Off the Straight Path by Semerdijan Elyse;

Author:Semerdijan, Elyse;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 2017-04-23T04:00:00+00:00

TABLE 4 . 2

TOTAL NUMBERS OF PROSTITUTION AND ZINA-TYPE CASES BY CENTURY

An annual abduction of Christian and Muslim boys from the Balkans and Christian boys of Anatolia continued, although gradually it decreased by the late sixteenth century. By the seventeenth century the corps was so saturated with local Muslim recruits that it was no longer necessary to continue to exact children through the devşirme. Despite the disciplined soldiery of the empire’s early years, it is apparent that there were two classes of Janissaries in Aleppo by the seventeenth century, between whom there was a sharp distinction: those soldiers who had undergone the strict traditional training and the locally recruited, free-born Muslims. The imperial troops were referred to as the qapi-qul and were sometimes at odd with the central Ottoman authorities, but more often at odds with the local forces stationed in the city.43 Several court cases indicate that local irregular troops were regularly involved in crime in Aleppo, in particular soldiers among the levend.

Who were the levend? The earliest references to the levend are found among Venetians who called eastern Mediterranean sailors employed on their ships “Levantinos.” These sailors were replaced in the late sixteenth century by the Ottoman Navy, and “many of those disbanded turned to brigandage, while others became employed as private troops.” By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the court records of Aleppo make frequent references to the levend. Often called irregular troops, the levend were later to become Ottoman cavalry auxiliaries. Upon their arrival in Syria, it was said that they “did fear neither death nor ruin.” The arna’ut (Albanians) and the levend were both recruited from the Balkans and seemed to appear with Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, who ruled Haifa from 1775 to 1804. It has been suspected that since Ahmad Pasha was Bosnian, he recruited his compatriots as cavalrymen among his troops. Additionally, it has been suspected that troops like the levend may have been organized by clan or common place of birth. In contrast to other studies, Abdul Karim Rafeq has noted that in eighteenth-century Damascus, the levend were often of Kurdish origin.44 Regardless of ethnicity, the levend had a reputation for unruly conduct.

Eighteenth-century French traveler Constantine François Volney described the levend in his account of Syria as equipped with “short sabers, pistols, muskets and lances,” resembling the Mamluks, except they were not nearly as orderly and distinguished as the latter. They were an undisciplined group, according to Volney; their clothes were ragged, they rode horses of different sizes, and their armaments were rusty. They resembled bandits more than soldiers and also behaved like bandits by “exercising the trade of robbers.”45

Needless to say, the reputation of the levend as criminals always held true. Volney, based on his travels through Syria, remarked that all “the villages would tremble at every lawend [sic] who appears.” Villagers feared the levend because they would enter villages and seize residents’ property. Volney describes a typical levend soldier: “He is a real robber under the name of soldier; he enters

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