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

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al fodor

While the sources are silent on the topc¸ıs, a small unit of cebeci (armourers)

appears already to have existed at the court in the period under discussion.

They mayhave numberedﬁfty to sixty men at most. They cleaned, repairedand

in part manufactured the arms of the court salaried troops, ﬁrst and foremost

those of the janissaries. According to Konstantin Mihajlovi

c they too were

mounted soldiers and were under the command of an ofﬁcer called cebecibas¸ı.

Fortress garrisons

Occupied fortresses and fortiﬁed cities were brought entirely under central

control because the government regarded them as the means and symbol

of the territorial integrity of the empire and of the strength of the sultan’s

power. The court used an increasing number of the janissaries and other

salaried court troops (gulam-i mir) for this purpose. These troops were probably

already entering service in the provincial fortresses on a rotating basis at this

time. Further, more and more gulams were appointed to the post of fortress

captain. The other, larger, part of the garrisons was recruited from provincial

troops including a large number of Christians and renegades, especially in the

Balkans.

The fortress guard was called hisar eri, m

ustahfız or merd-i kale, the fortress

captain dizdar and his deputy keth

uda, all, apart from hisar eri, terms of Persian

origin. The soldiers were divided into units of ten men each commanded by

a decurion (b

ukbas¸ı). The majority were simple infantrymen complemented

by several special units such as arbalesters, guards, store men, musicians, crafts-

men and armourers. In the ﬁrst half of the ﬁfteenth century new units were

also drafted and integrated into the garrisons, particularly in fortresses along

the frontiers: the artillerymen, the voynuks and the martaloses (see below). In

major riverside fortresses waterborne units were in service, headed by the

kapudan (captain).

The remuneration and service of the fortress troops were wide ranging.

Some received timars, others salaries, and the combination of the two could

also occur. Collective timars were frequent, and, as with the sipahis, many

fortress soldiers served on a rotating basis. A considerable part of the garrisons

consisted of local elements of semi-military and peasant origin who rendered

service in return for exemption from certain taxes, most frequently from

77 Konstantin Mihajlovi

c, Memoirs,p.163.

78 In addition to the cited timar registers, see further esp. Todorov and Nedkov, Fontes

Turcici,pp.235–70;Had

zibegi

c et al., Oblast Brankovi

ca,ff.142v–144r. On the fortress

garrisons in general, see N. Beldiceanu, Le timar,pp.81–2; Olga Zirojevi

c, Tursko vojno

uredjenje u Srbiji (1459–1683) (Belgrade, 1974), pp. 105 ff.

210

Ottoman warfare, 1300–1453

poll-tax and extraordinarywartaxes. Theymanufactured arms or ammunition,

shields, arrows and ropes, for example, built and repaired the fortress walls,

bridges, moats and ships, undertook regular patrols, and (sometimes also

on a rotating basis) served as artillerymen and arbalesters. There were large

stockpiles of arms and food in the fortresses but the latter were only drawn

upon during sieges. At other times, each soldier was responsible for his daily

subsistence at his own expense.

Peasant soldiers, peasant and town militias

From the latter half of the fourteenth century, the Ottoman standing army

was supplemented by a whole range of paramilitary units and peasant militias.

Some were ‘invented’ by the Ottomans, others were found in the conquered

countries and integrated into their own system with minor alterations.

Azabs

Hardly any factual information survives about the azabs prior to the second

half of the ﬁfteenth century, although apparently they constituted one of the

pillars of the Ottoman war machine. The word azab, meaning unmarried,

occurs in the fourteenth-century Levant and west Anatolia denoting seamen

or pirates, whereas in the Ottoman army they seem to have been land foot

soldiers who were enlisted from the peasants for the duration of a campaign.

Tradition puts the emergence of the azab army before that of the janissaries,

but the chronicles mentioned them with increasing frequency in connection

with the wars at the end of the century and the domestic strife of the early

ﬁfteenth century.

By the 1420s the method of their recruitment may already have been the

following: a ﬁxed number (ten to twenty) of peasant and craftsman households

had to supply a suitable young man and provide his campaigning costs.

The

archer azabs, who sometimes also carried lances, were usually deployed in

front of the battle array of the court troops and thus – especially with the

79 The best general survey to date is Kl

ara Hegyi, ‘Magyar

es balk

ani katonaparasztok a

budai vil

ajet d

eli szandzs

akjaiban’, Sz

azadok 135, 6 (2001), 1255–72.

