Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

Ottomanism, wrote of the imminent arrival of the Safavid shah to deliver the
Türkmen tribes from the hands of the House of Osman, he described the forces of
the shah as the "real gazis."[94] It cannot be taken for granted, however, that
the gazi-dervishes who gathered around the cult of Seyyid Gaza or the tribal
populations that switched their allegiance to the Safavids represented the
original and "real" gaza ethos while the Ottomans degenerated it. Obviously at
least two different modes existed in the sixteenth century, but both of them
were, in different ways and degrees, variants of the earlier spirit(s). The
mutations were configured during the tension-ridden process of Ottoman state
building, which does not seem to have been accompanied by a concern with
history-writing in its first century.
There are no known historical accounts of Ottoman exploits by the Ottomans
before the fifteenth century. But this must be seen as part of a broader
phenomenon: the blooming of a literate historical imagination among the
representatives of post-Seljuk frontier energies had to await the fifteenth
century.
The earliest written rendering of an Anatolian Turkish narrative of a
"historical" nature seems to have been Danismendname , composed in 1245, but no
copies are known of that original version. The earliest extant works written in
Anatolian in Turkish on any topic are, in addition to the mystical poetry of
Yunus Emre, a few thirteenth-century poems by a couple of lesser-known poets
such as Dehhani and some verses penned as curious experiments by Sultan Veled,
Rumi's son, at the turn of the fourteenth century. The rest of that century saw
primarily translations of romances or ethical and medical works (mostly from
Persian) as well as works of Islamic law and rites (mostly from Arabic). There
were also original works produced in Anatolian Turkish, such as `Asik Pasa's
mystical masterpiece, the Garibname , in which the author felt compelled to
defend his use of Turkish, but few of these can be considered historical in
nature. If it were not for Gulsehri's brief vita of Ahi Evren and the
Menakibii'l-kudsiyye , one would not be able to point to any works written in
Turkish before the fifteenth century dealing with contemporary historical events
and circumstances.[95] Even in Persian and Arabic, not much historical writing
(even including hagiographies and epics) was undertaken in post-Seljuk Rum in
the fourteenth century.[96] But dearly, events were told and cast into oral
narratives, which seem to have awaited the Timurid shock to be rendered into
writing.[97]
A versified chronicle of the Ottomans appended to an Alexander romance by Ahmedi
, who had an earlier attachment to the House of Ger-
― 94 ―
miyan, is the oldest account we have of early Ottoman history. It was written,
as we have it, for Prince Suleyman , who was one of the competitors for
reestablishing the integrity of the Ottoman realm after his father had lost the
Battle of Ankara in 1402. Timur, the victor, quickly left Anatolia with his eyes
set on other goals but not before dividing the domain that Osman and his
descendants had been consolidating for over a century. Many beg families were
given back their former territories that had been annexed by an increasingly
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