The Veledeş Conflict: A Reassessment of the Mid-Seventeenth-Century Rebellions of the Altı Bölük Halkı

Beginning in the late sixteenth century, the cavalry branch of the Ottoman standing army, known as the "People of the Six Regiments" (Altı Bölük Halkı), acquired a number of privileges that facilitated its transformation into a powerful organization with wide-ranging resources and influence. Scholarly attention has focused primarily on the fiscal component of these privileges, in particular the cavalry's domination of several branches of the empire's tax administration. In contrast, this article explores a previously unrecognized aspect of the cavalry's transformation: the capacity of its members to induct their sons into the corps, a privilege referred to by the term veledeş. An understanding of the emergence of this phenomenon, as well as the efforts of reformers to bring it to an end, provides a new framework for interpreting the repeated cavalry rebellions of the middle decades of the seventeenth century.