Under the caliphs, Jews, Christians and others lived as dhimmis, people under a covenant of protection. They kept their faith, clergy and places of worship, and free adult men with means paid the jizya. By modern standards they were unequal, with dress and building rules at times, yet often safer than minorities in Europe then.
At a glance
- 631 Najran’s Christians make a treaty with the Prophet ﷺ.
- 637 or 638 Jerusalem surrenders to the caliph ’Umar.
- 849-850 Al-Mutawakkil orders distinctive dress and new churches pulled down.
- 1009 Al-Hakim has the Church of the Holy Sepulchre demolished.
- 1148 The Almohads take Córdoba; Maimonides’ family leaves for Almería.
- 1453 Mehmed II gives the Genoese of Galata a written covenant.
- 1492 Spain gives its Jews baptism or exile; some settle in Ottoman cities.
The covenant
The Arabic word is dhimma, a covenant of protection, and those under it were dhimmis; anyone under a treaty with the Muslims was a mu’ahad, or mu’ahid. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (TDV stands for Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, the Turkish Diyanet Foundation) ties the safety of their places of worship to this verse:
وَلَوْلَا دَفْعُ اللَّهِ النَّاسَ بَعْضَهُمْ بِبَعْضٍ لَهُدِّمَتْ صَوَامِعُ وَبِيَعٌ وَصَلَوَاتٌ وَمَسَاجِدُ يُذْكَرُ فِيهَا اسْمُ اللَّهِ كَثِيرًا
And were it not that Allah checks the people, some by means of others, there would have been demolished monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of Allah is much mentioned
Warnings from the Prophet ﷺ and ’Umar
مَنْ قَتَلَ مُعَاهَدًا لَمْ يَرَحْ رَائِحَةَ الْجَنَّةِ، وَإِنَّ رِيحَهَا تُوجَدُ مِنْ مَسِيرَةِ أَرْبَعِينَ عَامًا
Whoever killed a person having a treaty with the Muslims, shall not smell the smell of Paradise though its smell is perceived from a distance of forty years
’Abd Allah ibn ’Amr narrated it. Abu Hurayra’s version says seventy autumns (Tirmidhi 1403, sahih (al-Albani)).
أَلاَ مَنْ ظَلَمَ مُعَاهِدًا أَوِ انْتَقَصَهُ أَوْ كَلَّفَهُ فَوْقَ طَاقَتِهِ أَوْ أَخَذَ مِنْهُ شَيْئًا بِغَيْرِ طِيبِ نَفْسٍ فَأَنَا حَجِيجُهُ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ
Beware: whoever wrongs a mu’ahid, or cuts short his right, or burdens him beyond his capacity, or takes anything from him without his consent, I will argue against him on the Day of Resurrection.
The “him” is the wrongdoer: the Prophet ﷺ sides with the wronged mu’ahid. Its narrators, sons of Companions, are unnamed, and the graders differ.
Dying in Madinah in 644, ’Umar charged the next caliph to keep the dhimmis’ covenant. He was to fight to defend them and not burden them beyond their capacity (Bukhari 1392, sahih (al-Bukhari)).
Najran, 631: the Prophet’s ﷺ treaty
TDV records that Najran’s Christians, from south-western Arabia, sent about sixty people to Madinah, probably in 9 AH (631), the ninth year after the Hijra, known as the Year of Delegations. Ibn Sa’d (died 845) reports that they prayed in the Prophet’s ﷺ mosque facing east, and that he said: leave them. It is a historian’s report, with no hadith grade.
They declined the mutual cursing and asked for terms. The Prophet ﷺ sent Abu ’Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah with them, calling him the trustworthy one of this ummah (Bukhari 4380, sahih (al-Bukhari)).
What they agreed
Abu Yusuf (died 798) keeps the fullest text in Kitab al-Kharaj, his tax manual for Harun al-Rashid. Najran owed 2,000 robes a year, would host the Prophet’s envoys for up to 20 days, and would lend 30 coats of mail, 30 horses and 30 camels if there was trouble in Yemen.
