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The only use I may have for them is in The Sudan, at the beginning of the Mahdist Revolt.
I've read the Egyptians employed them & I believe Hicks Pasha had some in his doomed command.
I don't have a lot of background on the Sudanese wars. Im sure there are a few experts on the forum though. In the article in the below link they are referenced with some illustrations of dismounted soldiers further down.
As they appear to be using muzzle loaded weapons I planned on using them with some licence as Napoleonic Ottomans/Egyptians.
Outstanding!! I'm just about to use a bunch of Ottoman Sailors in Battle as Provincial Levy/Rabble for my Napoleonic Ottomans. Now thinking I should wait and use these guys instead. Any thoughts as to when they may hit the shelves??
Definitely. It was smart of Strelets to sclupt these fellows with jezail-type muskets and flintlock pistols rather than the more modern breech-loading firearms (or even rifled muskets) that some would have been using by 1876. They would work for Ottoman, Egyptian or North African soldiers all the way from 1760-1820 and as any of their irregulars right up to 1880 or so. If you want to go crazy, line them up against the Zvezda Prussian Grenadiers of Frederick II painted in green uniforms as Russian grenadiers of Catherine the Great, Suvorov and Potemkin for the Russo-Turkish Wars of the 1760's and 1770's. Or against any of the Zvezda, Hat or Strelets Napoleonic Russians for Russo-Turkish Wars of the 1810's and 1820's.
Hi, excellent looking set of figures, could nt have asked for better. I m planning on using them as Ottoman infantry in the 18th century and Napoleonic era. They will certainly do to represent some of the Ottoman and Mamluke infantry who fought Napoleon in Egypt. Cario Janisssaries and possibly Albanians?
There were Bashi Bazouks in the Sudan, fighting (and helping cause) the revolt against Egyption control. I believe there was a force with the Hicks column which was destroyed and Bakers army in Eastern Sudan / Suakim, which also did not fare well. Not sure what they were armed with.
Just started 'Peter the Great Humbled - The Russo-Ottoman War of 1711' (N Dorrell - Helion 2018). May be scope for some use in that war as well.
The people being slashed etc are usually civilians. They are like the great grandfathers of Daesh/Isis although Kurds would have been part of them then. The costumes (some seem a bit "Sunday best") could easily go to the period of the Greek and Armenian massacres/genocide in the 20th c and they would often pose with weapons of an antique nature but I would assume they used contemporary weapons and more swords. They were paid by plunder so gamers having them as cavalry in heroic charges seems unlikely in reality. A corpse doesn't cart much plunder.
Actually, these savage fellows are only accurate for the period through the 1880's or thereabouts. The Ottomans tired of the bashi-bazouks' antics after the debacle in the Balkans plus the Egyptians' bad experiences with them in the Sudan in the 1880's and they disappeared by 1890 or so. What replaced them in Eastern Turkey wasn't much better - it were the Hamidiye units of irregular Kurdish or Turkmen cavalry, uniformed in either civilian dress or Caucasian-style beshmet coats and fur papakha caps. They had modern rifles and, in World War I, machine guns, that were mostly used to massacre Armenians, Anatolian Greeks and Assyrians - both the handfuls of rebels or insurgents and the much greater numbers of civilians.