The present book is the translation, survey and publication of a most interesting source on the history of the military organization of the Ottoman Empire, the anonymous treatise Melide-i kanun-i yeniçeri ocağı tarihi. It is a Turkish literary production of the early 17th century (1606), dedicated to the description of the janissary corps and presented, in particular, by a manuscript belonging to the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Aeademy of Sciences (press-mark A 249). The title of that literary production is not provided by the author. It is written on the title-page of the manuscript, to all appearances, by its owner to replace a previous one - Yeniçeri ocağının sultan Ahmed han hazretlerinin kanunnamesi - which is, crossed out and, judging by the handwriting, belongs to copyist İbrahim ibn İsmail. The manuscript was once in the collection of L. A. Perovsky, the noted Russian statesl11an and minister of foreign affairs who is known to have been a collector of oriental antiquities, from where, via the collection of the Asiatic Museum, it has come to the manuscript depository of the Institute for Oriental Studies. Judging by the watermarks the manuscript copied in Turkey in the very beginning of the 18th century. But it is not the only copy. It is known to have survived in seven other manuscripts. Five of them are in Turkey and the two, which we have had the opportunity to use in our study, are in European manuscript collections, in Gotha and Bratislava. The Bratislava one is a considerably abridged version of, the composition in question and traces back to an unknown photograph.

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