Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

the bourgeoisie simply by studying his or her postal address.
In short, as defined by the critics of the gaza thesis, gazis are not historical
entities but straw men relentlessly fighting for their lofty, untarnished
ideals. It is not surprising that such men are to be found not as a real factor
in early Ottoman history but simply as an ideological creation of later Ottoman
historiography. The characteristics of social groups can be inferred not from a
lexicographic definition of their titles, however, but from an interpretation of
the sources describing their activities, relations to other social groups, and
cultural characteristics as manifested in particular historical contexts.
It is to those sources that we shall next turn to see how gaza and related
notions were conceptualized by those who called themselves gazi and their
supporters. It is surprising that no one, among either those who accept or those
who reject the role of the gaza ethos in the construction of the Ottoman Empire,
has yet attempted to investigate the nature of that ethos as a historical
phenomenon on the basis of a close analysis of the sources narrating the deeds
of the gazis. That is precisely what I will attempt to do in the next chapter.
Before doing that, however, we should point out another major problem with the
critique of the gaza thesis as it has been raised, namely, a confusion between a
"motive force" and a "sufficient cause." Clearly, these are two different kinds
of explanatory principles. Otherwise, all gazi principalities would be expected
to form world empires. "If the ghazi spirit was so powerful among the
Danishmendlis and Ottomans, why did this same zeal for the Holy War lead the
Ottomans to success, while the Danishmendlis were somehow unable to defeat their
enemies and even disappeared from power and influence in Anatolia after less
than a century." Lindner asks: "if the ghazi spirit is to be the motive force
that we have taken it to be, how could it lead to such discordant results?"[72]
The question would have been valid only if the gazi spirit, or any other
suggested motive force(s), had been presented as a sufficient
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cause to establish a world empire. However, Ottomanist scholars in search of the
forces which propelled a small principality into a superpower, including Wittek,
have always been eager to consider the specific circumstances which made the
balance tip Osman's way, such as the peculiar advantage of the geographic
location of his initial power base.
A further comment needs to be made in relation to "causality" and cultural
history. Cultural or intellectual history does not necessarily entail implicit
causal assumptions. Through the delineation of an ethos or ideology in the
sources relating to a certain milieu or class, one can identify the nature of
that class, its interests, demands, and relations to other social groups. This
does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the actions of the members of
that class were "fueled" by their "ideas"; one merely understands them better
through an examination of their ideas. In this approach, cultural history is
only an epistemological path and not a causal statement. The failure to
appreciate properly the cultural traditions of the frontier society stems from a
mechanistic attitude to cultural history, or from confusing an epistemological
itinerary with an ontological one.
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