regular raids on villages within the dar al-harb and the military expeditions which swept more deeply into the infidel lands, emptying towns and provinces of their inhabitants. This strategy practiced from the beginning of Arabo-Islamic expansion by the first four caliphs and then by the Umayyads and their successor, remained constant over all the areas covered by jihad.
Individuals who had been atomized by the loss of family, religious, and social solidarities through slavery and deportation these captives formed the hordes of mawali (emancipated slaves) who filled Arab military camps at the beginning of the conquest. This demographic increase, resulting from the spoils of war, began the process of urbanization which emerged from the eighth century.
The Christians and Jews driven from the Mediterranean countries and Armenia scholars, doctors, architects, craftsmen, and peasants, country folk and town dwellers, bishops, monks, and rabbis-belonged to more complex civilizations than those of the Arab or Turkish tribes.
SLAVERY: DEMONGRAPHIC, RELIGIOUS, AND CULTURAL ASPECTS (Pages 108-115)
Their proficiency, mastery of traditional techniques and manual skill in the various professions added to the wealth of the umma. The most brilliant rose to high office through the influence they gained over their masters.
Villagers captured by the rebels, travelers who were the victims of piracy, prisoners forming war booty to be disposed of by soldiers, or the quaint reserved for the caliph-they worked in the fields, populated the towns, filled the administration and the army, and sometimes rose to the highest positions in the state.
The barriers between the social category of dhimmis and that of slave was hardly ever impervious, since abduction of dhimmi women and children, razzias on villages or dhimmi districts, tribal revolts, or the insolvency of the jizya tax were sufficient to transfer individuals from one day to the next from the category of dhimmi to that of salve. Nothing could be more illusory than to imagine the dhimmi populations enjoying a definitive guaranteed and stable status. On the contrary, the history of dhimmitude shows how fragile were the constantly threatened legal structures which protected it.
The state was not alone in drawing its supplies of slaves from the dhimmi populations. The nomads also replenished their stocks through razzias and ambushes.
The complexity of the historical fabric shows, dhimmitude cannot be defined in an exclusively religious context, for it intrudes upon the ethnic, cultural, and economic conflicts and,, notably-due to the Islamization of the Arab and Turkish nomads-on the antagonism between nomads and sedentary populations.
Historical sources on collective groups, official documents, individual behavior which history has fortuitously preserved-all provide abundant evidence to indicate that the dhimmis offspring were regarded as a reservoir of slaves for economic or political purposes.
It is impossible to assess the number or Christians and Jews who passed form dhimmitude to slavery over the centuries; the last significant group were the thousands of Ottoman Armenian women and children in 1915-1917.
Devshirme (Pages 113-115)
Another important process of Islamization was the devshirme. This practice, introduced by the Ottoman sultan Orkhan (1326-59), consisted of a regular levy, as tribute, of a fifth of the Christian children from the conquered Balkan regions. The interval between levies varied with needs.
Devshirme (Pages 113-115) [continued]
These youngsters, aged between fourteen and twenty, were converted to Islam and entered the corps of janissaries, military militias formed almost exclusively of Christians. The recruiting agents, themselves janissaries, then selected the handsomest and most robust in the presence of the quadi. No father could avoid this blood tribute on pain of severe punishment.
These levies of children gave rise to abuses, the recruiters taking a surplus of children in order to sell them back to their parents. If their poverty-stricken families were unable to redeem them, they remained slaves. Removed from their families, hardened by painful experiences, and turned into fanatics by their education, these soldiers became the cruelest weapon against their own people.
Another parallel recruitment system operated. It provided for the levy of children aged six to ten (ichoghlani), reserved for the sultan’s seraglios. Confined in the palaces and entrusted to eunuchs, they underwent a tyrannical training for fourteen years and furnished the highest hierarchy of officials to the Ottoman state. The devshirme was theoretically abolished in 1656, but recruitment of ichoghlani continued until the mid-eighteen century.
POLITICAL INSTABILITY (Pages 115-121)
In so vast an empire conquered by the sword, the power struggle and the rebellions of nomadic tribes frustrated by the division of booty (land and slaves) unleashed-from the death of the Prophet onward-politico-religious schisms, civil wars, and endemic anarchy from which the dhimmi populations suffered most. Indeed these peoples, with their lands, property and wealth remained the stake in the fight for power within the Arab clans. The Umayyad period, which initiated an intensive Arab colonization, particularly in Syria and Palestine, was a period of civil war, anarchy, and insecurity.
