July 28, 2026 • 38 mins
While often forgotten by the global West, the Ottoman Empire was an absolute superpower in its heyday. As the Empire expanded across three separate continents, they also practiced mass enslavement -- and used it to power their army. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the rise of the Empire's elite fighting force: the Jannisaries. Originally composed of kidnapped and enslaved children from conquered lands, over time the Janissaries gained a unique social position that frightened the Sultan. Eventually, this led to their downfall -- and, arguably, the downfall of the Ottoman Empire overall.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, follow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the man,
the myth, the legend, our super producer Max, the free train, Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
To choo, you know, potato klimata, everything but the poop poop.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So we just for the silly rhyme that is none
other than mister Noel Brown. Noel, how you're feeling today?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
And now I'm feeling fine, feeling fancy the footloosen, fancy
free as they say. Excited to talk about some Ottoman
Empire history with you today, sir, Oh.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Wow, sir, Yes, without a cravat. They do call me
Ben Bull and check out our ongoing conversation about what
doth define a cravat today. As you said, Noel, we
are returning to something that's been fascinating us for a while.
(01:30):
It's the Automan Empire.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Af you.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
A while back, I can't remember what year it was,
we looked into something called the harem system of the
Ottoman Empire, which is not necessarily what we think of
when we think of harems here in the West, but
we also even more recently. Know, we've also spent some
time exploring the fact in fiction the myth and legends
(01:57):
surrounding elite fighting forces like Nights or Berserkers.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Bat back. I love those guys. Yeah, really charming, grated parties,
super fun hangs. Also jumping real quick.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
It was July second and fourth of twenty twenty four,
which is kind of wild that that was over two
years ago that we did that episode about the Harems.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
And another thing that's wild, Max, that you pointed out
to Ben and I off Mike, is that I believe
we've got something of a ridiculous anniversary coming up. Oh yeah,
it was ridiculous diversity.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, our nine year show of versary.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Wow, talk about that on base camp.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yes, it's this October, folks, so wish us luck, Pat
us on the back, feed us orange slices, like folks
at the end of a marathon, right thing, orange slices.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
That's vaguely Harem codd you know, like batting you with
like with palm leaves and feeding you fruits. You know,
was it wasn't?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, Marlon Renders running out with an orange peel in
his mouth and Godfather and choke.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
That's right, he was right, a silly goofy granddad. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And the cat who stole the show and the Godfather
was apparently I just learned this guy's a stray cat
that wandered on set and Marlin just said, I want
him in the.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Show, dude. Speaking of stuff like that, Ben, I just
found out. I don't know. This is not a spoiler,
but if you guys haven't seen Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey yet,
I look forward to chatting with you about it. But
there is a scene where it's just the most epic
sweeping ship kind of wide shot and there is just
a pod of dolphins that just are like leaping in
(03:37):
sync and it's like they see gi that. Nope, they
were just there and Nolan just kept the camera rolling.
I mean Nolan kept it rolling. It's incredible. It's honestly
one of the most memorable shots in the movie because
it just feels magic. It's I wasn't in love with
it at first, but the more I think about it,
and as I got further into it, I really began
(03:58):
to get invested. And I've been thinking about it a lot,
and I look forward to seeing it again.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
And we can't wait to hear your thoughts on the
Odyssey and ancient empires, folks. The Automan Empire is quite
anomalous to a lot of Western discourse because it bridges
this gap between the medieval to the modern era. And
as we're going to learn in today's episode, they had
(04:24):
an elite fighting force all their own that began as
slaves and over time evolved into a ridiculous superpower. Their
name may be familiar to some of us who play
video games. This is the story of the Janissaries.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
What I'm assuming this is from an assassin's creed situation.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, the video game reference for sure. Okay, Max and
I we're actually talking a little bit off air about this,
sax to want to do it.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Never been a world that I've dipped my toe in,
but you guys are always screaming about I need to
give it a try.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
This is from Seventh Street Revelations, which is I mean,
I think the SEO trilogy. It's the only one the
only games where they have the same assassin, same hero
amongst three. This is the third and final one, which
is cool because it bridges the SEO trilogy with the
with the original original protagonist all Tai Year it's really
(05:19):
cool because you're in Constantinople or by that point it's
just then.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Why cons down to no, we'll get them. That's business.
It's nobody's business but the Turks. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
But talking about the Turks, yeah, you deal with a
good bit of janissaries in the game, and man, they
are not fun when you run into a janisary, at
least not first.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Right, because they're an elite fighting force. Let's learn about
their origin story. First things first, fellow ridiculous historians, The
Ottoman Empire loved slavery.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Wow, that's one way of letting it get right to it.
I love that. And you know what, I don't love that.
Don't love slavery. Just loved them to turn a phrase.
You know what else? They loved them upholstered furniture. What
other empire gets like a piece of furniture that still
remains named directly after them and that is so functional
and good looking the autumn. Yeah, bad guys really into slavery.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Super duper into it. Their empire depended upon the practice
of enslaving conquered people. And we learned about this a
little bit now our previous exploration of the Harem system
The Automan Empire was such a big deal from the
late twelve hundreds CE up until the early nineteen hundreds
(06:44):
and before it fell, the Ottoman Empire stretched across three
separate continents. They gobbled up parts of Western Asia, Eastern Europe,
North Africa. This is still, in twenty twenty six, one
of the largest and longest lasting empires in history.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
It sure was. And you know, that love of slavery,
they didn't come up with it on their own. They
inherited it from the previous empire, the Byzantine Empire. Then,
when people refer to something as being Byzantine, doesn't that
mean kind of like a little bit overly elaborate. Yeah,
it means very complex, Labytine. Yeah, there we go, because
(07:24):
they were into all that kind of stuff. Uh, yeah, they.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Were into They very much had a complex system of adjudication,
rule of law, and so on. And I love your point.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
They were the Romans when the Romans got too far
up their own ass.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh yeah, take from the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah yeah, they came after the fall of Rome as
a less successful spin off, is the way Kevin Page
would put it. From Marvel And with this, you know,
hands on misery to man, as Philip Larkin said, and
I love the point you're making there, knowl that the
Ottomans didn't come up with this idea of slavery on
(08:09):
their own. They got up from the Byzantines, and they
also combined it with Islamic thought, which at that point
was already an established institution. And you know, as villainous
as it is, as unclean as it is, we have
to realize that for a great deal of human history
in slaving other people was kind of more the rule
(08:32):
that it was the exception.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
It was the name of the game. And I mean,
I know I said they were bad guys, I'm sure
there were some some good folks among them. We also
have to remember that a lot of our forefathers, you know,
in these United States, were slave owners. And this isn't
giving anyone a path, but it is sometimes needs to
be tempered a little bit. This idea of they were horrible,
horrific people. You need to take a little bit of
(08:54):
an account of what was going on historically.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, it was definitely normal for people empower for a
long time to enslave others. And part of this was
because most rulers back in the day thought they were
divinely chosen to run everything. They didn't see a problem
with it at all, because they thought slavery was just
(09:18):
another job perk of being better than everyone else. But
it is interesting, Nola Max that slavery was incredibly complex
in the Ottoman Empire and was distinct from the system
of later slavery in the United States.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Right, And it wasn't as directly race based as it
became like in the United States, Like wouldn't people be
enslaved if they were conquered, for example? It was like
there was lots of different criteria for qualifying to be
a slave, right.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Right, Yeah, in slavery, in chattel slavery in the United States,
the slave and overseers were first off, they were very
racially based. Obviously, they were entirely racially based. And they
were not incentivized to keep these people, they're victims alive.
