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Journal of World History, Volume 25, Number 1, March 2014, pp. 85-124
(Article)
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DOI: 10.1353/jwh.2014.0005
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Firearms and Military Adaptation:
The Ottomans and the European
Military Revolution , 14501800*
gbor goston
Georgetown University
T he mass adoption of firearms as a tool of warfare dramatically

changed the nature of military conflict from the mid fifteenth cen-
tury onward, prompting historians of early modern Europe to describe
the changes as a gunpowder revolution or Military Revolutiona
thesis that provoked a spirited scholarly debate in the 1990s. Although
the original concept, as set forth by Michael Roberts in 1955, did not
single out firearms technology, in the influential elaboration of the the-
sis by Geoffrey Parker (1988), firearms and artillery fortifications (trace
italienne, which were developed in response to artillery firepower)
became the main building blocks of the thesis. According to the thesis,
the new fortresses required much larger armies to successfully besiege
them, leading to a dramatic increase in the size of European armies.
To build and maintain artillery fortifications, large artillery trains and
ever larger armies in turn required a more centralized government.
Thus, the introduction of firearms led to the rise of centralized states in
Europeand, on a global scale, to the rise of the West. 1
* I thank Edmund Burke and the late Jerry Bentley for commissioning this article. I
also thank Matt Romaniello and his colleagues at the Journal of World History for their
patience, for this essay took far longer to prepare than their initial timetable envisioned.
While sections of this essay draw on my Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons
Industry in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), new ques-
tions and substantial new material have also been incorporated.
1
Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West,
15001800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); rev. ed., 1999. The importance
Journal of World History, Vol. 25, No. 1

2014 by University of Hawaii Press
85
86 journal of world history, march 2014
Many embraced Parkers ideas, but his thesis also provoked criti-
cism, both conceptually and empirically. Some suggested different
chronologies for the military transformation of Europe, ascribing the
revolutionary changes to periods other than Robertss original 1560
1660 or Parkers broader 15001800. Others saw the changes as a more
complex process involving several interrelated military revolutions,
which were each usually preceded by periods of incremental change.2
The most forceful challenge, however, came from David Parrott, who
argued that a wholly state-recruited and state-administered military
force is an anomalous development, a particular preoccupation of
European states from roughly 1760 to 1960, and that prior to that the
characteristic pattern of European warfare was military organization
on the basis of contracts with private suppliers. Parrott not only deem-
phasized the role of military technology, but also challenged the causal
relationship between war and the rise of the centralized state through
military revolution, the very essence of the thesis.3
Students of non-Western history started to add their voices to
the discussion only recently.4 The Ottomans typically appeared in
the discussion as a counterpoint to their (supposedly) militarily more
advanced European rivals. While the Ottomans successful participa-
tion in the artillery revolution of the fifteenth century was acknowl-
edged,5 and some historians even suggested that the Ottomans were a
gunpowder empireimplying that firearms played a crucial role in
the formation and consolidation of their empire6others claimed that
of the gunpowder revolution in the rise of Atlantic Europe has been raised by others;
see, for example, William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and
Society since a.d. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
2
See, for instance, Clifford J. Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on
the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995);
Jeremy Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 15501800 (Lon-
don: Macmillan, 1991); and Jeremy Black, Beyond the Military Revolution: War in the Seven-
teenth-Century World (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
3
David Parrott, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 2.
4
Kenneth Warren Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003); Peter Allan Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder
to the Bomb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
5
John Francis Guilmartin, The Military Revolution: Origins and First Tests Abroad,
in Rogers, The Military Revolution Debate, pp. 304, 306; Kelly DeVries, Gunpowder Weap-
ons at the Siege of Constantinople, 1453, in Yaacov Lev, ed., War and Society in the Eastern
Mediterranean, 7th15th Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 343362.
6
Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Vol. 3, The Gunpowder Empires and
Modern Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); William Hardy McNeill, The
Age of Gunpowder Empires, 14501800 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Associ-
ation, 1989); Douglas E. Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and
Mughals (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 2011).
goston: Firearms and Military Adaptation 87
from the late sixteenth century onward the Ottoman military lagged
behind its western and central European rivals. The latter embraced
the trace italienne and a balanced mix of shock and shot infantry of
pikemen and arquebusiers, and thusaccording to this viewestab-
lished military superiority over the sultans forces.7 Underlying all the
reasons put forward to explain the Ottomans inability to keep pace
with the West (whatever that means) was an assumption that their
deficiencies ultimately sprung from their conservatism, fanaticism, and
despotism, which in turn stemmed from their culture and religion.8
Such explanations put undue emphasis on military technology and
tactics, but an even bigger problem with this approach is the fact that
each and every claim made therein flies in the face of the evidence, as
this paper demonstrates. The paper is divided into three sections. The
first two sections examine the adaptation, manufacturing, and deploy-
ment of firearms in the Ottoman Empire as well as the role of gunpow-
der technology in establishing and maintaining Ottoman military supe-
riority against the sultans European, Asian, and Middle Eastern rivals
in the early modern era. Challenging commonly held views about the
Ottomans supposed conservatism and dependence on European mili-
tary technology and imported weaponry, these sections demonstrate
the Ottomans continued flexibility and pragmatism in adapting and
improving on acquired weapons, as well as their self-sufficiency in the
production of weapons and munitions. They also reveal that in addition
to firearms, factors such as good intelligence; resourceful leadership;
7
Guilmartin, The Military Revolution, pp. 307308; Jzsef Kelenik, The Military
Revolution in Hungary, in Gza Dvid and Pl Fodor, eds., Ottomans, Hungarians, and
Habsburgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest (Leiden:
Brill, 2000), pp. 117159.
8
The list of authors who share such views is long, and includes Kenneth M. Setton,
Paul Kennedy, Eric L. Jones, Arthur Goldschmidt, and Bernard Lewis. See goston, Guns,
pp. 78. Despite evidence to the contrary, such views have been enduring; see, for example,
Anthony Pagden, Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle between East and West (New York:
Random House, 2009), p. 354: why had they failed to maintain their advantage? The sim-
plest, most compelling answer was and would remain: religion. For an older view about
Ottoman conservatism and backwardness, see E. L. Jones, The European Miracle: Environ-
ments, Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 175191, which is a hodgepodge of half-truths and
biased generalizations based on the accounts of European travelers and other Orientalist
experts, which, taken together, amount to a caricature of Ottoman history: As Europe
developed, they [the Ottomans] could have learned from there too. As it was they spat on
the opportunity, and soon they were held in terror (p. 178); Technological stagnation and
intellectual retrogression mark the check to Ottoman ambitions (p. 179); After tolerant
start, typical perhaps of military despotisms in the first flush of confidence, the Ottomans
came positively to encourage obscurantist thought. This militated against the borrowing of
western techniques and against native inventiveness (p. 181).
large and disciplined professional armies; superior supply and logistics;

and the combined use of field artillery, infantry firepower, wagon for-
tresses, and cavalry charges were all important in Ottoman military suc-
cesses. The last section of the paper examines the possible relationship
between firearms and the growth of Ottoman military manpower. Older
literature explained the increase in the number of musket-bearing janis-
sary footmen with Istanbuls need to counter Habsburg infantry fire-
power in the war of 15931606 in Hungary. New evidence indicates
that the growth of the janissary corps was part of a general military
expansion that started under Sultan Sleyman I and accelerated dur-
ing the Ottomans Thirty Years War (15781611) against the Safavids
and Habsburgs. In addition to increased demand for military manpower
in these multiseasonal wars, Ottoman military expansion also reflected
increased supply of fighting men due to domestic socioeconomic
changes, which resulted in the emergence of provincial governors and
local strongmen as military entrepreneurs with private armies.
Adoption and Integration of Gunpowder Technology

The Diffusion of Firearms in the Ottoman Realms
By the 1380s, the Ottomans were acquainted with gunpowder weap-
ons, most likely via the Balkans, where firearms had been known from
the 1350s onward.9 Ottoman registers of timar prebends or military
fiefs mentioned gunners (sing. topu) remunerated with timars from
the 1390s.10 Sieges and defenses where Ottoman troops are known to
have employed cannons include those of Byzantine Constantinople
(between 1394 and 1402, 1422, 1453), Salonica (1422, 1430), Anta-
lya (1424), Novo Brdo (1427, 1441), Smederevo (1439), Belgrade
(1440), and the Hexamilion (six-mile-wall) fortified wall across the
Gulf of Corinth that guarded the only land route between mainland
Greece and the Peloponnese peninsula. Considering that cannons
became common in European sieges only from the 1420s on, the above
9
Djurdjica Petrovi, Firearms in the Balkans on the Eve of and after the Ottoman
Conquests of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, in Vernon J. Parry and M. E. Yapp,
eds., War, Technology and Society in the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press, 1975),
pp. 169172, 175; Gbor goston, Ottoman Artillery and European Military Technol-
ogy in the Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries, Acta Orientalia Scientiarum Hungaricae 47
(1994): 1548.
10
stanbul, Babakanlk Osmanl Arivi (Istanbul, Prime Ministrys Ottoman Archives,
henceforth BOA), Maliyeden Mdevver Defterleri (henceforth MAD) 231, p. 107. See dris
Bostan, XVI. Yzyl Balarnda Tophane-i Amire ve Top Dkm Faaliyetleri, in Takn
Tak and Sunay Aksoy, eds., Halil nalck Armaan-I (Istanbul: Doubat, 2009), p. 251.
examples suggest that the Ottomans were on par with developments

occurring elsewhere in Europe. By 1444, the Ottomans were using can-
nons in their Balkan castles, aboard their river flotillas on the Danube
and its tributaries, and in field battles. They employed cannons against
both fixed and moving targetssuch as castles and enemy ships. By
this time, they also used matchlock arquebuses (tfek).11
The Ottoman-Hungarian wars of the 14431444 and the Crusade
of Varna (1444) were crucial in the proliferation of firearms among
the Ottomans. A contemporaneous anonymous Ottoman chronicler
of the Hungarian-Ottoman wars of 14431444 noted that the Otto-
man defenders of Vidin had cannon, mangonels, and arquebus at their
disposal, as did those in the castles of Nibolu (Nicopol), umlu (Shu-
men), and Pravadi.12 Extant survey registers from the mid fifteenth
century on listed cannon and arquebus in Ottoman castles in the Bal-
kans, though the Ottomans must have inherited many of the pieces
from the Christians.13
Table 1. Number of cannons and arquebuses in Ottoman castles