The weakening of a caliph’s power, challenged by rebel clans, implied the destruction of the economic foundations of his strength and the usurpation of his territories, and the workforce from which he drew his revenues.
The uprising and the continual pursuit of jihad required constant troop movements over the territory. The obligation on the dhimmis to accommodate these numerous armies and to provide for their needs ruined the villagers who were often robbed by their guests.
The ongoing jihad against the Christians exacerbated fanaticism. “At that time [1140], every Christian who mentioned the name of the king of the Greeks or of the Franks, even unwittingly, the Turks slew.
POLITICAL INSTABILITY (Pages 115-121) [continued]
***One of the causes-probably the main one-for the extinction of the indigenous dhimmi communities was not only the permanent state of war against the external infidels (harbs), but also the inter-Muslim wars and the anarchy within the dar al-Islam itself.***
Caliphs, sultans, emirs, or provincial governors-whether Arab or Turkish-encouraged the emigration and settlement of their tribes on the conquered lands in order to consolidate their power against their rivals. The nomads, whose numbers increased incessantly, could only maintain their essential needs by pillaging villages and towns, confiscating goods, extorting money under torture, and ransoming and abducting the youth who were a marketable commodity and a source of wealth as slaves. Towns offered more security than the countryside, although anarchy and the love of booty remained a constant incitement to pillage and burn or ransom dhimmi districts.
The holy war being the cornerstone of the Ottoman state and the source of its expansion strength, and wealth, the government and administration of the empire was entirely dominated by militaristic imperatives.
The people fled and hid themselves in caverns, mountains and caves. “So it was that all the villages of the Ararad were sacked, devastated and all the food grain removed, as well as the inhabitants.”
Ethnic changes were accompanied by the transfer to the Muslim state of land ownership (fay), religious property, building (churches and synagogues which had become mosques), and of property in mortmain (waaf). With these recurring infiltrations, the indigenous groups entered a phase of irreversible extinction caused by flight, ruin, the destruction of traditional ways of life, and of the homogeneity of the human, social, cultural, and religious fabric.
THE DHIMMI: ECONOMIC FUNCTION (Pages 121-123)
The economic function of the non-Muslim is a crucial and fundamental factor which governed the dar al-Islam – dar al-harb relationship. It was the demands for tribute that unleashed the jihad; it was its payment by the vanquished that ended it. The origin and legal justification of the tribute was based on a Koranic verse (9:29) and on the tribute which the Prophet levied on Jewish and Christian villagers in Arabia. The tribute was the umma’s primary source of wealth, which rescued it from poverty. Tribute in cash, in kind, and in manpower was constantly invested in the machinery of war and conquest which it fed, thereby strengthening its power and domination. ***Booty and tribute were basic foundation of the politico-theological system of jihad and justified riads and razzias.*** It was tribute which theoretically guaranteed the lives and safety of the multitude; laborers, craftsmen, traders, villagers, and town dwellers, whether Christians – Nestorians, Jacobites, Melchites Zoroastrians, or Jews who peopled the territories Islamized by the jihad. ***That is why tribute links the concepts of jihad to that of the dhimma.***
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THE DHIMMI: ECONOMIC FUNCTION (Pages 121-123) [continued]
The nomad practice of holding settled population to ransom was well established in Arabia and encapsulated the principle of clientalism. It sealed the alliance between the settled population-laborers or craftsmen-and the nomads, shepherds, and warriors. The latter refrained from pillaging the settled population and protected them from other tribes on payment of a ransom in money or in kind.
The fiscal extortion practiced by tribal chiefs or governors constituted a more significant erosive factor in the destruction of dhimmi societies than the excessive taxed levied by the state.
A part from its economic and ethnic characteristics, tribute had a religious role which determined its perception and destination. This theological dimension, which transcended the economic aspect, excludes any assimilation with the principle of taxation.
THE TRIBUE: FACTOR OF RECUPERATION AND OF COLLUSION (Pages 123-124)
After the Arab conquest, the Christian notables kept the economic and administrative power whereas executive, political, and military power became exclusively Islamic.
