Yannis Spyropoulos JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD raditionally, works on the history of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Mediterranean treat its eastern part as a sphere of commerce dominated by the economic forces of Western states and the non-Muslims of the Ottoman Empire1. In this framework, Christians and Jews are usually seen as the only religious groups that were able to develop diasporic communities within and beyond the Ottoman Empire, and as the only financial actors which had to be reckoned with in the fields of maritime commerce, shipping, and commercial credit2. 1 2 Research for this paper was carried out in the framework of the project “Janissary networks in early modern Mediterranean, 18th-early 19th centuries”, funded by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) within the action “Funding of postdoctoral research” with funds from the Operational Program Education and Lifelong Learning, NSRF 2014-2020, priority axes 6, 8 and 9, co-funded by Greece and the European Social Fund. On some aspects of these historiographical issues, see Kate Fleet, “Introduction,” in Eadem and Svetla Ianova, Ottoman Economic Practices in Periods of Transformation: The Cases of Crete and Bulgaria (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2014), 1-22; Edhem Eldem, “Strangers in Their Own Seas? The Ottomans in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century,” in Studi Settecenteschi 29-30. Il Mediterraneo nel Settecento: Identità e scambi, ed. Piero Sanna (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 2009-2010), 25-57, 25-26; Palmira Brummett, “The Ottomans as a World Power: What We Don’t Know about Ottoman Sea- JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 105 However, in the last decades, historiography has started to challenge the dominant view on the European trade in the Ottoman Empire, by raising important questions concerning the role of Western sources in the formation of our current perception of this trade’s relative size and volume3. This revision went hand-in-hand with the appearance of studies which stressed the importance of sources produced by institutions which functioned within the framework of the Ottoman fiscal system, such as the registers of the Empire’s tax-paying communities. Yet, even the research that has tried to examine the dynamics of the Ottoman economy beyond the information provided by the Western bureaucracy has focused, so far, only on a limited number of its aspects. Although, for instance, a number of publications have helped us to better understand the mechanisms which defined the commercial and credit networks of Ottoman religious minorities4, no relevant studies have examined the issue from the viewpoint of Muslim communal institutions. Furthermore, a few notable exceptions aside5, Muslim entrepreneurship in the eastern Mediterranean is usually investigated with no systematic reference to the broader framework of Muslim economic activity between different localities. An inevitable side-effect of this imbalanced view is the emergence of considerable difficulties in our attempt to understand not only the economic 3 4 5 Power,” Oriente Moderno 20, no. 1 (2001): 1-9; Molly Greene, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 6. See, for instance, Edhem Eldem, “Capitulations and Western Trade,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 286; Eyal Ginio, “When Coffee Brought About Wealth and Prestige: The Impact of Egyptian Trade on Salonica,” Oriente Moderno 25, no. 1 (2006): 93-94; Asma Moalla, The Regency of Tunis and the Ottoman Porte, 1777-1814: Army and Government of a North African Ottoman Eyālet at the End of the Eighteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2005), xx. For the well-studied case of Greek-Orthodox merchants, see, for instance, Gelina Harlaftis and Katerina Papakonstantinou, eds, Η ναυτιλία των Ελλήνων, 1700-1821, ο αιώνας της ακμής πριν από την Επανάσταση, (Athens: Kedros Publications, 2013); Despoina Vlami, Το φιορίνι, το σιτάρι και η οδός του Κήπου. Έλληνες έμποροι στο Λιβόρνο (1750-1868) (Athens: Θεμέλιο, 2000); Eleftheria Zei, “Το ακίνητο και το χρέος στην Πάρο, 18ος-19ος αιώνας. Ανάμεσα στο κοινό και στο ιδιωτικό,” Ιστορικά 13, no. 23-24 (1996): 67-84; George Dertilis, ed., Banquiers, usuriers et paysans. Réseaux de crédit et stratégies du capital en Grèce (17801930) (Paris: La Découverte, 1988); Spyros Asdrachas, “Η ελληνική οικονομία κατά τον ΙΗ΄ αιώνα: οι μηχανισμοί,” in idem, Ελληνική Κοινωνία και Οικονομία, ιη΄-ιθ΄αι. (Athens: Ermis, 1982). Nelly Hanna, ed., Money, Land and Trade: An Economic History of the Muslim Mediterranean (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002); Kate Fleet, European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Daniel Panzac, Commerce et navigation dans l’Empire Ottoman au XVIIIe siècle (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1996). 106 YANNIS SPYROPOULOS but also the sociopolitical history of Muslim populations in the region. In a similar fashion, despite the fact that a number of researchers have made considerable effort to examine the mobility of people and ideas between non-Muslim diasporic communities6, we still lack studies which investigate the phenomenon from the viewpoint of Islamic populations in the early modern era. The movement of people and the dissemination of ideas between Ottoman Muslim communities have only recently started to be examined, mainly in the nineteenth century and in relation to biographical studies and micro-history7. However, in spite of this historiographical tone which clearly does not favor a more holistic examination of Muslim participation in the economic and political life of the Ottoman Empire, I believe that the study of the history of Janissaries has to offer new exciting opportunities for research in this direction. In the present article I will attempt to give a tentative description of some of these prospects, by discussing the ways through which the history of the corps in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is relevant to that of various Muslim communities. Through explaining some of the basic aspects of the corps’ financial and political evolution during the period in question, I will give a brief description of how historians can approach the Janissaries as a key institution to create a more balanced image of the political and economic life of the early modern Ottoman Empire. 6 7 See, for instance, Loukianos Chassiotis, Olga Katsiardi-Hering, and Evridiki Ambatzi, eds, Οι Έλληνες στη Διασπορά, 15ος-21ος αι. (Athens: Parliament of Greece, 2008); Vaso Seirinidou, Οι Έλληνες στη Βιέννη, 1780-1850, (Athens: Herodotus, 2011); Richard G. Hovannisian and David N. Myers, eds, Enlightenment and Diaspora: The Armenian and Jewish Cases (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999); Paschalis Kitromilidis, “Από την Ορθόδοξη Κοινοπολιτεία στις εθνικές κοινότητες: ελληνορωσικές πνευματικές σχέσεις,” Τα Ιστορικά 10 (1989): 29-46. See, for instance, Ian Coller, “Ottomans on the Move: Hassuna D’Ghies and the ‘New Ottomanism’ of the 1830s,” in Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century, eds Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou (London, New Delhi, New York, and Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2016), 97-116; Abdulhamit Kırmızı, “Experiencing the Ottoman Empire as a Life Course: Ferid Pasha, Governor and Grandvizier (1851-1914),” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 40, no. 1 (2014): 42-66; Cengiz Kırlı, “Coffeehouses: Public Opinion in the Nineteenth Century Ottoman Empire,” in Public Islam and the Common Good, eds Armando Salvatore and Dale F. Eickelman (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 75-97. For the few related works pertaining to the 18th century, see Ali Yaycıoğlu, “Révolutions de Constantinople: The French