Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State 9780520918054

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Between Two Worlds

Between Two Worlds The Construction of the Ottoman State

Cernal Kafadar

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley / Los Angeles / London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England First Paperback Printing 1996 © 1995 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kafadar, Cemal, 1954Between two worlds: the construction of the Ottoman state / Cemal Kafadar. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-520-20600-7 I. Turkey-History-Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918. 2. TurkeyHistory-Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918-Historiography. I. Title. DR486.K34 1995 956.1'0072-dc20 94-21024 Printed in the United States of America 08 10

07 9 8

7

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Pennanence of Paper). @>

bana okumayt sevdiren, sonra bu ifi ahartttB,m, arayagiren gurbete ragmen hifbir zaman yUzume vurmayan Anneme fie Bahama / To My Parents

Calabtm bir far yaratmtf iki cihan aresinde Baktcak didargiirunur 01 fartn kenaresinde

N dgihdn 01 fare vardtm Ant ben yaptltrgordum Ben daht bile yaptldtm Taf u toprak aresinde

Hacl Bayram Veil (d. 1429-30 )

My Lord has created a city In between two worlds. One sees the beloved if one looks At the edge of that city. I came upon that city And saw it being built. I too was built with it Amidst stone and earth.

Contents

xi

PREFACE

xvii

CHRONOLOGY

Introduction

I

Background and Overview Identity and Influence in the History of Nations

I

19

I

The Moderns

29

The Rise of the Ottoman State in Modern HistOriography The Wittek Thesis and Its Critics

29

47

2

60

The Sources Gaza and Gazis in the Frontier Narratives of Medieval Anatolia The Chronicles of the House of Osman and Their Flavor: Onion or Garlic? 3

The Ottomans: The Construction of the Ottoman State Strategizing for Alliances and Conflicts: The Early Beglik Into the Limelight and the Rise of Tensions ix

62 90

118

122

138

x

CONTENTS

Epilogue: The Creation of an Imperial Political Technology and Ideology

151

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

155

NOTES

157

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

193

INDEX

209

Preface

After decades of relative consensus and silence on the issue, the rise of the Ottomans, who established one of the longest-lived (ca. 1300-1922), yet least studied or understood, dynastic states in world history, is back on the agenda of historians as an open question. Until the twentieth century, no attempt was made to delineate the underlying factors or causes (in the postpositivist sense of the term) behind the fascinating development of the political enterprise headed by a certain 'O!lman in the western Anatolian marches of the late thirteenth century into a centralized and self-consciously imperial state under the House of 'O!lman in a few generations. The former occupied a tiny frontier outpost between the worlds of Islam and Byzantium, not only physically but also politically and culturally beyond the pale of established orders in either world; the latter, upon conquering Constantinople in 1453, represented itself as heir to the Eastern Roman Empire and leader of the Muslim world. Historians basically reiterated the legendary accounts received from frontier narratives that were first written down in the latter part of the fifteenth century - a century and a half later than the appearance in the historical record of 'O!lman (d. 1 324?), the eponymous founder of the dynasty. With a controversial book in 1916, Herbert A. Gibbons initiated debate on the rise of Ottoman power, and this debate continued until the publication of two influential works in the 1930S by Fuat Kopriilii and Paul Wittek. I With these works, the gates of independent reasoning were closed, as it were. Wittek's ''gam thesis" in particular - the thesis that assigned xi

