Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective by Karen Barkey

Author:Karen Barkey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780521715331
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2008-06-22T21:00:00+00:00

Celalis

Another relatively complex phenomenon of the sixteenth century was the rise of banditry, which developed into a form of mercenary or quasi-military organization with leadership. The Ottoman government’s dealings with this form of banditry - which plagued the empire between approximately 1550 and 1650 -demonstrate an altogether different understanding of the implications of dissent. In fact, that state authorities were open to incorporating these bandits was almost entirely due to their ability to understand and put to use their organizational structures. They thus handled bandits with a different set of policies, which included both deal making and brutal destruction; they also clearly perceived them as cooptable and less threatening than the kizilbas.

The development of Ottoman banditry, a phenomenon of the sixteenth century located especially in the southeastern frontiers of the empire, resulted from many state policies of territorial consolidation and demilitarization after war. When peasants, vagrant students, and others were drawn into the army and given clothing, shelter, arms, and a salary, they became soldiers. However, demilitarized after war and deprived of their shelter and salary, soldiers turned into mercenaries, gathering around band chiefs who refocused their energies on looting and banditry. As these former soldiers-cum-mercenaries grew in number and sophistication, they organized their forces around pools of men ready for hire by the state or by powerful grandees out to challenge local control. Such actions militarized the countryside, and as mercenaries waiting to be hired, these loose networks of soldiers not only competed among themselves, but also inflicted much damage on local populations, inspiring terror and complaints.

Responding to demands from local populations under siege, the state engaged the bandits at different times, and often struck bargains with bandit chiefs, reconverting mercenaries into soldiers and making their leaders officials of the state. Given that no common ideology or political goal beyond participation in Ottoman institutions ever emerged, the celalis remained powerless to effect major change or to constitute a clear threat to Ottoman politics and territory. Furthermore, banditry did not threaten the state as such because it quickly became incorporated into the state through bargains. State-bandit relations can be viewed as an alternative method of centralization through bargaining and incorporation, a method that the Russians used with their Cossack bands at the edges of their territory. Bandits, formerly mercenary soldiers, were not interested in rebellion but concentrated on trying to gain state resources, more as rogue clients than as primitive rebels.1

Unlike the Shiite threat from the Iraqi provinces where deal making was not really considered, celalis were eminently cooptable. They were recognized military units, demanded positions in the Ottoman state, and organizationally were a known quantity. This is easily demonstrated by the letters of intent bandit leaders wrote the sultans, offering their mercenaries for military use during campaigns in return for positions in the local state hierarchy and patronage networks. In one famous letter, Canboladoglu Ali Pasha, a celali chieftain, promised the sultan more than 16,000 soldiers in return for fourteen high-level administrative positions for himself and his lieutenants.2 The

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