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

population. 1821 Although this ratio seems to be an exaggeration, it still indicates the fact
that before Yavuz Selim’s campaign on Shah Ismail, much, if not most, of the Anatolian
rural population were either adherents or sympathizers to the qizilbash movement. As I
have already delineated, the qizilbash existence in Ottoman Anatolia could not be
reduced barely to their sizable population, but they also had a very effective part in
politics and the military affairs. By Selim’s harsh policy, however, both the number and
the influence of the qizilbashes in the political and military sphere reduced to a
controllable level. Before he started the war against the Shah, Sultan Selim had already
initiated a ‘purging operation’ within the Ottoman borders. It is traditionally reported by
the Ottoman chroniclers that forty thousand qizilbashes were reported to the court and
then executed by Ottoman officials. 1822
Idrīs states that while Sultan Selim was staying in Edirne in the winter of 1513-
1514, he dispatched decrees for the local governors ordering to register the names of all
the disciples and sympathizers of Ismail be it young or old up to their third ancestors. 1823
According to Idrīs, the local governors were ordered to register the ancestors of the
qizilbashes back to the third generation because of the fact that among the Safavid
shaykhs only Ismail’s grand father, father, and himself (three generations) were
enthusiastically engaged in politics and deviated from the ‘true path’ of Islam. Thus, the
1821
Minorsky, “Shaykh Bālī-Efendi on the Safavids”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African
Studies, vol. 20, no. 1/3, 1957, p. 438.
1822
For a different approach to the qizilbash massacre by the Ottomans see Benjamin Lellouch, “Puissance
et justice retenue du sultan ottoman. Les massacres sur les fronts iranien et égyptien (1514-1517)”, Le
Massacre, objet d’histoire, sous la direction de David El Kenz, Gallimard, 2005, 171-182. This article
attempts to bring a general conceptual approach to the massacre of the qizilbashes and Mamluks by Sultan
Selim. To the author, Ottomans, and medieval Middle Eastern rulers in general, perceived the massacre of
captives, even of the population of the conquered lands, as an act of sovereign power and justice. Thus it
had ideological, judicial, and philosophical basis, as well as political reasons.
1823
IDRS, p. 130. SLZ says, however, that Selim ordered the registeration of the names of the qizilbashes
when he was in Anatolia. See SLZ, p. 16.
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