ABSTRACT
One of the most significant changes the post-1839 state reorganisation of the Tanzimat-ι hayriye brought about was the transformation of the Ottoman askeri class of tax exempted state servants and military persons into a corps of civil servants and a modern military. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the theory of the clear dichotomy between askeri and reaya (tax-paying subjects) had for quite some time been largely a fiction. There was nothing like one Ottoman elite, there were a number of them, and some of the elite groups would have had no place in the sixteenth-century concept of askeri: it is sufficient to mention as examples the tax-farming provincial notable, the non-Muslim kocabaşι (local or regional community leader), the Phanariot hospodar or the Armenian money-lender of substance who belonged to the group of people called amira. Those who had the status of kul were only very rarely still of slave origin.