and the Ottoman Worlds in the Age of Revolutions,” in French Mediterraneans: Transnational and Imperial Histories, eds Patricia M. E. Lorcin and Todd Shepard (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 25-26, 48; Vefa Erginbaş, “Enlightenment in the Ottoman Context,” in Historical Aspects of Printing and Publishing in Languages of the Middle East: Papers from the Symposium at the University of Leipzig, September 2008, ed. Geoffrey Roper (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 53-100. JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 107 The opening of the Janissary corps to the Ottoman Empire’s Muslim populations The Janissaries constitute one of the most intriguing, hotly debated, and, yet, least understood institutions of the Ottoman Empire. They were created in the fourteenth century as an élite military force which acted as the Sultan’s private guard. Their manpower originally comprised ‘slaves’ (kul) that were either war captives or youths enrolled through the ‘devşirme,’ a levy of young Christian boys who were forcibly taken from their families in the Balkans and Anatolia, and converted to Islam. These children were given out to Turkish families in villages as manual laborers for a number of years in order to learn the Turkish language and be instructed to the basic principles of Islam. After this period ended, they were returned to Istanbul where they completed their training and served in various imperial institutions, through which they often managed to occupy some of the Empire’s most important military/administrative posts8. In theory, this system ensured the suitability of the people who participated in the Ottoman governance and army, and guaranteed the quality of their training and their obedience to the Sultan9, while preventing the emergence of a self-reproducing élite. That is owing to the fact that the existence of the devşirme largely blocked the hereditary transfer of offices within the higher echelons of the administration. However, in the first half of the sixteenth century the sons of Janissaries (kuloğlu) gained the right to enter the corps10, while by the end of the same century a great number of ‘outsiders’ also started being enrolled as Janissaries. This 8 9 10 The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition (henceforth EI2), vol. 2, “Devshirme” (Victor L. Ménage), 210-213, and vol. 11, “Yeñi Čeri” (Rhoads Murphey), 322-323. This claim is, in fact, debatable as most of the arguments used on the suitability and unsuitability of certain parts of the Ottoman society for joining the corps were based solely on ethnic, religious, and social stereotypes of little actual value; Ibid., 326; Kavanin-i Yeniçeriyan (Yeniçeri Kanunları), ed. and trans. Tayfun Toroser (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür yayınları, 2011), 13-15; Gülay Yılmaz, “Becoming a Devşirme: The Training of Conscripted Children in the Ottoman Empire,” in Children in Slavery Through the Ages, eds. Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2009), 121; Mustafa Âli, “The Ottoman Gentleman of the Sixteenth Century: Mustafa Âli’s Mevâ’idü’n-nefâ’is fî kavâ’idi’l-mecâlis, ‘Tables of Delicacies Concerning the Rules of Social Gatherings’,” trans. Douglas S. Brookes, in Sources of Oriental Languages and Literatures 59. Turkish Sources LI, eds Şinasi Tekin and Gönül Alpay Tekin (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 16. The institution of ‘kuloğlus,’ which was introduced during Sultan Selim I’s rule (1512-1520), acted as the first mechanism for the hereditary transfer of Janissary pay-certificates; Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi (henceforth İA), vol. 1, “Acemi Oğlanı” (Mücteba İlgürel), 325. 108 YANNIS SPYROPOULOS development, which reflected the political trends and military necessities of the time11, has as a result the gradual demise and eventual cessation of the devşirme and its replacement by a much more open system of appointments which allowed a great number of Muslim-born subjects to enter the corps12. This meant that, starting from the second half of the sixteenth century, thousands of Muslims who had the financial and political means to infiltrate the Janissary ranks managed to become soldiers. This infiltration, in turn, provided them with a steady salary, the opportunity to move higher in the administrative/military hierarchy of the state, and a number of other privileges that I will deal with later on in the present article. Following these developments, the number of officially registered Janissaries rose from approximately 2,000 men in the late fourteenth to more than 50,000 in the second half of the seventeenth and more than 100,000 in the early nineteenth century13. During this expansion, the Janissaries also started to gradually acquire a more decentralized identity. In the second half of the fifteenth century, they were mostly based in the Ottoman capital, but, from the sixteenth century onward, rotating Janissary garrisons began to be appointed in growing numbers in provincial fortresses. With the exception of the Ottoman state’s semi-autonomous North African regencies of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers (eyalet-i mümtaze), where the appointed Janissary forces gained permanence and created their own autonomous administration during the sixteenth century14, in the rest of the Empire Janissary regiments continued to rotate from one provincial garrison to another every few years until the eighteenth century. At that time, as I will discuss later, most Janissary regiments started acquiring a permanent presence in particular provincial fortresses 11 12 13 14 For an extensive discussion of the drives behind this process, see Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 177-82. Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 140-142; Hamilton A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West: A Study of the Impact of Western Civilization on Moslem Culture in the Near East, vol. 1: Islamic Society in the Eighteenth Century, part 1 (London, New York, and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1950), 62. Antonis Anastasopoulos and Yannis Spyropoulos, “Soldiers on an Ottoman Island: The Janissaries of Crete, Eighteenth-Early Nineteenth Centuries,” Turkish Historical Review 8, no. 1 (2017): 2. According to Mehmet Mert Sunar, the total number of officially registered Janissary pay-tickets in 1815/6 and 1818/9 were 114,497 and 109,706 respectively: Mehmet Mert Sunar, “Cauldron of Dissent: A Study of the Janissary Corps, 1807-1826” (PhD diss., State University of New York, 2006), 57. Daniel Panzac, The Barbary Corsairs. The End of a Legend, 1800-1820, trans. Victoria Hobson and John E. Hawkes (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 17-21. JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 109 Первые две страницы документа, информирующие судью Кандийе о ликвидации янычарского корпуса. First two pages of the document, informing the judge Kandiye about the Janissary corps abolishment. Turkish Archive of Herakleion, vol. 45, pp. 82–83. and creating stronger connections with the local societies. According to the Ottoman-Armenian writer Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson, by 1787 only 43 of the 196 Janissary regiments were based in Istanbul, with the rest 153 being dispersed around the Empire’s periphery15. D’Ohsson also states that the total number of Janissaries was a mystery even to their own commander in Istanbul. He maintains that the Janissary organization comprised about 120,000 combatant soldiers, another 150,000 holders of pay-certificates (esame) not performing any services, and Janissary-pretenders (taslakçı) whose numbers he did not even venture to guess16. If we accept such statements as reflecting 15 16 Ignace Mouradgea d’Ohsson, Tableau général de l’empire othoman, vol. 7 (Paris: Firmin Didot père et fils, 1824), 312-313. Cemal Kafadar, “Janissaries and Other Riffraff of Ottoman Istanbul: Rebels Without a Cause?,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 13, no. 1-2 (2007): 117-118. 