The two types of Sipâhî

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Originally posted this in an unrelated thread (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=1004770#post1004770). :san_tongue:


Sipâhî is a Persian word: سپاهی I couldn't find out what 'sipâh' means but it's probably horse or something related. (Sounds similar to the known indo-european words for horse: epos, 'ιππος, EQVES, aspa) Then, 'sipâhî' would literally mean horseman.

Two distinct, unrelated type of cavalry were both named Sipâhî:

"Timarlû Sipâhi" were the light cavalry units, trained and commanded by people under whose posessions fiefs were given. That was a feudal system but very unlike that in Europe. These landlords were under absolute control of beuoracratic administration, explicitly responsible to the provincial governers (Beylerbeyi). They had to show up in person with a certain amount of cavalry under their posession, depending on the size and revenue of the land they were given. The fief would be seized back should the Sipâhî fail to fulfil his responsibilities and it wasn't automatically inherited by his descendants.

"Kapukulu Sipâhîsi" was the name given to the six heavy cavalry divisions within the janissary order. They were, like the rest of the janissaries, part of the imperial guard and theoretically under direct command and posession of the emperor, hence no feudal character at all.

Couldn't waste it. :san_cool:
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[The Wizard]

Nice stuff, Mouza.

So, if I get things right, the timars were quite akin to the Arabic 'feudal' system? What with control being much tigher. Also, how tight was this control? Wasn't there a danger of them becoming grounded in their fiefs like what happened with Charlemagne's system?

[GoreBag]

Ah, I was wondering about this, actually. Due to Age of Empires 3, I encountered a Turkish heavy horseman, the Spahi. Since it acts like a colonial-era tank, I was made very curious about the origins of the word.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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AFAIK, yes, Timar was pretty similar both to Arabian "Iqta" and Roman Pronoia. :yes:
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[The Wizard]

Well, the pronoiai turned feudal pretty quickly, to their detriment. Was their any realistic danger with the timar system for this to happen?

[Watchman]

They probably did de facto to some degree, but this may have been more of the adminstration not bothering - it was probably just easier to pass the ownership to the previous holder's son whent the time came.

But at least when it was still running properly the Ottoman adminstrative system tended to be able to enforce its decrees if it wanted to - after all, technically speaking most everything was the property of the Sultan and you don' mess wit' him...

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Watchman put it pretty straight.

They tended to turn into feudal after 17th century and those pseudo-feudal warlords caused great unrest for a time. But they were subdued and finally the system was abandoned altogether in the early 19th century.

The real trouble was the janissary but that's a different story.
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[tsyed]

I know in Urdu 'Sipah' means army, hence 'Sipah Salar' (commander of the army). Sipahi in Urdu is means soldier, even though 'Fauj' from Arabic is a more common word for the army, and 'Fauji' is the more common word for soldier.

Since this word was taken from Persian, it probably has the same meaning in the original Persian.

[Watchman]

Well, there were naval sipahis too (serving as marines aboard war galleys), so a generic "soldier" would certainly seem like a reasonable translation.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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"Sipah-salar" was probably used in Turkish too, but the exact meaning escapes me at the moment. The Urdu usage may also be a case of meaning shift.
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[Mouzafphaerre]

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I didn't hear about naval sipahis, but naval janissaries. To my knowledge sipahi was the generalized term for cavalry units.

Hmm... Will have to dig this deeper. ~;)
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[Watchman]

I understand that the marine roles were divided roughly so that the lighter-equipped Janissaries tended to concentrate on the naval archery side of things (a specialized and demanding skill), while the more heavily armoured sipahis tended to act as frontline assault troops in boarding actions.