80 Enveri, Le Dest

an d’Um

ur Pacha,pp.54, 64;M.FuadK

opr

uand

Ismail Hakkı Uzunc¸ars¸ılı,

‘Azab’, in

IA, ii,pp.81–3; Ernst Werner, Die Geburt einer Grossmacht – Die Osmanen (1300–

1481). Ein Beitrag zur Genesis des t

urkischen Feudalismus (Weimar, 1985), pp. 206–7.

81 Nes¸ri, Kitab-ı Cih

an-n

a, i,pp.248–9, 290–1; Azamat, Anonim Tev

ıh-i

Al-i Osman,

. 61–2.

82 P

al Fodor, ‘The Way of a Seljuq Institution to Hungary: the Cereh

or’, Acta Orientalia

Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 38, 3 (1984), 377–8 and n. 38.

211

al fodor

spread of ﬁrearms and artillery – would suffer considerable losses.

Narrative

sources put their number in important battles at tens of thousands

and list

their commander (azab a

gası) among the most prestigious statesmen.

Later

infantry azabs also appear among the regular soldiers of castle garrisons, and

river and naval ﬂeets, but it is not yet clariﬁed how the three troops were

connected apart from having the same name.

Yayas and m

usellems

As mentioned above, by the end of the fourteenth century, the yaya (or piyade

in Persian) footmen had been transformed into provincial soldiers and their

number constantly increased. This was achieved partly by recruiting and set-

tling tribal nomad warriors and partly by conscripting peasants into the yaya

corps. During the last decades of the century they were provided with farms

with special legal status (yayalık yer) to meet the expenses of their campaign-

ing.

In fact, they may have been free peasant soldiers who enjoyed their lands

in return for military service. They can be found everywhere in the areas occu-

pied in the fourteenth century: in eastern Thrace and the Maritsa valley, as well

as the western and west-central parts of Asia Minor. There is enough evidence

to suppose that the widely scattered yayas were organised into non-territorial

districts independently of the timariot cavalry (atlı) sancaks and placed under

the command of the yayabas¸ıs, who usually also had the rank of subas¸ı.The

later chronicles mention several of them by name as participants of the wars

in the 1380s–90s, while Ulu bey subas¸ı, also called Sarım

uddin Saruca Pas¸a,

is indicated as the chief commander of the Rumelian footmen (Rum ilin

yayabas¸ısı). This person, who is presumed to have belonged to the marcher

lords, played a crucial role in settling the yayas, providing them with land and

establishing their organisation.

83 For their importance, see

Inalcık and O

guz,Gazav

at-ı Sult

an Mur

ad,pp.21, 23, 56–7, 59,

63–5; Konstantin Mihajlovi

c, Memoirs,pp.165, 167.

84 Enveri, Fatih Devri Kaynaklarından D

ust

urn

ame-i Enver

ı Osmanlı Tarihi Kısmı (1299–1466),

ed. Necdet

Ozt

urk (Istanbul,2003), p. 31;Oruc¸,Die fr

uhosmanischenJahrb

ucherdesUrudsch,

pp. 25, 34.

85 As¸ıkpas¸azade, Tev

ıh,p.185; Azamat, Anonim Tev

ıh-i

Al-i Osman,pp.54, 76;Nes¸ri,

Kitab-ı Cih

an-n

a, i,p

p.652–5.

86 Tursun Bey, T

ıh-i Eb

u’l-Feth, ed. Mertol Tulum (Istanbul, 1977), pp. 48, 79; cf. M. Tayyib

okbilgin, Rumeli’de Y

ukler, Tatarlar ve Evl

ad-i F

atih

an (Istanbul, 1957), p. 41 n. 2;

Idris

Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Tes¸kil

atı: XVII. Y

uzyılda Ters

ane-i

Amire (Ankara, 1992), pp. 51–2.

Inalcık, Hicri 835 Tarihli,pp.xv–xvi;cf.Arıkan,‘YayaveM

usellemlerde’, pp. 178–9.

88 Cf. Nes¸ri, Kitab-ı Cih

an-n

a, i,pp.242–3;M.TayyibG

okbilg

in, XV–XVI. Asırlarda Edirne

ve Pas¸aLiv

ası,Vakıﬂar–M

ulkler–Mukataalar (Istanbul,1952), p. 14;

Inalcık, Hicri 835 Tarihli,

pp. xv–xvi;Do

gru, Osmanlı

Imparatorlu

gu’nda Yaya,pp.44–5.