(10:15):
They were overworking folks in horrific conditions, and they said, look,
these are not people, these are property. They're cheap, they're
easily replaceable. So it is more economically feasible, say the
American slave owners, to push people to the breaking point
and then just buy more people as our original victims
(10:36):
die from abuse, malnutrition, fatigue, disease, and most slaves in
the United States systems were black or native people. So
to these slave owners, this class would have booked at
the idea of what they saw as a white or
European slave. The Automan Empire had it, as you were saying,
(10:58):
entirely based on religion more so than skin color. They
thought God was telling them who it was okay to enslave,
but it was God telling them if this person doesn't
follow Islam or your version of Islam, then they're up
for grabs.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, and once these folks were conquered and captured, they
would be sold at a market. They were then placed
in a variety of jobs, not all just hard labor.
Some would of course be that some involved joining the military. Others,
depending on the abilities of the folks that enslave, might
(11:36):
become craftsmen or members of guilds harems as we mentioned
before on that other episode that apparently happened quite a
long time ago. Or it could even be a post
in kind of an admin role, like overseeing bureaucracy, you know,
administering paperwork and things like that.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, yeah, this meant real idea where this religious rubric
for enslavement meant that the Ottoman Empire would snatch people
from Eastern Europe, the Caucuses, Central Asia, et cetera, and
war captives where they're primary victims. And one thing that, yeah,
(12:18):
I love that you're pointing this out. It escapes a
lot of people in the West. Some slaves had the
Automan equivalent of an office job. So let's just imagine, guys,
if you go to your local DMV and you realize
everybody on the other side of the counter is an
enslaved prisoner of war from a few years back, and
(12:38):
you know sometimes the DMV does act like that.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
That's fair.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Also, if I can jump in he real quick, I'm
going to reference the Futurama episode here. I don't know
if this is aged perfectly, but it's in Futurama, so
get mad at them. But there's an episode where they
go looks basically a space like Egypt, and Bender becomes
the Pharaoh, and there is a scene where like Bender's
is always whipping everybody where they're basically the guys, like
the architects, and then they're in their suits, they're looking
(13:03):
at it and they' getting whipped And that's exactly what
I thought about when you reference that.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Then, right, yeah, bender Pharaoh Futurama episode, let's see which
one that is. Oh, it is a pharaoh to remember
the seventeenth episode of the third season of Futurama.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Oh, I'm gonna check that one out. Oh, like an
affair to remember? Okay, thank you? Oh oh and unrelated,
but guys, there's a new season of King of the
Hill and Hulu that just dropped a whole new season. It's
so good.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
That's great, I'll check it out.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Man.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
We also have to recognize, you know, your earlier point
there Noel about people being enslaved and becoming prominent members
of the administration. This meant that slaves could and did
attain these astonishing levels of influence and power within Ottoman society.
(13:54):
Was still terrible obviously being enslaved, but arguably.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Form of meritocracy kind of like isolated, you know, like
I mean, they could rise in the ranks potentially, I guess,
is what we're saying.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, yeah, and arguably it's still not as bad as
the American system of dyeing and cotton and cane fields,
where your life expectancy could be as little as like
six years.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
And again, just to be clear, we are not saying
like they did slavery better, even though they kind of did.
But slavery is bad no matter how you do it. So,
but I think the kind of weighing the two systems
makes sense.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
If a very good looking poop.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
There we go, that's a that's a great way to
say its so for our purposes tonight, now you have
a little bit of context about the Ottoman Empire, do
check out our episodes on how harems actually worked. We
want to talk about another aspect of their intricate dare
we say Byzantine slavery system.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
It's the child tax.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
This is the origin of the janissaries.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Janissary, by the way, comes from a Turkish word that
means new soldier or like looking.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, and so what would happen is Ottoman forests would conquer,
you know, they would move out in search of conquest,
conquer it take on these slaves. This often involved calling
the population in terms of like you know, separating the
old wheat from the chaff aka, killing old people and
then enslaving young men, making them into galley slaves or soldiers. Women.
(15:34):
Of course, would be targeted to become sex workers and
part of these harems or housemaids, handmaids, that kind of thing,
how servants. So the government then instituted a one fifth
tax on slaves taken during war, and from this pool
of manpower, either the sultan at the time Oran or
(15:58):
his son Murai came up with the idea of kind
of sorting them out into these janissaries or elite groups
of soldiers. In this case, this would be to create
a personal army, like answering only to the sultan himself.
So it's like like the King's guard in Game of
(16:18):
Thrones world right, right.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Right, or like those guys on January sixth. This is
one of the things. Yeah right, Okay, we walked out
the three for it. It's fine, But this is one
of the this is brilliant. Well, this is one of
the world's first actual standing armies. We have to remember
before this point in this part of the world, most
(16:40):
fighting forces were civilian conscripts or mercenaries. So after a
big fight is over, after your big Daddy makes you
go and risk your life, if you survive, you go
back to your normal job, which is statistically going to
be small scale farming. You're a surf again, you hunt
you fish.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Speaking a big dad. He's been the only beef I had.
One of very few with The Odyssey was the fact
that little Tom holland little baby boy character kept referring
to Odysseus as my dad. I gotta go find my dad.
It just it took me out of it every time
he said. And he would vacillate between that and father.
But I'm like, pick a lane and make it be father,
(17:19):
because saying dad and being dressed in the sword and
sandals garb. But just it felt odd. And I know
a lot of people have made that complaint, but there
you go.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Also, one thing I can say about Chris's duist film
is that no Greeks were harmed in the production because
there were no Greeks in there.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's true. That also did become the base of a
pretty gnarly, you know, racist take on the casting, which
doesn't seem to have harmed the box office take.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Just leave it absolutely not. Yeah, and this is so
what we're saying is all of the other empires and
would be world rulers and doctor dooms in the area,
they did not have a standing army. The Automan Empire
figured it out with this slave army of the Janis series.
They were one thing and one thing only fighting men.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Ooh, I wonder if this would have been I'm sorry,
I keep Game of Thrones of fying things. But the
Unsullied remember that that was like a yeah, they were
they A lot of them were slaves. They were slaves
and they were.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Not castrated.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
That's right, but some of the just correct. But but
I think there are some historical parallels. As we know,
mister Martin does love to do that. It feels like
he maybe was thinking a little bit about the Turks.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Alle hundred percent. There's a lot of Near Eastern or
Western Asian history wrapped up in in the Song of
Ice and Fire series. And George, if you're tuning in, man,
don't stress out. Just publish Winds of Winter.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
You can catch your back to do it. Man. I
don't think he's gonna do it. I hope he does,
you know. I saw a take on that that I
thought was very interesting because of how hated the conclusion
of the teach this series was. I think he's just
stuck where he's like, well, that was kind of how
I was going to do it now, I got to
do it different, and I don't know how to proceed,
so I'm just going to work on literally anything else.