Date Castle Cannons Arquebuses
1455 skp (Skopje) 12 148

1455 Sobri 4 2
1455 Novoberda (Novo Brdo) 8 55
1473 vranya (Vranja) 10 16
1488 Semendire (Smederevo) 50
Sources: Feridun Emecen, Osmanl Klasik anda Sava (Istanbul: Tima, 2010), pp. 3536;
Bostan, Tophane, p. 252 n. 7. In skp the source listed 125 lead shots for cannon, 4,000
arquebus bullets, 41 bows, 23 crossbows, 15,000 arrows, and 8,000 arrowheads.
11
Petrovi, Firearms, pp. 174177; Colin Heywood, Notes on the Production of
Fifteenth-Century Ottoman Cannon, in Colin Heywood, Writing Ottoman History: Docu-
ments and Interpretation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), no continuous pagination, article XVI
(originally published in 1980), pp. 39; goston, Guns, pp. 1617. The meaning of the
Ottoman term tfek changed through the centuries. In the fifteenth century it referred to
weapons similar to European arquebus. However, unless we have data regarding the weap-
ons weight, length, and caliber, it is difficult to tell whether our mid sixteenth-century
sources referred to arquebuses or early muskets.
12
Halil nalck and Mevld Ouz, eds., Gazavt- Sultn Murd b. Mehemmed Hn:
zladi ve Varna savalar (14431444) zerinde Anonim Gazavtnme (Ankara: Trk Tarih
Kurumu, 1978). English translation: Colin Imber, The Crusade of Varna, 144345 (Alder-
shot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 79, 82, 88, 90.
13
In Novo Brdo, for instance, the Ottomans registered eight cannons ten days after its
conquest. A weapons inventory compiled before the Ottoman conquest listed three large
and five other pieces. Petrovi, Firearms, p. 185.
In mid October 1444, the Ottomans were successful in sinking a

ship of the crusader fleet, which intended to prevent Sultan MuradII
(14211444, 14461451) and his Asian troops crossing to Europe.
Both the anonymous Ottoman chronicler and Zaifi, the author of a rel-
atively unknown contemporaneous Ottoman Gazavatname (Chroni-
cle of Holy Wars) who was participant of Murad IIs wars in the 1440s,
mentioned the incident, which may be the very first example for the
successful use of coordinated fire of coastal artillery from both shores
of the straits to disable an enemy fleet. According to Zaifi, the sultan
ordered his grand vizier to come with five thousand cavalry, four hun-
dred arquebusiers, and two hundred artillery gunners to the European
shores of the Bosporus straits, opposite the Anatolian castle (Anadolu
Hisar) at the narrowest point of the straits, where the sultan decided
to cross to Europe, following his failed attempt of doing so at the straits
of Gallipoli.14 The anonymous chronicler added that the shots of Otto-
man cannons, directed by the chief Ottoman artillery gunner, a man
named Saruca, smashed into one of the ships, splintering its hull and
sending it to the bottom of the sea. 15 Under the cover of artillery fire,
and with the help of Genoese ships, the Ottoman troops crossed to
Europe and headed toward Varna.
In November the Ottomans defeated the crusaders at the battle of
Varna, where both parties used artillery. Zaifi underlines the impor-
tance of Ottoman cannons in stopping multiple crusader assaults.16
The Ottomans use of artillery and handguns in the second battle of
Kosovo (1448) is also well documented by both European and Otto-
man sources.17
14
Zaifi, Gazavat-i Sultan Murad Ibni Muhammad Han, Afyon l Halk Ktphanesi
Gedik Ahmet Paa Blm, no. 18349, 51/a, as summarized in Grol Pehlivan, Varna Sava
ve Bir Tarih Kayna Olarak Gazavatnameler, Turkish Studies: International Periodical for the
Languages, Literature and History of Turkish and Turkic 3, no. 4 (2008): 607. Jehan de Wavrin,
whose account is based on the memoirs of his nephew, commander of the Burgundian ships
on the Bosporus in 1444, corroborates this information, putting the size of Halil Pashas
army at about seven to eight thousand men, and underlining that the cannons and culver-
ins he deployed were delivered to him by the Genoese of Pera. See Imber, Varna, p. 128.
See also John Jefferson, The Holy Wars of King Wladislas and Sultan Murad: The Ottoman-
Christian Conflict from 14381444 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 339340, for the significance
of the event.
15
Imber, Varna, p. 84.
16
Zaifi, 74/a81/b, Pehlivan, Varna Sava, p. 613. However, the two thousand
arquebusiers, five hundred artillery gunners, and one thousand cannon given by Zaifi (53/b,
Pehlivan, Varna Sava, p. 609) seem greatly exaggerated.
17
Artillery fire was especially heavy on the first day of the battle (18 October), when
the Hungarians, on the suggestion of a Turkish renegade who had escaped to Hungary
in the time of King Sigismund (13871437), attacked the Ottoman camp at night with
Hungarian Wagenburg and Ottoman Tabur

During the Hungarian-Ottoman wars of the 1440s the Ottomans
acquainted themselves with the Hussite Wagenburg tactic. The Wagen-
burg, or wagon fortress, perfected by the Hussites in Bohemia during
the Hussite wars (14191436), was a defensive arrangement of war
wagons chained together. The Hussites manned their wagons with
some twenty crossbowmen and gunners per wagon, and also protected
them against cavalry assault by heavy wooden shielding and light artil-
lery. The Ottomans first encountered the Wagenburg in their fight
against Jnos Hunyadis troops in 1442. Hunyadi had learned the use
of war wagons during his wars against the Hussites in Bohemia, where
he served as a commander for Sigismund of Luxemburg, king of Hun-
gary (13871437). When Hunyadi was preparing against the Otto-
mans in March 1443, he relied on the well-developed industry of the
Saxon towns of Transylvania, his home base, which he governed in the
name of the king. Hunyadi ordered the artisans of the Saxon town of
Kronstadt (Braov in modern Rumania) to send war wagons furnished
with guns, arquebuses and other war-machines, made according to the
instructions of a certain Bohemian artisan whom Hunyadi had sent to
the town to supervise the construction of war wagons. Hunyadi also
spent a great amount of his own money on the construction of war
carts, and his Czech mercenaries brought additional war wagons to his
camp. In the end, some six hundred taborite war carts were deployed
during the winter campaign of 14431444, although Hunyadi had diffi-
culty manning them with the required number of infantry. In the 1444
Varna campaign, sources put the number of wagons in the crusaders
camp at two thousand.18
The Ottomans quickly realized the usefulness of the wagon laager
and also determined how to overcome itnamely, by surrounding the
laager out of range of the guns and forcing the enemy to give up its
positions, a tactic they successfully employed at the battles of Varna
infantry and artillery. However, Murad II responded with equally strong artillery fire and
repulsed the attack. See Jzsef Teleki, A Hunyadiak kora Magyarorszgon, 5 vols. (Pest:
Emich s Eisenfels, 18521856), 2:91, based on Chalkokondyles and contemporary western
sources.
18
Lajos Elekes, Hunyadi (Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1952), p. 189; goston, Guns,
p. 18; Jefferson, Holy Wars, pp. 320, 425. See also Constantin Emanuel Antoche, Du tabor
de Jan ika et de Jean Hunyadi au tabur cengi des armes ottomanes: Lart militaire hus-
site en Europe orientale, au Proche et au Moyen Orient (XVeXVIIe sicles), Turcica 36
(2004): 91124.
(1444) and Kosovo (1448).19 The battle of Varna demonstrated that

the Wagenburg alone could not win the war, and that other factors were
also important. In the case of Varna, Ottoman numerical superiority,
discipline, and the young kings reckless charge (which he launched
toward the end of the fight despite Hunyadis advice to the contrary)
against the sultans well-protected position led to disaster.20 In the bat-
tle, the Ottomans captured the crusaders war wagons and firearms. It
is possible that the two hundred huffnitzbugschen (according to another
source, 140 pixides) that Sultan Mehmed II (14441446, 14511481)
deployed and, after his failed siege, abandoned at Belgrade in 1456
were the ones that the Ottomans had captured at Varna in 1444.21
Both terms were used for smaller guns in the mid fifteenth century, but
the former specifically referred to the guns (haufnice) that the Hussites
of Jan ika and Hunyadis Czech mercenaries used on their wagons.
It is not known when the Ottomans first used their wagon laager
(tabur). Whereas at the second battle of Kosovo (1448) Hunyadi had
some two thousand carts and used them as Wagenburg, it was not
yet the Hungarian-style wagon laager that the Ottomans employed.
Rather, it was the type of defensive embankment that had served the
Ottomans so well at Varna in 1444: a deep trench and a dirt embank-
ment strengthened with iron stakes and large shields, behind which
stood janissary archers, arquebusiers, cannons, and camels laden with
rich baggage.22 The combined use of artillery, arquebus, and tabur is
usually cited as a decisive factor in the Ottomans victory against the
Akkoyunlu forces of Uzun Hasan (14571478) at the battle of Bash-
kent in 1473.23
19
You rely on your cartsrecorded the anonymous Ottoman chronicler, hoping
that the House of Osman will attack them so that you can drive them back with cannon
and arquebus. But do you not know that they have tumbled to this trick of yours and will
not approach the carts? No, they will surround you completely, out of range of the guns, and
stay there until you are reduced to eating one another. Imber, Varna, p. 59.
20
Teleki, A Hunyadiak kora, 1:427445; Elekes, Hunyadi, pp. 249255; Jefferson, Holy
Wars, pp. 455481, for the reconstruction of the battle.
21
On 3 August 1456, one anonymous source reported from Vienna that the Turks lost
bombardas 22, maximas 32 palmas in longum et in latum 7, et huffnitzbugschen 200 et
ultra. Similar information is reported from Vienna by Georgius de Welche: Lucrati etiam
sunt Bombardas magnas, quorum longitudo 32 palmarum, latitodo . . . 7 palmarum, parvas
autem pixides 140. See dn Blcskey, Capistrani Szent Jnos lete s kora, 3 vols. (Szkes-
fehrvr: Debreczenyi Istvn Knyvnyomdja, 1924), 2:342.
22
Teleki, A Hunyadiak kora, 2:79 for the number of carts, and 2:87 for the embank-
ment. See also Jefferson, Holy Wars, p. 458, for similar embankment and tactics at Varna.
Should the enemy reach the embankment, the rich baggage would be used to distract the
enemy to buy time.
23
John E. Woods, The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire, rev. ed. (Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 1999), pp. 118120. It is puzzling why Uzun Hasan accepted battle
Firearms and Standing Troops

While the Ottomans quick adoption of firearms and the Wagenburg
tactic is notable, their main advantage lay in their early integration
of gunpowder weapons into their standing forces. From the 1390s on,
preceding their rivals by centuries, the Ottomans established a corps
of permanent salaried troops who specialized in the manufacturing
and handling of firearms. As mentioned above, in the time of Sul-
tan Bayezid I they had artillery gunners paid with military fiefs, and a
generation later began to employ salaried cannoneers. From the mid-
fifteenth century onward there was a separate unit of armorers (sing.
cebeci) within the sultans household troops, who looked after and car-
ried the infantry janissaries weapons. Beginning in the second half of
the same century the army had its own gun carriage drivers (sing. top
arabac) whose job was to manufacture, repair, and operate war wag-
ons in campaigns, including the setting up of the tabur. The corps of
bombardiers (sing. humbarac) was established in the late fifteenth cen-
tury. All this was in sharp contrast to most of the Ottomans European
adversaries, in whose realms the gunner remained a master craftsman
who had special relationship to his weapon. In Europe, individual
pieces had their names, and cannons were elaborately decorated.24
While European sources mention the Mahometa, Mehmed IIs giant
cannon manufactured by the Hungarian renegade Orban before the
siege of Constantinople (1453), such specialized names for artillery
pieces are absent from Ottoman chronicles and fortress inventories.
This also suggests that the business of the Ottoman gunner was more
mundane, and while his profession required specialized knowledge and
brought him prestige, he was first and foremost a professional soldier of
the sultans standing household forces, known as kapukulu or slaves-
servitors of the [sultans] gate. 25
The sultans elite infantry janissaries are perhaps the best known
among the standing household troops. Established either under Orhan
(r. 13241362) or Murad I (r. 13621389) 26 and recruited through the
against the fortified Ottoman army in 1473 when the Akkoyunlu leader had been so cau-
tious and successful in wearing out, with a long blockade and repeated raids, the wagon fort
(hisar-i araba) of the Timurid Sultan Abu Saids (14511469) in 1469 (ibid., p. 99).
24
This is a point made by J. R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 14501620
(London: Fontana Press, 1985), p. 50.
25
goston, Guns, pp. 2829. The standard work remains smail Hakk Uzunarl,
Osmanl Devleti Tekiltndan Kapukulu Ocaklar, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Ankara: Trk Tarih
Kurumu, 1984; 1st ed., 1944).
26
Colin Imber, The Origin of the Janissaries, in Colin Imber, Warfare, Law and
Pseudo-History (Istanbul: Isis, 2011), pp. 165171.
child levy or devirme system, the janissaries were initially equipped

with their formidable recurved bow, saber, shield, and light coat of
mail. However, under Murad II they began to use tfek.
Sources summarized in Table 2 demonstrate that from the mid-fif-
teenth century onward, artillery gunners, handgunners, and crossbow-
men (sing. zembereki) served in numerous Ottoman castles.
Data regarding the Ottoman castle of Novoberda (Novo Brdo)
in 1455 are especially significant, for they demonstrate that by the
mid-fifteenth century some of the janissaries serving in border forts
Table 2. Artillerymen, handgunners, and crossbowmen in selected

Ottoman castles (14551491)
Date Castle Gunners Handgunners Crossbowmen
(topu) (tfeki) (zembereki)
1455 Novoberda (Novo Brdo) 11 (C)