212

Ottoman warfare, 1300–1453

From the end of the fourteenth century, the central administration began

to impose taxes on their hitherto free land grants, which made it more and

more difﬁcult for the yayas to fulﬁl their military duties. Upon the advice of

a chief councillor, the pretender Mustafa completely reshufﬂed them in 1421,

and the legitimate rulers subsequently adopted the system he had introduced.

He created units of three to ﬁve men (ocak) from the yayas on a parcel of

land. These men alternated annually in rendering military service, known as

es¸k

unci. The remaining yayas on the land (yamak, ‘assistant’) paid 50 akc¸e per

person to cover the expenses of those serving. In exchange, these yayas were

exempted from extraordinary taxes, and their tithes and other levies were used

to provide for the organisation and the ofﬁcers. In 1421 the Rumelian yayas

were converted into mounted soldiers, with the exception of those in Gelibolu

(Gallipoli), and called m

usellem. Either at the same time or shortly afterwards,

usellem units were also set up in Anatolia and served in the same way as

the yayas.

Presumably around this time separate yaya and m

usellem sancaks

were created with a subas¸ı holding the rank of sancakbeyi heading each district.

The sancaks were divided into nahiyes under the yayabas¸ıs for the footmen

and the c¸eribas¸ıs for the mounted units.

These commanders, like the beys,

received timar-holdings as remuneration. With the passage of time, an upper

stratum evolved, especially in Rumeli, from the es¸k

uncis and their replacement

(the c¸atalsorm

us¸tereks) within the yaya and m

usellem ocaks until they eventually

monopolised military service.

Until the late 1440s the archer yaya infantry was one of the centrally impor-

tant military units of the Ottoman army, heading the defensive system around

the sultan together with the azabs. Towards the middle of the century, how-

ever, both they and the m

usellems were gradually degraded to auxiliary ranks.

The new duties of the latter included the clearing of the roads, while the yayas

were put in charge of transporting guns and ammunition.

uks and Tatars

In order to consolidate its conquests, the Ottoman state settled nomadic Turks

uks) in the Balkans in large numbers. In addition to this, there was also

voluntary mass migration from western Anatolia into these territories. As a

result, heavy y

uk concentrations developed in Macedonia, Thessaly, Thrace

89 The most important evidence concerning the reorganisation is supplied by Azamat,

Anonim Tev

ıh-i

Al-i Osman,p.61; cf. Fodor, ‘The Way of a Seljuq Institution’, 376 and

nn. 37–8; see further Arıkan, ‘Yaya ve M

usellemlerde’, pp. 176–93.

90 Do

gru, Osmanlı

Imparatorlu

gu’nda Yaya,pp.38–9.

91 Arıkan, ‘Yaya ve M

usellemlerde’, pp. 188–9. 92 Tursun Bey, T

ıh-i Eb

u’l-Feth,pp.47–8.

213

al fodor

and Bulgaria.

This large manpower resource was used by the government

partly as reserve, partly as the pool from which to recruit a special military

unit. Although no contemporaneous data are extant it seems obvious that the

uks, just like the yayas, were organised in ocaks and performed service in

return for tax exemption. However, their units were probably more heavily

manned and stratiﬁed, since the person whose turn it was to go to war and

his three replacements (c¸atal) were supported by twenty yamaks in the second

half of the ﬁfteenth century.

Their commanders were timar-holding subas¸ıs

with the rank of sancakbeyi, below whom were the c¸eribas¸ıs, as was the case

for the m

usellems. In the Balkans, the y

uks took over the role of the yayas

turned m

usellems and fought armed with a coat of mail, lance, shield, sword and

bow.

In the fourteenth to the ﬁfteenth centuries, a few Tatar groups also settled

in the Balkan peninsula, ﬁrst mainly around Edirne. Later, they are found

concentrated in four districts, mainly along the military routes where they

lived mixed with the y

uks, and rendered service within the latter’s military

structure.

Cerehors

In the Anatolian Seljuk armies of the thirteenth century there was a unit called

jira-khvar.

