Kirdzhalis

The Kirdzhalis have been a social phenomenon in the European possessions of the Ottoman Empire since the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Because robbers operated in the mountains of the Armatolis, i.e. daalii in Ottoman Turkish, they are not referred to as kirdzhalis.

[3] Kirdzhalis are a phenomenon in Rumelia and to some extent in Bosnia, peripherally affecting Wallachia and Morea on the eve of the Greek War of Independence.

The social phenomenon subsided with the Ottoman coups of 1807–1808 and gradually disappeared with the attenuation of the Napoleonic Wars[why?].

The name of the Bulgarian town Kardzhali, despite the similarity, has unrelated meaning (at the time of the kirdzhalis phenomenon it was just a small settlement).

The Kirdzhalis, a modern reconstruction. Kirdzhalis are provincial Balkan free warriors, something like a militia . A kind of late Ottoman analogue of the Cossacks .