In return it had protection for lives, property, land, religion and churches. No bishop, monk or priest would be removed, no army would tread their land, and usury was barred to them.
The versions differ: al-Zuhri, in al-Baladhuri (died 892), gives a month of hosting. Abu Dawud’s version from Ibn ’Abbas has a weak chain (Abu Dawud 3041, da’if (Zubair Ali Zai)), as al-Albani also judged.
Moved to Iraq
Under ’Umar (634-644) they were moved to al-Najraniyya, near Kufa. Abu Yusuf says ’Umar feared the weapons they had gathered; Ibn Sa’d, Abu ’Ubayd (died 838) and al-Baladhuri say they had taken usury. ’Umar himself narrated that the Prophet ﷺ said he would expel the Jews and Christians from Arabia (Muslim 1767, sahih (Muslim)).
’Umar gave them land and two years free of jizya. ’Uthman cut their robe levy in 648, and ’Ali confirmed their covenant in 657.
Jerusalem, 637 or 638
TDV records that the sources give 636, 637 and 638 for the surrender of Jerusalem, then called Aelia. ’Umar, it says, came in 638 and received the city from Patriarch Sophronius.
Al-Tabari (died 923) gives the fullest text, dated 15 AH and witnessed by four Companions, Khalid ibn al-Walid and Mu’awiya among them. It guarantees lives, property, churches and crosses: no church is to be occupied or demolished, and no one forced in religion.
It also says no Jew is to live with them in Aelia, and it never names Sophronius. The text comes through Sayf ibn ’Umar, whom al-Dhahabi calls abandoned “by agreement”, while Ibn Hajar calls him weak in hadith but “a mainstay in history”.
A different text: the “Pact of ’Umar”
Al-Shurut al-’Umariyya lists restrictions, such as no new churches and no dress like Muslims’, in a letter said to come from Christians of Syria or the Jazira to ’Umar. TDV traces it to ’Abd al-Rahman ibn Ghanm (died 697), recorded by al-Bayhaqi (died 1066) and later writers.
Ibn al-Qayyim (died 1350), the first to call it that as far as TDV can trace, held it needed no chain, since the imams had accepted it. TDV records that nearly all modern Muslim and Western researchers find it unauthenticated, with many clauses added in Umayyad and Abbasid times.
The jizya: who paid and who did not
The jizya is named in Qur’an 9:29, which closes, in Sahih International’s rendering, “until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled”. TDV notes two readings of the last words: humiliation, or, for al-Shafi’i, submitting to Islamic law.
Abu Yusuf taxes Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Sabians and Samaritans, men only, never women or children. TDV sums up the payer as a free, sane, healthy adult man with means.
The well-off paid 48 dirhams a year, the middle 24 and the labourer who worked with his hands 12. Akram Diya’ al-’Umari grades as hasan, through their several chains, the reports that ’Umar set these rates in Iraq.
Who was exempt
Abu Yusuf exempts the poor who live on charity, the blind man with no trade, the disabled and chronically ill without means, the old man who cannot work and owns nothing, and the insane. Monks with means pay, and poor monks do not. Practice varied: TDV records an Umayyad official in Egypt charging monks a dinar each in 693, and the Ottomans taxing all monks but the disabled after 1691.
How it was collected
Abu Yusuf forbids beating anyone over the jizya or standing them in the sun, though a non-payer may be held until he pays. The Companion Hisham ibn Hakim once found the governor of Hims standing Nabataeans in the sun over it, and told him Allah will punish those who punish people in this world (Muslim 2613, sahih (Muslim), which also has a version over the kharaj; and Abu Dawud 3045, sahih (al-Albani)).
Abu Yusuf also reports, ungraded, that ’Umar found an old blind Jew begging at a door, driven to it by the jizya, need and age. He lifted the jizya from him and men like him: it was unjust, he said, to take from a man’s youth and abandon him in old age.
