Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

engaging in Realpolitik.
As depicted in a later episode, the drawbacks of rigidity could be all too
apparent to the Muslim warriors through its consequences. According to this
account, the people of the town of Sisiya converted to Islam, but they converted
"out of the fear of the sword." The governor whom Danismend left in charge of
the town "was extremely devout, a solid [or, rigid] religious scholar, and made
the people of Sisiya pray all five times
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every day whether it was necessary or not. If one of them were not to come to
the mosque [to pray with the congregation at the regular hours], he would be
reprimanded. The hypocrites remained helpless."[16] When the town was besieged
by the infidels, however, the governor paid dearly for this attitude. He
gathered an army of the townsmen ten thousand strong, but "there were only about
two thousand Muslims, while the other eight thousand were hypocrites." The
latter switched sides during the confrontation, and all the Muslims, including
the governor, were killed. On the one hand, this is a story of treachery that
prepares the ground for the unfolding of the gazis' inevitable revenge; it could
be read as a lesson on the dangers of putting too much trust in converts. On the
other hand, it can also serve as a lesson on the hazards of too much orthodoxy.
The narrator seems to have wanted his audience not to miss that reading by
inserting the phrase underlined above: praying five times a day is of course
incumbent upon all adult Muslims according to Sunni orthodoxy.
The most important element of Melik Danismend's vita for our concerns here must
be the hope of inclusion it offers to the Christians of Anatolia upon conversion
to Islam. The same motif is central to the Battalname , where the best friend,
the warrior companion, of Seyyid Battal Gaza happens to be his former foe on the
Byzantine side.[17] And if the Battalname provides a matrix for the joint
ventures of an Arab and a Greek warrior, the Danismendname goes further in that
its warrior heroes come from different sides not only of religious and ethnic
but also of gender boundaries. Melik Danismend is joined in the beginning of the
narrative by Artuhi (an Armenian?) and Artuhi's beloved Efromiya (a Greek?), who
recognize the military as well as religious and moral superiority of Melik
Danismend and convert. The two are so quickly absorbed into the whirlwind of
gaza that they do not even find time to change their names as they fight
alongside the melik for the rest of his exploits. One of the most celebrated
gaza narratives thus presents its audience with an eloquent surprise, namely,
the seemingly incongruous image of a woman named Efromiya, even after she has
become Muslim, leading raids on horseback or engaging in chivalric one-to-one
combat in the name of Islam. In one of their first joint ventures, for instance,
all three heroes take their ablutions, pray, and dine together, and Efromiya
stands guard while the other two sleep. This does not prevent her, however, from
being the first to ride into the field the next day and challenge the enemy, led
by her own father, to send somebody for combat. That infidel "made three attacks
but could not succeed. It was Efromiya's
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