Fleet K. The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume 1, Byzantium to Turkey, 1071-1453

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Anatolian timar-holders were transferred to Rumeli and those from Rumeli

sent to Anatolia in order to detach them from their native environments.

Able-

bodied peasants and other volunteers who had shown bravery had also had

access for some time to timar-estates. However, the most important means for

the centralisation of the timar system was to grant the estates of ‘ancient’ and

other traditional sipahis to soldiers of slave origin who came from the sultan’s

household and acted as local agents of the ruler. This constantly expanding

group of timar-holders was called gulam-i mir (in Turkish bey kulu), since the

rulers had most frequently been referred to by the title mir or bey until the

early ﬁfteenth century.

In the frontier districts with special status (see below),

the marcher lords in the main recruited new timar-holders from among their

followers of slave origin or status (gulam, n

oker, hizmetkar). As a result, the

sipahis’ position as a status-group (also manifest in the treatment of the sons of

sipahis as a separate legal category) gradually vanished, and the timar became

more and more closely tied to service.

The main duty of a timariot was to go to war when summoned, taking with

him the required weaponry and a certain prescribed number of armed retainers

(cebel

u). These obligations were determined in proportion to his revenue. For

a considerable period there was apparently no uniform regulation valid for the

wholeof the empire, and thus the same amount of revenue could at times entail

widely differing obligations. By the same token, it seems that no effort was

made before the second half of the ﬁfteenth century to create a more distinct

separation between the ordinary prebends, which carried the obligation of

going to war (es¸k

un timarı), and the prebends of fortress troops, granted in

lieu of salary (hisar eri/m

ustahfız timarı) but which in practice could also entail

going to war (es¸mek). Towards the end of Murad II’s reign reforms may have

been introduced in both aspects of the system since the defters surviving from

the middle of the century stipulated the quota of cebel

us to be mobilised and

listed other obligations following the same principles as the central law code

promulgated in 1501.

Omer L

utﬁ Barkan, ‘Osmanlı

Imparatorlu

gu’nda Bir

Iskan ve Kolonizasyon Metodu

Olarak S

urg

unler’,

Istanbul

Universitesi

Iktisat Fak

ultesi Mecmuası 11, 1–4 (1949–50), see

particularly 215–29;

Inalcık, ‘Ottoman Methods of Conquest’, 122–5.

33 The terms gulam-i mir/bey kulu have generally and erroneously been interpreted in

scholarly literature as denoting the servants, slaves (the ‘men’) of the district governors;

cf. e.g. N. Beldiceanu, Le timar,pp.88–9.

34 Nihat Azamat (ed), Anonim Tev

ıh-i

Al-i Osman – F. Giese Nes¸ri (Istanbul, 1992), p. 34;

cf. Grignaschi, ‘Les guerri

ers domestiques’, pp. 226–7.

35 The latter edited by Nicoar

a Beldiceanu, Code de lois coutumi

ere de Meh

med II. Kit

ab-i

Qav

ın-i ‘

Orﬁyye-i ‘Osm

ı (Wiesbaden, 1967),

ff. 9v–10r.

200

Ottoman warfare, 1300–1453

Table 1

The obligations of the timariots according to the categories of revenue

(mid-ﬁfteenth century)

