Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation?

Integrating the Established Balkan Military

System into the Ottoman Army
Mariya Kiprovska

Being part of the Ottoman Empire for several centuries, the Balkan countries
produced a historiography which, in search of a common identity after the disso-
lution of the Empire, presented a largely negative image of the Turkish/Ottoman
conquest of the peninsula. The Ottoman conquest was presented as devastating
for the region, the population and the culture of the Balkan nations, as bringing
about a rupture to their natural historical development. Probably the most ex-
treme view is to be found in the widespread notion of the “Turkish Yoke” which
has prevailed until recently both in the Bulgarian collective imagination and in
academia. This notion generally postulated large-scale destruction immediately
after the Ottoman conquest, accompanied by the annihilation of a large part
of the population and violent mass campaigns for the Islamization of the native
populace. It was claimed that as a direct result of the Ottoman conquest the Bul-
garian nation suffered a demographic catastrophe and that the new rule brought
backwardness to society and complete discontinuity in its development. A similar
destructive concept of the Ottoman conquest was likewise reproduced in other
Balkan nationalistic historiographies too.1

1 A general overview of the Balkan historiographies with an emphasis on the Islamization

is presented by Antonina Zhelyazkova, “Islamization in the Balkans as a Historiographical
Problem: the Southeast-European Perspective”, in The Ottomans and the Balkans: a Discus-
sion of Historiography, ed. Fikret Adanır and Suraiya Faroqhi (Leiden–Boston–Köln: Brill,
2002), pp. 223–265. The notion of the “Turkish Yoke” was discussed in a comparative
context by Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, who insists that the local chronicles and other literary
texts written during the Ottoman rule, which often legitimize the latter, should be consid-
ered as well. See his “The ‘Turkish Yoke’ Revisited: the Ottoman Empire in the Eyes of its
Non-Muslim Subjects”, published originally in Zones of Fracture in Modern Europe: the Baltic
Countries, the Balkans, and Northern Italy, ed. Almut Bues (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2005),
pp. 157–164. An elaborated version of this article is published in Acta Poloniae Historica 93
(2006): pp. 177–195. The use of local sources was already pointed out by Johann Strauss,
“Ottoman Rule Experienced and Remembered: Remarks on Some Greek Chronicles of the
Tourkokratia”, in The Ottomans and the Balkans, ed. Adanır and Faroqhi, pp. 193–221. The
80 Mariya Kiprovska

With the emergence of a less biased and more scholarly interest in the history
of the Ottoman Empire in general and its institutions in particular (which partly
came as a reaction to the oppressive image of the Ottomans, portrayed by the Bal-
kan nationalist historiography), a much less antagonistic image of the Ottoman
conquest and subsequent rule over the conquered territories came to dominate
historical writing. Presently, modern scholarship accentuates the highly latitudi-
narian policy of the multireligious and multiethnic Ottoman Empire. Emerging
at the frontier between the Byzantine and Seljuk territory in Western Asia Minor
in Bithynia, as is now commonly argued, the Ottoman state evolved as a poli-
ty which was influenced by both Islamic and Christian traditions. Research of
the past three decades has emphasized that the frontier territories in Bithynia,
where the Ottoman polity came into being, were less antagonistic in character
and should be regarded also as a zone of interaction, collaboration and cultural
mixing, characterized by a hybrid culture, a result of the intermingling of the
Turkish/Seljukid/Islamic and Byzantine/Christian influences.2 Emphasizing the
peaceful coexistence of different religious groups in the Ottoman realm, as well as
the inclusive character of the Ottoman state and institutions, modern historians
accentuate the “syncretic”, “tolerant” and “latitudinarian” nature of the Ottoman
polity with a distinctive “flexible”, “pragmatic” and “accommodationist” policy
toward the established systems in the conquered lands.3

impact of the Ottoman conquest on the demographic trends in the Bulgarian lands in par-
ticular is discussed at length in Grigor Boykov’s contribution to the present volume.
2 Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley–Los
Angeles–London: University of California Press, 1995); Heath Lowry, The Nature of the Ear-
ly Ottoman State (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); Karen Barkey, Empire
of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008), pp. 28–65; Keith Hopwood, “Low-Level Diplomacy between Byzantines and
Ottoman Turks: the Case of Bithynia”, in Byzantine Diplomacy. Papers from the Twenty-Fourth
Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, March 1990, ed. Jonathan Shepard and
Simon Franklin (Aldershot: Variorum, 1992), pp. 151–155; idem, “The Byzantine-Turkish
Frontier c. 1250–1300”, in Acta Viennensia Ottomanica, Akten des 13. CIEPO-Symposiums,
Wien, 21.–25. Sept. 1998, ed. Markus Köhbach, Gisela Procházka-Eisl, and Claudia Römer
(Vienna: Institut für Orientalistik, 1999), pp. 153–161; idem, “Christian-Muslim Symbiosis
in Anatolia”, in Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia: the Life
and Times of F. W. Hasluck, 1878–1920, ed. David Shankland (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2004),
vol. 2, pp. 13–30; Linda Darling, “The Development of Ottoman Governmental Institu-
tions in the Fourteenth Century: a Reconstruction”, in Living in the Ottoman Ecumenical
Community. Essays in Honour of Suraiya Faroqhi, ed. Vera Costantini and Markus Koller
(Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 17–34; eadem, “Reformulating the Gazi Narrative: When
Was the Ottoman State a Gazi State?”, Turcica 43 (2011): pp. 20–27.
3 Besides the literature cited in the previous footnote, cf. Gábor Ágoston, “A Flexible Empire:
Authority and its Limits on the Ottoman Frontiers”, in Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Person-
alities and Political Changes, ed. Kemal Karpat and Robert Zens (Madison: The University of
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 81

Born in the multicultural and multiconfessional environment of the West-

ern Anatolian marches at the turn of the thirteenth century, the Ottoman state’s
policy from its very outset seems to have been based not on religious antago-
nism toward the religious other, but was rather centred on a pragmatic ratio-
nale, which allowed for the Ottomans to form alliances and cooperate with
the local elites, as well as integrate them into the administration and the army,
which on the other hand proved to be a winning strategy for their success in
the long run. This pragmatic strategy developed fully in the Balkans, where the
Ottomans found themselves in a completely new environment, having virtually
nothing in common with the indigenous population.4 It was with the thorough
examination of the Ottoman survey registers (tahrir defterleri) of the conquered
territories in the Balkans that the conciliatory conservative policy of the con-
querors toward the pre-conquest local conditions, which clearly originated in
their Anatolian motherland, was unveiled sixty years ago by Halil İnalcık in his
ground-breaking studies on the Ottoman methods of conquest and the incor-
poration of the Balkan elites in the governmental, administrative and military
system of the evolving Ottoman state.5 On the basis of the earliest surviving
Ottoman registers from the fifteenth century, representing the situation closest
to the immediate aftermath of the Turkish conquest, İnalcık showed that the
Ottomans adopted many of the administrative and institutional peculiarities
of the subdued territories and accommodated large portions of the established
military and administrative personnel, integrating many representatives of the
former ruling Christian elites, some of whom occupied the highest positions in
the Ottoman governmental institutions.

Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp. 15–31. The pragmatic and flexible approach of the Ottomans
in dealing with the lands at its southern and northeastern frontiers is examined by Dariusz
Kołodziejczyk, “Between Universalistic Claims and Reality: Ottoman Frontiers in the Early
Modern Period”, in The Ottoman World, ed. Christine M. Woodhead (London: Routledge,
2012), pp. 205–219.
4 Heath W. Lowry, “Early Ottoman Period”, in The Routledge Handbook of Modern Turkey, ed.
Metin Heper and Sabri Sayarı (Abingdon–New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 5–14.
5 Halil İnalcık, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest”, Studia Islamica 2 (1954): 103–129; idem,
“Od Stefana Dušana do Osmanskog Carstva: Hrišćanske Spahije u Rumeliji u XV vijeku i
njihovo porijeklo”, Prilozi za Orijentalnu Filologiju i Istoriju Jugoslovenskih Naroda pod Tur-
skom Vladavinom 3–4 (1952–1953): pp. 25–54. The first Turkish translation of the last
article appeared under the title “Stefan Duşan’dan Osmanlı İmparatorluğuna: XV. Asırda
Rumeli’de Hıristiyan Sipahiler ve Menşeleri”, in 60. Doğum Yılı Münasebetiyle Fuad Köprülü
Armağanı (Istanbul: Osman Yalçın, 1953), pp. 207–248. It was later reprinted and is most
easily accessed in Halil İnalcık, Fatih Devri Üzerinde Tetkikler ve Vesikalar (Ankara: Türk
Tarih Kurumu, 1954), pp. 137–184. See also his Hicrî 835 Tarihli Sûret-i Defter-i Arvanid
(Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1954), a transliterated version of the oldest preserved Otto-
man tahrir defter (1431) for the Albanian lands.
82 Mariya Kiprovska