Thiswasa generaltermdesignating hired soldiers of various ethnic

origins who were mainly recruited in times of emergency. After the Ottomans

had conquered the old Seljuk territories in central Anatolia, they adopted the

method of mobilising volunteers in return for wages. These irregularly enlisted

warriors, who included both Muslims and Christians, were called cerehor in

Ottoman-Turkish, or sometimes serehor/sarahor. They were armed with a

sword, shield and lance, and some also had armour. Towards the middle of the

ﬁfteenth century, the cerehor service gradually lost its voluntary character. The

government transformed it into an irregular levy imposed on the tax-paying

population and integrated it into the system of extraordinary war taxes. Under

this system, each four or ﬁve households had to supply a man (cerehor)ﬁtfor

93 G

okbilgin, Rumeli’de Y

ukler,pp.1–85, 90–251; Werner, Die Geburt,pp.207–10; Halil

Inalcık, ‘The Y

uks: Their Origins, Expansion and Economic Role’, in Oriental Carpet

and Textile Studies II: Carpets of the Mediterranean Countries, 1400–1600, ed. Robert Pin-

ner and Walter B. Denny (London, 1986), pp. 39–65; Mehmet

Inbas¸ı, Rumeli Y

ukleri

(1544–1675) (Erzurum, 2000).

Omer L

utﬁ Barkan, XV ve XVI ıncı Asırlarda Osmanlı

Imparatorlu

gunda Zira

ı Ekonominin

Hukuk

ıveMal

ı Esasları. Kanunlar (Istanbul, 1943), p. 393.

95 G

okbilgin, Rumeli’de Y

ukler,pp.86–90;

Inalcık and O

guz, Gazav

at-ı Sult

Mur

ad,

pp. 83–4 n. 6;

Inbas¸ı, Rumeli Y

ukleri,pp.96–109.

96 Bombaci, ‘The Army of the Saljuqs of R

um’, 353–7.

214

Ottoman warfare, 1300–1453

war and had to provide for all his expenses and supplies. The mobilisation of

the cerehors was often associated with the proclamation of a general call to

arms (neﬁr-i am) resorted to in critical situations. The cerehors, whose number

occasionally amounted to about 10,000, generally fought on the left wing of

the army, and the majority of them went to war on horseback. By the second

half of the ﬁfteenth century, the cerehors had lost their combatant role, and had

been relegated to act as sappers.

Voynuks, Vlachs and martoloses

The vojnici or vojini belonged to the lesser nobility of the Balkan Slav states and

possessed hereditary estates (bas¸tina). Tradition maintains that the Ottomans

incorporated them into their own military under the name voynuk in the

1370s.

It is not known how this took place, but in the early 1430s the voynuk

army demonstrably mirrored the yaya troops with the difference that the basic

unit consisting of a mounted or foot voynuk and two to three assistants (yamak)

was here called g

onder.Thevoynuk and his assistants had bas¸tinas exempted

from taxes. The replacement was ensured by the family and the relatives who

were registered as ofﬁcial reserves (zevaid) and rewarded with considerable tax

allowances. Most of the Bulgarian voynuks were ordered to serve the sultan’s

stable.

The voynuk organisation was also extended to (or, what is equally

feasible, borrowed from) the Vlachs (Eﬂak), a populous group of shepherds and

peasants with special legal status (ius walachicum) living in large numbers in the

Balkans.

100

They rendered voynuk service and tended to their lands in return for

extremely favourable lump sum taxes (adet-i eﬂakiye). Their commanders – the

lagator, the most junior, followed by the primik

ur, the c¸eribas¸ı and, at the top of

the hierarchy, thevoynukdistrict governorwho co-ordinatedthegeographically

widely scattered voynuks – either had free bas¸tinas or belonged to the sipahi

class as timar-holders. Although they were found everywhere, they lived in

large numbers along the strategic routes and in the border zones, playing a

key role in warding off enemy raids and guarding the castles and towns.

101

97 Fodor, ‘The Way of a Seljuq Institution’, 367–83.

98 Saadeddin, T

u’t-tev

ıh, i,p.94.

Inalcık, Fatih Devri,pp.137–77; Zirojevi

c, Tursko vojno uredjenje,pp.162–9; Werner,

Die Geburt,pp.210–17; Yavuz Ercan, Osmanlı

Imparatorlu

gunda Bulgarlar ve Voynuklar

(Ankara, 1986).