Akc¸e Obligation

1,000 the timar-holder (cebel

2,000 the timar-holder (cebel

u) + 1 gulam

3,000 the timar-holder (b

ume) + 1 cebel

u + 1 gulam

4,000, 4,500, 5,000 the timar-holder (b

ume) + 1 cebel

u + 1 gulam + 1 tentk

5,500, 6,000 the timar-holder (b

ume) + 2 cebel

u + 1 tentk

7,500, 8,000 the timar-holder

ume) + 2 cebel

u + 1 gulam + 1 tentk

9,000 the timar-holder (b

ume) + 3 cebel

u + 1 c¸adır

10,000, 10,500, 11,000 the timar-holder (b

ume) + 3 cebel

u + 1 gulam + 1 c¸adır

12,000 the timar-holder (b

ume) + 4 cebel

u + 1 c¸

adır

13,500, 14,000 the timar-holder (b

ume) + 4 cebel

u + 1 gulam + 1 c¸adır

15,000 the timar-holder (b

ume) + 5 cebel

u + 1 c¸adır

16,500, 17,000 the timar-holder (b

ume) + 5 cebel

u + 1 gulam + 1 c¸adır

18,000 the timar-holder (b

ume) + 6 cebel

u + 1 c¸adır

19,500, 20,000 the timar-holder

ume) + 6 cebel

u + 1 gulam + 1 c¸adır

Sources:

Sabanovi

c, Kraji

ste; Todorov and Nedkov, Fontes Turcici,pp.11–41, 119–231;

Had

zibegi

c et al., Oblast Brankovi

ca; Bojani

c-Luka

c, Vidin i vidinskijat sand

zak,pp.55–

90,facs.1–111; Delilbas¸ı and Arıkan, Hicr

ı 859 Tarihli; cf. Beldiceanu, Code,ff.9v–10r.

The weaponry of the ordinary timariots consisted of a coat of mail (cebe)

or a cevs¸en (coat of mail reinforced with iron or steel lamellae), mail coif and

turban (m

ucevveze), bow (yay), arrows (ok), broad arrow-heads (bilek/bilik),

javelin (g

onder), shield (kalkan) and a lightly curved sabre (kılıc¸).

Those whose

annual revenue was 3,000 akc¸e or above had to wear the so-called b

ume instead

of the cebe; this was a mail-and-plate armour that was ﬁxed on a leather garment

or a dress of several layers of cloth and covered a much greater part of the

body than the cebe.

As Table 1 shows, a timariot was obliged to bring a man-

at-arms with him for every 3,000 akc¸e of income. Further, he was also expected

to bring a young servant (gulam, sometimes called n

oker) and various tents

(tenkt

ur, c¸adır) if his income exceeded a certain ﬁgure. Most of the cebel

us were

chosen from among the sons, relatives and (at least in the Balkans) Christian

36 David Nicolle and Angus McBride, Armies of the Ottoman Turks 1300–1774(London, 1983),

pp. 22–3 (with some errors). Useful for the identiﬁcation of weaponry are H. Russell

Robinson, Oriental Armour (London, 1967), particularly pp. 53–71, 77; Zdzislav

Zygulski,

Stara bro

n w polskich zbiorach (Warsaw, 1982); David Nicolle and Christa Hook, Saracen

Faris 1050–1250 ad (London, Auckland and Melbourne, 1994; reprinted 1997).

37 N. Beldiceanu, Le timar,pp.83–4.

201

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subjects, and not infrequently, from among the freed slaves (azadegan)ofthe

timariots.

In the ﬁrst half of the ﬁfteenth century the average income of the timars

seems to have been relatively modest. In 1431–2, 70 per cent of estates in the

district of Arvanid were in the income category of 500 to 3,000 akc¸e. Hence, a

considerable number of recipients were not obliged to provide men-at-arms.

On the other hand, the number of timars and that of the timariots differed

considerably because many of the estates (as was also the case with the Byzan-

tine pronoias) were held jointly by two or more timariots who usually, though

not always, went to war on a rotating basis. The importance of this can be

illustrated with the help of the defter of Tırhala (1454–5). Apart from those

of the commanders, a total of 192 (159 ordinary and 33 garrison) timars were

registered, ‘eaten’ by a total of 291 persons (including 15 under age). The 159

ordinary timars provided for 175 sipahi and 213 armed retainers, that is, a total

of 388 men. Thus a timar provided an average of 2.44 people for war per annum

and maintained 2.88 people (excluding women and other relatives).