xii

PREFACE

a crucial role to the spirit of gaza ("Holy War ideology" in his unfortunate translation), which he claimed was prevalent among the early Ottomans - soon became textbook orthodoxy. This is not to say that there were no important studies whose coverage included that period in the context of broad developments in late Byzantine or medieval Turkish history. Except for a few cases that made no ripples, however, no direct discussion of the particular topic took place and no new hypotheses were presented until a flurry of publications in the 1980s took issue with the received wisdom, particularly on the basis of perceived contradictions between the gaza thesis and early OttOIn,an behavior displaying inclusiveness and latitudinarianism. This book grew partly out of the author's joy in seeing a faSCinating problem reincluded in the agenda of historians and partly out of his discomfort with some of the directions taken in these new works. The decline and comeback of the topic parallels broad trends in world historiography and in Ottomanist scholarship. The waning of interest in the question coincided with the opening of the Ottoman archives to scholarly study and the ensuing fascination with archival research. For one thing, there is a phenomenal quantitative difference between the extant materials related to early Ottoman history and those pertaining to the sixteenth century and beyond. There is still not one authentic written document known from the time of 'Osman, and there are not many from the fourteenth century altogether. Furthermore, the nature of the documents from later periods is such as to enable scholars to conduct social and economic studies of rare quantitative precision, while the prearchival sources are mostly legends, hagiographies, and annalistic chronicles. Naturally, this quality of the material coincided so well with the rising prestige of quantification-based social and economic history worldwide that the investigation of Ottoman "origins" lost its appeal, just as did historical linguistics (philology), which was among the most cherished areas of expertise for the generation of Wittek and Kopriilii. Although the field of Ottoman studies did not and still is often reluctant to directly engage in a theoretical discourse, the victory of structure over progression of events indirectly made its impact on Ottomanists. 2 However, more recent intellectual currents reveal heightened concern with issues like "origins:' "genealogy:' and "sequentiality of events" once again, though in a new manner. An example of this new spirit may be the popularity and esteem ofUmberto Eco's Name of the Rose in the 1980s. I am not referring to the historical setting and flavor provided by a scholarly concern with authenticity but something more intrinsic to

PREFACE

xiii

the novel: its plot. After all, had William of Baskerville, the detectivemonk, inquired into the succession of head librarians in the abbey, had he pursued, as a traditional historian would have, the succession of events related to the library in chronological order, he would have discovered much sooner that Jorge of Burgos should have been the prime suspect. 3 This trend is accompanied by a renewed interest in narrative sources, which were once seen as inferior to quantifiable records. Turning the tables around, historians now indulge in the application of literary criticism or narratological analysis to archival documents, to even such dry cases as census registers, which have been seen as hardly more than data banks in previous history-writing. 4 It is not merely in the context of developments in world historiography that we should situate trends in Ottoman studies. For one thing, the two are hardly ever synchronized, since Ottomanists are often in the role of belated followers rather than innovators or immediate participants. Besides, history-writing, like any other kind of writing, needs to be viewed through its entanglements in the sociocultural and ideological context of its time and stands at a particular moment of an evolved intellectual / scholarly tradition. As the late classicist Sir Moses Finley has demonstrated in his Ancient Slavery and Modern ldeowgyJ the temporal distance of the period under investigation does not necessarily provide it with immunity against the influence of present-day concerns. 5 In Ottoman and Turkish studies, too, it is certainly true that the intensity of the ideological dimension in historical investigation does not diminish as one moves back in time. In fact, the period of Turkish migrations into and invasions of Anatolia and the eventual establishment of Ottoman power over what had been the Byzantine Empire must be one of the most ideologically laden, for reasons I hope will become apparent to the readers of this book. It may be due partly to such an awareness that lately more studies are published on the historiography of that formative period (pre- and early Ottoman) than straight histories. In fact the ongoing assessment of the gaza thesis can be seen as part of the same histOriographic stocktaking. 6 This book itself is partly an extended historiographic essay on the rise of the Ottoman state and on the treatment of this theme in historical scholarship. It is also an attempt to develop, through this dialogue with Ottomanist scholarship, a new appraisal of the medieval Anatolian frontier setting, with its peculiar social and cultural dynamics, which enabled the emergence of Ottoman power and thus played a major role in shap-

