Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

therefore not only were uninhibited about recording Osman's murder of his own
uncle but also knew better than to editorialize against fratricide when they
wrote about Orhan and `Ala'eddin . Ibn Kemal in fact attributes to Osman the
same reasoning that is advanced in Mehmed II's code to legitimize the
legislation of fratricide: "saying that damage to an individual is preferable to
damage to the public, he shot and killed ... his uncle Dündar, who entertained
ambitions to chieftainship."[132] In short, the stubborn old man got what he
deserved; why should one fuss about it?
Given all this, one is tempted to conclude that the later authors may well be
telling a truth that is suppressed by earlier authors due to their narrative
priorities. With respect to the historicity of Dündar, there seems to be further
confirmation in a piece of "hard" evidence found in the archives. In the land
survey of the district of Hudavendigar (including Sogut >) from A.H. 928/A.D.
1521, a plot is identified as land once held and then endowed by a certain
Dündar Beg.[133] There is certainly room for caution here since no information
is given about this person other than his name and title. But then, the plot of
land happens to be in the village of Köprühisar, in the vicinity of which, Nesri
specifically points out, Osman's made was buried.
Obviously, later sources cannot be treated as mere derivatives. A care-
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ful scrutiny of how a later compiler edits, what he or she chooses to maintain,
omit, or change of the material available to him or her, reveals a good deal
about the literary, political, and ideological proclivities of the editor and
hopefully glimpses of the sources at the editor's disposal. Furthermore, later
sources may provide information from earlier ones now lost to us. It is dear
that Nesri (d. ca. 1520), Leunclavius (1533?-93), Muneccimbasi (d. 1702), to
take a few examples from different periods, had access to works that we have not
yet been able to locate or to as yet unidentified manuscript versions of works
we know from other, variant copies. Until the recent discovery of the
Menakibu'l-kudsiyye , containing the stories of Baba Ilyas and his descendants,
Uruç was our only source for some fascinating information on the Baba'i Revolt,
which took place more than two centuries before he wrote. Nesri may have read
Dündar's story in some written source which may or may not eventually be
discovered. Or perhaps he heard it told by a raconteur. In either case, his
account of it two centuries after the fact seems to relate a reliable report
about a crucial incident in Osman's political career.[134]
Clearly, the task of the historian is not as easy as using the early or tardy
appearance of sources as the criterion of their reliability. Nor is there a
clear-cut single path of ideological evolution whereby the meaning of these rich
texts can be ascertained by wholesale characterizations.
Gaza: An Ideology of Schoolmen?
The dismissal of the chroniclers' tradition creates yet another serious problem.
Those who refuse to assign the gaza principle any role in early Ottoman history
write it off as a later ideological construct, but even so the question remains:
whose construct is it? Lindner, again the most systematic of the critics of the
gaza thesis, confronts this question and claims that the gaza ideology that is
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