These

ﬁgures indicate that, however small the average income appears to be, it was

sufﬁcient for the system to run smoothly.

Some holders of collective estates, and a few individual landowners, enjoyed

the privilege of not performing active military service unless the sultan or the

provincial governor led the campaign in person. In all other cases they could

send a man-at-arms or a son in their place. A cebel

u or es¸k

unci could also replace

the owner of a private estate who was under the obligation of going to war

(es¸k

unc

ulk).

From our sources it can be inferred that with the passage of time the

changes among prebend-holders gradually increased. The major reasons for

reassigning timars included a timariot’s failure to report for service, prema-

ture return from war, leaving the estate and resignation. Timars were very

often transferred to other holders owing to losses in war, especially along the

frontiers, as indicated by the entry ‘dead’ (m

urde)inthedefters. The change

in the attitude of the central power referred to above – the mass penetration

of the sultan’s gulams into the ranks of timar-holders – also contributed to the

constant mobility among the sipahis.

38 Cf. e.g. Delilbas¸ı and Arıkan, Hicr

ı 859 Tarihli,p.206.

39 Mutafchieva, Agrarian Relations,p.28.

40 The calculation was made by the present author.

Omer L

utﬁ Barkan, ‘Osmanlı Devrinin ‘Es¸kinc

ulkler’i Veya ‘M

ulk Timarlar’ı

Hakkında Notlar’, in 60.Do

gum Yılı M

unasebetiyle Zeki Velidi To

gan’a Arma

gan (Istanbul,

1950–5), pp. 61–70. Republished in

Omer L

utﬁ Barkan, T

urkiye’de Toprak Meselesi. Toplu

Eserler 1 (Istanbul, 1980), pp. 897–904.

202

Ottoman warfare, 1300–1453

The timariots were expected to live in the district where their estates were

situated. The cavalry of a nahiye (originally a military, later a territorial unit)

was commanded by a c¸eribas¸ı or serasker (literally ‘commander of the army’)

who was remunerated with a larger timar. From the description by Georgius

de Hungaria, who wrote in the mid-ﬁfteenth century, we know that the sipahis,

placed under the c¸eribas¸ıs, were divided into hundreds.

Several nahiyes made

up a vilayet or subas¸ılık headed by the subas¸ı. His prebend (towards the end of

the period, the one-time Seljuk designations zaim and ziamet appeared again

for the subas¸ı and his holding, respectively) was generally termed has and his

yearly income could amount to more than 100,000 akc¸e.

Around the mid-

ﬁfteenth century, subas¸ıs were in charge of deploying a retainer for every 4,000

akc¸e of their revenues, and bringing with them one set of horse armour (gec¸im),

three tents (two c¸adır and one tenkt

ur) and one young servant (gulam) for every

30,000 akc¸e.

From the last decades of the fourteenth century, the supreme commander-

ship of the timariots in the district rested with the governor (sancakbeyi,or

mir-i liva in Arabic)

who was granted the privilege of having his own military

band and standard (tabl ve alem). The existence of this ofﬁce is ﬁrst attested

to in a diploma of 1391.

By the 1430s the number of the sancaks had risen to

thirteen in Rumeli and sixteen in Anatolia, and it was constantly increasing as

a result of new conquests.

In the few instances which are known, the annual

revenue of the district governors’ has-estates always exceeded 200,000 akc¸e and

was mostly of the order of 300,000 to 500,000 akc¸e.Thesancakbeyi had to ﬁeld

one armed retainer for every 5,000 akc¸e of his income, as well as one set of

horse armour and a speciﬁed number of tents for every 50,000 akc¸e,tobe

used, for example, for the kitchen, treasury, pantry or saddlery.

The ofﬁcially

designated followers of the governors and subas¸ıs constituted a considerable

part (20–30 per cent) of the district’s military strength, not to mention their

innumerable non-ofﬁcial retainers whom they ‘fed’ at their own expense. It

was a custom to leave a small percentage of the sipahis at home for the defence

42 Zeki Arıkan, XV–XVI. Y

uzyıllarda Hamit Sanca

gı (Izmir, 1988), pp. 36–7, 42.

