Between Two Worlds. Cemal Kafadar

such tombstones, they acquired and maintained the tradition.” There is not even a doubt expressed that the tombstones of the “Turkish era” may have been carved by the very same people who had been producing the pre-Turkish stones, namely, by the locals who “became Turks.” The liquidity and fluidity of identities in those centuries is hard to imagine in the national age.

      It was not difficult for a sixteenth-century Ottoman intellectual, however, to appreciate the plasticity of identities that had gone into the making of the neo-R

m

s:

      Those varied peoples and different types of Rumis living in the glorious days of the Ottoman dynasty, who are not [genetically] separate from those tribes of Turks and Tatars…, are a select community and pure, pleasing people who, just as they are distinguished in the origins of their state, are singled out for their piety, cleanliness, and faith. Apart from this, most of the inhabitants of Rum are of confused ethnic origins. Among its notables there are few whose lineage does not go back to a convert to Islam…either on their father or their mother's side, the genealogy is traced to a filthy infidel. It is as if two different species of fruitbearing tree mingled and mated, with leaves and fruits; and the fruit of this union was large and filled with liquid, like a princely pearl. The best qualities of the progenitors were then manifested and gave distinction, either in physical beauty, or in spiritual wisdom.²⁸

      In that grand tableau, huge amounts of material—poetic, hagiographic, epigraphic, archeological—still await gathering and sifting. This is not the place to attempt such a tableau. It is the more modest ambition of this book to problematize the origins of the Ottoman state by engaging the historiography and thus hopefully opening early Ottoman history to wider debate. It is also my hope that some of the related questions will be taken up by future researchers to improve, alter, or disprove my suggestions.

      CHAPTER 1

      The Moderns

      If you have nothing to tell us except that one barbarian succeeded another on the banks of the Oxus and Jaxartes, what is that to us? Voltaire, article on history, Encyclopédie

The Rise of the Ottoman State in Modern Historiography

      Beginning in the fifteenth century, numerous historical accounts were composed, by Ottomans and others, that relate a series of events delineating the emergence and expansion of Ottoman power, but none of these would have passed Voltaire's test. From the point of view of modern historiography, they contain no explanation, no analysis of underlying causes or dynamics, and are only narratives of events in succession about successive dynasties and states. Naturally, a reader of Dumézil would be ready to trace implicit explanatory models in these sources, as literary or nonanalytical as they may seem, through an examination of their selection and ordering of events.¹ However, this would not change the fact that “the rise of the Ottoman state” was not problematized and explicit causal explanations were not sought until after the full impact of positivist and historicist thought on Ottoman studies at the turn of this century.

      Ottoman histories from the earliest written works in the fifteenth century to the late imperial age tend to start off with Osman's genealogy and his dream against the backdrop of the physical and political turmoil caused by the Chingisids in western Asia. With Turks pouring into Asia Minor due to the onslaught of the Mongol armies and with Seljuk power disintegrating, a young warrior (son of so-and-so, son of so-and-so, etc.) has an auspicious dream that is read to imply the dreamer and his descendants are selected by God for rulership. There are various versions of this legend, and some attribute the dream to Erto

zril, Osman's father, but they all precede Osman's bid for political power and indicate that it was endowed with divine sanction. To the chroniclers and their audience, pedigree and divine sanction clearly played a crucial role in the rise of Ottoman power. These are accompanied by such personal qualities as sincere faith, righteousness, valor, and leadership.

      Further, supplementary explanations could be woven into this model depending on the narrator's concerns. Just as genealogies could be reshaped or embellished through, say, remembrance of forgotten ancestors, divine blessing could easily accommodate some holy person who may be assigned intermediacy in its allocation or verification. If you wanted to make sure that you and yours got proper credit for their real or imagined contribution to Ottoman successes, you might include an episode or two to underline the nature of that contribution. In the vita of

ril.² However, the transfer does not take place through direct intervention by God. The news is broken by

c

Bekta

, who, thanks to his vilyet (proximity to God), has access to such divine secrets and power to intercede in the actual transmission of rulership. His blessing turns out to be another “factor” in the rise of Ottoman power.

      In European sources, the question of origins again took up considerable space, but here the emphasis was on ethnicity or race rather than Osman's genealogy: are Turks indeed Trojans; or are they Scythians? What needed to be explained to European audiences was not so much the emergence of the Ottomans in particular but the arrival of the “Turkish menace” or “yoke” at large. Whether they were Trojans avenging Hector or Scythians out to destroy, or an Inner Asiatic people related to the Huns as it was later discovered, their superb military skills—a racial characteristic—would need to be underlined as well as the fact that they were now within the fold of Islam, thus armed with a “warlike religion.” God's design, often in the form of a punishment for the sins of Christians, should not be neglected in this context.

      Against this background, it is easy to understand why Samuel Johnson thought so highly of Richard Knolles (1550?–1610) as to call him “the first of historians,” even though the good doctor was quick to add that the historian was “unhappy…in the choice of his subject.” To explain the “beginning, progresse, and perpetuall felicity of this the Othoman Empire,” Knolles referred to

      such a rare unitie and agreement amongst them, as well in the manner of their Religion (if it be so to bee called) as in matters concerning their State (especially in all their enterprises to be taken in hand for the augmenting of their Empire) as that thereof they call themselves Islami, that is to say Men of one minde, or at peace amongst themselves; so that it is not to bee marvelled, if thereby they grow strong themselves, and dreadfull unto others. Joyne unto this their courage,…their frugalitie and temperatenesse in their dyet and other manner of living; their carefull observing of their antient Military Discipline; their cheerefull and almost incredible obedience unto their Princes and Sultans…. Whereunto may bee added the two strongest sinewes of every well governed Commonwealth; Reward propounded to the good, and Punishment threatened unto the offender; where the prize is for vertue and valour set up, and the way laid open for every common