100 For their origins and spread, see Gottfried Schramm, Ein Damm bricht. Die r

omische

Donaugrenze und die Invasionen des 5 .–7. Jahrhunderts im Lichte von Namen und W

ortern

(Munich, 1997); cf. T. J. Winnifrith, The Vlachs: the History of a Balkan People (London,

1995); Hegyi, ‘Magyar

es balk

ani katonaparasztok’, pp. 1267–72.

101 Nicoar

a Beldiceanu, ‘La r

egion de Timok–Morava dans les documents de Mehmed II

et de Sel

ım I,’ Revue des

Etudes Roumaines 3–4 (1957), 111–29; Nicoar

Beldiceanu, ‘Les

215

al fodor

The organisation of the martoloses (from the Greek armatolos, ‘armed men’)

also derives from pre-Ottoman times, and they are thought to have been

incorporated into the Ottoman military around 1421. Initially, they served

mainly along the European borders of the empire, partly on foot and partly

on horseback. The Ottomans used them to man fortresses and river ﬂeets, to

guard riversides, carry out raids, reconnoitre and take prisoners as well as for

various policing activities. At ﬁrst, they and their families were exempted from

paying several taxes and many of them also received regular pay and a share

of the booty.

102

The majority of the listed contingents had some basic features in common.

Their members fought in return for tax exemption (mostly from extraordinary

war taxes) or tax allowances, or, in other words, they fulﬁlled their obligation to

pay war tax by doing military service and/or raising the costs of the conscripts.

Collective military service may have been the outcome of autochthonous

development as in the Frankish empire where in the 800s the impoverished

freemen did not go to war individually but two to ﬁve men jointly equipped

and supplied a warrior (see also the German agrarii milites in the 900s).

103

Since,

however, the earliest element of the system (voynuk) and several terms (such as

lagator, primik

ur and g

onder) are of pre-Ottoman origin, it cannot be precluded

thatweare faced with the Ottomanisedform of the late Byzantinesmallholding

system.

104

Among those who served under the ocak system, service was usually

passed down from father to son, and the state itself was intent on making them

into an increasingly closed group. To this end, they were gradually elevated to

the military (askeri) class, even though most of them still lived a peasant way

of life. Consequently, the majority of the Ottoman peasant soldiers could be

subsumed under the regular standing army. Through these agencies, broad

masses of not only the conquerors but also the subjugated were involved in

Valaques de Bosnie

alaﬁnduXVesi

ecle et leurs institutions’, Turcica 7 (1975), 122–

34; Nicoar

a Beldiceanu, ‘Les Roumains

a la bataille d’Ankara’, S

udost-Forschungen 14,

2 (1955), 441–50; Nicoar

a Beldiceanu and Ir

ene Beldiceanu-Steinherr, ‘Quatre actes de

Mehmed II concernant les Valaques des Balkans slaves’, S

udost-Forschungen 24 (1955),

103–18; Werner, Die Geburt,pp.210–17.

102 Milan Vasi

c, ‘DieMartolosenim Osmanischen Reich’, Zeitschriftf

urBalkanologie 2 (1964),

172–89; Milan Vasi

c, Martolosi u jugoslovenskim zemljama pod turskom vladavinom (Sara-

jevo, 1967);

Inalcık, Fatih Devri,pp.179–80; Cengiz Orhonlu, Osmanlı

Imparatorlu

gunda

Derbend Tes¸kil

atı, 2nd edn (Istanbul, 1990), pp. 85–96; Hegyi, ‘Magyar

balk

ani kato-

naparasztok’, pp. 1266–7, 1270–1.

103 Eugen von Frauenholz, Das Heerwesen der germanischen Fr

uhzeit, des Frankenreiches und

des ritterlichen Zeitalters (Entwicklungsgeschichte des deutschen Heerwesens), vol. I (Munich,

1935), pp. 159–61, 177–80; E. Sander, ‘Die Heeresorganisation Heinrichs I’, Historisches

Jahrbuch 5 (1939), 1–26.

104 For this, see Bartusis, The Late Byzantine Army,pp.157–90.

216

Ottoman warfare, 1300–1453

and beneﬁted from the wars of conquest. This ‘socialisation’ of the war was

one of the main guarantees of the dynamism and efﬁciency of the Ottoman

military organisation in that period.