10 Janissaries
(M)
1455 Gvercinlik (Golubac) 10 (C)
14671468 Resava 4 (C) 10 (C)
14671468 Gvercinlik 10 (C) 40 (C)
14671468 Nibolu (Nicopol) 11 (C)
14671468 Holovnik 9 (C)
1488 Semendire (Smederevo) 18 (M) + 32 (C) 40 (C) 40 (C)
1491 Resava 4 (C)
1491 Gvercinlik 2 (M) 10 (C)
1491 Vidin 2 (C) + 2 (M)
1491 zvornik (Zvornik) 2 (M) 10 (M) 10 (M)
1491 Gzelce (Havala) 2 (M)
1491 Yerg (Giurgiu) 1 (M)
1491 Semendire 15 (M) + 35 (C) 40 (C) 40 (C)
1491 Hram 4 (M)
1491 Akkerman (Bielgorod) 17 (M)
1491 Kili (Kilia) 18 (M)
1499 Novi (Castelnouvo) 11 (M)
1500 Moton (Modon) 16 (M)
Sources: Data for 1455: Olga Zirojevi, Tursko vojno ureenje u Srbiji, 14591683 (Beograd: Istorijski
Institut, 1974), pp. 136, 139; Emecen, Sava, pp. 3536. Data for 14671468: Zirojevi, Tursko vojno
ureenje u Srbiji, p. 120 (Golubac); Bostan, Tophane, p. 253 (Nibolu). Data for 1488: BOA Kamil
Kepeci (henceforth KK) 4725, pp. 4448. Data for 1491: BOA, MAD 15334, pp. 42, 44, 46, 4950,
5458, 44m45m; 63, 71. Data for 1499: KK 4725, p. 24b (Novi); Bostan, Tophane, pp. 252253.
Abbreviations: C=Christian; M=Muslim
had already been armed with handguns. The table also shows that in
the fifteenth century most artillery gunners, arquebusiers, and cross-
bowmen serving in Ottoman forts in the Balkans were Christians or
recent converts. However, in strategically located castlessuch as the
recently conquered Kili and Akkareman at the mouth of the Danube,
and Moton on the southwestern edge of the Peloponneseall of the
artillerymen were Muslims. Muslim cannoneers gradually outnumbered
their Christian peers in other Ottoman castles as well.
Unlike their Mamluk and European adversaries, who armed sol-
diers of lower social standing with gunpowder weapons, the Ottomans
equipped their elite standing troops with firearms. Table 3 demon-
strates the gradual increase and fluctuation in the number of artillery
gunners, armorers, and gun-carriage drivers of the sultans household
troops. The increase, as with other household troops, started under Sul-
tan Sleyman I (15201566), when the number of artillery gunners tri-
pled between 1520 and 15671568. After a small decrease in the early
1570s, the growth continued, and the number of artillerymen doubled
again between 1582 and 1597. Although the number for 1598 seems
very high, it might reflect the needs to garrison recently conquered
fortresses in Hungary in the wars of 15931606 (especially Gyr/Yank
in 1594 and Eger/Eri in 1596). After the war the corps was reduced
drastically, almost to its prewar size by 1609, although the numbers of
armorers continued to rise. The high number of 1669 reflects the need
for cannoneers during the final siege of Candia (16671669), whereas
the highest numbers coincided with the long war against the Holy
League (16841699).
The number of janissaries carrying firearms in battles is difficult to
discern. Ottoman narrative sources estimated them from two thousand
to ten thousand men at the battle of Mohcs in 1526. German con-
temporaries believed that in the 1532 campaign, when Charles V and
Sleyman I came closest to confronting one another at the battlefield,
some nine thousand janissaries were armed with handguns. However,
Table 4 suggests that the spread of firearms amongst the janissaries was
a slow process, and that in the Rhodes (1522) and Mohcs campaigns
about half, and in the 1533 Iraq campaign about 60 percent, of the
janissaries listed in official pay sheets could have carried handguns,
assuming full mobilization of janissaries.
The Question of Janissary Volley Fire

The janissaries were firing their guns row by row from the early six-
teenth century on, as indicated by narrative sources and miniatures
Table 3. Number of salaried artillerymen, armorers, and gun carriage
drivers, 15121705
Date Artillerymen Armorers Carriage drivers Total
1512 331 401 346 1,078

1514 353 451 378 1,182
1520 396 522 308 1,226
1521 560 504 544 1,608
15221523 688 484 543 1,715
1523 600 517 542 1,659
15231524 594 568 543 1,705
15241525 632 528 516 1,676
15271528 695 524 943 2,162
1530 687 528 1,168 2,383
15671568 1,204 789 678 2,671
1574 1,099 625 400 2,124
15821583 1,438 1,382 916 3,736
1598 2,827 3,000 700 6,527
1609 1,552 5,730 684 7,966
16521653 1,481 5,426 339 7,246
1654 1,455 5,128 322 6,905
16601661 1,481 5,426 339 7,246
16611662 2,026 4,189 282 6,497
16691670 2,793 4,789 432 8,014
16871688 5,243 12,275 477 17,995
16901691 3,996 8,782 576 13,354
16911692 2,970 4,932 407 8,309
16921693 3,941 7,493 838 12,272
16931694 3,385 5,257 498 9,140
16941695 5,869 14,726 1,229 21,824
16961697 4,433 9,188 1,105 14,726
16981699 4,604 9,692 1,174 15,470
16991700 4,177 8,924 980 14,081
17001701 3,592 7,105 788 11,485
17011702 3,429 6,760 704 10,893
17021703 3,217 6,138 655 10,010
17041705 3,437 7,719 695 11,851
Sources: 15121530: BOA, MAD 23, published in Gbor goston, Osmanlda Strateji ve Askeri G
(Istanbul: Tima, 2012), pp. 177178. 1567, 16521670, 16941705: Mehmet Gen and Erol zvar eds.,
Osmanl Maliyesi: Kurumlar ve Bteler, 2 vol. (Istanbul: Osmanl Bankas Ariv ve Aratrma Merkezi,
2006) 1:237238. 1574, 1582, 1609, and 16871693, ibid., vol. 2 and CD-ROM, passim. 1598: goston,
Guns, p. 30.
Table 4. Number of handguns and janissaries, 15211533

Date Arquebuses in campaigns Janissaries on pay sheets
1521 8,349
1522 4,500 small and 1,000 trench guns
15221523 7,010
15241525 9,390
1526 4,000 small and 60 trench guns
15271528 7,886
1530 8,407
1533 3,420 small and 1,300 longer guns
Sources: Emecen, Sava, p. 41; Nicolas Vatin, Rodos valyeleri ve Osmanllar (Istanbul: Trkiye
Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakf, 2004), pp. 450451, for arquebuses. goston, Strateji,
pp.177178, for the janissaries.
describing the battle of Mohcs in 1526. The Ottoman chronicler

Celalzade Mustafa (d. 1567) claimed that four thousand janissaries
[under the command of the beylerbeyi of Rumeli] were deployed in nine
consecutive rows according to the rules of imperial battles [led by the
sultan], behind the chained field pieces known as darbzen or darbuzan,
and that these gunners (tfekendaz) were firing their guns (tfek) row
by row. A miniature of the battle from 1558 shows the janissaries fir-
ing in two rows: Soldiers in the first row are in a kneeling position
reloading their weapons, while those standing behind them in the sec-
ond row firing their guns. The janissaries are depicted as being behind
light field pieces, chained together, a well-known arrangement from
earlier and later battles.27 The question of whether these accounts refer
to volleys known from Western European examples from the latter
part of the sixteenth century and presented by historians as one of the
hallmarks of the Military Revolution needs further examination. How-
ever, a description of the janissaries volley fire practice in 1605 outside
Esztergom (Hungary) undoubtedly depicts volleys along the Western
European style. And in the middle of the field, the janissaries stood in
27
Mustafa elebi Cellzade, Geschichte Sultan Sleymn nns von 1520 bis 1557,
oder, Tabakt l-Memlik ve Derect l-Meslik, ed. by Petra Kappert (Wiesbaden: Steiner,
1981), fols. 146b147a; goston, Guns, p. 24; Gnhan Breki, A Contribution to the
Military Revolution Debate: The Janissaries Use of Volley Fire during the Long Ottoman-
Habsburg War of 15931606 and the Problem of Origins, Acta Orientalia Scientiarum Hun-
garicae 59, no. 4 (2006): 430431.
three ranks, each musketeer (tfekendaz) with matches ready [to fire],
and they lined up the bigger darbzens (ahi darbuzanlar), chained one
another, in front of the janissaries. Then, after the first rank of the
janissaries fires their muskets, the second rank fires, too. Afterward, the
rank that fired first bends double [= kneels] and begins to reload their
muskets. And as the third rank fires, the second rank in front [of them]
bends and prepares their muskets. Then, the first rank again stands up
and fires their muskets. 28
While the above reference to the janissaries volley practice can be
seen as proof for their participation in the European Military Revolu-
tion, a different explanation is also possible. It might, at least partly,
be explained by the swelling of the corps and the resulting decline of
the janissaries fighting skills and discipline, which in turn required
constant drills to keep their skills up to date and to enhance corps
coherence. One should also be careful not to overstate the importance
of the janissaries volleys and consider the destructiveness of archers,
whose arrows could cause more damage among the enemy than musket
fireas was the case in the first phase of the battle of Mezkeresztes
(26 October 1596), the main battle of the Long War of 15931606.29
This is a reminder of the skills of the janissaries in archery and the
enduring effectiveness of non-gunpowder weapons at the end of the
sixteenth century.
Firearms and the Ottoman Cavalry

Based on an oft-quoted passage of Oghier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Habs
burg imperial ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the mid sixteenth
century, historians have emphasized the aversion of the Ottoman cav-
alrymen to firearms. Apart from reluctance of cavalrymen to adopt fire-
arms, one should remember that early matchlocks were inferior to the
reflex bows of the Ottoman mounted archers with regard to force of
penetration and range and speed of fire. The wheel lock was also unre-
liable, and although the Ottomans became acquainted with wheel-
lock pistols as early as 1543 in Hungary, they did not adopt them en
masse until about the Cretan war (16451669), when the snaphaunce
lock made the pistols safer and easier to use. This explains the limited
28
Topular Katibi Abdulkadir (Kadri) Efendi Tarihi, p. 437, cited in English in Breki,
A Contribution, p. 416.
29
Sndor Lszl Tth, A mezkeresztesi csata s a tizent ves hbor (Szeged: Belvedere,
2000), p. 238.
number of pistols in Turkish museums.30 However, the Ottomans had

mounted gunners in Egypt and trained gun-bearing janissaries in the
Anatolian and Arab provinces to fight as mounted troops since the
mid sixteenth century. The timariot sipahis and/or their retinues serv-
ing aboard Ottoman galleys at the battle of Lepanto (1571) and in the
early seventeenth century also used handguns. The household cavalry
of the sultans adopted short-barreled arquebuses in the long Hungarian
war of 15931606, and perhaps even earlier.31
Weapons Production and Firepower Superiority
The adoption and adaptation of firearms by the Ottomans significantly

enhanced their military capabilities. However, these weapons had to
be manufactured and deployed in large enough numbers to have an
impact. This required the establishment of considerable weapons and
ammunition manufacturing capabilities as well as an effective trans-
portation system and logistics. The Ottomans proved successful in
these areas as well.
Some Europeanist historians and Middle East generalists continue
to repeat the old myth that the Ottomans were unable to manufacture
their own cannons and thus relied on European weapons, which they
either confiscated from their rivals or imported from Europe. When
they managed to manufacture their own weapons, it was only with the
help of European renegades.32 Alas, claim yet others, Ottoman can-
nons remained obsoletehuge and unwieldy pieces in a time when
European powers were casting smaller, mobile pieces. According to
this narrative, Ottoman technological backwardness and dependence
on foreign military know-how and hardware eventually led to their
30
Robert Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait (Lon-
don: I. B. Tauris, 1995), p. 45. A seventeenth-century wheel-lock pistol in the Military
Museum of Istanbul (catalogue no. 241) was sixty centimeters long and had a bore diam-
eter of eleven millimeters; see Aysel teliolu, Askeri Mze Osmanl Dnemi Ateli Silahlar
Katalou (stanbul: Askeri Mze, 2000), p. 107.
31
Elgood, Firearms, p. 45; dris Bostan, Osmanl Bahriye Tekilt: XVII. Yzylda Ter
sne-i mire (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 1992), p. 231.
32
Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western
Power (New York: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 254255, which claims that the artillery pieces
of the sultans were for the most part stolen and plundered from Christian forces rather
than fabricated on the premises. Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (London:
Phoenix, 1995), p. 223, which maintains that the majority of their [i.e., the Ottomans]
gun-founders and gunners were European renegades or adventurers.
defeat at the hands of technologically and tactically superior European

