Bashi Bazouks under French command. By 22 July he had assembled at Varna a cavalry brigade of 4,000 Bashi Bazouks given to the French by the Ottomans, along with various other detachments of irregulars, including a Kurdish band of horsemen commanded by Fatima Khanum. Known as the Virgin of Kurdistan, the 70-year-old Khanum led her tribal followers, armed with swords and knives and pistols, under the green banner of a Muslim war.
