ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3084 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3084 ************************************ 09 Nov 2005 From: Ursula Whitcher Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for our help in choosing a name appropriate for a janissary of the Ottoman empire from 1500 to 1550. You expressed specific interest in the name . We'll start with some background information about the janissaries and the Ottoman empire. In particular, we'll discuss the languages of the Ottoman empire, and tell you about the way we've transliterated Turkish and Arabic. Then we'll discuss your given name and offer suggestions for a byname. We'll finish with suggestions for your full name. The janissaries were an elite infantry corps attached to the sultan's household. In your period, the janissary corps was composed of slaves recruited as young boys from Christian villages within the empire. This process was known as . (Here we've used the comma <,> to represent a hook beneath the 's'.) [1, 11] Janissaries converted to Islam; their names follow Ottoman and Islamic patterns, not Christian ones. Because the janissaries were extremely powerful, some Ottoman citizens who were not slaves joined their ranks. The emperor was complaining about janissary posts given to his Muslim subjects as early as 1577; by the end of the seventeenth century, the janissaries were recruiting new members primarily from the Muslim population, rather than through conquest. [8] Turkish and Arabic were both important spoken and written languages in the Ottoman empire. Until the twentieth century, Turkish was written in a script based on Arabic; modern Turkish uses the Roman alphabet, with certain special characters. We've transliterated Arabic words using a standard scholarly transcription. Our sources for Turkish names use a transliteration system based on modern Turkish. We believe that when the Ottomans recorded names which came from Arabic they used the standard Arabic spelling, even when the Ottoman pronunciation was different from the Arabic pronunciation. However, because we transliterate Arabic and Turkish names in different ways, we write names borrowed from Arabic to Turkish differently: for instance, we write in Turkish contexts, and <`Abd Allaah> in Arabic ones. The modern Turkish word means 'lion'; an older form of this word is . We found an Ottoman military commander named in 1554-56, and we found a janissary named in the 1660s. ( is a title corresponding to one of the lower ranks in the janissary command structure.) [6, 12] We found the name in an Arabic context as a given name used by the Mamluks, soldiers and former slaves who ruled Egypt from 1250 until the Ottomans conquered Egypt in the the early sixteenth century. [5] We found the form used by two sixteenth-century Jewish men who appeared in court in Ottoman-controlled Jerusalem. (The period after the 's' represents a small dot below that letter.) These court records were written in Arabic. One of the men named we found, , appears to be the same person as , whose name was recorded a year later. We found several other sixteenth-century Jewish men identified as . [7] Members of the Ottoman empire were frequently identified by a single given name. For instance, the sultan Suleyman described the sixteenth-century military commander Arslan as in a formal letter, even though Arslan held the rank of 'pasha'. [12] Many of the references to Ottoman soldiers which we have found identify them by a given name followed by a title indicating military rank; examples include and . (The 'i' in represents an upper-case with a dot above it.) [2, 4, 6] We found a few examples of janissaries using a descriptive byname such as 'small' before their given name. (Here the quotation marks represent an umlaut or pair of small dots above the 'u'.) Other members of the sultan's household, many of whom held important offices in the Ottoman bureaucracy, also used descriptive bynames before their given names; examples include 'black' and 'Georgian'. [2, 3] If you're interested in using a descriptive byname, we may be able to find a few more examples; please let us know if you'd like us to investigate this possibility. In the Ottoman empire, former slaves and other converts to Islam used the conventional patronymic , literally "son of a servant of Allah", rather than identifying themselves by their actual fathers' names. [4, 9] This practice followed a broader Islamic pattern: the Mamluks, also former slaves, identified