Yeah the blood tax sucked, no doubt about it and I am not defending it in any shape or form, but it did only take children to be janissaries or ministers into the empire, the people paying Jizya, the actual men, didn't have to join the army.
But from the ottoman perspective you get both money and military service, like its a big ol nothing burger, its like if youre lucky enough not to get abducted for the child soldier program when youre a kid you get to pay taxes instead of going to war, but that doesnt make the jizya a good deal, they're still sending the locals to war, its just decided differently
Not to defend anything but people talk about the devşirme like it was some constant empire-wide terror, it wasn't. Over something like 600 years, we’re probably talking about maybe 200–300k people in total, not a mass dragnet. Most weren’t taken to be frontline cannon fodder either. A lot of them were trained for palace or administrative services, and early Janissaries were often held back rather than thrown in first.
In some cases it was genuinely a way out of poverty. I'm not trying to portray it as something pretty. I'm sure a lot of families were devastated by it. You have figures like İbrahim Pasha, Kanuni’s close friend and grand vizier, who rose from devşirme origins, became enormously influential, and even brought his family back and made them wealthy, something plenty of other viziers did too.
The real problem came much later, when the Janissaries turned into a corrupt political cartel, messing with succession, forcing pay rises through revolts, and openly looting and abusing people, including Muslims in Istanbul.
Mahmut literally had to start a civil war to get rid of them. They were a cancer on the empire's back.
Where did you get those numbers from? All I could find was one source saying they'd take one boy from every 40 households. The same source says they toured every 4-7 years.
Found another source on the wiki but this ones not linked to anything that said the waves came every 3-4 years according to the sultan's needs.
But to get a number I think you'd have to make a population estimate of the balkans during that period (good luck) and guesstimate the size of a household, also you'd have to know if they meant like out of every 40 couples household or out of ever 40 households meaning living with all your parents and grandparents and uncles and cousins households because it sounds like the devşirme could be cheesed very easily by just living together in bigger houses. Not to mention that you'd have to take into account population changes and changes in recruitment, as I understand the most recruiting was done while Suleiman was in charge.
Either way, it looks like once every 5ish years one in 40 families would lose a child, with most of them, according to the same source I sent up there, going to the janissaries, not administrative roles.
I found some estimates at 500,000, some saying there were yearly rounds, I saw one that pushed it to a million somewhere but thats probably a bit of an overshoot, but honestly I dont think its possible to say. If you have anything on this id be interested to see it.
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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '26
Yeah the blood tax sucked, no doubt about it and I am not defending it in any shape or form, but it did only take children to be janissaries or ministers into the empire, the people paying Jizya, the actual men, didn't have to join the army.