The Ottoman system of autonomous religious communities was called the millet system.
A millet was a legally recognized confessional community whose members could manage many internal affairs according to their own religious laws and institutions. Christian and Jewish communities commonly handled matters such as worship, education, marriage, divorce, inheritance, and community taxation through their own leaders and courts, while remaining subjects of the sultan.
The best-known communities included the Rum millet for Eastern Orthodox Christians, the Armenian millet, and the Jewish millet. Their leaders, such as the Ecumenical Patriarch or the chief rabbi, acted as intermediaries between the community and the Ottoman government. This arrangement gave non-Muslim subjects meaningful autonomy, but it did not mean equality with Muslims; non-Muslims faced special taxes and legal restrictions under the dhimmi system.
A common misconception is that the millet system was a fully organized structure from the empire’s beginning. Historians note that the system developed gradually, becoming more formally defined especially during the nineteenth-century Tanzimat reforms.