TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

army. Orhan learns the method from the newly arising ulemā: he was to recruit soldiers
from among the people of the country. The point of eminence here, however, is that the
soldiers would enter the infantry with their individual identity, leaving tribal bonds
aside.
The creation of the yaya corps marked the beginning of the cleavage between the
Ottoman center and Turkoman milieu. In other words, it marked the transition from first
stage to the second, i.e. the transformation of tribal chieftaincy into routinized state. It is
not a task of this study to examine the development of the Ottoman military system.
Stress should be put, for the present purpose however, on the stimulating role of the
central army in realizing centralization of the administration. The Ottoman central army
evolved in two directions: a standing army at the center, and a provincial army organized
under the firm control of the center. It is to be shown in the following paragraphs that
the provincial military system called timarlı sipāhi was intermingled with administrative
and fiscal mechanisms as well. The timar system 260 as a whole functioned as an efficient
apparatus of Ottoman state in centralizing the administrative, military, and fiscal system.
Yet the most powerful weapon in the hand of the sultan in establishing his
absolute power within a patrimonial state was the standing army attending the court,
namely the Janissary corps. A detailed analysis of the origin and development of the
260 One of the principal bases on which Ottoman central administration developed was the fiscal regime,
namely the timar system. The earliest documentary references to the timar system dates back to the time
of Orhan but the system developed gradually and took its classical form during the time of Murad II, when
the first concise registers were drawn up and the system was fully developed in all its basic principles and
features. In the timar system, all newly conquered lands belonged to the state and the state distributed the
usufruct right of the land to individuals, demanding certain taxes in return. A timar holder was a state
agent who did not receive any stipend from the state treasury but collected the tax of a defined piece of
land and re’ayā as timar. Since all territories of the Empire were divided and assigned to certain timar
holders, the subjects were strictly constrained by certain duties. See Halil Đnalcık, “Tīmār”, EI2; “Giriş” in
his Hicri 835 tarihli Suret-i Defter-i Sancak-ı Arvanid, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1954, pp. XI-
XXXVI; Ömer Lütfi Barkan, “Timar”, IA, 12/1, 286-333.
98