xiv

PREFACE

ing the destinies of southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. Transliteration is the perennial problem of historical scholarship in different branches of Islamic studies. Materials in pre-modern Turkish rendered in the Arabic script, as in almost all the sources used in this study, are particularly difficult to standardize, and any transliteration system is bound to be esthetically displeasing. But the shortcut of using modern spelling throughout feels anachronistic and thus even more displeasing to this author. Still, I have decided to give place names (e.g., Konya) as well as the names of principalities (e.g., Karaman) and states (e.g., Abbasid) in their modern forms since that might make it easier to look them up in geographical and historical atlases or reference works. Words that appear in English dictionaries (such as sultan, kadi) are not transliterated unless they appear as part of an individual's name. Otherwise, all individual names and technical vocabulary are transliterated according to a slightly modified version of the system used in the Encyclopedia of Islam. The transliteration of Arabic compound names is simplified when used in reference to the Turkish-speaking Anatolian/ Balkan world: hence, BurhaneddIn instead of Burhan al-Din. Like many other books, this one took shape as a long adventure for its author. Along the way, I was fortunate to receive comments, guidance, encouragement, or admonition from a number of friends and colleagues, among whom it is a pleasure to mention Peter Brown, George Dedes, Suraiya Faroqhi, Jane Hathaway, Halil inalctk, Ahmet Karamustafa, Ahmet Kuya§, Joshua Landis, Roy Mottahedeh, Gillru Necipoglu, Nevra Necipoglu, irvin Schick, Ru§en Sezer, ~inasi Tekin, isenbike Togan, and Elizabeth Zachariadou. I am particularly grateful to Cornell Fleischer, whose thorough reading of and thoughtful commentary on the manuscript were of immense help in giving the book its final shape. They are probably unaware how much they contributed to the development of this book through not only intentional interventions but also casual remarks or general observations that I appropriated, and possibly twisted, to my own ends. Plunder, as I hope the readers of this book will come to agree, can coexist in harmony with the assumption, or presumption, of serving some good cause in the end. The critical tone of my historiographic evaluations should not obliterate the profound indebtedness I feel toward all those scholars whose

PREFACE

xv

works on the rise of the Ottoman state are surveyed here. Their findings and ideas, even when I disagreed with them, opened many pleasant vistas and doors for me. I also appreciate having had the chance to try out some earlier and partial versions of my arguments on audiences whose responses enabled me to focus on formulations that needed to be refined and paths that needed to be abandoned. Such opportunities were provided at the Brown Bag Lunch series of Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department, at Washington University in Saint Louis, at the Istanbul center of the American Research Institute in Turkey, and at the Murat SarlCa Library workshop series in Istanbul.

Chronology

1071 II 76 II 77 1204 1220-37 1221 1220S-30S

1239-41 1243 1261 1276-77 1277 1298

1298-1301

The Battle of Mantzikert: Seljuks defeat Byzantine army; the first great wave of Turkish migrations into Asia Minor. The Battle of Myriokephalon: Seljuks of Rilin defeat Byzantine army. Dani§mendids subdued by the Seljuks of Rilin. The Fourth Crusade: Latins occupy Constantinople; Lascarids start to rule in Nicaea; Comneni start to rule in Trebizond. The reign of 'Ala' uddin Keylciibad, peak of Seljuk control in Asia Minor. Shihab ad-din 'Umar al-SuhrawardI brings insignia of futuwwa, sent by the caliph, from Baghdad to Konya. Migrations from central Asia and Iran to Asia Minor due to Chingisid conquests; the ancestors of 'Osman arrive in Anatolia according to some Ottoman sources. The Baba'i Revolt of the Tiirkmen, led by Baba Dyas and followers, crushed by the Konya government. The Battle of Kosedag: Mongol armies defeat Seljuks of Rilin and render them into vassals. Byzantine capital moves from Nicaea back to Constantinople. Baybars leads Mamluk forces into Asia Minor. Mongols (llkhanids) take direct control of Asia Minor. The revolt of Siilemish against Mongol administration in Anatolia; seems to have allowed frontier lords to undertake independent action. Likely dates of earliest conquests (Bilecik, Yarhisar, etc.) by 'Osman. xvii

