180 DESTINY DISRUPTED
Another set of checks and balances built into Ottoman society involved
the devshirme instituted by Bayazid. At first, as I mentioned, this was just
the mamluk system by another name. Like the mamluks, the janissaries
were trained to serve as the ruler's bodyguards-at first. But then the janis-
saries' function expanded.
For one thing, they didn't all end up as soldiers anymore. Some were
taught administrative skills. Others received cultural training. The sultan
began appointing janissaries to top posts in his government as well as his
armies and navies. He put janissaries in charge of important cultural insti-
tutions as well. Sinon, the Ottoman architect most responsible for estab-
lishing that characteristic style of Ottoman mosque-a solid edifice capped
with one big dome and many smaller mushroom domes and four pencil-tin
minarets at the corners-was a janissary.
Originally, the devshirme took boys only from Christian families in
newly conquered territory. But Mehmet the Conqueror instituted another
crucial innovation: he extended the devshirme into the empire itself.
Henceforth, any family under Ottoman rule, Muslim or non-Muslim, high
or low, might see some of its sons sucked into this special form of "slavery,"
which was, paradoxically, a route to the highest strata of Ottoman society.
Through the devshirme, the Ottomans crafted a brand new power elite
for their society. Unlike the elite of other societies, however, the janissaries
were forbidden to marry or have {legitimate} children. They could not,
therefore, become a hereditary elite. In fact, the devshirme was a mecha-
nism for constantly turning the social soil. It sought out promising young-
sters from all sectors of society, gave them the most rigorous possible
intellectual and physical training, and then charged them with running the
empire. Naturally, they sucked a good deal of power away from the old,
traditional, military, Turkish aristocracy, those families whose ancestral
roots went back to central Asia, which was all to the good as far as the Ot-
tomans were concerned. It weakened their potential rivals.
And yet the Ottomans did not eliminate these potential rivals, even
though they could have. No, the Ottoman genius for checks and balances
kept the old aristocratic families in place and left them some power to
serve as a check on the janissaries should the latter ever get any big ideas.
What power was left to the old nobility? Well, for one thing, they re-
mained the biggest landowners in the empire and the major taxpayers.