Sipahi (, ) were professional cavalrymen deployed by the Seljuks, and later by the Ottoman Empire. Sipahi units included the land grant-holding (timar) provincial timarli sipahi, which constituted most of the army, and the salaried regular kapikulu sipahi, or palace troops. However, the irregular light cavalry ("raiders") were not considered to be . The sipahi formed their own distinctive social classes and were rivals to the Janissaries, the élite infantry corps of the Sultans.
A variant of the term "sipahi" was also applied by colonial authorities to several cavalry units serving in the French and Italian colonial armies during the 19th and 20th centuries (see ).
Name
The word is derived from , meaning "soldier". The term is also transliterated as and ; rendered in other languages as: in Albanian and Romanian, sepuh (սեպուհ) in Armenian, () in Greek, or in Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian (Cyrillic: , ): in Bengali [sipāhī] "sepoy" (সিপাহী). The Portuguese version is also sipaio (with variants like sipai, cipaio and cipai), but in Spanish it was adapted as cipayo. The word sepoy is derived from the same Persian word . In Maldivian, the army's soldiers are referred to as { ސިފައިން} "sifain".
Description
The term refers to all freeborn Ottoman Turkish mounted troops other than akıncı and tribal horsemen in the Ottoman army. The word was used almost synonymously with cavalry. The sipahis formed two distinct types of cavalry: feudal-like, provincial (timariots) which consisted most of the Ottoman army, and salaried, regular (sipahi of the Porte), which constituted the cavalry part of the Ottoman household troops.
The provincial governors, or beys, were rotated every few years, preventing land inheritance. The provinces, or sanjaks, were not all equal since Anatolia and the Balkans were mostly ruled by Turks, while other areas of the empire were more flexible, adhering, somewhat, to local traditions.
The entwinement of land, military, politics, economics and religion was a way of life. The timar system, where the sultan owned all land but individual plots of land, came with residential rights. The Ottoman people had rights to the land but the sipahi, a unique kind of military aristocracy and cavalry portion of the military, also lived on the land with the farmers (90% of the population) and collected tax revenues, usually in-kind, to subsidize the costs of training and equipping the small army, dedicated to serving the sultan. The sipahi did not inherit anything, preventing power centres from growing and threatening the supreme power structure. The locals on the timar used the land and all it produced.
Timarli Sipahis
Status
The "Timarli Sipahi" or "timariot" (tımarlı) was the holder of a fief of land ( ) granted directly by the Ottoman sultan or with his official permission by beylerbeys. He was entitled to all of the income from that land, in return for military service. The peasants on the land were subsequently attached thereto. Timarli Sipahis' status resembled that of the knights of medieval Europe. Unlike medieval knights, they were not legally owners of their fiefs. The right to govern and collect taxes in a timar fief was merely given to a Timarli Sipahi by the Ottoman State. And in return, tımarli sipahis were responsible for security of the people in their timar, enlisting and training cebelu soldiers for the army.
A timar was the smallest unit of land held by a Sipahi, providing a yearly revenue of no more than 20,000 , which was between two and four times what a teacher earned. A () was a larger unit of land, yielding up to 100,000 akçe, and was owned by Sipahis of officer rank. A has () was the largest unit of land, giving revenues of more than 100,000 akçe, and was only held by the highest-ranking members of the military. A tîmâr Sipahi was obliged to provide the army with up to five armed retainers (), a ziamet Sipahi with up to twenty, and a has Sipahi with far more than twenty. The cebelu (meaning "armed, armored") were expected to be mounted and fully equipped as the sipahi themselves; they were usually sons, brothers or nephews and their position was probably more similar to squires than men-at-arms.
Although timars were not originally granted to their holders until perpetuity (the state inheriting the land at the death of the landholder), by the end of the 17th century estates were passed on from father to son.