(19:14):
And I don't need the money, so you.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Know, right right, And he also George, thank you for
tuning in. George also knows one of the big turns
for the janissaries here. The Empire has instituted this practice
(19:37):
of a child tax or dev serme, and this is
a system of tribute where every five years or so,
Christian kids, boys ranging from the age of eight to eighteen,
are abducted from their homes, largely in the Balkan provinces.
At first, they're drafted into Ottoman service just like the
(19:59):
unsullied Dude great comparison. They get subjected to strict rules,
including celibacy for the length of their.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Careers, conditioning, mental and physical. Yep, they're forced to convert
to Islam, swear fealty to the Sultan on pain of death.
They have to live in these barracks away from society.
They're also forcefully circumcised, which you know, for anybody who
has been circumcised, it usually occurs shortly after your birth,
(20:30):
So imagine being seventeen good at that and then a
lot of this too reminds me of some conversations we've
had on stuff they don't want you to know about
Seer School and about like some of the elite, you know,
special ops, you know, forces in the US military that
are subjected to these really really intense regimens of like
(20:52):
psychological conditioning in order to you know, basically feel no
pain and be able to be complete warmish.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Like how the Unsullied spoiler three to one spoilers are
are invited to raise a puppy and then have to
kill it as part of their training. So after you
after you survive this indoctrination, after you get your shaken
bake and you're booted in, you're called a chenne or
a chemi. We don't speak Turkish folks very well, which
(21:24):
just means new recruit. And you have to go to
a special cadet school in the capital city and then
you get you get the equivalent of the ottoman asvab
asvab is what people joining the military in the US
have to take. It's a test that decides what your
role is going to be. So if you've got a
(21:44):
great aim, you become a rifleman. As they figure out
firepower or an archer, artillery artisan, if you're very you know,
good with your hands, engineers, if you can do math.
You can't have any other job while you're a janissary
because you're still a slave, but you are increasingly slave.
(22:06):
Plus which sounds terrible to say, you get paid a
regular salary and if you survive.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
It's a path to retirement almost right.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, yeah, if you survive up to like your forties
or so that you can retire in the Ottoman Empire
pretty much as a person.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
And then jump in here again I have to reference
that Sam Few Drama said again a scene where Fry's
complaining and Fry goes, you know, the worst part about
being a slave is, Yeah, you have to work all day.
You don't get paid. And Leila's like, Fry, that's like
the only part of being a slave.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
It's true. It's true, Leela's on it. So once you're retired, though,
Ben to your point, you could take a spouse, you
could even start a business. You were able to work
in government. Why you would want to do that after
all of that, I do not know. It seems like,
you know, maybe the marrying, starting a business and just
taking it easy might be the move. Hell, maybe you
(23:04):
just really are craving bureaucracy. So similar to how joining
the French Foreign Legion would eventually give legioneers citizenship French citizenship,
former janissaries could in practice achieve a social position equal
to or even exceeding that of a non enslaved civilian who,
you know, comparatively were born on third base. These janissaries
(23:28):
really had to work their way up through the ranks,
but the system was designed for them to be able
to do that to a degree. Again, I gues it
keeps out on like we're like, good job, guys, you
did slavery so much better. But it did seem like
there was a path towards living a normal life. And
again to your point, Ben, that is if you survived
some very dangerous conditions, you know, protecting the Sultan. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah, Because these guys are relied, they're like special operations,
and for centuries, the janissaries are the baddest boys on
the block. They get this fearsome reputation because they are
the first military corps to do stuff like use firearms
in a normalized way. They're always doing drills. They totally
(24:16):
outplass the pop up armies of foreign powers. This is
one of the main reasons why the Automan Empire expanded
so quickly across the Mediterranean and the Balkans. But the
Automan Empire wasn't always at war, right, So where do
you put these enslaved killers in times of peace? You
(24:36):
make them palace guards, you make them local law enforcement,
you make them firefighters, and more and more a lot
to your earlier point, they're no more and more. A
lot of regular folks envied the life of the janiss
area and they were like, this is less of a
death sentence. This is more like a really cool career.
(24:58):
Because some people, even some former janisaries, became governors of provinces.
They one guy became the grand Vizier, which is the
most powerful nonsultant office in the land.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Mm hmmm. Wasn't that what Ja'afar was in Aladdin? He
was the grand Vizier. Yeah. Yeah, so you don't necessarily
have to be a beard stroking villain to be a
grand vizier. He was just a bad He was a
bad one. He was just a bad guy.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Unfortunately coded in some ways that probably messed with kids' heads.
But he uh, like think about it. Let's say the
four of us are just regular civilians in the Ottoman Empire.
We own a fruit stand. It's our businesses, fruit stand,
cradle to grave, that's what we do. And then we
learned that a peasant boy from the Balkans had been
(25:47):
taken in abducted because of this child tax, this deshmih,
and then they end up being a great commander of armies.
They end up running the province where we've had a
fruit stand for two hundred and fifty years. We could
ever do this. And also if we asked that guy,
that janissary was now a general, if we asked them
(26:08):
what their life was like in the Balkans, they might
have had a better life them specifically as a general,
than they would have ever had as a surf in
the suppressed region of Christian Europe.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
For sure. And you know, it's makes me wonder. I
guess this was an elite army that directly protected the sultan,
but there would still have been a fighting force that
was not a volunteer base. But that would have there
would have been the conscription, I imagine. Yeah, there was conscription
very common with the citizen. Ye yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And also there were people who signed up to be
the janissaries, great rivals from what would become them the cavalry,
the horse mounted guys, but the janissaries, they're getting more
and more power these centuries. Over time and their system
begins to change. It's so weird, folks, we were talking
about this of the research. If you were a student
(27:10):
of American history, the idea that any civilian would sign
up for slavery seems patently absurd. But by the sixteen hundreds,
the recruitment policy of janissaries began to relax, and civilians say,
like our four friendly fruit stand owners, they saved up money,
(27:31):
they bought their way into janissary membership because it would
approve their socioeconomic status.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
That's wild, man, I mean that this really was a
system that had some perks despite it literally being slavery. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
And the janissaries won the right to marry during their time.
They also, perhaps more importantly in this kind of society,
they won the right of hereditary secession, right so they
could enroll their own sons. Their sons didn't have to
be kidnapped from wherever. Instead, their sons could be raised
(28:12):
in a janissary household. They would get the perks. Also,
janissaries could start their own businesses and outside trades. By
sixty ninety nine, at the height of the organization, there
were slightly less than sixty eight thousand of these folks.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah, they had in some ways, you know, especially the
folks that had been in the system for a while
and moved their way up, quite a significant number of privileges.
