Sorry to be pedantic, Doc, but a few points:
- The video is amateurish crap; about 50% right, and an equal portion wrong. It is just a propaganda piece.
- The brothers never actually became Janissaries; they were held as hostages in the Sultan's court.
- He was fluent in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. On one occasion, his fluency in Turkish helped him to trick the defenders to let open the defences, and on another, for him to attack the Sultan's camp and get past the sentries (they mistook two of the Wazir's tents for that of the Sultan, and finally had to make a run for it).
- The stories about impalement started in connection with Christians, not Muslims. The video has it pretty badly wrong in this regard, probably because the author was looking for a sob-story centred around Muslims. The Christians in question were Transylvanian Saxons (incidentally, this ethnicity still exists in Romania and in Hungary - my office manager in Budapest was one of them - they set up the wine industry in Hungary).
- There is a great deal of doubt about these impalements. Most of it - not all - can be traced back to the hideous tales told by the Saxons about their great enemy.
- Getting the entire story clear is very difficult, unless you have some prior knowledge about the Balkans in the 14th to the 16th centuries. That was the period of the Turkish penetration into the Balkans (Constantinople fell in 1453).
- He died in battle fighting the Turks, who had marched into Wallachia in support of a puppet ruler. His body is said to have been cut up, and the head sent to the Sultan.
Hope you find this interesting.
Yes, in two ways.
Originally, they were tribute taken from Christian families, and they were not allowed to marry. Secondly, they originally served in exclusively military roles. Over time, their power became such that Muslim families vied to enrol their sons into this elite force. They were also allowed to marry, which meant that their earlier clear-eyed objectivity gave way to the boringly normal graft typical of any Oriental court.
What you mention, their trying coups, was another contributory factor in their downfall.
PS: Did I have a conversation with you a few days ago, where I asked if you had read Destiny Disrupted? If not, do take a look at the book; I found it good light reading. Not as a serious text, but as a quick encapsulation of an argument and a smoothly written aide memoire.
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