Deli (Ottoman troops)

The first Delis were created by the Bosnian and Semendire governors. Gazi Husrev-beg was the leader most associated with these troops, who employed about 10,000 of them. Due to the efficiency of Husrev-beg, other district (ie frontier and inland) governors of Rumelia began to imitate him. Most of the Delis were usually of Bosnian, Croat and Serb origin, who had previously converted to Islam and who fanatically devoted themselves to fighting the infidels.[1]

The unit was first established in Rumelia Eyalet around the middle of the 15th century to create a force to protect the borders of the empire in the Balkans and came to full power around the 16th century.

The unit is usually confused in historical records with the Akinji, both being light cavalry units and being part of Eyalet soldiers, although they were not related.

Sultan Mahmud II abolished the unit in 1829, along with the disbandment of the Janissaries, in attempts to reform the army and establish one in the Western model.

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  Deli's (1590)
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  Delli horseman from a 1576 Italian edition of Nicolas de Nicolay's Navigations. Les Navigations, pérégrinations et voyages faicts en Turquie…,
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  Deli horsemen with pelt
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  Surname-i Hümayun (1582-1587)
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  Deli Stefano Della
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  Ottoman Military Illustrations from Hans Weigel's Habitus Praecipuorum Populorum (Trachtenbuch), 1577
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  Deli in parade uniform, paint from 1688 Melchior Lorichs 1583
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  Dellis
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  Deli signature from Sultan Suleyman I's campaign diary

In the Turkish movie, Deliler Fatih'in Fermanı: directed by Osman Kaya, a small Deli's League is told to be sent to Wallachia in order to kill the Romanian Prince Vlad the Impaler.[2][3]

• Houtsma, Martijn Theodoor, ed. (1987). "Deli". First Encyclopaedia of Islam. E.J. Brill's first encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913–1936, Volume II: Bābā Fighānī–Dwīn. Leiden: BRILL. ISBN 90-04-08265-4.
• Erickson, Edward J.; Uyar, Mesut (2009). Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Atatürk. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0313056031.