SLAVERY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY

Sultan Murad I (1362–89) went down in history not only for establishing the Janissaries but also as the leader of a militant spiritual brotherhood known in Anatolia as Ahîlik (from the Arabic ahî, meaning ‘my brother’). It is said that this brotherhood was founded at the insistence of Hadji Bektash Veli (1209–71), a Khorasan Sufi and follower of the teachings of Ahmad Yasawi. It fought for the interests of the tanners’ guild and defended the common people against the Seljuks and Ilkhanids. The members of this brotherhood organized the coronation of Murad I in the field. Unsurprisingly, his new army of Christian boys was structured around the spiritual and moral paradigm of brotherhood.

Over time, the Janissaries became increasingly associated with the Bektashi Sufi order, which was founded by the same Hadji Bektash Veli and was close to Shi’ism. This led to the Janissaries being somewhat separated from the mainstream Muslim population of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the Janissaries were often referred to as the Tâife-i Bektaşiye,ithe Bektashi tribe and until they were disbanded, there was always a representative of the ‘fathers’ of this Sufi order in the troops. However, switching from soldier to Sufi was a rare occurrence. Only with permission granted by the sultan could a janissary soldier leave the military and join this Sufi order.

At the height of the empire, the Janissaries, like the Sufi brothers under Murad, played a key role in various ceremonies, such as the coronations of Ottoman sultans or the oath taken by the Şehzâde before he embarked on his first military campaign or left to govern a province. In fact, the sultans did not have a crown as such. The ceremony of elevation to the sultanate consisted of kılıç kuşanma.igirding with a sword The sons of the sultan took a special Janissary oath, known as gülbenk, praising Ali, Hadji Bektash Veli, and, of course, the sword. It began with these words: ‘My head is uncovered, my soul is ravaged, my sword glistens with blood. On this path so many heads will be cut off, but no one will care.’

The bonds of brotherhood and Sufi solidarity would remain the foundation on which the entire structure, ethics, and hierarchy of the Janissaries were built. Sometimes, this was even more important than serving the sultan, whose slaves they were formally considered. The commander of the Janissaries was none other than the ‘agha’ or the Yeniçeri ağası, the ‘elder brother of all Janissaries’. According to Ottoman nomenclature, he was considered the head of all the ‘elder brothers’ of the Kapıkulu Corps (which included the cavalry, ‘gardeners’, et cetera), making him one of the most influential people in the empire along with the grand vizier. However, the grand vizier’s power often depended on the sultan’s will, while the Janissary agha was backed by the whole ‘gang’. Many viziers were often former janissaries, and this advancement in their careers only temporarily removed them from their brotherhood roots.

The Janissary Corps was called Yeniçeri Ocağı (the hearth), with the Kazan-ı Şerif (sacred cauldron) as its central and sacred object. They swore allegiance by the sacred cauldron; their rituals and ceremonies were built around it. Overturning the cauldron meant open disobedience, leading to immediate rebellion and beheadings. The entire structure of the hearth was also built around cauldrons: small, medium, and large. Every meeting, both general and company, of the Janissaries took place around the cauldron. Their main bond was preparing food together, and so it is unsurprising that the company commanders were officially called çorbacı, or those who make the soup.

As the first permanent and professional army in modern history, the Janissaries were unique in that their only income was a fixed salary in peace and war. The Janissaries were entirely responsible for their own sustenance in peacetime, buying their own provisions and cooking their own food with their own money. By contributing themselves to the weekly purchase of meat, beans, cheese, and vegetables, they knew the pressures of inflation better than most, what corruption cost, what caused shortages, and how logistical problems or natural disasters affected prices. In any economic crisis, the Janissaries were eager for campaigns and war. After all, in times of war, they were supported exclusively by the treasury, which also paid a substantial sefer bahşişi.icampaign bountyAs a result, the Janissaries always supported the more militant viziers and Şehzâde in any political dispute.

Since its inception, this fearless and brutal army, this Sufi citadel of mystical Islam, was known to be very greedy for money and, of course, food. The history of the rise and expansion of the Ottoman Empire, from Mehmed II the Conqueror (1444–46, 1451–81) to Mahmud II (1808–39), is a story of relentless mutinies by Janissaries dissatisfied with their wages, rations, or allowances. For every holiday and social event, the Janissaries had to be fed by the palace—and that’s tens of thousands of people—by sending them baklava and sweets from the sultan’s own kitchen. As expected, these ‘cauldron tippers’ also expressed their dissatisfaction with state policy through food—they refused to eat the soup offered to them in the palace.

We all know that even the daily diet of these elite Ottoman troops was much more sophisticated than that of their fighting counterparts in ancient Sparta. But if the Spartans were forbidden to eat with their wives to maintain morale—they could only eat with their fellow soldiers—the Janissaries were forbidden to marry. Thus, because of the prohibition on marriage, the Janissary Corps remained an all-male fraternity until the early sixteenth century. They had no wives, no children, and no ties to their original kin.