[Watchman]

I was unsuccesfully trying to look up a mention of the naval sipahis (but have seen several references in various works, including the Osprey book on Lepanto) when I ran into the following bit on the timar system:
The link between territorial acquisitions in the west and the health or the empire was timar, a system of land allocation, taxation, local rule and military manpower mobilization which was a central pillar of the Ottoman state. Timar was based on the award of non‑hereditary, feudatory land grants which gave the holder the right to collect agricultural taxes, normally in return for military service as an armored horse archer. Timar thus provided a decentralized, self supporting source of fighting manpower. In addition, timar holders performed important local governmental functions. The Ottomans, however, were perpetually short of cash and timar holdings were diverted to support administrative office holders, ladies of the harem and so on, particularly when the acquisition of booty from conquests began to fall off. A steady influx of new land was therefore necessary to sustain the numbers of timariot cavalry, who were numerically the most important element in imperial field armies. By 1529, potential timar lands in Anatolia, Syria and Egypt had long since been apportioned, and in the east the seizure of conquered lands from Muslim owners posed legal problems. The continued acquisition of Christian lands in the west was therefore necessary for the continuing health of the state.Taken from the footnotes of Guilmartin's The Military Revolution Debate (http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/guilmartin.com/Revolution.html); the rest of his site also makes for very interesting reading.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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There was a specific navy used for transporting troops along the Danube. Sipahis were naturally transported with that navy too, which may have caused some confusion...or not. ~;p I can't be totally sure but I haven't seen any mention of naval sipahis in native sources.
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[Mouzafphaerre]

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timariot cavalry, who were numerically the most important element in imperial field armies.

doesn't cope with my sources. The Timarlu Sipahi was -according to them- used for guarding the infantry, chasing down routing enemy, hit-and-run actions preceding the battle, borderland pillaging, fort guard etc.

The other, heavy sipahi was, well, the heavy cavalry but didn't have any feudal character at all. In fact, calling them sipahi was misnomer at the first place. Their official name was "Kapukulu Süvârîsi" (Imperial Guard Cavalry).

As I said, I will dig this up further. (Waiting reply to an email already. ~;))
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[Watchman]

The "Kapikulu cavalry" would be the guys also known as "Sipahis of the Porte", AFAIK. They were the creme de creme of the same stock the Janissaries came from.

To my knowledge Ottoman cavalry came in roughly two types: light archers and heavy shock. The former were apparently commonly recruited from amongst assorted tributary nomadic and seminomadic peoples, and the lifestyle raiders of the border regions were routinely enlisted as auxiliaries. The heavies were the real grist of the timariot system (which no doubt furnished a fair few of the lighter cavalry types too), and the main striking arm of Ottoman field armies (the Janissaries and other infantry tended to act as lineholders in the centre); all accounts I've read of these guys point that they were amongst the last Ottoman troops to abandon body armour in large scale, tended to go quite heavily armed, and possessed a very nasty combination of cohesion, maneuverability, discipline and raw striking power. They might have been underdogs in a head-on clash with European chivalry (who were both better armoured and had the undeniable advantage of the massed couched-lance charge), but that was about the only one; I've seen it said that all European military innovations developed in the long wars against the Ottomans were specifically to counter the Sipahi shock cavalry, not the skirmishing light archers or the infantry.

As far as armament and tactics go, the Kapikulu cavalry probably didn't differ much from the rank-and-file Sipahis.

Incidentally, further perusing of the Guilmartin site brought up an explicit mention of naval sipahis:
Though apparently larger, at least on major campaigns, the specialized fighting complements of Ottoman galleys, ‘azabs, sipahis and Janissaries, were somewhat more lightly armed with respect to edged weapons and more lightly armored than their Venetian opponents.From a section of the The Weapons of Sixteenth Century Warfare At Sea (http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/guilmartin.com/Weapons.html) exercept.

Put this way: if the timariot system worked so well for supplying fighting men for the land armies, why not employ it to supply fighting contignents to the navy too ?

[L'Impresario]

There was a similar discussion regarding the semantics of the name:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=48982

Feel free to mention any misconceptions.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Waiting reply to an email already.
The reply came from a friend with extensive Persian knowledge:


sipâh:|army
serbâz:|soldier
esb:|horse

That makes sipâhî warrior I believe.