Vassals

From the second half of the fourteenth century the vassal states were expected

regularly to send contingents of varying size to ﬁght on the side of the

Ottomans. Between 1379 and 1400 Manuel II (Byzantine co-emperor from

1373 and emperor from 1391) and his army had to accompany Murad I and

Bayezid I on their campaigns almost every year.

105

The same fate befell the

Serbian princes after the battle of Kosovo (1389). During the 1430s the Serbian

despot of Smederevo had to send a force of 800 to 3,000 men commanded by

one of his sons to assist the Ottoman army.

106

The vassal troops often provided

invaluable help to the Ottomans as exempliﬁed by the battles at Nikopolis and

Ankara. In the ﬁrst case, it was the charge of the Serbian cavalry of Stefan

Lazarevi

c that decided the outcome of the battle; and in the second, it was his

5,000 cavalry lancers covered in ‘black armour’ who stood fast by the sultan

and were the last to ﬂee from the battleﬁeld.

107

Armament: the diffusion and use of ﬁrearms

Mention having been made of the arms and equipment of the Ottomans in

the discussion of individual army units, only a few general characteristics

will be emphasised here. Contemporary foreign observers usually stressed

two aspects. First, that the armament of a considerable segment of the army

appeared very simple, and was often regarded as poor. Bertrandon de la Bro-

qui

ere, for example, had a low opinion of the quality of the weapons in 1433.

108

Second, the arms of even the best-equipped mounted troops (especially their

armour) were much lighter than the enemy’s, and the resulting agility and

manoeuvring ability ensured them enormous advantages in ﬁeld battles.

109

The armament was lighter because the smaller Turkish horses could carry less

weight. It was, nevertheless, the excellent horses that were one of the main

assets of the Ottoman cavalry, as they were less demanding, more enduring

105 George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State (Oxford, 1968; repr. 1980), pp. 543,

548–9.

106 Ostrogorsky, History,p.547; Bertrandon de la Broqui

ere, Voyage ,pp.185, 209.

107 Imber, The Ottoman Empire,p.46;Doukas,Decline and Fall,p.93; Jorga, Geschichte, i,

pp. 321, 331.

108 Bertrandon de la Broqui

ere, Voyage ,pp.202, 221, 224, 227.

109 Konstantin Mihajlovi

c, Memoirs,p.171.

217

al fodor

and faster than the European mounts.

110

Since the Christian cuirasses with-

stood the sword, the weaponry of the Ottoman infantry also contained various

thrusting and cutting tools such as the war-axe, the halberd and especially the

pick-axe (k

unk) that were capable of breaking through the heavy armour.

111

While lighter weaponry was advantageous in ﬁeld battles, its disadvantages

became apparent in sieges, as the soldiers were far more vulnerable while

climbing the fortress walls, more exposed to the arrows and bullets showering

on them than were the plate-armoured defenders of a fortress.

It was during their conquest in the Balkans (in the 1380s) that the Ottomans

became acquainted with gunpowder technology and guns and began to adopt

and integrate them into their own warfare. In this process, a major role was

playedbytheBalkan vassal subjects as wellasthewesternexperts who, entering

Ottoman service, initially transmitted and later further developed the then up-

to-date knowledge. As a result, within the next half a century the Ottomans

became a real ‘gunpowder empire’ ahead of their rivals in many regards.

112

There is evidence at our disposal showing that the Ottomans ﬁrst used

ﬁrearms during the repeated sieges of Constantinople (1394–1402, 1422).

113

While these cannons (actually large bombards) proved rather ineffective, those

used at the siege of Thessalonike (1430) were far more successful. Cannons had

become the fundamental and indispensable weapons of the Ottoman army

by the 1440s. Based on experiences gained in the series of battles with the

Hungarians, the Ottomans created their ﬁeld artillery and used it with success

as early as the battle of Kosovo in 1448.

114

It was apparently also from the Hun-

garians that they learnt the Wagenburg-tactic (tabur cengi) of Hussite origin,

though they rarely resorted to it prior to 1453. This was a sort of fortiﬁcation

created from hundreds of carts chained together by their wheels and packed

with crossbowmen, hand-gunners and light artillery.

115

In 1444 the Ottoman

110 Bertrandon de la Broqui

ere, Voy age,pp.218, 221, 229; on the Turkoman horse,

see Mehmet Altay K

oymen, ‘Alp Arslan Zamanı Selc¸uklu Asker

ıTes¸kil

atı’, Tarih

Aras¸tırmaları Dergisi 5 (1967), 53–72.