110 YANNIS SPYROPOULOS a real tendency, we understand that in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries literally hundreds of thousands of Muslims had become in one way or another affiliated to the Janissary corps. A reasonable question which automatically comes to mind when dealing with this rapid growth of Janissary membership is which factors had led to it. Traditionally historians have been treating the demise of the devşirme and the enrollment in the corps of thousands of Muslims as the results of the Empire’s need for a greater salaried firearm-bearing infantry to be used in the European front. A more recent research, though, successfully revised this view, by claiming that the changes in military technology — important as they may have been — are not enough to explain the proportions that the phenomenon took. This new thesis rather proposes that it would be much easier to interpret it in the framework of the development of centrifugal forces within the Empire’s central political scene which led to en masse appointments of a political nature in the Ottoman army17. However, this interesting analysis refers mainly to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Thus, it does not explain the continuation and climax of the phenomenon in the following two centuries and, especially, on the periphery of the Ottoman state, where the political and financial influence of Istanbul-based élites were following a declining course vis-à-vis that of local power-brokers18. To better understand what I mean by referring to a ‘climax’ of Muslim enrollment in the corps during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, I should specify that the sources of that period indicate that the entire male Muslim population in a number of Ottoman cities was becoming Janissaries. Such mentions are to be found, for instance, in the cases of Bosnia, Crete, Thessaloniki, Bolu, Erzurum, and elsewhere19. The phenomenon seems to 17 18 19 Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire, 177-182. Ariel Salzmann, “An Ancien Régime Revisited: ‘Privatization’ and Political Economy in the Eighteenth Century Ottoman Empire,” Politics and Society 21, no. 4 (1993): 393-423; Bruce McGowan, “The Age of the Ayans, 1699-1812,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914, vol. 2, eds Halil İnalcık with Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 637-758. Fatma Sel Turhan, The Ottoman Empire and the Bosnian Uprising: Janissaries, Modernisation and Rebellion in the Nineteenth Century (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014), 178; Ali Yaycıoğlu, “The Provincial Challenge: Regionalism, Crisis, and Integration in the Late Ottoman Empire (1792-1812)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2008), 52-53; Sunar, “Cauldron of Dissent,” 49; Philippe De Bonneval and Mathieu Dumas, Αναγνώριση της νήσου Κρήτης: μια μυστική έκθεση του 1783, trans. and eds G. Nikolaou and M. Peponakis (Rethymno: Mitos, 2000), 213; Eric Cornell, “On Bektashism in Bosnia,” in Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious and Social Perspectives, eds Tord Olson, Elisabeth Özclalga, and Catharina Raudvere (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 1998), 14; McGowan, “The Age of the JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 111 have been, in fact, so widespread at the imperial level that Sir Adolphus Slade wrote after the suppression of the corps that “in the provinces, registration in an orta [Janissary regiment]… was general; so much so, that Janissaries and the adult male Turkish population were nearly convertible terms20.” In the same spirit, M. de Peyssonnel, the French consul in Izmir in the late eighteenth century, maintained that “the registered Janissaries [in the Ottoman Empire] are actually so numerous that if they could be calculated they would amount to several million21.” Of course such statements sound extravagant, and there is no definite way to test their accuracy. Yet, they clearly reflect a very real tendency, that of the increasing, in the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, association of large parts of the Empire’s male Muslim population with the Janissary corps. That is not to say that the Ottoman periphery should be treated as a homogeneous entity or that this tendency had the same intensity or followed the same trajectory and timeline in every Ottoman region where Janissaries were present. A number of factors, including the geopolitical importance of a given area, its historical relationship with the corps, its proximity to Istanbul, its administrative status, or even its ethnic and religious composition influenced the dynamics created between Janissaries and the Empire’s various local populations. Thus, it would be more accurate to claim that the above statements become more credible in the cases of the Balkans and Anatolia and less in those of most Arab lands, although even in some of the latter a tendency of locals to affiliate themselves with the corps is to be observed22. 20 21 22 Ayans,” 664-665; Mathieu Dumas, Souvenirs du lieutenant général comte Mathieu Dumas de 1770 à 1838, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie de Charles Gosselin, 1839), 180; Guillaume Thomas Raynal and Jacques J. Peuchet, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans l’Afrique septentrionale, vol. 2 (Paris: Pierre Maumus, 1826), 344; F. W. Sieber, Reise nach der Insel Kreta im griechischen Archipelagus im Jahre 1817, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1823), 186; J. M. Tancoigne, Voyage à Smyrne, dans l’archipel et l’île de Candie, vol. 1 (Paris: J. L. Chanson, 1817), 102; Claude Etienne Savary, Letters on Greece: Βeing a Sequel to Letters on Egypt, and Containing Travels through Rhodes, Crete, and Other Islands of the Archipelago; with Comparative Remarks on their Ancient and Present State, and Observations on the Government, Character, and Manner, of the Turks, and Modern Greeks (London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1788), 186. Adolphus Slade, Turkey and the Crimean War: A Narrative of Historical Events (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1867), 13. M. de Peyssonnel, Lettre de M. de Peyssonnel, Contenant Quelques observations relatives aux Mémoires qui ont paru sous le nom de M. le Baron de Tott (Amsterdam: N.p. 1785), 100. Bruce Masters, “Aleppo’s Janissaries: Crime Syndicate or Vox Populi?,” in Popular Protest and Political Participation in the Ottoman Empire: Studies in Honor of Suraiya Faroqhi, eds Εleni Gara, Μehmet Erdem Kabadayı, and Christoph K. Neumann, (Istanbul: Bilgi 112 YANNIS SPYROPOULOS But how, one may ask, could all these thousands of people become employed as Janissaries, especially at a time of financial crisis for the Empire, when it was often difficult for the central treasury to even cover the needs of the state’s already existing military manpower23? The answer is that the majority of these Janissaries were actually not appointed at all; their relation with the corps was in fact determined by informal procedures, which I will try to describe in the next section. Decentralization of the Janissary corps, privileges, and ‘pseudo-Janissaries’ In the first half of the eighteenth century a series of reforms which aimed at reducing the operational costs of the Janissary corps took place. The first was the outsourcing of the office of the institution’s paymaster, which was followed by the legalization of the buying and selling of Janissary titles of payment, and the cessation of the three-year periodic rotations of Janissary regiments from one provincial fortress to another24. These reforms had a great impact both on the way the corps functioned