The Janissary Corps — Imperial Ottoman

The Janissaries (yeniçeri, “new troops”) were the elite infantry corps of the Ottoman standing army, a body of soldier-slaves recruited from the Christian population, converted to Islam, and bound by a strict hierarchy to the person of the sultan. From the late 1320s or 1330s, and by the more common chronicler date of 1363 under Murad I, the corps existed in some form until the “Auspicious Incident” of 17 June 1826 — a span of roughly four and a half centuries. The corps was the most recognisable institution of Ottoman military power, the subject of admiration and fear across the Christian Mediterranean, and a force of considerable political weight inside the empire itself. Their recruitment is discussed at greater length in the article on the devshirme system; the broader institutional history is surveyed in the Ottoman military pillar.

Key dates

c. 1363 — Conventional date of the corps’ foundation under Murad I, by the chronicler Şükrullah.
1389 — Janissaries fight at the battle of Kosovo.
1453 — Janissary storm troops participate in the final assault on Constantinople.
1481 — The first Janissary mutiny over the succession, at the death of Mehmed II.
1521 — Janissaries take Belgrade; the beginning of the Süleymaniye-era campaigns.
1566 — Janissary pikemen fight at Szigetvár at Suleiman’s death.
1622 — Janissaries depose and murder Sultan Osman II.
1687 — Janissary sedition helps to depose Mehmed IV.
1826 — Corps abolished in the Vaka-i Hayriye; surviving members executed, imprisoned, or dispersed.

Formation under Murad I

The Janissary corps is conventionally dated to the reign of Murad I (r. 1362–1389), and more specifically to the years around 1363, when the chronicler Şükrullah places the formation of the new infantry. Earlier Ottoman forces had relied on tribal cavalry and on Christian mercenaries; the new infantry gave the sultan a disciplined force that did not depend on the goodwill of the Turkmen chiefs. The first Janissaries were drawn from prisoners of war and from volunteers, but the corps was soon associated with the devshirme, the regular collection of Christian boys from the Balkan and Anatolian villages. By the time of Bayezid I the Janissaries were a recognisable part of the army; by the time of Mehmed II they were the infantry backbone of the imperial field army.

Busbecq, the Habsburg ambassador who observed the corps at close quarters in the 1550s, left the most quoted European description:

“The Turkish infantry, however, is far from being despicable. Their number, their equipment, and their discipline are all admirable. The chief support of the sultan’s throne is the Janissaries, an infantry corps of about twelve thousand men, attached to the sultan’s person and devoted to his service.” — Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Turkish Letters (1560s).

Busbecq’s “twelve thousand” was the active, paid portion of the corps; the total establishment by the 1560s was considerably larger.

Recruitment: the devshirme

The devshirme, from the Turkish devşirmek (“to collect” or “to pick up”), was the principal method of recruiting the Janissary corps from the late fourteenth century until the seventeenth. Christian boys aged roughly eight to eighteen, drawn from the Balkan and Anatolian provinces, were taken into Ottoman service, converted to Islam, and assigned to one of several career paths. Some went to the palace school, the Enderun, and rose into the highest offices of state — Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and the architect Sinan were both devshirme alumni. Most were sent to the Janissary barracks, the acemi ocak, in the Anatolian and Rumelian towns. The selection was carried out by officials of the devşirme ocak, the devshirme office, and boys were collected from the raya (the non-Muslim subject population) in the Balkans as far as Hungary, Bosnia, Albania, and southern Russia. The boys were theoretically the property of the sultan, and they were bound to the corps for life.

Training and the orta system

The training of a Janissary recruit began in the acemi ocak and continued, for the most able, in the Yeniçeri Ocağı, the Janissary corps proper. The acemis spent their early years as auxiliary troops, often on the palace construction projects or in the Anatolian fortresses, before being promoted to the Janissary orta, the regimental company that was the basic unit of the corps. A fully manned orta had around 200 men, divided into squads of various sizes. The orta had its own kazan, a large field cauldron that served as a focus for the company mess and that was carried on the march. The orta had a distinct identity, with its own banner, its own patron saint, and its own bölük (corporal). The ortalar were numbered, and a roll-call in the barracks at the end of the seventeenth century listed over 100 ortalar, most of them in Istanbul but some in provincial garrison towns. The whole corps was led by the Yeniçeri Ağası, the Agha of the Janissaries, who in the classical period was one of the senior officers of the empire.

Pay, privileges, and the kazan

The Janissary was paid in cash, in three-monthly instalments. The basic rate of pay was modest, but it was supplemented by a series of allowances, gifts, and the right to engage in trade. From the sixteenth century onwards the Janissaries became an important element of the urban economy, working as porters, bakers, and small traders when they were off duty. The corps was forbidden to marry during the classical period, but the prohibition was gradually relaxed from the late sixteenth century onwards — the precise year is disputed in the sources, with some imperial firmans dated to the 1560s and others to the 1620s — and by the seventeenth century married Janissaries were the norm. The Janissary also enjoyed the right to bear arms in public, a daily meal at the kazan, and a series of legal exemptions. The most important was the ocak, the right of the corps to defend itself in its own court. The famous metaphor of “the kazan boiling over” came to refer to Janissary mutiny, and the ritual overturning of the kazan was a sign of open rebellion.

The Janissary band: the mehterhane

The corps was accompanied everywhere by its own military band, the mehterhane, whose instruments — the davul (a deep bass drum), the zurna (a loud, double-reed shawm), the nakkare (kettledrums), the zil (cymbals), and the boru (a natural trumpet) — defined Ottoman military music from at least the reign of Mehmed II. The mehter marşı, the Janissary march, was less a single piece than a genre of martial music played as the corps entered or left barracks, on the march, and in the field.

