blood tax

The "blood tax," known as the devşirme, was a levy of male children from Christian households in the Balkans, including Bulgaria, during the Ottoman Empire's rule. These boys were converted to Islam and trained for service in the empire's administrative and military elite, most notably the Janissary Corps. This practice was part of the broader Ottoman conquest and rule of the Balkan Peninsula, which began in the 14th century and lasted for approximately five centuries, a period often referred to as the "Turkish yoke". While this era resulted in the loss of Bulgarian national and ecclesiastical independence and the enserfment of the peasantry, it also brought a period of relative peace, the Pax Ottomanica, compared to the preceding centuries of conflict.123