topchi-bashi

Updated: May 11, 2025

And in a page or two after such divine sentiment, the ladies of Bagdad sit in the porter's lap, and indulge in a facetiousness which would have killed Pietro Aretino before his time. Often I am visited by the Topchi-Bashi, or master of the ordnance, half a dozen honeycombed guns, a wild fellow, Bashi Buzuk in the Hejaz and commandant of artillery at Zayla.

Sir Richard Francis Burton - First Footsteps in East Africa