Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (18 page)

RELIGION AND EDUCATION IN THE OTTOMAN
VILLAGE

Religion played a central role in bringing the residents of
a village together. The most important responsibility of parents in a peasant
household was to pass the values, traditions, customs, and practices of their
religion to their children. Following the rules and the laws of Islam was
essential for Muslim peasant farmers, while obeying the authority of the church
and living in accordance with the teachings of Christianity was central to the
belief system and the everyday life of Christian peasants. The overwhelming
majority of the peasant population was illiterate and an ordinary villager who
could not read his holy book for himself often accepted local customs and
traditions, including some heterodox beliefs and practices, as integral parts
of his religion. 194 The strict application of religious laws and local customs
allowed the head of the household to exercise his authority without being
challenged by his wife or children. Divine and traditional sanction also
provided the father/husband with the authority to supervise relationships
between sexes, particularly with respect to selecting a spouse for his
children.

In many villages there were schools, but they admitted only
boys. The classes were not designed to teach sciences or practical crafts and
trades. Instead, young Muslim boys learned how to pray and recite the holy
Quran by heart. In exceptional cases, a talented child might be sent by his
teacher, who often came from the lower ranks of the religious establishment, to
a nearby town where he could attend a school attached to a mosque, but such
cases were extremely rare. The majority of the young male population in rural
communities of the Ottoman Empire did not receive any formal education and
learned how to work the field from their fathers, older brothers, and uncles.
As young boys, they started their training by keeping watch over the family’s
sheep and goats. They then moved with their fathers to the field, where they
helped with sowing and harvesting. As they grew older, the nature of their work
became increasingly more difficult and they spent longer hours at it. If they
displayed a lack of discipline and seriousness, they could be subjected to
beating by their fathers or older brothers.

Although they could not attend the village school, young
girls received a household education at home. Mothers taught their daughters
how to cook, sew, tend to the family’s animals, and take care of the younger
children in the household. Girls as young as seven or eight carried newly born
babies in their arms, changed their diapers, and fed them with little
supervision from their parents. This served as a form of apprenticeship, which
trained and prepared young girls for the time when they became wives and
mothers. As for values, girls were taught proper, modest, and chaste behavior.
They had to demonstrate absolute obedience and respect toward their parents and
other older members of the family. They also had to preserve their virginity
until they were married. Loss of virginity was viewed as a colossal violation
that resulted in expulsion from the village, and sometimes in the death of “the
violator,” who had failed to preserve the honor of her family.

In the Balkans, the Orthodox Christian peasantry was
controlled by the Orthodox Church through the
millet
system and the
village authorities. These two institutions acted as intermediaries between the
Ottoman central government and the rural communities, and were the most
essential elements in the everyday life of Balkan Christian peasants. Though
aware of the power of the local Ottoman
sipahi,
who was responsible for
collecting taxes, the peasant “was most directly affected by the actions of
officials of his own religion, including his ecclesiastical authorities.” For
Christian peasants of the Balkans, Sundays and various Saint’s Days broke up
the monotony of their everyday lives. On such days, peasants typically took off
their plain, dark homespun dress; donned their colorful best; and attended the
early mass in a small white-washed church. After returning home, they fed the
cattle and chickens and prepared a simple meal. Afterwards, the elders retired
to the village’s coffeehouse and matrons relaxed in the shade while children
played and the young men and women of the village played music and danced.

In the Ottoman Empire, “villages were connected to the
outer world through market towns,” which served as the centers “of both
commerce and government.” The governor of the district, a religious judge,
responsible for enforcement of Islamic law, tax collectors, and a small unit of
janissaries, usually resided in these towns. Since many villages were located
within a day’s walk of a market town, peasant farmers could sell their surplus
at the local town market; purchase “agricultural implements, farm animals, and
other necessities,” such as a “bolt of cloth” and jewelry; and return home by
nightfall. Besides the markets, in their short trips to the nearby town, the
villagers could visit mosques, tombs of saints and Sufi leaders,
derviş
lodges, schools, public baths, shops, coffeehouses, bakeries, mills,
slaughterhouses, warehouses, government buildings, military barracks, and
public water houses, which provided the town’s water supply.

5 – RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES

The
Ottoman Empire was vast and contained numerous religious, ethnic, and
linguistic communities such as Turks, Tatars, Arabs, Kurds, Circassians,
Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, Bosnians, Croatians, Bulgarians,
Romanians, Hungarians, Jews, and many others. In “the Balkan Peninsula,
Slavonic, Greek and Albanian speakers were undoubtedly in the majority, but
besides these, there were substantial minorities of Turks and romance-speaking
Vlachs.” In Anatolia, the majority of the population spoke Turkish, but there
were also significant Greek-, Armenian-, and Kurdish-speaking communities. In “Syria,
Iraq, Arabia, Egypt and north Africa, most of the population spoke dialects of
Arabic.” In the urban centers of the empire, the population included Muslims,
Christians, and Jews. As the religion of the Ottoman sultans and the ruling
elite, Islam was the empire’s dominant creed. The Greek and Armenian Orthodox
churches, however, retained an important place within its political structure
and ministered to large Christian communities, which in many areas outnumbered
Muslims. There was also a substantial community of Jews scattered throughout
the empire. Aside from these main religious groups, numerous other Christian
and non-Christian communities resided throughout the empire.