The janissaries were indeed moving on up and became part
of the ruling class in a certain sense, with power
rivaling that of the traditional members of an aristocracy. From
(28:53):
the sault in the view, however, he's starting to worry
a little bit about them maybe getting a little too
big for their breeches and exactly how much potential political
power they might be able to wield.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, and we all know the tendency of humans. With
a little bit of power, they become protective of it,
and typically they want more. So it is no surprise
that the janisaries became a reactionary conservative force by this point.
We have to remember a lot of these guys were
in practice not really elite soldiers. They were shopkeepers with
(29:31):
a pedigree. They were still getting their army pay. They
fought the government to get regular raises. They were way
more interested in protecting their perks than they weren't actually fighting.
And this was a problem because the rest of the
powers in Western Europe are learning lessons continually they modernize
(29:52):
their military. The Ottoman forces are increasingly outdated and less
effective and then obsolete because whenever the Sultan seeks to
modernize the janissaries or modernize the military, the janissaries feel
their position, their catbird seed is under threat and they
start reacting with rebellion. The thing is they can execute
(30:16):
on their threats.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Well, it wasn't unfounded that the Sultan might have been
a little concerned about the potential for them to organize,
and they could indeed follow through with those threats. An
attempt by Osman the second to kind of get them,
whip them back into shape, get them to get back
in line, involved cutting their pay, did not go well.
(30:46):
He was executed at the hands of the janissaries. They
frequently were able to engineer palace various palace coups, and
one particular example of this, they conspire with officials of
the court to overthrow Ibraheim because he was as a
bad governor. He's a bad ruler, not good. So they
(31:09):
really did have all of this unintended, at least as
far as, like you know, the sultan is concerned power
and influence. This was the Automan equivalent of the kinds
of military cups we might see throughout history.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yeah, yeah, even in the modern day. And so if
you were, if we're looking at the janissary perspective over
this time, they're very successful as a demographic right, as
a portion of the population. They get better treatment, they
get more money, they consider themselves increasingly above the rule
(31:44):
of law. These factors lead to the fall of the Janissaries,
but not just that, they lead to the fall of
the Ottoman Empire overall. So how did the world end
up putting their feet on the furniture of this once
terrifying nation.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, it's a good question, man, a question the historians
have been asking for quite some time, and they many
of the folks looking into this trace the fall of
the Janissaries to something called the auspicious incident, which is.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
You could tell the Sultan wrote that one.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Very direct, Yeah, for sure. And this took place in
June of eighteen twenty six. So the janissaries did another
one of their revolts after learning of a new was
it a new fighting force.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Ben, Yeah, yeah, there's a new fighting force that the
Sultan is making. Says, hey, we've got to catch this
is like eighteen twenty six, right, like we said, the auspicious.
They were falling behind, like you said, right, And so
the Sultan rightly says, we need new modernized troops that
(32:47):
can fight toe to toe with these jerks from Western Europe.
The Janissaries say, no way, we want to keep our thing.
And thus Sultan Bachmud the second declares war on the Janissaries.
He says, you were all rebels. Lay down your arms,
you know, bend the knee. And the Janissaries say no,
(33:09):
And so the Sultan has his new forces fire a
bunch of cannons on the barracks where the Janissaries live.
Most of them are killed. Those who survive are taken prisoner,
but not for long because a little bit after this,
the Sultan orders that six thousand of them be executed.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah that's true, man, And the goal of this, you know,
getting rid of the janissaries ultimately ended up being a
bit of a moot point, because this was all kind
of band aid stuff. Because the Ottoman Empire was woefully
behind the times in terms of other world powers, and
there was no way they were ever going to catch up.
(33:55):
So the Janissaries were, you know, squashed, but it was
kind of all for because the Ottoman military power just
was never ever going to catch up to the West. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, So the Janissaries are effectively disbanded, violently disbanded by
Mahmud the second, and he goes on to create this
new modernized army or westernized army. After he recruits like
twelve thousand troops, he gives him a cool name, the
Trained Victorious Soldiers of Mohammed or the Mansur Army for short.
(34:27):
They expand to like twenty seven thousand guys by eighteen
thirty eight. All fighting corps of the Ottoman Empire are
included in this. They change its name to the Ordered Troops.
This last until the end of the empire, but it's
in a state of steady, deadly decline. Like you were saying,
(34:48):
the writing had been on the wall for a while.
The defeat of the Ottoman Empire World War One, that's
the nail in the coffin, right, that's the last veil
in the harem.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, you may, you know, be asking yourself, gosh, I
haven't really heard of much about a sultan in recent memory,
and that's because the sultanate as it was referred to,
was officially abolished on the first of November nineteen twenty two.
The very last sultan was Memed the sixth, who ran
from nineteen eighteen to nineteen twenty two and then was
(35:22):
exiled and left the country on the seventeenth of November
nineteen twenty two the same year. So, you know, the
age that we're describing here of the janisaries is long gone.
There are, of course, cultural remnants of this system. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Absolutely. One of our favorites comes from Nawsa, Greece janissaries
and booze. This dates back to the seventeen hundreds. It's
supposed to celebrate an event in seventeen oh five when
Turkish forces were attempting a child tax and the natives
rebelled and they fought off the Turkish guys trying to
(35:59):
steal their kids. The Ottomans came back, they killed tons
and tons of locals, and so the next year, instead
of holding a memorial service for the victims, the people
of this town in Greece put on costumes and masks
so that the Turks couldn't recognize them, and they re
enacted in public protests the events of seventeen oh five.
(36:21):
That's the story. You can check it out now. The
festival still continues every year.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, it's like a carnival type cell. Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah, and the masks are cool, the costumes are cool,
The Janisaries are I think we could call them ridiculous
history because they rose from such harsh, evil conditions to
become a superpower and then became their own enemy.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
It did got a little big for their own bridges,
I suppose. But yeah, no, it's fascinating. I can't really
think of any other examples quite like it of this,
you know, version of slavery that became almost like attractive
to non slaves. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Can you imagine it's so weird for us as Americans, folks.
Can you imagine looking around and saying, well, that guy's
technically enslave, but hot dog is does he have a
good job.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
It'd be almost the equivalent of us being like, gosh,
those inmates in prison they're getting their square meals and stuff.
They really got it better. I mean, you know, you
have to be in a pretty gnarly situation to think that,
and that certainly was the case. But also some of
these janissaries did have some significant privileges, so you wouldn't
have even, like you said, it could have just been
these humble fruit stand owners that had like paid their
(37:36):
way and worked their whole lives to earn kind of
a menial income, and then seeing these enslaved people that
were rising away above their station.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Mm hmm, exactly. I'm tired of coming home for twelve
hours of work, had to stand steaking of figs. Why
are these.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Guys so sneaking a fix? Why are these guys so ahead?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Well, they were ahead for a time, but the times
they were And thank you so much for tuning in,
fellow ridiculous historians.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Thank you Ben for putting this research together. This is
something that I was completely unfamiliar with. So I learned
something today, as I think we all strive to do
every day.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
At Speaking of learning, big big thanks to our super
producer Max Williams for the Futurama and the Assassin's Creed facts.
