Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
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DEFINING AND DEFENDING BELIEVERS t 197<br />
were all equal be<strong>for</strong>e the <strong>Islam</strong>ic law, granted the same privileges<br />
<strong>and</strong> subject to the same restrictions. In 1453, the same year that he<br />
took Constantinople from its last Eastern Christian defenders, the<br />
Ottoman sultan Mehmed II organized his “flock” (reaya), that is,<br />
the 90 percent of his subjects who were not part of the Ottoman<br />
ruling institution. The flock was divided horizontally according to<br />
profession <strong>and</strong> occupation, but Mehmed introduced a new vertical<br />
distinction by millet, or religious community. In theory, the Muslims<br />
of the flock constituted a millet along with the others, but in<br />
reality the millet organization applied only to the <strong>Jews</strong>, the Armenians,<br />
<strong>and</strong> Orthodox <strong>Christians</strong>.<br />
Or so they were called. The Orthodox millet was headed by the<br />
newly appointed Greek Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople,<br />
George Scholarios, known as Gennadius II, a monk strongly opposed<br />
to all plans <strong>for</strong> reunion with the Roman Church. His millet<br />
jurisdiction included not only the Greek <strong>Christians</strong> but the<br />
Churches of Bulgaria, Serbia, <strong>and</strong> Bosnia, whose liturgical language<br />
was not Greek but Slavonic. The members of these latter<br />
Churches all spoke Serbo-Croatian as their vernacular, <strong>and</strong> all of<br />
them were at the time of the Ottoman conquest well on their way<br />
to becoming jurisdictionally independent (autocephalous) Christian<br />
Churches. Likewise, the Armenian patriarch in Constantinople<br />
presided over the <strong>for</strong>tunes not only of his own Church but of<br />
the bundled Monophysite Churches in the Ottoman l<strong>and</strong>s, notably<br />
the Copts of Egypt <strong>and</strong> the Jacobites of Syria <strong>and</strong> Iraq. The Jewish<br />
millet was presided over by the chief rabbi of Istanbul <strong>and</strong> included<br />
both Sephardic <strong>and</strong> the less numerous <strong>and</strong> influential Ashkenazi<br />
<strong>Jews</strong> of the empire.<br />
The sultan dealt with his non-Muslim subjects through the<br />
heads of the millets, who naturally favored their own proper constituents.<br />
In the Balkans this led to increased estrangement between<br />
the Slavic Churches <strong>and</strong> the Greek Orthodox Church under<br />
whose jurisdiction they were now placed. For their part, the three<br />
millets became in effect Ottoman institutions, organs of administration<br />
in the sprawling bureaucracy of the empire.