ABSTRACT
The Ottoman state, the last great Islamic empire of the successive Mediterranean Muslim states since the Umayyads, was based on the principles of the Islamic Law (Şeriat). Within this context, the Ottoman administration regarded subject Christian and Jewish populations as ‘people of the book’ (Ehli Kitab) and acknowledged them as separate communities, known as millets. These communities were also considered as Ehli Zımmî, i.e., people ‘protected’ by the Islamic authority, and each member of these communities called a zımmî. Each of these populations was left autonomous in civil issues such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and education that were traditionally regarded as belonging to the realm of religion. Another feature of the religious communities was their administration by their respective church or clergy. The head of a non-Muslim community was at the same time the head of the church, i.e., the patriarch was responsible for the secular issues of his community. Before 1830 the main officially recognized non-Muslim communities within the empire were the Greek Orthodox, the Armenians, and the Jews. Though the whole institutional arrangement of the ‘millet system’ seemed to be settled in the later Ottoman centuries, one should note that the status of ‘Protected People’ and its members was probably not well defined. For example, the term zımmî seems to have been used sometimes in a more general sense to denote Christians in general, either free or slave. Moreover, conditions such as internal crisis or rebellion could lead to the loss of the status of ‘Protected People’, and whole communities were sold to slavery. The last well-known example of such a crisis happened during the Greek revolt between 1821 and 1829. 1 Therefore, one may state that the toleration of non-Muslim communities within the empire did not provide its individual members an absolute immunity from persecution.
