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, 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 …

, a term in Ottoman Turkish used to describe companies of brigands, led usually by idle or dissident Ottoman army officers, widely-spread throughout Anatolia from about 999/1590 but diminishing by 1030/1620. The term probably derives from an earlier (925/1519) political and religious rebellion in Amasya by a S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ D̲j̲alāl. Official Ottoman use appears in a petition ( ʿarḍ ) as early as 997/1588 (Divani Kalemi 997-8-C), where the term identifies unchecked rebels ( as̲h̲ḳiyāʾ ) engaging in brigandage. Analysis of the three-decade period of D̲j̲alālī re…

, a salaried member of the Ottoman internal security forces, recruited predominantly in the Balkans from among chosen land-owning Orthodox Christians who, retaining their religion, became members of the Ottoman ʿaskerī caste [ q.v.]. The word almost certainly originated from the Greek, either amartolos (ἁμαρτωλός), “corrupt”, “gone astray”, or armatolos (ἀρματολός), “armed”, “weapon-carrying”. It was shortened to martolos (sometimes martuloz , with the occasional plural martulosān , .) in Ottoman Turkish, whence it entered Bulgarian and then Serbian. By the end…