Protection and service
Abu Yusuf reports that in 636, as Byzantine armies gathered, Abu ’Ubayda had his governors in Syria hand back taxes from towns they could no longer defend. Al-Baladhuri, in a report that had only “reached” his source Sa’id ibn ’Abd al-’Aziz, says the people of Hims answered that Muslim rule and justice were dearer to them than their old oppression.
A few treaties swapped the tax for service. Al-Tabari, again through Sayf, gives Azerbaijan in 639 and al-Bab (Derbend) in 643, and al-Baladhuri the Jarajima of the Amanus mountains, who served as scouts.
Baghdad’s Christian and Sabian scholars
In 765 the caliph al-Mansur, ill with his stomach, called Jurjis ibn Jibra’il, head physician at Jundishapur, to Baghdad. TDV says his family, the Bukhtishu’, gave the Abbasid court physicians for about 250 years.
Ibn Abi Usaybi’a (died 1270) reports that when Jurjis fell ill, al-Mansur urged him to accept Islam, and the Christian doctor said he would die in his fathers’ faith. The caliph laughed, sent him home with 10,000 dinars, and ordered that if he died on the road he be buried at home.
Hunayn ibn Ishaq (810-873), a Christian Arab from al-Hira, translated Galen and other Greek authors into Syriac and Arabic at the Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom, and became physician to al-Mutawakkil. Yuhanna ibn Masawayh, a Syriac Christian, was physician to four caliphs and died at Samarra in 857. Thabit ibn Qurra (836-901), a Sabian from Harran, put Archimedes and Apollonius into Arabic, and TDV ranks him with Hunayn as Islamic civilisation’s two greatest translators.
The Ottoman communities
İlber Ortaylı, writing in TDV, shows Ottoman documents of the 16th to 18th centuries using millet for a religious community, as in millet-i Ermeniyan, the Armenians. The word for minority, ekalliyet, came only in the empire’s last decades.
For the Armenians he gives 1461, when Mehmed II made Hovakim patriarch in Istanbul, as the accepted date. (Benjamin Braude finds that no Ottoman source of the time confirms this founding story, or the charters Mehmed II is said to have given in 1453, and that the 19th-century reforms largely created the formal “millet system”. He agrees that the Ottomans left Christians and Jews wide freedom in worship, schooling, marriage and inheritance.)
Galata, 1453
In June 1453 Mehmed II gave the Genoese of Galata an ahdname, a written covenant (TDV’s article on dhimmis dates it 1454). It promised free worship, safety for an annual jizya and no forced conversion, but no new churches and no bells. Ortaylı says the Ottoman bell ban lasted until the Reform Edict of 1856.
1492: from Spain to Salonica
From 1492, TDV records, Spain’s Jews had to choose baptism or exile. Its article on Bayezid II adds that some who fled were settled in Ottoman cities.
TDV’s article on Salonica finds no Jews in the 1488 jizya register, 686 households from Spain in about 1502, and 3,143 Jewish households by 1519. The exiles set up an academy with a rich library and, early in the 16th century, brought printing to the city.
The honest record
Dress and buildings
Abu Yusuf advised Harun al-Rashid that dhimmis wear distinct dress, such as the zunnar cord belt, a rule known as ghiyar, and build no new church or synagogue in Muslim cities beyond their treaties. TDV’s article on dhimmis finds no dress rule under the Prophet ﷺ and none in Abu Bakr’s or ’Umar’s treaties; its article on ghiyar dates distinct dress from ’Umar’s time.
TDV adds that new places of worship were often allowed in calm times, while unrest or war with Byzantium and the Crusaders brought restrictions. Ibn al-Qayyim ruled out new churches in cities Muslims had founded, such as Kufa and Baghdad. Where a treaty left the land with its people, he held they could build, since the Prophet ﷺ set no such condition on Najran.
