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Ethnic-Regional (Cins) Solidarity in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Establishment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Metin Ibrahim Kunt
Metin Ibrahim Kunt
Affiliation:
Bosporus University, Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey
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Extract

Similar to many previous and contemporary Islamic states, the basis of classical Ottoman administration and military was a highly elaborate system of slavery. Slaves, carefully recruited and educated, made up the bulk of the central army and filled many of the administrative posts of the empire. To the traditional sources of slaves the Ottomans added a new one: the levy of children from non- urban, mostly Christian subjects of the empire (devşirme). The motive behind this elaborate system of ‘slaves of the sultan’ is obvious: to provide the sultan and the central government with an efficient, well-trained and loyal professional army. The basis of the loyalty was that theoretically they were without root and without ties.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , June 1974 , pp. 233 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 233 note 1 The main argument of this article was presented at the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, held in Columbus, Ohio, in November 1970.Google Scholar

page 233 note 2 Especially L'Esclavage du Mamluk (Jerusalem, 1951).Google Scholar

page 233 note 3 The significance of the Mamluk households in Egyptian politics after the Ottoman conquest is demonstrated by Professor Ayalon, in his ‘Studies in al-Jabarti’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. III (1960).Google Scholar More recently Forand, Paul G. has discussed ‘The Relation of the Slave and the Client to the Master or Patron’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. II (1971).Google Scholar

page 234 note 1 I would like to express my thanks to Professor Leon Carl Brown for letting me see portions of the typescript of his forthcoming study of Tunisia in the early nineteenth century, where he discerns a similar situation (chapter III, pp. 76 ff.).Google Scholar

page 234 note 2 The term ‘Ottoman’ signifies ‘those who qualified for first-class status in that society by serving the religion (being Muslim), serving the state (holding a position that gave them a state income and a privileged tax status), and knowing the Ottoman Way (using the Ottoman Turkish language and conforming to the manners and customs of the society that used Ottoman Turkish)’; Mubadele, ed. and trans. Itzkowitz, Norman and Mote, Max (University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 11.Google Scholar

page 234 note 3 Miller, Barnette, The Palace School of Muhammad the Conqueror (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1941), p. 9. Renegades may have been few; there are, on the other hand, countless examples of rebels in Ottoman history who were products of the palace school.Google Scholar

page 234 note 4 Gibb, H. A. R. and Bowen, Harold, Islamic Society and the West (Oxford, 1950), vol. 1/1, p. 43.Google Scholar

page 234 note 5 Lybyer, Albert Howe, The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1913), pp. 68–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 234 note 6 Lybyer, p. 48.Google Scholar

page 235 note 1 Library, Köprülü (Istanbul), no. i, p. 42.Google Scholar

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page 235 note 7 Naîmâ, vol. VI, p. 4.Google Scholar

page 236 note 1 Naîmâ, vol. V, p. 280.Google Scholar

page 236 note 2 Çelebi, Evliya, vol. II, p. 453.Google Scholar

page 236 note 3 Cins usually connotes ‘sex’ in modern Arabic, Persian and Turkish; the article ‘Djins’ by Charles Pellat in EI 2, for instance, is on the sexual life of Muslims and its reflection in literature. Another basic meaning, common to all three languages, is ‘genus, class, category’. Redhouse Ottoman–English dictionary has ‘nationality or race’ as a further connotation.Google Scholar

page 236 note 4 Atâ, Tayyarzade Ahmed, Târih-i Atâ (Istanbul, 1291–3), vol. II, p. 68.Google Scholar

page 237 note 1 Tâib, Osmanzade Ahmed, Hadîkat ül-Vüzerâ (Istanbul, 1271), section I, p. 104;Google ScholarAğa, Silahter Mehmed, Târih-i Silahtar (Istanbul, 1928), vol. I, p. 225.Google Scholar

page 237 note 2 ‘Nasihat-i Islambol Kasîdesi’, in Gibb, E. J. W., History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. III (London, 1904), p. 217 discussion of authorship and dating on pages 210–11.Google Scholar

page 238 note 1 Gibb & Bowen, vol. I/I, p. 75, note that ‘from the end of the sixteenth century… the majority of the Harem women were recruited from the Caucasus’; according to Lybyer, p. 52, ‘the strongest and ablest youths came from the mountainous regions inhabited by Albanians and Southern Slavic peoples’.Google Scholar

page 238 note 2 Silahtar, vol. I, p. 18; vol. II, p. 318.Google Scholar

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page 238 note 4 Naîmâ, vol. VI, p. 110.Google Scholar

page 238 note 5 The popular prejudice against Abazas, Circassians, and the Albanians has taken root in the Turkish language. The Redhouse dictionary, reflecting the language as it was in the nineteenth century, gives the following definitions. ‘Arnavutluğcu tuttu’ — ‘he spoke or acted as an Albanian usually does, with impulsive violence.’ ‘Abazaya varmak’ — ‘To abuse one's self, to practice masturbation.’ ‘Çerkeslik’ — ‘dirt and squalor; thievishness; lawlessness.’Google Scholar

page 238 note 6 These attachments, such as between hocadş or ocakdaş (trained under the same tutor or in the same corps or service), are similar to those described by D. Ayalon for Mamluk society. The Circassian v. Kipçak Turkish clash in the Mamluk Sultanate, and the strong feeling of racial solidarity among the Circassians, are noted in Professor Ayalon's, ‘The Circassians in the Mamluk Kingdom’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 69 (1949), pp. 135–47; and ‘Djarâkisa’, EI2.Google Scholar It is interesting that Professor Ayalon observes in his ‘Studies in al-Jabarti’ that racial antagonism in Egyptian society in the Ottoman period was replaced by feuds among family factions (JESHO, vol. III (1960), p. 318).Google Scholar

page 239 note 1 Naima, vol. IV, p. 415.Google Scholar

page 239 note 2 Evliya Çelebi, vol. V, p. 236.Google Scholar