Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

or had been, associated with the Chingisid polity. Many of them had moved to the
western
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Anatolian frontiers and made up pieces of the intricate ethnopolitical puzzle
there. Some, perhaps most, of them were pagan. In any case, the little band of
Ertogril and Osman apparently engaged in confrontations with the Çavdar Tatars
in the land of the Germiyan in addition to competing with the House of Germiyan
itself. Though the Ottoman chronicles do not refer to him, Cakü Beg of Göynük,
mentioned in al-`Umari , must have been one of these Mongol/Tatar foes.[21] In
fact, surmising from some Ottoman traditions, this rivalry with the Tatars and
the Germiyan was higher in the early Ottoman agenda than the one with local
Christians. The Christians may have been easier to cooperate with or subjugate
and assimilate compared to the Tatars, who must have had more formidable
military skills and possibly also strong political claims among Turco-Mongol
tribes. In the early fifteenth century when Timur came into the area, the Tatars
— still a distinct group and still not at ease with Ottoman supremacy — switched
over to the side of the world conqueror, who sent them messages like the
following to steal away their, evidently fickle, allegiance to Bayezid : "we
have the same ancestors ... you are therefore truly a shoot from my stock ...
your last king was Artana who died in the Faith and the greatest king in the
realms of Rum was your least servant ... why should you be slaves of a man who
is a son of slaves set free by Al-i Saljuk?"[22] The defeated and imprisoned
Bayezid is reported to have beseeched Timur to "not leave the Tatars in this
country, for they are material for wickedness and crime.... and they are more
harmful to the Muslims and their countries than the Christians themselves."[23]
It is impossible to determine the extent to which Osman acted with a long-term
strategy. He may well have been following his predatory instincts and acting on
the spur of the moment. But he cannot have missed the potential implications for
the future of the family ties he knotted for himself and his son. One of his
marriages was to the daughter of a sheikh who is said to have been at the head
of a prosperous community of dervishes and pastoralists in the frontier. Since
Sheikh Ede Bali and the wedding of his daughter to Osman appear at the end of
the undoubtedly apocryphal dream story, and the two stories are narratologically
closely linked to one another, the veracity of the marriage has been doubted as
well.[24]
That a certain Sheikh Ede Bali indeed lived in western Asia Minor in the first
half of the fourteenth century can no longer be doubted because he is mentioned
in Elvan Çelebi's hagiographical work, written in 1358/59.[25] The affiliation
of the sheikh with the Vefa'i-Baba'i mystical
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order in this source tallies perfectly with our information from other sources
concerning the presence of representatives of that order around the early
Ottomans. Geographically, Bithynia makes good sense for Baba'is to have chosen
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