The World of the Orient, 2023, No. 4 39
© 2023 O. Sokyrko; Published by the A. Yu. Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies, NAS of Ukraine
on behalf of The World of the Orient. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
ISSN 1682-5268 (on-line); ISSN 1608-0599 (print)
Shìdnij svìt, 2023, No. 4, pp. 39–58
doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/orientw2023.04.039
UDC 94(477.7)“17”
REPLICAS OF THE OTTOMAN MILITARY CULTURE IN THE MILITARY
LIFESTYLE OF THE COSSACK HETMANATE IN THE END OF THE 17
TH
CENTURY
Oleksii Sokyrko
PhD (History)
Faculty of History
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
60, Volodymyrska St., Kyiv, 01601, Ukraine
sag@univ.kiev.ua
ORCID: 0000-0003-3841-9782
The article presents a comparative analysis of the material maintenance forms of the profes-
sional troops of the Cossack Hetmanate and the Ottoman Empire – serdyuks and janissaries
through the prism of their subcultures. Ottoman influences on the military and political practices
and daily life of the Hetmanate became very intense and noticeable in the middle and second half
of the 17
th
century thanks to a series of alliances and joint military campaigns. In the system of
providing and maintaining professional mercenary troops of the Hetmanate, not only the tradi-
tions that came from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but also borrowings from Ottoman
military traditions are followed.
The distribution of ready-made clothes, special premium payments and other forms of incen-
tives to the hetman’s serdyuks indicate many common features with the maintenance practices of
the elite units of the janissary corps – the serden-geçtiler. These formations served as a model for
the creation of permanent Serdyuk infantry regiments in the Hetmanate during the reign of Petro
Doroshenko (1665–1676). Later, such contingents joined the armies of the left-bank Hetmans
Ivan Samoilovych (1672–1687) and Ivan Mazepa (1687–1709). Along with the form of recruit-
ment, traditions of material support of serdengechti were obviously borrowed. Special payments
to serdyuks “for boots” and special monetary bonuses on the eve of campaigns, which have direct
analogues in Ottoman practice, are applied to themselves. One of the notable features characteris-
tic of the janissary subculture was purchases by the hetman’s treasury for the mercenaries’ caul-
drons (kazan), which were the symbols of the military community that received food from the
hands of the Hetman. Cauldrons were widely used in the Cossack army, but were bought with pri-
vate money and were common camp implements. Food (“bread”), along with clothing (“barwa”),
which, like that of the janissaries, was of the same type of the uniform, received by hetmans’
serdyuks were a sign of subjection and obedience. Paying mercenaries a salary (“zhold”), special
monetary bonuses, clothing and products (in addition to a utilitarian role) also had a deeply sym-
bolic meaning, marking the patronage and special care of the ruler over them.
Keywords: Cossack Hetmanate; food culture; Cossacks; janissaries; mercenaries; Ottoman
Empire; serdyuks; warfare
РЕПЛІКИ ОСМАНСЬКОЇ МІЛІТАРНОЇ КУЛЬТУРИ
У ВІЙСЬКОВОМУ ПОБУТІ ГЕТЬМАНЩИНИ КІНЦЯ XVII ст.
О. Г. Сокирко
Вступ
Важливість східних впливів на формування та історію українського козацтва (особ-
ливо раннього періоду) – доволі усталена теза в сучасній українській та зарубіжній