and on its perception by the Ottoman provincial societies. The first two measures resulted in a considerable decrease in the control of the Istanbul Janissary administration over its units, while the last one led to the tying of specific regiments to particular provinces and to an increase of their influence on the latter’s populations. Eventually, all of these reforms triggered a process of rapid decentralization within the corps itself and led to the 23 24 Unıversity Press, 2011), 166-167, 175; André Raymond, “Soldiers in Trade: The Case of Ottoman Cairo,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 18, no. 1 (1991): 16-37; Herbert L. Bodman, Political Factions in Aleppo, 1760-1826 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963), 57-59, 61-62. Yavuz Cezar, Osmanlı Maliyesinde Bunalım ve Değişim Dönemi (XVIII. Yy.dan Tanzimat’a Mali Tarih) (Istanbul: Alan Yayıncılık, 1986), 70-73. Yannis Spyropoulos, “Janissary Politics on the Ottoman Periphery (18th-Early 19th c.),” in Halcyon Days in Crete IX: Political Thought and Practice in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Marinos Sariyannis (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2019), 451–452; Tezcan, Second Ottoman Empire, 205, 209, 225; Rossitsa Gradeva, “Between Hinterland and Frontier: Ottoman Vidin, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Frontiers of the Ottoman World, ed. A. C. S. Peacock (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 340-341; EI2, ‘Yeñi Čeri’, 328; İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devleti Teşkilâtından Kapukulu Ocakları, vol. 1 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1988), 408; Howard A. Reed, “Ottoman Reform and the Janissaries: The Eşkenci Lâhiyası of 1826,” in Türkiye’nin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Tarihi (1071-1920), eds Osman Okyar and Halil İnalcık (Ankara: Meteksan, 1980), 194. JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 113 Янычары. Janissaries. From NICOLAY, Nicolas de., Le Navigationi et viaggi, fatti nella Turchia … Novamente tradotto di Francese in Italiano da Francesco Flori da Lilla, Aritmetico…, Venice: Francesco Ziletti, 1580 creation of stronger bonds between Janissaries and the Ottoman periphery25. Until the presence of specific Janissary regiments in the Ottoman provinces became permanent, the enrollment of provincial Muslims in them was perceived by the latter as a quite ‘risky’ venture. That is because, if a regiment was to be transferred to another province, those enrolled in it would have to choose between following it — abandoning their social milieu, families, and businesses in the process — or leaving the corps altogether. Yet, after the regiments’ presence in the provinces became permanent, the inhabitants of the Ottoman periphery began to think of their enrollment as a much safer ‘investment.’ At the same time, this change presented the regiments with an opportunity to proceed in bigger investments in the economies of the areas they were barracked in, it set the basis for the formation of extended networks between Janissary officers and local Muslims, as well as for the ascent of the latter in the corps’ hierarchy. It is no coincidence, for instance, that one of the direct results of this process was the emergence during the eighteenth century in various provinces of powerful local Janissary families which were investing in tax-farming, land-holding, commerce, and money lending26. 25 26 Spyropoulos, “Janissary Politics.” For the well-known case of Pasvanoğlu of Vidin, see, for instance, Robert Zens, “Pasvanoğlu Osman Paşa and the Paşalık of Belgrade,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 8, no. 1-2 (2002): 90-91; Gradeva, “Between Hinterland and Frontier,” 340-341. 114 YANNIS SPYROPOULOS The development of such connections can be better understood in relation to the privileges that the membership of the corps offered. One such benefit was tax-exemptions — a privilege reserved for all members of the Empire’s administrative/military class (askeri). Furthermore, the corps’ regulations (kavanin-i yeniçeriyan) stipulated that Janissaries were granted ex officio a status of jurisdictional autonomy27. It should be noted that this privilege was of particular importance, as it ensured various gains for all social and professional categories that entered the corps. In the case of rich tax-farmers, for instance, it created the preconditions for greater liberty in the administration of the areas which they controlled and for greater profit, as it blocked any regulatory intervention on the part of Ottoman officials. In a similar fashion, it offered multiple benefits to people who had small or medium-sized properties, participated in the guilds, or conducted commerce. As Baki Tezcan puts it, “[t]he immunity of janissaries from regular procedures of prosecution applied to everyone else, which secured them a trial by their elders and peers as opposed to a court of law, proved to be an invaluable advantage in business. If one were protected by the immunity of membership in the corps, then judicial authorities or market inspectors could not interfere with one’s business. Thus a merchant who became a janissary could engage in a broader variety of business practices than could a regular merchant, such as breaking the price ceilings in their dealings with others28.” Besides tax-exemptions and judicial immunity, the Janissary corps was also providing its members with a number of other privileges: Access to credit issued by the regiments’ common funds, for example, acted as an enticement for the enrollment of many small or big entrepreneurs in the corps, as in a period of increasing monetization of the Ottoman economy ready access to cash was becoming a particularly important asset for every business29. Furthermore, the central role that Janissaries played in the provinces as members of administrative councils and police forces — especially in urban centers where a major part of the Empire’s artisanal and commercial activity was taking place — helped them establish their networks and assert 27 28 29 For the case of Crete, see Anastasopoulos and Spyropoulos, “Soldiers on an Ottoman Island,” 22-25 and Yannis Spyropoulos, “Κοινωνική, διοικητική, οικονομική και πολιτική διάσταση του οθωμανικού στρατού: οι γενίτσαροι της Κρήτης, 1750-1826” (PhD diss., University of Crete, 2014), 247-263. Kavanin-i Yeniçeriyan, 63-65. Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire, 207. For the process of monetization of the Ottoman economy and its substantial expansion from the sixteenth century onward, see Şevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 16. JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 115 control over regional markets30. At the same time, inter-regimental connections and the secondment of troops and regiment units from one provincial fortress to another offered opportunities for the development of trans-provincial networks for the corps’ members31. In sum, the Janissaries offered their affiliates a wide range of privileges which made enrollment in the corps very attractive for the Muslims of the Ottoman provinces. However, a regiment could not accept an unlimited number of soldiers into its ranks, as it was up to the central administration to determine the number of pay-certificates available for every provincial garrison. In practice, though, since most people were mainly interested in the privileges and protection offered by the corps and not in its salaries, this inconvenience was easily dealt with at a local level via their unofficial enrollment. The names of such ‘pseudo-Janissaries’ were not listed down in the payrolls which were sent to the central administration. As a result, they were not entitled to any salary but enjoyed the same privileges as real Janissaries under the auspices of their officer patrons, who were in charge of keeping the personnel books of each regiment. Since the Janissaries enjoyed jurisdictional autonomy from local authorities and were not dependent on provincial officials for their payments, no governor or judge had access to these books. Consequently, their networks could stretch far beyond their regiments’ circle, without outsiders being able to discern who was a real member of their organization and who was not32. It is, thus, owing to this practice that the sources testify to the illusive enrollment of the entire male population of given areas in the Janissary corps, while, in fact, the vast majority of these men were merely Janissary-pretenders. As we will see in the following section, these networked connections would also play a decisive role in the political empowerment of the institution during the period in question. 