178 | The Identity of the Ottoman Elite
officers. Whether their incompetence was due to the promotion of less skilled
individuals or the incursion of untrained outsiders is not clear. Veysi maintained
that timar holders from nontraditional groups were less militarily qualified and
less zealous for the Ottoman dynasty than the sons of sipahis. To restore the
empire, the sultan had to control military appointments and corruption among
officeholders. The true Ottoman was a timar-holding sipahi, warlike and hon-
est; Veysi did not mention intelligence or education. Otherwise, his view agrees
closely with Mustafa Ali’s and Akhisari’s: timar holders should be the primary
force, gaining a timar was the route to Ottoman identity, and the primary threat
came from people low on the social hierarchy obtaining timars.
By Veysi’s time, the countryside had erupted in what are known as the Celali
revolts, not true rebellions but unrest caused by soldiers who had been dismissed
from the army, either because they had not showed up for campaigns or because
they were hired troops enrolled by the season. These men were no longer elite
soldiers, but there was no room in the village economy for them, because climate
change had reduced cultivation. So they became bandits, preying on the villages
and on merchant and tax caravans, causing more peasants to abandon agricul-
ture. In 1610 the Celalis were massively crushed by the Ottoman army, although
in later decades they rose up again. They were often hired to supplement the
armed retainers of provincial governors and local strongmen; to balance them,
the sultan stationed Janissaries in the cities of the empire to keep the peace.
Contention: Who Were the Real Ottomans?
After the war with Austria and the Celali unrest, the timar-holding cavalry lost
both their military effectiveness and their political power. In the reign of Os-
man II (r. 1618–1622) elite competition entered a new phase. The Janissaries and
palace military corps were now the sole elite force in the capital and were sta-
tioned in provincial cities as security forces, especially in Anatolia, where they
became involved in local politics and the economy. For the anonymous author
(probably a scribe) who wrote Kitab-i Müstetab (The excellent book) in 1621, the
timar system was no longer the issue; the author copied some of Mustafa Ali’s
complaints about the incursion of unfit outsiders, protégés of the powerful, but
without his degree of anger. This author instead critiqued the Janissaries, casti-
gating their lackluster military performance in the Polish campaign of 1621 and
blaming it on disorder in the Janissary ranks—swollen numbers, inflated but
unpaid salaries, outsiders allowed into the corps, and promotions made outside
proper career paths in return for bribes. Those now designated as outsiders were
not Janissary recruits but retainers of Ottoman officials, provincial governors and
the like, who wangled military appointments for their men in return for bribes,
as conditions on their own service, or as rewards for aiding the government with