In 849-850 the caliph al-Mutawakkil ordered every province to enforce distinctive dress, bar dhimmis from horses and from posts over Muslims, demolish new churches and level their graves. Ibn Kathir (died 1373) calls the measures humiliating.
Al-Hakim, 1009
The Fatimid caliph al-Hakim (ruled 996-1021) had Cairo’s churches and Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre plundered and demolished in 1009. He forced Christians to convert, letting them return to their faith in 1013.
TDV notes that he also banned the Sunni tarawih prayer in 1009, and that historians agree he was harsh. His son al-Zahir’s treaty with Byzantium in 1027 let the church reopen, with money and materials from Christian rulers, and let forced converts return (al-Maqrizi). TDV says worship resumed there about forty years after 1009.
The Almohads and Maimonides
Al-Marrakushi, writing in 1224, says that under the Almohads no Jew or Christian had dhimma and no church or synagogue stood in their Maghrib. TDV narrows this: ’Abd al-Mu’min’s policy of conversion or exile was later dropped and never applied in al-Andalus.
Maimonides, born in Córdoba in 1135, left with his family for Almería in about 1148, the year the Almohads took Córdoba; TDV gives no reason. Almería was then held by Castile; the Almohads took it in 1157, and in 1160 the family moved to Fez. Ibn al-Qifti and Ibn Abi Usaybi’a report, the latter as hearsay, that he professed Islam in the Maghrib, which, TDV notes, some modern Muslim writers doubt.
In 1165 the family sailed east, and he settled in Fustat, where TDV says Jews lived in freedom and peace. He became physician to Saladin.
The devshirme
The Ottoman devshirme took Christian boys aged 8 to 20 for the Janissaries and the palace, from Mehmed I’s reign (1413-1421) to 1751, the last levy by Ahmed Cevad Pasha’s dating. TDV calls it a method unseen in earlier Muslim states.
Compared with Europe at the time
In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council (canon 68) ordered Jews and Saracens, meaning Muslims, in Christian lands to dress differently from Christians. England’s Statute of Jewry made every Jew over seven wear a badge from about 1275, and in 1290 Edward I expelled them all, about 3,000 people by the National Archives’ estimate. Only in 1656 did Oliver Cromwell let Jews back.
France followed in 1306. After 1492, TDV records, Spain put the same choice of baptism or exile to Granada’s Muslims in 1501 and Castile’s in 1502.
By the standard of equal citizenship, the dhimmis were unequal. Beside these dates their lot often compares well, though not always: al-Mutawakkil, al-Hakim and the Almohads belong to the same record.
Read next: How the caliphs protected Muslims, and the times that protection failed.
Sources
- Abu Yusuf (died 798), Kitab al-Kharaj, al-Maktaba al-Azhariyya edition: the Najran treaty and its later history (about pp. 84-87); who pays jizya, the three rates, the exemptions, collection, ’Umar and the old blind man, dress and churches (about pp. 134-141); Abu ’Ubayda’s refund in Syria (about p. 153). OpenITI text (Arabic). https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenITI/0200AH/master/data/0182AbuYusufYacqub/0182AbuYusufYacqub.Kharaj/0182AbuYusufYacqub.Kharaj.Shamela0026333-ara1
- Abu ’Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam (died 838), Kitab al-Amwal, nos. 503-505: the Najran treaty, the move to Iraq and the reason given for it, ’Uthman’s reduction. OpenITI text (Arabic). https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenITI/0225AH/master/data/0224QasimIbnSallam/0224QasimIbnSallam.Amwal/0224QasimIbnSallam.Amwal.Shamela0012999-ara1
- Ibn Sa’d (died 845), al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, vol. 1: the Najran delegation, its prayer in the mosque, and the move to Iraq. OpenITI text (Arabic). https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenITI/0250AH/master/data/0230IbnSacd/0230IbnSacd.TabaqatKubra/0230IbnSacd.TabaqatKubra.Shamela0001686-ara1.mARkdown
- Al-Baladhuri (died 892), Futuh al-Buldan: al-Zuhri’s version of the Najran treaty, the move to Iraq, the Hims refund, the Jarajima. OpenITI text (Arabic). https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenITI/0300AH/master/data/0279Baladhuri/0279Baladhuri.FutuhBuldan/0279Baladhuri.FutuhBuldan.Shamela0012221-ara1.mARkdown
