Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

so that even people of other lands started to arrive."[32] Modern scholars who
write about Turkish conquests as a kind of "liberation movement" that spread
justice, equity, and tax breaks to Muslims and non-Muslims are generally and to
a large extent accurately perceived as engaging in chauvinistic apologetics. But
how are we to interpret this assertion by a late medieval historian? He too may
be propagandizing of course but even propaganda reflects a certain concern with
the principles embedded in it. The theme of the conquerors' interest in the lot
of the subjugated people in fact runs through many frontier narratives. In some
of the anonymous chronicles, the Ottoman administration of the fifteenth century
is bluntly criticized for not taxing its non-Muslim subjects as fairly and
mildly as it used to. This concern for fiscal moderation is corroborated by the
Ottoman law codes to the extent that these later sources shed light on the
earlier practices. The preamble to the 1530 law code of Bayburt, for instance,
sets the whole code in a comparative perspective by pointing out that the people
of the area were unable to bear the burden of the previous laws of (Akkoyunlu
Uzun) Hasan . Thus, "some exactions have been cancelled and some reduced" under
the new regime of the Ottomans, who realize that the well-being of their
subjects is "the reason of the longevity of the state and of order in the
realm."[33] The early Ottomans apparently faced a
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competitive situation in terms of fiscal moderation, too; at least one of their
rivals, Umur Beg of Aydin, proudly announced in an inscription in Denizli that
he had abolished a local tax. [34]
This should not be surprising, however; nor can it be equated with modern
apologetics. There were pragmatic considerations here as the wording of the law
code itself makes dear: relative leniency and equity could ease the tensions
between rulers and subjects, especially when such rule was quite young and
possibly precarious. Moreover, decades of political instability and nomad and
raider activity had devastated a good part of the countryside in Anatolia and
also led to depopulation; any enterprise that looked forward to a serious
political future would want to have producing, tax-paying subjects in its
domains. The dislocation of the agrarian population was caused to a large extent
by Turkish tribal movement, raiding, and colonization, but if any of those
tribes or raiders were to settle down to rule, their priorities would naturally
need to be redefined.
In this context, it is worth reconsidering the dream narrative, which, from Apz
through Hammer, Gibbons, his critics, and Lindner, has somehow figured in all
accounts of early Ottoman history. At least since Hammer, these historians have
also been aware that similar dream legends adorn the foundation narratives of
many other states. To a hyper-rationalist sensibility, this implies that the
story ought to be dismissed altogether or understood merely as a device for
satisfying the "psychological needs of the population" in the sense of massaging
their superstitious piety (and fooling them?) into submission. [35] If one is
not satisfied with the underlying assumption of pure and simple gullibility,
however, one might profit from Roy Mottahedeh's brilliant suggestion, on the
basis of examples from medieval Islamic history, that such dream narratives can
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