From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Janissaries  : Shaw   (WAS Re: To M.Hubey (About the "genoci
Date: 30 Jul 92 19:25:18 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.greek
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


Stanford Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey,
Volume I, Cambridge, 1976.

[My comments are in square brackets like this.]


p. 22

Bayezit I's accession marked a fundamental break with the
policies and traditions of Ottoman statceraft molded under Osman
and maintained by both Orhan and Murat. To explain this change
fully, its origins, implications and results, we must first
examine the development of Ottoman institutions during the
fourteenth century under the first three rulers.

The Structure of Ottoman Government and Administration

The transformation of Osman's frontier principality into a state
and then an empire altered the ruler's relation to his followers.
As a tribal leader, frontier bey,and then independent bey, the
Ottoman leader carried the government and military command more
or less in his saddle. The administration and army were composed
of the same people, mostly members of the princely Turkoman
families and their nomadic followers along with a few Christian
converts. In peace they collected taxes from the conquered areas;
in war they led the fight against the enemy and took booty. ..All
this time the Ottoman leader was still no more than a tribal
chief, able to claim the loyalty of the clans and tribes that
followed him only as long as he led them to good grazing land and
booty. In the councils the leaders were all equals, and he was no
more than the first among them. Individual leaders and their
followers could and did leave him when he failed to gain as much
booty as they had wished or for any other reason they deemed
sufficient. Anyone who wished to approach the Ottoman leader
could do so in camp or on the march without performing any
special rituals or marks of obeisance. The authority of the bey
extended only to functions involved in his role as military
leader of allied clans. In all internal matters each tribe or
clan was autonomous...The Ottoman leader could intervene only
in disputes  between and among clans, and then as mediator. Most
disputes were settled by tribal custom and law, with  Muslim law
and jurists having little influence regardless of the fact that
the Ottomans and their followers professed to be gazis.

Under such a government what could territorial rule mean?
Whatever administration existed ...was largely financial in
scope. Each clan or tribe or family collected all the booty it
could in the lands it conquered as part of the Ottoman army. It
had the right to collect taxes afterward from the same territory
as regularly as it could. It had neither the time nor the
inclination to interfere with the producers of wealth in their
possession of property or agricultural or trade operations as
long as they paid their taxes.  The only particular advantage
given the Ottoman beys over their commanders in return for their
function as leaders was the right to collect, as additional
revenue, one-fifth of the booty acquired in battle, called
'penchik' (pers. one-fifth). At this time the state treasury and
the treasury of the ruler were the same, with only the penchik
giving the leader's treasury more revenue than those of his
followers. The bey had to meet whatever common expenses there
were out of this treasury. Whatever common policies had to be
decided were considered in the tribal council of elders. Here the
bey had a strong voice but certainly not the only one. We might
say that he was the first among equals in a rough tribal
democracy.

[This is where the Janissaries got their start.]

But as the Ottoman successes mounted and the territory under
their rule expanded, particularly in Europe, the beys came to
claim the title of sultan, enabling them to exercise full secular
powers and to legislate in all areas not specifically covered by
the Muslim religious law....Under Orhan, and especially under
Murat I, new institutions were introduced to meet the needs of
the time.

As Ottoman government and military institutions evolved, there
were a number of influences that determined their structure. The
traditions left by the old Turkish dynasties of Central Asia had
a pervasive though not necessarily dominant influence. These had
already been significantly diluted in Iraq and Anatolia by the
High Islamic civilization of the Abbasids and Seljuks.
Nevertheless, thousands more nomads were entering Anatolia in
flight from the Mongols and Tamerlane and bringing with them
particularly Turkish forms of military organization, bureacratic
structure, and taxes--all of which became integral and essential
forms of the Ottoman system. Another important source of
tradition was Sunni Islam, developed by the classical empires of
Islam and perpetuated and extended by the Seljuks.....

Finally, there was the Byzantine tradition. By assimilating a
living Byzantine society in both Anatolia and Europe, the
Ottomans inevitably inherited Byzantine ways of doing things--
Byzantine fiefs, taxes, ceremonials, officials and
administration. In many cases the veneer of High Islamic
civilization was thrown over these institutions by giving them
Muslim names, but the substance remained Byzantine, at least in
the two centuries before the conquest of the Arab world gave High
Islamic civilization a much more predominant role throughout the
Ottoman Empire. Court ceremonial and central administrative
practices were affected by the Byzantine patterns. Beginning in
the Seljuk times and continuing into the fourteenth century,
Byzantine and other Christian women were taken into the harems of
Seljuk, Turkoman and early Ottoman rulers. The mother of Seljuk
ruler Izzuddin II was the daughter of a Greek prince. Izzuddin II
is said to have been secretly baptized and to have allowed strong
Greek influence at his court. Orhan's wife Theodora, daughter of
Cantacuzene, is said to have remained a Christian and to have
provided help to the Christians of Bithynia while she was in the
Ottoman court. Murat I and Bayezit I had Christian Greek mothers.
Murat married the Bulgarian princess Tamara and Byzantine
princess Helena. Bayezit married Despina, daughter of the Serbian
prince Lazar. All these women brought Christian advisors into the
Ottoman court, influencing Ottoman court practice and ceremonial
as it evolved in this crucial century. We shall see later how
their influence changed Bayezit I from a gazi leader to an
invader of the Muslim Turkoman principalities of Anatolia.