To impose its rule over such a diverse population and
maintain peace and security for its subjects, the Ottoman state downplayed ethnic
and linguistic differences and instead emphasized religion as the primary form
of identity. The central government organized the non-Muslim population “into
three officially sanctioned millets: Greek orthodox, headed by the ecumenical
patriarch, Armenians, headed by the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul, and Jews,
who after 1835 were headed by the
hahambaşi
[chief rabbi] in Istanbul.”
Each religious community, or
millet,
enjoyed cultural and legal autonomy
and managed its own internal affairs under the leadership of its own religious
hierarchy. Unlike “the Christian churches, the Jews of the empire did not have
a pre-existing clerical hierarchy.” Instead of patriarchs and bishops, the Jews
of an Ottoman town or city governed their community autonomously. Since Islam
was the official religion of the Ottoman Empire, the Muslims were not
considered a separate
millet.
The Muslim community was, however,
organized in the same manner as the Christian communities.

As a self-governing body, which was responsible for
managing its own internal affairs, each
millet
elected its own leader,
who received the blessing and approval of the sultan. The state vested
sufficient executive power in each
millet
leader to enable him to
collect taxes from the members of his community. The tolerance displayed by the
Ottoman sultans did not mean that the Jews and Christians of the empire were
viewed and treated as equal to Muslims. In accordance with Islamic law, or
şeriat
(Arabic:
sharia
), Jews and Christians were “People of the Book” and
considered
zimmi
(Arabic:
dhimmi)
, or protected religious
communities that lived under the authority of a Muslim sovereign. The sultan
was required to protect the lives and property of his Jewish and Christian
subjects, who were obligated to pay the Ottoman government a poll tax, or
cizye,
in return for not serving in the military. In all legal matters, Islamic
law had precedence and Islamic courts were open to all subjects of the sultan.

CHRISTIANS

The Christian population of the Ottoman Empire was
heterogeneous. The central government recognized two principal Christian
millets,
namely, the Orthodox and the Armenian Gregorian. Other Christian
communities such as the Maronites, Nestorians, and Syrian Orthodox were not
recognized as
millets,
although, for all practical purposes, they
functioned as autonomous religious communities under their own leaders. The
Ottoman state did not concern itself with the daily life, customs, and rituals
of its Christian subjects. Instead of dealing with individuals and their
religious needs and demands, the Ottomans showed a clear preference for using
religious hierarchies and local elites as intermediaries, who would control
their own communities and, at times of crisis, could be blamed for problems and
shortcomings. Thus, indirect and decentralized rule was the hallmark of the
Ottoman political culture.

ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN MILLET

Military conquests in the Balkan Peninsula in the 14th and
15th centuries resulted in Ottoman rule over vast territories inhabited by
Orthodox Christians. Regardless of their ethnic, linguistic, and cultural
differences, all Orthodox Christians; namely Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs,
Montenegrins, Macedonians, Romanians, and Albanian Christians, were viewed as
members of the same
millet.
The religious hierarchy and the power
structure within the Orthodox religious community was, however, dominated by
the Ecumenical Patriarch of Istanbul, who served as the religious head of all
Orthodox subjects of the sultan. After conquering Constantinople, Mehmed II
appointed the influential Byzantine scholar-monk Bishop Gennadios Scholarius as
the patriarch of the Orthodox Church because of his strong opposition to union
with Rome and the Latin West.

The system created by the Ottomans allowed the patriarch,
who enjoyed full control over all Orthodox churches in the empire and their
property, to be elected by the Holy Synod (a high council of bishops, which
acted as the ruling body of the church) and then confirmed by the sultan. Other
church administrators were appointed and dismissed by the synod and the
patriarch with the approval of the sultan.

With the imposition of direct Ottoman rule over the
Balkans, former civil administrations disintegrated and those who resisted
Muslim Turkish rule either fled or were killed or excluded from office. In
their place, Ottoman authorities empowered local religious leaders and
clergymen who were willing to cooperate with the new Ottoman provincial
administration. An alliance with the Orthodox Church provided the Ottoman state
with a golden opportunity to legitimize its rule. By utilizing institutions of
the Orthodox Church, such as the many monasteries that played a central role in
the daily lives of Orthodox Christians, the Ottoman government consolidated its
legitimacy with the populations it had conquered. Faced with possible
subordination to or forced union with its traditional rival and enemy, the
Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church chose to survive by aligning itself
with the sultan. The Ottoman state allowed the Orthodox clergy to work under
the jurisdiction of their own religious courts, and they were exempt from
taxation. Each church ensured its own financial welfare and security through
assessing various fees, soliciting donations, and receiving income from
property it owned.

By the beginning of the 18th century, the power and
authority of the patriarch of Istanbul had become significant. He was not only
the head of the Orthodox Christian
millet
but also the
ethnarch
(secular
ruler) of the entire Orthodox population. The Ottoman government held him
responsible “for the behavior and loyalty of his flock.” With the blessing and
support from the sultan, the Orthodox Church taxed its constituency in
accordance with its own administrative regulations and arrangements. In
judicial matters, the church enjoyed full jurisdiction over a wide range of
functions, such as marriage, divorce, and even commercial cases involving
Christians, and, though criminal cases such as murder and theft came under the
Muslim judicial system, the Orthodox courts handled them as well, as long as a
Muslim was not involved. Using “canon law, Byzantine statuary law, local
customs, and church writings and traditions,” orthodox religious courts, which
were preferred by the Orthodox Christian population, “handed out penalties such
as imprisonment, fines, along with denial of the sacraments and
excommunication.” The Greek War of Independence (1821–1831) and the creation of
an independent Greek state in 1832 significantly undermined the prestige and
power of the “Orthodox ecumenical patriarch in Istanbul,” effectively ending “the
special relationship that had existed between the Greek Orthodox Church and the
sultan.”