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Janissaries
From the Turkish yeni cheri, “new troops.” An elite slave infantry established in the fourteenth-century Ottoman Empire. A quadrennial collection (devshirme) selected young boys from conquered regions, particularly the Christian Balkans. They received a thorough military education, learned Turkish, and assumed Muslim names and identities. The Sultan could depend on their loyalty, as disobedience meant summary execution while obedience resulted in enormous personal power and tax-exempt status. In the mid-seventeenth century the Ottoman government weakened, and control of the outlying regions increasingly fell into Janissary hands. Sultan Mahmud II , relying on the power of his newly formed military and public contempt for Janissary tyranny, massacred most of the Janissaries in 1826 and drove the remainder from the provinces.
