By the 17th century they were firmly established in the Ottoman Balkans, owing to increased taxes, Christian victories against the Ottomans, and a general decline in security. Hajduk bands predominantly numbered one hundred men each, with a firm hierarchy under one leader. They targeted Ottoman representatives and rich people, mainly rich Turks, for plunder or punishment to oppressive Ottomans, or revenge or a combination of all.[1]
In Balkan folkloric tradition, the hajduk (hajduciorhaiduci in the plural) is a romanticised hero figure who steals from, and leads his fighters into battle against, the Ottoman authorities.[2] They are comparable to the English legendary Robin Hood and his merry men, who stole from the rich (who as in the case of the hajduk happened to also be foreign occupiers) and gave to the poor, while defying seemingly unjust laws and authority.[citation needed]
People that helped hajduks were called jataks. Jataks lived in villages and towns and provided food and shelter for hajduks. In return, hajduks would give them part of the loot.
The hajduk of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries commonly were as much guerrilla fighters against the Ottoman rule as they were bandits and highwaymen who preyed not only on Ottomans and their local representatives, but also on local merchants and travellers. As such, the term could also refer to any robber and carry a negative connotation.[3][4]
The etymology of the word hajduk is unclear. One theory is that hajduk was derived from the Turkish word haidutorhaydut 'bandit', which was originally used by the Ottomans to refer to Hungarian and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth infantry soldiers. Another theory suggests that the word comes from Hungarianhajtóorhajdó (plural hajtókorhajdók) '(cattle) drover'.[5] These two theories do not necessarily contradict each other because the Turkish word haidutorhaydut is adapted from the Hungarian hajtóorhajdó just as many slavic words were adapted from Turkish in what is known as Turcizam or Turkification.[3][4][6]
Other spellings in English include ajduk, haydut, haiduk, haiduc, hayduck, and hayduk.
Forms of the word in various languages
Forms of the word in various languages, in singular form, include:
hajdut, in Albanian; in the ordinary sense of "thief"
hayduk (հայդուկ), in Armenian; used as a male given name, and it means "Armenian freedom fighter".
haydut (хайдут), haydutin (хайдутин) or hayduk (хайдук), in Bulgarian
In 1604-1606, István Bocskay, Lord of Bihar, led an insurrection against the HabsburgEmperor, whose army had recently occupied Transylvania and begun a reign of terror. The bulk of Bocskay's army was composed of serfs who had either fled from the war and the Habsburg drive toward Catholic conversion, or been discharged from the Imperial Army. These peasants, freelance soldiers, were known as the hajduks.[7] As a reward for their service, Bocskay emancipated the hajduk from the jurisdiction of their lords, granted them land, and guaranteed them rights to own property and to personal freedom.[8] The emancipated hajduk constituted a new "warrior estate" within Hungarian feudal society.[9] Many of the settlements created at this time still bear the prefix Hajdú such as Hajdúbagos, Hajdúböszörmény, Hajdúdorog, Hajdúhadház, Hajdúnánás, Hajdúsámson, Hajdúszoboszló, Hajdúszovát, Hajdúvid etc., and the whole area is called Hajdúság (Land of the Hajduk) (see Hajdú County)
The word hajduk was initially a colloquial term for a style of footsoldier, Hungarian or Turco-Balkan in inspiration, that formed the backbone of the Polish infantry arm from the 1570s until about the 1630s.[10] Unusually for this period, Polish-Lithuanian hajduks wore uniforms, typically of grey-blue woolen cloth, with red collar and cuffs. Their principal weapon was a small calibre matchlock firearm, known as an arquebus. For close combat they also carried a heavy variety of sabre, capable of hacking off the heads of enemy pikes and polearms. Contrary to popular opinion, the small axe they often wore tucked in their belt (not to be confused with the huge half-moon shaped berdysz axe, which was seldom carried by hajduks) was not a combat weapon, but rather was intended for cutting wood.
In the mid-17th century hajduk-style infantry largely fell out of fashion in Poland-Lithuania, and were replaced by musket-armed infantry of Western style. However, commanders or hetmans of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth continued to maintain their own liveried bodyguards of hajduks, well into the 18th century as something of a throwback to the past, even though they were now rarely used as field troops. In imitation of these bodyguards, in the 18th century wealthy members of the szlachta hired liveried domestic servants whom they called hajduks, thereby creating the meaning of the term 'hajduk' as it is generally understood in modern Polish.[11]
^Ludanyi, Andrew; Cadzow, John F.; Elteto, Louis J., eds. (1983). Transylvania The Roots of Ethnic Conflict. Kent State University Press. p. 87. ISBN9780873382830.
^Richard Brzezinski, Polish Armies 1569-1696, volume 1, London: Osprey Military Publishing, 1987, p. 21, 39-41 (also contains six contemporary illustrations of Polish hajduks, besides several modern reconstructions by Angus McBride).
Bracewell, Wendy (2003). "The Proud Name of Hajduks". In Naimark, Norman M.; Case, Holly (eds.). Yugoslavia and Its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Stanford University Press. pp. 22–36. ISBN978-0-8047-8029-2.
