The Ottoman Empire provides a good example of this pattern. Like other Islamic kingdoms or caliphates, it was adept at raising revenue from those it oppressed. One of the most famous Ottoman rulers, Suleyman the Magnificent, who ruled from 1520 to 1566, used his military to add vast lands to the Ottoman territory.
One of the few areas able to resist Suleyman's army was Habsburg Vienna. Despite an organized siege in 1529 by the Ottomans, Vienna did not capitulate. It survived a second attack by Suleyman's forces in 1532. But Suleyman was generally successful in his invasions, adding territories from Transylvania to Tripoli to his empire.
Suleyman understood that even more than exacting taxes in the form of money, taking slaves was an effective way, both to enrich his dynasty and to humiliate and weaken those whom he subjugated. The Ottoman monarchy functioned on the basis of slavery. As one textbook (World History: Patterns of Interaction, McDougal-Littell, 2007), notes:
The sultan’s 20,000 personal slaves staffed the palace bureaucracy. The slaves were acquired as part of a policy called devshirme. Under the devshirme system, the sultan’s army drafted boys from the peoples of conquered Christian territories.
Taken from the families, the Muslims "converted them to Islam" and put them to work as slaves for the monarch. Suleyman was also efficient at organizating traditional tax collection in the form of coin. An extra tax, called jizya, was placed on non-Muslims.
The jizya was an excellent tool for subduing "the people of the book," which was a Muslim phrase for Christians and Jews. Not only did caliph have a source of revenue in this tax, but it was a way to ensure that the non-Musilms felt humiliated and "subdued." Further, the Caliph could confiscate as much wealth as was practical from the non-Muslims, because his base of power was among the Muslims. Islamic rulers like Suleyman found justification for their tactic in the Qur'an, which includes this passage:
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of truth, from among the people of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
A note on orthography: Suleyman is also known as Suleiman, Soliman, and Solyman. The Qur'an is frequently cited as the Koran. The Qur'an was written originally in Arabic, and Suleyman's Ottoman Empire was largely Turkish-speaking. Translation and transliteration yields divergent spellings.
To the east of the Ottoman regions was another Muslim kingdom in India, known as the Mughal Empire. It, too, was expert at extracting wealth from those it oppressed. While the Ottomans tyrannized the Christians, the Mughal Empire persecuted the Hindus and Buddhists.
One of the most famous Mughal emperors, Akbar, was assisted by a Hindu named Todar Mal, who betrayed his own people to serve Akbar. Together Akbar and Todar Mal devised a cruel way to oppress the Hindus: an early form of income tax. As the history textbook notes, Todar Mal confiscated the agricultural products of the peasants:
He levied a tax similar to the present-day U.S. graduated income tax, calculating it as a percentage of the value of the peasants' crops.
This inhumane treatment allowed the Muslims to keep the Hindus and Buddhists of India under a harsh rule for many years. Yet it also bred a resentment among the Indians which would cause them to one day rise up and throw off the yoke of the Islamic oppressors.
One of Akbar's successors was a ruler named Shah Jahan. He extracted more money from the Indians to finance his personal luxuries. He gave the Indians
taxes and more taxes to support the building of monuments, their rulers’ extravagant living, and war.
Conditions for the Indians got even worse. After Shah Jahan, one of his sons named Aurangzeb took power. He was even more cruel to the Hindus and Buddhists. There were many aspects
to Aurangzeb’s oppression of the people. He rigidly enforced Islamic laws, outlawing drinking, gambling, and other activities viewed as vices. He appointed censors to police his subjects’ morals and make sure they prayed at the appointed times.
Intent on humiliating the Indians, he increased
the hated tax on non-Muslims and dismissed Hindus from high positions in his government. He banned the construction of new temples and had Hindu monuments destroyed. Not surprisingly, these actions outraged the Hindus.
Aurangzeb showed the attitudes of Islamic rulers. He expanded his empire by using harsh military force; he taxed the non-Muslims and destroyed their places of worship.
Aurangzeb ruled for almost 50 years and made the empire grow once again with new conquests. However, his rule brought about new problems. A serious Muslim, the new ruler put harsh new laws in place. He punished Hindus and destroyed their temples, which produced a rebellion that managed to take control of part of his empire. At the same time, the Sikhs had become skilled fighters, and they won control of another part of the empire. To fight these battles, Aurangzeb had to increase taxes. Since he only taxed Hindus, not Muslims, this move only made large numbers of people more and more angry.
Note the parallels: when Muslim armies occupied Spain starting in 711 A.D., they destroyed Christian churches and Jewish synagogues. When Muslim armies dominated India, they destroyed Hindu temples and Buddhist temples.
Aurangzeb ruled from 1658 to 1707, and seemed only to get harsher with the passing years. His cruelty paved the way for the fall of his empire.
Aurangzeb levied oppressive taxes to pay for the wars against the increasing numbers of enemies. He had done away with all taxes not authorized by Islamic law, so he doubled the taxes on Hindu merchants. This increased tax burden deepened the Hindus’ bitterness and led to further rebellion. As a result, Aurangzeb needed to raise more money to increase his army. The more territory he conquered, the more desperate his situation became.
During Aurangzeb's reign, first Portuguese and later British trading representatives held influence in the area of the port city Bombay. In fact, the city, now known as Mumbai, was essentially governed by them. The residents of the area enjoyed liberties not found in the bulk of India which was controlled by the Mughals. The Hindus were allowed to practice their religion. Bombay enjoyed economic freedom, as importing and exporting flourished.
From Spain in the west, to India in the East, with the Ottomans between, taxation was an instrument used by oppressors to humiliate and impoverish their subjects.
