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

Rumelia to Anatolia where they cooperated with the Safavid propagandists. 1866 Ocak
calls attention to the coincidence of the change in the Ottoman policy towards Kalenderī
groups and the acceleration of Safavid propaganda in Anatolia, and he comes up with
the argument that a connection between them and Safavid followers was established by
the beginning of the sixteenth century. 1867 He also puts emphasis on the emergence of
Shi’ite elements in the works of the sixteenth-century Hurufī poets like Hayālī, Yetīmī,
and Hayretī. 1868 To him, after Kalenders realized that the governing circles of the
Ottoman state turned against them, they sought a new political support. Furthermore
their latitudinarian way of religious life formed an appropriate soil for the Shi’ite-
Safavid propaganda. 1869
Nevertheless, Ocak does not provide any direct evidence for such a co-operation,
at least during the early sixteenth century. 1870 On the contrary, above-mentioned act of
Sultan Selim enables us to suggest another interpretation. It seems reasonable, within the
available evidence, to propose that although there was a remarkable familial
resemblance in terms of religious understanding and practice, the two groups did not
establish a serious organizational connection. Selim was surely aware of the doctrinal
and practical likeness between the the religious beliefs of the qizilbashes and abdals. It
was most probably because of that, that Selim needed to visit the most celebrated center
1866
Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Osmanlı Đmparatorluğu’nda Marjinal Sûfîlik: Kalenderîler (XIV-XVII. Yüzyıllar),
Ankara: TTK, 1999, pp. 122-3.
1867
Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, "Quelques remarques sur le rôle des derviches kalenderis dans les mouvements
populaires dans l'Empire Ottoman au XVe et XVle siècles ",Osmanlı Araştırmaları, III, 1982, pp. 78-9.
Ocak Fuat Köprülü already indicated the connection between Abdals and Safavid movement before. See
Fuad Köprülü, “Abdal”, Türk Halk Edebiyatı Ansiklopedisi, çıkaran M. Fuad Köprülü, sayı:1, Đstanbul,
1935, pp. 30, 36.
1868
Ocak, “Kalenderī Dervishes and Ottoman Administration”, p. 251.
1869
Ocak, “Kalenderī Dervishes and Ottoman Administration from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth
Centuries”, p. 250.
1870
I should add that I have not come across any indication to such a cooperation between the Qizilbashes
and Kalenderī groups in the contemporary sources, at least until the battle of Çaldıran.
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