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

Needless to say, the emergence, molding, and congealment of the Qizilbash
identity were socio-religious processes that coincided with the politico-military struggle
between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavids. Nonetheless, it was long before the
commencement of this confrontation that a discontent segment in Ottoman society,
which would ultimately wear the red-caps of Shaykh Haydar (d. 1488) and launch fierce
uprisings against Ottoman authority, had already appeared. They were discontent
because the central bureaucratic administration of the Ottoman State forced them to
leave their traditional mode of life, which was overwhelmingly nomadic; because there
was a certain cultural discrepancy between their cultures and that of the Ottoman elite,
who at the same time had a demeaning attitude towards them; because their
understanding, interpretation and practice of Islam was regarded by the Ottoman
religious scholars as heretic (rāfizi); and finally because they could no more find their
idiom-leader prototype in the Ottoman sultans as it had been during the formative period
of the state. Contemporary sources clearly reveal that in the second half of the fifteenth
century, the discontent population of Anatolia, which overwhelmingly consisted of
tribal-nomads, regarded the Ottoman rule as illegitimate and oppressive. For the
Ottoman governors, on the other hand, they were a source of disobedience, anarchy,
political resistance, and finally of heresy; in short, they were source of all sorts of
trouble.
When studying the emergence of the Qizilbash identity towards the end of the
fifteenth century, a careful inquiry soon unveils the fact that there was not a single cause
for a considerable segment of society in Anatolia to detach itself from the Ottoman
Empire. It was rather a combination of political discontent, religious controversy, and
economic incompetence. The main grounds of alienation, furthermore, were not merely
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