"Military Organization of the Ottoman Empire" Topic
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Tango01 | 15 Sep 2018 3:52 p.m. PST |
"The first Ottoman army had been composed entirely of Turkmen nomads, who had remained largely under the command of the religious orders that had converted most of them to Islam. Armed with bows and arrows and spears, these nomadic cavalrymen had lived mostly on booty, although those assigned as ghazis to border areas or sent to conquer and raid Christian lands also had been given more permanent revenues in the form of taxes levied on the lands they garrisoned. These revenue holdings were formalized as mukвta'as, held by tribal leaders and ghazi commanders who used their revenues to feed, supply, and arm their followers. It was this type of mukвta'a that developed into the Ottoman form of fief--called a timar--that was the basis of Ottoman military and administrative organization as the European portions of the empire were conquered from the vassals in the 15th century and placed under direct Ottoman administration. These nomadic troops had predominated through Orhan's reign, until he saw that such undisciplined cavalrymen were of limited use in besieging and taking large cities. In addition, once he had established his state, he had found it difficult to maintain order with such an army because the nomads still preferred to maintain themselves by looting, in the lands of their commander as well as in those of the enemy…." Main page turkmeniya.tripod.com/id24.html Amicalement Armand
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