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ABSTRACT
This article investigates the modes of interaction between the Ottoman state and the Kızılbaş and Nusayri communities in a comparative way. Both communities diverge from Hanafi-Sunnism, which was increasingly fashioned as the official Ottoman Islam in the course of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, both groups share a history of persecution, which has continued on and off until today and constitutes an important aspect of their respective identities. Yet persecution was but one side of the Ottoman treatment of both Kızılbaş and Nusayris: the state also integrated them into its administrative apparatus. Drawing on a variety of sources, this article seeks to identify different contexts in which the Kızılbaş and the Nusayris interacted with the Ottoman state and its local agents. The examples illustrate, on the one hand, how these groups were treated, labelled and thus perceived by the state and thereby accommodated to the Empire’s apparatus of power. On the other hand, they also indicate the historical agency of the groups themselves. The findings presented here thus serve to revisit the history of these communities in the Ottoman Empire, which has for long been approached from the perspective of their persecution as ‘heretics’.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Among the Alevis in Turkey, and even more so in the European diaspora, there is a lively debate as to whether Alevis belong to Islam. Historically, however, many Alevi subgroups developed in the context of Sufism.
2 Arinberg Laanatza, ‘Alevis in Turkey’, 151, 164.
3 Friedman, Nuṣayrī-ʿAlawīs, 62.
4 De Planhol, Kulturgeografische Grundlagen, 108–10.
5 Alkan, Non-Sunni Muslims; idem, ‘Fighting for the Nusayri Soul’; Winter, History of the ʿAlawis; Capar, ‘Mezhepçilik’; Talhamy, ‘Ismaʿil Khayr Bey’; Talhamy, ‘Conscription’.
6 Çakmak, Sultanın Kızılbaşları; Yıldırım, ‘Safavid-Qizilbash Ecumene’; Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash/Alevis; Weineck, Zwischen Verfolgung.
7 Taking this perspective over a long period of time does not suggest stasis or an ahistorical approach to the dynamic relations between the Ottoman state, its local agents and its population. Rather, the goal here is to delineate some basic principles on which parts of their relationships seem to rest.
8 Accommodaton here is understood as a rather uncodified modus vivendi between two actors. It does not necessarily involve knowledge about the other’s difference, nor does it require an explicit cooperation agreement. It is therefore to be distinguished from what is usually called co-option. On these different forms of relations, see Osterhammel, Geschichtswissenschaft, 223.
9 Singer, ‘Tapu tahrir defterleri’.
10 There has been, and still is, much confusion and debate on the nature of this very ‘system’. Suffice it to say here that the extent to which the regulations for non-Muslims were in fact implemented in the various regions and peripheries of the Ottoman Empire remains unclear. For this debate, see Ursinus, ‘Zur Diskussion um “millet”’.
11 For a short, general sketch of such groups in the nineteenth century, see Ortaylı, ‘Groupes hétérodoxes’.
12 On these terms, see Dressler, Writing Religion, 4; Alkan, ‘Fighting for the Nuṣayrī Soul’, 49–50.
13 His date of birth and death are subject to speculation. Stefan Winter gives 883 as his date of death, while Halm dates it around 864. Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 12; Halm, Die islamische Gnosis, 296.
14 While the Nusayris are conventionally labelled ghulāt (extremist Shiis), it has to be stressed that this term was only a later appellation applied to many strands of early Shiism that did not make it into the later canon of Twelver Shiism; see Hodgson, ‘How Did the Early Shia Become Sectarian?’, 4–5.
15 Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash/Alevis, 100.
16 The most useful sources for evidence on this persecution are the works by Hezarfen and Şener, as they provide facsimiles of the relevant entries in the mühimme defterleri from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. Şener, Osmanlı belgeleri’nde; Hezarfen and Şener, Osmanli arşivi’nde. See also the contribution by Aščerić-Todd in this special issue.
17 Sohrweide, ‘Sieg der Safawiden’; Faroqhi, ‘Conflict’, 173; Terzioğlu, ‘Sufis’, 93; Koller, ‘Verfolgung von Häretikern‘, 276; Baltacıoğlu-Brammer ‘Formation’; ibid., ‘Neither Victim nor Accomplice’.