The Ottomans’ flexible and accommodationist approach in dealing with the

conquered lands is revealed by the fact that they preserved lots of the pre-existing
regional subdivisions and territorial entities and many Ottoman sancaks, kazas and
nahiyes simply followed the former division in the subjugated regions. Thus, in the
Balkans one may easily recognize the lands controlled by the previous rulers even
by the names of the new administrative units: vilâyet-i Vlk/Vuk denoted the terri-
tories controlled by Vuk Branković, vilâyet-i Pavle/Pavle-ili – the lands of the Pav-
lović family, vilâyet-i Kovaç/Kovaç-ili – the Kovačević lands, vilâyet-i Laz/Laz-ili –
the Lazarević lands, vilâyet-i Köstendil/Konstantin-ili – the territories controlled
by Konstantin Dragaš, or Karlı-ili in the north-western part of Greece – a district
corresponding approximately to the territories of Carlo Tocco I (1381–1430), to
name the most obvious examples.6 Traces of the earlier territorial divisions could
be found in the Ottoman sancaks in the Bulgarian lands too, where parallels
could be drawn with regards to the administrative units of Niğbolu sancağı, cov-
ering roughly the territories of the former kingdom of Ivan Šišman (1371–1395),
the sancak of Vidin – with the lands of Ivan Stracimir (1356–1396), and that of
Silistra – encompassing the territories of the independent Dobrudja estate of des-
pot Ivanko (1385–1388 and 1395–1399?).7 The situation is similar in Albania,
where the former local noble family holdings are distinguishable in the naming
of the new Ottoman districts where the vilâyet of Pavlo Kurtik, the Balşa-ili, the
Yuvan-ili, and the nahiyes of Aştin, Bogdan Ripe, Dimitri Gönima and Kon-
do Miho certainly bare traces of the pre-Ottoman landlords of these territories.8

6 Hazim Šabanović, “Upravna podjela jugoslavenskih zemlja pod turskom vladavinom do

Karlovačkog mira 1699 godine”, Godišnjak Istorijskog društva Bosne i Hercegovine 4 (1952):
pp. 171–204; idem, Krajište Isa-Bega Ishakovića. Zbirni Katastarski Popis iz 1455. Godine
(Sarajevo: Orijentalni Institut u Sarajevu, 1964); idem, Bosanski Pašaluk: postanak i upravna
podjela (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1982); Hamid Hadžibegić, Adem Handžić and Ešref Kovačević,
Oblast Brankovića. Opširni Katarstarski Popis iz 1455. Godine (Sarajevo: Orijentalni Insti-
tut u Sarajevu, 1972); Hristo Matanov, Knjažestvoto na Dragaši. Kăm istorijata na Iztočna i
Severoiztočna Makedonija v doosmanskata epoha (Sofija: Gal-iko, 1997) and his Văznikvane
i oblik na Kjustendilski sandžak prez XV–XVI v. (Sofija: IF-94, 2000); Victor L. Ménage,
“Karlı-Īli”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, vol. 4 (1978), pp. 656–657; Franz
Babinger, “Beiträge zur Geschichte von Qarly-Eli vornehmlich aus osmanischen Quellen”,
in idem, Aufsätze  und Abhandlungen zur Geschichte Südosteuropas und der Levante, vol. 1
(München: Südosteuropa-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1962), pp. 370–377; Machiel Kiel, “Karlı-ili”,
in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 24 (2001), pp. 499–502.
7 Dušanka Bojanić-Lukač, Vidin i vidinskijat sandžak prez XV-XVI vek. Dokumenti ot arhivite
na Carigrad i Ankara (Sofija: Nauka i izkustvo, 1975); Rumen Kovačev, Opis na nikopolskija
sandžak ot 80-te godini na XV vek (Sofija: Narodna biblioteka “Sv. sv. Kiril i Metodij”, 1997).
8 İnalcık, Fatih Devri, pp. 148, 158–160; idem, “Les régions de Kruje et de la Dibra autour
de 1467 et 1519 d’après les documents ottomans”, in Halil İnalcık, From Empire to Republic:
Essays on Ottoman and Turkish Social History (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 1995), pp. 73–89.
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 83

Likewise, vilâyet-i Kral and vilâyet-i Hersek denoted the territories formerly
controlled by the Bosnian king Stjepan Tomašević and duke (Herceg) Stjepan
Vukčić Kosača respectively,9 whereas the nahiyes of Pirlepe and Kırçova (Pri-
lep-Kičevo) encompassed the small principality of Prilep in western Macedo-
nia, governed by Marko Mrnjavčević (known as Prince Marko / Kraljević Mar-
ko), the son of king Vukašin Mrnjavčević, who was killed in 1371 at the battle
of Maritsa.10 Moreover, it appears that the Ottomans retained the boundaries
of even the smaller administrative units, as many of the nahiyes in northern
Bosnia strictly followed the territorial division of the old župas too.11 In Greek
Thessaly the names of the nahiyes of Mikra-ili and Kravar/Kravaldi undoubted-
ly comprised the old family estates of the Christian landlords from the pre-con-
quest period.12
Besides unveiling the rather conservative method by which the Ottomans
incorporated Balkan territories through absorption of established administra-
tive practices, the earliest Ottoman survey registers from the Balkans attest
that a number of members of the old Balkan aristocratic elite and high-rank-
ing military officers were also integrated into the new system. During the
fifteenth century there were still traces of those cooperative groups from the
old nobility and high military class who had chosen to side with the Otto-
mans and were incorporated into the new military system, preserving parts
of the privileged position they previously held, as well as their landed es-
tates (or at least substantial parts of them). The presence of big Christian ti-
mar-holders (sipahi), whose large prebends retained their heritable status and
thus remained in family possession while passed down from father to son, is
a pure indication both of the Ottoman conciliatory behaviour in adopting
the local conditions and of the more or less smooth transition some mem-
bers of the Balkan military caste experienced while recognizing the Ottoman
overlordship. In Thessaly the Mikra and Kravar/Kravaldi families held their
large fief-holdings hereditarily in the districts of the same names for several
generations, thus illustrating that the families retained their rights over their

9 Hatice Oruç, “15. Yüzyılda Bosna Sancağı ve İdari Dağılımı”, Osmanlı Tarihi Araştırma ve
Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi (OTAM) 18 (2005): pp. 249–271; eadem, “Christian Sipahis in
the Bosnian Sandjak (15th Century)”, Archivum Ottomanicum 26 (2009): pp. 5–16.
Feridun Emecen, “Pirlepe’nin İlk Osmanlı Tahrirleri”, Güney Doğu Avrupa Araştırmaları
10

Dergisi 12 (1998): pp. 63–70; idem, “Defter-i Köhne: Pirlepe-Kırçova Kesiminin En Eski
Timar Defteri (1445–1455)”, Osmanlı Araştırmaları 43 (2014): pp. 341–474.
11 Jelena Mrgić, Severna Bosna, 13–16. vek (Belgrade: Istorijski institut, 2008), pp. 227–271.
12 İnalcık, Fatih Devri, pp. 145–148; Melek Delilbaşı, “Christian Sipahis in the Tırhala Taxa-
tion Registers (Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries)”, in Provincial Elites in the Ottoman Em-
pire. Halcyon Days in Crete V. A Symposium Held in Rethymno, 10–12 January 2003, ed.
Antonis Anastasopoulos (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2005), pp. 87–114.
84 Mariya Kiprovska

patrimonial estates from the pre-conquest period. In the Ottoman times, the
estates were held jointly by the sons and grandsons of the original landlords,
as some of them embraced Islam and others kept their Christian names. Over
time, however, as was the case with many other Christian sipahis in the Bal-
kans, the descendants of these pre-conquest landlords became Muslim, leav-
ing no traces of their Christian background.13 Again in Thessaly, the subaşı
of Fenar (Hasan Beg bin Zenebiş) was a direct descendant of the Zenebish
family, who were local lords in South Albania. As a governor of the Tetovo/
Kalkandelen region, Hasan Beg of the Zenebish family was allocated fiefs in
the area. The same was true for the descendants of the Dukagjin family as well,
who were integrated into the Ottoman Empire and Islamized under the name
Dukagin-zade, as well as for some members of the Kastrioti family, including
the father of George Kastrioti and George himself prior to his rebellion.14
Another Albanian elite family, namely the Ashtin (Aştin oğlu Yakub Beg and
his brother Mustafa), also held big timars.15 In Albania traces are also found of
the Albanian Muzaki family, as a large prebend was held by the sancakbegi of
Arvanid, Todor Muzak oğlu Yakub Beg.16 The lands of the Ottoman district
Pavlo Kurtik were a heritable fief-holding of the son of the local landlord, Isa
Beg, and later of his descendants.17 The offspring of Carlo Tocco, designated
in the Ottoman realm with the family name Karlızadeler or Karlıoğulları,18
or even the descendants of the Palaiologos Byzantine royal family were also
among the large prebend-holders in the fifteenth-century Ottoman Balkans,19