43 Georgius de Hungaria, ‘Incipit prohemium in tractatum de moribus, conditionibus et nequicia

Turcorum’.

Ertekez

esat

ok szok

asair

ol, viszonyair

es gonoszs

ol 1438–1458,Hun-

garian translation by Gy

oKen

ez, in Rabok, k

ovetek, kalm

arok az oszm

an birodalomr

ol,

ed. Lajos Tardy (Budapest, 1977), p. 84.

44 E.g. Todorov and Nedkov, Fontes Turcici,pp.77, 122–3, 287.

45 N. Beldiceanu, Le timar,pp.78–81.

46 Cf. Delilbas¸ı and Arıkan, Hicr

ı 859 Tarihli,p.1. 47 Lo

wry, The Nature,p.62.

48 Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, ‘Lauro Quirini and the Turkish Sandjaks (ca. 1430)’, Journal

of Turkish Studies 11 (1987), 239–47.

49 N. Beldiceanu, Le timar,pp.76–7.

203

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of the district. The sancaks along the borders of the empire were entrusted to

so-called ‘marcher lords’ (uc¸ beyi) who enjoyed special privileges (see below).

Sometime in the last third of the fourteenth century, the Rumelian and,

slightly later around 1393, the Anatolian districts were organised into separate

provinces (beylerbeyilik or vilayet). In 1413, a third province came into being

in central Anatolia with Amasya as its centre, but the military role of its

leader remained insigniﬁcant in comparison with that of the ﬁrst two.

The

governor-general (beylerbeyi) of Rumeli had his residence at Soﬁa, while that

of Anatolia was either at Ankara or later at K

utahya. There were perhaps

two concerns underlying the central administration’s creation of these ofﬁces.

First, it desired to curtail the political power of the beys by placing above them

a supreme commander of slave origin whose loyalty was unquestionable; and

second, it wished to secure the uniﬁed military command of the territorial

districts and the infantry districts (yaya sancakları, see below) which were

being established simultaneously at that time.

The governor-general, who also had the title pas¸a, commanded the entire

army of his province, including infantry and auxiliary contingents. In the main

it was he who granted timars to applicants on his own authority, issuing his

own documents of assignment (called, among other terms, biti or mektub).

Measured by the standards of the time, his ofﬁcial has-holding was extraordi-

narily large, enabling him to maintain a considerable household and ‘private

army’ which in most cases numbered more than a thousand men. According to

some later information, about one-third of these men received full equipment

including a coat of mail or mail-and-plate armour, and many of their horses

were harnessed with armour.

The total potential and the mobilisable strength of the timariot army is

not known for any precise period, but taking the number of the districts into

account and calculating on the basis of the few extant defters, it can be said

that the sancaks of Rumeli and Anatolia may have been able to deploy 10,000

to 15,000 sipahis for the imperial campaigns during the 1430s and 1440s.

The marcher districts (uc¸ beylikleri) and the akıncıs

Within the provincial organisation, the so-called marcher districts had a spe-

cial position. Their leaders (uc¸ beyleri) usually came from old state-founder

Ilhan S¸ahin, ‘XV ve XVI. Asırlarda Osmanlı Tas¸ra Tes¸kilatının

Ozellikleri’, in XV ve XVI.

Asırları T

urk Asrı Yapan De

gerler, ed. Abd

ulkadir

Ozcan (Istanbul, 1999), p. 123. According

to Imber (The Structure of Power,p.179) the third vilayet was created in the 1390s.

51 Iacopo de Promontorio, Die Aufzeichnungen des Genuesen Iacopo de Promontorio-de Campis

uber den Osmanenstaat um 1475, ed. Franz Babinger (Munich, 1957), pp. 47–8, 55–6.

