Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

his first confrontation with Byzantine imperial forces in 1301 (or 1302).[6]
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Gaza and Gazis in the Frontier Narratives of Medieval Anatolia
The cultural life of the frontiers was dearly dominated by oral traditions,
especially "historical" narratives that represented the frontier society's
perceptions of its own ideals and achievements. Some written works were produced
in the mini-courts of the principalities during the fourteenth century; these
were not historical in nature but mostly translations or compilations in the
Islamic religious sciences. Some begs undoubtedly commissioned such works in
order to be comme il faut or to acquire prestige through courtly patronage.
Building up their sphere of authority, some of the begs probably felt a
practical need for having access to authoritative formulations of the tenets of
Islam. There must also have been a pious concern with being correct or better
informed about the faith one claimed to champion. As for non-religious learning,
interest was displayed in the practical sciences of medicine and astronomy and
in Persian literary classics. Many works in these categories were copied or
recast in Turkish in the fourteenth century.[7]
From the evidence of extant sources, it seems that the people of the frontiers
did not write their histories, with some exceptions to be discussed below, until
the fifteenth century. They rather told what purported to be historical
narratives woven around legendary warriors and dervishes. Two interrelated,
sometimes even indistinguishable, types of narrative played a prominent role in
formulating the historical consciousness of the people of the frontiers: warrior
epics and hagiographies. If we are to understand the ideals and the motives of
uc society, to grasp how they read meaning into their actions, how they
conceptualized "war for the faith" and related notions, these are dearly the
sources we must turn to. The following brief discussion of the sources, neither
an encyclopedic survey nor an exhaustive analysis of a particular group, is
meant only to highlight some of the relevant points in that regard.
Before turning to the narratives that claimed to portray the lives and deeds of
frontier warriors of post-Mantzikert Anatolia, however, it must be noted that
they were produced and told within milieux that were conscious of earlier layers
of frontier traditions. The gests of various Arab warriors, deriving from early
Islamic history or the ebb and flow of the Arabo-Byzantine frontiers, continued
to be enjoyed by Muslim Anatolians even after the Turkish speakers gained
predominance. These were not national epics but epics of a struggle between two
religio-
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civilizational orientations, the Muslim side of which was dominated once by
Arabic speakers and later by Turkish speakers. That earlier layer included the
military exploits of Muhammad , the Prophet, as embodied in works of magazi and
tales of Hamza and `Ali , the uncle and the son-in-law of the Prophet,
respectively. Various other tales of Arab and Persian lore also enjoyed
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