13 Ibidem.
14 Oliver Jens Schmitt, Skanderbeg. Der neue Alexander auf dem Balkan (Regensburg: Friedrich
Pustet, 2009), pp. 135–143, pp. 161–168; idem, “Skanderbeg et les sultans: anatomie d’une
rébellion contre l’Empire ottoman”, Turcica 43 (2011): pp. 55–90, esp. 73, 77; İnalcık, “Les
régions de Kruje et de la Dibra”, pp. 73–89; Lowry, The Nature, p. 127.
15 İnalcık, Fatih Devri, p. 148.
16 Ibidem, p. 159.
17 Ibidem, p. 160.
18 Ibidem, p. 161; Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, “Les Tocco: seigneurs, vassaux, otages, renégats”,
Güneydoğu Avrupa Çalışmaları Uygulama ve Araştırma Merkezi (GAMER) 1 (2012): pp. 11–
22; Grigor Boykov, “Karlızâde ‘Ali Bey: An Ottoman Dignitary’s Pious Endowment and the
Emergence of the Town of Karlova in Central Bulgaria”, in Defterology: Festschrift in Honor
of Heath Lowry, ed. Selim Kuru and Baki Tezcan = Journal of Turkish Studies 40 (2013):
247–267. Regrettably, the latter article has been published without the otherwise extremely
rich bibliography in the footnotes. It is expected that the thus mutilated version will soon
be republished in its original form with its full references by the same journal in one of its
forthcoming issues!
19 Heath W. Lowry, “A Note on Three Palaiologai Princes as Members of the Ottoman Ruling
Elite”, in The Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, the Greek Lands: Toward a Social and Economic
History. Studies in Honor of John C. Alexander, ed. Elias Kolovos, Phokion Kotzageorgis,
Sophia Laiou and Marinos Sariyannis (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2007), pp. 279–288.
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 85

retaining parts of their patrimony under the new order and representing per-
fectly, along with many other examples, the preservation of the ‘Byzantine
legacy in Ottoman forms’.20
Furthermore, members of the highest strata of the pre-conquest nobility not
only retained their prebends and positions in the new military system, but even
climbed to the highest levels of the social ladder and were fully integrated into
the Ottoman ruling elite. Thus, descendants of the Balkan aristocratic families,
who were originally either taken captive or were sons of the Christian vassals of
the Sultan sent to the Palace as hostages, rose to the highest administrative posts
of the Ottoman state apparatus, even occupying the position of Grand Vizier.
The fact that many Ottoman Grand Viziers came from the ranks of the Bal-
kan aristocracy is no doubt illustrative of the Ottomans’ accommodationist ap-
proach in subsuming members of the former elite into their own administrative
system.21 It also suggests that the Ottoman conquest in the Balkans brought
about transformation and continuity rather than large-scale destruction and
annihilation of the established aristocratic elite and administrative practices.
The incorporation of the previous elites into the Ottoman governmental in-
stitutions proved instrumental for the efficient assimilation of the Christian
Balkans into Ottoman governance, and eased the process by which the new
rulers’ will could be conveyed.
The whole-scale level on which the Ottomans used the service of Christians
in the Balkans as a means of integration cannot be fully apprehended by only
examining the incorporation of the members of the pre-conquest nobility into

20 To paraphrase the title of an article by Speros Vryonis, “The Byzantine Legacy and Ottoman
Forms”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23–24 (1969–1970): pp. 251–308.
21 Lowry, The Nature, pp. 115–130; idem, “A Note on Three Palaiologai Princes”, pp. 279–
288; idem, Hersekzāde Ahmed Paşa: An Ottoman Statesman’s Career & Pious Endowments /
Hersekzāde Ahmed Paşa: Bir Osmanlı Devlet Adamının Meslek Hayatı ve Kurduğu Vakıflar
(Istanbul: Bahçeşehir University Press, 2011); Theocharis Stavrides, The Sultan of Vezirs: The
Life and Times of the Ottoman Grand Vezir Mahmud Pasha Angelović (1453–1474) (Leiden–
Boston–Köln: Brill, 2001); Hedda Reindl, Männer um Bāyezīd. Eine prosopographische Stud-
ie über die Epoche Sultan Bāyezīds II. (1481–1512) (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1983);
Klaus-Peter Matschke, “Research Problems Concerning the Transition to Tourkokratia: the
Byzantinist Standpoint”, in The Ottomans and the Balkans, ed. Adanır and Faroqhi, pp.
79–113; Mihailo St. Popović, “Kaiser, Zar und Sultan – Das Byzantinische Reich und die
Integration Südosteuropas in das Osmanische Reich”, Historicum: Zeitschrift für Geschichte
(Sommer – Herbst 2011): 72–78; Behija Zlatar, Gazi Husrev-beg (Sarajevo: Orijentalni Insti-
tut u Sarajevu, 2010); eadem, “Mehmed Bey Obrenović, Sanjakbey of Herzegovina”, Ankara
Üniversitesi Güneydoğu Avrupa Çalışmaları Uygulama ve Araştırma Merkezi Dergisi (GAMER)
1 (2012): pp. 187–196; Zachariadou, “Les Tocco”, 11–22; Dino Mujadžević, “Osmanska
osvajanja u Slavoniji 1552. u svjetlu osmanskih arhivskih izvora”, Povijesni prilozi 28 (2009):
pp. 89–107.
86 Mariya Kiprovska

the Ottoman military and administrative system.22 Indeed, the larger number
of Christian timar-holders in the first centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans
obviously pertained to the middle and lower-ranking military, as indicated by
the size of their military prebends. A growing number of studies on the fif-
teenth-century Ottoman tax records from the Balkans, sparked by the doyen
of Ottoman studies Halil İnalcık, who first explored a series of them to unveil
the flexibility and inclusiveness of the Ottoman system in regards to the incor-
poration of the Balkan administrative and military elite, show that to a large
extent the Ottomans maintained the previous status of the Christian soldiers.23
The fact that the Christian sipahis could largely preserve their former social
position and retain their prebends (with the right of inheritance)24 under the

22
The Ottoman military organization in the Serbian lands and its incorporation of many
local Christian elements has been the focus of many Jugoslav scholars. Cf. Olga Zirojević,
Tursko vojno uređenje u Srbiji (1459–1683) (Belgrade: Istorijski institut, 1974). An excellent
overview of the early Ottoman military organization and warfare strategies, presented as an
amalgamation of Turkoman nomadic, Seljuk-Ilkhanid and Byzantine elements, is offered
by Pál Fodor, “Ottoman Warfare, 1300–1453”, in The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 1:
Byzantium to Turkey, 1071–1453, ed. Kate Fleet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009), pp. 192–226. Other examples of absorption of Christian elements by the Ottoman
state in the latter’s Grand Strategy in dealing with the religious other which revolved more
around pragmatic reasoning and calculated priorities are given by Emrah Safa Gürkan,
“Christian Allies of the Ottoman Empire”, in European History Online (EGO), published by
the Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz 2010–12–03. URL: http://www.ieg-ego.eu/
gurkane-2010-en URN: urn:nbn:de:0159-20100921549 [2014–10–15].
23
İnalcık, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest”, 113–117; idem, Fatih Devri, pp. 137–184, esp.
145–151; idem, “Timariotes chrétiens en Albanie au XVe siècle d’après un register de timar
ottoman”, Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 4 (1951): pp. 118–138; Branislav
Đurđev, “Hrišćani spahije u severnoj Srbiji u XV veku”, Godišnjak Društva istoričara Bosne
i Hercegovine 4 (1952): pp. 166–169; Bistra Cvetkova, “Novye dannye o hristianah-spahi-
jah na Balkanskom poluostrove v period tureckogo gospodstva”, Vizantijskij vremennik 13
(1958): pp. 184–197; Nicoara Beldiceanu, “Timariotes chrétiens en Thessalie (1454/55)”,
Südost-Forschungen 44 (1985): pp. 45–81; Delilbaşı, “Christian Sipahis in the Tırhala Tax-
ation Registers”, pp. 87–114; Heath Lowry, “The Island of Limnos. A Case Study on the
Continuity of Byzantine Forms under Ottoman Rule”, in Continuity and Change in Late
Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society: Papers Given at a Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks in
May 1982, ed. Anthony Bryer and Heath Lowry (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks
Research Library and Collection, 1986), pp. 235–259; idem, Fifteenth Century Ottoman
Realities: Christian Peasant Life on the Aegean Island of Limnos (Istanbul: Eren, 2002); idem,
“Privilege and Property in Ottoman Maçuka in the Opening Decades of the Turkokratia:
1461–1553”, in Continuity and Change, ed. Bryer and Lowry, pp. 97–128; Oruç, “Christian
Sipahis in the Bosnian Sandjak”, 5–16.
24
Ottoman records also demonstrate that initially the Christian sipahis inherited their fiefs
from father to son, which supports the assumption that the old tradition of the baština and
pronoia holdings was adopted by the Ottoman system at least for some time. A circumstan-
tial examination of the Byzantine pronoia and its comparison with the Ottoman timar has
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 87

new system, on the other hand, undoubtedly explains the relatively rapid and
smooth expansion of Ottoman rule in the Balkans.25 It is indicative that shortly
after the fall of the last Serbian capital Smederevo (1459), which effectively put
an end to the medieval Serbian state, and its incorporation into the Ottoman
administrative system, the military class of the bordering sancak of Semendire
remained largely intact. The majority of the fief-holders were Christian, while
the bulk of the entire military organization, including the members of auxiliary
contingents that were not entitled to military prebends, were overwhelmingly
non-Muslim too.26 As revealed by the earliest fifteenth-century tahrir defters
from other parts of the Balkans, in some areas close to half of the Ottoman
timariots were Christian, whereas in other areas their number averaged around
20 percent.27 At that stage many of the formerly Christian fief-holders had
already become Muslim converts, bearing only their fathers’ Christian names,
which suggests that at the beginning of the Ottoman conquest their number
must have been even greater.28 Moreover, as convincingly shown by the atten-
tive studies of Heath Lowry on various regions in the Balkans and the former
empire of Trapezund, which proved crucial in unveiling the transition from
pre-Ottoman to Ottoman rule, the autochthonous population which melted
into the Ottoman military was not only active in conquering foreign lands un-
der the Ottoman banner, but was essential for the protection of their fatherland,
a fact that perfectly illustrates the accomodationist approach of the conquerors

