Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

not, it is not surprising that the narrators of those particular texts would
choose to censor episodes concerning dynastic strife resolved through murder in
the family (deflected parricide?). To sustain the logic of their argument, or
the moral of their tale, Apz, Uruç, and the compilers of the anonymous
chronicles would simply need to omit Dündar's case, because their narratives are
structured around a rupture in the moral uprightness of the Ottoman enterprise
in the reign of Bayezid I (1389-1402): all evil deviations from the purity and
sincerity of early frontier years are to be located after that juncture, all
those nasty developments toward the construction of an imperial political system
and its ideology. The case is the same with fratricide, which the anonymous
chroniclers and Uruç explicitly cite as an evil that was not practiced, so they
claim, in the early generations. Just after reporting Orhan's peaceful agreement
with his brother `Ala'eddin upon their father's death, these sources add:
"brothers consulted each other then; they did not kill one another."[126]
Curiously, this passage is omitted in the YF-Apz narrative, which also omits
reports, found in some other chronicles, about the murder of Haci Ilbegi , to be
discussed below. It is unlikely that Yahsi Fakih had not heard these gruesome
stories, whether they were true or not. He may have found them unbelievable or
chosen not to write them down, or perhaps Apz excluded such passages from his
edition.[127] It must have been Apz's choice, for instance, to omit the
antifratricide editorial recorded in the anonymous chronicles and Uruç, because
it is presumably from the common source. Did Apz omit this passage because he
knew better, namely, because he had read about Osman and Dündar in the menakib
of Yahsi Fakih ? In any case, the anonymous chroniclers and Uruç are in general
more consistent in erasing all memory of familial strife in the early
generations before Bayezid . They also omit the passage, related by Apz and
preserved by Nesri , of Osman's disagreement with his brother Gündüz. Uruç is in
fact so cautious that he makes Osman's two brothers die before Ertogril's
demise, that is, before Osman has any political claims, so that he cannot be
imputed.[128] In the anonymous texts, the brothers are named but nothing is said
of their deaths.
As for Dündar, he is mentioned before Nesri only in Bayath Mahmudogli Hasan's
Cami Cem-Ayin .[129] Bayath writes that Ertogril's father had four sons: two of
them took their clans eastward when their father drowned in the Euphrates; the
other two, Ertogril and Dündar, came to
― 107 ―
Anatolia. Dündar is not mentioned again in this work, which leaves some room for
speculation but no more than that. How could that vile deed be imputed to the
glorious founding father in a work written for Prince Cem, the loser of a
violent struggle for the throne and the prime target of fratricidal designs
entertained by the victorious brother? Apz, Uruç, and the authors of the
anonymous chronicles as well as Ahmedi assign only three sons to Ertogril's
father; none of them is named Dündar. (Sukrullah and Karamanli Mehmed simply do
not refer to any brother of Ertogril .
Is it coincidental that the policy defended by Dündar is the very one Ertogril
is claimed in some sources to have maintained during his chieftainship? A
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