The Ottoman military was a complex system of
recruiting and fief-holding. In the Ottoman army, light cavalry long
formed the core and they were given fiefs called timars granted
to them by the sultan and commanded the personal loyalty of the peasants
who worked the land. The Spahis were organized in the 14th century on a
feudal basis. The Spahis were entitled to all income from the fief in
return for military service to the sultan. Until the mid-16th century they
provided the bulk of the Ottoman army.
Committed to the tradition of light cavalry, they were slow to adopt
firearms, whose development made the cavalry less important.
Cavalry used bows and short swords and made use of nomad tactics
similar to those of the Mongol Empire. The Ottoman army was once among the
most advanced fighting forces in the world being one of the first to
employ muskets. The famous Janissary corps provided elite troops and
bodyguard for the sultan. However, after the 17th century, the Ottoman
could no longer produce a modern fighting force because of lack of
reforms, mainly because of the corrupted Janissaries.
The abolishion of the corps in 1826 was not enough and in the war
against Russia, the Ottoman Empire severely lacked modern weapons and
technologies.
They remained politically important until Mahmud II revoked their fiefs
in 1828, two years after he crushed the Janissaries with modern artillery
in his effort to build a modern army. In the French army certain Algerian
and Senegalese cavalry units were also called Spahis. The term is
sometimes spelled Sepahis.
Turkish
Spahisi Cavalry - 1595
Ottoman coat of arms