To my knowledge Ottoman cavalry came in roughly two types: light archers and heavy shock. The former were apparently commonly recruited from amongst assorted tributary nomadic and seminomadic peoples

We have to make a clear distinction between pre and post 15th centuries. More on this when I'm less asleep... :sleeping:
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[Watchman]

Even if the organizational and recruitement basis was different, the basic division would still stand - after all, the steppe nomads (which pre-1400s Ottomans can well be counted as) had since God knows when supplanted their main body of light horse-archers with heavy shock cavalry elite; heck, they pretty much invented the whole thing by what I know...

[The Wizard]

To my knowledge the holders of the timars -- timariots -- would come armed and armored, but they were obliged to bring with them a previously specified amount of retainers armed in the style of Turkish light cavalry -- that is to say horse archers -- and failing to bring the specified amount would get you sacked as timariot. Timariots reported directly to the provincial governer, the beylerbey, and until your previous post, Watchman, I did not know they had any real governing obligations. They certainly seem to have had a lot more obligations than privileges, making theirs a far less feudal existence than that of knights.

And, as such, light horse from the timar system dominated the Ottoman armies. It was Ottoman light horse that won them their great victories, after all, with the janissaries ensuring they got the chance to do so.

Of course, this is from my sources. With light horse they might also have meant the heavies, since it seems that in Renaissance Europe distinctions were made between heavy and light horse based on the amount of armor the horse carried (making hussars and sipâhi light horse, for instance, since their horses went without armor).

[Watchman]

The usual, generally applicable ways to differentiate betwen "heavy" and "light" troops are considerations such as formation, tactical role and weaponry; "light" troops are the skirmishers, archers and suchlike whose main job is not the crunch of melee combat, "heavy" ones those who are meant to take care of that side of things.

Not that for example light cavalry could not be an effective shock force (it often was, and not rarely intentionally), it's just not their primary battlefield role.

That said, Ottoman heavy cavalry also used horse barding though how widely I don't know - but the mail-and-plate bards I've seen pictures of certainly look like they did their jobs well.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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From especially Mehmed II's reign -particularly the capturing of Konstantinopolis- on the nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle was discouraged, even at times suppressed by force. The official state policy was towards encouraging -and again enforcing, by sürgün- the urban lifestyle and agricultural economy. That's why the distinction is vital and important.

So, light cavalry, horse archers or not (I have no data ATM), were the "timariots" (that's a bastard term) while the "heavy" army consisted of the Kapukulu (janissaries including the heavy cavalry), azeb etc. There were also the "Başıbozuk", which were essentially voluntaries and soldiers of fortune. In most campaigns, levies from client states, especially the Crimean forces would add up to the bulk.
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[Rosacrux redux]

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The reply came from a friend with extensive Persian knowledge:


sipâh:|army
serbâz:|soldier
esb:|horse

That makes sipâhî warrior I believe.

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Heya neighbour. I've been writing a piece on the Persian campaing into Greece (Persian wars) and I did some reading on the Achaemenid military. The term I've encountered for army was spāda and the term for cavalry asabari (horseborn, was the literally meaning thos sources gave).

Might sipâh be the medieval Persian paraphrase of the ancient term spāda?

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Medieval and apparently modern. :yes: My friend knows modern Persian, ie Fârsî.

PS: Greek lessons starting tomorrow. :jumping:
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[Watchman]

I still fail to see what part of the equation doesn't allow parts of the timariot cavalry to be armoured shock troops, though. All the more so as urban, settled cultures are way better at producing armoured cavalry than light horse-archers (which tends to be more of a nomad pasttime).

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Timarlu were not part of the urban culture, they belonged to the agricultural economy part.

I have no data as to they were horse archers or light cavalry, or both. But I have read that they weren't fit for the bulk of combat and in a few occassions they had to do some job themselves (like defending the Ismail stronghold) they sucked.
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[Watchman]

If so, then who were those mounted guys in armour that tended to be placed on the wings of the Ottoman army in the field to sally forth to trample the enemy to dust as needed, given that the Sipahi of the Porte were ultimately rather few in number for military purposes and tended to look after the Sultan anyway ? All the sources I've seen tend to call them Sipahis - and many of those sources also make a clear difference between them and the Kapikulu guys.

[edyzmedieval]

Gold mine Mouz!!!

