'Azab (Ottoman fighting men)

'Azab is an Arabic word meaning an unmarried man or woman, a virgin. From the thirteenth to the nineteenth century it was applied to several types of fighting men under the Ottoman and earlier Turkish régimes. ²

The soldiers of the various Ottoman formations, notably those recruited by devshirme, were forbidden to marry before retirement. The earliest 'azabs mentioned were marine troops of the Aydın-oghullari, recruited from coastal villages; the term was used in the same way for marines in the Saljuq state of Konya and its smaller successors with seaboards. Because these men were unmarried, the name was also given from early Ottoman times to light archers, recruited for campaigns in whatever numbers were thought necessary, whose duty in battle was to face the enemy in front of the artillery and the Janissaries and open the fight with a hail of arrows. They were drawn one from every twenty or thirty khanes in the provinces and were supported from the contributions of those khanes, which stood in lieu of tax. ¹

From the middle of the fourteenth century there were 'azabs in the Ottoman fortresses, called kale 'azablari. They were organised more or less like the Janissaries and other odjaks, but were not recruited by devshirme and were paid in cash by the Treasury. Although they began as bachelors, they were eventually allowed to marry, since places in the corps passed to competent sons. After the sixteenth century the kale 'azablari were sometimes employed as bridge-builders and sappers. ³

The Ottomans continued the tradition of the Aydın-oghullari in employing 'azabs at sea, as Treasury-paid musketeers organised in companies under officers (reis), who might rise to command galleys or to chief posts at the Admiralty. The men of the Admiralty odjak were also known as 'azabs, and their duty was to guard warships in dock. ³