A Kuloğlan, or son of a Janissary

See this near-identical picture.

In the early 16th century, the Janissaries gained the right to marry while still in service; and a little over a decade later—long enough for the first legally-born boys to reach recruitment age—the Janissaries won the right to have their sons follow them into service.

Their sons weren’t exactly sought after as soldiers, though. Their fathers were born to hard-working peasants, taken from their homes at an early age, and put through a pitiless system of training. Growing up far from all family bonds, in a strange land with a strange tongue, the boys were easily brought to regard their unit as their family and war as the noblest pursuit. It was a cruel system, but it was effective. Janissaries’ sons, on the other hand, grew up with their family, in their native country, speaking their native language, raised like any other boy. Becoming a Janissary was the best career open to them, but it wasn’t the only career. They were soft and less motivated.

This drawing of a Janissary’s son—”kuloğlan,” literally “son of a slave”—shows the young man dressed richly, with a hanging-sleeved overcoat draped over his shoulders and a jaunty feather in his turban.

Source: Recueil de costumes turcs et de fleurs, vol. 2, at the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Date: Tentatively dated to 1650