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The Military Household in Ottoman Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Jane Hathaway
Jane Hathaway
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Ohio State University, 230 W. 17th Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1367, U.S.A.
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Extract

For over 350 years, Egypt was the largest province of the Ottoman Empire, which had captured it from the Mamluk sultanate in 1517. It is well known that the Ottomans retained key Mamluk usages, above all in subprovincial administration, and that a number of the defeated Mamluks who were willing to cooperate with the new regime were allowed to join the Ottoman administration. In consequence, a number of practices of the Mamluk sultanate survived the Ottoman conquest. Critical administrative offices such as those of pilgrimage commander (amīr al-ḥajj), treasurer (daftardār), and deliverer of the annual tribute to Istanbul (khaznadār) were analogous to offices of the Mamluk sultanate, and the grandees whom the Ottomans installed in these offices were analogous to the Mamluk amirs of the sultanate. Above all, the practice of recruiting boys and young men from the Caucasus as military slaves, or mamluks, and training them as soldiers in households geared to that purpose appears not only to have survived but to have flourished in Ottoman Egypt. By the time of Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798, in fact, the province's military elite was dominated by Caucasian, and above all Georgian, mamluks. In the face of such apparent similarities with the Mamluk sultanate, it is tempting to define the military society of Ottoman Egypt as a continuation or revival of the sultanate.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , February 1995 , pp. 39 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

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9 These were the Müteferrika, Çavuşan, Janissaries (Mustahfizan), ʿAzeban, Gönüllüyan, Tüfenkçjyan, and Çerakise.

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13 For example, the entourages of the early Qazdaǧh leaders Mustafa Kâhya and Hasan Çavuş are called variously ṭaraf and ṭāʾifa. See al-Jabartī, , ʿAjāʾib, 1:107, 238Google Scholar; ʿAbdülkerīm, , Tārīḫ-i Miṣir, fol. 135vGoogle Scholar. Interestingly, similar groupings were noted in the former Soviet army in Germany. See “Bad Blood in Germany: The Soviet Army Can't Leave Soon Enough,” Newsweek, 12 11 1990, 42Google Scholar.

14 A çavuş was the third-highest-ranking officer in most regiments, behind the agha and the kâhya.

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16 See, for example, al-Jabartī, , ʿAjāʾib, 2:90Google Scholar. (The plural is usually atbāʿ, but occasionally tāwabiʿ.)

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18 Quoted by Ayalon, , “Studies in al-Jabarti,” pt. 2, 279Google Scholar.

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20 Istanbul, Başbakanhk Osmanli Arşivi, Maliyeden Müdevver 7069, a register of 3000 soldiers dated 1150 A.H. (1737–38)Google Scholar, specifies places of origin for seven followers of household founder Mustafa Kâhya al-Qazdaǧli. Of these, five come from a variety of districts in Anatolia (see n. 23).

21 Cairo, al-shakhṣiyya, Maḥkama li-al-aḥwal, ʿAskariyya no. 108 (3 01 1716), 110Google Scholar; ʿAskariyya, no. 147 (24 03 1740), 17. Professor Raymond cited these documents in a communication to meGoogle Scholar.

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23 I have examined two registers from the Başbakanlik Oşmanh Arsivi in detail: Maliyeden Müdevver 4787, dated 1086–88 A.H. (1675–77), which lists 2,000 soldiers for an unspecified imperial campaign; and 7069, dated 1150 A.H. (1737–38), which lists 3,000 soliders for a campaign against Austria.

24 Mühimme-i Miṣir, 5:18, dated 1146 A.H. (1733)Google Scholar.

25 Abou-el-Haj, , “Vezir and Paşa Households,” 441Google Scholar, where he notes that in central Ottoman sources, atbāʿ refers to “followers/hangers on” of a vizierial household.

26 For an example of a çirak of one patron who was the tābiʿ of another, see Çelebi, Aḥmad, Awḍaḥ, 514Google Scholar.

27 Kunt, , The Sultan's Servants, especially chap. 5 and Conclusion. See also Abou-el-Haj, “Vezir and Paşa Households,” 446, n. 37Google Scholar.

28 The naqīb al-ashrāf was appointed from Istanbul until the 18th century, when the Bakri family, a prominent Cairene clan of descendants of the Prophet, came to monopolize the post.

29 See Hathaway, Jane, “The Role of the Kizlar Aǧasi in Seventeenth-Eighteenth Century Ottoman Egypt,” Studia Islamica 75 (06 1992): 141–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Çelebi, Aḥmad (Awḍaḥ, 514) records what is to my knowledge the first instance of an ocak officer raising a client to the beylicate in 1727, when the Janissary kâhya Hüseyin al-Dimyati made his client Mustafa Agha al-Wali sancak beyi of Jirja and Minya in Upper EgyptGoogle Scholar.

31 The kâhya, also rendered katkhudā or ketḫüda, was nominally second in command to the agha; by the 18th century, however, the kehyas of the Janissary and ʿAzeban corps exercised de facto control over their respective regiments.

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35 Al-Damūrdāshī, , Durra, 55–56.Google Scholar

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46 I am grateful to Professor Daniel Crecelius for this information.

47 For a study of the phenomenon in medieval Europe, see Lansing, Carol, The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), esp. chap. 2–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In “Soldiers in Trade,” cited earlier, André Raymond has made an intriguing study of the wealth of low-ranking officers, based on inheritance registers.

48 See, for example, Tuchscherer, Michel, “Le pèlerinage de I'émir Sulaymân Gâwiš al-Qazduglî, sirdâr de la caravane de la Mekke en 1739,” Annales islamologiques 24 (1988): 155–206Google Scholar. The followers listed in such a register do not necessarily comprise the totality of their patron's entourage, however.

49 For a description of these chronicles, see Holt, P. M., “Ottoman Egypt (1517–1798): An Account of Arabic Historical Sources,” in Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt, ed. Holt, P. M. (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 3–12Google Scholar; and Crecelius, Daniel, “Aḥmad Shalabī ibn ʿAbd al-Ghanī and Aḥmad Katkhudā ʿAzabān al-Damūrdāshī: Two Sources for al-Jabartī's ʿAjāʾib al-āthār fīʾ l-tarājim wa'l-akhbār,” in Eighteenth Century Egypt: The Arabic Manuscript Sources, ed. Crecelius, Daniel (Claremont, Calif.: Regina Books, 1990), 89–02Google Scholar. See also the published edition by ʿAbd al-Rahim, ʿAbd al-Rahim ʿAbd al-Rahman (Cairo: Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 1989)Google Scholar and the English translation, Al- Damūrdāshī s Chronicle of Egypt, 1688–1755: Al-durra al-muṣāna fi akhbār al-kināna, ed. and annotated by Crecelius, Daniel and Bakr, ʿAbd al-Wahhab (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991).Google Scholar

50 The manuscript is discussed by Kafadar, Cemal in his “Bir Misir Yeniçerisinin Fransa Anilari” (Paper presented to the meeting of the Comité international d'études pré-ottomanes et ottomanes, Ankara, 09 1992).Google Scholar

51 For an analogous analysis of the literary output of the soldiers of the Mamluk sultanate, see Flemming, Barbara, “Literary Activities in Mamluk Halls and Barracks,” in Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet, ed. Rosen-Ayalon, Myriam (Jerusalem: Institute of Asian and African Studies, Hebrew University, 1977), 249–60.Google Scholar

52 See nn. 13,47.