Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Janissary" in English language version.
The word "Janissary" derives from the Turkish yeni cheri (yeni çeri, new army). They were originally an infantry bodyguard of a few hundred men using the bow and edged weapons. They adopted firearms during the reign of Murad II and were perhaps the first standing infantry force equipped with firearms in the world.
Devshirme. The conscription system used by the Ottomans. It consisted of taking male children from subject Christian populations, chiefly in the Balkans, forcibly converting them to Islam, and raising them to join the ranks of an elite military corps, the Janissaries, or to enter other branches of government service. The boy-levy (devshirme) was carried out largely by force, but to be taken by it held out such promise of a brilliant future that Ottomans sometimes tried to slip their own children into it. Many of the Viziers came from the higher levels of the pageboy training. At first every fifth boy was drafted in a levy carried out every four or five years, but later every able-bodied boy between the ages of ten and fifteen was liable to be taken in a draft carried out annually. The devshirme system became obsolete in the 17th century.
In 1402 [...] the core of Bayezid's forces [...] consisted of infantry. These were the famous Janissaries, the 'New Army' (Ottoman Turkish: Yeni Cheri , Ottoman Turkish: yeni being the Turkish for 'new' and Ottoman Turkish: cherīk a word of Mongol origin for 'army'). This force had come into existence at some point in the fourteenth century, most likely under Murad. [...] The third significant feature of the Janissaries was the way they were recruited: they were Christians enslaved and converted to Islam [...] Their enslavement happened in either of two ways. One was through capture in the course of warfare against the infidel. Ottoman soldiers took large numbers of prisoners when they raided the Balkans, and the ruler would take his cut of them. The fifteenth-century Ottoman chroniclers date the beginning of this practice to the reign of Murad and associate it with the origin of the Janissaries. [...] But already in the fourteenth century an alternative and unprecedented form of recruitment had developed: collecting children from the subject peasant population, again particularly in the Balkans.
[...] Murad was loved by everyone, friends and foes alike. Although the Janissary Corps had been established during his father's reign, it was he who really became the driving force behind it and improved the Janissary Corps and the Acemi Oglans (Novices) Corps.
"Orta" (t.), literally "centre", in Ottoman Turkish military terminology, the equivalent of a company of fighting men...
"Yerliyya", colloquial Turkish-Arabic term derived from the Turkish yerlü "local".
"Orta" (t.), literally "centre", in Ottoman Turkish military terminology, the equivalent of a company of fighting men...
"Yerliyya", colloquial Turkish-Arabic term derived from the Turkish yerlü "local".
see para 2
