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Seimeni
Found in: Turkish words and phrases
Seimeni is also a commune in Constana County, see Seimeni, Constana.
Seimeni (plural of Seimen) designates the group of flintlock-armed infantry mercenaries charged with guarding the hospodar and his Court in 17th and 18th century Wallachia and Moldavia. They were mostly of Serb and other Balkan origin.
The designating term is of Turkish origin: segmen means "young armed man". In modern transcriptions of Slavonic, it may also appear as simen or siimen (siimeni).
Rebellion
Menaced by the growing privileges of boyars and threatened to lose land grants or be turned into serfs, the Wallachian seimeni rebelled in 1655, being crushed after Prince Constantin Serban enlisted the help of George II Rakoczi, Prince of Transylvania, as well as that of Moldavia's Hospodar Gheorghe Stefan.
After exercising a rule of terror in Bucharest, capturing and executing several boyars, they were decisively defeated by Rakoczi on June 26, 1655, in a battle on the Teleajen River.
See also
Serbs in Romania
References
Gheorghe I. Bratianu, Sfatul domnesc i Adunarea Starilor in Principatele Romane, Bucharest, 1995
Constantin C. Giurescu, Istoria Bucuretilor. Din cele mai vechi timpuri pina in zilele noastre, Bucharest, 1966, p. 73
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Seimeni