rivals.33
In fact, the Ottomans were self-sufficient in the manufacturing of
cannons and powder well into the eighteenth century, and the majority
of the cannons that they cast and deployed were similar to those used
by their European rivals. The crux of the matter is in the details, for in
order to compare the weapons used by the Ottomans and their rivals,
one has to make sense of the bewildering nomenclature of Ottoman
firearms and employ quantifiable data as to the composition of Otto-
man ordnance, instead of citing a few readily available, but often unre-
liable, observations by European military experts, a lazy method too
often employed even by distinguished historians when writing about
the Ottomans.
Cannons
The Ottomans were fortunate to have abundant ore deposits (copper,
iron, and lead) needed for cannon casting, and raw materials (saltpeter,
sulfur, charcoal, and fuel wood) necessary for powder manufacturing.
The only metal they lacked was tin. However, the alloy of the Otto-
man bronze cannons usually contained only about 10 percent tin, and
Istanbul managed to obtain the needed amount from import, mainly
from England. The rest of the ore came from the empires copper and
iron mines. The amount of copper received by the Imperial Can-
non Foundry from the Balkan and Anatolian mines was substantial:
in 16841685, for example, almost 850 metric tons, sufficient to cast
hundreds of field pieces and siege cannons. At the same time the iron
mines in the Balkans and Anatolia cast hundreds of thousands of iron
shots annually, the total weight of which varied, according to demands,
from one hundred to eight hundred metric tons in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.34
The Ottomans cast cannon in their foundries along the Adri-
atic (Avlonya and Prevesa), in their Hungarian provinces (Buda and
Temesvr), the Balkans (Rudnik, Semendire, skenderiye, Novaberda,
33
See, for example, Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation
and the Early Phases of European Expansion 14001700 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1996;
1st ed., 1965), pp. 9599; Parker, The Military Revolution, 1st ed., p. 126, Jonathan Grant,
Rethinking the Ottoman Decline: Military Technology Diffusion in the Ottoman Empire,
Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, Journal of World History, 10, no. 1 (1999): 191192; and
McNeill, The Pursuit of Power, p. 112, on the Asian gigantesque siege cannon.
34
goston, Guns, pp. 171178, for the mines and their output levels.
Pravite, and Belgrade), Asia Minor (Diyarbekir, Erzurum, Birecik,

Mardin, and Van), Iraq (Baghdad and Basra), and Egypt (Cairo), mainly
for local needs. The center of cannon casting, however, was the Impe-
rial Cannon Foundry (Tophane-i Amire) in Istanbul, which Mehmed
II established after his conquest of the city in 1453. This was one of
the first arsenals in late medieval Europe to be built, operated, and
financed by a central government, in a time when European monarchs
obtained their cannons from artisanal workshops. The Istanbul foundry
cast hundreds of cannons annually and could easily ramp up produc-
tion during major wars, a sign of adaptability. For instance, whereas
in 1676 the foundry manufactured only forty-six pieces, between July
1684 and June 1685, at the beginning of the long war against the Holy
League (16841699), it cast 785 cannons, mainly small field pieces.35
Moreover, production statistics demonstrate that, contrary to
claims about the gigantesque nature of Ottoman ordnance, the major-
ity of Ottoman cannons cast in the Istanbul foundry were small- and
Table 5. Distribution of cannon cast in the Imperial Cannon Foundry, 16851772

Date Total Small % Medium % Large % Mortars %
no. no. no. no.
16851686 416 376 90.4 38 9.1 2.0 0.5

16911692 298 187 62.4 61 20.5 50 16.8 1 0.3
16931694 679 524 77.2 125 18.4 6 0.9 24 3.5
16951696 208 92 44.2 115 55.3 1 0.5
16961697 1322 1169 88.4 111 8.4 26 2 16 1.2
1704 167 164 98.2 3 1.8
17041706 130 25 19.2 105 80.8 0
17061707 177 91 51.4 53 29.9 26 14.7 7 4
17121713 103 28 27.2 58 63.3 2 1.9 15 14.5
17311732 83 79 95.2 4 4.8
1732 486 147 30.2 208 42.8 95 19.6 36 7.4
1748 22 20 90.9 2 9.1 0
17691770 350 290 82.9 60 17.1 0
17711772 188 140 74.5 20 10.6 0 28 14.9
Source: goston, Guns, p. 186.

Note: Figures for 16851686 and 1732 represent inventory; all other data are production output figures.
35
Ibid., pp. 183184, for output statistics.
medium-caliber pieces. I consider guns that fired projectiles less than

1.5 okka (1.8 kilograms) small-caliber pieces, and those that used round
shots weighing between 1.5 and 11 okka (13.5 kilograms) medium-cal-
iber cannons. The 1.5-okka Ottoman pieces were smaller than most
European 6-pounder sakers and somewhat bigger than the 3-pounder
falcons. Yet the great majority of small Ottoman pieces, such as akaloz
and prang guns, fired projectiles of merely 0.1 and 0.33 pounds, respec-
tively, and thus were considerably smaller than the 1-pounder Euro-
pean falconets. By the same token, the 11-okka Ottoman guns were
similar to the Spanish 30-pounders (culebrina) and the Habsburg
24-pounders (Half Karthaun). However, most medium-caliber Otto-
man cannons, such as small and medium darbzens, fired projectiles that
weighed between 0.33 and 2 pounds.
While large cannons could be found in the empires fortresses, the
distribution of artillery pieces in selected Ottoman castles, based on
extant inventories from the era of Sultan Sleyman I, demonstrates
a wide variety of ordnance and indicates that Ottoman fortress ord-
nance, too, was dominated by small- and medium-caliber cannons.
As Table 6 shows, the most popular weapons in castles were small
akaloz and prang guns. Made of bronze and iron, prangs used shots of
150 grams (0.33 pounds) in weight, whereas akaloz guns fired projec-
tiles of about 60 grams (0.13 pounds), although the smallest Ottoman
akaloz pieces used projectiles as small as 31 grams (0.068 pounds) and
37 grams (0.081 pounds) in weight.
Darbzens (also known as zarbzen, darbuzan, and zarbuzan) were pop-
ular both in castles and as field pieces. The length and weight of these
cannons varied from 88 to 352 centimeters and from 54 to 540 kilo-
grams, respectively. The smallest ones weighed 54 kilograms and fired
shots merely 150 grams in weight. Medium-size darbzens fired lead and
iron shots of 307, 461, 614, and 921 grams (0.68, 1, 1.35, and 2 pounds)
and were small field pieces, similar to 1- and 2-pounder European fal-
conets. Larger darbzens used shots of 1.2 kilograms (2.6 pounds) and
2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds), and would be similar to European sakers
and falcons.
Bacalokas were the most common siege guns, which used cannon
balls made of iron, copper, and stone. The smallest ones fired shots
of 1, 5, 7, and 14 kilograms (2.2, 11, 15.4, and 30.8 pounds) and
would roughly correspond to European sakers, falcons, half culver-
ins, 30-pounder culverins, and cannons. Bigger bacalokas used can-
non balls of 17, 20, 22, 25, 27, and 28 kilograms (37.4, 44, 48.4, 55,
59.4, and 61.6 pounds) in weight and would correspond to 40-, 50- and
60-pounder European cannon.
Table 6. Number of cannons in selected Ottoman castles, 15201566
Date castle akaloz prang darbzen bacaloka ayka top mortar other total
(S) (S) (S/M) (L) (L) (G) (L)
15201566 Rodos/Rhodes 263 26 100 42 12 241 3 687

15201566 Anavarin/Navarino 55 18 56 129
15201566 Moton/Modon 4 8 53 15 12 239 10 341
15201566 Arhos/Argos 170 1 1 10 55 237
15201566 skenderiye/kodra 2 41 34 77
15201566 stanky/Kos 1 1 1 141 144
1523 Bodrum 20 2 17 25 64
1524 Kladovo 38 38 76
1530 Bodrum 8 205 13 226
1530 Antalya 44 7 41? 95
1536 Semendire/Smederevo 900 313 1 15 6 91 1,326
1536 Belgrad/Belgrade 230 150 75 2 6 2 30 513
1565 Budin/Buda 160 40 200
1565 Estergon/Esztergom 60 22 82
1565 stolni Belgrad/ 200 57 257
Szkesfehrvr
Sources: Salim Aydz, XV. ve XVI. Yzylda Tophne-i mire ve Top Dkm Teknolojisi (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 2006), pp. 455457; Klra Hegyi,
A trk hdoltsg vrai s vrkatonasga. 3 vols. (Budapest: Histria, 2007), 1:126127.
Note: S = small, M = medium, L = large, G = general term for cannon.
The term ayka was used for large siege cannons as well as for
smaller pieces used on riverboats. Given their small numbers in the
above fortresses, it is assumed that these were large siege cannons,
which used balls of 25, 27, and 30 kilograms (55, 59.4, and 66 pounds;
medium ayka) and 34, 44, 52, 54, 55, 61, and 68 kilograms (74.8, 96.8,
114.4, 118.8, 121, 134.2, and 149.6 pounds; large ayka), usually made
of stone. These latter pieces were very large siege cannons by west
European standards, but similar large pieces could be found in Venice,
Spain, and Habsburg Austria, especially in castles.36
Narrative sources demonstrate that the majority of guns that the
Ottomans deployed in their campaigns in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries were smaller field pieces, called darbzen. Ottoman
chroniclers differentiated between darbzens and cannons proper (top).
One chronicler, writing about the battle of Mohcs (1526), referred
to darbzens as [battle]line-breaker (saff-iken) and neck-destroyer
(merad-efgen), and called cannons castle-destroyer (kale-ken).37 The
Mamluk chronicler Ibn Zunbul noted that Ottoman darbzens employed
in Sultan Selims Syrian and Egyptian campaign of 15161517 fired
projectiles large enough to fill a palm of a mans hand, and that their
carriages had four horses.38 Other sources indicate that darbzens needed
three artillery gunners to operate, while their carriage required two car-
riage drivers.39
While some contemporary European observers praised the quality
of Ottoman gun barrels, others had less positive view, and Europeanists
usually favor the latter opinion, citing, for instance, that the Venetians
melted down and recast the captured Ottoman cannons after Lepanto
(1571), because they found the metal of such poor quality. 40 However,
other explanations are also possible: The great variety of the Ottoman
pieces, not all of which were compatible with the Venetian pieces in
terms of caliber, would have made supplying shots for these captured
cannon a nightmare. This was a major concern for all belligerents, and
at the siege of Candia in 16671669 the Ottomans, too, cast new can-
36
Ibid., pp. 7487.
37
Cellzade, Tabat l-Memlik, fol. 139a. It is possible that Celalzade meant merd-
efgen, meaning over-thrower of men, mighty in battle, powerful. See James W. Redhouse,
A Turkish and English Lexicon (Constantinople: A. H. Boyajian, 1890; repr. Istanbul: ar
Yaynlar, 1978), p. 159.
38
V. J. Parry Warfare in P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton, and Bernard Lewis, eds., The
Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 2B: Islamic Society and Civilization (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1970), p. 841.
39
Uzunarl, Kapukulu Ocaklar, 2:50.
40
Parker, The Military Revolution, p. 128.
nons in situ with calibers that enabled them to reuse the cannon balls
that the Venetians fired at them from the fortress. Chemical analysis
of extant Ottoman cannon barrels and production data suggest that
Ottoman founders cast bronze cannons whose alloy contained 8.6
11.3 percent tin and 89.591.4 percent copper, an alloy very similar to
that suggested by the famous Italian metallurgist Vanoccio Biringuccio
(14801539) in his posthumously published De la pirotechnia (1540)
and used by European founders in the sixteenth century.41
Janissary Guns
Contemporary observers and later historians noted that janissary mus-
kets were much heavier and thus less practical than European guns.
However, we should remember that the janissaries were using two types
of guns: lighter and shorter muskets used for volleys in battles, and
heavier and longer siege guns. The guns used in the Iraq campaign in
1553, for instance, fired lead projectiles of 15 grams (5 dirhem) and
were 88 centimeters (4 kar) and 110 centimeters (5 kar) long. The
2,498 guns that were manufactured in the imperial workshops and sent
to the armory in 1555 were registered as being 88 centimeters long and
firing projectiles of 12 grams (4 dirhem).42 Such lighter guns remained
in commission in the latter part of the sixteenth century, too, for archi-
val sources mention janissary guns firing lead projectiles of 12 and 15
grams, which would correspond to calibers of 13 and 14 millimeters,
respectively. Extant janissary guns in Turkish museums are 115140
centimeters long, weigh 34.5 kilograms, and have bore diameters of
11, 13, 14, or 16 millimeters. These janissary guns are similar to the
typical European matchlocks of the sixteenth century, which were
about 120150 centimeters long, weighed 2.54.5 kilograms, and had
calibers of 1418 millimeters. In siege warfare, however, the janissar-
ies used their longer (130160 centimeters) and heavier trench guns
(metris tfei), with bore diameters of 2029 millimeters (and occa-
sionally of 35 or 45 millimeters).43
Most janissary guns were matchlocks (fitilli tfek) or had mique-
let locks. The Ottomans are credited with perfecting the serpentine
mechanism, but they also imported lock mechanisms from Europe in
41
goston, Guns, p. 189.
42
Emecen, Sava, p. 41, although it is not clear if the length refers to that of the barrel
or the weapon.
43
goston, Guns, pp. 8990.
the thousands and mounted those on barrels manufactured locally.

