Page 27 - Journal of Asian History_Neat

I TUIU Nl) PORTUGUESE IN THE PERSIAN GULF 55
r
that region with the Ottoman expedition prepared for the occupation
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of that area. 33 The Pasha of Basra, in 1550, demanded the surrender of
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l «• the fort of Katif. The Arabs made no resistance and 3*ieldcd their fort
to the Ottomans. A number of Ottoman troops, with some artillery,
was then stationed at Katif.34
Within a few years, after the conquest of Basra in 1540, the Otto­
K
¥ mans introduced and set on firm foundation the eyalet system in the
»
newly conquered lands. There were two kinds of eyalet in the empire.
The first was yilliksiz (salyanesiz), namely the timar system.33 The
■ 41 second was yilhkli (salyaneli), i.e., provinces where a portion of the
!
revenues was not distributed in the form of timars, but was collected
fc:
directly for the treasury. In the salyaneli eyalels the salaries of the
beylerbey s, the soldiers and other functionaries came from the annual
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taxes gathered in the eyalels. The two eyalels (beylerbeyliks) with which
we are most concerned here are Basra and Lahsa—both of them being
salyaneli eyalels**
Bilal Mehmed Pasha was appointed as the first beylerbey of Basra
with an income amounting to 200,000 ak$e per annum. According to
the letter37 of Manuel de Lima there were 2,200 Ottoman troops in
! Basra in 1547. These troops were described in the Portuguese letter as

es'pingardeiros, i.e., arquebusiers. We are told that 1,000 of them were
*
s The letter also gives the information that there were, in addition,
stationed in the actual fort of Basra and 700 of them in the town itself.
t ! 1,000 Turkish horsemen at Basra. The Ottoman forces included a
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[ considerable number of Gonullu, i.e., of volunteers who were under the
f command of an aga*8
I. The eyalet of Basra, under the control of a beylerbey, consisted of a
number of sanjaks (liva); each sanjak was under a sancak beyi. The
:
!; beylerbey himself was at the head of the actual sanjak of Basra, which
was called pasa sancagx. The other sanjaks, as far as we can judge from
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* l ” Cart. Ormuz, fol. 116r.
u Cf. Couto, Dec. VI, Liv. LX, p. 243; I. Wield (ed.), Documtnia Indica, II,
(Romae, 1950), p. 69. In a letter, dated 24 November 1550, Liz Thom6 Serrao,
oumdor of the King, wrote that the Turks went to Katif with 200 men in six
justas and 500 horsemen on land (cf. Schurhammer, op.cit., nu. 4539).
** Timar, i.e., a kind of Turkish fief, the possessors of which go mounted to
;
war and supply soldiers for weir.
f M Cf. H. Inalcik, in IE*, s.v. Ey&Ut.
,7 See Appendix I.
i
: 11 ^ for ©sample, Istanbul Ba$bakanlik Ar§ivi, Kamil Kopeci Taanifi, Ruus
? Defterleri, nu. 218, p. 142.
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