204

Ottoman warfare, 1300–1453

families who passed their posts down from father to son. Such families included

the Evrenos, Mihalo

glu, Malkoc¸ and Pas¸a Yi

git clans and their descendants.

They possessed thousands of slaves and private troops as well as huge hered-

itary estates, and they allocated timar-estates within their jurisdiction, acting

practically as vassals rather than subjects of the sultan. Their main duty was

to watch the neighbouring countries, prepare for their conquest by annual

raiding and merciless devastation, contribute to the maintenance of the war

machine by acquiring booty and provide slaves by seizing captives in war and

raids. In military campaigns they were assigned the tasks of scouting and con-

stant harassment of the enemy, pillaging enemy territory, securing deployment

routes and guarding the baggage train.

To carry out these tasks they had at their disposal, in addition to the timari-

ots, enormous numbers of akıncıs (raiders) living in their districts. The raiders

were descendants of nomadic tribal warriors who had withdrawn to the fron-

tiers and who emerged as a distinct military body in the late fourteenth cen-

tury. They lived by livestock rearing and bred excellent horses that were able to

cover, on little fodder, three or four times the distance achieved by an ordinary

horse.

The akıncıs made a living by selling the spoils at good prices. Captured

boys who seemed ﬁt for military service were bought or seized by the sul-

tan’s ofﬁcials. Though the majority of the raiders were professional soldiers,

in the period under discussion their numbers were often augmented by volun-

teers, Muslims and Christians alike. According to the few and often unreliable

sources we have, they numbered some 10,000 to 20,000 and were probably

divided from the outset into groups of 10, 100 and 1,000. Their weaponry

was adapted to their form of warfare: they usually had only a sword, lance,

shield, and perhaps a mace, and wore a typical red headgear to distinguish

them. A large number of the volunteers were poorly armed, carrying only a

club in their hands.

Their ofﬁcers were tovıcas (a word of Mongolian origin),

who had the same rank as the c¸eribas¸ıs of the timariots and like them usually

received timar-estates by way of remuneration. The commander-in-chief was

the marcher lord who was therefore also called akıncı beyi.

52 Halil

Inalcık, ‘The Rise of the Ottoman Empire’, in A History of the Ottoman Empire to

1730, ed. M. A. Cook (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 31–7;Ir

ene Beldiceanu-Steinherr, ‘En marge

d’un acte concernant le pen

gyek et les aqın

gı’, Revue des

Etudes Islamiques 37 (1969),

26–38; Imber, The Structure of Power,pp.260–5;H.C¸ etin Arslan, T

urk Akıncı Beyleri ve

Balkanların

Imarına Katkıları (1300–1451) (Ankara, 2001); Lowry, The Nature,pp.45–94.

53 Georgius de Hungaria, ‘Incipit’, p. 64–7; Konstantin Mihajlovi

c, Memoirs of a Janissary,

trans. Benjamin Stolz, notes Svat Soucek (Ann Arbor, 1975), p. 177.

54 Doukas, Decline and Fall,p.134; Bertrandon de la Broqui

ere, Le Voyage d’Outremer de la

Bertrandon de la Broqui

ere, ed. Ch. Schefer (Paris, 1892), p. 185.

205

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The salaried troops of the court (kapukulu ocakları)

Janissary infantry

In the second half of the fourteenth century the ruler’s entourage was trans-

formed into a more complex household and court modelled on Islamic mili-

tary slavery. As part of this process, the yayas of his retinue had been gradually

relegated to the status of provincial soldiers and their place occupied by a

combined force of salaried court troops.

The ﬁrst in the series of the new-style household warriors were the janis-

saries (yenic¸eri, literally ‘new army’). The supposition that their name orig-

inated from the Catalan genetari/ginetari and was transmitted through the

Byzantine term ianitzaroi seems to be unfounded.