From the late sixteenth century onward, Ottoman troops also started
to use flintlock muskets (akmakl tfek), but matchlocks remained
the favored weapon. However, one should also remember that with
the proliferation of firearms in the empire in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries (due to illicit manufacturing and trade), the weapons
used by temporarily hired musket-bearing infantry mercenaries (sekban,
tfenk-endaz, etc.) varied greatly and reflected regional manufacturing
traditions, different styles, and varying quality from the Balkans to the
Maghreb.44
European observers and commanders of the Habsburg armies fight-
ing the Ottomans in Hungary considered Ottoman musket barrels to
be made of good-quality metal and maintained that their range and
force were superior to those made in Europe. Historians of technology
ascribed the strength and reliability of Ottoman musket barrels to the
techniques by which flat sheets of steel were coiled into a spiral. Such
Damascus-twist barrels manufactured in the Ottoman Empire were
highly sought after in Europe and were mounted and remounted on
European firearms from the sixteenth century on.45 Ottoman muskets
were also held in high esteem in Safavid Persia, Mughal India, and
Ming China, where a treatise in the late 1590s considered Ottoman
handguns better than Portuguese muskets. Ottoman muskets, which
reached China through Central Asia, weighed 4.184.78 kilograms
(and occasionally 3.58 kilograms) and were 187218 centimeters
in length. The barrel itself was only 140143 centimeters long and
weighed 2.392.98 kilograms. The bigger guns fired bullets of about 18
grams, while the smaller ones used projectiles of 12 grams. The touch-
hole was farther from the rear sight, and thus when the musketeer fired
his weapon the smoke did not interfere with aiming.46
There is an interesting feature of these Ottoman (Rumi) guns: In
the butt of the weapon there was a steel knife, which could be used if
44
Elgood, Firearms; Elgood, The Arms of Greece and Her Balkan Neighbors in the Otto-
man Period (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009,) for locally manufactured firearms.
45
Elgood, Firearms, p. 38; Elgood, The Arms of Greece, pp. 78, 8081.
46
Kazuaki Sawai, Japon Teknolojisine Kar XVI. Yzyl Dou Asyada Osmanl Tfe
inin Yeri, in Feridun M Emecen, ed., Eskiadan Modern aa Ordular: Oluum, Tekilt
ve lev (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2008), pp. 341354. See also Giray Fidan, Kanuni Devrinde
inde Osmanl Tfei ve Osmanllar (Istanbul: Yeditepe, 2011). The writer of the treatise,
Chao Shizhen, based his observation on the testimony and muskets of a Central Asian
military expert, who had come to Ming China in the 1550s. See also Chase, Firearms, p. 2,
and Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution, p. 77, for the praise of Ottoman muskets in a 1644
Chinese treatise.
the enemy attacked the gunner after he fired his gun and thus was vul-
nerable. While the Ottomans were late in introducing the bayonet en
masse,47 the above information indicates that the vulnerability of the
gunner after he fired his weapon, mainly to swift cavalry charges, was a
concern among the Ottomans, and that they experimented with pos-
sible countermeasures, including combination weapons similar to the
one described in the Chinese treatise.
Gunpowder
The Ottomans manufactured gunpowder in the main gunpowder
works in Istanbul, as well as in the empires provincial centers, includ-
ing Cairo, Baghdad, Aleppo, and Yemen in the Arab provinces; Buda,
Esztergom, Pcs, Temesvr, Belgrade, Salonica, and Gallipoli in the
European provinces; and Izmir, Bor, Erzurum, Diyarbakr, and Van in
Asia Minor. Provincial powder works usually were able to meet local
demands and also helped to ease the logistical burden and costs asso-
ciated with transporting hundreds of tons of powder to the theaters
of war during major campaigns. Moreover, the decentralized Ottoman
system of powder production was flexible enough to respond to the
exigencies of wars. At time of increased demand the Ottomans reac-
tivated previously disused powder mills or set up new ones closer to
the theaters of war. The establishment of the powder works in Eriboz
(Negroponte), Hanya (Chania), and Salonica during the Cretan wars
(16451669) are examples of Ottoman adaptability, as is the ability
of the Salonica powder works to double its production in 17161718,
in a time of renewed wars against the Habsburgs in Hungary and the
Venetians in the Morea. All together, Ottoman powder works met the
demands of the army, the navy, and garrisons well into the eighteenth
century, producing an estimated 6501,000 metric tons annually from
the late sixteenth century through the late seventeenth. However, in
the 1770s diminishing production forced Istanbul to import substantial
qualities of powder from Europe. At the end of the eighteenth century
the new Azadl gunpowder works in Istanbul, modernized with French
assistance, were again able to manufacture sufficient quantities of gun-
powderand of a much better quality.48
47
The Habsburgs used bayonets against the Ottomans at the siege of Buda in 1686.
Later Baron de Toth tried in vain to introduce the weapon in the Ottoman armies in the
1770s. The Ottomans used bayonets en masse only from early nineteenth century on.
48
goston, Guns, pp. 128163.
Quality, Quantity, and Logistics

All this said, one has to be cautious not to overstate the importance
of weapons technology. In an age when standardization of calibers and
quality was only attempted but never achieved, and when there were
no major technological breakthroughs in weapons design and manu-
facturing, the quality of weapons remained of secondary importance
relative to that of their quantity. Firepower and military superiority
were achieved through the sheer numbers of weapons and troops, and
not so much by their quality. In battles and sieges the party that out-
numbered its opponent in terms of deployed weaponry and troops had
a good chance of winning the engagement, provided that all other fac-
tors were equal.
In this regard, the Ottomans were superior to their opponents until
about the end of the seventeenth century. The availability of local can-
non foundries, powder works, and major weapons depots in the Balkans
and Hungary, eastern Anatolia, and Iraq greatly facilitated the deploy-
ment of military hardware against both the Austrian Habsburgs and
the Safavids. The Ottomans were also aided by the availability of water
transport. Heavy artillery and gunpowder was shipped from Istanbul
via the Black Sea to Varna, whence it was loaded on carts, transported
to Belgrade, and transferred onto hundreds of ships of the Ottoman
Danube flotilla, which then transported the weapons and powder to
the Hungarian theater of war. In their campaigns against the Safavids,
military hardware traveled to Trabzon on the Black Sea, where it was
loaded onto camels and other draft animals, and transported to the
theater of war. When possible, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the
Ottoman river flotillas on these waterwaysincluding hundreds of
ships well armed with smaller guns and well manned with thousands
of troopswere also mobilized for transport and amphibious warfare.
Due to their production and transportation capabilities, the Ottomans
managed to accumulate large quantities of weapons and ammunition
in their fortressesindeed, often more than was needed or could be
used.49 It was not until the very end of the seventeenth century that
49
Before the unsuccessful Habsburg siege of Buda in 1684, the Ottomans amassed 540
metric tons of powder in the fortress, and by February 1686 had replenished the diminished
stocks with some 400 metric tons of new shipment. See goston, Guns, p. 154. After the
Habsburg reconquest of Buda in 1686, the Habsburgs found 460 cannons in the fortress, of
which 213 pieces lay unused in the depots. See Endre Veress, Grf Marsigli Alajos olasz
hadi mrnk jelentsei s trkpei Budavr 16841686-i ostromrl, visszafoglalsrl s
helyrajzrl, Budapest Rgsgei IX (1906).
the Austrian Habsburgs and their allies were capable of matching their
Ottoman enemies in terms of numbers of deployed troops and weapons.
War-Winning Weapons?
Military historians usually cite the Ottoman conquest of Byzantine
Constantinople (1453) and Ottoman battlefield victories at aldran
(1514) against the Safavids, Marj Dabiq (1516) and Raydiniyya (1517)
against the Mamluks, and Mohcs (1526) against the Hungarians, as
examples for the decisiveness of firearms. These Ottoman victories fun-
damentally altered the geopolitics in Europe and southwest Asia. They
signaled the end of the thousand-year-old Byzantine Empire (1453),
of the Mamluk sultanate in Syria and Egypt (1516 and 1517), and of
the medieval Hungarian kingdom (1526). They also extended Otto-
man rule over most of eastern Asia Minor (1514), Greater Syria, and
Egypt. The battles of Mohcs and aldran inaugurated a long struggle
between the Ottomans and their Habsburg and Safavid rivals, which
determined the history of both Europe and western Asia for the next
two hundred years. But were these Ottoman victories due largely to
firearms? The reexamination of the above engagements suggests a more
complex picture.50
While cutting-edge military technology, which enabled the Otto-
mans to deploy the largest bombards known of the day, played an
important role in breaching Constantinoples walls in 1453, it was but
one element in the Ottoman success. Other important factors included
careful planning, resourceful leadership (portaging some seventy
smaller ships overland from the Bosporus into the Golden Horn and
the surprise attack on the weakest section of the defense), prowess in
siege warfare (mining, triangle firing technique, and the invention
and use of mortars), numerical superiority (seventy thousand Ottomans
versus ten thousand defenders), better logistics (abundant supplies in
weaponry and food), and the lack of Byzantine relief forces. Firepower,
even in combination with numerical and logistical superiority, was still
insufficient in the mid fifteenth century if a relatively strong relief army
with superior leadership arrived in time, as Mehmed IIs failed siege of
Belgrade in 1456 demonstrated.
At aldran in 1514, the fifty thousand to sixty thousand Otto-
50
This section draws on my War Winning Weapons? On the Decisiveness of Otto-
man Firearms from the Siege of Constantinople (1453) to the Battle of Mohcs (1526), in
Journal of Turkish Studies vol. 39 (2013): 129143.
mans might have outnumbered the Safavids two to one. While Safa-
vid sources and earlier historiography claimed that Sultan Selim I
employed twelve thousand to twenty thousand janissary arquebusiers,
it is more likely that only about one third of the 10,065 janissaries, who
were listed in the pay sheets, carried firearms. Similarly, the 293 artil-
lery gunners and 334 gun carriage drivers present in the battle could
have served about 100150 field pieces, and not 300500 cannons, as
suggested in earlier works. However, even this more modest firepower
proved crucial against the Safavids, who had no arquebusiers and can-
nons in the battle. Moreover, the Ottoman wagon laager, described by
Safavid sources as an impenetrable strong fortress or wall, effectively
protected the janissaries against Safavid cavalry charges. In addition
to Ottoman numerical and firepower superiority, Shah Ismails tactical
errors (his enabling the Ottomans to set up their wagon laager and his
frontal attack against the fortified Ottoman camp) were also important
factors that led to Safavid disaster.
Unlike the Safavids, the Mamluks deployed dozens of field guns
and had trained arquebusiers at Marj Dabiq, but could not match Otto-
man firepower and numbers of troops. Like the Safavids, the Mamluks
too were unable to penetrate the Ottoman wagon laager. But there
were other factors that decided the battle in the Ottomans favor. Of
these, the most important were the Mamluk Sultan al-Ghawris death
halfway through the battle, the looting of the Mamluk soldiers and
the disorder it caused, and the treachery of one of the Mamluk gener-
als who changed sides with his troops. At Raydaniyya, the Mamluks
and Ottomans were more comparable in terms of troop numbers and
firepower. The Mamluk sultan Tumanbay also learned the lessons of
Marj Dabiq and decided to use entrenched positions, firearms, and
wagon laager. However, the Ottomans learned about Tumanbays plans
through their spies and captured Mamluk soldiers and altered their tac-
tics accordingly. Before they reached the range of fire of the Mamluk
cannons, the Ottomans turned to the side and outflanked the enemys
gun emplacement.
Contrary to received wisdom, Ottoman victory at Mohcs was
not due to the Ottoman cannons, which supposedly slaughtered the
obsolete Hungarian heavy cavalry. Recently discovered sources show a
mixed Hungarian army consisting of sixteen thousand horsemen and
ten thousand footmen, armed with handguns, pikes, and large shields,
and supported by eighty-five cannons, six hundred smaller hook guns,
and five thousand wagons that could be used as Wagenburg. However,
having about sixty thousand professional troopsincluding some nine
thousand janissaries and forty-five thousand provincial timariot cav-
alrythe Ottomans greatly outnumbered the Hungarians. While the