themselves in Arabic as , also "son of a servant of Allah". [10] Since janissaries in your period were slaves, we recommend that you use the Turkish or Arabic rather than identifying yourself as , "son of Mustafa": is a Muslim name, and we believe that only a man who was actually the son of a Muslim named would have used this patronymic. Depending on the language and situation, the same name could appear in many different forms. In Turkish, your name might have been recorded simply as , using a title such as , or with a descriptive byname, such as 'black Arslan'. Your name might have appeared in a more formal Turkish document as . In a document written in Arabic, it could have been recorded as either or . We hope this letter has been useful. Please write to us again if any part of this has been unclear or if you have other questions. Contributing to the research and writing of this letter are: Alzbeta Michalik, Gunnvor Silfraharr, Aleksandr called the Traveller, Arval Benicoeur, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Mari neyn Brian, Sion Andreas, and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, Ursula Georges and Giudo di Niccolo Brunelleschi 9 November 2005 -------------------- References: [1] Bernard Lewis, _Race and Slavery in the Middle East_, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 9, 11-12. [2] P.M. Holt, "The Career of Kucuk Muhammad (1676-1694)" (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 26, No. 2 [1963], 269-287) has an outline of janissary ranks in the context of seventeenth-century Egypt. was a jannisary. According to a Google search, it appears that is a byname meaning "small". [3] Metin Ibrahim Kunt, "Ethnic-Regional (Cins) Solidarity in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Establishment" (International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3 [June 1974], 233-239). Kunt gives the names of a number of seventeenth-century vezirs. Like the janissaries, the vezirs were slaves (or at least began their careers as slaves). One of the most interesting bynames is that of the grand vezir ; he apparently acquired the nickname because it means "Take him!" in Albanian, and this was the phrase the vezir used to order the removal of the guilty from his presence. [4] Ursula Georges, "Sixteenth-Century Turkish Names" (WWW: privately published, 2002). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/ursula/ottoman/masculine.html [5] J. Sauvaget, "Noms et Surnoms de Mamelouks" in _Journal Asiatique_ 238 (1950), 31-58. Sion Andreas transliterated the names from Arabic. [6] Eunjeong Yi. _Guild Dynamics in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul: Fluidity and Leverage_. (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2004), p.69. [7] Amnon Cohen. _A World Within: Jewish Life as Reflected in Muslim Court Documents from the of Jerusalem (XVIth Century)_. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Center for Judaic Studies, 1994). Page Date Entry Name ---- ---- ----- ---- 35 1536-1537 408a As.laan b. Fraym the Jew 54 1541-1542 460b As.laan b. Fraayim the Jew 63 1546-1547 52g khooja As.laan b. Ibraahiim 80 1550-1551 39c Sulaymaan b. As.laan 83 1551-1552 27f Sulaymaan b. As.laan 122 1570-1571 133d As.laan b. `Amraan alias "Abuu Karsha (Big Belly)" 131 1563 574b As.laan Yahuudaa 151 1572-1573 369f, 370c, As.laan 371e H.ad.r b. As.laan Khad.r b. As.laan 155 1574-1576 211c Simh.a b. As.laan 59 1544-1545 502b Ars.laan b. Ibraahiim 187 1592-1593 49d Ars.laan [8] Raymond, Andre/, "Soldiers in Trade: The Case of Ottoman Cairo", _British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies_, vol. 18, no. 1 (1991), p. 16. [9] Ursula Georges. "Ottoman Cauldron-Makers, 1643-1644" (WWW: privately published, 2005). http://www.s-gabriel.org/ursulageorges/onomastics/cauldron.html [10] Academy of St. Gabriel Report #2932 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2932 [11] Metin Kunt, "State and Sultan up to the age of Su"leyman: frontier principality to world empire," in: _Su"leyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World_. Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead, eds. (London and New York: Longman, 1995). p. 15. [12] Anton C. Shaedlinger, ed., _Die Schreiben Su"leyma:ns des Pra"chtigen an Karl V., Ferdinand I. und Maximilian II aus dem Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv z Wien: Transkriptionen ud U"bersetzungen_, Wien: Verlag der O"sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1983, pp. 82-83, 105.