- Al-Tabari (died 923), Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, vol. 3 pp. 609-610: the covenant with Aelia (Arabic). https://shamela.ws/book/9783/1881
- Al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, vol. 4 pp. 155-157: the Azerbaijan and al-Bab treaties (Arabic). https://shamela.ws/book/9783/2046
- Ibn Kathir (died 1373), al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya, vol. 10, the year 235: al-Mutawakkil’s orders. Arabic Wikisource. https://ar.wikisource.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9_%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D8%B2%D8%A1_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%B4%D8%B1/%D8%AB%D9%85_%D8%AF%D8%AE%D9%84%D8%AA_%D8%B3%D9%86%D8%A9_%D8%AE%D9%85%D8%B3_%D9%88%D8%AB%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AB%D9%88%D9%86_%D9%88%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AA%D9%8A%D9%86
- ’Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi, al-Mu’jib fi Talkhis Akhbar al-Maghrib (written 1224): the Almohads and the dhimmis. OpenITI text (Arabic). https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenITI/0650AH/master/data/0647CabdWahidMarrakushi/0647CabdWahidMarrakushi.Mucjib/0647CabdWahidMarrakushi.Mucjib.Shamela0008559-ara1
- Ibn Abi Usaybi’a (died 1270), ’Uyun al-Anba’ fi Tabaqat al-Atibba’, the section on the Syriac physicians: Jurjis ibn Jibra’il, called to Baghdad in 148 AH, and his answer to al-Mansur, from the translator Fathiyun. OpenITI text (Arabic). https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenITI/0675AH/master/data/0668IbnAbiUsaybica/0668IbnAbiUsaybica.CuyunAnba/0668IbnAbiUsaybica.CuyunAnba.Shamela0006687-ara1.completed
- Al-Dhahabi (died 1348), al-Mughni fi al-Du’afa’, no. 2716, on Sayf ibn ’Umar. OpenITI text (Arabic). https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenITI/0750AH/master/data/0748Dhahabi/0748Dhahabi.MughniFiDucafa/0748Dhahabi.MughniFiDucafa.Shamela0005836-ara1
- Ibn Hajar al-’Asqalani (died 1449), Taqrib al-Tahdhib 1/428, on Sayf ibn ’Umar, via the Shamela narrator database (Arabic). https://shamela.ws/narrator/2726
- Ibn al-Qayyim (died 1350), Ahkam Ahl al-Dhimma, vol. 3, pp. 1172-1202 in the edition OpenITI follows: no new churches in cities Muslims founded (pp. 1172-1177); treaty lands and Najran (p. 1201) (Arabic). https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenITI/0775AH/master/data/0751IbnQayyimJawziyya/0751IbnQayyimJawziyya.AhkamAhlDhimma/0751IbnQayyimJawziyya.AhkamAhlDhimma.Shamela0021747-ara1
- Akram Diya’ al-’Umari, ’Asr al-Khilafa al-Rashida (Riyadh), pp. 187-188: the jizya rates under ’Umar (Arabic). https://shamela.ws/book/11439/171
- Mustafa Fayda, Ahmet Yaman and M. Macit Kenanoğlu, “Zimmî”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2013): Qur’an 22:40 and places of worship, dress and buildings, the Almohads, the Galata covenant (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/zimmi
- Mehmet Erkal and Halil İnalcık, “Cizye”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (1993): readings of Qur’an 9:29, payers, monks, Ottoman exemptions for service (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/cizye
- Mustafa L. Bilge, “Necran”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2006): the delegation of about sixty, probably in 631 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/necran
- Mustafa Fayda, “Ahidnâme”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: the forged Sinai covenant (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/ahidname
- “Kudüs”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2002): the surrender dates, Sophronius, and worship resumed at the Holy Sepulchre about forty years after 1009 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/kudus
- Mustafa Fayda, “eş-Şürûtü’l-Ömeriyye”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2010): the Pact of ’Umar, its transmission from ’Abd al-Rahman ibn Ghanm (died 697) in al-Bayhaqi and later writers, and its authenticity (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/es-surutul-omeriyye
- M. Yaşar Kandemir, “Beyhakī, Ahmed b. Hüseyin”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (1992): al-Bayhaqi’s death in 1066 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/beyhaki-ahmed-b-huseyin