Ottomans had twice as many field guns as the Hungarians, infantry
firepower was more comparable, with four thousand handguns used by
the janissaries. In the end, it was the much larger Ottoman cavalry and
reserves, and the discipline and volleys of the janissaries protected by
chained cannons, that decided the battle. It seems that the Ottoman
cannons played a minor role, for their shots landed beyond the attack-
ing Hungarians, due to uneven terrain and the resulting elevation of
the gun barrels.
In short, firearms were useful in combination with the Ottoman
tabur and cavalry on the wings, both of which provided protection to
the infantry janissaries. The Safavid, Mamluk, and Hungarian cavalry
were unable to penetrate the tabur, and were decimated by janissary
volleys. Except for Raydaniyya, the Ottomans greatly outnumbered
their enemies in terms of deployed troops and firearms. This, in turn,
reflected the strength of the Ottoman administrative-fiscal and logisti-
cal systems, which maintained and supplied one of the largest profes-
sional armies in Europe and southwestern Asia in the fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries. The janissary core comprised less than 15
percent of the mobilized Ottoman army, yet, at critical moments, their
discipline and endurance proved crucial.
Firearms and the Growth of Ottoman

Military Manpower
A spectacular increase in military manpower in most European

armies is one of the hallmarks of the Military Revolution. It has been
explained alternatively by the rise of the new monarchies and their
bureaucracies, by inter-state rivalry, and by the emergence of the artil-
lery fortress. 51 The Ottoman experience supports Parkers suggestion
in several respects, but at the same time it demonstrates that Ottoman
military expansion was a more complicated matter, explainable by both
military and nonmilitary factors.
Until recently most Ottomanists accepted Halil nalcks sugges-
tion that the increase in the janissary corps and the hiring of peas-
ant militias (sekban, levend) armed with firearms was attributable to
the Ottomans need to match Habsburg firepower in the Long War
51
Geoffrey Parker, In Defense of The Military Revolution, in Rogers, ed., The Military
Revolution Debate, p. 344.
of 15931606, fought in Hungary.52 One reason for this thesis was the
scarcity of data on the number of janissaries. Sources available in the
1970s and 1980s showed that the number of janissaries rose sharply
from 12,798 in 1567 to 37,627 in 1609, which was then explained by
the Long War. At the same time, Hungarian historians demonstrated
that the imperial forces fighting against the Ottomans in the war of
15931606 were in the forefront of the Military Revolution in terms
of the high proportion of gun-carrying infantry relative to pikemen.53
This corroborated the narrative sources view, cited by nalck, that the
Habsburgs attained firepower and tactical superiority over the Otto-
mans, who then responded to the challenge by increasing the number
of janissary gunners and by recruiting gun-carrying peasant militias in
order to counter Habsburg firepower.
In light of new research, however, both the timing of the growth
of the janissary corps and its underlying reasons now seem more com-
plicated. I propose the following. First, this growth was part of a more
general military expansion and transformation that affected the entire
Ottoman military. Second, the beginnings of military expansion can be
located in Sultan Sleymans reign, and the trend was further acceler-
ated from the late 1570s onthat is, the process predated the Long
War in Hungary, although that war (along with the Safavid wars and
the Celali revolts) did play an important role in it. And third, Ottoman
military expansion and transformation must be explained by a more
complex socioeconomic approach, with an emphasis on both increased
demand for and supply of military manpower, rather than the challenge
of the European Military Revolution alone, which is indeed a reduc-
tionist reasoning bordering on technological determinism.
The Beginning of Army Growth

Data summarized in Table 7 show that the first spike in the number of
the standing kapukulu troops occurred under Sleymans reign. While
between 1520 and 1530 the household salaried troops averaged less
than 16,000 men (19,000 men with janissary novices or acemi olan),
by 1567 their number rose to 26,500 men (34,000 men with janissary
novices). The most spectacular expansion occurred not among the
janissaries but in the palace cavalry, whose number more than doubled
52
Halil nalck, Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600
1700, Archivum Ottomanicum 6 (1980): 283337.
53
Kelenik, The Military Revolution in Hungary.
Table 7. Paper strength of the salaried troops, 14841711
Date Janissary Artillery Palace Cavalry Total
1484 7,841 4,306 12,147

1512 8,164 1,078 3,896 13,138
1514 10,065 1,182 6,202 17,449
1520/Selim 7,780 1,217 5,667 14.664
1520/Sleyman 8,361 1,226 6,380 15,967
1521 8,349 1,608 6,192 16,149
15221523 7,010 1,715 6,022 14,747
1523 7,164 1,659 6,118 14,941
15231524 8,641 1,705 5,882 16,228
15241525 9,390 1,676 5,997 17,063
15271528 7,886 2,162 5,088 15,136
1530 8,407 2,383 4,906 15,696
1547 12,131
15671568 12,798 2,671 11,044 26,513
1569 11,535
1574 13,599 2,124 5,957 21,680
1582 16,905 3,736 8,346 28,987
1592 23,323
1597 35,000 6,527 17,000 58,527
1609 37,627 7,966 20,896 66,489
16521653 55,151 7,246 20,479 82,876
1654 51,047 6,905 19,844 77,796
16611662 54,222 6,497 15,248 75,967
16661667 47,233 6,193 13,267 66,693
16691670 53,849 8,014 14,070 75,933
16871688 62,826 17,995 19,800 100,621
16911692 35,839 8,309 10,807 54,955
16941695 78,798 21,824 13,395 114,017
16961697 69,620 14,726 15,212 99,563
1699 67,729 15,470 13,447 96,646
1700 50,102 11,934 12,992 75,028
17011702 39,925 10,893 12,999 63,817
17021703 40,139 10,010 12,976 63,125
17041705 52,642 11,851 17,133 81,626
17091710 16,609 3,265 14,101 33,975
17101711 43,562 8,775 15,625 67,962
Sources: 14841568, 1582, and 1592: goston, Strateji, pp. 177179, 203. 1547: mer Ltfi
Barkan, H. 954955 (15471548) Mali Ylna ait bir Osmanl Btesi, in Barkan, Osmanl
Devletinin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Tarihi: Tetkikler-Makaleler, ed. by Hseyin zdeer, 2 vols. (Istan-
bul: stanbul niversitesi ktisat Fakltesi, 2000), 2: 931. 1569: BOA, KK nr. 1767, p. 4, also
cited in Nejat Gyn, Tarih Balkl Muhasebe Defterleri, Osmanl Aratrmalar 10 (1990):
27. 1574, 1597, and 1609: Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, p. 45. All other data are from Mehmet
Gen and Erol zvar, Osmanl Maliyesi Kurumlar ve Bteler, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Osmanl Bankas
Ariv ve Aratrma Merkezi, 2006), 1:237, with minor corrections.
Note: The artillery in 1597 is unknown; I used the figure for 1598 from goston, Guns, p. 30.
between 1530 and 1567. Data regarding the janissaries and janissary
novices demonstrate that the spike started before 1547: the number of
janissaries rose from 8,407 in 1530 to 12,131 in 1547, while that of the
novices rose from 3,640 to 5,840. The sharp increase in the number
of janissary novices from a median 3,500 men in the 1520s to 7,745
men in 1567 and again to 9,396 men in 1582 suggests that the Istan-
bul government filled in the vacancies in the salaried corps principally
with janissary novices, as opposed to the post-1580 period, when sons
of janissaries and outsiders (ecnebi), that is, commoners from the tax-
paying subjects, were the main source of recruitment.
The increased demand for military manpower under Sleyman
might be explained in part by the need to garrison newly conquered
frontier provincesBaghdad (1534), Erzurum (1535), Buda (1541),
Basra (1546), and Temevar (1552)and to besiege artillery fortifica-
tions. In general, military manpower in newly conquered castles was
largely met by local soldiers (neferat-i yerlyan), often redeployed from
the empires neighboring interior provinces and paid from local pro-
vincial treasuries. However, central kapukulu troops, especially janis-
saries, were also sent to the key fortresses in increasing numbers. By
1547 there were 4,648 janissaries on garrison duty, who constituted
38 percent of the 12,131 janissaries paid from the imperial treasury.54
Amphibious operations and longer sieges of modernized trace italienne
fortifications in the Mediterranean islands of Malta (1565) and Cyprus
(15701571) also added to the demand on military manpower. The
casualty rates of these sieges and of the battle of Lepanto in 1571 were
significantly higher than those suffered in similar amphibious opera-
tions in the early sixteenth century.
Ottoman military expansion was also triggered by domestic devel-
opments unrelated to foreign wars. During the dynastic struggles of the
Ottoman princes under Bayezid II and Sleyman I, the prince, who
was unable to secure the support of the reigning sultan and the central
standing troops, recruited thousands of landless peasants, townsfolk,
nomads, and vagrant irregular soldiers (levend). Referred to as daily
wagers (yeviml) after their salary, these militiamen were ordinary
taxpaying subjects (reaya). They volunteered for military service in
order to eventually join the ranks of the sultans salaried troops, and
thereby enter the privileged, tax-exempt askeri (military) class. The
process reached its peak under Sleyman, when Prince Bayezid, whom
Sultan Sleyman declared a rebel, reportedly recruited ten thousand
54
Barkan, H. 954955 (15471548) Mali Ylna ait bir Osmanl Btesi, p. 933.
yeviml soldiers, pledging to enlist them into the janissary corps. With
the support of the sultan, Prince Selim also hired thousands of ordi-
nary taxpayers with daily salaries. While about eight thousand soldiers
perished in the battle of Konya between the competing armies, and
the government persecuted Bayezids men in the purges following the
rebel princes execution (1562), many of his levend soldiers escaped.
Forming bands of fifty to sixty men, they roamed the countryside as
bandits.55 Since scores of timariot cavalrymen also sided with the
rebel prince, the government could not trust them to perform their
traditional function of maintaining law and order in the Anatolian
countryside. To reestablish public order, Istanbul sent janissaries to
towns and villages in increasing numbers. Settled in the countryside
as guardians (yasak), these janissaries supplemented their salaries
by collecting fees for transgressiona function and privilege tradition-
ally belonging to the timariot provincial cavalryand by establishing
businesses in towns and acquiring farmlands in villages. As public order
deteriorated further during the Celali rebellions at the end of the six-
teenth century, more and more Anatolian cities and towns requested
janissaries from the government. The proliferation of janissaries and
other kapukulu troops in the provinces created opportunities for the
ordinary taxpayers and levends to disguise themselves as janissaries and
janissary novices. How many of these pseudo-janissaries managed to
add their names to the official pay lists is unknown, but the practice
was the first sign of the massive civilianization of the janissary corps,
and it also further worsened the already existing lawlessness and disor-
der in the countryside.56
The Expansion of the Salaried Troops from the Late 1570s

The next, and more spectacular, phase of expansion of the salaried
troops occurred from the late 1570s onward. The number rose from less
than twenty-two thousand in 1574 to twenty-nine thousand in 1582,
and to more than fifty-eight thousand in 1597. The number of janis-
saries doubled between 1569 and 1592 (from 11,535 men to 23,359
55
erafettin Turan, Kanuni Sleyman Dnemi Taht Kavgalar (Ankara: Bilgi Yaynevi,
1997), pp. 8184, 9395, 103104, 145149. See also Mustafa Akda, Trk Halknn Dirlik
ve Dzenlik Kavgas: Celal Isyanlar (Istanbul: Cem Yayinevi, 1995), pp. 108109.
56
Turan, Taht Kavgalar, pp. 150152; Mustafa Akda, Yenieri Ocak Nizaminin
Bozoluu, Ankara niversitesi Dil-Tarih Corafya Fakltesi Dergisi 5, no. 3 (1947): 291309;
nalck, Military and Fiscal Transformation, p. 286.
men)that is, immediately before the Hungarian war of 15931606.