18 Yıldırım, ‘Literary Foundations’, 7; Kehl-Bodrogi, Kızılbaş/Aleviten, 40.
19 Tümkaya, Farklılığa rağmen bir olmak, 167–75. Capar, ‘Mezhepçilik’, 125–6.
20 Friedmann, Nuṣayrī-ʿAlawīs, 56–64; Tsugitaka, Syrian Coastal Town, 63–6.
21 But see Alkan’s recent monograph on the ʿAlawis, which also contains a comparative perspective, especially in Chapters 2 and 3. His work mainly focuses on the later nineteenth century, fruitfully complementing the approach to earlier periods envisioned here. Alkan, Non-Sunni Muslims, 45–51, 86–107.
22 Maurus Reinkowski, Dinge der Ordnung. Comparative approaches with regard to the workings of the Ottoman courts are also quite well under way; see for example Ergene, Local Court.
23 Reinkowski, Dinge der Ordnung, 100.
24 Freiberger, Considering Comparison, 51.
25 Ibid, 105.
26 Reinkowski, Dinge der Ordnung, 100.
27 Tilly, Big Structures, 125.
28 Stefan Winter’s work on the Alawis in the Ottoman Period is particularly used here for comparison with my research on the Anatolian Alevis, as he also made use of tax records, petition registers and court records; Winter, History of the ʿAlawis.
29 Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 69; Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash/Alevis, 257; Weineck, Zwischen Verfolgung, 78.
30 On this process and its underlying rationale of good government, see İnalcık, ‘Part I: The Ottoman State’, 132–6; Darling, Revenue-Raising, 289.
31 Abou-El-Haj, ‘Aspects of the Legitimation’, 376.
32 TD 68 (1519): 316; quoted in Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 80
33 TD 68 (1519): 316; Winter, History of the Alawis, 80.
34 Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 80.
35 Barkey, Empire of Difference, 155. Barkey also argues that this ability was highly contingent on locally variable power relations.
36 Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 71; for the source, see Akgündüz, Osmanlı kanunnameleri, 7: 83.
37 ‘Savm ü salât bilmedüklerinden gayrı şerâit-i İslâmiyyenin birin riʿâyet etmeyüb’, Akgündüz, Osmanlı kanunnameleri, 7: 83.
38 Ibid.
39 Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 84, 87–98.
40 Ibid., 71.
41 Posch, Osmanisch-safavidische Beziehungen, 184. He quotes the historian Matraqçı Nasuḫ, who describes the Kızılbaş as ‘adulterated heretics of different kinds’.
42 Lists of these tribes feature in their respective historiographies by the likes of Hasan-e Rumlu and Taʿlikizade. These are published in Sümer, Safevî devletinin kuruluşu.
43 Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash/Alevis, 123.
44 Karakaya-Stump borrowed the term from DeWeese, ‘Yasavī Šayḫs’.
45 Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash/Alevis, 112; Weineck, Zwischen Verfolgung, 54–7.
46 For a map, see Shankland, ‘Maps and the Alevis’, 233–6.
47 For further examples, see Weineck, Zwischen Verfolgung, 142–71.
48 Barkan, XV ve XVIıncı asırlarda, 67.
49 387 Numaralı muhâsebe defteri, Bd. II, 563.
50 Ibid., 568. On the aspect of tax evasion, see also Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, ‘Formation’, 36.
51 998 Numaralı muhâsebe defteri, Bd. I, 136.
52 Ibid., 182.
53 This is also attested in Evliya Çelebi’s linguistic register; he uses the expression sürkh baş, a mixture of sürkh ser and Kızılbaş, to denote the Turcoman tribe of Zulkadir in Maraş. See Bulut, Evliya Çelebis Reise, 215. On the term sürkh ser in Ottoman tax records, see also Erpolat, ‘Tahrir defterlerinde’.
54 998 Numaralı muhâsebe defteri, Bd. I, 19.
55 For example, on the Varsak Turcomans in central Anatolia, see Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans, 54, 81. The Varsak also feature on the various lists of contemporary historiography as a Kızılbaş tribe; see Sümer, Safevî devletinin kuruluşu, 49–50, and the list published in Posch, Osmanisch-safavidische Beziehungen, 187–9.
56 998 Numaralı muhâsebe defteri, Bd. II, 502.
57 Sümer, Safevî devletinin kuruluşu
58 Bulut, Evliya Çelebis Reise, 215.
59 Like the Avşar, Barak, Hacılar, Eymür, Kızıllu and Varsak; see 998 Numaralı muhâsebe defteri, Bd. II, 451–9.
60 Yaman, Alevilik’te dedelik, 431.
61 Gülsoy and Taştemir, 1530 Tarihli Malatya, 53; facsimile on p. 396.
62 Yinanç and Elibüyük, Kanuni devri Malatya tahrir defteri, 103.
63 Gülten, ‘Anadolu’da bir Vefaî şeyhi’, 152.
64 Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash/Alevis, 118.
