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

So, putting these two facts together, it clearly appears that Shaykh Junayd’s
homage in the Province of Canik was provided by the Çepni and other Turkoman tribes
that inhabited in the region, which provided gâzi-disciples for Junayd’s troops as well. If
Mehmed Beg was a dependent of the Ottoman Sultan as intrinsically suggested by
Kemalpaşazāde, then Junayd’s stay at his court must have been a short visit. Rather, he
supposedly spent three years from 1453 to 1456 among the Turkoman tribes, engaging
in the propaganda of his spiritual way and making new recruits. We do not know exactly
how the response of the Canik governor and the Ottoman administration to his doings
was. Although no military measure is recorded in contemporary sources, the Ottoman’s,
Karaman’s, and Memluk’s attitudes to the former actions of Junayd suggest that it was
not calm.
On the other hand, failing to realize his political intentions within the three
Islamic realms – namely the Ottoman, Karaman, and Mamluk –, Junayd turned towards
a Christian country. He attacked the Trabzon Greek Empire. Junayd’s goal was obvious:
to construct a temporal power over the ruins of this infidel state in addition to the
spiritual one. Shaykh Junayd’s attack on Trebizond was also recorded in Greek
sources. 608 Taking advantage of the internal conflicts within the ruling family, Junayd
achieved considerable success against the Greeks. He defeated the combined army and
navy of the Greek emperor Yuannis Comminos IV near Kordile (Akca Kale) and
other works, where he studied Ottoman tahrir registers related to Chepnis Sümer says there were number
of people bearing names like ‘Osman’, ‘Bekir’, ‘Ömer’ in Chepni villages thus they were sunnis. See his
Tirebolu Tarihi, pp. 53-4.
607 Mehmed Aşıkî, Menâzirü’l-evâlim, manuscript, Nurosmaniye Kütüphanesi, no. 3426, fol. 299a.
608 For an assessment of Junayd’s campaign on Trebizond mainly basing on Greek sources see Rustam
Shukurov, “The Campaign of Shaykh Djunayd Safawī against Trebizond (1456 AD/860 H)”, Byzantine
and Modern Greek Studies, v. 17, 1993, 127-140.
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