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Akinji
Akinji or akindji (, ; plural: ''akıncılar'') were Turkish people, Turkish Irregular military, irregular light cavalry, scout divisions (deli) and advance troops of the Ottoman Empire's Military of the Ottoman Empire, military. When the pre-existing Turkish Ghazi (warrior), ghazis were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire's military they became known as "akıncı." Unpaid, they lived and operated as wikt:raider, raiders on the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, subsisting on plunder. In German sources these troops were called ''Renner und Brenner'' (English: "Runner and burner"). There is a distinction made between "akıncı" and "deli (cavalry), deli" cavalry. History In war their main role was to act as advance troops on the front lines and demoralise the marching opposing army by using guerrilla tactics, and to put them in a state of confusion and shock. They could be likened to a scythe in a wheat field. They would basically Turkish archery, hit the enemy with arrows. When a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Timarli Sipahi
The ''sipahi'' ( , ) were professional cavalrymen deployed by the Seljuk dynasty , Seljuk Turks and later by the Ottoman Empire. ''Sipahi'' units included the land grant–holding (''timar'') provincial Timariots, ''timarli sipahi'', which constituted most of the army, and the salaried regular Kapıkulu, ''kapikulu sipahi'', or palace troops. However, the irregular light cavalry ("raiders") were not considered to be . The ''sipahi'' formed their own distinctive social classes and were rivals to the Janissary, janissaries, the elite infantry corps of the sultans. A variant of the term "''sipahi''" was also applied by colonial authorities to several cavalry units serving in the Troupes coloniales, French and Italian Empire, Italian colonial armies during the 19th and 20th centuries (see ). Name The word is derived from Persian language, Persian and means "soldier" and is also transliteration, transliterated as and ; rendered in other languages as: in Albanian language, Alban ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Light Cavalry
Light cavalry comprised lightly armed and body armor, armored cavalry troops mounted on fast horses, as opposed to heavy cavalry, where the mounted riders (and sometimes the warhorses) were heavily armored. The purpose of light cavalry was primarily raid (military), raiding, reconnaissance, screening (tactical), screening, skirmishing, patrolling, and tactical communications. Prior to the 17th century they were usually armed with swords, spears, javelins, or bow and arrow, bows, and later on with Sabre, sabres, pistols, shotguns, or carbines. Light cavalry was used infrequently by Ancient Greece, Ancient Greeks (who used hippeis such as prodromoi or sarissophoroi) and Ancient Rome, Ancient Romans (who used auxiliaries (Roman military), auxiliaries such as Numidian cavalry, equites Numidarum or equites Maurorum), but were more common among the armies of Eastern Europe, North Africa, West Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia. The Arabs, Cossacks, Hungarian people, Hungarians, Hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe, between the early 16th and early 18th centuries. The empire emerged from a Anatolian beyliks, ''beylik'', or principality, founded in northwestern Anatolia in by the Turkoman (ethnonym), Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. His successors Ottoman wars in Europe, conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into the Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the Fall of Constantinople, conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II. With its capital at History of Istanbul#Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interacti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gazi
A ''ghazi'', or ''gazi'' (, , plural ''ġuzāt'') is an individual who participated in ''ghazw'' (, '' ''), meaning military expeditions or raids against non-Muslims. The latter term was applied in early Islamic literature to expeditions led by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and later taken up by Turkic military leaders to describe their wars of conquest. In the context of the wars between Russia and the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus, starting as early as the late 18th century's Sheikh Mansur's resistance to Russian expansion, the word usually appears in the form ''gazavat'' (). In English-language literature, the ''ghazw'' often appears as '' razzia'', a borrowing through French from Maghrebi Arabic. In modern Turkish, ''gazi'' is used to refer to veterans, and also as a title for Turkic Muslim champions such as Ertuğrul and Osman I. Ghazwa as raid—razzia In pre-Islamic Bedouin culture, ghazw was a form of limited warfare verging on brigandage that avoided head-on co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ghazi (warrior)
A ''ghazi'', or ''gazi'' (, , plural ''ġuzāt'') is an individual who participated in ''ghazw'' (, ''wikt:ghazwa, ''), meaning military expeditions or raids against non-Muslims. The latter term was applied in early Islamic literature to expeditions led by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and later taken up by Turkic military leaders to describe their wars of conquest. In the context of the wars between Russia and the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus, starting as early as the late 18th century's Sheikh Mansur's resistance to Russian expansion, the word usually appears in the form ''gazavat'' (). In English-language literature, the ''ghazw'' often appears as ''Razzia (military), razzia'', a borrowing through French from Maghrebi Arabic. In modern Turkish language, Turkish, ''gazi'' is used to refer to veterans, and also as a title for Turkic Muslim champions such as Ertuğrul and Osman I. Ghazwa as raid—razzia In pre-Islamic Bedouin culture, ghazw[a] was a form of limited warfar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deli (cavalry)