- Ahmet Saim Kılavuz, “Giyâr”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (1996): distinctive dress (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/giyar
- “Buhtîşû’”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (1992): the Bukhtishu’ family and Jurjis ibn Jibra’il in 765 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/buhtisu
- Hasan Katipoğlu and İlhan Kutluer, “Huneyn b. İshak”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (1998) (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/huneyn-b-ishak
- M. Cüneyt Kaya, “Yuhannâ b. Mâseveyh”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2013) (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/yuhanna-b-maseveyh
- İhsan Fazlıoğlu, “Sâbit b. Kurre”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2008): his translations, including Archimedes, whose Greek originals are partly lost (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/sabit-b-kurre
- İlber Ortaylı, “Millet” (Ottoman section), TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2020): the word millet, Hovakim in 1461, the bell ban lifted in 1856 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/millet
- “Galata”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: Mehmed II’s covenant of June 1453 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/galata
- Şerafettin Turan, “Bayezid II”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (1992) (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/bayezid-ii
- Machiel Kiel, “Selânik”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2009): the jizya registers of 1488, about 1502 and 1519 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/selanik
- Kürşat Demirci, “Engizisyon”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (1995): baptism or exile in Spain, 1492-1502 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/engizisyon
- Mustafa Öz, “Hâkim-Biemrillâh”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (1997): the churches demolished and the tarawih ban in 1009, the converts’ return in 1013 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/hakim-biemrillah
- Murat Öztürk, “Zâhir el-Fâtımî”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2013): the treaty of 1027, citing al-Maqrizi (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/zahir-el-fatimi
- “Kurtuba”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi: the Almohads take Córdoba in 1148 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/kurtuba
- Mehmet Özdemir, “Meriye”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2004): Castile takes Almería in 1147, the Almohads retake it in 1157 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/meriye
- Mustafa Çağrıcı, “İbn Meymûn”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (1999): Córdoba, Almería at thirteen, Fez in 1160, Fustat from 1165 (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/ibn-meymun
- Abdülkadir Özcan, “Devşirme”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (1994) (Turkish). https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/devsirme
- Benjamin Braude, “Millet System”, Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, via encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/millet-system
- Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906), “Bajazet II”: the quotation, printed without a source. https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2377-bajazet-ii
- The National Archives (Britain), “Jews in England 1290”: the 1275 badge, the 1290 expulsion of about 3,000 people, France in 1306, Cromwell in 1656. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/teaching-resources/jews-in-england-in-1290/
- Fourth Lateran Council (1215), canon 68, Fordham University Medieval Sourcebook. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran4.asp
Qur’an and hadith on this page
- Qur’an 22:40
- Bukhari 1392, sahih (al-Bukhari)
- Bukhari 3166, sahih (al-Bukhari)
- Bukhari 4380, sahih (al-Bukhari)
- Muslim 1767, sahih (Muslim)
- Muslim 2613, sahih (Muslim)
- Abu Dawud 3041, da’if (Zubair Ali Zai)
- Abu Dawud 3045, sahih (al-Albani)
- Abu Dawud 3052, sahih (al-Albani); da’if (Zubair Ali Zai)
- Tirmidhi 1403, sahih (al-Albani)