A friend in a SCAdian Janissary band invited me to look over his group’s uniforms and help him make them more historically accurate. (He’s excited about my research now. Wait until I tell him everyone has to wear wool coats and two pairs of wool pants. In Pennsylvania. In August.) The topic has turned into quite the rabbit hole.
One of the complicating factors is that Janissary uniforms, like the rest of Ottoman fashion, changed drastically between the 16th century and the late 17th century, and this late version is what both scholars and Turkish reenactors gravitate to.1 This page is an attempt to dig through the late scholarship and unearth the uniforms as they were worn in the 16th century.
Papers, Articles, and Books
Kafadar, Cemal. Yeniçeri-Esnaf Relations: Solidarity and Conflict. Master’s thesis, 1981.http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1554148876895~418
Mihailovic, Konstantin. Memoirs of a Janissary.https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155876531X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=155876531X&linkCode=as2&tag=greatestbattl-20&linkId=2VHK5P5YCYZN2D53
Minkov, Anton. Conversion to Islam in the Balkans: Kisve Bahas ̧petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 1670-1730.https://books.google.com/books?id=zQsB_AghBKkC&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=yeniceri+defter+clothing&source=bl&ots=GffY4_yHfC&sig=ACfU3U11AsYpIZf0lCmIGL3XkR_13w_yWQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqxP_01a_hAhVGZN8KHfkRCXsQ6AEwDHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=clothing&f=false
Sahillioglu, Halil. “Yeniçeri çuhasi ve II Bayezid’in son yillarinda yeniçeri çuha muhasebesi” [Janissary broadcloth and accounting for Janissary broadcloth in the later years of Bayezid II?] http://dergipark.gov.tr/download/article-file/12829
Vural, Timur. “MEHTER GELENEĞİNİN YAŞAYAN KİMLİĞİ” [The living identity of the mehter [Janissary band] tradition]https://www.jasstudies.com/Makaleler/812042561_4-Do%C3%A7.%20Dr.%20Timur%20VURAL.pdf
http://dergipark.gov.tr/download/article-file/17958
Image Sources
https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/201302/the.r.lamb.mission.htm
https://www.facsimilefinder.com/facsimiles/book-of-felicity-facsimile
https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx?images=true&school=24438&page=2
- Badly. So, so badly. For a country so fiercely proud of its history, Turkey is godawful at reproducing that history. Add in the universal human tendency to make every costume four sizes larger than it should be, and the average Turkish reeenactor is dressed in a series of red polyester bags held together with faux gold braid.