been recently presented by Mark Bartusis, Land and Privilege in Byzantium: The Institution
of Pronoia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
25
İnalcık, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest”, 115.
26
Đurđev, “Hrišćani spahije u severnoj Srbiji”, pp. 165–169; Zirojević, Tursko vojno uređenje
u Srbiji, pp. 158–208; Ema Miljković-Bojanić, Smederevski sandžak (1476–1560). Zemlja.
Naselja. Stanovništvo (Belgrade: Istorijski institut, 2004); Ema Miljković, Aleksandar Krstić,
Braničevo u XV veku. Istorijsko-geografska studija (Požarevac: Narodni muzej, 2007); idem,
“Na raskršču dve epohe: kontinuitet i promene društvene structure u Braničevo u 15. veku”,
Istorijski časopis 56 (2008): pp. 279–304.
27
İnalcık, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest”, 113–114; idem, Fatih Devri, pp. 145–151. For
other estimates of the percentage of Christian timar-holders in other Balkan provinces of the
empire cf. Delilbaşı, “Christian Sipahis in the Tırhala Taxation Registers”, pp. 89–91; Linda
Darling, “Nasihatnameler, İcmal Defterleri, and the Timar-Holding Ottoman Elite in the Late
Sixteenth Century”, Osmanlı Araştırmaları 43 (2014): pp. 193–226, esp. 203 and table 1.
28
The generally accepted view that with the passing of time it became compulsory to be a
Muslim in order to obtain a fief-holding was recently refuted by Linda Darling. Her thor-
ough study on a series of sixteenth-century summary tax registers convincingly shows that
the practice of allocating timar-holding to Christians did not come to an abrupt end in the
sixteenth century. On the contrary, the data shows that after 1520 in some provinces up to
12–16% of timar-holders were Christian, whereas Muslim sons of Christian fathers received
timars in significant numbers throughout the sixteenth century. Darling, “Nasihatnameler,
İcmal Defterleri, and the Timar-Holding Ottoman Elite”, 203, 219.
88 Mariya Kiprovska

toward the established customs and practices.29 Furthermore, the example of

the Limnos island, where the Ottomans largely preserved the Byzantine prac-
tices in all areas of life, such as administration, military organisation, religious
life, agriculture and taxation, and where the conquerors’ role consisted of little
more than collecting taxes, could be symptomatic of the large-scale continuity,
rather than destruction, of the traditional pre-conquest practices which found
their way into the Ottoman system.30 The preliminary results of an on-going
project undertaken by Lowry, based on a thorough examination of the whole
corpus of extant fifteenth-century Ottoman tahrir defters from the Balkans,
shows that in the immediate aftermath of the conquest roughly one-third of
all fief-holders were Christians.31 Additionally, taking into account the fact that
huge numbers of former Christians, now part of the Janissary corps, manned
the fortresses at the borders of the Ottoman Empire, one is confronted with
the scale on which the Ottomans utilised local manpower to establish their firm
control over the Balkan territories. This process of successful incorporation of
the Balkan lesser nobility was undoubtedly a twofold one and both the Otto-
mans’ pragmatic approach and needs-driven policy, as well as the prospect they
offered local noblemen of preserving their property and social position, should
be taken into consideration.
Additionally, what also seems to have smoothened the path of the Ottoman
conquest in the Balkans was the integration into the conquerors’ system of local
contingents and groups with paramilitary functions, often also incorporated
along with their established structural organization, thus easing the process of
transition from the pre-Ottoman to Ottoman sovereignty. A sizable portion
of the lesser nobility of the Balkans, namely the Christian voynuks (vojnik, i.e.
soldier), were integrated in such a way into the Ottoman military structure. As
indicated by the earliest Ottoman survey registers from Rumeli (i.e. the Bal-
kans), they were direct descendants of the old lower ranking military (kadîmî
sipahi), who under the new system retained their military fiefs (baştina), ob-
ligations, as well as certain privileges (they enjoyed tax exemption-status). A
voynuk and two to three assistants (yamak), sometimes from the family of the

29 Lowry, “The Island of Limnos”, pp. 235–259; idem, Fifteenth Century Ottoman Realities;
idem, “Privilege and Property in Ottoman Maçuka”, pp. 97–128; idem, The Islamization &
Turkification of the City of Trabzon (Trebizond), 1461–1583 (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2010).
30 Lowry, “The Island of Limnos”, pp. 235–259; idem, Fifteenth Century Ottoman Realities.
31 This information was privately communicated on numerous occasions, for which I express
my gratitude to Prof. Lowry. Cf. Heath W. Lowry, The Shaping of the Ottoman Balkans, 1350–
1550. The Conquest, Settlement & Infrastructural Development of Northern Greece (Istanbul:
Bahçeşehir University Press, 2008), pp. 3–8; Selim Kuru and Baki Tezcan, “A Life in Ottoman
Studies: An Interview with Prof. Heath Lowry”, in Defterology: Festschrift in Honor of Heath
Lowry, ed. Selim Kuru and Baki Tezcan = Journal of Turkish Studies 40 (2013): pp. 30–31.
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 89

soldier, possessed their baştinas, which were exempted from certain taxes, on
a hereditary basis. They were organized into groups of varying numbers under
the direct command of a voynuk officer, called a lagator. During the fifteenth
century they were in active military service and were expected to join the mil-
itary campaigns in full armour. The voynuk organization was widespread and
quite sizable in the Balkans, but was mainly concentrated along the strategic
routes and the bordering regions, which on the one hand is a clear reference
to its territorial spread prior the conquest and on the other – to the militarized
parts of the peninsula, where the high density of landed soldiers unveils the
contested zones of conflict before the arrival of the Ottomans.32 The situation
was similar with another militarized Balkan group, namely the Vlachs, or Eflâk.
These cattle-breeders and shepherds were undoubtedly autochthonous Balkan
groups who entered into the Ottoman system with their established military
and civic organization. Similarly to the organization of the voynuks, every five
Vlach houses had to provide for one soldier in times of a military campaign.
They had their own commanders – knez, lagator, primikür, and çeribaşı, and
were under the command of the sancakbegi during campaigns. Additionally, the
Vlachs supplied manpower for the voynuk and martolos auxiliary troops too. In
return for their services they were exempted from certain taxes while their lands
were liable only to a lump sum tax assessment (adet-i eflâkiye). Geographically,
the presence of the Vlachs was also most numerous along the border zones,
mostly in the bordering Ottoman sancaks of Hersek, Semendire, Braniçevo,
and Vidin.33 Another most probably pre-Ottoman military institution was that
of the Christian martoloses (from the Greek armatolos, ‘armed men’). Likewise,

32 İnalcık, Fatih Devri, pp. 156–177; idem, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest”, 114–115; Ziro-
jević, Tursko vojno uređenje u Srbiji; Yavuz Ercan, Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Bulgarlar ve
Voynuklar (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1989).
33
Nicoară Beldiceanu, “La région de Timok-Morava dans les documents de Mehmed II et de
Selim I”, Revue des Études Roumaines 3–4 (1955/1956): pp. 111–129; Nicoară Beldiceanu
and Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr, “Quatre actes de Mehmed II concernant les Valaques des
Balkans slaves”, Südost-Forschungen 24 (1965): pp. 103–118; Nicoară Beldiceanu, “Sur les
Valaques des Balkans Slaves à l’époque ottomane (1450–1550)”, Revue des Études Islamiques
34 (1966): pp. 83–123; idem, “Les Valaques de Bosnie à la fin du XVe siècle et leurs in-
stitutions”, Turcica 7 (1975): pp. 122–134; Dušanka Bojanić, “Jedan rani kanun za vlahe
Smederevskog sandžaka”, Vesnik Vojnog Muzeja 11–12 (1966): pp. 146–160; Dušanka Bo-
janić-Lukać, “Vlasi u severnoj Srbiji i njihovi prvi kanuni”, Istorijski časopis 18 (1971): pp.
255–268; eadem, “Ce que signifient les données sur les Valaques de Sjenica dans le registre
de l’année 1455”, Révue Historique 34 (1987): pp. 97–112; Zirojević, Tursko vojno uređenje u
Srbiji. A diligent study of the changing identity and status of the Vlachs within the Ottoman
system is presented by Vjeran Kursar, “Being an Ottoman Vlach: On Vlach Identity(ies),
Role and Status in Western Parts of the Ottoman Balkans (15th – 18th Centuries)”, Osmanlı
Tarihi Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi (OTAM) 34 (2013): pp. 115–161.
90 Mariya Kiprovska

the Ottomans employed their services mostly at the borders of the empire, as
these soldiers appear typically as fortress guards and serving in the river fleets.
The martoloses in the Balkans were mainly used as armed police and border
patrols, safeguarding important mines or strategic mountain passes. They were
both mounted and on foot and, being stationed in the frontier regions, occa-
sionally participated in raids across the border, but usually acted in their own
regions as peacetime border patrols. At first many of them received regular pay,
but some were also awarded timar-holdings in the border regions, and, as was
the case with other auxiliaries, they were exempted from certain taxes in return
for their services.34
It is notable that former Balkan militarized groups were used extensively by
the Ottomans in strategic places, such as the border regions; Christians were
employed in manning the fortresses, guarding mountain passes, safeguarding
mines, many Christians were miners themselves, or were occupied in salt-pro-
duction, etc.35 Christians served in the navy too; they were employed by the
Ottomans not only as ordinary sailors and corsairs, but one also finds them
rising to the highest posts in the Ottoman fleet.36
As it becomes apparent, the Ottomans employed Christians extensively at
all levels of their military organisation – from the lesser ranks of the regular
soldiery and auxiliary regiments to the highest commanding posts in the army.
This military “cooperation” between the Ottomans and different Christian
groups and individuals undoubtedly smoothened the process of incorporation
of the Balkan territories into the Ottoman domain and ought to be account-

