TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

Turkoman warriors to Osman’s entourage. On the other hand, the religious
representatives of early Ottoman society, namely ‘heterodox’ dervishes, flourished the
idea of holy war and augmented religious sentiment among gāzi-warriors, 246 as well as
legitimizing claims of the early Ottomans for the worldly power. 247
The political and military dignitary of this confederation was intermingled and
represented by a tribal aristocracy, who were at the same time the comrade-in-arms of
Osman, who was simply the first among equals rather than enjoying a supreme authority
over other begs or tribal leaders of gazā bands. During the foundation period of the
principality, two closely intermingled classes, which would play a leading role in the
development of the state both in terms of organization and ideology, were almost absent:
the bureaucratic elite and high (religious) scholars or ulemā. 248 Contrary to the Turko-
Mongolian step tradition, these two classes were representatives of high Islamic
tradition, which was heavily influenced by the Arabic and Persian culture. As will be
returned to in the further stages of the analysis in this chapter, the emergence and
consolidation of the bureaucratic elite and ulemā class in the Ottoman capital cities
constituted one of the two principal bases of the Ottoman Imperial regime, the other
being the centralized military system.
246 One should note that there are indications in contemporary sources of that these dervishes did not only
propagate the idea of gazā but also actively took part in many fights such as the conquest of Bursa, the
conquest of Rumelia etc. For the prominent role of Seyyid Ali Sultan, one of the dervishes of that kind, in
the conquest of Rumelia, see Rıza Yıldırım, Seyyid Ali Sultan (Kızıldeli) ve Velâyetnâmesi.
247 Indeed, as Đnalcık rightfully delineates, “in the Ottoman frontier lands dervishes and gāzis often became
identical.” See Halil Đnalcık, “The Rise of Ottoman Historiography”, in Historians of the Middle East,
eds., Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt, Oxford, 1962, p. 157.
248 Indeed, one could hardly differentiate these two classes in early Ottoman context since there was not a
clear-cut border-line between them and the transition form one to other was wide-spread. Researches on
the Ottoman history point to the fact that the bureaucracy of the Ottoman empire was predominantly –
wholly during the formation period – emerged from the ulemā class.
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