This, of course, brings to mind the Spartans, who, while being able to marry earlier, were forbidden to spend the night with their wives until the age of thirty in order to boost discipline, even though people in those days married much earlier and usually did not live long. A closer example is the spiritual and knightly orders of Western Europe,1¹Ecclesiastical and chivalric ordersof Western Christian knights that arose during the Crusades of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, initially to protect pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land, and later for defense and conquest in both Palestine and Eastern Europe. The first and best-known Order, that of Saint John or the Knights Hospitaller, exists to this day under the name of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. where the knights took a vow of celibacy and lived in the houses of the order as male communities. One also recalls the ban on sex during World Cups for German national soccer players, most recently in 2018, ostensibly to promote better fitness and motivation for the four-time world champions. Of course, it’s important not to forget that the Sufi Bektaşı order, whose spiritual world became the benchmark for the Janissary Corps, enforced celibacy, especially for their leaders. The most important argument, however, was the desire to protect the sultan’s personal army from mixing with the rest of the empire’s population to prevent kinship intrigues and social solidarity

These restrictions did not mean that the janissaries had no private life or love affairs, and sometimes, their carnal activities became the subject of controversy. However, it was dangerous to make open claims against the Janissaries. For example, Baron Václav Vratislav of Mitrovica, who accompanied the diplomatic mission of Emperor Rudolf II to the Ottoman capital in 1591, recalled the story of a young Turkish woman who, while her husband was still alive but quite old, secretly rendezvoused with Mustafa, a janissary, in a tavern after changing in the women’s bathroom. There are many stories of how Janissaries, despite the ban on marriage, had secret wives and children both in the capital and in the provinces.

Of course, the sex lives of the janissaries were not limited to permanent cohabitation, and the commercial pursuits of their sensual pleasures were known to everyone. In the seventeenth century, the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi counted 200 brothels and taverns run by Greeks and Jews in the port areas of Galata, a district of Istanbul, alone, where the main customers were janissaries. It should be noted that sex workers were not exclusively owned by non-Muslims, and sometimes even former janissaries ran brothels.

The Janissaries did not only socialize with women, and this aspect of their life aroused great interest among ordinary people. We will not go into details, but their social circles also included young beardless hammam workers who worked as washers and other bath attendants, as well as the civelek acemisi (merry recruits), young men who helped the Janissaries in their daily lives to cook, tidy up, and clean clothes. They did not receive a soldier’s salary, but were allowed to eat and sleep in the Janissary barracks under the patronage of influential Janissaries. Interestingly, the famous seventeenth century Islamic theologian Vankulu Mehmed Efendi, known for his conservatism, openly accused the Janissaries of using these boys for sexual pleasure during campaigns.

The official celibacy of the Janissaries changed when an intercession was made for a janissary by his sensitive and highly influential brother.

This brother was the Grand Vizier Yunus Pasha, who had a distinguished career, given that he had started as a poor Christian boy, rising from a mere recruit to become the agha of the Janissaries. The sultan appointed him to the imperial diwan, made him vizier and governor. Yunus Pasha even married the granddaughter of Sultan Bayezid II. He personally petitioned Sultan Selim I (1512–20) for permission for his not-so-young brother, who had also joined the ranks of the Janissaries, to marry. After several refusals, the sultan finally took pity on the janissaries and granted them permission, which in the long run, may have deprived the empire of its most effective troops. Initially, however, the Janissaries were reluctant to marry, and only did so at an advanced age as marriage prevented them from obtaining command positions in the army. But the situation changed, and over time, more and more children of janissaries were recruited into their ranks, especially orphans who were registered as kuloğlu,ithe son of a slaveand the army gradually turned from a brotherhood into a clan.

Strange as it may seem, when creating a large army of ‘rootless’ slaves, the Ottomans preferred boys from noble Christian families, and this choice was even enshrined in law. Therefore, devşirme did not apply to orphans, families with a bad reputation, the stunted, or those prone to baldness. Of two sons in a family, the healthier and more handsome one was chosen, especially for service in the palace, a practice that demonstrated that nothing had changed since the time of the Byzantine emperor Justin I (518–527), who was once a poor boy from the Balkan chosen for the palace guard because of his good looks. Among the most favored were the sons of priests and students of church schools, one of whom was the future Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, who would later build one of the most beautiful mosques in Istanbul, the Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii (Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque). The architect of the mosque was Sinan, the greatest architect in the Ottoman Empire, also known as Sinan Agha, making it easy to guess that he was also a janissary of Anatolian Christian origin.

Grand Vizier Mahmud Pasha, who was accused of murdering the heir to the Ottoman throne, was, according to various historians, a descendant of the Byzantine aristocratic dynasty of the Angels (Angeloi), although he was born in a Serbian despotateiprovinceand is thus also known as Mahmud Pasha Angelović. But the Ottomans’ faith in the loyalty of Christian recruits was so unshakable that during the conquest of Serbia, all official negotiations were conducted by Mahmud Pasha on the Ottoman side and by his own brother, the great Serbian voivode Michael Angelović, on the Serbian side. The brothers couldn’t come to an agreement, and in 1458, the Ottoman army led by Mahmud Pasha conquered the country by force, although his brother Michael later moved to Istanbul and remained Christian.