34 Milan Vasić, “Die Martolosen im Osmanischen Reich”, Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 2 (1964):
pp. 172–189 or the Turkish translation, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Martoloslar”, Tarih
Dergisi 31 (1977): pp. 47–64; idem, Martolosi u jugoslavenskim zemljama pod turskom vlada-
vinom (Sarajevo: Akademija nauka i umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine, 1967); İnalcık, Fatih
Devri, pp. 179–180; Mark Stein, Guarding the Frontier: Ottoman Border Forts and Garrisons
in Europe (London–New York: Tauris, 2007), pp. 89–92.
35 Evgenii Radoušev, “Ottoman Border Periphery (Serhad) in the Nikopol Vilayet, first Half of
the 16th Century”, Études balkaniques 3–4 (1995): pp. 140–60; Stein, Guarding the Frontier,
pp. 89–92; Zirojević, Tursko vojno uređenje u Srbiji, pp. 158–208; Aleksandar Stojanovski,
Dervendžistvoto vo Makedonija (Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija, 1974); idem, Raja
so specijalni zadolženija vo Makedonija (vojnuci, sokolari, orizari i sokolari) (Skopje: Institut
za nacionalna istorija, 1990); Elena Grozdanova, Stefan Andreev, Solarstvoto po bălgarskoto
Černomorie prez XV–XIX v. (Sofija: Narodna biblioteka “Sv. sv. Kiril i Metodij”, 1982); idem,
Iz istorijata na rudarstvoto i metalurgijata v bălgarskite zemi prez XV–XIX v. (Sofija: Narodna
biblioteka “Sv. sv. Kiril i Metodij”, 1993).
36 Emrah Safa Gürkan, “The Centre and the Frontier: Ottoman Cooperation with the North
African Corsairs in the Sixteenth Century”, Turkish Historical Review 1 (2010): pp. 125–163;
idem, “Christian Allies of the Ottoman Empire”, pp. 8–10; idem, “My Money or Your Life:
Habsburg Hunt for Uluc Ali”, Studia Historica. Historia Moderna 36 (2014): pp. 111–135.
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 91

ed for when examining the methods of Ottoman conquest and subsequent

rule. As İnalcık convincingly illustrated sixty years ago in his seminal article,
the Ottomans pursued a policy of gradual incorporation in the course of their
conquest, in which two distinct phases were markedly distinguishable from
the very beginning of Ottoman history – the first stage was that of an alli-
ance, followed by one of vassalage and direct control.37 Arguably, these stages
were noticeable in all levels of Ottoman accommodationist practices toward
the established pre-conquest conditions and were an indispensable part of the
evolving process of Ottoman state building and increasingly centralized Otto-
man policy. At the beginning of the Ottoman domination in the Balkans the
conquerors incorporated many members of the cooperative pre-existing Chris-
tian aristocratic elite and lesser nobility with only minor alterations to their
previous positions. With the passage of time and the evolution of a more cen-
tralized system, however, members of the former elites either melted into the
new system without leaving a trace of their previous eminence or were deprived
of their privileged status and replaced by the products of the new order. Thus,
for example, the Christian voynuk auxiliaries, along with other auxiliaries too,
lost their privileges and, after being deprived from active military service, were
reduced to the status of ordinary re‘aya.38 Similarly, members of the old Balkan
aristocratic elite who occupied the highest administrative posts in the emerging
empire gave way to the centrally-trained “slaves of the Port” of devşirme origin
who came to monopolize the high-ranking state offices.39 Thus, with the chang-
ing historical dynamics we see the evolution of Ottoman “pragmatism” with its
altered meaning. While at the beginning of the Ottoman rule in the Balkans
the conquerors pursued a rather accommodationist approach toward the estab-
lished practices and local elites, explained mainly by the manpower shortage,
over time they slowly incorporated and subsumed into the newly evolving cen-
tralized system the pre-existing Christian elements and gradually replaced them
with the devşirme recruits and more centralized military organization.
The ease with which the Muslim state of the Ottomans adopted many
Christian practices and allowed for the advancement of members of the
pre-conquest Christian nobility to the highest ranks in its administration in-
duced some scholars to label it “syncretic”, and others to conclude that up
until the fifteenth century Ottoman frontier society lived in a state of “meta-
doxy”, where religious syncretism and militancy coexisted peacefully.40 More

37 İnalcık, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest”, 103–107.

38 Ercan, Bulgarlar ve Voynuklar.
39 Lowry, The Nature, pp. 128–30; Metin Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants: The Transformation of the
Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
40 Lowry, The Nature; Kafadar, Between Two Worlds.
92 Mariya Kiprovska

recently, the validity of terms such as “syncretic” and “tolerant” describing the
early Ottoman policy toward the pre-conquest local conditions and individ-
uals has been seriously challenged, especially when we are reminded that the
Muslim narratives from the same period illustrate that toleration was not an
omnipresent feature of religious coexistence and that in fact the co-habitation
of different religious groups abounded with anti-syncretic tensions too.41 Yet,
as much as these tensions should be taken into account and as much as we
should probably move away from the term “syncretism”, which clearly ob-
scures the differences among the religious groups in the Empire and muddles
the complicated matrix of power relations during the Ottoman state building
process, it seems that it was not religious antagonism which prevailed in the
Balkans in the wake of the Ottoman conquest. Rather, cooperation and al-
liance with the locals seem to have dominated the Ottomans’ initial policy,
while for their Christian allies it appears that the allegiance to the new rulers
was a matter of carefully calculated priorities. It suffices to take a closer look
only at the development of the uprising of George Kastrioti (Skanderbeg)
to catch a glimpse of the complicated relations among the Christian nobles,
even members of Skanderbeg’s family themselves, some of whom pledged al-
legiance to him only in pursuit of their petty feuds, while others sided with
the Ottomans, seeking the preservation of their own possessions. Although,
generally speaking, the uprising may be called Christian, since no Muslims
supported it, it certainly was not in itself an uprising of the Christians. Rather,
its development showcases the heterogeneous character of the local nobility
and populace, each of whom defended their own particular interests while
entering alliances and negotiating favourable positions for their own sake. As
convincingly demonstrated by Oliver Jens Schmitt, the anatomy of the rebel-
lion of Skanderbeg could be illustrative for the Ottoman conquest throughout
the Balkans as a whole: it was the regional conflict of competing nobles, so-

41 The concept of “syncretism”, commonly emphasized in reference to the early Ottoman state
building, was recently challenged by Tijana Krstić. On the basis of contemporary conversion
narratives, she argues that religious coexistence in the fifteenth-century Ottoman state was
not free of tensions between the different religious groups. Moreover, the politics of religious
synthesis and toleration was closely linked to the evolution of the Ottoman imperial ideology
and to the constant reconfiguration of the elites and their relation to the center of imperial
power. Tijana Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the
Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp.
16–19, 51–74; eadem, “Conversion and Converts to Islam in Ottoman Historiography of
the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries”, in Writing History at the Ottoman Court: Editing the
Past, Fashioning the Future, ed. by H. Erdem Çıpa and Emine Fetvacı (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013), pp. 58–79. Cf. the contribution of Krstić in
the present volume.
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 93

cial groups, conflicting interests and personal rivalries that indeed facilitated
the Ottoman conquest and should be all taken into serious consideration.42
Clearly, some constituents of the pre-conquest social order sought to preserve
the dismemberment of the Balkan territories, which enabled them to preserve
their own dominions and resources, while others sought the security of a more
centralized political system, which besides offering safety also opened up op-
portunities for career advancement.
The same must hold true not only for the Albanian Christians, but also for
other members of the Balkan population cooperative with the Ottomans, be
they of noble or ordinary descent. What is noteworthy, however, is that their
subsequent integration into the Ottoman system obfuscates our observations
as to the evolution or decline of their position in the increasingly centralised
Ottoman polity. Such an opportunity presents itself when one traces the ca-
reers of the families of Balkan marchlords, who joined the Ottomans at the
beginning of their expansion, retained hereditary rights to their posts and thus
created dynasties of military commanders. The eponymous founders of two of
these state-founding families, namely the Mihaloğlus and the Evrenosoğlus, are
commonly used to exemplify the conciliatory policy of the Ottomans toward
the pre-conquest nobility.43 The practice of subsuming members of the for-
mer ruling elites and conditions into the Ottoman state, it was argued, was a
continuation of a process that already began in Bithynia (the fatherland of the
Ottoman state) at the beginning of the fourteenth century.44 The most com-
monly used example of this Ottoman-Christian symbiosis is the figure of the
Byzantine renegade Köse Mihal, who joined Osman from the outset of the Ot-
toman state-building in Anatolia.45 Later, the descendants of this state-found-
ing family enjoyed the careers of military commanders under whose command

