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

lead. 2024 The vakıf of the tekke was well established in the second half of the fifteenth
century, having possessions in the Kırşehir province, especially around Hacı Bektaş and
in the area known as Sülaymanlı. From the period of Mehmed II onward, if not earlier, it
also possessed vakıf in the Aksaray area. Faroqhi determines from archival sources that
“while the dergâh received donations from different Sultans down to the period of
Bayezid II, we have no further record of such gifts until the eighteenth century.” 2025
Furthermore, although the vakıfs of the tekke were recorded in the defters compiled
under Mehmed II and Bayezid II, they are absent in the defters up until the defters from
the late sixteenth century. 2026
The relationship between Bektashis and the Ottoman administration is also one
of the most controversial issues of the Ottoman history. On one hand, the established
acceptance by the current scholarship suggests a connection between Bektashi order and
the Janissary corps. 2027 On the other hand, because of their unorthodox way of Islamic
mysticism, Bektashis had always remained suspicious in the view of the Ottoman
official ideology. 2028 For example, the central tekke in Kırşehir, if we rely upon the
See E. Zeynep Yürekli-Görkay, Legend and Architecture in the Ottoman Empire: The Shrines of Seyyid
Gâzi and Hacı Bektaş, Unpublished PhD. thesis, Harvard University, 2005, p. 121.
2024 Faroqhi, “The Tekke of Hacı Bektaş”, p. 184. For the original account see, Vilâyet-nâme, p. 90.
2025 Suraiya Faroqhi, “The Tekke of Hacı Bektaş”, p. 206.
2026 Ibid, p. 206. Zeynep Yürekli-Görkay determines stagnation in the architectural development of the
shrine complex during the first half of the sixteenth century. The process of reviving and monumentalizing
the buildings in the complex was started towards the end of the fifteenth century and completed during the
mid-sixteenth century. However, until the 1550s there was a visible interruption, which might be a sign of
the closure of the tekke as related in Bektashi tradition. See E. Zeynep Yürekli-Görkay, Legend and
Architecture in the Ottoman Empire: The Shrines of Seyyid Gâzi and Hacı Bektaş, Unpublished PhD.
thesis, Harvard University, 2005, p. 174.
2027 I have discussed this issue briefly in Chapter III.
2028 What is more controversial is that, as this thesis clearly puts it, the Janissary corps played the leading
role in bringing Selim I, who had already established his program mainly on the qizilbash enmity during
the period from his governorship in Trabzon, to the throne.
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