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

the other hand, a relative religious, economic, and administrative autonomy against the
interference of the Ottoman officials at least by the mid-seventeenth century.
To the contrary of the Ottoman Administration’s will, however, this autonomy
which granted a certain capacity of resistance to the absorbed heterodox elements
resulted in the survival of Anatolian heresy under (relative) Bektashi protection.
Following Linda Schatkowski-Schilcher’s analysis on the society of the eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Damascus 2037 , Faroqhi attempts to explain this autonomy and
immunity of dervishes against the government with the phenomenon of ‘sufi estate’. The
sufi groups, or tarikats, in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire were
bodies with a definite membership and a well-defined internal structure. Thus it was not
so easy to violate the autonomous sphere of a sufi organization and to remove one or
more people from this ‘estate’ to the status of ordinary re’āya. 2038
As far as the qizilbashes are concerned, however, one should further this
analysis. Although it seems plausible to assume that the qizilbashes of Anatolia shifted
their allegiance to Bektashi Order from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards,
one may hardly claim that they became Bektashi. Rather, their affiliation to – or
connection with - the order developed in a peculiar way. Most probably stemming from
its dominant tribal character during the formation, or more accurately speaking
‘synthesis’ period, the boundaries of the qizilbash identity in the Ottoman Anatolia were
formed not only by the religious discourse but also by a vague ethnicity. As elucidated
throughout the present study, during the formative period under Shaykh Junayd, Shaykh
Haydar, and Shah Ismail, the qizilbash community mainly appeared as tribal, close-knit
2037 Linda Schatkowski-Schilcher, Families in Politics. Damascus Factions and States of the 18th and
19th Centuries, Stuttgart: Berliner Islamstudien, 2, 1985.
2038 Faroqhi, “Conflict, Accommodation, and Long-Term Survival”, p. 182.
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