A Life Divided in Two: From Mountain Bandit to Serasker Pasha Koşancalı Halil

Abstract

This article focuses on the last ten years (1800-1810) of Koşancalı Halil, who rose to prominence during a period when central authority in the Ottoman provinces weakened and local powers expanded their influence in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Apart from the limited information found in the works of chroniclers about Koşancalı Halil, there has been no study reflected in the literature to date. However, Koşancalı Halil’s
active life including many different identities such as subaşı, mountain chief, mütesellim, kethüda, muhafız and vizier makes him historically noteworthy. In this regard, Koşancalı Halil’s emergence as a mountain bandit affiliated with Pazvandoğlu Osman at the beginning of the 19th century and his subsequent transformation into a serasker pasha is an important example that explains both the struggle for power and dominance among local authorities in the provinces and the integration of informal elements into the centralized
structure in the context of central-provincial relations. In this regard, this study on the life of Koşancalı Halil based on Ottoman archival sources illuminates the issues mentioned above while also offering an alternative perspective on topics such as the mountain bandits, the Serbian uprising, and the Ottoman-Russian struggle, which occupy an important place in recent Ottoman history.