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

as major ‘qizilbash zones’ and provided the main body of the qizilbash tribal fighters
which constituted the backbone of Shah Ismail’s conqueror army.
Obviously, Turkoman’s divergence from the Ottoman state and Shaykh Junayd’s
recruitment of disciples among Anatolian Turkomans were closely interrelated
developments. In the same vein, the doctrinal change in the Safavid order from the high
Islamic Sufism to the militant-popular Sufism under Shaykh Junayd was not
coincidental; rather, it was closely linked to a fundamental shift of the gravity in the
disciple fundamentals of the order from the relatively cultured townspeople to the
Turkoman tribespeople. The second half of the fifteenth century experienced the
marriage of the Turkoman tradition, which had already been distanced from the Ottoman
official sphere, and the Safavid mysticism.
This marriage brought considerable innovations to both parties. As mentioned
above, the Safavid order experienced an essential transformation. On the other hand,
under the spiritual and temporal leadership of the Safavid shaykhs, the Turkoman tribes
attained a capacity of organization, of coming together and forming a supra-tribal entity
cemented by intense mysticism. It was these inter-tribal bonds provided by the spiritual
mastership of the Safavid shaykhs that made the harmonious collective deeds of the
qizilbash oymaqs possible and made them capable of shaking the Ottoman suzerainty in
Anatolia.
Moreover, the Safavid spiritual mastership shaped the Turkoman religious
corpus evolved through centuries. The pillars of the faith and the fundamental rules of
the practice (ritual) of the qizilbash understanding of religion are designed in the course
of this period. Today, still many elements of belief and rules of ritual among qizilbashes
bear clear seals of the Safavid mastership, especially of Shah Hatā’ī, i.e. Shah Ismail. If
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