30 31 32 For the official role of Janissaries in the administration of western Crete, see Yannis Spyropoulos, Οθωμανική διοίκηση και κοινωνία στην προεπαναστατική δυτική Κρήτη: Αρχειακές Μαρτυρίες (1817-1819), ed. Aspasia Papadaki (Rethymno: General State Archives of Greece, 2015), 30-38. For a systematic analysis of these privileges, see Idem, “Οι γενίτσαροι της Κρήτης,” 225280. For the versatile role of Janissaries in the Ottoman provincial administration and their position as imperial agents connecting different provinces, see Linda T. Darling, “Istanbul and Damascus: Officials and Soldiers in the Exercise of Imperial Power (C. 1550-1575),” in Osmanlı İstanbulu IV: IV. Uluslararası İstanbulu Sempozyumu Bildirileri 20-22 Mayıs 2016, İstanbul 29 Mayıs Üniversitesi, eds F. M. Ecemen, A. Akyıldız, and E. S. Gürkan (Istanbul: İstanbul 29 Mayıs Üniversitesi and İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi, 2016), 326-332. Spyropoulos, “Janissary Politics;” idem, “Οι γενίτσαροι της Κρήτης,” 225-232. 116 YANNIS SPYROPOULOS The political dimension of the Muslim-Janissary connection The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries could be characterized as a time of provincial revolts for the Empire. For those who work on the history of Ottoman provinces during this period, it is evident that the Ottoman state was going through an era of frequent violent mobilizations in great parts of its periphery and chiefly in the latter’s urban centers. It is no coincidence that Janissaries are often mentioned in the sources as the principal instigators of such mobilizations: The access to the means of violence and the protection from other authorities that the corps offered to its members provided great parts of the Muslim populations in the Empire’s provinces with the opportunity to raise their voice and actively participate in the political scene of their homelands. Ottomanist historian Cemal Kafadar, when referring to the various Janissary revolts which took place in Istanbul from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, claims that “the cumulative experience of political activism by the Janissaries and their affiliates eventually created a new political reality, which could be seen as the kernel of a political party or even a representative institution, including alliances and clashes with other social-political forces33.” On the Empire’s periphery, where in the course of the eighteenth century the sociopolitical influence of Janissaries became more dominant, this “experience of political activism” continued to be a central point of reference for the corps’ members, who proliferated and adjusted it to the political realities prevalent in different provinces. However, despite the leading role that the Janissaries played in these developments, which, according to historians, were leading to an ever-increasing politicization of the Empire’s urban space and an “empowerment of the political” in the provinces34, to date the study of the political initiatives of the corps has been mainly limited to Istanbul. Janissaries had established their political preeminence in the Empire’s capital long before the eighteenth century and their mobilizations therein have become a subject of meticulous research over the years35. Yet, given 33 34 35 Kafadar, “Janissaries and Other Riffraff,” 123. Ali Yaycıoğlu, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 13; Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference. The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 197-225. For one of the latest treatments of Janissary political mobilizations in Istanbul, see Aysel Yıldız, Crisis and Rebellion in the Ottoman Empire: The Downfall of a Sultan in the Age of Revolutions (London-New York: I. B. Tauris, 2017). JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 117 their extended opening to the Muslims of the Ottoman provinces in the eighteenth century and the fact that, during the period in question, over two thirds of their regiments were permanently based outside Istanbul, it is surprising, to say the least, that no work has been done with an eye toward understanding the corps’ contribution to the ‘provincialization’ of Ottoman imperial politics. This historiographical problem mainly stems from the fact that while a number of publications have focused on Janissary revolts at a local level36, to date there has been no considerable effort toward placing such case-studies in a wider theoretical and spacial context. On the contrary, the participation of Janissaries in uprisings outside of the Ottoman capital is generally interpreted in the framework of local interests and regional power-struggles, while little, if any, effort has been made to put the pieces of this complicated puzzle of events together into a synthesis demonstrating the trajectory of the growing politicization of provincial Muslim populations vis-à-vis the corps’ increasing involvement in the imperial political scene. Yet, the comparative study of Janissary-instigated political revolts offers new possibilities for research and allows us to follow the course of the diffusion of ideas and political movements between a series of Muslim communities in the imperial space. The examples are plentiful, but here I will only mention in brief a few indicative cases. In 1730 a Janissary revolt broke out in Istanbul, which came to be known as the ‘Patrona Halil rebellion.’ The revolt resulted in the deposition of Sultan Ahmed III, his replacement by Mahmud I, and the violent termination of the era of a purported cultural and financial opening of the Istanbul Ottoman élite toward Western Europe, tagged the ‘Tulip Period37.’ Three years after the Istanbul rebellion, the 36 37 See, for instance, Spyropoulos, “Janissary Politics;” Sel Turhan, The Ottoman Empire and the Bosnian Uprising; Masters, “Aleppo’s Janissaries,” 159-176; Basil C. Gounaris, “Reassessing Wheat Crises in Eighteenth-Century Thessaloniki,” The Historical Review/La Revue Historique 5 (2008): 41-65; André Raymond, Le Caire des janissaires: L’apogée de la ville ottomane sous ‘Abd al-Rahmân Kathudâ (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1995); Necmi Ülker, “1797 Olayı ve İzmir’in Yakılması,” Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi 2 (1984): 117-159; Abd ul-Karim Rafeq, “The Local Forces in Syria in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in War, Technology and Society in the Middle East, eds V. J. Parry and M. E. Yapp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 277-307. For the Patrona Halil rebellion and the Tulip Period, see Selim Karahasanoğlu, “Challenging the Paradigm of the Tulip Age: The Consumer Behavior of Nevşehirli Damad İbrahim Paşa and His Household,” in Living the Good Life: Consumption in the Qing and Ottoman Empires of the Eighteenth Century, eds Suraiya Faroqhi and Elif Akçetin (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 134-161; Yalçın Gezer, “Yazma Eserler Işığında Patrona Halil İsyanı Hakkında Yeni Bir Değerlendirme,” in Osmanlı İstanbulu III, eds Feridun M. Emecen, Ali Akyıldız, and