The “Golden Age” as a Political Agenda 201
and Akhisari did speak of their oppressive practices (the former, particularly,
more against the kuls in government than in the army), but this argument had
never before had the central position it acquired in early seventeenth-century
texts. In fact, one may speak of a bipolar conflict that characterizes these texts:
on the one hand, we have the sipahis, virtuous and true soldiers who suffer
from the abandonment of the old practices; on the other, the janissaries, full
of intruders, who, by their number and oppressive behavior, have become a
disrupting factor in Ottoman society and the military.27
Kitâb-ı müstetâb is probably the first treatise containing this kind of anti-
janissary sentiment, inaugurating various topoi that were to be repeated for
decades to come. The old custom, says the anonymous author, was that when-
ever the army gained a victory or conquered a castle, valiant soldiers were
granted promotion or a fief, while those not participating were removed from
their posts (Y2–4, A602–3). All changes in salaries and fiefs were reported to
the sultan, who could either approve or reject them. Similarly, but in a more
organized manner, Koçi Bey first describes how the system had functioned in
the past, noting that janissaries were collected through devşirme alone, from
among Albanians, Bosnians, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians, and that they
only lived in the Istanbul – Edirne – Bursa triangle. They used to be bachelors
(marriage being permitted only following retirement) and lived in barracks.
Their sons would start as acem oğlanları ( janissary apprentices), while their
officers served for at least seven or eight years (A27–29, Ç37–40).
Beginning with the Iranian campaign of Murad III, however, these rules
started to be abandoned: the commanders of the army took liberties by grant-
ing promotions and fiefs at will, and as a result of bribery, we read in Kitâb-ı
müstetâb, even as soon as a campaign starts. Thus, Turks, Kurds, Roma, and
Iranians of reaya origin infiltrated the army (at another point, the author
claims that nine out of ten kul recruits are “city boys”28 from Istanbul, being
Turks, Armenians, or Roma: Y25–27, A625–26). Koçi Bey locates the beginning
of this entry of strangers into the corps to the early 1580s,29 when some people
who had kept the crowds at Mehmed III’s circumcision festival under control
were accepted into the ranks of the janissaries as ağa çırakları. Other innova-
tions (sipahi oğulları, becayiş) further increased the number of such strang-
ers; Aziz Efendi describes these tricks, recruiting apprentices (ağa çırağı) or
27 On this bipolar contrast see Abou Hadj 1988.
28 On this expression, which in this period signified unattached urban strata before taking a
more moral meaning toward the end of the seventeenth century, see Sariyannis 2005, 4–8.
29 On this dating, which is written 909/1503 in the MS, see Koçi Bey – Çakmakcıoğlu 2008,
58, fn. 1. The reader may remember that Mustafa Ali (Ali – Demir 2006, 142) was also of the
same view, giving the date 1582.