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

Then Sultan Selim favored this suggestion saying that “here is the only man with
a reasonable idea. It is a pity that he did not become a vizier.” 1909 Hüseyin b. Ca’fer says
that because of this idea Sultan Selim promoted Pīrī Mehmed Çelebi to the vizierate
after the battle. 1910 So the preparations were made to confront the enemy by the early
morning. 1911
It clearly appears in the contemporary sources that the Ottoman army at Çaldıran
was much larger than the Safavid army. Perhaps as effective as the relative sizes of two
armies was the nature of their composition. Safavid force essentially consisted of
traditional Turko-Mongolian type cavalry archers, exclusively derived from qizilbash
oymaqs. As already mentioned in Chapter IV, the prominent oymaqs constituted Shah
Ismail’s army were as follows: Ustaclu, Şamlu, Tekelü, Afşar, Çepni, Dulkadirlü, Kaçar,
Varsak, Çepni, Bayatlu, Talişlu, etc. 1912
In the Ottoman army, on the other hand, as well as cavalry, there were infantry
Janissaries armed with guns and field artillery, which the Safavid side totally lacked on
this occasion. 1913 Selim divided his army into three branches: at the center were the
Janissary troops under the command of Selim himself while the Rumelian troops were
on the left under the command of Hasan Pasha (the beylerbey of Rumelia) and the
Anatolian troops being on the right under the command of Sinan Pasha (the beylerbey of
between the religious understanding and the practice of Bektashi Order, which is alleged to have been the
official spiritual order of the Janissary corps, and Qizilbashism. Rather, he indicates akıncıs as potential
sympathizers of Ismail. As delineated above, the same line of narration also occured in the report of Spy
Ahmed.
1909
Hüseyin b. Ca’fer, fol. 114a; HAM2, p. 427.
1910
Hüseyin b. Ca’fer, fol. 114a. HYDR records that Piri Paşa became a vizier instead of Mustafa Paşa on
October 15, 1514. See HYDR, p. 147.
1911
See also HAM2, p. 427; UZC2, p. 266; TNSS, pp. 52-53.
1912
See Mehmed b. Mehmed el-Fenārī eş-şehir bī Ta’līkī-zāde, Şahnāme-i Āl-i Osman, manuscript,
Topkapı Sarayı Kütüphanesi, III. Ahmed Kitaplığı, 3592, fols. 87a-87b.
1913
See, for example, David Morgan, Medieval Persia 1040-1797, London, New York: Longman, 1988,
pp. 116-7.
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