Deli (from Turkish language, Turkish ''deli'', meaning "mad, wild, daring") were a Turkish people, Turkish light cavalry unit within the Ottoman Empire. Their main role was to act as front-line shock troops, also acting as personal guards for high-level Ottoman officials in the Rumeli during peacetime. History The first Delis were created by the Bosnian and Sanjak of Smederevo, Semendire governors. Gazi Husrev-beg was the leader most associated with these troops, who employed about 10,000 of them. Due to the efficiency of Husrev-beg, other district (ie frontier and inland) governors of Rumelia began to imitate him. The majority are Turks and they were chosen from among the peoples living in Rumelia. The unit was first established in Rumelia Eyalet around the middle of the 15th century to create a force to protect the borders of the Ottoman Empire, empire in the Balkans and came to full power around the 16th century. The unit is usually confused in historical records with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evrenosoğlu
Evrenos or Evrenuz (1288–1417, Giannitsa, Yenice-i Vardar) was an Ottoman Empire, Ottoman military commander. He served as a general under Suleyman Pasha (son of Orhan), Süleyman Pasha, Murad I, Bayezid I, Süleyman Çelebi and Mehmed I. Legends stating that he lived for 129 years and had an incredibly long career are inaccurate. These sources of confusion may be linked to the deeds of his descendants becoming intertwined with his own achievements in historical retellings. He was also known as Gavrinos, and believed to descend from a Greek family. Biography Οriginally, Gazi Evrenos was a noble dignitary, a bey in the Karasids, principality of Karasi, joining the Ottomans only after their conquest of the beylik in 1345. A Greek legend maintains that Evrenos' father was a certain Ornos, renegade Byzantine Empire, Byzantine governor of Bursa (Prusa) who defected to the Ottomans, and then on to Karasi, after the Siege of Bursa, in 1326. Stanford J. Shaw states that Evrenos was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Devshirme
Devshirme (, usually translated as "child levy" or "blood tax", , .) was the Ottoman practice of forcibly recruiting soldiers and bureaucrats from among the children of their Balkan Christian subjects and raising them in the religion of Islam. Those coming from the Balkans came primarily from noble Balkan families and rayah classes. It is first mentioned in written records in 1438, but probably started earlier. It created a faction of soldiers and officials loyal to the Sultan. It counterbalanced the Turkish nobility, who sometimes opposed the Sultan. The system produced a considerable number of grand viziers from the 15th century to the 17th century. This was the second most powerful position in the Ottoman Empire, after the sultan. Initially, the grand viziers were exclusively of Turk origin, but after there were troubles between Sultan Mehmed II and the Turkish grand vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha the Younger, who was the first grand vizier to be executed, there was a ris ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turkoman (ethnonym)
Turkoman, also known as Turcoman (), was a term for the people of Oghuz Turkic origin, widely used during the Middle Ages. Oghuz Turks were a western Turkic people that, in the 8th century A.D, formed a tribal confederation in an area between the Aral and Caspian seas in Central Asia, and spoke the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family. Today, much of the populations of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are descendants of Oghuz Turks. ''Turkmen'', originally an exonym, dates from the High Middle Ages, along with the ancient and familiar name " Turk" (), and tribal names such as " Bayat", " Bayandur", " Afshar", and " Kayi". By the 10th century, Islamic sources were referring to Oghuz Turks as Muslim Turkmens, as opposed to Tengrist or Buddhist Turks. It entered into the usage of the Western world through the Byzantines in the 12th century, since by that time Oghuz Turks were overwhelmingly Muslim. Later, the term "Oghuz" was gradually supplanted by "Turkmen" among Og ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Osman I
Osman I or Osman Ghazi (; or ''Osman Gazi''; died 1323/4) was the eponymous founder of the Ottoman Empire (first known as a bey, beylik or emirate). While initially a small Turkoman (ethnonym), Turkoman principality during Osman's lifetime, his beylik transformed into a vast empire in the centuries after his death. It existed until 1922 shortly after the end of World War I, when the sultanate was abolished. Owing to the scarcity of historical sources dating from his lifetime, very little factual information about Osman has survived. Not a single written source survives from Osman's reign, and the Ottomans did not record the history of his life until the fifteenth century, more than a hundred years after his death. Because of this, historians find it very challenging to differentiate between fact and myth in the many stories told about him. One historian has even gone so far as to declare it impossible, describing the period of Osman's life as a "black hole". According to late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Janissary
A janissary (, , ) was a member of the elite infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops. They were the first modern standing army, and perhaps the first infantry force in the world to be equipped with firearms, adopted during the reign of Murad II (r. 1421–1444, 1446–1451). The corps was established under either Orhan or Murad I, and dismantled by Mahmud II in 1826. Janissaries began as elite corps made up through the ''devşirme'' system of Ghilman, child levy enslavement, by which Ethnic groups in Europe, indigenous European Christians, Christian boys, chiefly from the Balkans, were taken, levied, subjected to forced circumcision and Forced conversion#Islam, forced conversion to Islam, and incorporated into the Ottoman army in the 15th–19th centuries, Ottoman army. They became famed for internal cohesion cemented by strict discipline and order. Unlike typical History of slavery in the Muslim world, slaves, they were paid regular salaries. Forbidden ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
