The word is derived from Persian sepâhi, meaning "soldier".
The term refers to all freeborn Ottoman Turkish mounted troops other than akıncı and tribal horsemen in the Ottoman army. The word was used almost synonymously with cavalry. The sipahis formed two distinct types of cavalry: feudal-like, provincial timarlı sipahi (timariots) which consisted most of the Ottoman army, and salaried, regular kapıkulu sipahi (sipahi of the Porte), which constituted the cavalry part of the Ottoman household troops.
The Ottoman people had rights to the land but the sipahi, a unique kind of military aristocracy and cavalry portion of the military, also lived on the land with the farmers (90% of the population) and collected tax revenues, usually in-kind, to subsidize the costs of training and equipping the small army, dedicated to serving the sultan. The sipahi did not inherit anything, preventing power centres from growing and threatening the supreme power structure. The sipahi were traditionally recruited among Turkic landowners, and thus, the non-Turkic provinces such as Arabia and Maghreb did not have sipahi.
Timariot armour dating to 1480
[IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/35jlatj.jpg[/IMG]
modelli di warband in OSP :)