Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

Osman. Their resentment goes at least as far back as the third quarter of the
fourteenth century when the Ottoman ruler not only appropriated their
independently conquered areas in Thrace but also imposed a tax on their most
important booty: slaves. The reign of Murad I (1362-89) represents a major
turning point in the process of outgrowing the petty chiefdom of the frontier
that the Ottoman principality had been until the middle of the century. The
creation of two offices in particular signal that major developments toward
statehood were under way.
Murad was the one who appointed a kadi`asker for the first time.[52] This
signifies that by then social stratification had crystallized to such a degree
that it necessitated the recognition of a distinction between the `askeri
(military-administrative) class and the rest of the society. While the creation
of this new position could also be attributed to the belated arrival of the
influence of traditions from previously established administrative centers (or,
more specifically, of Seljuk institutions), the two explanations are not
mutually exclusive.[53] The arrival and acceptance of a particular institution
could only be possible when it made sense, when the development of the accepting
society required or at least could comfortably accommodate that change. Through
the appointment of a special judge for the `askeri class, Murad took an
important step in the delineation of boundaries around the ruling class
vis-à-vis the people (as well as himself?).
It is again under Murad I that some warriors are appointed to be uc begleri
(lords of the frontier) for the first time in the Ottoman principality.[54] This
is significant first in terms of the sociopolitical differen-
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tiation it implies between a self-conscious central power and frontier warriors
whose role is defined vis-à-vis and by the center. It is an announcement of the
fact that the military-political elite was no longer a band of more or less
equal warriors and of its corollary that the beg from the Ottoman family was
claiming to be more than primus inter pares. That Murad I is reported to have
been harsh enough to personally execute those pashas and begs who committed acts
of disobedience against him but mellow toward those who showed due obedience and
that he was the first to be given the lofty title of hunkar , or sultan, appear
as more than idiosyncratic character traits in this context.[55] In fact, this
character portrait drawn of Murad reads like an encapsulation of the most basic
elements of his reigns political history, which might be summarized as the
elaboration of a sultanic attitude to governing. The appointment of begs of the
frontiers also indicates the emergence of a schizoid mental topography in
Ottoman political imagination in the same old pattern that divides the land
between a core area (iç il ?) and an uc.
Although the crisis of the 1370s was overcome, its legacy seems to have
survived, and not only in the form of a cult built around its main protagonist.
Thanks to Orhan Saik Gökyay's masterful demonstration, we now know that Sheikh
Bedreddin , the "heretical" leader of perhaps the most significant, albeit
failed, revolutionary movement in Ottoman history (1416), was the son of not the
kadi but the gazi of Simavna.[56] This fits in nicely with the reports that
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