Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A form of forced conversion became institutionalized during the Ottoman Empire in the practice of devşirme, [105] a human levy in which Christian boys were seized and collected from their families (usually in the Balkans), enslaved, forcefully converted to Islam, and then trained as elite military unit within the Ottoman army or for high ...
The compulsory conversion to Islam which these boys underwent as part of their education is the only documented form of systematic forced conversion organized by the Ottoman state. [ 4 ] For strategic reasons, the Ottomans forcibly converted Christians living in the frontier regions of Macedonia and northern Bulgaria, particularly in the 16th ...
[34] [35] The Ottoman authorities encouraged hopes of expelled Muslims for a quick return to their homes and settled them in the border regions. [36] The Muslims were two thirds of the population of Lika. Like the Muslims who lived in the rest of Croatia, they were forced to convert to Catholicism or be expelled. [37]
Skanderbeg (1405 –1468) Albanians began converting to Islam when they became part of the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th century. [1] Albania differs from other regions in the Balkans such as Bulgaria and Bosnia in that until the 1500s, Islam remained confined to members of the co-opted aristocracy and sparse military outpost settlements of Yuruks.
Illustration of Sabbatai Zevi from 1906 (Joods Historisch Museum). The Dönme (Hebrew: דוֹנְמֶה, romanized: Dōnme, Ottoman Turkish: دونمه, Turkish: Dönme) were a group of Sabbatean crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire who were forced to convert to Islam, but retained their Jewish faith and Kabbalistic beliefs in secret.
The Armenian genocide [a] was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of others, primarily women and children.
Another reason for conversion was the absence of liturgical ceremonies. [39] The first wave of conversions began in the 18th century, among a poor farmers. The wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries between Russia and the Ottoman Empire negatively impacted upon the region. [41] Increased conversions followed, often forced. [41]
Officially, part of the Tanzimat's goal was to make the state intolerant to forced conversion to Islam, also making the execution of apostates from Islam illegal. Despite the official position of the state in the midst of the Tanzimat reforms, this tolerance of non-Muslims seems to have been seriously curtailed, at least until the Reform Edict ...