It reached about thirty-five thousand by 1597, and stabilized at about
thirty-seven thousand in 1609, after the war. These figures reflect
the general demand for, and availability of, military manpower dur-
ing Istanbuls Thirty Years War (15781611), when Ottoman troops
fought, often simultaneously, against the Safavids in the east (1578
1590, 16031611), the Habsburgs in the north (15931606), and the
Celali rebels in eastern Anatolia and Syria (ca. 15951610). Other
spikes in the numbers of the standing salaried army coincided with
the wars against Venice over Crete (16451669) and against the Holy
League (16841699).
Besieging Hungarian castles at the end of the sixteenth century
was a more difficult business than under Sleyman. Beginning in the
1570s, the Habsburgs had modernized the countrys key castles, such
as Szigetvr, Kanizsa, Gyr, Komrom, jvr (modern Nov Zmky in
Slovakia), Eger, and Temesvr (modern Timioara in Romania), with
the help of Italian military engineers. In the case of the strategically
most important castles, such as Gyr, Komrom, and jvr, not just the
castle but also the entire town was rebuilt and transformed into a forti-
fied town (Festungstadt).57 To garrison these fortresses, the Habsburgs
recruited experienced German, Italian, and Spanish mercenaries by
the thousands, and by 1576 stationed some twenty-three thousand
troops in about 120 castles in Hungary. While prior to the Long War of
15931606 the modernization of the Hungarian castles was only par-
tially completed due to lack of financial resources, these modern for-
tresses with garrisons numbering several thousands of German, Italian,
and Spanish mercenaries required substantially more Ottoman troops,
firepower, and time to invest and conquer.58
Similarly, after their conquest, the Ottomans had to leave behind
large garrisons in these fortresses, including thousands of kapukulu
janissaries. Whereas in 1547 the Ottomans stationed 2,282 janissaries
in their key fortresses in Hungary, by 15961597 their number rose
to 7,581, which alone amounted to 22 percent of the total number of
57
Gbor goston, Habsburgs and Ottomans: Defense, Military Change and Shifts in
Power, Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 22, no. 1 (1998): 126141; Gyrgy Domonkos,
Ottavio Baldigara: Egy itliai vrfundl mester Magyarorszgon (Budapest: Balassi Kiad,
2000).
58
Gza Plffy, The Origins and Development of the Border Defence System against
the Ottoman Empire in Hungary, in Dvid and Fodor, eds., Ottomans, Hungarians and
Habsburgs, 49.
janissaries in 1597.59 Although these were war years and two of the
castles were recently conquered and thus needed larger garrisons, the
figures reflected general trends in the empire. While the ratio of janis-
saries on garrison duty to their total number changed little from 1547,
in absolute numbers the increase was noticeable. In contrast to 1547,
when fewer than five thousand janissaries served in the empires for-
tresses, in the seventeenth century between fourteen thousand and
thirty-six thousand janissaries were on garrison duty.60
Local circumstances and the exigencies of warfare also influenced
the size of the janissary contingents on garrison duty. For instance,
the number of janissaries serving in the empires garrisons increased
from 14,379 men in the spring of 1670 to 21,728 in the summer of the
same year.61 Most of the increase is attributable to the 5,925 janissaries
deployed in the recently conquered Kandiye (Candia).62 Typically, as
the Ottomans consolidated their rule and governors of newly estab-
lished provinces managed to man their fortresses with local troops,
Istanbul was able to considerably reduce the size of janissary garrisons.63
From the late sixteenth century on, the Ottomans faced large impe-
rial field armies in Hungary that cannot be compared to the medi-
eval Hungarian troops. Whereas the army that Sleyman defeated
at Mohcs numbered about twenty-six thousand men, in 1595 the
Habsburg emperor deployed some eighty thousand men in his two
expeditionary armies, which operated in Hungary. According to one
record, the main army that recaptured Esztergom from the Ottomans
in 1595 numbered 57,945 men. While actually deployed troops were
smaller than these paper numbers, the imperial field armies fighting the
Ottomans in Hungary still constituted a formidable military force.64
59
There served 2,676 janissaries in Buda, 370 in Yank, 1,414 in Temevar, and 3,121
in the recently conquered Eri. See Caroline Finkel, The Administration of Warfare: The
Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 15931606 (Wien: VWG, 1988), p. 77. The 22
percent represented a slight increase from 19 percent in 1547.
60
Based on the account books of the imperial treasury, published by . L. Barkan,
M.Gen, and E. zvar. The majority of the garrison forces remained local troops (neferat-i
yerlyan).
61
Barkan, 2:750, 800.
62
BOA, MAD 1951, p. 144.
63
Gbor goston, Defending and Administering the Frontier: The Case of Ottoman
Hungary, in Christine Woodhead, ed., The Ottoman World (Abingdon, Oxon, U.K.: Rout-
ledge, 2012), pp. 220236, at p. 229, for examples.
64
Zoltn Pter Bagi, A csszri-kirlyi mezei hadsereg a tizent ves hborban: had
szervezet, rdekrvnyests, reformksrletek (Budapest: Histriaantik Knyvkiad, 2011),
pp. 4749, 371374.
More important, the musketeers and gunners (Schtzen) usually out-

numbered the pikemen (Spiesser) two to one, and as a result the impe-
rial forces enjoyed firepower and tactical superiority over the Otto-
mans, a fact that contemporaries on both sides noted.65
In general, the multiseason wars of the late sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries resulted in much higher rates of casualty and desertion
than the wars of Sleyman. Combined, these multifront, year-round
wars created continuous demand for new recruits, both infantry and
cavalry, that could not be met by traditional recruiting techniques and
required new methods of mobilization, opening the doors for those tax-
paying reaya who wanted to become askeri. This trend is reflected in
the changes in the recruitments of janissaries and in the temporary
recruitment of peasant militias. Whereas the number of janissary nov-
ices almost tripled between 1530 and 1582, there is no similar sharp
increase in their number after 1582: It stayed at about nine thousand to
ten thousand until the early seventeenth century, and even dropped to
about 4,100 by 16611662. More important, the acemi corps, too, went
through its own metamorphosis: Alongside janissary novices recruited
through the waning child levy (devirme), increasingly more novices
were handpicked recruits in the personal service of the commander of
the janissary corps (aa ra) and sons of the salaried cavalry (ferzend-i
sipahi).66 A recent comparison of devirme recruitment registers of the
1490s and 1603 demonstrated that the average age of recruited boys
had risen from 13.5 to 16.6, indicating that in the early seventeenth
century the government preferred older boys, who could immediately
be turned into soldiers. This reflected the increased need for military
manpower, but also the changed nature of warfare, for it took only a
couple of months to train musketeers, whereas previously it took years
to train a skilled janissary archer.67
65
Kelenik, The Military Revolution in Hungary; Halil nalck, The Socio-Political
Effects of the Diffusion of Fire-arms in the Middle East, in V. J. Parry and M. E. Yapp, eds.,
War, Technology and Society in the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp.
195217; Colin Imber, Ibrahim Peevi on War: A Note on the European Military Revolu-
tion, in Colin Imber, Keiko Kiyotaki, and Rhoads Murphey, eds., Frontiers of Ottoman Stud-
ies: State, Province, and the West, 2 vols. (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 2:722.
66
Rhoads Murphey, ed., Aziz Efendis Book of Sultanic Laws and Regulations: An Agenda
for Reform by a Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Statesman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Office of the University Publisher, 1985), p. 55; Glay Ylmaz, The Economic and
Social Roles of Janissaries in a 17th Century Ottoman City: The Case of Istanbul, PhD
diss., McGill University, Montreal, 2011, p. 79.
67
Ylmaz, The Economic and Social Roles of Janissaries, pp. 7577.
The Metamorphosis of the Janissaries

We saw that the civilianization of the janissaries in greater numbers
started under Sleyman, partly as a consequence of the succession strug-
gle between Princes Bayezid and Selim. Under Murad III (15741595),
the government tried in vain to recall the yasak janissaries from the
countryside. The failure also meant that the timariot cavalrymen lost
not just their role of policing the countryside and maintaining public
order, but also the transgression fees that they had collected from com-
moners found guilty of criminal acts. These sums now enriched the
janissaries, who desperately needed the extra revenue, as the real value
of their salaries had substantially declined, due to inflation and the
repeated devaluation of the silver ake. In fact, the government long
realized the problem, and in addition to their regular salaries provided
the janissaries with an annual clothing allowance, plus set up a special
fund to subsidize the janissaries purchase of staple commodities such
as bread and meat.68 Such subsidies, along with revenues from trans-
gression fees, artisanal activities, and trade, as well as the availability
of credit from the corps fund, were important incentives for common-
ers aspiring to enter the corps.69 Indeed, janissary life in the provinces
offered plenty of opportunities for amassing and investing substantial
sums, as can be seen from the examples of two janissaries (one officer
and a rank-and-file), who respectively had loaned sixteen thousand
and thirty thousand ake to a Ragusan trading company operating in
Ottoman Buda sometime before the companys liquidation in 1591.
Considering that these investments constituted sums that were several
times (in the case of the rank-and-file janissary, thirteen to seventeen
times) larger than their regular annual salary, we may assume that these
janissaries had access to substantial extra revenues.70 In the seventeenth
century, a good portion of the janissaries became craftsmen, shop own-
ers, merchants, and tax farmers, while ordinary tradesmen, merchants,
and tax farmers also bought their way into the corps using opportuni-
ties created by the exigencies of wartime economies.71 Therefore, it is
68
Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, p. 85.
69
Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the
Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 25, for the impor-
tance of credit.
70
goston, Defending and Administering the Frontier, p. 235. See also Tezcan, The
Second Ottoman Empire, pp. 184190, for janissaries as financial entrepreneurs.
71
Virginia H. Aksan, Whatever Happened to the Janissaries? Mobilization for the
17681774 Russo-Ottoman War, in Aksan, Ottomans and Europeans: Contacts and Conflicts
hardly surprising that only a portion of the janissaries recorded on the

pay sheets participated in campaigns: in 1597 about 26 percent, and in
the second half of the seventeenth century between 25 and 33 percent
of the total. By the early eighteenth century, in the Prut campaign
against Peter the Great in 1711 and in the wars of 17361739 against
Austria and Russia, the majority of mobilized janissaries had nothing in
common with the once-elite corps: between 70 and 80 percent of them
were fresh recruits, hired before and during each campaign from among
the commoners.72
In addition to the corps of the salaried army, state-financed militia-
men (miri levend) accounted for an increasingly larger share of new
recruits.73 In the 17361739 wars, for instance, the thirteen thousand
to sixteen thousand miri levend troops constituted between 10 and 15
percent of the deployed army. However, if one adds all the state-funded
militiamen whom the government deployed in other fronts (Vidin,
Bosnia, Bender), the number of these troops reaches more than forty
thousand men in 1738, and twenty-eight thousand men in 1739.74
The Decline of the Prebendal Cavalry and the Rise

of the Governors Household Armies
The military demands and sociopolitical changes that shaped the evo-
lution of the janissaries also profoundly affected the prebendal sipahi
cavalry. As with the janissaries, the changes started under the reign
of Sleyman, when the timariot cavalrys involvement in the succes-
sion struggles led to the governments distrust of these forces. Not only
(Istanbul: Isis Press, 2004), pp. 223238; Cemal Kafadar, Janissaries and Other Riffraff of
Ottoman Istanbul: Rebels without a Cause? in Baki Tezcan and Karl K. Barbir, eds., Identity
and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World: A Volume of Essays in Honor of Norman Itzkowitz
(Madison: Center for Turkish Studies at the University of Wisconsin, 2007), pp. 113134;
Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire, pp. 175190.
72
Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, p. 77. While 9,202 janissaries were regis-
tered in the spring of 1597 as being on campaign, chronicler evidence put the size of the
janissary regiments that left the capital at fifteen thousand. Gbor goston, Empires and
Warfare in East-Central Europe, 15501750: The Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry and Military
Transformation, in Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim, eds., European Warfare, 13501750
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 110134, at pp. 128129.
73
On the levends the standard work remains Mustafa Cezar, Osmanl Tarihinde Lev-
endler (Istanbul: elikcilt Matbaasi, 1965); see also Virginia Aksan, Ottoman Military
Recruitment Strategies in the late Eighteenth Century, in Aksan, Ottomans and Europeans,
pp. 191207.
74
BOA, Ba Muhasebe Kalemi Defterleri (DBM) no. 2286, pp. 23; DBM no. 2390,
pp. 23.
did they gradually lose the privilege of maintaining public security

