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

devoted to explaining how this transformation materialized, even though it is thinly
guised as the story of Junayd and Haydar.
Apart from Aşıkpaşazāde, there are references in many other Ottoman sources as
well. All the Ottoman sources, except Haniwaldanus Anonym, which deploys the
traditional pejorative attitude of Ottoman authors towards Shaykh Junayd and Haydar,
depict the history of the Safavid Order in the same manner as Aşıkpaşazāde. To
summarize, the early Shaykhs until Junayd were revered as saintly persons and rightly
guided spiritual masters; by the time of Junayd, however, desire for worldly power had
invaded the souls of the Safavid descendants, and they deviated from the true path of
their ancestors.
Idris-i Bitlisī, a contemporary writer of the era, who first served at the
Aqqoyunlu court and then moved to the Ottoman palace, writing Heşt Behişt, the
famous history of the first eight Ottoman Sultans up to Bayezid II, repeats more or less
the same account without mentioning any names. He says that the early Safavid Shaykhs
set their feet on the path of şeriat and on the prayer rug (seccade) of tarikat; and that
thus, a great number of prominent religious men and people of truth in the Ottoman and
Şam (Damascus) countries followed them. Nonetheless, he claims, their descendants did
not continue the rightly guided tradition established by the early Shaykhs, but went
astray, preferring the worldly throne to the spiritual one. They married daughters of
Persian kings and established kinship with temporal rulers. Consequently, certain
licentious disciples began to be excited by the ‘mania’ for temporal sovereignty. To
ratify their legitimacy on temporal power, they eventually claimed descendance from the
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