Kalenders, Abdâls, Hayderîs: The Formation of the Bektâşîye in the Sixteenth Century

Karamustafa, Ahmet T.

doi:10.31826/9781463231774-009

Cited by 5 publications

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“…This sûfi mystic devotional order takes its name from an Anatolian sheyh of a much earlier age but as an order it was the recent coalescence of various syncretic movements. 17 Like the Shi'is the Bektâshi venerated Ali but some of their beliefs and symbolism call to mind a trinity (of God-Muhammad-Ali) with twelve being a special number and the dove a special creature. Their rituals included partaking of wine (in various quantities).…”

Section: From the Father's House To The Son's Householdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turks in the Ottoman Imperial Palace

Kunt¹

2011

Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires

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To a non-specialist "Turks in the Ottoman Imperial Palace" may sound reasonable, even expected, certainly innocuous, but in Ottoman studies the expression comes with a question mark and an exclamation point. Both in terms of the underlying principles and in terms of actual practice there were supposed to be no Turks in the Ottoman palace, except in special circumstances. But from the late sixteenth century, as critics put it, Turks and Kurds and other riffraff penetrated the palace and so caused the deterioration of the venerable institution of the imperial household. 1 Any royal palace might be cosmopolitan to a certain degree but in Europe, except perhaps in the multi-ethnic Habsburg capitals, Madrid and Vienna, the main national element in a given polity would constitute the largest ethnic component in the royal establishment. In Islamic polities the reverse was true. Caliphs and sultans preferred to distance themselves from the main ethnic groups in society by developing household troops composed of outsiders. Furthermore, these outsiders were imported as enslaved, deracinated warriors owing sole loyalty to their masters: the perfect troops for dynastic empires. Slavs, Turks, Franks, pagan or Christian but always non-Muslim for they were slaves, were then trained to develop their supposed "innate" warlike qualities inherited from life in the Eurasian steppe, and served caliphs as highest commanders and loyal troops. They lived apart from the people as an elite corps with distinct dress, languages and customs. 2 In time some such mamluk slave-turned-commanders wielded * I thank Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study for a period of Fellowship in Spring 2008 which facilitated the writing of this article. 1 The most forceful statement on this is to be found in the work of Mustafa Âlî: see especially Cornell Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: the Historian Mustafa Ali, 1541-1600 (Princeton 1986) pp. 156-157. 2 For the early development of the mamluk phenomenon see, for example, Patricia Crone, Slaves on Horses: the Evolution of the Islamic Polit (Cambridge 1980).

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Section: From the Father's House To The Son's Householdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turks in the Ottoman Imperial Palace

Kunt¹

2011

Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires

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Pir Sultan Abdal: Encounters with Persona in Alevi Lyric Song

Koerbin¹

2011

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In his 1997 Nobel Prize lecture, Contra jogulatores obliquentes, Italian dramatist Dario Fo makes an oblique reference to a famous medieval Ottoman "jester." 1 The "jester" is not mentioned by name but rather in the context of the murder of 35 artists and writers in July 1993 when religious bigots set alight the Madımak Hotel in the eastern Turkish city of Sivas. 2 Those killed were there to participate in the Pir Sultan Abdal etkinlikleri (festivities). 3 The "jester" Fo refers to is the eponymous identity in whose memory the festival is held, the Alevi dervish, poet, rebel, and martyr Pir Sultan Abdal. Fo's reference to the Sivas massacre was a significant statement about this incident in an international forum; but it also demonstrates the misunderstanding of the persona of Pir Sultan Abdal when refracted through time, language, and the chasm that beckons when peering askance into the opaqueness of an esoteric culture. Pir Sultan Abdal's persona, as perceived and expressed by contemporary intellectuals and artists, was fundamental to the Sivas events, 4 but Fo's commendable reference gives no sense of this potent and complex persona. Indeed it even distorts and trivializes it. Pir Sultan Abdal dominates the Turkish Alevi-Bektaşi oral lyric tradition in his influence through text and persona and is counted as one of the seven great bards, the yedi ulu ozan, of

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Wild Social Transcendence and the Antinomian Dervish

Kuehn¹

2018

J. Relig. Transf. Cont. Soc.

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Kalenders, Abdâls, Hayderîs: The Formation of the Bektâşîye in the Sixteenth Century

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Turks in the Ottoman Imperial Palace

Turks in the Ottoman Imperial Palace

Pir Sultan Abdal: Encounters with Persona in Alevi Lyric Song

Wild Social Transcendence and the Antinomian Dervish

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