Big big thanks to aj Bahamas, Jacobs, the Puzzler and
a tepid nod of the cap to Jonathan Strickland aka
(38:34):
the Quist.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Fine, how do you do indeed? Yeah? Like, instead of.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Saying hey, we just say his name correct, like.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Hey, Noel, Jonathan, Jonathan, Hey, we'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, follow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the man,
the myth, the legend, our super producer Max, the free train, Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
To choo, you know, potato klimata, everything but the poop poop.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So we just for the silly rhyme that is none
other than mister Noel Brown. Noel, how you're feeling today?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
And now I'm feeling fine, feeling fancy the footloosen, fancy
free as they say. Excited to talk about some Ottoman
Empire history with you today, sir, Oh.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Wow, sir, Yes, without a cravat. They do call me
Ben Bull and check out our ongoing conversation about what
doth define a cravat today. As you said, Noel, we
are returning to something that's been fascinating us for a while.
(01:30):
It's the Automan Empire.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Af you.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
A while back, I can't remember what year it was,
we looked into something called the harem system of the
Ottoman Empire, which is not necessarily what we think of
when we think of harems here in the West, but
we also even more recently. Know, we've also spent some
time exploring the fact in fiction the myth and legends
(01:57):
surrounding elite fighting forces like Nights or Berserkers.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Bat back. I love those guys. Yeah, really charming, grated parties,
super fun hangs. Also jumping real quick.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
It was July second and fourth of twenty twenty four,
which is kind of wild that that was over two
years ago that we did that episode about the Harems.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
And another thing that's wild, Max, that you pointed out
to Ben and I off Mike, is that I believe
we've got something of a ridiculous anniversary coming up. Oh yeah,
it was ridiculous diversity.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, our nine year show of versary.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Wow, talk about that on base camp.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yes, it's this October, folks, so wish us luck, Pat
us on the back, feed us orange slices, like folks
at the end of a marathon, right thing, orange slices.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
That's vaguely Harem codd you know, like batting you with
like with palm leaves and feeding you fruits. You know,
was it wasn't?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, Marlon Renders running out with an orange peel in
his mouth and Godfather and choke.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
That's right, he was right, a silly goofy granddad. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And the cat who stole the show and the Godfather
was apparently I just learned this guy's a stray cat
that wandered on set and Marlin just said, I want
him in the.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Show, dude. Speaking of stuff like that, Ben, I just
found out. I don't know. This is not a spoiler,
but if you guys haven't seen Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey yet,
I look forward to chatting with you about it. But
there is a scene where it's just the most epic
sweeping ship kind of wide shot and there is just
a pod of dolphins that just are like leaping in
(03:37):
sync and it's like they see gi that. Nope, they
were just there and Nolan just kept the camera rolling.
I mean Nolan kept it rolling. It's incredible. It's honestly
one of the most memorable shots in the movie because
it just feels magic. It's I wasn't in love with
it at first, but the more I think about it,
and as I got further into it, I really began
(03:58):
to get invested. And I've been thinking about it a lot,
and I look forward to seeing it again.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
And we can't wait to hear your thoughts on the
Odyssey and ancient empires, folks. The Automan Empire is quite
anomalous to a lot of Western discourse because it bridges
this gap between the medieval to the modern era. And
as we're going to learn in today's episode, they had
(04:24):
an elite fighting force all their own that began as
slaves and over time evolved into a ridiculous superpower. Their
name may be familiar to some of us who play
video games. This is the story of the Janissaries.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
What I'm assuming this is from an assassin's creed situation.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, the video game reference for sure. Okay, Max and
I we're actually talking a little bit off air about this,
sax to want to do it.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Never been a world that I've dipped my toe in,
but you guys are always screaming about I need to
give it a try.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
This is from Seventh Street Revelations, which is I mean,
I think the SEO trilogy. It's the only one the
only games where they have the same assassin, same hero
amongst three. This is the third and final one, which
is cool because it bridges the SEO trilogy with the
with the original original protagonist all Tai Year it's really
(05:19):
cool because you're in Constantinople or by that point it's
just then.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Why cons down to no, we'll get them. That's business.
It's nobody's business but the Turks. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
But talking about the Turks, yeah, you deal with a
good bit of janissaries in the game, and man, they
are not fun when you run into a janisary, at
least not first.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Right, because they're an elite fighting force. Let's learn about
their origin story. First things first, fellow ridiculous historians, The
Ottoman Empire loved slavery.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Wow, that's one way of letting it get right to it.
I love that. And you know what, I don't love that.
Don't love slavery. Just loved them to turn a phrase.
You know what else? They loved them upholstered furniture. What
other empire gets like a piece of furniture that still
remains named directly after them and that is so functional
and good looking the autumn. Yeah, bad guys really into slavery.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Super duper into it. Their empire depended upon the practice
of enslaving conquered people. And we learned about this a
little bit now our previous exploration of the Harem system
The Automan Empire was such a big deal from the
late twelve hundreds CE up until the early nineteen hundreds
(06:44):
and before it fell, the Ottoman Empire stretched across three
separate continents. They gobbled up parts of Western Asia, Eastern Europe,
North Africa. This is still, in twenty twenty six, one
of the largest and longest lasting empires in history.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
It sure was. And you know, that love of slavery,
they didn't come up with it on their own. They
inherited it from the previous empire, the Byzantine Empire. Then,
when people refer to something as being Byzantine, doesn't that
mean kind of like a little bit overly elaborate. Yeah,
it means very complex, Labytine. Yeah, there we go, because
(07:24):
they were into all that kind of stuff. Uh, yeah, they.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Were into They very much had a complex system of adjudication,
rule of law, and so on. And I love your point.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
They were the Romans when the Romans got too far
up their own ass.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh yeah, take from the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah yeah, they came after the fall of Rome as
a less successful spin off, is the way Kevin Page
would put it. From Marvel And with this, you know,
hands on misery to man, as Philip Larkin said, and
I love the point you're making there, knowl that the
Ottomans didn't come up with this idea of slavery on
(08:09):
their own. They got up from the Byzantines, and they
also combined it with Islamic thought, which at that point
was already an established institution. And you know, as villainous
as it is, as unclean as it is, we have
to realize that for a great deal of human history
in slaving other people was kind of more the rule
(08:32):
that it was the exception.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
It was the name of the game. And I mean,
I know I said they were bad guys, I'm sure
there were some some good folks among them. We also
have to remember that a lot of our forefathers, you know,
in these United States, were slave owners. And this isn't
giving anyone a path, but it is sometimes needs to
be tempered a little bit. This idea of they were horrible,
horrific people. You need to take a little bit of
(08:54):
an account of what was going on historically.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, it was definitely normal for people empower for a
long time to enslave others. And part of this was
because most rulers back in the day thought they were
divinely chosen to run everything. They didn't see a problem
with it at all, because they thought slavery was just
(09:18):
another job perk of being better than everyone else. But
it is interesting, Nola Max that slavery was incredibly complex
in the Ottoman Empire and was distinct from the system
of later slavery in the United States.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Right, And it wasn't as directly race based as it
became like in the United States, Like wouldn't people be
enslaved if they were conquered, for example? It was like
there was lots of different criteria for qualifying to be
a slave, right.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Right, Yeah, in slavery, in chattel slavery in the United States,
the slave and overseers were first off, they were very
racially based. Obviously, they were entirely racially based. And they
were not incentivized to keep these people, they're victims alive.
