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

other things, but since they were not allowed to remain in the camp, they returned
home.” 774 Without a doubt these disciples were mostly coming from Anatolia and
Northern Syria. It is interesting to note that a few years before, Rüstem Beg’s
predecessor Yakub Padishah had forbidden Shaykh Haydar to communicate with his
disciples, especially with his khalifas in Rūm. 775 All this evidence clearly puts the facts
that 1) the disciples of the Safavid house were no more the quietest mystics but had
formidable military potency as well, 2) the main stem providing the ‘new type of
disciples’ to the ‘order’ was in Anatolia, and then in northern Syria. It is because of this
fact that when Safavid shaykhs emerged as a threat for the temporal authority of
Akkoyunlu rulers, the first measure they applied was to cut off the connection between
the shaykh, the head, and Anatolian (as well as Syrian) disciples, the body. 776
In the end, in the middle of 1494, Rüstem Beg grew quite fearful of an attack by
qizilbashes; he decided to kill Safavid princes on his way from his winter quarters in
Hoy to his summer pastures. 777 Forewarned, Sultan Ali and his two brothers,
accompanied by chief devotees like Husayn Beg Lala, Dada Beg Talish, Qara Pīrī Beg
774 HS, p. 567. Ross Anonymous writes similarly: “… he [Rüstem Beg] commissioned spies to see that the
Prince [Sultan Ali] had no communication with the Sūfīs. Nevertheless, his faithful disciples contrived
secretly to send him gifts of ready money and various stores, thus putting to the test the coin of their
devotion.” See Ross Anonymous, p. 261. Also see HT, p. 166; AA, p. 38.
775 TA, p. 70.
776 One might feel legitimate to ask the question that ‘what was the policy of the Ottoman government
against Safavid movement during this period?’ We know from the letter of Bayezid II to Akkoyunlu
Yakub, as an answer to the letter of the former sent upon the death of Shaykh Haydar, that he was
antagonist against Haydar and his followers. In this letter qizilbashes are depicted as ‘the people who went
astray’ or gürūh-ı dālle-i Haydariyye. (See Feridun Bey, I, pp. 304-5.) But we do not know of any
Ottoman measure to prevent Safavid shaykh’s communication with their disciples in the Ottoman
territories. Furthermore, Ottoman chronicles, except APZ’s account on Shaykh Junayd, are totally silent
on Safavid matters until 1500, when Ismail came to Arzinjan, the Ottoman border in the East. Thus
available evidence suggest that the Ottoman government did not apply any effective preventive measure
against the communication between Anatolian qizilbashes and their shaykhs until 1500. Faruk Sümer
deems Bayezid II responsible for ignoring the arising danger in the East and for his soft policy against
qizilbashes, which paved way to the flourishing of qizilbash movement within the Ottoman borders. See
Sümer, Safevî Devletinin Kuruluşu, p. 13.
777 HS, p. 567; HT, p. 167; HR, p. 3; Sarwar, p. 28; Woods, The Aqquyunlu, p. 156.
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