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

in the second half of the sixteenth century. In the first half of the study, Sohrweide deals
with the history of early Safavids until the rise of Shah Ismail. In this first part, she
underlines the fundamental change from sunni bases to ghulat shi’ism in the esoteric
message of the order under Shaykh Junayd, as well as Junayd’s – and his successors’-
success in recruiting new disciples from among Turkomans of Anatolia. Then she
continues with the echoes of the Safavid success under Shah Ismail among the Anatolian
qizilbashes. In this context, she briefly examines the Shahkulu Rebellion (1511), the Nur
Ali Khalifa Uprising (1512), the Celālī Uprising (1519), the Kalender Çelebi Uprising
(1524), and some other qizilbash uprisings in the first half of the sixteenth century.
Sohrweide finishes her work by providing a brief description of the positions of the
Anatolian qizilbashes within the Ottoman realm in the second half of the sixteenth
century.
Although it became a classic in the field, a fame it deserves, Sohrweide’s work
does not cover all the aspects of the issue. First of all, she does not adequately consult
the Ottoman sources, neither the rich archival materials in TSA nor the Selim-nāme
literature. 9 As a result many important aspects of the issue remained untouched in her
article. Secondly, Sohrweide presents a descriptive history of events within three
centuries, but does not attempt to provide a theoretical framework filling the socio-
cultural and ideological background. True that she occasionally refers to the tribal
affiliations of the Safavid disciples. Nonetheless, she by no means intends to analyze the
development of the qizilbash movement within a systematically developed theoretical
framework.
9 Although she consults some Ottoman chronicles, some very important first-hand sources such as Defter
VIII (and its addendum) and Defter IX of Kemalpaşazāde and Selim-nāme of Şükrī-i Bitlisī are absent in
this article.
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