This infantry corps (ocak)

was most likely established in the 1370s, and initially consisted of perhaps

a thousand men at most who were divided into hundreds commanded by

yayabas¸ıs, a clear indication of their close relation to the yayas.

The ﬁrst

janissaries were enlisted from among the prisoners of war who entered the

corps immediately and – as later janissary tradition maintains – received a

two-akc¸e salary a day. According to the same tradition, this practice changed

soon afterwards: novices were enrolled after serving ﬁve years on ships sailing

up and down between the two shores of the Straits.

The next step was to

introduce two new methods in order to place recruitment on a more solid

basis. The ﬁrst of these was to take one-ﬁfth of the captives acquired in enemy

territories during military operations. This institution, which was based on

Islamic precepts concerning the division of spoils, was called pencik, from

Persian penc u yek, ‘one-ﬁfth’. Recruits coming from this source were called

pencik o

glanı by the Ottomans.

The second was to collect the children of the

Christian subjects of the empire at different intervals (once in ﬁve to twelve

years, alternating the provinces) and at varying rates: one boy per forty house-

holds may have been most typical. This system and the recruits supplied by

it was known as devs¸irme (literally ‘collection’), but Konstantin Mihajlovi

himself a janissary between 1456 and 1463, calls the boys collected within the

55 Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, ‘Les “janissaires” de l’empereur byzantin’, in Studia turcolog-

ica memoriae Alexii Bombaci dicata, ed. Aldo Gallotta and Ugo Marazzi (Napoli, 1982),

pp. 591–7.

Ismail Hakkı Uzunc¸ars¸ılı, Osmanlı Devleti Tes¸kil

atından Kapukulu Ocakları, vol. I: Acemi

Oca

gı ve Yenic¸eri Oca

gı (Ankara, 1984), p. 144; Beldiceanu-Steinherr, Recherches,pp.203–

11;M

ucteba

Ilg

urel, ‘Yenic¸eriler’, in

IA, viii,pp.385–95; Kafadar, Between Two Worlds,

pp. 139–40.

57 Kav

ın-i Yenic¸eriy

an, in Ahmed Akg

und

uz, Osmanlı Kanunn

ameleri ve Huk

ı Tahlilleri,

vol. IX (Istanbul, 1996), pp. 133–4, 270.

58 Beldiceanu-Steinherr, ‘En marge d’un acte’, pp. 38–43; Kav

ın-i

Yenic¸eriy

an,pp.139, 274.

206

Ottoman warfare, 1300–1453

Ottoman realm c¸ilik; a distorted Persian word meaning ‘one in forty’, thus

conﬁrming the supposition that this rate may have been in force at that time.

The same author also maintains that the janissaries of pencik and devs¸irme (c¸ilik)

origin had different legal status.

Recent studies tend to accept that these two

forms of manpower supply were probably ﬁrst applied by the marcher lords

and later borrowed from them by the sultans. There is sufﬁcient evidence to

claim that the devs¸irme, in a sense the extension of the one-ﬁfth levy to the

sultan’s own domain, was already in existence in the 1380s.

Once selected, the janissary novices received education and military train-

ing. The ﬁrst reliable information on how this happened is provided by

Georgius de Hungaria, who lived in the empire between 1438 and 1458.He

relates that the ruler distributed the novices among the households of the

magnates in his dominion where they were taught morals and the handling of

weapons. At the age of twenty they returned to the court and became the sul-

tan’s salaried infantrymen.

Though Georgius does not mention it, we may

suppose that many of the apprentices were brought up in the ruler’s court.

During the early years of Mehmed II’s reign a new and totally different method

of training was introduced.

At the beginning, all the janissaries served as the ruler’s bodyguard; they

were his ‘companions’ or ‘retainers’ (yoldas¸). As time went by, their number and

tasks gradually, and constantly, increased. As a result, a special unit consisting

of ﬁfty to sixty men was selected from among them and given the name solak.