[As can be seen, the Ottomans had plenty of reasons/pretexts like
the other European nobility to 'meddle' and to lay claims to
various lands in Europe since they since the Ottoman nobility too
were related by marriage to the rulers of these lands.]


The vassal Christian princes of the Balkans also sent contingents
to the Ottoman army as well as advisors who helped develop
Ottoman provincial and central administrative institutions. Since
conversion was not yet a preprequisite for entering Ottoman
service, many Christians served the sultans as officers, soldiers
and administrators.

It is extremely difficult to determine the exact extent of
Turkish, Islamic and Byzantine influence in the development of
the institutions of the Ottoman Empire. The problem is
complicated by limited source materials and also by the fact that
Islamic and Byzantine empires were similar in many ways and had
been interacting for centuries before the Ottomans arrived, as
had the Hellenistic and Persian cultures at an earlier time. They
shared the traditional Middle Eastern characteristics of exteme
heterogeneity in population and religion and, therefore, faced
similar problems that had to be solved in similar ways.

[In other sources it says that most of the 'eastern ways' of doing
things (which means ARab, Persian and Byzantine) were mostly
borrowed from the Persians.]


There were, however, certain areas of Ottoman life where specific
influences could be traced. We have indicated how Byzantine
influence apparently pervasive as Murat I and Bayezit I abandoned
the simple tribal court of Osman and adopted the trappings of
imperial rule. As sultans the Ottoman rulers began to isolate
themselves. No longer approachable, they could be reached only
through elaborate  court ceremonies borrowed from the Byzantines
and Persians.

p.25

Originally, all the soldiers in the Ottoman army were Turkoman
horsemen, organized into clans and tribes under tribal chiefs and
heterodox religious leaders. They were almost entirely cavalry,
armed with bows, arrows and spears...Orhan, however, soon found
that undisciplined soldiers were of little use in besieging and
capturing fortified cities....The Seljuks had rid themselves of
disruptive nomads by sending them to the frontiers, and the
Ottomans now began to do the same. But before Orhan could
dispense entirely with their military services he had to replace
them with some kind of a new army. Therefore, he organized a
separate army of soldiers who entered his service in return for
salaries rather than booty or in fulfillment of religious
objectives... As it increased in size and strength, the Ottoman
leaders were able to push the Turkomans to the frontier and to
use them mainly as shock troops, with the terms akinci (raider)
and deli (fanatic) [mine: today deli means crazy] being applied
to them in place of gazi....

Murat, however, began to become dissatisfied with the quality of
men who served the state for money alone and were in any case
under the control of their commanders. Thus he began to organize
a new military force composed of "slaves of the Porte"
(kapikullari; sing. kapikulu). These men came to the ruler as
his penchik, or one-fifth of share, of booty captured from the
enemy. Murat had previously collected the share in cash but now
used it to build up an army directly under his control and
command. When these youths came to the sultan, they were educated
in the Turkish language, Islam, Arabic, and other characteristics
of the Ottoman way. They then were given military training, and
organized as infantry, called Yeni Cheri ("New Force") or
Janissary corps, or as cavalry, called Sipahis. The yayas and the
musellems were relegated more to rear-line duties, so that it was
the kapikullari rather than either the nomad or the salaried
forces that led the conquests and were rewarded with lands in
return for their efforts.  It should be noted, however, that
during the late fourteenth century while this process was taking
place and new military forces were replacing the old, the Ottoman
army was able to depend for much of its effectiveness on the
contributions of the troops sent by their Balkan vassals....

Since the conquered European provinces were organised in the
timar [fief] system and given to the Turkish notables who
commanded the Ottoman armies, it was inevitable that they should
develop extensive estates with revenues in excess of those
remaining to the rulers. It was also inevitable that the men in
the army should obey those who paid their salaries, the timar
holders, rather than the rulers. As a result, as the fourteenth
century continued, the power and influence of the Turkish
notables increased considerably in relation to the rulers....

Most revenues in the conquered lands remained in the hands of the
Turkish notables, who thus monopolized power in both the state
and the army as the century continued.

Murat I sought to counteract the power of the notables by
developing the Christian vassal soldiers and converted
kapikullari as his personal troops, independent of the regular
army.

[The reason originally for the Janissaries seem to have been
short range, only to get more power for the Sultan. PS. The
Turks themselves were products of a 'slave' system. Altough
probably not the Ottomans, Turks for a few centuries had begun
to serve as slaves and mercenaries in the Middle East; Persia
and Arab lands. ]

 In addition, he took over the Seljuk system of training
youthful slaves as gulams (foreign youths) and instituted the new
practice of devshirme (literally a "gathering" of youths), the
periodic conscription of Christian boys in the Balkans, with the
best being entered into the army and the palace (on the
development of the devshirme system and class see pp. 113-114).

[Given in the next post]

The Turkish notables; however, continued to lead the conquering
armies and receive most of the fruits; thus they supported
further conquests while the slave forces and Christian advisors
at court tried to convince the rulers to turn toward conquests in
Muslim Turkish Anatolia, which would not strengthen their rivals
as much. Here we see the background of tensions that would
eventually tear the Ottoman state asunder and bring a tragic and
sudden end to Bayezit I's reign early in the fifteenth century.

[The 'slave forces' did win out. The Ottomans turned to Asia and
conquered the Turkmen lands, then the Arab lands and went on
to conquer Egypt being ruled by 'slave' Turks like themselves
i.e. the Mameluks]
-- 

	mark	


   hubey@pilot.njin.net                   hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
 ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey                  hubey@logos.montclair.edu