(and the associated revenues) to the yasak janissaries, but many of
their fiefs were also given to janissary companies, especially in fron-
tier regions. Other prebends were turned into royal estates in order to
pay the expanding standing army and to hire peasant mercenaries (miri
levend). The policy also aimed at easing the burden on the treasury,
which faced recurring deficits from the early 1590s onward.
Istanbul also realized the prebend holders diminishing capabilities
in maintaining proper military preparedness, and adjusted government
policy accordingly. Small prebend holders were now less likely to be
summoned for campaigns. Instead, the government ordered them to
keep the peace in their respective districts, or assigned them tempo-
rarily to guard frontiers, whose more capable military forces had been
ordered to join the imperial expeditionary armies elsewhere. This prac-
tice, like the other changes, started either under Sleyman or soon
after his reign. Istanbul also adjusted the minimum income after which
ordinary timariot sipahis and holders of medium-sized prebends (zeamet)
were obliged to field an armed retainer (cebel): In the case of the for-
mer, the threshold was raised from three thousand to six thousand
ake, in the latter from four thousand to five thousand ake. In other
words, holders of smaller prebends were now exempted from military
service. Timar holders possessing prebends worth of 10,000 to 19,999
ake annual revenue were all required to maintain three retainers. As a
result of these adjustments, the contingents that the prebendal cavalry
mobilized for campaigns declined significantly. The missing soldiers
were now substituted by the private troops (kap halk) whom the com-
manders of the prebendal cavalry, the district and provincial governors
(sing. sancakbeyi and beylerbeyi), fielded. Whereas in the 1520s the pri-
vate armies of the sancakbeyis and beylerbeyis made up only 33 percent
of the timariot troops, by the late seventeenth century their share had
risen to 58 percent.75
By the seventeenth century it was expected that provincial gov-
ernors maintain large household armies, and such a capability had
become the condition for their appointments. Many of them enjoyed
the revenues of whole districts as arpalk (literally, fodder money) in
order to maintain their households and armies even when temporar-
75
Gza Dvid and Pl Fodor, Changes in the Structure and Strength of the Timariot
Army from the Early Sixteenth to the End of the Seventeenth Century, Eurasian Studies
Yearbook 4, no. 2 (2005): 157188.
ily out of office.76 The manpower pool of these private armies was the
same as that of the state-financed militiamen: landless peasants and
vagabonds, created by the combination of socioeconomic and envi-
ronmental changes since the latter part of the sixteenth century. If not
employed by provincial governors or the central government, these
individuals usually turned to banditry, leading to an increase in rural
disorder and violence.77 The number of such levends was already sub-
stantial by the mid-sixteenth century, when a rebel (Prince Mustafa)
in 1555 managed to gather some ten thousand levends and timariot
cavalrymen under his banner.78
Conclusions
For too long historians have focused on the alleged superiority of Euro-
pean arms and tactics over the Ottomansostensibly beginning in the
late sixteenth centuryand on the resulting Ottoman military reforms,
which, starting in the late eighteenth century, reshaped the sultans
armies along European lines. Recent research has called into question
any major technological, tactical, or organizational advantage of Euro-
pean militaries over the Ottomans until the late seventeenth century.
Due to their receptivity and adaptability, the Ottomans not only inte-
grated firearm technology into their military structures with ease and
swiftness; they also established domestic production facilities that were
capable of meeting the needs of their armies, navies, fortresses, and
river flotillas in terms of weapons, ammunition, and military hardware.
With administrative, fiscal, and logistical capabilities to match their
military might, the Ottomans had established military superiority over
their immediate neighbors by the late fifteenth century, an advantage
they maintained through a succession of rivals, until some time in the
late seventeenth century.
With regard to the possible relationship between firearms and army
growth, we have seen that Ottoman military expansion was only partly
due to external military challenges and that domestic socioeconomic
76
. Metin Kunt, The Sultans Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Gov-
ernment, 15501650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 8793.
77
Oktay zel, The Reign of Violence: The Celalis c. 15501700, in Christine Wood-
head, ed., The Ottoman World (Abingdon, Oxon, U.K.: Routledge, 2012), pp. 184202; Sam
White, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2011).
78
Akda, Trk Halknn Dirlik ve Dzenlik Kavgas, p. 71.
factors also played an important role in the transformation of the sul-

tans armed forces. More important, whereas in Western Europe the
Military Revolution supposedly led to enhanced state centralization
and resulted in the rise of military-fiscal states, the Ottoman experi-
ence was military devolution. In contrast to Europe, the Ottoman gov-
ernment directed the changes only to an extent. Realizing Istanbuls
need for infantry troops, the janissaries themselves seized the moment
and used it to enlist their sons and relatives into the corps. Selling
janissary certificatesthat is, entry tickets to the corpsbecame a
lucrative business for janissary officers. District and provincial gover-
nors and local notables also profited from the devolution of power. In
return for their access to state revenues through state offices and tax
farms, they provided the government with troops and provisions.
The implications of military expansion and devolution for the
composition of the Ottoman expeditionary forces and their military
capabilities were significant. Whereas the salaried troops of the court
constituted only about 2025 percent of Sleymans armies, their share
rose to 4050 percent by 16971698. Conversely, while in the early
sixteenth century timariot provincial cavalry accounted for 6075 per-
cent of the Ottoman combat forces, their proportion had dropped to
1015 percent by the late 1690s. In 1526 Sleyman could mobilize
some forty-five thousand provincial cavalry from his European and
west Anatolian provinces (Rumeli and Anadolu); in the 1697 cam-
paign the two provinces provided just eleven thousand timariot sipahis.
By the late 1690s, the private household armies of provincial governors
and grandees gave 1618 percent of the mobilized troops. As a result of
these transformations, the formerly cavalry-heavy Ottoman army also
changed significantly: In the late 1690s infantrymen made up 5060
percent of the deployed troops, mirroring the infantry-to-cavalry ratio
of their Habsburg rivals.79
In general, the advantages of a European Military Revolution
against the Ottomans remain highly questionable, at least until the
late seventeenth century. Even then, the successes of Habsburg arms
against the Ottomans can better be explained by improved capabilities
in marshaling troops and resources, and, as a consequence, the ability
of the Habsburgs, for the first time, to match Ottoman troop strength
and logistical capabilities, rather than by tactical and technological
79
BOA, MAD no. 7483, pp. 25, for 1697; and Dvid and Fodor, Changes in the
Structure and Strength of the Timariot Army, pp. 177178, 188, for 1698.
advantages emanating from a European Military Revolution. Even

more important was the Habsburgs ability to form alliances and wage
a coalition war against the Ottomans, which forced their archenemy to
fight on four different fronts, an impossible task for all contemporary
belligerents.
The expanded salaried corps and the household troops of provin-
cial governors and grandees remained surprisingly effective through
the early eighteenth century. It was with such forces that the Otto-
mans nearly captured the capital of the Holy Roman Empire in 1683,
defeated Peter the Great in 1711, defeated the Venetians and recap-
tured the Morea in 17151717, and both retook Belgrade from Austria
and scored victories against both Austria and Russia in the 17361739
war. Therefore, European victories against the Ottomans prior to the
Russo-Ottoman war of 17681774 should not be overstated.
Instead of focusing on the putative military superiority of European
arms, future studies must consider the reverse proposition: the impact
of Ottoman military strength and prowess on developments among the
Ottomans rivals and contemporaries. Such an approach helps to avoid
the trap of relating Ottoman military developments to a hypothetical
Military Revolution involving the emergence of ideal forms of con-
duct among a handful of paradigmatic powerspowers with whom
the Ottomans had little confrontation before the late eighteenth cen-
tury and whose impact on the evolution of the Ottoman military was
minimal.80 Examining changing Ottoman military capabilities vis--vis
their main rivals yields a more realistic assessment of Ottoman strength
and weaknesses.81 It also reveals the long-unappreciated role the Otto-
mans played in catalyzing military developments across a vast terrain
from Mughal India to central and eastern Europe.
80
See Black, Beyond the Military Revolution, p. 1, for problems associated with ideal
forms of conduct and paradigmatic powers.
81
See, for example, Aksan, Ottoman Wars; goston, Military Transformation in the
Ottoman Empire and Russia, 15001800, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian His-
tory 12, no. 2 (2011): 281319; Brian L. Davies, Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern
Europe: Russias Turkish Wars in the Eighteenth Century (London: Continuum, 2011).

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T he mass adoption of firearms as a tool of warfare dramatically

Journal of World History, Vol. 25, No. 1

large and disciplined professional armies; superior supply and logistics;

Adoption and Integration of Gunpowder Technology

examples suggest that the Ottomans were on par with developments

Table 1. Number of cannons and arquebuses in Ottoman castles

1455 skp (Skopje) 12 148

In mid October 1444, the Ottomans were successful in sinking a

Hungarian Wagenburg and Ottoman Tabur

(1444) and Kosovo (1448).19 The battle of Varna demonstrated that

Firearms and Standing Troops

child levy or devirme system, the janissaries were initially equipped

Table 2. Artillerymen, handgunners, and crossbowmen in selected

1455 Novoberda (Novo Brdo) 11 (C)

The Question of Janissary Volley Fire

1512 331 401 346 1,078

Table 4. Number of handguns and janissaries, 15211533

describing the battle of Mohcs in 1526. The Ottoman chronicler

Firearms and the Ottoman Cavalry

number of pistols in Turkish museums.30 However, the Ottomans had

Weapons Production and Firepower Superiority

The adoption and adaptation of firearms by the Ottomans significantly

defeat at the hands of technologically and tactically superior European

Pravite, and Belgrade), Asia Minor (Diyarbekir, Erzurum, Birecik,

Table 5. Distribution of cannon cast in the Imperial Cannon Foundry, 16851772

16851686 416 376 90.4 38 9.1 2.0 0.5

Source: goston, Guns, p. 186.

medium-caliber pieces. I consider guns that fired projectiles less than

15201566 Rodos/Rhodes 263 26 100 42 12 241 3 687

the thousands and mounted those on barrels manufactured locally.

Quality, Quantity, and Logistics

alrythe Ottomans greatly outnumbered the Hungarians. While the

Firearms and the Growth of Ottoman

A spectacular increase in military manpower in most European

The Beginning of Army Growth

1484 7,841 4,306 12,147

The Expansion of the Salaried Troops from the Late 1570s

men)that is, immediately before the Hungarian war of 15931606.

More important, the musketeers and gunners (Schtzen) usually out-

The Metamorphosis of the Janissaries

hardly surprising that only a portion of the janissaries recorded on the

The Decline of the Prebendal Cavalry and the Rise

did they gradually lose the privilege of maintaining public security

factors also played an important role in the transformation of the sul-

advantages emanating from a European Military Revolution. Even

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