Emrah Safa Gürkan (Istanbul: İstanbul 29 Mayıs Universitesi and İstanbul Buyukşehir Belediyesi, 2015), 331-352; Felix Konrad, “Coping with ‘the Riff-Raff and Mob’: 118 YANNIS SPYROPOULOS French consul on Crete, in one of his reports to Paris, made special reference to the merciless beating of the French vice-consul in Kandiye (mod. Herakleion) by a group of unruly Janissaries. In this context he noted that the spirit of rebellion was being transmitted from one city of Crete to the other and that it was “since the revolution of Istanbul and the revolt that took place in Kandiye, that the soldiers and their supporters have lost their respect and obedience, to the extent that they are afraid of neither their commanders nor their peers38.” The French consul made it clear that the Janissary units acted as good conductors of mobilizations from one Ottoman city to another, both within the same and between different provinces. This type of transmission of political mobilizations between cities also seemed to have been frequent in the case of the three Maghrebian regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. It is a well attested fact that the Janissary units of these three Ottoman regencies were acting as communicating vessels for the transference of people and ideas39, and it seems that they were also actively following the political developments which were taking place at the heart of the Empire. After all, the Janissaries of these areas were often being drafted from places in the Ottoman Anatolia, the Balkans, and the wider Aegean region, and never lost their contact with their places of origin40. On May 1807 the Janissaries of Istanbul rebelled against Sultan Selim III owing to the latter’s effort to ‘Westernize’ the Empire’s army through the creation of a new corps entitled ‘Nizam-ı Cedid’ (New Order). Similar efforts were 38 39 40 Representations of Order and Disorder in the Patrona Halil Rebellion (1730),” Die Welt des Islams 54, no. 3-4 (2014): 363-398; Ahmet Refik Altınay, Lale Devri (1718-1730): Geçmiş Asırlarda Osmanlı Hayatı (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2011); Dana Sajdi, Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century (London: I. B Tauris, 2007); Ariel Salzmann, “The Age of Tulips: Confluence and Conflict in Early Modern Consumer Culture (1550-1730),” in Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922, ed. Donald Quataert (New York: SUNY Press, 2000), 83-106; Robert W. Olson, “The Esnaf and the Patrona Halil Rebellion of 1730: A Realignment in Ottoman Politics?,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 17, no. 3 (1974): 329-344; Münir Aktepe, Patrona İsyanı (1730) (Istanbul: İstanbul Edebiyat Fakültesi Basımevi, 1958). Archives Nationales de France (ANF), Affaires Etrangères (AE), B1, La Canée, vol. 4 (December 18, 1733); ANF, AE, B1, La Canée, vol. 4 (December 1, 1733); ANF, AE, B1, La Canée, vol. 4 (January 9, 1734). Asma Moalla, The Regency of Tunis and the Ottoman Porte, 1777-1814: Army and Government of a North-African Ottoman Eyālet at the End of the Eighteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004), 98; Taoufik Bachrouch, Formation sociale barbaresque et pouvoir à Tunis au XVIIe siècle (Tunis: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1977), 175177; Mohamed-Hédi Cherif, Pouvoir et Société dans la Tunisie de Husayn Bin ‘Ali (17051740), vol. 2 (Tunis: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1986), 7; Taoufik Bachrouch, “Les élites tunisiennes du pouvoir et de la dévotion : Contribution à l’étude des groupes sociaux dominants (1782-1881)” (PhD diss., Université de Paris — Sorbonne, 1981), 512. Bachrouch, Formation sociale barbaresque, 34-35. JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 119 Турецкий янычар. Ottoman Janissary. (1479–1481). Gentile Bellini at the same time taking place in Tunis, driven by the administration of governor Hammuda Paşa, who since 1795 maintained close relations with Selim41. The Tunisian Janissaries who expressed in every given opportunity their opposition to such reforms — in a fashion very similar to the way Janissaries opposed them in Istanbul — finally decided to betray Hammuda during the war of Tunis with the Janissary-dominated Algerian government in 1807 and to change sides on the battlefield by defecting to the Algerian army. As this action did not bring Hammuda’s regime to an end, in 1811, a large part of the remaining Janissary guard of Tunis followed the example of their comrades in Istanbul and proceeded to a large-scale rebellion which aimed at Hammuda’s deposition and the annulment of his reform program, following the example of their comrades at the Empire’s capital42. Let me note here just one last characteristic example of this political interconnectedness: Before the 1770s, the Ottoman sources mention the formation in Izmir of an active commercial community of Cretan Muslims43, which comprised soldiers and maintained strong relations with the city’s Janissary garrison44. When the Greek War of Independence broke out on Crete in 1821 the Cretan Janissaries of Izmir, who by that time numbered several hundred men, 41 42 43 44 Moalla, The Regency of Tunis, 87. Ibid., 54-58; Bachrouch, “Les élites tunisiennes,” 511. T. C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi (henceforth CΟΑ), C.ML.40/1804. Ülker, “1797 Olayı,” 119-120. 120 YANNIS SPYROPOULOS took their weapons and started to attack the city’s local Christians as a retaliation for the massacres of Muslims that were taking place on their native island. As a result of this mobilization the governor of Izmir ordered the execution of a Cretan Janissary and the banishment back to Crete of 150-200 “Cretan criminals” under the accusation that they “oppressed the tax-paying subjects of Izmir45.” Such incidents demonstrate that the Janissary networks of the Ottoman Empire were good conductors for the transference of political ideas and mobilizations between different cities and provinces. However, it is only through a systematic examination of local Janissary political initiatives in the broader imperial framework that we can disclose these underlying connections in their trans-provincial dimension. The economic aspects of Janissary networks The involvement of Janissaries in the Ottoman Empire’s economic life as artisans and tradesmen in peacetime can be traced as far back as the fifteenth century, and should not be treated as an indication of the institution’s decline46. Yet, the phenomenon clearly intensified from the late sixteenth century onward, as the corps started being manned with non-devşirme recruits who were often already engaged in various extra-military financial activities. Janissary involvement in the guilds was furthermore induced by the economic conditions prevalent in the Empire and the decreasing salaries of the soldiers whose military income was often less than adequate for covering their everyday needs. It is a commonplace in the Ottoman historiography that the Janissaries of Istanbul had established strong liaisons with the city’s economy as artisans and merchants even from the last decades of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries47. Recently two studies went even further and unveiled for the first time some of the phenomenon’s institutional aspects, by underlining the importance of investment activities of entire regiments and not just of 45 46 47 Spyropoulos, “Οι γενίτσαροι της Κρήτης,” 236; Theophilus C. Prousis, “Smyrna in 1821: A Russian View,” University of North Florida History Faculty Publications 16 (1992): 154, 157158, 163; Richard Clogg, “Smyrna in 1821: Documents from the Levant Company Archives in the Public Record Office,” Μικρασιατικά Χρονικά 15 (1972): 318, 324, 342, 347-348, 355; Charles MacFarlane, Constantinople in 1828 (Λονδίνο: Saunders and Otley, 1829), 16-17. Cemal Kafadar, “On the Purity and Corruption of the