Thanks, I will add this to Byzantium TW. :san_grin:

[The Wizard]

Well, the term 'kapukulu (with the lack of the dotless Turkish i) sipâhi' seems to have been a nickname of sorts for their official name, sort of like the British soldiers in the American Revolution being dubbed 'redcoats', or Great Britain's ethnic Indians in the Crown Colony of India 'yellow boys' (iirc).

To my knowledge Turkish heavy cavalry really wasn't the big factor in many of the Ottoman's victories. It was either the artillery, the light horse, the janissaries or the tactics (or a combination of the aforementioned). The proportions of the kapukulu sipâhi would fit that fact.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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I have to check about those flank cavalry.

kapu is the authentic contemporary spelling; kapı is the modern form.
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[LeftEyeNine]

My fellow, Mouza, may I take the flag for a few moments to contribute into your concerns. :bow:

Osprey - Armies Of The Ottoman Turks 1300 - 1774 book says that :


...Two tuğs were set up in the Palace courtyard if the Sultan was to lead the army, one if the Grand Vizier was in charge. Six weeks later the army set out behind a screen of akıncıs and delis, Turcoman and Tartar light cavalry. Elite cavalry skirmishers under the çahacıbaşı formed a vanguard. Provincial sipahi cavalry protected the flanks and the baggage-train to the rear, while a main force included Janissaries, headqurters, armoured cavalry of the Palace regiments, artillerymen and engineers...

And through the next paragraph that describes about the Ottoman army of 16th century, written that :


..On their flanks stood the provincial sipahi cavalry. Ahead of them all ranged akıncı cavalry, whose task was to draw enemy towards the azaps...

...Finally the flanking sipahis would attack and, where possible, surround the foe. Although the highly disciplined Janissaries most impressed the Europeans, their importance was far less than that of the sipahi cavalry, the battle-winning offensive element in a classic Ottoman army...

I was predicting that the flanks Watchman asked about were composed of the akıncıs, who were fast, enthusiast borderline attackers harassing the neighboring enemy lands in fact. But Osprey sounds on proof ~:)

[edyzmedieval]

Thanks LEN. :san_grin:

[LeftEyeNine]

I just remembered about my promise, edzy ~:(

[L'Impresario]

I 've already mentioned this site,it contains a good overview of ottoman military practices:

http://www.theottomans.org/english/campaigns_army/index.asp

Here's a relevant to the discussion passage:


Ottoman armies consisted of salaried kapıkulu regulars, topraklı regional irregulars, short-term levied called miri-askeris, yerli-neferats consisting of the entire Muslim population of a town called up for a local defence, and the gönüllüyan, a general mass of tribal irregulars.
The establishment of a regular army early in the 14th. Century saw the emergence of Byzantine and Classical Islamic elements in th eOttoman battle array.Byzantine influence was strong because of the important role played by Christian vassals,particularly in siege warfare.
By the 16th century Ottoman tactics had reached their classic form.within a formidable system of entrenchments, top arabalari gun-waggons and artillery stood the Sultan, his personal guard of solaks, and the Janissaries armed with arquebuses.On their immediate flanks were the armoured alti bölük housed cavalry.Azap infantry assambled in front of the artillary and to the rear, where they and the muteferika guarded the baggage train.On their flanks stood the provincial sipahi cavalry,whose tast was to draw an enemy to the azaps.They in turn would absorb the charge, then move aside to allow the artillery and Janissaries to open fire. Finally the flanking sipahis would attack and, where possible, surround the foe.The Janissaries were, of course, also trained to attack, but they did so at a rush in large closely-packed formations which rendered their gunfire largely ineffective.
Turcoman nomads, the first element in the Ottoman army , were generally known as akincis if they served for one campaign as volunteers receiving booty instead of pay,and as yürüksi if they formed a tribal contingent. Such troops were horse-archers, rarely owning more than leather lamellar armour and still using the ancient Central Asian lassoo as a weapon

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Both of your posts comply with the flank/rear guard-flanker/chaser type of typical light cavalry duties of the Timarlu Sipâhî. Thanks. :bow:
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[LeftEyeNine]

My pleasure. :bow: