Note 26 — Chapter V · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF SPAIN.

Further, the Christian subjects of the Turkish empire had to pay the capitation-tax, in return for protection and in lieu of military service. The rates fixed by the Ottoman law were 2½, 5 and 10 piastres a head for every full-grown male, according to his income,26 women and the clergy being exempt.27 In the nineteenth century the rates were 15, 30 and 60 piastres, according to income.28 Christian writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries generally speak of this tax as being a ducat a head,29 but it is also variously described as amounting to 3, 5 or 5⅞ crowns or dollars.30 The fluctuating exchange value of the Turkish coinage in the seventeenth century is the probable explanation of the latter variations. To estimate with any exactitude how far this tax was a burden to those who had to pay it, would require a lengthened disquisition on the purchasing value of money at that period and a comparison with other items of expenditure.31 But by itself it could hardly have formed a valid excuse for a change of faith, as Tournefort points out, when writing in 1700 of the conversion of the Candiots: “It must be confessed, these Wretches sell their Souls a Pennyworth: all they get in exchange for their Religion, is a Vest, and the Privilege of being exempt from the Capitation-Tax, which is not above five Crowns a year.”32 Scheffler also, who is anxious to represent the condition of the Christians under Turkish rule in as black colours as possible, admits that the one ducat a head was a trifling matter, and has to lay stress on the extraordinary taxes, war contributions, etc., that they were called upon to pay.33 The land taxes were the same both for Christians and Musalmans,34 for the old distinction between lands on which tithe was paid by the Muhammadan proprietor, and those on which k͟harāj was paid by the non-Muhammadan proprietor, was not recognised by the Ottomans.35 Whatever sufferings the Christians had to endure proceeded from the tyranny of individuals, who took advantage of their official position to extort money from those under their jurisdiction. Such acts of oppression were not only contrary to the Muhammadan law, but were rare before the central government had grown weak and suffered the corruption and injustice of local authorities to go unpunished.36 There is a very marked difference between the accounts we have of the condition of the Christians during the first two centuries of the Turkish rule in Europe and those of a later date, when the period of decadence had fully set in. But it is noticeable that in those very times in which the condition of the Christians had been most intolerable there is least record of conversion to Islam. In the eighteenth century, when the condition of the Christians was worse than at any other period, we find hardly any mention of conversions at all, and the Turks themselves are represented as utterly indifferent to the progress of their religion and considerably infected with scepticism and unbelief.37 A further proof that their sufferings have been due to misgovernment rather than to religious persecution is the fact that Muslims and Christians suffered alike.38 The Christians would, however, naturally be more exposed to extortion and ill-treatment owing to the difficulties that lay in the way of obtaining redress at law, and some of the poorest may thus have sought a relief from their sufferings in a change of faith.