111

Inalcık and O

guz, Gazav

at-ı Sult

an Mur

ad,pp.21, 53, 55, 62.

112 For a general assessment, see JeremyBlack, War andthe World: Military Powerand theFate

of Continents 1450–2000 (New Haven and London, 2000), particularly pp. 20–1;G

abor

Agoston, ‘Ottoman Warfare in Europe 1453–1826’, in European Warfare 1453–1815, ed.

Jeremy Black (London, 1999), pp. 123–5;

Agoston, Guns for the Sultan,pp.17, 42–8, 56–60.

113 Djur

djica Petrovi

c, ‘Fire-arms in the Balkans on the Eve of and After the Ottoman

Conquests of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, in War, Technology and Society

in the Middle East, ed. V. J. Parry and M. E. Yapp (London, 1975), pp. 174–8, 190–1.

114

Agoston, Guns for the Sultan,pp.17–18.

115 Emanuel Constantin Antoche, ‘Du t

abor de Jan

zkaetdeJeanHunyadiautabur c¸engi

des arm

ees ottomanes. L’art militaire hussite en Europe orientale, au Proche et au

Moyen Orient (XVe–XVIIe si

ecles)’, Turcica 36 (2004), 91–124.

218

Ottoman warfare, 1300–1453

artillery was already capable of ﬁring at enemy ships, that is, moving targets, to

cover the troops crossing at the Bosphorus. During Murad II’s reign shipboard

artillery also appeared.

116

The largest part of Ottoman artillery in this period comprised wrought-

iron monster guns. They were huge hard-to-transport bombards that could

shoot stone balls of several hundred kilograms each. By the mid-ﬁfteenth

century the Ottomans had learnt to cast bronze guns that included smaller

calibre pieces too. For lack of permanent foundries, they usually cast the

guns on the spot using materials brought with them. The situation gradually

changed towards the middle of the century, especially when they began to

prepare for the siege of Constantinople. For this major undertaking (1453),

they deployed one of the world’s most advanced artilleries with a variety of

guns: giant bombards including a monster gun of unprecedented size cast by

Master Orban of Hungary; mortars or heavy short-barrelled guns that threw

the stone balls or explosive shells with parabolic trajectories, used now for the

ﬁrst time against the Byzantine ships; and small-calibre cannons, similar to

the most advanced French artillery,

117

which they deployed in mixed batteries

(fourteen in number). With these mobile units, they carried out one of the

ﬁrst mass bombardments in history.

118

We have enough reason to suppose that parallel with, or in the wake of,

the ﬁeld-pieces, hand-held ﬁrearms also appeared in the Ottoman army. As

noted above, a small number of the janissaries probably carried hand guns

ufek, t

ufenk) during the 1440s. In the middle of the century, the existence can

be attested to in some Balkan fortresses of gunner units (t

ufenkc¸i), many of

whom were Christian subjects of the sultan. The guns may well have been

imported from abroad and in part acquired during the skirmishes. However,

these weapons, which were probably matchlock arquebuses, were not used

widely until the later part of the ﬁfteenth century.

119

116

Inalcık and O

guz, Gazav

at-ı Sult

an Mur

ad,pp.47–8;

Agoston, Guns for the Sultan,p.18.

117 Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and

Tactics (Baltimore and London, 1997), p. 130.

118 John Norris, Early Gunpowder Artillery c.1300–1600 (Ramsbury, 2003), pp. 108–11; Feridun

M. Emecen,

Istanbul’un Fethi Olayı ve Meseleleri (Istanbul, 2003), pp. 18, 37;

Agoston, Guns

for the Sultan,pp.61–8.

119

Agoston, Guns for the Sultan,pp.19, 88. The question remains whether the more

expensive Ottoman arms and armours were in the main domestic or imported products

in the period at issue. While there is ample evidence showing that Italian trading cities

exported large quantities of arms and armours into the Levantduring the thirteenth and

early fourteenth century, such evidence verifying the supposed Genoese and Venetian

arms trade into the Ottoman Empire during the fourteenth and the ﬁfteenth century

is still lacking. Cf. Kate Fleet, European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State:

the Merchants of Genoa and Turkey (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 112–21. It is worth noting,

219