, the name given to two kinds of Ottoman daily-wage irregular militia, one sea-going ( deñiz ), the other land-based ( ḳarā ), both existing from early times. The word may derive in its maritime sense from the Italian levantino (S̲h̲. Sāmī, Ḳāmūs-i Türkī ), used originally by Venetians for soldiers recruited from their Levantine possessions, and then passing into ¶ Ottoman Turkish as a term for mercenaries recruited from the Mediterranean regions, especially the eastern lands and islands of Greece, Dalmatia and western Anatolia. Som…

[see lewend ].

(t., from Pers. sagbān “servant in charge of dogs, or keeper of the sultan’s hounds”. In Ottoman Turkish, it was often spelled sekbān , and also written as segmen or seymen , following popular pronunciation), a term of Ottoman palace and military organisation. In the Ottoman Empire, the term had three general uses which evolved over time: first used for the guardians of the sultan’s hunting dogs, it was then applied to members of various salaried infantry units within the Janissaries, surviving until the corps itself was abolished in 182…

, Ottoman Grand Vizier under Meḥemmed IV, was born in 1030/1620, in a village near Bayburt, of a Muslim family. He first appears as a lewend [ q.v.] serving under Abaza Ḥasan Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.]; when Abaza Ḥasan’s rebellion was crushed (1069/1658) he took service under a succession of prominent figures, firstly Firārī Muṣṭafā Pas̲h̲a and finally Ḳara Muṣṭafā Pas̲h̲a, whose ketk̲h̲udā he became. Helped by the Pas̲h̲a’s influence and enjoying the confidence of the Sultan he now began to rise rapidly in the service of the state. He was appointed firstly küčük and then büyük mīrak̲h̲ōr …

An Arabic word meaning "an unmarried man or woman", "a virgin", applied to several types of fighting men under the Ottoman and other Turkish régimes between the 13th and the 19th centuries. The soldiers of various Ottoman formations, notably all those recruited by dews̲h̲irme [ q.v.], were forbidden to marry before retirement; and it may be assumed that the earliest ʿazabs we read of—those employed as marine troops by the Aydi̊n Og̲h̲ullari̊ in the 13th century—were bachelors recruited from coastal villages. The term was probably us…

(d. 923/1527), a Turkish mariner and naval commander in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Apparently a native of Lesbos [see midilli ] and thus a countryman and contemporary of another ¶ famous seaman, K̲h̲ayr al-Dīn [ q.v.], he became active as a corsair in the Central Mediterranean (J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont and Anne Kroell, Mamlouks , Ottomans et Portugais en Mer Rouge . L’affaire de Djedda en 1517, Cairo 1988, 76). At an unspecified date (at the latest in 1514) he entered the service of the Mamlūk sultan Ḳānṣawh al-G̲h̲awrī [ q.v.] who was endeavouring to resist the recently-arrived Port…

(t.), literally, “new system, re-organisation”, the new military units created by the Ottoman sultan Selīm III (1203-22/1789-1807 [ q.v.]). The Treaty of Sistova between the Ottoman Empire and Austria (August 1791) and that of Jassy between the Empire and Russia (January 1792) meant that Turkey had to recognise the loss of the Crimea and the fact of Russian control over much of the Black Sea, although Austria withdrew from its conquests in Serbia, Bosnia and the Danube Principalities. Moreover, the European powers…

, leader of lewends [ q.v.], bandit, vizier, and serʿasker of the Ottoman army in Hungary. In 1096/1685 he was bölük-bas̲h̲i̊ [ q.v.] of the lewends of serdār S̲h̲eyṭān/Melek Ibrāhīm Pas̲h̲a in Hungary. After fleeing from the theatre of war, he sacked villages and towns between Sivas and Bolu (in Anatolia). Afterwards, he became the chief bölük-bas̲h̲i̊ of K̲h̲alīl Pas̲h̲a, who was responsible for the pursuit of the bandits ( teftīs̲h̲d̲j̲i ]. When the latter was dismissed (D̲j̲umādā II 1089/April 1689), ʿOt̲h̲mān Pas̲h̲a obtained the sand̲j̲aḳ of Ḳaraḥiṣār-i Ṣāḥib [see afyūn ḳara ḥi…

, Gümrükčü (d. 1158/1745), Ottoman Grand Vizier. Son of a sister of the then influential statesman Defterdār Kel Yūsuf Efendi (hence the surname “Nephew”), he was born in Antalya and began public life as a Mültezim in the region of his origin. He went to Istanbul to take up a career in the secretarial service, becoming a k̲h̲ad̲j̲egān . From 1140/1728 to 1141/1729 he was Commissioner of the Customs of Istanbul ( Gümrük Emīni ). Around 1144/1732 he became Ḳapu-Ketk̲h̲udāsi̊ of the Beglerbegi of Erzurum, Topal ʿOt̲h̲mān Pas̲h̲a, as well. In 1145/1733 he acquired the post of Mewḳūfātči̊ …

