Bashi Bazouks

Bashi Bazouks (from Turkish words meaning disorderly dress), irregular Turkish troops, not in uniform, and usually Asiatics, sometimes recruited from the Circassians, who have emigrated in great numbers from the Caucasus of late years. They are daring when well led, but wild, and to all appearance quite undisciplined. Serious complaints were made of their behaviour in the Crimean war, and the Bulgarian atrocities of 1876 were largely ascribed to them.