202 chapter 5
sipahis’ sons (ferzend-i sipahi), as well as concealing the death of a soldier
and selling his pay-ticket to “a shepherd, an agriculturist, or even a robber”
(becayeş), in even greater detail (M6–8). As a result, a multitude of the ignorant
and good-for-nothing are now paid from the treasury, including (in Koçi Bey’s
own words)
city boys of unknown origin, Turks, Roma, Persians, Kurds, strangers, Laz,
Yörüks, camel drivers, porters, robbers, and pickpockets.Koçi Bey notes that were this number of soldiers needed by sultans in the past,
they would recruit them in times of campaign and dismiss them afterwards
(“the tailor, the grocer, the barber, each back to their job”) instead of giving
them timars and steady pay. And yet this would not be an army proper: an
army consists of soldiers and the sons of soldiers, not laborers and petty ar-
tisans (bakkal çakkal ile iş bitmez). The author of Kitâb-ı müstetâb agrees that
soldiers in the past were few in number but large in quality (az idi lakin öz
idi; the expression dates at least from Lütfi Pasha), having spent their whole
career on campaign and in battle. Nowadays, he says, a peasant (reaya) can sell
a pair of oxen and become a sipahi or a janissary; strangers have become more
numerous than the genuine kuls; some of them do not even know Istanbul,
let alone the whereabouts of the sultan’s court (Y5–9, A605–8). Furthermore,
retired but salaried members have increased, but few among them are actually
old or invalid; the rest have paid bribes in order to enter the payrolls as retired
or rural watchmen (Y9–13, A608–12).
The results, he says, are detrimental for both the peasants and the treasury.
All authors enumerate in detail the numbers of the janissaries (and of the sala-
ried cavalry) and their salaries, showing the swelling of their ranks since the
beginning of Murad III’s reign (almost three times the numbers of 1574, ac-
cording to Koçi Bey). Expenses increased abruptly and that is why the janis-
saries came to be paid in bad coinage, writes the author of Kitâb-ı müstetâb;
Celalis and other rebels appeared, peasants’ lives deteriorated, and the janis-
saries started to mutiny. Aziz Efendi describes two results: on the one hand, the
army was swollen with useless a rabble that fled their provinces and thus threw
their own tax-burden onto the rest of the peasantry; on the other, the constant
need for revenue to cover increased expenditure led to increased oppression
and thereby increased ruin of the land (M6–8).
Moving now to the other side of the equation, the timariots, our authors
agree that alterations of the same kind also afflicted the timar system (and
Aziz Efendi begins his treatise by praising Murad IV for having restored the
proper status of the timar lands that had been held “captive and languishing ...