Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index A bashi-bazouk (in Turkish başıbozuk, meaning leaderless) was an irregular mounted mercenary soldier of the Ottoman army. The bashi-bazouk were notorious for being brutal and indisciplined. They were recruited from homeless, vagrants, criminals, slaves and prisoners of war. Foreign mercenaries and volunteers could also be hired to the corps. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.