(10:15):
They were overworking folks in horrific conditions, and they said, look,
these are not people, these are property. They're cheap, they're
easily replaceable. So it is more economically feasible, say the
American slave owners, to push people to the breaking point
and then just buy more people as our original victims
(10:36):
die from abuse, malnutrition, fatigue, disease, and most slaves in
the United States systems were black or native people. So
to these slave owners, this class would have booked at
the idea of what they saw as a white or
European slave. The Automan Empire had it, as you were saying,
(10:58):
entirely based on religion more so than skin color. They
thought God was telling them who it was okay to enslave,
but it was God telling them if this person doesn't
follow Islam or your version of Islam, then they're up
for grabs.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, and once these folks were conquered and captured, they
would be sold at a market. They were then placed
in a variety of jobs, not all just hard labor.
Some would of course be that some involved joining the military. Others,
depending on the abilities of the folks that enslave, might
(11:36):
become craftsmen or members of guilds harems as we mentioned
before on that other episode that apparently happened quite a
long time ago. Or it could even be a post
in kind of an admin role, like overseeing bureaucracy, you know,
administering paperwork and things like that.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, yeah, this meant real idea where this religious rubric
for enslavement meant that the Ottoman Empire would snatch people
from Eastern Europe, the Caucuses, Central Asia, et cetera, and
war captives where they're primary victims. And one thing that, yeah,
(12:18):
I love that you're pointing this out. It escapes a
lot of people in the West. Some slaves had the
Automan equivalent of an office job. So let's just imagine, guys,
if you go to your local DMV and you realize
everybody on the other side of the counter is an
enslaved prisoner of war from a few years back, and
(12:38):
you know sometimes the DMV does act like that.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
That's fair.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Also, if I can jump in he real quick, I'm
going to reference the Futurama episode here. I don't know
if this is aged perfectly, but it's in Futurama, so
get mad at them. But there's an episode where they
go looks basically a space like Egypt, and Bender becomes
the Pharaoh, and there is a scene where like Bender's
is always whipping everybody where they're basically the guys, like
the architects, and then they're in their suits, they're looking
(13:03):
at it and they' getting whipped And that's exactly what
I thought about when you reference that.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Then, right, yeah, bender Pharaoh Futurama episode, let's see which
one that is. Oh, it is a pharaoh to remember
the seventeenth episode of the third season of Futurama.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Oh, I'm gonna check that one out. Oh, like an
affair to remember? Okay, thank you? Oh oh and unrelated,
but guys, there's a new season of King of the
Hill and Hulu that just dropped a whole new season. It's
so good.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
That's great, I'll check it out.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Man.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
We also have to recognize, you know, your earlier point
there Noel about people being enslaved and becoming prominent members
of the administration. This meant that slaves could and did
attain these astonishing levels of influence and power within Ottoman society.
(13:54):
Was still terrible obviously being enslaved, but arguably.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Form of meritocracy kind of like isolated, you know, like
I mean, they could rise in the ranks potentially, I guess,
is what we're saying.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, yeah, and arguably it's still not as bad as
the American system of dyeing and cotton and cane fields,
where your life expectancy could be as little as like
six years.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
And again, just to be clear, we are not saying
like they did slavery better, even though they kind of did.
But slavery is bad no matter how you do it. So,
but I think the kind of weighing the two systems
makes sense.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
If a very good looking poop.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
There we go, that's a that's a great way to
say its so for our purposes tonight, now you have
a little bit of context about the Ottoman Empire, do
check out our episodes on how harems actually worked. We
want to talk about another aspect of their intricate dare
we say Byzantine slavery system.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
It's the child tax.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
This is the origin of the janissaries.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Janissary, by the way, comes from a Turkish word that
means new soldier or like looking.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, and so what would happen is Ottoman forests would conquer,
you know, they would move out in search of conquest,
conquer it take on these slaves. This often involved calling
the population in terms of like you know, separating the
old wheat from the chaff aka, killing old people and
then enslaving young men, making them into galley slaves or soldiers. Women.
(15:34):
Of course, would be targeted to become sex workers and
part of these harems or housemaids, handmaids, that kind of thing,
how servants. So the government then instituted a one fifth
tax on slaves taken during war, and from this pool
of manpower, either the sultan at the time Oran or
(15:58):
his son Murai came up with the idea of kind
of sorting them out into these janissaries or elite groups
of soldiers. In this case, this would be to create
a personal army, like answering only to the sultan himself.
So it's like like the King's guard in Game of
(16:18):
Thrones world right, right.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Right, or like those guys on January sixth. This is
one of the things. Yeah right, Okay, we walked out
the three for it. It's fine, But this is one
of the this is brilliant. Well, this is one of
the world's first actual standing armies. We have to remember
before this point in this part of the world, most
(16:40):
fighting forces were civilian conscripts or mercenaries. So after a
big fight is over, after your big Daddy makes you
go and risk your life, if you survive, you go
back to your normal job, which is statistically going to
be small scale farming. You're a surf again, you hunt
you fish.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Speaking a big dad. He's been the only beef I had.
One of very few with The Odyssey was the fact
that little Tom holland little baby boy character kept referring
to Odysseus as my dad. I gotta go find my dad.
It just it took me out of it every time
he said. And he would vacillate between that and father.
But I'm like, pick a lane and make it be father,
(17:19):
because saying dad and being dressed in the sword and
sandals garb. But just it felt odd. And I know
a lot of people have made that complaint, but there
you go.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Also, one thing I can say about Chris's duist film
is that no Greeks were harmed in the production because
there were no Greeks in there.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's true. That also did become the base of a
pretty gnarly, you know, racist take on the casting, which
doesn't seem to have harmed the box office take.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Just leave it absolutely not. Yeah, and this is so
what we're saying is all of the other empires and
would be world rulers and doctor dooms in the area,
they did not have a standing army. The Automan Empire
figured it out with this slave army of the Janis series.
They were one thing and one thing only fighting men.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Ooh, I wonder if this would have been I'm sorry,
I keep Game of Thrones of fying things. But the
Unsullied remember that that was like a yeah, they were
they A lot of them were slaves. They were slaves
and they were.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Not castrated.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
That's right, but some of the just correct. But but
I think there are some historical parallels. As we know,
mister Martin does love to do that. It feels like
he maybe was thinking a little bit about the Turks.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Alle hundred percent. There's a lot of Near Eastern or
Western Asian history wrapped up in in the Song of
Ice and Fire series. And George, if you're tuning in, man,
don't stress out. Just publish Winds of Winter.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
You can catch your back to do it. Man. I
don't think he's gonna do it. I hope he does,
you know. I saw a take on that that I
thought was very interesting because of how hated the conclusion
of the teach this series was. I think he's just
stuck where he's like, well, that was kind of how
I was going to do it now, I got to
do it different, and I don't know how to proceed,
so I'm just going to work on literally anything else.
