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

messianism. 1203 It is not coincidence that most of the charismatic leaders of those sort of
rebellions were affiliated with mysticism. These leaders usually lead an ascetic life
secluded in a cave, which created great respect mingled with the fear among folk, before
launching the insurrection. 1204 Şahkulu also, as well as Baba Ilyas 260 years ago, spent a
couple of years in a cave just before raising the banner of revolt. As Ocak puts,
Aux époques dont nous parlons, il faut certainement qu’il y ait un idéologie
religieuse se nourrissant des croyances traditionnelles des révoltés. Et c’est
précisément sur ce point que le chef soufi du mouvement ou de la révolte joue
son rôle fondamental. Ce chef suofi et souvent le stimulateur d’une idéologie
messianique, mettant à profit sa personnalité charismatique de caractère
mystique. Ce caractère mystique prend la forme du mahdî – une forme qui est
très familières aux peuples musulmans médiévaux. 1205
On the other hand, the discourses used by the leaders of rebellions are nearly
identical. As Ocak has already showed, Şahkulu carried on an astonishingly similar
propaganda to that spread by Baba Ilyas two and a half centuries earlier. Furthermore,
the socio-economic backgrounds of two revolts, as well as of other similar but smaller-
scale revolts in the Ottoman realm, were also more or less the same. Like Baba Ilyas, the
followers of Şahkulu were mainly nomadic or semi-nomadic Turkomans affiliated with
a ‘heterodox’ form of Islam. The roots of rebellion, indeed, stemmed from the socio-
economic conflict between nomadic groups and the Anatolian Seljukid regime rather
1203 Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, “XVI. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Anadolu’sunda Mesiyanik Hareketlerin Bir Tahlil
Denemesi”, V. Milletlerarası Türkiye Sosyal ve Đktisat Tarihi Kongresi (Tebliğler), Đstanbul, 21-25
Ağustos 1989, Ankara, 1991, 817-25; “Babīler Đsyanından Kızılbaşlığa”, p. 153; “The Wafā’ī tarīqa
(Wafā’īyya) during and after the Period of the Seljuks of Turkey: a new Approach to the History of
Popular Mysticism in Turkey”, Mésogeios, 25-26, 2005, p. 243; “Tarihsel Süreç Đçinde Türklerin Đslâm
Yorumu (Tarih Boyunca Türkler ve Đslâm Problemine Genel Bir Bakış Denemesi”, in his Türkler, Türkiye
ve Đslam. Yaklaşım, Yüntem ve Yorum Denemeleri, Đstanbul: Đletişim Yayınları, 2000, p. 47; “Un aperçu
général sur l’hétérodoxie Musulmane en Turquie: Réflexions sur les origines et les caractéristiques du
Kizilbashisme (Alévisme) dans la perspective de l’histoire”, Syncretistic Religious Communities in the
Near East, eds. Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi, Barbara Kellner-Heinkele, Anke Otter-Beaujean, Leiden, New
York, Köln: Brill, 1997, pp. 202-3.
1204 Ocak, Babaîler Đsyanı, pp. 157-8; “Kutb ve Đsyan”, p. 51.
1205 Ocak, “Syncrétisme et esprit messianique”, p. 252.
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