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

Shah. Celalzāde says, on the other hand, when Murad, in accordance with the plan
designated in Ahmed’s court, offered qizilbashes to help his father, they rejected to do
so without taking the permission of the Shah. Then Murad went to Iran with qizilbashes
but did not return to his father. As for the end of Murad, two accounts again come
together. Murad was killed by Shah Ismail upon arriving Persia. Celalzāde interestingly
ignores the Nur Ali Khalifa rebellion completely.
The other line of narration, however, focuses on Nur Ali Khalifa rebellion but
completely ignores Ahmed and Murad’s relationship with the qizilbash movements in
the region. Similarly with Kemalpaşazāde, Idrīs and his followers also describe Nur Ali
Khalifa, who managed to capture Tokat in the name of the Shah, as an agent of Shah
Ismail commissioned to organize a rebellion in Anatolia. But they diverge from the first
group with regard to Ahmed’s respond to Nur Ali’s activities and its consequence. Idrīs
states that Ahmed sent his troops after Nur Ali under the command of Sinan Pasha, who
was defeated. It was this defeat that finished the support for Ahmed’s candidacy in
Istanbul.
Indeed, the qizilbash movements in the Province of Rum in the year 918 (1512-
3) and Murad’s adherence to this movement are documented to a certain degree in
archival reports housed in TSA. A careful study of these documents suggests that the
qizilbash movement advanced as at least two correlated arms: One was led by Nur Ali
Khalifa Rumlu, 1627 a Safavid khalifa directly charged by the Shah with organizing the
qizilbash population especially living in the Province of Rum for an uprising, and the
other being led by indigenous khalifas and Sultan Murad.
1627 HR claims that Nur Ali Khalifa was coming from Rum. See HR, p. 164.
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