(19:14):
And I don't need the money, so you.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Know, right right, And he also George, thank you for
tuning in. George also knows one of the big turns
for the janissaries here. The Empire has instituted this practice
(19:37):
of a child tax or dev serme, and this is
a system of tribute where every five years or so,
Christian kids, boys ranging from the age of eight to eighteen,
are abducted from their homes, largely in the Balkan provinces.
At first, they're drafted into Ottoman service just like the
(19:59):
unsullied Dude great comparison. They get subjected to strict rules,
including celibacy for the length of their.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Careers, conditioning, mental and physical. Yep, they're forced to convert
to Islam, swear fealty to the Sultan on pain of death.
They have to live in these barracks away from society.
They're also forcefully circumcised, which you know, for anybody who
has been circumcised, it usually occurs shortly after your birth,
(20:30):
So imagine being seventeen good at that and then a
lot of this too reminds me of some conversations we've
had on stuff they don't want you to know about
Seer School and about like some of the elite, you know,
special ops, you know, forces in the US military that
are subjected to these really really intense regimens of like
(20:52):
psychological conditioning in order to you know, basically feel no
pain and be able to be complete warmish.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Like how the Unsullied spoiler three to one spoilers are
are invited to raise a puppy and then have to
kill it as part of their training. So after you
after you survive this indoctrination, after you get your shaken
bake and you're booted in, you're called a chenne or
a chemi. We don't speak Turkish folks very well, which
(21:24):
just means new recruit. And you have to go to
a special cadet school in the capital city and then
you get you get the equivalent of the ottoman asvab
asvab is what people joining the military in the US
have to take. It's a test that decides what your
role is going to be. So if you've got a
(21:44):
great aim, you become a rifleman. As they figure out
firepower or an archer, artillery artisan, if you're very you know,
good with your hands, engineers, if you can do math.
You can't have any other job while you're a janissary
because you're still a slave, but you are increasingly slave.
(22:06):
Plus which sounds terrible to say, you get paid a
regular salary and if you survive.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
It's a path to retirement almost right.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, yeah, if you survive up to like your forties
or so that you can retire in the Ottoman Empire
pretty much as a person.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
And then jump in here again I have to reference
that Sam Few Drama said again a scene where Fry's
complaining and Fry goes, you know, the worst part about
being a slave is, Yeah, you have to work all day.
You don't get paid. And Leila's like, Fry, that's like
the only part of being a slave.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
It's true. It's true, Leela's on it. So once you're retired, though,
Ben to your point, you could take a spouse, you
could even start a business. You were able to work
in government. Why you would want to do that after
all of that, I do not know. It seems like,
you know, maybe the marrying, starting a business and just
taking it easy might be the move. Hell, maybe you
(23:04):
just really are craving bureaucracy. So similar to how joining
the French Foreign Legion would eventually give legioneers citizenship French citizenship,
former janissaries could in practice achieve a social position equal
to or even exceeding that of a non enslaved civilian who,
you know, comparatively were born on third base. These janissaries
(23:28):
really had to work their way up through the ranks,
but the system was designed for them to be able
to do that to a degree. Again, I gues it
keeps out on like we're like, good job, guys, you
did slavery so much better. But it did seem like
there was a path towards living a normal life. And
again to your point, Ben, that is if you survived
some very dangerous conditions, you know, protecting the Sultan. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah, Because these guys are relied, they're like special operations,
and for centuries, the janissaries are the baddest boys on
the block. They get this fearsome reputation because they are
the first military corps to do stuff like use firearms
in a normalized way. They're always doing drills. They totally
(24:16):
outplass the pop up armies of foreign powers. This is
one of the main reasons why the Automan Empire expanded
so quickly across the Mediterranean and the Balkans. But the
Automan Empire wasn't always at war, right, So where do
you put these enslaved killers in times of peace? You
(24:36):
make them palace guards, you make them local law enforcement,
you make them firefighters, and more and more a lot
to your earlier point, they're no more and more. A
lot of regular folks envied the life of the janiss
area and they were like, this is less of a
death sentence. This is more like a really cool career.
(24:58):
Because some people, even some former janisaries, became governors of provinces.
They one guy became the grand Vizier, which is the
most powerful nonsultant office in the land.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Mm hmmm. Wasn't that what Ja'afar was in Aladdin? He
was the grand Vizier. Yeah. Yeah, so you don't necessarily
have to be a beard stroking villain to be a
grand vizier. He was just a bad He was a
bad one. He was just a bad guy.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Unfortunately coded in some ways that probably messed with kids' heads.
But he uh, like think about it. Let's say the
four of us are just regular civilians in the Ottoman Empire.
We own a fruit stand. It's our businesses, fruit stand,
cradle to grave, that's what we do. And then we
learned that a peasant boy from the Balkans had been
(25:47):
taken in abducted because of this child tax, this deshmih,
and then they end up being a great commander of armies.
They end up running the province where we've had a
fruit stand for two hundred and fifty years. We could
ever do this. And also if we asked that guy,
that janissary was now a general, if we asked them
(26:08):
what their life was like in the Balkans, they might
have had a better life them specifically as a general,
than they would have ever had as a surf in
the suppressed region of Christian Europe.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
For sure. And you know, it's makes me wonder. I
guess this was an elite army that directly protected the sultan,
but there would still have been a fighting force that
was not a volunteer base. But that would have there
would have been the conscription, I imagine. Yeah, there was conscription
very common with the citizen. Ye yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And also there were people who signed up to be
the janissaries, great rivals from what would become them the cavalry,
the horse mounted guys, but the janissaries, they're getting more
and more power these centuries. Over time and their system
begins to change. It's so weird, folks, we were talking
about this of the research. If you were a student
(27:10):
of American history, the idea that any civilian would sign
up for slavery seems patently absurd. But by the sixteen hundreds,
the recruitment policy of janissaries began to relax, and civilians say,
like our four friendly fruit stand owners, they saved up money,
(27:31):
they bought their way into janissary membership because it would
approve their socioeconomic status.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
That's wild, man, I mean that this really was a
system that had some perks despite it literally being slavery. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
And the janissaries won the right to marry during their time.
They also, perhaps more importantly in this kind of society,
they won the right of hereditary secession, right so they
could enroll their own sons. Their sons didn't have to
be kidnapped from wherever. Instead, their sons could be raised
(28:12):
in a janissary household. They would get the perks. Also,
janissaries could start their own businesses and outside trades. By
sixty ninety nine, at the height of the organization, there
were slightly less than sixty eight thousand of these folks.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah, they had in some ways, you know, especially the
folks that had been in the system for a while
and moved their way up, quite a significant number of privileges.
The janissaries were indeed moving on up and became part
of the ruling class in a certain sense, with power
rivaling that of the traditional members of an aristocracy. From
(28:53):
the sault in the view, however, he's starting to worry
a little bit about them maybe getting a little too
big for their breeches and exactly how much potential political
power they might be able to wield.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, and we all know the tendency of humans. With
a little bit of power, they become protective of it,
and typically they want more. So it is no surprise
that the janisaries became a reactionary conservative force by this point.
