Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

Imparatorlugunda * Bir Iskan * ve Kolonizasyon Metodu Olarak Vakiflar ve
Temlikler," Vakiflar Dergisi 2(1942):279-386, selected primarily documents
related to dervishes and ahis * , excluding many that dealt with the fakihs * .
It seems, on the basis of the later publication, that in the generations of
Osman and Orhan * , more land was given to fakihs * than to either dervishes or
ahis * . Though "fakih * " literally means a jurisconsult, it implied more of an
imam (as prayer leader) than a juridical figure in the context of western
Anatolia in the late-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but looking at the
example of Tursun Fakih * some of these figures, possibly those who had a more
impressive education, may also have played a consultative role in
legal-administrative matters. On the "fakih"s * , also see Köprülü, Islam in
Anatolia, 28.
137. It would be too much of a digression to discuss the second point in detail
here. That discussion must await the future publication of the "YF menakib * "
that I have edited experimentally through a comparison of the chronicle of Apz
with the anonymous ones, basically following the lead given by Ménage a long
time ago. A similar experiment was recently published in Greek translation by E.
Zachariadon (Athens, 1992). My basic point is that the critical passages are
used by the compilers of the different chronicles not randomly but within the
framework of a conscious editorial policy.
138. The use of this word indicates that here the blame is placed squarely on
the Ottoman rulers, not on the ruling elite in general.
139. Anonymous, Tevarih-i * Al-i * `Osman * (see Die altosmanischen anonymen
Chroniken, part 1, ed. E Giese [Breslau, 1922]). Passages translated in B.
Lewis, ed. and trans., Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of
Constantinople, vol. 1, Politics and War (New York, 1974), 135-41.
140. The YF-Apz narrative, for instance, describes the meager inheritance left
by Osman Beg with great admiration: Apz, ed. Giese, 34.
141. Anonymous, Tevarih * , in Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of
Constantinople, trans. B. Lewis, 142.
142. See Ernest Gellner's discussion of the relevance of the Ibn Khaldunian *
paradigm in dealing with the Ottoman experiment in his "Flux and Reflux in the
Faith of Men," in his Muslim Society (Cambridge, 1980), 73-77; and idem,
"Tribalism and the State in the Middle East," in TSF, 109-26. It is true that in
terms of its longevity, the Ottoman Empire does not conform to that paradigm,
but a closer look reveals that Ottoman history is beset with the general rhythm
of tribal-societies-turned-empire-builders as described by Ibn Khaldun * ; and
later Ottoman intellectuals, once they discovered Ibn Khaldun * , appreciated
the relevance of his theory as addressing a phenomenon much more universal than
the Arabian and North African states that he took as the basis of his
theorizing. See Cornell Fleischer, "Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and 'Ibn
Khaldunism' in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Letters," Journal of Asian and African
Studies 18(1983):198-220. The longevity can be explained within that paradigm
(as an exception that ultimately confirms the rule) by the bold initiative of
the House of Osman in creating an unprecedentedly sophisticated system of an
artificial but cohesive household (the kapikullart * , often erroneously
translated as "the sultan's slaves") just when the tribal/warrior solidarity, or
`asabiyya * , was waning. For Ibn Khaldun's * views on the "slave soldier''
phenomenon, see David Ayalon, "Mamlukiyyat * ," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and
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