Led by the solakbas¸ı and with bows in their hands they marched before the

ruler. In the ﬁrst half of the ﬁfteenth century, large numbers of janissaries were

sent to the provincial fortresses to man the garrisons and act as the ruler’s local

representatives.

The head of the janissary corps was given the title a

ga. The ﬁrst holder

of this ofﬁce, a certain Mehmed, appears in a document of 1389, where he

is said to have led 2,000 infantry (piyade) archers at the battle of Kosovo.

59 Basilike D. Papoulia, Ursprung und Wesen der ‘Knabenlese’ im Osmanischen Reich (Munich,

1963); Victor L. M

enage, ‘Some Notes on the Dev

shirme’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental

and African Studies 29 (1966), 64–78.; Victor L. M

enage, ‘Dev

shirme’, in The Encyclopaedia

of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden, 1960-) [henceforth EI2], ii,pp.210–13.

60 Konstantin Mihajlovi

c, Memoirs,p.159.

61 Vassilis Demetriades, ‘Some Thoughts on the Origins of the Devs¸irme’, in The Ottoman

Emirate (1300–1389), ed. Elizabeth A. Zachariadou (Rethymnon, 1993), pp. 23–33.

62 Georgius de Hungaria, ‘Incipit’,p.74.

63 Kav

ın-i Yenic¸eriy

an,pp.135, 271. From this time on they were sold to Turkish farmers

where theyremained about seven or eight years,learnt Turkish and became accustomed

to hard work.

64 K

aldy-Nagy, ‘The First Centuries’, p. 165.

207

al fodor

After the a

ga in the hierarchy came his deputy, followed by the yayabas¸ıswho

commanded the main units (orta) of a hundred men each, with the lowest

ranking ofﬁcer being the corporal. In 1451 the keepers of the sultan’s hounds

(sekban) were attached to the corps.

Before this date, the total strength of the

corps did not exceed 3,000 men, but soon afterwards it rose to about 5,000.

Each of the ordinary janissaries received three to ﬁve akc¸e pay a day and a yearly

allowance of garments as well as a certain amount of cash for buying a bow. The

distinctive feature of their uniform was their white headgear (zerk

ulah) with

a ﬂap turned backward.

Their basic armament included a bow, sabre, shield

and light coat of mail. Some units also used crossbows (zenberek), others –

mainly during the 1440s – were increasingly equipped with hand guns, and

there werecontingents which employed pole-arms – lances, halberds, war-axes

(balta, nac¸ak) – instead of or in addition to some of the weapons mentioned

above.

From the turn of the fourteenth century, the janissaries played a

crucial role both in the guarding of the ruler’s person during pitched battles

and in the assaults on enemy fortresses.

The salaried horsemen

The second main component of the central standing army was the six cavalry

regiments, referred to as altı b

uk halkı in later sources. The most presti-

gious among them were the sipahi o

glanları (cavalry youths) and the silahtar

(armbearers), followed by the ulufeci (salaried men) of the right and the left

wings, and the garib yi

gitleri (foreigners) of the right and the left wings. They

were mostly paid in cash and the amount of their salary reﬂected their pres-

tige within the court hierarchy. Owing to the lack of reliable evidence, it is

impossible to establish the date and the sequence of their foundation. If we

consider, however, a short, and often misunderstood, notice in the Ottoman

65 Kritoboulos, Vie de Mahomet II, tr. Th. A. Dethier (Budapest, n.d.), pp. 24–5; Uzunc¸ars¸ılı,

Kapukulu Ocakları, i,pp.163–4;

Inalcık, Fatih Devri,p.118.

66 Ordo portae – Description gr

ecque de la porte et de l’arm

ee du Sultan Mehmed II, ed. and tr. S¸erif

Bas¸tav (Budapest, 1947), pp. 6–7; Peter Schreiner, ‘Eine Zweite Handschrift des “Ordo

Portae” und der Wegbeschreibung in das Gebiet des Uzun Hasan. Mit einer Hypothese

zur Verfasserfrage’, S

udost-Forschungen 41 (1982), 11, 15, 17; cf. Konstantin Mihajlovi

Memoirs,pp.159, 163.

