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).
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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’:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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).
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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. In this light, the Janissaries should be treated as a key institution the study of which has the potential to drastically redefine our perception of the sociopolitical and financial role of Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.
“Freedom in an Ottoman Perspective,” in State, Democracy and The Military: Turkey in the
1980s, eds M. Heper and A. Evin (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1988), 23-35.
126
YANNIS SPYROPOULOS
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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