page_title: Devshirme
section_title: Devshirme in the Ottoman Palace School
hierarchical_section_title: Devshirme / Devshirme in the Ottoman Palace School
caption_attribution_description: English: Enderun pyramid
context_page_description: Devshirme was the Ottoman Empire practice of forcibly recruiting soldiers and bureaucrats from among the children of their Balkan Christian subjects. The mention of it first appears in written records in 1438, but probably started earlier. It created a faction of soldiers and officials loyal to the Sultan, which counter-acted the power of the Turkish nobility who sometimes opposed the Sultan. The system produced all of the grand viziers, the second most powerful man in the Ottoman empire, from the 1400s to the 1600s. It also produced most of the Ottoman empire's provincial governors, military commanders and divans during that period.
  Ottoman soldiers would take Christian males, ages 8 to 20, from Eastern and Southeastern Europe and relocate them to Istanbul, where they would be trained. The fact many were taken forcibly from their parents has been the subject to criticism. The devshirme was often resented by locals, though some Christian families also volunteering their sons for the service as it offered good career options, specifically Albanians and Bosnians according to William Gervase Clarence-Smith. Recruits sometimes used their positions to help their family.
context_section_description: The primary objective of the Palace School was to train the ablest children for leadership positions, either as military leaders or as high administrators to serve the Devlet. Although there are many resemblances between Enderûn and other palace schools of the previous civilizations, such as those of the Abbasids, and Seljuks or the contemporary European palace schools, Enderûn was unique with respect to the background of the student body and its meritocratic system. In the strict draft phase, students were taken forcefully from the Christian population of the Empire and were converted to Islam; Jews and Gypsies were exempted from Devshirme, and so were all Muslims.
  Those entrusted to find these children were scouts, who were specially trained agents, throughout the Empire's European lands. Scouts were recruiting youngsters according to their talent and ability with school subjects, in addition to their personality, character, and physical perfection. The Enderûn candidates were not supposed to be orphans, or the only child in their family (to ensure the candidates had strong family values); they must not have already learned to speak Turkish or a craft/trade. The ideal age of a recruit was between 10 and 20 years of age. Mehmed Refik Beg mentioned that youth with a bodily defect, no matter how slight, was never admitted into palace service, since Turks believed that a strong soul and a good mind could be found only in a perfect body.
  The selected children were dressed in red, so that they could not easily escape on their way to Constantinople. The cost of the devshirme service and their clothes were paid by their villages or communities. The boys were gathered into cohorts of a hundred or more to walk to Constantinople where they were circumcised and divided between the palace schools and the military training.  Anyone not chosen for the palace spent years being toughened by hard labor on Anatolian farms until they were old enough for the military.
  The brightest youths who fit into the general guidelines and had a strong primary education were then given to selected Muslim families across Anatolia to complete the enculturation process. They would later attend schools across Anatolia to complete their training for six to seven years in order to qualify as ordinary military officers. They would get the highest salaries amongst the administrators of the empire, and very well respected in public. M. Armağan, defined the system as a pyramid which was designed to select the elite of the elite, the ablest and most physically perfect. Only a very few would reach the Palace School.
caption: Enderûn pyramid
exif: {}