The two men portrayed here are both arrayed in the picturesque garb of the
bashi-bazouk. The term means, literally, "damaged head" signifying someone leaderless or without discipline. The
bashi-bazouks were "irregulars" in the Ottoman army, recruited from lands across the Ottoman empire, from Egypt to the Balkans. The strain on the empire's feudal system caused by its wide expanse, required heavier reliance on these irregular soldiers, and during the height of their existence, they were feared as brutal, corrupt, merciless, and unpredictable; contemporary reports on their crimes and exploits even reached as far as the United States. By the time Gérôme encountered them in Cairo, though, many had become more of a colorful local attraction than active participants in the empire's violent "peacekeeping." Paul Lenoir, who accompanied Gérôme on two tours of Egypt, referred to
bashi-basouks as “soldiers of ornament” and “
opéra-comique sentinels” who had become nothing more than “indispensable furniture of the door of a mosque or of the entrance to a palace.” Nevertheless, the costume, unruly behavior, and romantic backstory of the
bashi-bazouk proved irresistible to Gérôme and other Orientalist painters.
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| Bashi-Bazouk, circa 1869. |
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| Bashi-Bazouk, 1868-69. (I'm hoping the Metropolitan Museum has undertaken some much needed restoration on this painting since this image was taken.) |
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| Dancing Bashi-Bazouk, also by Gérôme, circa 1869. |
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A few examples of the genuine - somewhat less glamorous - article.
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