Mamelukes and Janissaries

Ever laid awake at night and wondered what is the difference between a Mameluke and a Janissary ? Well, Wiki to the rescue again!

Mamluks (also Mameluks, Mamelukes, Mamlukes) (the Arabic word usually translates as "owned", singular: مملوك plural: مماليك) comprised slave soldiers who converted to Islam and served the Muslim caliphs and the Ottoman Empire. Over time they became a powerful military caste, and on more than one occasion they seized power for themselves, for example in Egypt from 1250 to 1517.

They were mostly Turkic, along with some Georgians, Circassians, a few Mongols from the regions ruled by the Juchi branch of the Mongol family sold into slavery for various reasons such as bankruptcy. The Turkic element then was dominant, and most of them were from the Russian steppe, in the lands alloted by Genghis Khan to his son Juchi and Juchi's heirs. After being converted to Islam, they were trained as cavalry soldiers

The Janissaries (or janizaries; in Turkish: Yeni çeri, meaning "new troops") comprised infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops and bodyguard. The force originated in the 14th century; it was abolished by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826.The first Janissary units comprised war captives and slaves.
After the 1380s Sultan Selim I filled their ranks with the results of taxation in human form called devshirmeh. The sultan’s men would conscript as a form of tax in -human- kind a number of non-Muslim, usually Christian, boys – at first at random, later, by strict selection – and take them to be trained. In later centuries they appear to have favored essentially Greeks and Albanians. Usually they would select about one in five boys of ages seven to fourteen but the numbers could be changed to correspond with the need for soldiers. Later they would extend the devshirmeh to other Balkan countries

So, the Mamluks were Turkic cavalry, and the Janissaries were Balkan infantry, both little better than slaves, sold into service of the Sultan.

(prodnose) ..where is all this leading us?
(me) ...............I'm not sure, to be honest.
(prodnose) ..just as I suspected
(me) ...............stick it in your pipe and smoke it