Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

as they came out into the political arena with a bid for regional power, would
be unaware of the language and code of the frontiers or that they would not
couch their claims within those terms.
Whether the early Ottomans belonged in that category or not, there dearly were
warriors in Anatolia, as in many other regions of the medieval Islamic world,
who claimed to be gazis fighting in the name of Islam. In the next chapter, we
shall look at them more closely as a part of the historical reality of medieval
Anatolia, as social types in a particular
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historical context. Here we must continue with our exploration of what gaza
meant. What kind of a struggle did those warriors and their supporters imagine
they were involved in?
With respect to gaza, the first thing to be noted is that it is not synonymous
with jihad even though all the scholars mentioned in the previous chapter use
the two terms interchangeably or use one English term, "holy war," for both as
if there were no appreciable difference. But there dearly was such a difference
in both the popular imagination and in canonical works.[55] Whether one takes
the position of a learned Muslim or a narrator of frontier lore, who may not
have had a rigorous training (and his audience, I presume), these terms are not
to be collapsed into one. The word "jihad" is rarely used in the frontier
narratives analyzed above or in the early Ottoman chronicles to be analyzed
below; the sources dearly maintained a distinction.
Recent studies have pointed out that jihad should not be understood as incessant
warfare to expand the abode of Islam or a mentality that recognizes a permanent
state of war.[56] The assumption of perpetual hostility between the abode of
Islam and the abode of war (which could better be translated as the abode of
infidelity) and thus of a duty upon all Muslims to undertake incessant warfare
upon non-Muslim lands is not valid. Such a view would be nothing more than a
crude caricature of both the learned/centralist circles' notion and that of the
frontier milieux. Accommodation was not necessarily outside the pale of Islamic
"international law." It cannot be said that the frontier (and its conception of
gaza or jihad) was inherently more or less accommodationist than the central
powers; conflict arose between the two on this matter because the needs of
warfare and accommodation did not always coincide in the two loci of decision
making. By and large, however, the central powers were accommodationist more for
historical reasons than for a priori ethical-political principles differing from
those of the frontier.
Furthermore, jihad is defined by most canonical sources as a war undertaken when
the world of Islam or the peace of the umma is threatened. There is thus a
defensive quality to it, which became more pronounced during the nineteenth
century when colonialist European encroachments were met with movements in the
name not of gaza but of jihad. Still, the discussion about jihad as an offensive
or defensive war overlooks the fact that, at least in terms of military logic,
it is not always easy to distinguish between the two. What about a "preemptive
strike"? Is it offensive or defensive? Or, how should one deal with the dictum
that "the best defense is offense"? Can offense be seen as a defensive
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