The Janissairies: Entangled Histories in the Ottoman Context of the 19th Century

The book displays the intricate entanglements of literary histories among the different communities in the Ottoman context of the19th c. It reveals the unknown reception map of the French novel “Les janissaires” by Alphonse Royer” (1842, Brussels, 1844, Paris) in Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Karamanlica and Armenian language. The case study of the rapid translation wave of this historical novel within several decades (1840s-1870s) clarifies my main objective of the research. It is that the literary interactions between the intellectual elite of the different communities in the Ottoman Empire led to transmissions of concepts, images, and perceptions of emotion that were more dynamic and influential than the national literary histories would have us to believe. Such is the image of the Janissary army. It was found the 14th c. as a paid infantry, recruited predominantly from non-Muslim communities and trained to serve the Ottoman sultans. The structure and functions of the corps were multilayered and intrinsically connected with the ruling power, the ulema, and the commercial networks. The novel and its wide reception undoubtedly served as an example of the reductionist trend in the image of the janissaries as violent criminals and ruthless assassins of Christians whose order had declined and was finally dismantled. Moreover, the novel illustrates that the orientalization of the janissaries’ image happened very sufficiently by means of literature. Les janissaries were indeed a roman-feuilleton whose central motive was the tragic love between a Muslim man and a Christian woman during the latest days of the Janissary troops.