42 Schmitt, Skanderbeg; idem, “Anatomie d’une rébellion”, 55–90.

43 Lowry, The Nature, pp. 55–94.
44 Ibidem, p. 130; İnalcık, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest”, 103; idem, “Osmanlı Beyliği’nin
Kurucusu Osman Beg”, Belleten 71 (2007): pp. 479–537.
45 Kafadar, Between Two Worlds, pp. 127, 144–145; Lowry, The Nature, pp. 57, 66, 89–90; Hop-
wood, “Low-Level Diplomacy between Byzantines and Ottoman Turks”, pp. 153–154; idem,
“Christian-Muslim Symbiosis in Anatolia”, pp. 13–30; idem, “Peoples, Territories and States:
The Formation of the Beğliks of Pre-Ottoman Turkey”, in Decision Making and Change in the
Ottoman Empire, ed. C. E. Farah (Kirksville: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1993), 134–
135; idem, “Mudara”, in Aspects of Ottoman History: Papers from CIEPO IX, Jerusalem , ed. Amy
Singer and Amnon Cohen (=Scripta Hierosolymitana 35) (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The
Hebrew University, 1994), pp. 157–158; idem, “Osman, Bithynia and the Sources”, Archív
Orientální, Supplementa VIII (1998), 159–160; idem, “Tales of Osman: Legend or History?”,
in XIII. Türk Tarih Kongresi, Ankara 1999, vol. 3, part 3 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2002),
pp. 2049–2060; idem, “Living on the Margin – Byzantine Farmers and Turkish Herders”,
Journal of Mediterranean Studies 10:1–2 (2000): 101–102.
94 Mariya Kiprovska

many of the initial Ottoman conquests in the Balkans were accomplished. Like
the other prominent families of frontier lords (uc begleri) from the Evrenosoğlu,
Turahanoğlu, İshakoğlu and Malkoçoğlu families, they are usually referred to
in the scholarly literature as enjoying special status in the Ottoman frontier
regions, holding hereditarily the governorship in these regions and retaining
relative autonomy vis-à-vis the central Ottoman administration.46 They had
their own large retinues and possessed a great many slaves, as well as huge
hereditary estates in the regions under their governance, emerging practically
as territorial magnates too.47 Their authority in the border districts was attest-
ed by their right to allocate timar-estates to their own retinues as late as the
fifteenth century (when the first Ottoman survey registers were compiled).48
Most importantly, their power in the Ottoman polity was most purely attested
by their interference in the Ottoman dynasty’s internal political struggles for
supremacy49 – they were a major factor during the Ottoman civil war between
the sons of Bayezid I that followed the dissolution of the empire after the battle
of Ankara (1402),50 during the first years of the rule of Murad II (1421–1451),
when his supremacy was contested by yet another pretender to the Ottoman
throne, Düzme Mustafa,51 or even at the beginning of the sixteenth century,

46 Halil İnalcık, “The Emergence of the Ottomans”, in The Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1
A: The Central Islamic Lands from Pre-Islamic Times to the First World War, ed. P. M. Holt,
Ann Lambton and Bernard Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp.
283–286; Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr, “En marge d’un acte concernant le pengyek et les
aqinği”, Revue des études islamiques 37 (1969): pp. 21–47; Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire,
1300–1650. The Structure of Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 186–188;
Fodor, “Ottoman Warfare, 1300–1453,” pp. 204–205.
47 Ömer Lütfi Barkan, “XV. ve XVI. Asırlarda Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Toprak İşçilerinin
Organizasyonu Şekilleri. III: Rumeli’ndeki Kulluklar ve Ortakçı Kullar”, İstanbul Üniversitesi
İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 1:4 (1940): pp. 397–447; idem, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Bir
İskân ve Kolonizasyon Metodu Olarak Vakıflar ve Temlikler”, Vakıflar Dergisi 2 (1942): pp.
359–360; idem, “Türk-İslâm Toprak Hukuku Tatbikatının Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Al-
dığı Şekiller. III: İmparatorluk Devrinde Toprak Mülk ve Vakıflarının Hususiyeti”, in idem,
Türkiye’de Toprak Meselesi – Toplu Eserler 1 (Istanbul: Gözlem Yayınları, 1980), pp. 249–280.
The hereditary family vakfs (pious foundations) of the marcher lords are the subject matter
of virtually all recent studies on these noble families.
48 İnalcık, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest”, 103–129; idem, Fatih Devri, pp. 137–184.
49 İnalcık, “The Emergence of the Ottomans”, pp. 285–286.
50 Nedim Filipović, Princ Musa i šejh Bedreddin (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1971); Dimitris Kastritsis,
The Sons of Bayezid: Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402–
1413 (Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 135–194; idem, “Religious Affiliation and Political
Alliances in the Ottoman Succession Wars of 1402–1413”, Medieval Encounters 13 (2007):
pp. 222–242.
51 Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1481 (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1990), pp. 91–95; John
Melville-Jones, “Three Mustafas (1402–1430)”, Annuario 5 (2004):  pp. 255–276.
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 95

when Selim I (1512–1520) relied largely on the support of the Balkan begs to
come to power.52
And while the example of the Christian renegade Köse Mihal is widely used
to illustrate the Ottoman-Christian cooperation and the pragmatic character of
the early Ottoman polity in Anatolia, which absorbed many of the pre-existing
conditions and used the administrative experience and military skills of the es-
tablished elite, the history of the other noble families who played an important
role in the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans is somewhat shrouded in mystery.
Historical research to date has accentuated mainly the role of these families
in the Ottoman military campaigns in the Balkan lands, emphasis being laid
on the leading positions and relative autonomy they enjoyed in the Ottoman
border (uc) zones and the architectural legacy they left in the frontier territories
granted to them by the sultans as a reward for the role they played in the sub-
jugation of the respective regions.53 Of particular note are the ground-breaking
studies of Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr, which reveal in a consistent manner that
the early Ottoman conquests in the Balkans were largely made by members of
these mini-dynasties, who not only played an essential role in the military oper-
ations, but were also a factor in the nascent Ottoman state-building process as a
whole and certainly should not be perceived as the obedient agents of the Otto-
man sultan in the Balkan territories, since they often acted somewhat autono-
mously and quite divergently.54 Undoubtedly, recent scholarship has succeeded

52 H. Erdem Çıpa, Yavuz’un Kavgası: I. Selim’in Saltanat Mücadelesi (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi
Yayınları, 2013), pp. 145–220.
53 Noteworthy in this respect is the pioneering work of Machiel Kiel, who drew attention to the
architectural patronage of the marcher lords in a number of localities in the Balkans and thus
opened the way for a more detailed analysis of their role in the governing of the border prov-
inces. A number of Kiel’s studies are available in his volume of collected articles Studies on the
Ottoman Architecture of the Balkans (Aldershot: Variorum, 1992). A more general assessment
of the architectural heritage of members of the noble families and its role in “conquering” the
Balkan territories is presented by the author in his “The incorporation of the Balkans into
the Ottoman Empire, 1353–1453”, in The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 1: Byzantium
to Turkey, 1071–1453, ed. Kate Fleet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.
138–191.
54 Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr, “La conquête d’Andrianople par les Turcs: la penetration tur-
que en Thrace et la valeur des chroniques ottomanes”, Travaux et Mémoires 1 (1965): pp.
439–461; eadem, “En marge d’un acte concernant le pengyek et les aqinği”, 21–47; eadem,
“La vita de Seyyid ‘Alī Sultān et la conquête de la Thrace par les Turcs”, in Denis Sinor (ed.),
Proceedings of the 27th International Congress of Orientalists, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 13th–19th
August, 1967 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971), pp. 275–276; eadem, “Seyyid ‘Ali Sultan
d’après les registres ottomans: l’installation de l’Islam hétérodoxe en Thrace”, in The Via
Egnatia under Ottoman Rule (1380–1699). Halcyon Days in Crete II: A Symposium Held
in Rethymnon, 9–11 January 1994, ed. Elizabeth A. Zachariadou (Rethymno, 1996), pp.
45–66; Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr and Raúl Estangüi Gómez, “Autour du document de
96 Mariya Kiprovska

in unveiling details from the history of these noble families, which now renders
them as mini-dynasties with substantial military entourage, financial resources
and landed properties, but it seems that studies still fail to situate them properly
within the context of the multifaceted network of power relations in the late
Balkan/Byzantine and early Ottoman Balkans.
Only recently, the figure of the founder of a different frontier lords’ family,
namely Evrenos Beg, was made central to the debate of the syncretic character
of the Ottoman entity with regard to the absorption of the former military
elite into the Ottoman system. The latest extensive studies by Heath Lowry
on the Evrenosoğlu family have confirmed what was previously suspected –
that the founder of this mini-dynasty, Evrenos Beg, was of Christian origin.55
Evrenos Beg’s father, whose name appears in several hitherto used Ottoman
documents and dedicatory inscriptions as ‘Isa Beg or Prangi ‘Isa Beg, appears
to have been of noble Serbian descent under the name Branko Lazar(t), as
listed in an endowment deed issued by Evrenosoğlu ‘İsa Beg for his pious
endowment in Yenice-i Vardar.56 This latest finding fits in nicely with a theory
already expressed by the same author, namely that the spirit of latitudinarian-
ism was a key aspect of the early Ottoman rule, the “Islamo-Christian syncre-
tism” having its practical considerations, partially explained by the shortage
of manpower, or more specifically a dearth of individuals with the skills and
experience necessary to ensure military expansion and administration in the
pre-existing predominantly Christian environment.57 What makes the most
recent finding of Lowry’s of particular interest, however, is that it moves away
from the previously widely explored phenomenon that the marcher lords were
granted extensive landed properties in the border territories they conquered
and it definitely suggests that they were indeed active in the territories of their
previous occupation and that they might have joined the Ottoman army to ac-
tually retain the authority they enjoyed over their ancestral domains. Extend-