67 A. Pertusi, ‘Le notizie sulla organizzazione amministrativa e militare dei Turchi nello

“Strategicon adversum Turcos” di Lampo Birago (c.1453–1455)’, in Studi sul medioevo

christiano offerti a Raffaello Morghen per il 90 anniversario dell’Istituto Storico Italiano (1883–

1973), vol. II (Rome, 1974), p. 697.

68 G

abor

Agoston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Powerand the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman

Empire (Cambridge, 2005), p. 23;

Inalcık, Fatih Devri,p.182; David Nicolle and Christa

Hook, T

he Janissaries (London, Auckland and Melbourne, 1995), pp. 20–1.

208

Ottoman warfare, 1300–1453

chronicles

and the fact that the hierarchy of ranks within the Ottoman mil-

itary was often determined according to the time of establishment, we may

suppose that the sipahi o

glanları and the silahtar were ﬁrst organised, most

probably, in the second half of the 1370s.

Some indirect evidence in the 1431–

2 timar register and narrative sources suggests that the garib yi

gitleri were

actually recruited from uprooted or foreign elements arriving either from

outside the realm or from diverse ethnic, mainly Tatar, groups.

The bulk

of the other divisions was enlisted from the graduates of the palace and, in

the case of the silahtar and the sipahi o

glanları, from the janissaries who were

promoted in this manner.

Each of the regiments was commanded by an

ga.

The strength of the court horsemen before 1453 cannot be accurately estab-

lished. Yet, from Konstantin Mihajlovi

c’s description an estimate of their num-

ber as being between 1,000 and 2,000 seems realistic.

They were armed with

bow, sword, lance and shield. Their weapons and armour were provided by the

ruler; some of them (about one-third) received cuirasses, others were given

coats of mail, helmets and – in smaller numbers – horse armour. Together with

the janissaries, the cavalrymen accompanied the ruler on campaign, carried

his arms, led his horses, and stood round him to left and right during ﬁeld

battles.

The artillery corps (topc¸ı) and the armourers (cebeci)

Though we have no evidence at our disposal, it is assumed that during Murad

II’s reign a separate salaried corps of court artillery was set up. This assumption

is based on those ﬁndings which show the existence of professional cannoneers

remunerated with timars during the reign of Bayezid I and Mehmed I.

At any

rate, a contemporary Ottoman source mentions a topc¸ıbas¸ı (chief gunner) in

1444 which implies that a separate unit may have existed under his command.

The advanced state of Mehmed II’s early artillery also supports this hypothe-

sis, for his cannoneers could not have operated so effectively without skilled

forerunners.

69 Saadeddin, T

u’t-tev

ıh, i,p.94. 70 Uzunc¸ars¸ılı, Kapukulu Ocakları, ii,p.147.

71 See Konstantin Mihajlovi

c, Memoirs,pp.159, 161; Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Historiarum

Demonstrationes, ed. Eugenius Dark

o, 2 vols. (Budapest, 1922–7), ii,p.9 (he states that

garibs came from as far as Egypt and Libya).

72 Chalkokondyles, Historiarum Demonstrationes, ii,p.9.

73 Konstantin Mihajlovi

c, Memoirs,pp.159, 161.

74 Iacopo de Promontorio, Die Aufzeichnungen,pp.31–2.

Agoston, Guns for the Sultan,pp.20, 28.

76 Halil

Inalcık and Mevlud O

guz (eds.) Gazav

at-ı Sult

an Mur

ad b. Mehemmed H

an.

Izladı

Var na Savas¸ları (1 443 –1 444)

Uzerinde Anonim Gazav

atn

ame (Ankara, 1978), pp. 47–8.

209