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

egarding the ‘deep current’ and which for the most part focused on the anthropological
fundamentals of the political formations, governed the whole thesis.
It is only by now, having determined the ‘visible picture’ as far as the available
sources allow, that the fundamentals of the Qizilbash Identity which are rooted in the
‘deep current’, especially its religious and anthropological fundamentals, could be
speculated on a comparatively safe ground of historical knowledge. Yet it should be
stated that the present monograph of the emergence of the Qizilbash Identity will remain
incomplete until a comprehensive evaluation of the religious and anthropological
dimensions of this identity is carried out. We have copies of the religious-sacred texts of
the qizilbashes, namely Buyruk, dating from the early seventeenth century. The Buyruk
texts not only explain the pillars of the qizilbash belief and rules of the practice or
rituals, but also include valuable information on the social organization, the socio-
religious hierarchy, and the religious-legal principles governing the community. Once
the course of the events was established, which was what the present thesis attempted to
do, then the accounts of Buyruk texts became meaningful and gain historical value even
if the earliest text was from after a century later than the congealment of the Qizilbash
Identity. 2041 As a matter of fact, a sufficient study of the religious aspects of the
Qizilbash Identity, which is mainly based on the Buyruk texts and which consults with
some archival documents – especially the Mühimme registers of the Ottoman state - and
with the other known sources, would complete the present monograph.
As well as the ‘surface current’ is concerned, the attentive reader might have
already recognized that ‘the making of the Qizilbash Identity’ was a phenomenon
2041 The earliest known manuscript of Buyruk texts was copied in 1612-3 in Manisa. The transliterated text
of this copy, alongside with the facsimile of the original manuscript, is published by Ahmet Taşğın. See
Bisâtî, Şeyh Sâfî Buyruğu (Menâkıbu’l-Esrâr Behcetü’l-Ahrâr), ed. Ahmet Taşğın, Ankara, 2003.
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