On the Flyssa, the Iflissen, and Janissary Recruitment in Ottoman Algiers

[Martin Lubojacky]

Hello Emanuel,
Not being "expert" in thi field I would just like to point out, that some time ago I brought very nice qama dagger from Tripolis in Libya. I allso saw some people with specific Caucasian physiognomy. When speaking with friends about this I was told that garrison force of coastal cities (especially Misurata) was consisting of Ottoman soldiers

[Martin Lubojacky]

sorry - I will continue:
...from Ottoman soldiers recruitet in Caucasus.
Regards,
Martin

[Emanuel]

Thought I'd update this thread with maps of the Iflissen commune and the locations of Ighil Bousouil, Isukane, and Taourirt At Zouaou, the three main villages of the At Zouaou Iflissen group.

Emanuel

[Emanuel]

And some pictures of the area (not mine unfortunately).

E

[TVV]

Fantastic thread, Emanuel, thank you for the effort you are putting in improving the collective knowledge about the flyssa.

After all the evidence so far, I think we can agree that the flyssa is a relatively late form, and that it is inspired from the yataghans the Ottoman janissaries brought with them to Algiers in the 18th century. However, there are also some notable differences from the yataghan, which are hard to explain.

The first one is, obviously, the decoration scheme, which is entirely based on Kabyle motives. One has to consider that weapon decoration during this period (and even nowadays) served not only an aesthetic purpose, but also an important symbolic one, as a talisman. While this is true of yataghans in the Balkans as well, to a Kabyle warrior the symbols on Balkan yataghans would bear little meaning, which seems to explain why the decoration scheme on flyssas was enitrely in a local style, completely different from that on yataghans.

Other differences, such as the straight back and the integral bolster can also be easily explained, as there are Western Balkans yataghans that exhibit the former feature, whereas Anatolian yatghans (and Balkan eared daggers) were often forged with the latter.

Much harder to explain is the long narrow point, which is something entirely missing on yataghans. Comparisons to Circassian sabres, whose points seem to originate from the long thin points of Tatar sabres, to me does not provide a good explanation. First, there is no evidence that there were Circassians of any significant number among the janissaries recruited in the armies sent to Algiers. The majority clearly came from Anatolia and the Balkans. Second, after the Russian expansion in the mid 19th century, the following Circassian diaspora spread the Circassians all over the Ottoman Empire, and yet in none of the areas with high concentration of them, such as the Eastern Balkans or Syria, do we see a form with a similar needle point tip.

Instead of searching the origins of the characteristic flyssa tip in outside influence, perhaps we should look for it in other local forms, from which the tradition may have been carried. To me, in certain aspects the flyssa is quite similar to the mysterious s'boula, sometimes misidentified as "Zanzibar sword". The pictorial evidence (of one single picture thus far) clearly shows that the s'boula is a Maghrebi weapon. The questions then is, how old is the s'boula as a form? Given how the hilt of the s'boula seems very similar to that of the European baselard from the 16th and 17th centuries, it is likely that the s'boula may be a bit older than the flyssa.

Jim McDougall has studied the s'boula extebnsively, and so he is the person to continue this discussion with regards to its origins and possible connection to the flyssa. I just wanted to provide a different avenue for exploration on the very interesting topic of how the flyssa received its shape.

Apologies for the long post,
Teodor

[Emanuel]

Hello Teodor,

Strange that I had missed your reply long ago. Very good food for thought, I had not considered the s'boula connection. My only argument against it is the geographic separation between Moroccan and Kabylian groups.

Still, this is the closest thing to a local development. Mind you the s'boula invariably had European blades no? None of them as thick as the flyssa blades. This is one point that has always stuck in my mind. The flyssa is ~1cm thick at the base. I've not yet seen such thickness in any yataghan, even assuming the integral bolster precedent.

Great thinking though!

Best regards,
Emanuel

[TVV]

Emanuel,

Thank you for the response. You are correct about yataghan blades being of different construction compared to the flyssa ones. The typical yataghan blade is of T cross section, where the T-back can be quite wide and certainly close to 1 cm in some cases, but I am not aware of any that even approximate 2 cm. Then the blade itself is often of a sandwich construction, with a hardened edge inserted between cheeks of softer iron. Some blades have rows of Turkish ribbon in the middle, and some even have fullering.

I have no older long flyssas in my collection and therefore cannot comment on the construction, but it looks different from that of a yataghan. I am yet to see a flyssa with fullering or with a pattern welded blade. It appears that the Kabyle craftsmen produced blades of simpler construction and their solution to preventing the long blades from snapping at the ricasso was to simply make the base of the blade quite thick for added strength. I am not a bladesmith, mind you, and what I am writing might make zero sense.

As for the s'boula, the one in the picture in my previous post is definitely fitted wit a crude, locally made blade (or reforged from a European bayonet or some other piece of steel that was available). I am sure that the early examples had European or reworked European blades, but I suspect that many blades started to be produced locally, in imitation of the earlier imports, similarly to how the production of takouba blades developped just a bit to the South.

The picture of the Maghrebi warrior with a musket and a s'boula has a musket characteristic of the Sous valley in Morocco (per Elgood) and I agree that this is a good distance from Kabylie. However, if the design originally came to the area in the 17th century, it may have spread throughout the Maghreb initially, before falling out of fashion and remaining popular only in a few pockets.

Regards,
Teodor