, Turkish corsair, naval commander and governor (b. early 16th century near Muǧla, western Anatolia, d. 1565 in Malta; better known as Dragut in European literature). The maritime career of this son of a peasant began when he joined the Levends, Turkish mariners operating off the Aegean coast [see lewend ]. It was as commander of Levend ships that he participated in the battle of Prevesa (1538). His subsequent area of operation was the central and western Mediterranean, where in the wake of K̲h̲ayr al-Dīn Barbarossa’s successes [see k̲h̲ayr al-dīn pas̲h̲a ], Turkish seamen and Janissa…

, Ottoman rebel (d. 14 D̲j̲umādā I 1143/25 November 1730). Of Albanian origin, he belonged to the protégés of the Ḳapudān-Pas̲h̲a Muṣṭafā and ʿAbdī Pas̲h̲a ( ca. 1680-5 and later). He was born at K̲h̲urpis̲h̲te (Khroupista, now Argos Orestikon, to the south of Kastoria, Greece). He served as a Lewend [ q.v.] on board the flagship of the Ottoman vice-admiral, the Patrona (for this term, see riyala) whence probably his name. Transferred from naval service, he was able to join the Seventeenth Orta of the Janissary Corps in which he served till the peace set…

, the twenty-eighth sultan of the Ottoman empire (1203-22/1789-1807), first son of Muṣṭafā III and grandson of Aḥmed III [ q.vv.], was born in Istanbul on 27 D̲j̲umādā I 1175/24 December 1761. Considered one of the ablest of the 18th century sultans, Selīm III’s early upbringing may account for his later perseverance in reforming the empire. His father’s more liberal outlook allowed Selīm considerable freedom of action, including the observation of the training of Baron de Tott’s new Ottoman rapidfire artillery corps, which wa…

, a town in the Tihāma [ q.v.] coastal plain of Yemen, at about 25 km/15 miles from the Red Sea, in a region of fertile agricultural lands irrigated by two major wādīs , Zabīd to the south and Rimaʿ to the north. It is the centre of an administrative district, a mudīriyya , with the same name, which falls under the jurisdiction of the governorate of al-Ḥudayda [ q.v.]. 1. History. Originally known as al-Ḥuṣayb, a village of the As̲h̲āʿir tribe, Zabīd took on the name of the wādī , to which it owed its prosperity, when it was founded in S̲h̲aʿbān 204/January 820 by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Ziyād [see ziyād…

, riyāle or riyāla bey , abbreviation of riyala-yi hümāyūn ḳapudani̊ “captain of the imperial [galley-] royal”, from the Italian riyale (secondary form from reale , abbreviated from galea reale, “the royal galley”), a general officer of the Ottoman navy who commanded the galley of the same name, later “rear-admiral”. There was also a popular pronunciation ¶ i̊ryāla with the prosthetic i frequent in Turkish in loan-words with an initial r (cf. Hindoglou, 113 under “contre-amiral” and 457 under “réale”; the form iryāla is found as early as Ewliyā Čelebi, v…

, twenty-third Ottoman sultan, son of Meḥmed IV (Muḥammad IV, [ q.v.]). Born in 1084/1673, he succeeded his brother Muṣṭafā II [ q.v.] on 10 Rabīʿ II 1115/21 August 1703, when the latter abdicated in consequence of a rising of the Janissaries. The leaders of this rising were soon got rid of by the new sultan on his immediate re-establishment of Istanbul as the habitual residence of the court; and for the next few years large numbers of persons known to have, or suspected of having, been implicated in it continued to …

, the name of two Ottoman sultans. 1. Maḥmūd I (1143-68/1730-54), (with the title of G̲h̲āzī and the literary nom-de-plume of Sabḳatī). The eldest son of Sultan Muṣṭafā II, he was born on the night of 3 Muḥarram 1108/2 August 1696 in the Palace at Edirne. His mother was Wālide Ṣāliḥa Sulṭān. He undertook his first studies on Wednesday, 20 D̲h̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 1113/18 May 1702 with a grand ceremony at the Edirne Palace which his father Muṣṭafā II attended in person, and was given his first lesson by the S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-Islām Sayyid Fayḍ Allāh …

(t.), lit. “new troop”, a body of professional infantrymen of the Ottoman empire in its heyday. 1. Origins. The “new troop”, so-called not so much because of the novelty of the idea as because at the time of its introduction by the vizier K̲h̲ayr al-Dīn Pas̲h̲a [see d̲j̲andarli̊ ] in the 760s/1360s it opposed then-prevailing military traditions cherished by the frontier warriors. The predecessors of Murād I [ q.v.], rather than maintaining a standing army funded by the central fisc, had relied almost exclusively on the military services provided, on a voluntary …