65 TD 14: 189b. On this village and on the Hubyar, see Karaman, Tozanlı: Doğanşar soy kütüğü.
66 Sivas Ahkam Defteri (SAD) 6:205d.
67 Barkan, ‘Osmanlı imparatorluğunda’, 284.
68 İnalcık, ‘Ottoman Methods of Conquest’, 103.
69 For Christian contexts on the Island of Limnos, see Lowry, Fifteenth Century Ottoman Realities.
70 For a systematic account of the various categories of texts to be found in court records, and how they may be put to use, see Ergene, Local Court, 33.
71 Both of these series are specified registers that emerged from the mühimme defterleri already referred to. These registers were set up in 1649, and in 1742, respectively, to accommodate administrative changes; Majer, Das osmanische ‘Registerbuch der Beschwerden’, 17–21.
72 Friedmann, Nuṣayrī-ʿAlawīs, 199.
73 Aksünger-Kızıl and Kahraman, Das anatolische Alevitentum, 28.
74 Gorzewski, Das Alevitentum, 30.
75 Toprakyaran, Das osmanische Petitionswesen, 54.
76 Winter, History of the ʿAlawis; Weineck, Zwischen Verfolgung.
77 In Karakaya-Stump’s corpus of Ottoman documents in private Alevi archives, she asserts that, of the roughly 150 documents to which she had access, ‘about forty concerned commercial transactions, criminal court cases and other such mundane issues’; Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash/Alevis, 22.
78 Ocak, Ortaçağ Anadolu’sunda, 133; 137.
79 Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash/Alevis, 118.
80 For a list of Alevi villages, see Andrews, Ethnic Groups.
81 There are only two court records from Malatya preserved from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries so the evidence here is necessarily inconclusive, but the fact that these two registers alone show that people from these specific villages were approaching the Kadi regularly suggests rather frequent contact.
82 Malatya Kadı Sicilli (MKS) No. 1513: 46b.
83 MKS 1513: 47a.
84 Maraş Ahkam Defteri (MAD) 1: 160b.
85 MKS 1513: 124c.
86 MKS 1513: 130c
87 MAD 2: 167a.
88 MAD 2: 147b. Similar cases from other Dede Garkın settlements also feature in the respective sicills and ahkam defterleri. For a list, see Weineck, Zwischen Verfolgung, 289–97.
89 Sykes, Dar-ul-Islam, 119.
90 Andrews, Ethnic Groups, 256–7 and 343–4; Tan, Alevi Köyleri.
91 SAD 6: 205d, 212b.
92 SAD 11: 151a.
93 SAD 15: 144a.
94 Petitions were also used by the Twelver Shiis in Yaslıçimen’s contribution to this special issue.
95 For further examples, see Yılmaz ‘Şeyh Hasan Ocağı’; Yalçın and Yılmaz, ‘Garkın ocaklı boyu’; Weineck, Zwischen Verfolgung, 310–42.
96 For Shiʿi and Druze examples, see Winter, Shiʿites of Lebanon, 40–3, 77–9.
97 Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 124–36.
98 Ibid., 127.
99 Ibid., 129.
100 Ibid., 171–2.
101 Ibid. Winter’s translation.
102 MD 102: 61; Also quoted in Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 131.
103 Maliyeden Müdevver Mukataat Defteri 4455: 41; Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 132.
104 MD 136:83; Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 134.
105 Şam-i Şerif Ahkam Defteri 2: 133, 137, 158; 3: 93; Winter, History of the ʿAlawis, 140.
106 Freiberger, Considering Comparison, 51–2.
107 Braude, ‘Foundation Myths’, 70.
108 Ursinus, ‘Zur Diskussion um “millet”’.
109 Peirce, Morality Tales, 144–5. Gerber, State, Society and Law, 56.
110 On practices of classifying pre-modern Ottoman population, see also Tezcan, ‘Ethnicity, Race, Religion’.
111 Reinkowski stresses that, as an empire, ‘integration’ of difference in a modern sense was not in its interest. Reinkowski, Dinge der Ordnung, 19.
112 Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash/Alevis, 295.
113 Chatterjee, ‘Reflections on Religious Difference’.