Mobilization of warrior populations in the Ottoman context, 1750-1850

Mustafa Vasfı Efendi of Kabud, a native of a village near Tokat, in Anatolia, Turkey, spent the years from 1801 to 1833 in Ottoman military service, first in Erzurum, as part of the troops under Dramalı Mahmud Pasha, then in Ağriboz (Euboia, Greece), where he signed on with Çarhacı (Chief Skirmisher) Ali Pasha, and then Ömer Vyroni Pasha, during the Greek Revolution. His simplistic, semi-literate description of battles, sieges, looting, and pillaging is one of the few pre-World War I Ottoman military memoirs we possess. The following passage is typical of the work, and is evocative of the life of one Ottoman irregular. Vasfı Efendi’s escapade here appears to have been a private enterprise, and evoked no discipline other than a scolding from his commander.