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

“région turcophone”. 432 Despite being curious about Nikitine’s argument, Sohrweide
also inclines to underestimate the connection of Safīyuddin with the Turkish cultural
sphere. He states, the word ”Türk” is used here as a synonym of “beautiful”. 433 To
conclude, the origin of the Safavid dynasty was neither seyyid, nor shi’ite, nor of
Turkoman blood. 434
Indeed, the connection of the early Safavid Shaykhs to Turkish culture and
language, as well as their ethnic origin, and the relationship of the order to the Turkish
folk during the early years of its history are not clearly known. Modern scholars tend to
identify the principal language spoken by the early Shaykhs as the Persian dialect of
Gilan. 435 Nonetheless, the translation of Saffetu’s-safa, albeit partially, into Turkish
immediately after its appearance clearly shows that by at least the mid-fourteenth
century the order had attained a wide-spread acceptance among Turkish speaking
people. Likewise, by the Shaykhdom of Junaid, at the latest, the decisive majority of the
order’s disciples hailed from Turkoman tribal peoples of Anatolia and Syria. Moreover,
from this time onward until the fall of dynasty the native language of the Shaykh’s
family members is known to have been Turkish. 436
432 Nikitine, p. 393, footnote 3. Nikitine’s view is, however, open to criticism. Sohrweide, for example,
took a skeptic stance toward this view. See, Sohrweide, p. 99, footnote 26.
433 Sohrweide reminds that in the Persian poetry the phrase “schön Türke” is celebrated. Thus, this phrase
in Saffetu’s-safa does not necessarily mean that Shaykh Safī was ethnically a Turk, but rather, that he was
as beautiful as a Turk. See Sohrweide, p. 99, footnote 26.
434 Hans Roemer argues, however, that Ismail’s etnhic origin must be accepted Turkish or Turcoman; “At
any rate,” he writes, “Ismail’s Turkish or Turkoman descent is beyond any question.” See Hans R.
Roemer, “The Qizilbash Turcomans: Founders and Victims of the Safavid Theocracy”, Intellectual
Studies in Islam, eds., M. M. Mazzaoui-V. B. Moreen, Utah, 1990, p. 29.
435 Sohrweide, p. 113. Brown states that Shaykh Safī produced poetry both in the dialect of Gilan and in
ordinary Persian. See BRW, p. 43. However, Mazzaoui says that the Shaykh may possibly have produced
some Turkish written works as well. See Mazzaoui, pp. 49-50, footnote 7.
436 Shah Ismail is said to have learned Persian during his concealment in Lahijan. (See Muhammad Karim
Youssef-Jamālī, The Life and Personality of Shāh Ismā’īl I (1487-1524), Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Edinburgh, 1981, p. 13.) And “more than a century after Isma’īl’s death, when the capital had been
transferred from the north of Persia to Isfahān, Turkish seems still to have been the language generally
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