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

according to the anonymous writer, the change here was not from sunnism to shi’ism,
which had already claimed to be done under Hoca Ali, but from an ‘orthodox’ shi’ite
doctrine to an extreme one, which was, furthermore, saturated with political ambition.
Perhaps as a contingent of this change, Junayd also transformed his disciples from
quietist mystics to devoted militants. 514 Iskender Beg also makes clear references to the
desire of Junayd for temporal power. 515
To sum up, the above-mentioned sources, most of which were contemporary to
Junayd and Haydar while the rest being nearly contemporary, leave no doubt that by the
succession of Shaykh Junayd the Sufi Order of Safavids had split into two branches. One
was headed by Shaykh Ca’far the brother of former Shaykh Ibrahim and continued the
traditional way of former Safavid Shaykhs. Some influential khalifas of early Shaykhs
such as Shaykh Hamid b. Musa, also known as Somuncu Baba (d. 1412), the spiritual
master of Haci Bayram Veli and the disciple of Hoca Ali (d. 1429), and Abdurrahman
Erzincānī were representatives of the early phase of the Safavid mysticism in Anatolia.
The other branch headed by Junayd was decisively different from the traditional picture
of the order, in terms of both the esoteric doctrine and the socio-cultural landscape of
disciples. Under Shaykh Junayd’s comparably short leadership (1447-1460), this branch
of the Order experienced a fundamental transformation from a cultivated, tranquil, and
ascetic Sufi Order, which was highly respected by the learned class and ruling elites as
well as the public masses, to a densely mystical but uncultivated, militant, and gulat
shi’ite movement, which identifiably pursued political aspirations and, perhaps mostly
514 See Muhammad Karim Youssef-Jamālī, The Life and Personality of Shāh Ismā’īl I (1487-1524), Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1981, p. 18.
515 AA, pp. 29-30.
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