1386 en faveur de Radoslav Sablja (Sabya/Sampias): du beylicat au sultanat, étape méconnue

de l’État ottoman”, Turcica 45 (2014): pp. 159–186.
55 In his earlier studies Heath Lowry rejected the widely accepted opinion that Evrenos Beg was
of Karesi Turkish origin from north-western Anatolia and instead suggested that he might
well have been a son of a Catalan mercenary active in the Balkans, Prangi/Franki Isa. Cf.
Lowry, The Nature, pp. 57–59 and Heath Lowry – İsmail Erünsal, Notes & Documents on the
Evrenos Dynasty of Yenice-i Vardar (Giannitsa) (Istanbul: Bahçeşehir University Press, 2010),
pp. 123–124.
56 Heath Lowry, Fourteenth Century Ottoman Realities: In Search of Hâcı-Gâzi Evrenos (Istanbul:
Bahçeşehir University Press, 2012), pp. 4–5; Ayşegül Kılıç, “Evrenos Bey’in Babası Pranko
Lazart’ın (Pranko İsa) Vakfı ve Türbesi,” Ankara Üniversitesi Güneydoğu Avrupa Çalışmaları
Uygulama ve Araştırma Merkezi Dergisi (GAMER) 1 (2012): pp. 87–99.
57 Lowry, The Nature, pp. 134–135.
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 97

ing this hypothesis even further, Evrenos and his father being the case in point,
one could even presume that there was personal revenge involved in Evrenos
Beg’s military conquests under the Ottoman banner. If it is accepted that
Evrenos’s father (Branko Lazar) was of Serbian descent, as his name definitely
implies, it would appear that he joined the Ottomans quite early in their mil-
itary advance in the Balkans and was acting, now under the name of ‘Isa Beg,
against his fellow Christian lords in the area. These could easily have been his
own adversaries from the times before the Ottoman conquests. They may have
even been his relatives. The fact that Branko Lazar/Prangi ‘Isa Beg was killed
on the battlefield near Radoviš (in today’s Republic of Macedonia),58 where his
son erected a mausoleum (türbe) to commemorate the martyrdom of his fa-
ther some time during the second half of the fourteenth century, substantiates
the possibility that he was actually fighting against his well-known adversaries
from the pre-conquest period. Further clues substantiating the former connec-
tion of Evrenos’s family to Macedonia are reflected by the fifteenth-century
Ottoman chronicler Neşri. An earlier source integrated into Neşri’s narrative
reveals that in 1389 sultan Murad I (1362–1389) entrusted Evrenos with the
task of leading the Ottoman army to the battlefield of Kosovo (via Sama-
ko-Dupniçe-Köstendil) because he was familiar with the region.59 In light of
the fact that Ottoman control over these territories was yet to be established, it
appears that Evrenos Beg must have acquired the knowledge about the routes
and topography of the lands still controlled by the Dragaši and Mrnjavčevići
before the Ottomans set foot on European soil. Although there is much more
to be researched with regard to the precise descent of Branko Lazar, it seems
logical to suggest that he must have been one of the local power holders who
joined forces with the Ottomans to preserve their authority in the area of their
previous occupation and who continued the fight for domination with their
former rivals in the region.
What could, for the time being, only be supposed for the ancestral lands of
Evrenos Beg and his father is clearly visible in the territories controlled by the
founder of the other prominent uc begleri family of Christian origin, namely
the Mihaloğulları. As attested by the Ottoman narrative sources, Köse Mihal,
a Byzantine military chieftain of Harmankaya region north of the Sangarios
River, formed an alliance with the founder of the Ottoman state Osman Beg,

58 The territory once belonged to the principality of Konstantin Dejanović before being perma-
nently annexed to the Ottoman realm. For the tomb of ‘Isa Beg as reflected in the Ottoman
documents cf. Aleksandar Stojanovski, “Zaveštanieto na Evrenos-beg vo nahijata Konče”,
Glasnik 40:1 (1996): pp. 103–110.
59 Kitâb-ı Cihan-Nümâ. Neşrî Tarihi, ed. Faik Reşit Unat and Mehmed Köymen (Ankara: Türk
Tarih Kurumu, 1957), 271–273.
98 Mariya Kiprovska

joined his military raids in Bithynia quite early in the reign of Osman,60 sub-
sequently embraced Islam61 and played a diplomatic role as an intermediary
between the Ottomans and the other Byzantine lords in the area (most notably
during the negotiations concerning the surrender of Bursa).62 It seems that
Köse Mihal also retained the rights of possession over his landed properties
from the pre-conquest period. Later Ottoman documents suggest that the
lands with which the founder of the family was associated were held hereditar-
ily by his descendants as late as the last quarter of the sixteenth century, when
the private property (mülk) was sold to another individual. Moreover, it was
not only the estates of the family which were preserved within the Ottoman
system, but also the leadership of a small infantry contingent (yaya/piyade)
from the Harmankaya area, which was held on a hereditary basis by members
of the family at least until the end of the sixteenth century.63
What is noteworthy in the case of Köse Mihal is the nature of his relation
with Osman Beg during the nascent years of the Ottoman state. It appears
that in the beginning it was rather an alliance that was formed between the
Byzantine Michael and the Ottoman sultan Osman. It was an alliance which
was mutually beneficial for both sides. On the one hand, Osman, already
stationed on the high plateau of Söğüt, needed to secure his rearguard to the
north when he was moving to the south en route to his summer pastures
and therefore formed peaceful relations with Mihal, who was controlling the
low lands of the Middle Sangarios/Sakarya valley and thus was in control of
the strategic routes traversing the area under his dominance.64 On the other

60 Halil İnalcık, “The Struggle between Osman Gazi and the Byzantines for Nicaea”, in İznik
Throughout History, ed. Işıl Akbaygil et al (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası, 2003), pp. 71–77;
idem, “Osman Beg”, 505–506, 516–519; Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr, “L’installation des Ot-
tomans”, in La Bithynie au Moyen Âge, ed. Bernard Geyer and Jacques Lefort (Paris: Éditions
P. Lethielleux, 2003), pp. 351–374, esp. 360.
61 The conversion of Köse Mihal and its representation in the Ottoman narrative tradition is
discussed at length by Krstić, “Conversion and Converts to Islam in Ottoman Historiogra-
phy”, pp. 62–65.
62 Lowry, The Nature, pp. 56–57.
63 Mariya Kiprovska, “Byzantine Renegade and Holy Warrior: Reassessing the Character of
Köse Mihal”, in Defterology: Festschrift in Honor of Heath Lowry, ed. Selim Kuru and Baki
Tezcan = Journal of Turkish Studies 40 (2013): pp. 254–258.
64 Köse Mihal not only controlled the strategic route leading from the Marmara to Ankara
along the basin of the Sangarios/Sakarya River, but he also dominated the region between the
Sakarya and Göynük Rivers, where two more important communication arteries traversed
the area – the one linking Nicaea with Ankara via Gölpazarı and the other following the
basin of the Göynük River via Geyve-Taraklı-Göynük. Rudi Paul Lindner, Explorations in
Ottoman Prehistory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), p. 50; Jacques Lefort,
“Les communication entre Constantinople et la Bithynie”, in Constantinople and Its Hin-
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 99

hand, forming an alliance with Osman was a way for the Byzantine lord of
Harmankaya to secure his position as a governor of the region he controlled.
The mutually beneficial relations thus established between the two sides guar-
anteed the life and property of the Byzantine lord in the unstable conditions
of the Byzantine border zone. The general situation of despair in the Asian
frontiers of the Byzantine Empire,65 on the other hand, and the inability of
the central Byzantine authorities to secure the payments and properties of the
soldiers, made it easy for the local leaders such as Mihal the Beardless to align
himself with the emerging masters of the region. This alliance proved to be
more useful, not only for keeping intact the properties of the apostate, but for
defending his military post as well.
Undoubtedly, the strong position the frontier lords’ families gained during
the first centuries of the Ottoman state was favoured by the peculiar condi-
tions in the times of extensive territorial expansion. Entrusted with the lead-
ership of most of the military expeditions in the Balkans and subsequently
with the administration of the border regions, these frontier lords accumu-
lated large resources in terms of spoils of war, captives, and private territorial
estates granted to them by the sultans in return for their military deeds. What
is noteworthy regarding the authority they enjoyed during the first centu-
ries of the Ottoman state is that they emerged as a political factor as well.66
As already mentioned, they played a key role in the period of Ottoman civil
war (1402–1413) at the beginning of the fifteenth century after the dismem-
berment of Bayezid I’s empire as a consequence of the Ottomans’ defeat at
Ankara by Timur’s army.67 What is indicative of this period is that it was a
time of complex political alliances between the Christian powers, individual
power brokers and Ottoman pretenders to the throne. Although the period of
the dynastic Ottoman wars offered an excellent opportunity for the Christian
powers to unite against the common enemy, no such alliance was formed. In-

terland. Papers from the Twenty-seventh Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Oxford, April
1993, ed. Cyril Mango and Gilbert Dagron (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), pp. 207–218;
idem, “Les grandes routes médiévales”, in La Bithynie au Moyen Âge, ed. Geyer and Lefort,
pp. 461–472; Raif Kaplanoğlu, Osmanlı Devleti’nin Kuruluşu (Istanbul: Avrasya Etnografya
Vakfı, 2000), pp. 51–55.
65 Angeliki Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins: The Foreign Policy of Andronicus II, 1282–
1328 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 78–79, 82–88; Mark Bartusis, The
Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204–1453 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, 1992), pp. 74–75; Savvas Kyriakidis, Warfare in Late Byzantium, 1204–1453
(Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. 23–28, 78; idem, “The Revolt of the General Kassianos in
Mesothynia (1306)”, Byzantion Nea Hellás 33 (2014): pp. 165–180.
66 İnalcık, “The Emergence of the Ottomans”, pp. 285–286.
67 Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1481, pp. 55–73; Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid.
100 Mariya Kiprovska