Janissaries,” The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 15, no. 2 (1991): 273-280. Eunjeong Yi, Guild Dynamics in Seventeenth Century Istanbul: Fluidity and Leverage (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 136-140. JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 121 their members48. Unfortunately, to date no comparable effort has been put toward understanding the institutional dimension of such economic activities in the case of the Ottoman periphery. Although we are well aware of the fact that Janissaries in Ottoman provinces were participating in a wide range of financial operations, so far their economic undertakings have been studied almost exclusively as the result of private initiatives. Yet there are strong indications that the augmentation of the financial power of individual Janissaries in the provinces was going hand-in-hand with the development of investment initiatives on their regiments’ part49. Thus, in order to better understand the actual size of the corps’ involvement in the Empire’s economy, Janissary entrepreneurship should not be seen as having been merely based on a disorderly ensemble of individuals who utilized the privileges offered by the corps for their own purposes; rather it should be examined in the framework of institutions, such as regimental waqfs (common funds), which developed their own financial planning and from which entire Muslim communal structures could reap benefits. From the second half of the eighteenth century onward we can observe an increase in the local commercial and credit-related activity of Muslims in a series of provincial cities50. What is particularly interesting about this development is the phenomenon of the parallel expansion of Janissary networks beyond their original cradles and the development of collaborations at the institutional level for the creation of wider trans-provincial economic networked connections51. Although the processes leading to these connections are yet to be investigated, sources indicate that soldier detachments played a key role in them. Every Janissary garrison included a group of men, the yamaks, who were not obliged to be settled where their own regiments were based. The study of Janissary payrolls reveals that such groups, which used to be only a small mi48 49 50 51 Günay Yılmaz, “The Economic and Social Role of Janissaries in a 17th Century Ottoman City: The Case of Istanbul” (PhD diss., McGill University, 2011); Sunar, “Cauldron of Dissent.” Spyropoulos, “Οι γενίτσαροι της Κρήτης.” For a characteristic entry from the French consular correspondence of Chania which refers to this economic expansion, see, for instance, ANF, AE, B1, La Canée, vol. 11 (November 17, 1761). For the rise of Janissary common funds as creditors in the Cretan economy, see Spyropoulos, “Οι γενίτσαροι της Κρήτης,” 200-220. For the role of Janissaries and Muslims as creditors and financial actors in eighteenth-century Ottoman Thessaloniki and Lesvos (Ott. Midilli), see Demetris Papastamatiou, Wealth Distribution, Social Stratification and Material Culture in an Ottoman Metropolis: Thessaloniki According to the Probate Inventories of the Muslim Court (1761-1770) (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2017), 285-307 and passim, and İbrahim Oğuz, “Midilli’de Osmanlı Vakıfları,” (PhD diss., T. C. Mersin Üniversitesi, 2014), 247-248, 253, and passim. Spyropoulos, “Οι γενίτσαροι της Κρήτης,” 237-239. 122 YANNIS SPYROPOULOS Osmanlılarda Resmî Kiyafetler. Ressam Brindesi Serisi 11 (Card-postal) nority in the seventeenth century, became in the course of the next century — as the financial activities of the corps in the provinces expanded — the main component of Janissary units in different fortresses, forming in each garrison a colorful agglomeration of several hundred or even thousands of military personnel belonging to tens of different regiments spread around the Empire. In 1784, for instance, Thessaloniki’s transferable Janissaries numbered just 262 men, while the yamak Janissaries amounted to a staggering 2,31352. For the sake of comparison let me mention that a century earlier, in 1682, the city’s transferable Janissaries were 154 and the yamaks just 5953. It seems that in the same way the unofficial proliferation of pseudo-Janissarism was important for the development of Janissary provincial networks, the officially recognized ‘diaspora’ of yamaks was crucial for turning these networks into trans-provincial. Owing to this practice, the yamaks acquired the ability to act as agents of their regiments in distant places and seem to have played an important role as their permanent representatives therein. To our knowledge so far, these soldiers often lived as merchants and tradesmen in their places of appointment54 and, as such, could 52 53 54 CΟΑ, MAD.d.17549:1-39. CΟΑ, MAD.d.3935:387-390. The primarily commercial identity of yamaks in provincial garrisons is underlined by Pococke in the mid-eighteenth century: “… the janizaries, of which there are in each [town] a certain number of different companies or chambers called odas; but besides these there JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 123 constitute a precious source of local knowledge for their comrades-in-armscum-business, providing continuity for the latter on the ground and expanding the networked connections between different Janissary chambers. At this point it is interesting to note that this system of relations between regiments and yamaks is comparable in many ways to the manner of operation of Western trading networks in the eastern Mediterranean. It bears striking similarities, for instance, with the contemporaneous establishment in various Ottoman port-cities of French commercial houses (maisons), which used trading agents/ merchants (négociants) in their places of operation. At the same time and on a different level, the French — like most Western powers trading in the area during the eighteenth century — were trying to develop local financial networks through the expansion to Ottoman Jewish and Christian subjects — the so-called ‘beratlıs’ or ‘protégés’ — of their capitulatory status, which provided them with tax exemptions and the right to special extradition. Furthermore, they strengthened these networks by granting loans to their clients, either directly or through the practice of preemption (selem) of local products which were exported to France55. This networking pattern is reminiscent of the networks that Janissaries developed through the extended use of the yamak agency and the creation of a pseudo-Janissary clientele: The Janissary regiments, like the Western commercial houses operating in the Ottoman Mediterranean, appointed their representatives in various port-cities and enhanced their local networks by expanding their privileged status to the local Muslim inhabitants of the Ottoman provinces, granting them loans and placing their businesses under their protection. Although much research is needed before we come to any definite conclusions, what we see is possibly an expression of the development of financial practices that, to date, modern historiography deems to have been exclusively non-Muslim by Muslim networks which used the Janissary organization as a platform for their economic growth. The nature and extent of the connections developed in this framework 55 are a greater number of janizaries called jamalükes (sic), who belong to chambers which are in other parts of the empire, and are settled here as merchants or tradesmen, and yet receive their pay as janizarie,; and if any one of the companies are ordered away, those only go who please, and they make up their number, as they can;” Richard Pococke, “A Description of the East”, in A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World, vol. 10, ed. J. Pinkerton (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1811), 619. For the case of Aleppo which supports Pococke’s claim, see Charles L. Wilkins, Forging Urban Solidarities: Ottoman Aleppo, 1640-1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 271-272. On these practices, see Antonis Hadjikyriacou, “Society and Economy on an Ottoman Island: Cyprus in the Eighteenth-Century” (PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies 2011), 223-227; İA, vol. 36, “Selem” (Bilal Aybakan), 402-405; Ali İhsan Bağış, Osmanlı Ticaretinde Gayri Müslimler: Kapitülasyonlar — Beratlı Tüccarlar, Avrupa ve Hayriye Tüccarları (1750-1839) (Ankara: Turhan Kitabevi, 1983). 