The Muslim Emirs intermarried with Armenians, Notably the Shaddadids of Ani who intermarried with Bagratid women. There was an Emir of Van named Ezdin who had Armenian sympathies and was said to be descended from Seneqerim Hovhannes Artsruni, the king of Vaspurakan. The son of Armenian prince Taharten, governor of Erzinjan, His son by a daughter of the emperor of Trebizond converted to Islam and was made governor of erzincan by Timur. The Ottoman Empire ruled in accordance to Islamic law. As such, the People of the Book (the Christians and the Jews) had to pay a tax to fulfill their status as dhimmi and in return were guaranteed religious autonomy. While the Armenians of Constantinople benefitted from the Sultan's support and grew to be a prospering community, the same could not be said about the ones inhabiting historic Armenia. During times of crisis the ones in the remote regions of mountainous often also had to suffer (alongside the settled Muslim population) raids by nomadic Kurdish tribes. Armenians, like the other Ottoman Christians (though not to the same extent), had to transfer some of their healthy male children to the Sultan's government due to the devşirme policies in place. During the Ottoman period many Armenians were forced to convert to Islam throughout Western Armenia through massacres, social pressure, and harsh taxation. Many conversions were noted across eastern Anatolia, In Hamshen, Yusufeli, Tortum, Ispir, Bayburt, Erzincan. Notably a mass conversion to Islam was described by an Armenian cleric Yakob Karnetsi In the region of Tayk centered around Tortum, a Muslim cleric named Mullah Jaffar was given charge from the Ottomans to take census of the Erzurum province and to levy taxes. After Mullah Jaffar placed excessively heavy taxes the Chalcedonian Armenians who belonged to the Georgian Orthodox church and made up half of the population in Upper Armenia Converted to Islam while the Apostolic Armenians did not, Yakop Karnetsi described Mullah Jaffar as an enemy of Christians who oppressed Armenians. In the region of Ispir(Sper in Armenian) 100 Armenian villages were burned down in 1723 and much of the population was converted to Islam by force. In the region of Yusufeli(Pertakrak in Armenian) Armenian Catholic priest Inchichian writes that most of the Muslim population was Armenian in origin but had converted to Islam to escape brutal taxation and oppression in the early 1700s. he visited the village of Khewag(Yaylalar) and met Islamized Armenians in the village.