The millet system was an administrative and legal framework used in the Ottoman Empire to govern recognized confessional communities—most prominently the Greek Orthodox (Rum), Armenian Apostolic, and Jewish communities—by permitting them autonomy in religion and personal-status matters under their own leaders. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, a millet was an autonomous self-governing religious community whose head was responsible to the central government for taxes and internal order.

Term, scope, and practice

In Ottoman usage, the term millet (from Arabic milla) could mean religion, religious community, or nation; its application to non-Muslim communities became systematic only in the modern era. Recent scholarship emphasizes that before the 19th century the “millet system” was not a single codified regime but a set of evolving administrative practices managing relations between the state and religious communities. Benjamin Braude’s classic study argued that many supposed early foundations of a timeless system were later “foundation myths.” (book://Benjamin Braude|“Foundation Myths of the Millet System,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire|Holmes & Meier|1982) This reassessment is echoed in later historiography, which notes that the paradigm of a fixed premodern “system” is anachronistic. (Stanford University Press)

Within this framework, communal councils administered matters not undertaken by the imperial state, including marriage, divorce, inheritance, education, and charity, while their leaders were accountable to the sultan for tax remittances and public order. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes how each millet operated its own institutions and courts for personal law.

Legal status and fiscal obligations

Non-Muslim subjects (dhimmīs) enjoyed protected status under Islamic law in return for loyalty and payment of specific taxes such as the jizya; this status provided the legal backdrop for communal autonomy. Encyclopaedia Britannica explains that jizya was historically levied on non-Muslim males in lieu of military service, in exchange for protection and freedom of worship. In the Ottoman context, such fiscal arrangements coexisted with communal courts and leadership, producing a form of religiously grounded legal pluralism. Encyclopaedia Britannica

Communities and leadership

By the early modern period the most prominent recognized millets were the Greek Orthodox community under the Greek Orthodox Church and its ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Jewish community under a chief rabbi (the Hakham Bashi). These leaders functioned as ethnarchs for their communities in dealings with the state, especially over taxation and internal discipline. (journal://Turcica|Halil İnalcık, “The Status of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch under the Ottomans”|1991; book://Bernard Lewis|The Jews of Islam|Princeton University Press|1984)

Reforms, codification, and change (19th century)

During the Tanzimat (1839–1876), the Ottoman state sought to centralize administration, modernize law, and redefine subjecthood. The Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane (1839) proclaimed security of life, honor, and property for all subjects, while the Hatt-ı Hümayun of 1856 promised equality in education, appointments, and justice regardless of creed, thereby both recognizing and restructuring communal governance. Encyclopaedia Britannica notes the reformist aims, and its detailed survey of the Tanzimat era explains that much legal authority previously exercised within millets shifted to new state courts and codes modeled in part on European law. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

The 1856 reform edict also accelerated the elaboration of communal constitutions—most famously the 1863 Armenian National Constitution, which defined the Armenian patriarch’s powers and established a representative Armenian National Assembly. (book://Roderic H. Davison|Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876|Princeton University Press|1963; Encyclopaedia Britannica) Parallel reorganization created or recognized additional millets (for example, for Catholic and Protestant communities) and increased state oversight over the internal regulations of clerical and lay councils. (book://Bruce Masters|Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism|Cambridge University Press|2001)

Fiscal and military obligations were also reformed. The traditional jizya was abolished during the reform era and replaced by a universal framework that included a commutation fee in lieu of military service for those not conscripted, reflecting a shift from community-based taxation to individual obligations of equal subjects. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica)

The constitution (Kânûn‑ı Esâsî) promulgated in 1876 articulated a common Ottoman citizenship while maintaining recognition of religious communities; it marked another step in redefining the balance between imperial sovereignty and communal autonomy. The official text is preserved by Türkiye’s Constitutional Court. (Anayasa Mahkemesi)

Foreign protections, capitulations, and communal politics

From the early modern period, foreign capitulations (treaty privileges) and later consular protections affected the operation of communal autonomy by placing some Ottoman Christians and Jews under European diplomatic protection, complicating jurisdiction and taxation. Encyclopaedia Britannica highlights how new commercial and penal codes, administered in state courts, were intended in part to reduce reliance on capitulatory jurisdictions. Geopolitical shifts—such as the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774), which enhanced Russian claims to protect Orthodox Christians—also intersected with the management of the Rum millet and communal politics. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Communal constitutions and internal governance

Nineteenth-century communal statutes limited clerical powers and expanded lay participation in governance—developments most clearly documented in the Armenian case with the 1863 constitution but also present among other communities through councils and electoral procedures subject to imperial approval. (book://Roderic H. Davison|Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876|Princeton University Press|1963) These reforms illustrate how the Ottoman state sought to standardize—and at times to curtail—millet autonomy while retaining recognized communal identities within a modernizing imperial legal order. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Legacy

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the millet framework had been transformed by centralization, constitutionalism, and rising nationalism, even as communal courts continued to adjudicate personal-status matters in many locales. The model is often cited in discussions of non-territorial autonomy in comparative politics; scholars have debated both its historical contours and its applicability to contemporary plural societies. (journal://Ethnopolitics|Karen Barkey & George Gavrilis, “The Ottoman Millet System: Non-Territorial Autonomy and Its Contemporary Legacy”|2016; Encyclopaedia Britannica)