xviii

CHRONOLOGY

1301 1304 1312 1324

1326 1331 1331? ca. 1332 1337 1337 1337 1341

1347 1348,1350, 1352 1352 1354 1354

1357 1359 or 1361 1362 1366 1361 or 1369 1371

The Battle ofBapheus; 'O~man defeats a Byzantine contingent. Catalan mercenaries deployed by the Byzantine Empire against Turks (including the Ottomans) in Asia Minor. Ulu Cami built in Birgi by AydmogIu Mebmed. The date of the earliest extant Ottoman document accepted as genuine: Orban is referred to as ~iidi'iiddin, "Champion of the Faith?' Bursa conquered. Iznik (Nicaea) conquered. The first Ottoman medrese (college) established (in Iznik) . Ibn Banu~ travels in Anatolia. Raiders from the Karasi and Ottoman principalities separately engaged in Thrace. Izmit (Nicomedia) conquered. The date on an inscription in Bursa that refers to OrlJan as gazi; authenticity and meaning controversial. The death of Emperor Andronikos III; beginning of civil war in Byzantium. Help sought by different factions from the Ottoman, Karasi, and AydmogIu principalities; Orban marries the daughter of John Kantakouzenos; KarasiogIu Siileyman marries the daughter ofBatatzes. Karasi principality subdued and annexed. Kantakouzenos enters Constantinople and declares himself (co- ) emperor. Kantakouzenos calls on Ottoman forces to be ~eployed in Thrace on his behalf. First Ottoman acquisition in Thrace: Tzympe. Kallipolis (Gelibolu) falls to the Ottomans following an earthquake. Gregory Palamas, archbishop ofThessaloniki, captured by the Ottomans, spends time in the emirate; his writings constitute important source on culturalllfe among early Ottomans. Prince Siileyman, OrlJan's son and commander of Thracian conquests according to Ottoman traditions, dies in accident. Dhidhimoteichon (Dimetoka) conquered (byl;Iaciilbegi). Orban dies, and Murad I succeeds him. Gelibolu lost to the Ottomans. Dates suggested for the conquest of Edime. The (Slrpsmrugt) Battle by the River Maritsa: Serbian forces ambushed (by Murad's forces in one tradition, single-handedly by l;Iii.ci tlbegi in another) .

CHRONOLOGY 1376 or 1377 1383-87 1385 or 1386 1389 1395?

1396 1402

xix

Gelibolu recaptured.

devshirme had been initiated.

Suggested anhe latest date by which point the imposition of

Nish conquered; Serbian king reduced to vassalage according to Ottoman tradition.

The Battle of Kosovo; Ottoman victory over the Serbs, but with many losses; Murad I dies and is succeeded by Bayezld I. Sermon by the archbishop of Thessaloniki that includes the earliest known reference to the devshirme (which indicates that it had been practiced for some time) . The Battle ofNicopolis (Nigbolu), in which Bayezld I defeats crusading army. The Battle of Ankara; Timur defeats Bayezld I.

1402- 1 3

The Interregnum: Ottoman throne contested among brothers who rule over different parts of the realm.

1403

Siileyman Velebi, Bayezid's eldest son, signs treaty with the Byzantine emperor ceding land.

1413

Mebmed velebi ends up winner of internecine strife; Ottoman realm reunited.

1416

Civil war due to uprising led by Prince son of Bayezid (or a pretender) .

1416

The revolt of Sheikh Bedreddin's followers crushed and Bedreddin executed.

1421-22

The accession of Murad II, followed by rebellions of an uncle and a brother.

Mu~ta£i,

a surviving

1430

Thessaloniki (Selanik) conquered.

1443

Army led by Janos Hunyadi descends deep into the Ottoman realm in autumn, is forced to return after the battle by the Zlatitsa Pass, where both sides suffer great losses.

1444

Murad II abdicates in favor of his son Mebmed II; crusading army arrives in the Balkans; Murad, asked to lead the Ottoman forces again, triumphs in the Battle of Varna, returns to selfretirement.

1446

A Janissary revolt culminates in Murad II's return to the throne.

1451

Murad II dies; Mebmed II's (second) reign beginS.

1453

Constantinople (Istanbul) conquered.

1456

Unsuccessful siege of Belgrade.

1461

Trebizond (Trabwn) conquered; end of Comneni rule.

xx

CHRONOLOGY

Regnal Years of Ottoman Begs and Sultans 'O~man

orban

Murad I Bayezid I (the Thunderbolt) Mebmed I (~elebi or Kyritzes) Murad II Mebmed II (the Conqueror) Bayezid II

?-1324? 1324-62 1362-89 1389-1402 1413-21 1421-44 and 1446-51 1444-46 and 1451-81 1481-1512

Introduction

Background and Overview Osman is to the Ottomans what Romulus is to the Romans: the eponymous founding figure of a remarkably successful political community in a land where he was not, according to the testimony of family chronides, one of the indigenous people. And if the Roman state evolved from a peripheral area to represent the center of the GraecoRoman civilization, whose realm it vigorously expanded, so the Ottoman state rose from a small chieftainship at the edges of the abode of Islam eventually to become the supreme power within a much enlarged Islamdom. Once they came to rule, the Ottomans, like the Romans, gained a reputation as better administrators and warriors, even if less subde minds, than the former representatives of their civilizations; they possessed less taste for philosophical finesse perhaps but had greater success in creating and deploying technologies of power. The "Romanesque" quality of the Ottoman political tradition has been noted before and was expressed recendy by an eminent scholar of the Islamic Middle East: ''The Ottoman empire ... was a new and unique creation, but in a sense it also marked the culmination of the whole history of Muslim political societies. The Ottoman Turks may be called the Romans of the Muslim world."l They were indeed called just that when they, like various other peoples of medieval Asia Minor, were referred to as R:iiml, that is, those of the lands of (Eastern) Rome. 2 This was a primarily geographic appella-