stead, those powers supported “whichever of Bayezid’s sons appeared to offer

them the most advantages and pose the least danger”.68 The Byzantine emper-
or Manuel II, Venice, Genoa, the Wallachian voyvoda Mircea the Elder, as well
as the rival Serbian lords Stefan Lazarević and George Branković all pursued
their own political agendas by establishing alliances with different pretenders
to the Ottoman throne but failed to form a coalition between themselves. Un-
der these circumstances, similar to the Balkan Christian powers, the families
of the uc begleri, most prominently those of Evrenos, Mihal, and Paşa Yiğit,
also pledged their support to the claimant who would guarantee their own
interests. Thus, alienated with the reconciliatory policies of prince Süleyman
toward his Christian neighbours, they switched to Musa Çelebi’s camp, who
pursued the aggressive politics of his father and thus complied with the de-
mands and secured the livelihood of the frontier lords. The support of the uc
begleri, on the other hand, practically ensured the victory of Musa over his
brother Süleyman in Rumeli. The subsequent centralizing policies, followed
by Musa Çelebi, which aimed at undermining the power of the uc begleri and
replacing them with his own men, resulted in the alienation of these begs, the
most vigorous of whom – Evrenos and Mihaloğlu Mehmed – escaped to join
the ultimate victor in the dynastic wars, Mehmed Çelebi, in Anatolia. Finally,
Musa, brought to the Balkans largely through the support of the voyvoda of
Wallahia Mircea the Elder, the Byzantine emperor, and the begliks of Karaman
and Isfendiyar, who sought to prevent unification of the Ottoman realm under
the rule of Süleyman, was defeated by Mehmed Çelebi, who had the support
of the discontented frontier lords of Rumili, the confederacy of Dulkadir in
Anatolia, the Byzantines, and the Serbian lords under the leadership of Stefan
Lazarević. What is symptomatic in this period of diverse political alliances
and divided loyalties is the strength that the frontier lords acquired in terms
of their political aspirations – indeed they played an influential role in this
turbulent period and the support they offered to any of the pretenders was
decisive in their eventual victory over their enemies.69
What can be observed even through the evolving power of the uc begleri in
the emerging Ottoman entity is that it was rather a history of alliance from the
outset, mutually beneficial for both the local elites and the Ottoman rulers.
Initially, forming an alliance with the Ottomans assured to both Evrenos and
Mihal the preservation of their possessions and military posts. Favoured by the
preferential position that they enjoyed under the circumstances of Ottoman
expansionistic conquest, the uc begleri emerged as distinct power holders within

68 Kastritsis, “Religious Affiliation and Political Alliances”, 223.

69 Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid, pp. 135–142, 161–171, 188–194; idem, “Religious Affilia-
tion and Political Alliances”, pp. 222–242.
 Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? 101

the Ottoman entity who sought the alliance of an Ottoman ruler who would
guarantee the preservation of their growing authority. On the other hand, it
was the accommodationist policies of the first Ottoman rulers towards the es-
tablished elites and institutions which faciliated their expansion and establish-
ment in the conquered lands. Although initially vital for the emerging Otto-
man entity, the increased power of the begs of the marches gradually threatened
the very authority of sultanic supremacy in turbulent times. An alliance was
sought and subsequent concessions were granted to the marcher lords on the
part of the sultans in order to preserve their allegiance and thus secure the
sultans’ sovereignty. A complete subsuming of these potential power brokers
within the Ottoman system was actually possible only with a territorial as well
as institutional and bureaucratic consolidation of the Ottoman state under the
control of an authoritarian ruler. This process seems to have reached a certain
firmness under the rule of Mehmed II, whose centralistic policies and increas-
ingly bureaucratized state could overpower the authority of the uc begleri. It
seems that their semi-autonomous position was considerably weakened with
the increase of the personal sultanic army, the Janissaries. The uc begleri were
appointed sancak begis on the Ottoman border territories, but were now under
the direct command of the beglerbegi. The conscription of their retinues, the
akıncıs, also seems to have been fully incorporated into the Ottoman military
system, as evidenced by their regular recording in the empire registration sys-
tem of the auxiliary forces.70
With the ever-increasing centralizing Ottoman policy following the con-
quest of Constantinople, and with the growing Safavid threat in the East, a
process of marginalizing different social groups in the Ottoman realm, includ-
ing the Turkmen tribes, ‘heterodox’ dervishes and frontier warriors, forced all
these segments of the Ottoman social order to form yet another alliance in re-
sponse to their diminished position. This alliance could be observed both in the
literary production of these groups and in their architectural patronage. Thus,
a special type of hagiographical literature, namely the velâyetnames of certain
Sufi saints, developed and was textualized at the time of these dervish groups’
marginalization; a typical feature of this genre seems to be its emphasis on
conquests, holy war and heroism, praising the military exploits of the famous
uc begleris’ families and openly criticizing the sultanic authority.71 The emer-
gence of this velâyetname literature could be read as a symbol of both groups’
(dervishes’ and frontier lords’) dissatisfaction with the centralistic policies of the

70 Mariya Kiprovska, “The Military Organization of the Akıncıs in Ottoman Rumelia” (MA
thesis, Bilkent University, Ankara, 2004).
71 Zeynep Yürekli Görkay, “Legend and Architecture in the Ottoman Empire: The Shrines of
Seyyid Gazi and Hacı Bektaş” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2005), pp. 57–73.
102 Mariya Kiprovska

Ottoman sultans.72 On the other hand, the fact that the frontier lords’ families
of Mihal, Evrenos and Malkoç patronized architecturally the principal dervish
hospices in Anatolia and the Balkans (Seyyid Battal Gazi, Hacı Bektaş and Şü-
caeddin Veli in today’s Anatolian Turkey, as well as Otman Baba, Kıdemli Baba,
Akyazılı Baba and Demir Baba in today’s Bulgaria), attests to the coalition that
was formed between the dissatisfactioned mendicant dervishes on the one hand
and the marginalized state-founding dynasties and their retinues on the other
against the centralistic imperial policies of the Ottoman state.73
The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans was not purely disruptive, as was
commonly emphasized by the nationalistic historiographies. Many administra-
tive divisions, institutions, as well as members of the Balkan elites were incor-
porated into the Ottoman system. Part of the Balkan nobility did not disappear
with the Ottoman conquest, rather it became submerged in the Ottoman sys-
tem, trying to preserve to some extent its previous status and authority while
seeking to survive in the transition from the Byzantino-Slavic system to the
Ottoman domination. It was certainly easier for the lower-ranking military
officers, who largely retained the privileges they enjoyed in the former con-
ditions, to be subsumed under the new order, which brought relative security
to their position. As for the higher Balkan nobility, it had its own reasons for
coping with or opposing the Ottoman suzerainty, fighting against rivals from
the pre-conquest times or simply retaining rights on holdings. Yet, although
they were incorporated seemingly smoothly into the Ottoman system, while
trying to preserve their status and position, members of the pre-conquest elites
formed new alliances even within the Ottoman realm. There was a constant
reconfiguration of mutual interests and power relations which was relentlessly
renegotiated in line with the evolution of circumstances over time, and which
has to be considered an indispensable aspect of the evolving imperial ideology
in the process of early Ottoman state building.

72 The declining prominence of the frontier lords is masterfully contextualized within the
framework of the Ottoman dynasty’s centralizing policy by Zeynep Yürekli, who examines
the raider-commanders’ architectural patronage of Bektashi shrines in the context of the in-
creased social cohesion of the marginalized segments of Ottoman society. See her Architecture
and Hagiography in the Ottoman Empire: The Politics of Bektashi Shrines in the Classical Age
(Ashgate, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies, 2012).
73 Yürekli, Architecture and Hagiography in the Ottoman Empire; Mariya Kiprovska, “The Mi-
haloğlu Family: Gazi Warriors and Patrons of Dervish Hospices”, Osmanlı Araştırmaları 32
(2008): pp. 173–202.
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THE OTTOMAN CONQUEST
OF THE BALKANS

Interpretations and Research Debates

EDITED BY
OLIVER JENS SCHMITT
 Vorgelegt von w. M. Oliver Jens Schmitt
in der Sitzung vom

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ISBN 978-3-7001-7890-3

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Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien

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 Contents

Oliver Jens Schmitt

Introduction: The Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans. Research
Questions and Interpretations 7

Maurus Reinkowski
Conquests Compared. The Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans and
the Mashreq in an Islamicate context 47

Toni Filiposki
Before and After the Battle of Maritsa (1371): The Significance
of the Non-Ottoman Factors in the Ottoman Conquest of the
Balkans 65

Mariya Kiprovska
Ferocious Invasion or Smooth Incorporation? Integrating the Es-
tablished Balkan Military System into the Ottoman Army 79

Grigor Boykov
The Human Cost of Warfare: Population Loss During the Ottoman
Conquest and the Demographic History of Bulgaria in the Late
Middle Ages and Early Modern Era 103

Tijana Krstić
New Directions in the Study of Conversion to Islam in Ottoman
Rumeli Between the Fourteenth and the Seventeenth Centuries:
Reconsidering Methods, Theories and Terminology 167

Andrei Pippidi
Taking Possession of Wallachia: Facts and Interpretations 189

Ştefan S. Gorovei / Maria Magdalena Szekely

Old Questions, Old Clichés. New Approaches, New Results?
The Case of Moldavia 209
6 Content

Dubravko Lovrenović
The Ottoman Conquest of Bosnia in 1463 as Interpreted by Bosnian
Franciscan Chroniclers and Historiographers (A Historic(Al) Event
With Political and Psychological Ramifications That Are Still Present
Today) 243

Ovidiu Cristea
Venice Confronting the Ottoman Empire: A Struggle for Survival
(Fourteenth–Sixteenth Centuries) 265

Index 281