We have to remember a lot of these guys were
in practice not really elite soldiers. They were shopkeepers with
(29:31):
a pedigree. They were still getting their army pay. They
fought the government to get regular raises. They were way
more interested in protecting their perks than they weren't actually fighting.
And this was a problem because the rest of the
powers in Western Europe are learning lessons continually they modernize
(29:52):
their military. The Ottoman forces are increasingly outdated and less
effective and then obsolete because whenever the Sultan seeks to
modernize the janissaries or modernize the military, the janissaries feel
their position, their catbird seed is under threat and they
start reacting with rebellion. The thing is they can execute
(30:16):
on their threats.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Well, it wasn't unfounded that the Sultan might have been
a little concerned about the potential for them to organize,
and they could indeed follow through with those threats. An
attempt by Osman the second to kind of get them,
whip them back into shape, get them to get back
in line, involved cutting their pay, did not go well.
(30:46):
He was executed at the hands of the janissaries. They
frequently were able to engineer palace various palace coups, and
one particular example of this, they conspire with officials of
the court to overthrow Ibraheim because he was as a
bad governor. He's a bad ruler, not good. So they
(31:09):
really did have all of this unintended, at least as
far as, like you know, the sultan is concerned power
and influence. This was the Automan equivalent of the kinds
of military cups we might see throughout history.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yeah, yeah, even in the modern day. And so if
you were, if we're looking at the janissary perspective over
this time, they're very successful as a demographic right, as
a portion of the population. They get better treatment, they
get more money, they consider themselves increasingly above the rule
(31:44):
of law. These factors lead to the fall of the Janissaries,
but not just that, they lead to the fall of
the Ottoman Empire overall. So how did the world end
up putting their feet on the furniture of this once
terrifying nation.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, it's a good question, man, a question the historians
have been asking for quite some time, and they many
of the folks looking into this trace the fall of
the Janissaries to something called the auspicious incident, which is.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
You could tell the Sultan wrote that one.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Very direct, Yeah, for sure. And this took place in
June of eighteen twenty six. So the janissaries did another
one of their revolts after learning of a new was
it a new fighting force.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Ben, Yeah, yeah, there's a new fighting force that the
Sultan is making. Says, hey, we've got to catch this
is like eighteen twenty six, right, like we said, the auspicious.
They were falling behind, like you said, right, And so
the Sultan rightly says, we need new modernized troops that
(32:47):
can fight toe to toe with these jerks from Western Europe.
The Janissaries say, no way, we want to keep our thing.
And thus Sultan Bachmud the second declares war on the Janissaries.
He says, you were all rebels. Lay down your arms,
you know, bend the knee. And the Janissaries say no,
(33:09):
And so the Sultan has his new forces fire a
bunch of cannons on the barracks where the Janissaries live.
Most of them are killed. Those who survive are taken prisoner,
but not for long because a little bit after this,
the Sultan orders that six thousand of them be executed.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah that's true, man, And the goal of this, you know,
getting rid of the janissaries ultimately ended up being a
bit of a moot point, because this was all kind
of band aid stuff. Because the Ottoman Empire was woefully
behind the times in terms of other world powers, and
there was no way they were ever going to catch up.
(33:55):
So the Janissaries were, you know, squashed, but it was
kind of all for because the Ottoman military power just
was never ever going to catch up to the West. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, So the Janissaries are effectively disbanded, violently disbanded by
Mahmud the second, and he goes on to create this
new modernized army or westernized army. After he recruits like
twelve thousand troops, he gives him a cool name, the
Trained Victorious Soldiers of Mohammed or the Mansur Army for short.
(34:27):
They expand to like twenty seven thousand guys by eighteen
thirty eight. All fighting corps of the Ottoman Empire are
included in this. They change its name to the Ordered Troops.
This last until the end of the empire, but it's
in a state of steady, deadly decline. Like you were saying,
(34:48):
the writing had been on the wall for a while.
The defeat of the Ottoman Empire World War One, that's
the nail in the coffin, right, that's the last veil
in the harem.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, you may, you know, be asking yourself, gosh, I
haven't really heard of much about a sultan in recent memory,
and that's because the sultanate as it was referred to,
was officially abolished on the first of November nineteen twenty two.
The very last sultan was Memed the sixth, who ran
from nineteen eighteen to nineteen twenty two and then was
(35:22):
exiled and left the country on the seventeenth of November
nineteen twenty two the same year. So, you know, the
age that we're describing here of the janisaries is long gone.
There are, of course, cultural remnants of this system. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Absolutely. One of our favorites comes from Nawsa, Greece janissaries
and booze. This dates back to the seventeen hundreds. It's
supposed to celebrate an event in seventeen oh five when
Turkish forces were attempting a child tax and the natives
rebelled and they fought off the Turkish guys trying to
(35:59):
steal their kids. The Ottomans came back, they killed tons
and tons of locals, and so the next year, instead
of holding a memorial service for the victims, the people
of this town in Greece put on costumes and masks
so that the Turks couldn't recognize them, and they re
enacted in public protests the events of seventeen oh five.
(36:21):
That's the story. You can check it out now. The
festival still continues every year.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, it's like a carnival type cell. Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah, and the masks are cool, the costumes are cool,
The Janisaries are I think we could call them ridiculous
history because they rose from such harsh, evil conditions to
become a superpower and then became their own enemy.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
It did got a little big for their own bridges,
I suppose. But yeah, no, it's fascinating. I can't really
think of any other examples quite like it of this,
you know, version of slavery that became almost like attractive
to non slaves. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Can you imagine it's so weird for us as Americans, folks.
Can you imagine looking around and saying, well, that guy's
technically enslave, but hot dog is does he have a
good job.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
It'd be almost the equivalent of us being like, gosh,
those inmates in prison they're getting their square meals and stuff.
They really got it better. I mean, you know, you
have to be in a pretty gnarly situation to think that,
and that certainly was the case. But also some of
these janissaries did have some significant privileges, so you wouldn't
have even, like you said, it could have just been
these humble fruit stand owners that had like paid their
(37:36):
way and worked their whole lives to earn kind of
a menial income, and then seeing these enslaved people that
were rising away above their station.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Mm hmm, exactly. I'm tired of coming home for twelve
hours of work, had to stand steaking of figs. Why
are these.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Guys so sneaking a fix? Why are these guys so ahead?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Well, they were ahead for a time, but the times
they were And thank you so much for tuning in,
fellow ridiculous historians.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Thank you Ben for putting this research together. This is
something that I was completely unfamiliar with. So I learned
something today, as I think we all strive to do
every day.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
At Speaking of learning, big big thanks to our super
producer Max Williams for the Futurama and the Assassin's Creed facts.
Big big thanks to aj Bahamas, Jacobs, the Puzzler and
a tepid nod of the cap to Jonathan Strickland aka
(38:34):
the Quist.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Fine, how do you do indeed? Yeah? Like, instead of.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Saying hey, we just say his name correct, like.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Hey, Noel, Jonathan, Jonathan, Hey, we'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.