2

INTRODUCTION

tion, indicating basically where those people lived, but it did not escape the attention of geographers and travelers that the Turco-Muslim populations of Riim, a frontier region from the point of view of the central lands of Islam, had their own peculiar ways that distinguished them from both the rest of the Muslim world and from other Turks. Namely, being a RiimI Turk also implied belonging to a newly emerging regional configuration of Islamic civilization that was on the one hand developing its own habitus in a new land and on the other engaged in a competition to establish its political hegemony over a rival religio-civilizational orientation. The proto-Ottomans, of whom we know nothing with certainty before the turn of the fourteenth century, were a tiny and insignificant part of this new configuration at first but their descendants and followers eventually came to dominate it and to shape it toward the creation of a new imperial order under their rule. According to most historical traditions, the immediate ancestors of Osman arrived in Anatolia with the second great wave of Turkish migrations from central Asia, which took place in the wake of the Chingisid onslaught in the early thirteenth century. Once in Anatolia, they would have encountered a variety of Turkish-speaking communities - some in urban centers, some settled down to agriculture, but the majority engaged in pastoral nomadism like Osman's ancestors, most but not all of them speaking the Oguz dialect, most but not all of them Muslim, and even then divided into communities that understood different things about being Muslim -living in a complex ethnoreligious mosaic that included Christian and non-Turkish-speaking Muslim communities (especially Arab, Kurdish, and Persian). The earlier wave, the tail end of the VOlkerwanderungen in a way, had occurred in the eleventh century when large numbers of Turkish tribes, belonging primarily to the Oguz dialect group and to the Oguzid idiom of Inner Asian political discourse, crossed the Oxus and moved toward western Asia. While the Seljuk family from among these tribes soon became involved in politics at the highest levels in Baghdad and ended up as a dynasty that held the sultanate, many tribes moved further west and piled along the eastern borders of the Byzantine Empire. Their incursions into Asia Minor were independent of and at least occasionally contradictory to the will of the Seljuk sultanate. The Byzantine Empire had faced a similar and at first more threatening pressure from a more southerly direction in the seventh century with the appearance of Arab-Muslim armies. While raids and counterraids continued to rage in the next few centuries, however, these were rela-

INTRODUCTION

tively localized in a fluid frontier rone that developed in southeastern Anatolia with its own borderland institutions, heroes, traditions, and lore. The Turkish-speaking settlers and conquerors of the later medieval era were to inherit a good deal of those traditions from both the Muslim and the Christian sides. In any case, ongoing friction in eastern Anatolia in the eleventh century led to the fateful encounter of the Seljuk and Byzantine armies in Mantzikert in 1071, the same year that the Eastern Roman Empire lost Bari, its last possession in the Italian peninsula, to other tribal warrior bands led by the Normans. The Byzantine defeat at Mantzikert was to be followed by deeper and more freq~ent raids or plain migration by Tiirkmen tribes into Asia Minor. The political landscape of the peninsula started to change immediately and was not to fully stabilize for four centuries, until the Ottomans established unitary rule over it in the latter part of the fifteenth century. 3 Before the end of the eleventh century, most of Anatolia was divided up among petty potentates led by Turkish warriors, Armenian princes, Byzantine commanders, and Frankish knights arriving with the First Crusade (1096-99). The political configuration of the peninsula kept changing through mostly short-lived successes of different adventurers who were ready to enter into all sorts of holy and unholy alliances with others who were not necessarily of the same religious or ethnic background. Many an aspiring warrior seems to have enjoyed, to paraphrase Andy Warhol, fifteen days to fifteen years of glory before he disappeared or was sucked into the sphere of influence of a momentarily mightier one. The Byzantine Empire still held the coastline and some connected areas inland, especially after