![]() They adopted a policy of "ruling different people differently," allowing local languages, customs, and in some cases, permitting local leaders to maintain leadership positions. ![]() Unlike previous Chinese dynasties, the Qing did not impose Chinese language or culture over their subjects and thought of China as just one part of a larger Manchu empire. The Qing dynasty expanded Chinese territory larger than it ever had been before and ruled a population of 450 million people. Manchus and their Chinese subjects In East Asia the Manchus, descendants of the Jurchen, overthrew the corrupt Ming and established the Qing Dynasty placing China once again under the yoke of a foreign ethnic group. They became important intermediaries in trade negotiations with merchants outside the empire benefitting the Ottoman economy. Consequently, Christian and Jewish millets turned to the development of craft skills, finance and brokerage. Thus their impact on the Islamic character of the Empire was limited. An influence on the development of non-Muslim millets was that members were not allowed to hold military or political posts. For example, Orthodox Christians and Jews each had their own respective millets and lived according to their own customs. Each millet was permitted to chose its own leader, practice its own religion, and live by its own religious orders or rules Sharia law did not have effect within a non-Muslim millet. ![]() Each millet, from the Arabic word for nation, was an autonomous zone made up of a particular religious group. To deal with the increasing diversity of the Empire, Mehmet II introduced what would later be called the millet system. By the middle of the 1500s the non-Muslim population of the empire reached about 40%. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 the Ottoman empire absorbed the former Byzantine lands and the number of Christians under Ottoman rule greatly increased.
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