The Janissaries were first formed under Orhan, but like the early Muslim military slaves they were prisoners taken during war and moreover they functioned as a bodyguard for Orhan rather than as a normal military unit.
Ottoman units captured countless slaves and, for the first time, a special tax called the ‘‘Pencik’’ (one out of five) was introduced to take one out of every five slaves for the central treasury. These slaves were trained and organized under the structure of a new corps known as the Janissaries.
Orhan’s son Murad I reorganized the Janissaries into a larger force (though still numbering only about one thousand) and changed the method of recruitment; now the populations of newly conquered territories would combed by Ottoman authorities to locate strong and intelligent young boys who would be taken from their families, enslaved, and trained as Janissaries.
When they come into the palace for education as a child they had also been learning many other jobs like bread making, coppersmith, boot maker, tentmaker and jewelry etc.. among the other servant soldiers. Some of them were also being sent to the Turkish families’ homes in Anatolia to learn Turkish and a craft. Only physically fit, sturdy and young slaves were selected, and a special training center, the ‘‘Acemi Ocagı’’ (hearth of the inexperienced), was founded in Gallipoli in order to train them for at least two years according to the needs of the army.
They eventually rose to high positions within the government and formed the heart of the Ottoman army.
As the Ottoman state became increasingly unable to pay the Janissaries’ wages in cash, they lost their role as a professional fighting force, exploiting their status as organic elements of urban life to engage in economic activities as tradesmen and artisans.
Despite their origins as loyal slaves in the early centuries of the empire, the Janissaries had now become a formidable urban, civilian, and commercial corporate interest group, with enough reach and power in imperial politics to initiate regicides.
The Janissaries finally met their end at the wiles of a sultan in the 19th century.
Janissaries of Ottoman empire