Surprisingly, the world’s most efficient and brutal army, which cold-bloodedly slaughtered the Hungarian cavalry in a few hours at the Battle of Mohács (1526), was no stranger to romance and art, and the Janissaries’ contribution to Ottoman literature in general is quite distinguished. Whether it was a way to cope with the reality of their bloody profession or to cope with the rigid age hierarchy and humiliating hazing of their bachelor fraternity, or whether it was driven Sufi traditions, the Janissaries were known as good poets. Their pseudonyms evoked spiritual romance and worldly peace: Aşkî (Full of Love), Nihanî (Mysterious), Sıdkî (Faithful, Truthful). They wrote their poems not only in Ottoman Turkish but also in Persian.

Mahmud Pasha was generally considered to be one of the most influential Ottoman poets of the time, and he chose a heavenly pseudonym, Adnî,iBelonging to Edenwhich was similar to, but clearly overshadowed, the pseudonym of another Ottoman poet, Avnî (Assistant), who was the Kayser-i RûmiCaesar of Romehimself, the great Sultan Mehmed II. Mahmud Pasha wrote poems in both Turkish and Persian, more about love and suffering, the worthlessness of existence, and divine eternity.

From its inception, these elite ‘new troops’ of rootless, unmarried Christians played a crucial role in major political affairs. Mehmed II’s father, Sultan Murad II (1421–44, 1446–51), once relinquished the throne in favor of his son. However, a few years later, with the support of the Janissaries, he decided to displace his son and become sultan again. This trauma and mistrust of the Janissaries, who could so easily overthrow the power and authority of the sultan himself, may have led him to seek religious permission to kill his half-brothers for the sake of the Nizâm-ı Âlemiworld orderand to legislate it. Suleyman the Magnificent’s father, Sultan Selim I (1512–20), better known as Yavuz Sultan Selim, or Selim the Grim, deposed his father, Sultan Bayezid II (1481–12), with the help of rebellious Janissaries. Suleiman, who was eighteen years old at the time, remembered this lesson, which later led to the execution of Şehzâde Mustafa, who was popular among the Janissaries. Many believe that this was the trigger for the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Over time, the personal guard of the sultan grew into a huge army and attempted to influence the succession of the throne. It was they who executed the young Sultan Osman II (1618–22), who planned to reform the army of the Ottoman Empire, accusing the Janissaries of cowardice and inefficiency. They participated in the conspiracy and subsequent execution of Sultan Ibrahim (1640–48), deposed Sultan Mustafa I (1617–18), Ahmed III (1703–30), and indirectly assisted in the deposition or assassination of many other sultans. And the viziers and pashas who were killed or deposed are almost countless. In fact, they were responsible for many, many fallen heads.

The number of Janissaries would steadily increase over time, reaching about 53,499 soldiers by 1670, with expenditures exceeding 21 per cent of the total budget of the Ottoman Empire.iBarkan, Omer Lutfi & Justin McCarthy. 1975. ‘The Price Revolution of the Sixteenth Century. A Turning Point in the Economic History of the Near East’. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 6:1. By the end of the eighteenth century, some historians estimate the number of Janissaries at nearly 400,000. However, only a tenth of them were considered ready for combat.iAksan, Virginia H. 2013. ‘Mobilization of Warrior Populations in the Ottoman Context, 1750–1850’. In Fighting for a Living: A Comparative Study of Military Labour 1500–2000, edited by Erik-Jan Zürcher. 331–352. Amsterdam University Press. Amsterdam.

Many of them had nothing to do with military affairs, but continued to receive salaries, organize rebellions, and commit robberies. The recruitment of Christian boys had long since ceased, as had the killing of Şehzâdes, and the Janissaries settled down to family life, having children, who, in turn, entered the service. Most Janissaries were engaged in commercial activities, running a protection racket and pushing around merchants and the bazaars themselves. Most importantly, they could no longer fight properly, but they never stopped organizing rebellions and uprisings.

The history of the Janissaries ended as tragically as it began. On 16 June 1826, Sultan Mahmud II, with the help of a European-reformed army with the symbolic name of the Nizâm-ı Cedîd (the New Order), simply cannoned away the barracks of the Janissaries, who had brought their cauldrons to the square for the last time as a sign of defiance. Thousands died in the shelling, tens of thousands of survivors were arrested and executed, and hundreds of thousands of former Janissaries tried to blend into the population, hiding their past for decades. Thus began a period in Ottoman history when men would suddenly gather in groups in Istanbul’s coffeehouses and taverns, drinking themselves into oblivion and tearfully singing their pitiful songs. There would also be those who would turn to a completely different path and start a new life in secret, for at the funerals of some Christian priests in the New World, the janissary tattoos were suddenly discovered on their bodies.

One way or another, the fate of one of the main brands of the Ottoman Empire would end in the spirit of the famous Latin aphorism: Thus passes the worldly glory.iin Latin, Sic transit gloria mundiThe firing of cannons, executions, and persecution of the Janissaries went down in Turkish history as Vak’a-i Hayriyye, or ‘the Auspicious Event’. No one will remember other events by that name now.

The frist part of our story you will find here.

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