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

Bektashi tradition, was closed by Selim I, and not opened until 1551. 2029 During the first
half of the sixteenth century, however, the tekke benefited from the donations of
Dulkadirlu family, especially of Şehsuvaroğlu Ali Bey, 2030 and during the mid-sixteenth
century, of akıncı families like Malkoçoğlu and Mihaloğlu. 2031
It appears, however, that the Bektashi order (re)gained the support of the
Ottoman administration by the second half of the sixteenth century. This must have been
a natural result of the new Ottoman policy pertaining to the qizilbashes, which might
well be called a policy of ‘taming’, rather than a Bektashi success. So when Ottoman
policy of ‘taming’ qizilbashes under the supervision of Bektashi babas was accepted, the
idea was first put forward by Köprülü and then flourished by Mélikoff and Ocak in that
“by the late sixteenth century on several ‘un-approved heterodox’ groups took shelter in
the Bektashi Order” gains further phase. “Not only did these people try to avoid
persecution by joining the order”, as Faroqhi suggests, but also “the Ottoman
2029 Suraiya Faroqhi, who made an extensive research on the history of the tekke, says that “it has not been
possible to prove the Bektashi tradition that the tekke was closed by Selim I. But since certain waqf
villages show up in the defters compiled under Mehmed Fatih and Bayezid II, and then again in the late
sixteenth century, while they are absent from the records of Süleyman Kanunî, there is some reason to
assume that the dervish community at least suffered temporary losses”. See Suraiya Faroqhi, “The Tekke
of Hacı Bektaş: Social Position and Economic Activities”, Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 7, no. 2,
1976, p. 206. Also see Ibid, p. 185; Remzi Gürses, Hacıbektaş Rehberi, Ankara, non-dated, p. 44. Faroqhi
also notes that although zaviyes like Seyyid Gazi in central Anatolia and Sari Baba in Denizli were in
serious difficulties, Mühimme registers of the period 1560 and 1585 provide no record on the persecution
directed at the shaykhs and dervishes living in the well-known Bektashi centers like Hacı Bektaş, Abdal
Musa, Koyun Baba. See Faroqhi, “Conflict, Accommodation, and Long-Term Survival”, p. 174.
2030 In the complex of the shrine of Hacı Bektaş, there are two inscriptions written in the name
Şehsuvaroğlu Ali Bey: one is located over the entrance to the mausoleum of Balım Sultan, dated
925/1519, and the other is situated over the door of the Friday mosque in the village, outside the shrine,
dated 925/1524. See Faroqhi, “The Tekke of Hacı Bektaş”, p. 185. During the early decades of the
sixteenth century the position of Kırşehir and the region around, which includes Hacı Bektaş as well, was
ambiguous between the Ottoman Empire and Dulkadir dynasty ruling in Elbistan and Maraş as a buffer
state between Ottomans and Mamluks. See Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr, “Les district de Kırşehir et le
Tekke de Hacı Bektaş entre le pouvoir ottoman el les émirs de zulkadir”, in Syncrétismes et hérésies dans
l’Orient seldjoukide et ottoman (XIVe-XVIIIe) siècle. Actes du Colloque du Collège de France, octobre
2001, ed., Gilles Veinstein, Paris, 2005, 259-82.
2031 Yürekli-Görkay, pp. 178-91.
617