ABSTRACT
In 1554, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq was sent by his employer, the future Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I, on a diplomatic mission to the court of Suleiman I the Magnificent (r. 1520–66), ruler of the vast Ottoman Empire. 1 While on the road to the seat of Suleiman’s court at Constantinople, Busbecq had his first experience with the sultan’s renowned infantry, the Janissary corps. This was a group of men set apart from the rest of society not only by their relationship to the sultan as part of his household, but also by their dress, which reinforced their special status. Because of their strange clothing and their respectful and humble manners, Busbecq remarked in his memoirs that “if I had not been told that they were Janissaries, I could well have believed that they were a kind of Turkish monk or the members of some kind of sacred association.” 2