124 YANNIS SPYROPOULOS undoubtedly require systematic investigation and so does their impact on the political and economic relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim communities of the Empire; such research can potentially overturn much of what we know about the history of the early modern eastern Mediterranean and create a more balanced and less ‘Eurocentric’ picture of the trading operations in the region. Conclusion In recent decades, thanks to the pioneering works of academics such as Cemal Kafadar and Donald Quataert, Ottomanist historians have started to move away from their exclusive examination as a military corps and to pay attention to their crucial role in the development of new economic practices in the Ottoman Empire and the popularization of imperial politics56. Membership of the Janissary corps and the privileges that it brought with it are seen as having played a pivotal role in the development of financial practices which bypassed the jurisdiction and traditional hierarchy of state-controlled guilds and led to the creation of a more ‘decentralized’ type of entrepreneurship, which was able to resist, until 1826, the unconditional opening of the Ottoman market to European manufactures57. Moreover, the opening of the Janissary corps to a large part of Ottoman Muslim society from the late 16th century onward and its involvement in popular movements which directly questioned the authority of big players in imperial politics — sometimes leading even to the dethronement and execution of Sultans — lie currently at the center of an ongoing debate over the issue of the creation of an Ottoman ‘limited government58.’ 56 57 58 Donald Quataert, “Janissaries, Artisans and the Question of Ottoman Decline, 1730-1826,” in 17th International Congress of Historical Sciences. I: Chronological Section, Madrid-1990, eds E. B. Ruano and M. Espadas Burgos (Madrid: Comité International des Sciences Historiques, 1992), 197-203; Kafadar, “Janissaries and Other Riffraff,”; Idem, “On the Purity and Corruption of the Janissaries,” The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 15, no. 2 (1991): 273-280. Deniz T. Kılınçoğlu, Economics and Capitalism in the Ottoman Empire (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2015), 51-52; Mehmet Mert Sunar, “‘When Grocers, Porters and Other Riff-Raff Become Soldiers:’ Janissary Artisans and Laborers in the Nineteenth Century Istanbul and Edirne”, Kocaeli Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi 17, no. 1 (2009): 175-194; Quataert, “Janissaries, Artisans.” Ali Yaycioglu, “Guarding Traditions and Laws, Disciplining Bodies and Souls: Tradition, Science, and Religion in the Age of Ottoman Reform,” Modern Asian Studies 52, no. 5 (2018): 1542-1603; Baki Tezcan, “Lost in Historiography: An Essay on the Reasons for the Absence of a History of Limited Government in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire,” Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 3 (2009): 477-505; Hüseyin Yılmaz, “Osmanlı Devleti’nde Batılılaşma Öncesi Meşrutiyetçi Gelişmeler,” Dîvân 13, no. 24 (2008): 1-30; Şerif Mardin, JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 125 Despite the above-mentioned historiographical developments, the economic and political role of the Janissaries is yet to be studied in its collective and imperial dimensions: Most studies that treat the corps as a coherent sociopolitical entity usually build their analyses on the case of Istanbul and pay little, if any, attention to its provincial structures. At the same time, the — relatively few — case-studies which deal with the political and economic activities of the corps’ provincial units tend to downplay the latter’s contact with the rest of the Janissary organization and do not evaluate their role as interacting parts of a large corporate imperial apparatus. Additionally, the Janissaries’ non-military activities have never been examined in their institutional framework and are usually treated as either a symptom of ‘decline’ from their ‘true’ purpose — that of conducting warfare — or as the by-product of individual soldiers’ private initiatives. In this article I explained that the institutional structure and functions of the Janissary corps were in fact crucial for its economic and political empowerment in the Ottoman provinces. I demonstrated the strong liaisons that the Janissaries had managed to create with a number of provincial Muslim communities on the Ottoman periphery, especially from the eighteenth century onward. I suggested that, if we put more emphasis on the study of Janissary activities beyond the Empire’s capital, it will become easier to understand the economic role of such communities and that, especially when seen from a Mediterranean perspective, such research can help us create a less ‘Eurocentric’ picture of the region. I also argued that this powerful connection between Muslims and Janissaries in many Ottoman provinces gave rise to a series of violent mobilizations which are yet to be investigated in a common political framework. Through the combined study of such mobilizations, we will be able to better understand the processes which led to the dissemination of ideas and political movements between a number of Muslim communities where the Janissaries had a very strong presence. By the eighteenth century, the Janissary corps had evolved into a powerful platform for the exchange of people, goods, and ideas between different localities covering a vast geographical area. 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Key words: Janissaries, Ottoman provinces, Eastern Mediterranean, Muslim networks, popular politics, Muslim trade. JANISSARIES: A KEY INSTITUTION FOR WRITING THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF OTTOMAN MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD Яннис Спиропулос ЯНЫЧАРЫ: КЛЮЧ К ПОНИМАНИЮ ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКОЙ И ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ ИСТОРИИ ОСМАНСКИХ МУСУЛЬМАН РАННЕГО НОВОГО ВРЕМЕНИ лавный тезис статьи — то, что на протяжении XVIII века, корпус янычар эволюционировал в мощную платформу перемещения людей, товаров и идей между различными регионами обширного географического пространства. Обосновывая эту идею, автор статьи подчеркивает, что янычары — как институт — являются своеобразным ключом к исследованию экономической и политической истории исламских общин на периферии Османской империи. На взгляд автора, исследование этих сетей взаимодействия позволяет радикально пересмотреть нынешнее восприятие социополитической и финансовой роли мусульман в Османской империи раннего Нового времени. Подобные исследования дают возможность выработать более сбалансированную и менее «евроцентричную» картину мусульманских торговых операций в регионе, и лучше понять распространение идей и политических движений среди различных исламских общин в тех регионах, где присутствие янычар было значимым. Ключевые слова: янычары, османские провинции, Восточное Средиземноморье, исламские сети взаимодействия, общественная политика, исламская торговля. Яннис Спиропулос — младший научный сотрудник института средиземноморских исследований научно-исследовательского центра FORTH, Греция. Yannis Spyropoulos Assistant researcher at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece 133