Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

least recognized an intermediate category of heterodox Islam, in which they
placed (not necessarily with analytical rigor as we shall see in later chapters)
what they believed to be the uncanonical practices of Turco-Muslim tribes and
warriors of the medieval Anatolian frontiers. The critics of the gaza thesis, on
the other hand, are ready to take on more-inquisitorial roles and to pass
sentences or moral judgments on the early Ottomans for not being Muslim
enough.[59]
After mentioning the participation of Christian forces of Balkan vassals in
Ottoman campaigns, even against Muslim foes, Jennings writes that "using
Christian soldiers along with Muslim ones on campaign violates almost everyone's
standard of a holy war, and leading Christian soldiers against Muslim ones is
reprehensible." Or again, "it is hard to imagine how any Muslims who operated in
those ways could be esteemed as gazis by Muslims who have any profound knowledge
of their own faith."[60] But all of the later Ottoman authors, who were to some
extent aware of these particular ways in which the early Ottomans oper-
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ated, who are in fact the sources of much of the information used by Jennings,
esteemed the builders of their state as gazis. Did they all lack "profound
knowledge of their own faith"?
Among the "reasons for hypothesizing that Ertughrul and his sons were only
loosely attached to Islam," Káldy-Nagy refers (among other things, which he
treats less systematically) to the fact that all of the family members and
associated warriors of the generations of Ertogril and Osman have Turkic
names.[61] Naming practices and changes in that sphere are certainly relevant
for understanding the cultural orientation of the people involved, and the clear
reversal of preference from Turkic to Arabic-Muslim names needs to be noted and
understood, but it is not necessarily a criterion to gauge the depth of a
person's "religious commitment" as Káldy-Nagy argues. There are many reasons why
Mamluk rulers of Egypt, for instance, kept their Turkic names, and lack of
religious commitment can hardly be one of them.[62]
In this respect, the most radical position is taken by Lindner, who is nearly
ready to act like an Inquisitor and excommunicate the early Ottomans.
Considering some examples of what he considers to be pre-Islamic beliefs and
attitudes among the early Ottomans, for instance, he concludes that they may
have been "crusaders for shamanism rather than for Islam." On another occasion,
after citing some unorthodox beliefs or practices of early Ottomans to disprove
once again the existence of "single-minded Muslim zeal," he decides to "leave
aside the interesting possibility that Osman and his comrades were holy warriors
in another just cause, that of shamanism."[63] But those early Ottomans, if they
were crusaders of anything, must surely be allowed to have been crusaders of
what they thought to be Islam. Some of their beliefs may have been contradictory
to an assumed essence of Islam, but there is nothing we can do about the fact
that the people of the marches, including the early Ottomans, chose to retain
several of their "shamanistic" notions or, rather, to redefine them within a
syncretistic understanding of Islam. A similar convergence of "heterodoxy" and
gazi spirit is observed in many other frontier circumstances; it is noted, for
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