The mehterhane’s influence on European music is greater than is often appreciated. Joseph Haydn knew the genre well, both from the Austro-Ottoman wars of the 1780s and from his time at the Esterházy court, and references to “Turkish music” — the alla turca style with bass drum, cymbals, and triangle — appear in his Military Symphony (1794) and the Rondo alla turca of his contemporary Mozart. Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory (1813) is another descendant. The March of the Janissaries was the anthem of the corps; the mehterhane survived the 1826 abolition as a state ceremonial band and is still performed on official occasions by the Turkish military.

Combat role

The Janissary fought on foot, in close order, and was originally equipped with the composite bow, the short sword, and a small shield. The bow was the dominant weapon of the corps for most of its history; the matchlock musket, adopted in the later fifteenth century, was slow to displace it, but the transition was effectively complete by the late sixteenth century. By the late sixteenth century the Janissary had become, in practice, a pikeman and musketeer, organised in the standard Ottoman manner. Rhoads Murphey’s case that the Janissaries’ military effectiveness at Mohács (1526) depended on their integration with the artillery train, rather than the other way round, is in my view the most convincing reading of the engagement.

The corps was a siege infantry. It played a decisive role in the great Ottoman sieges of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from Constantinople in 1453 to the Great Siege of Malta and the siege of Vienna. The Janissary was trained to dig, to mine, and to storm breaches; it was also trained to fight in open battle, in the centre of the Ottoman line, and to support the sipahi cavalry with massed musket fire. The combination of disciplined infantry fire and timely cavalry charge is the classic Ottoman tactical pattern, and the Janissary was its central element.

Political power and decline

From the sixteenth century onwards the Janissary corps became a significant political force inside the empire. The ortalar were concentrated in Istanbul, and a Janissary mutiny was, in effect, a coup. The corps was involved in the deposition of several sultans — most notoriously of Osman II in 1622 — and in the choice of several grand viziers. The agha of the Janissaries was a high officer of state, and the corps was a political as well as a military institution.

The classical Janissary was a slave of the sultan, a member of a closed corps, and a disciplined soldier. The Janissary of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was, increasingly, a hereditary soldier, a tradesman, and a political pressure group. The devshirme had declined in importance; the ortalar had become large, hereditary bodies; and the military effectiveness of the corps had fallen sharply. The repeated defeats of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries — most notably at Vienna in 1683 — were widely attributed, in part, to the failure of the Janissary to perform its old role. Koçi Bey, presenting his Risale to Murad IV around 1631, blamed the corruption of the Janissary ortalar explicitly for the empire’s military misfortunes.

The Auspicious Incident of 1826

Sultan Mahmud II came to the throne in 1808 with a clear determination to reform the army and to end the political power of the Janissaries. The Nizam-ı Cedid had been created by his predecessor Selim III in the 1790s; Mahmud revived the project in the form of the Sekban-ı Cedid and, after a mutiny, replaced it with the Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye in 1826. The Janissaries reacted with a series of mutinies, the last of which, in June 1826, was the occasion of the Vaka-i Hayriye, the “Auspicious Incident”. On 15 June 1826 the Janissaries mutinied in Istanbul, demanding the abolition of the new infantry; Mahmud II mobilised his loyal troops and the topçu artillery, and on 17 June the Janissary barracks were surrounded and bombarded. The corps was abolished by imperial decree, and the surviving Janissaries were executed, imprisoned, or dispersed.

The abolition of the Janissaries marks the end of the old Ottoman military system. The new infantry, organised on European lines, took the corps’ place, and the older institutional vocabulary of devshirme, orta, kazan, and agha disappeared from official use. The soup-cauldron of the orta, however, remains a symbol in Turkish popular culture.

Frequently asked questions

Did Janissaries marry?

No, in the classical period. The corps was a celibate order, and a Janissary’s children were excluded from inheritance of his pay and his place in the orta. The prohibition was gradually relaxed from the late sixteenth century onwards; by the seventeenth century married Janissaries were the norm, and the sons of Janissaries were admitted to the corps by right under the kul kaçgun and çıkma provisions.

How were Janissaries recruited?

Through the devshirme. Christian boys, generally aged eight to eighteen, were collected from the Balkan and Anatolian villages by officials of the devşirme ocak, converted to Islam, and sent through the acemi ocak training barracks before being promoted to a Janissary orta. The system is treated in detail in the article on the devshirme.

What happened to the Janissary music?

It survived. The mehterhane was re-established as a state ceremonial band after 1826 and is still performed on official occasions in modern Turkey, including at the mausoleum of Atatürk in Ankara and on state visits. The Janissary march is the ancestor of the alla turca style in European classical music — Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven all borrowed from it.

Ottoman military and warfare — A chronological overview of the Ottoman military, in which the Janissary corps was the central institution from 1363 to 1826.
The devshirme system — The mechanism by which Christian boys were collected for the Janissary ortalar and the palace school.
Ottoman gunpowder siege warfare — The great sieges in which the Janissary corps played a central role, from Constantinople in 1453 to Vienna in 1683.
The provincial sipahi cavalry — The timariot horsemen who fought alongside the Janissary infantry in the Ottoman field army.
The Ottoman navy — The imperial fleet that transported Janissary storm troops on amphibious operations across the Mediterranean.

Sources and further reading

Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare 1500–1700 (Hurst, 1999).
Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1923 (Basic Books, 2005).
Mesut Uyar and Edward J. Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Atatürk (Praeger, 2009).
Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
William Spencer, The Ottoman Army 1914–1918 (Osprey, 2008).