Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

Christianity. The Danismendname , as we saw in the last chapter, captured the
urgency of this in two of its major characters for whom the crossing occurred in
such haste, after a sudden flash of enlightenment, that neither one of them had
time to change his or her name, overtaken by the joy of having found the right
side and too eager to join the fight for its supremacy.
The sociopolitical order created by these frontier conditions developed a
general reluctance to recognize an aristocracy, a freezing of inheritable
distinction in specific lineages, even after settling down. A system like the
devshirme , whereby children of non-Muslim peasant families were recruited,
"Ottomanized," and then brought to the highest positions of government, could be
conceivable only in a state born of those frontier conditions.
The potentialities of mobility and fluidity found their ultimate representation
and congealed into "awe-inspiring centrality" (i.e., charisma) in the persons of
the babas, religions mystical leaders of the tribal and (newly settled?) peasant
populations, who could change into birds or, slipping into things more
ferocious, lions or whatever they wished to be and fly or roar over vast spaces
unleashing their arsenal of alchemical weaponry. The most illustrious example is
of course the Haci Bektas of later legend, who was sent from Khorasan to
Anatolia in the form of a dove and turned out to be the baba of babas. The
Ottomans also relied on the services of many of these babas and cultivated and
patronized them in the earlier stages of their state building. Eventually,
however, the more established and urbane Sufi orders were preferred by the
Ottoman state while some of the earlier allies became opponents. The Safavids
were able to gain followers among not only the tribes but also some of the
closely related groups of dervishes who were ready to adopt Shi'ism. The ahi
bands, on the other hand, the guild-like quasi-Sufi associations of men in urban
areas, including the small towns around and later within the Ottoman
principality, lost their once considerable autonomy as they were turned into
guilds much more strictly controlled by the government.
Another social group that suffered from the centralization of power in the
growing Ottoman polity and the eventual adoption of an imperial
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mode of administrative and intellectual life was that of the frontier warriors,
led by the begs of the uc. Given the paucity of sources, it is impossible to
pinpoint precisely the early tensions that manifested themselves between the
House of Osman and its allies and warriors. Such tensions are naturally built
into any political structure, and the example of `Ali Amourios from the first
few years of the fourteenth century again comes to mind as an early falling out
between Osman and one of his fellow warriors. Some of Osman's early allies were
his Bithynian Christian neighbors, many of whom found themselves incorporated if
not eliminated. As the power of Osman and Orhan grew and as their principality
began to acquire the characteristics of a sedentary administration, there must
have been gazis and others within that principality who felt left out. That
there was opposition among the neighboring warriors is dear from the rivalries
the Ottomans faced. A much deeper, structural tension emerged among the gazis,
who were accustomed to seeing themselves as partners of the begs of the House of
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