The collection of different forms of tribute was delegated to the religious leaders of the vanquished peoples. They divided the total amount due among their communities and paid the Islamic treasury the fixed sum, having deducted their part.
The caliph gave his seal to the appointment of the notable or patriarch who pledged to extort the highest tribute from his community. The Christian religious leaders, assisted by the notables, administered the colossal revenues constituted by the taxes levied on their coreligionists.
THE CALIPHATE: PROTECTING POWER OF THE DHIMMIS (Pages 124-128)
The enrollment of militias of Kurdish and Turkish slaves for the jihad extended the destructive attacks to Asia Minor, the Balkans, and into the heart of Europe.
In this violent upheaval, the caliph represented order, authority and stability. In his capacity as ruler, he initiated peace or war inside the dar al-Islam, judge conflicts between dhimmis, and ensured that the law was carried out. The caliph protected his subjects against the hordes of immigrants who left barren Arabia for the rich lands of booty.
***The caliphate appeared as the authority protecting the indigenous tributaries against the exactions of Bedouin tribes.***
This conflict between the state and the nomads, renewed over generations through the dar al-Islam, explains the tendency of Christian and Jewish dhimmis to refer with gratitude to the supreme Islamic authority, which represented an d guaranteed order and continuity-the foundations of civilization – against anarchy and destruction.
THE CALIPHATE: PROTECTING POWER OF THE DHIMMIS (Pages 124-128)[continued]
Whatever the political issues in the recurring wars and revolts, the dhimmis always ranged themselves under the protection of the party in power, entrusting their safety and their rights to the religious and judicial bodies of the Muslim state: the sharia and the dhimma.
Through the mediation of their representatives, the dhimmi were able to pass their complaints on to the caliph and appeal to him for justice.
Much emphasis has been placed on the way the caliphate exploited schism in order to destroy communities; however, it seems more likely that the different communities destroyed themselves by the intensity of the hatred and fanaticism which set them against each other even before the advance of Islam.
There abundant evidence of the good will of the Islamic authorizes, caliphs or regional governors, toward the dhimmi notables who represents their community; high officials, doctors, astrologers, and administrators.
It is at this level that the plurireligious symbiosis in the dar al-Islam is apparent. Thus it is in this contradictory relationship protection and oppression determined by economic, ideological, and political factors, that the condition of dhimmitude was perpetuated in history, with positive or negative variations.
OPPRESSION AND COLLABORATION (Pages 128-131)
Islamic domination over Christian populations was successfully imposed and consolidated due to a close collaboration between the Muslim state and dhimmi leaders, who combined spiritual and temporal power.
***In general, the whole system of dhimmitude was based on the combination of the relationship between the domination by the umma and the subjection of the vanquished, which implied collaboration.*** Collaboration was inescapable since the appointment of the civil or religious leaders of the dhimmi secured the allegiance of valuable assistant.
Scribes, secretaries, treasurers, accountants, architects, craftsmen, peasants, doctors, scholars, diplomats, translators, and politicians, the Christians formed the base, the texture, the elite, and the sinews of the Muslim empire. It is probable that without their collaboration the creation and expansion of this empire would not have been possible. The caliph’s closest collaborators-his counselors-were often Zoroastrians converted to Islam, but mainly Christians, whereas his person militia, the backbone of his army, was formed of Christians prisoners. Not only were they more clever and more skillful than others, but their vulnerability as dhimmi or slaves assured him of loyalty that he would not have found among his coreligionists.
OPPRESSION AND COLLABORATION (Pages 128-131) [continued]
This Christian-Islamic collaboration, embedded in the struggles and goals for power, was not confined to the field of politics. It existed at the highest levels of the Orthodox religious hierarchy, anxious to protect the numerous peoples it controlled from Catholic proselytism.
Collaboration also occurred at the military level as well as in the political and religious spheres.
Whether it was on the military, economic, religious, political, and social plane in the relationships between states or the prolonged relationships in the submission to dhimmitude-collaboration and alliance, fusion and integration, constituted a dynamic of syncretism and evolution which traversed and molded history.
OTHER PROCESSES OF ISLAMIZATION (Pages 131-136)
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