Browsing by Subject "Shiites."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
Depicting the other : Qizilbash image in the 16th century Ottoman historiography
(2013) Arslantaş, Yasin
This study examines the early roots of the Ottoman perception of Qizilbash, both the Safavids, rising as a new power in Iran at the turn of the 16th century, and their Turcoman collaborators in Anatolia. The previous literature showing the image of the Qizilbash in the eyes of Ottoman dynasty employed mostly archival sources, such as fatwa collections and mühimme registers. In contrast, by focusing on the historiographical narrations of the years of 1509–1514, the present study looks at the literary works of 16th century chroniclers, particularly Selimnâme literature, and their role in building the Ottoman religio-political discourse on the Qizilbash with an attempt at showing their propagandist (or Selimist) nature. The present study argues that this discourse helped the dynasty to justify the act of war against them. After giving a brief background of the early Ottoman history with an emphasis on the shifting position of nomadic-tribal Turcomans, the study probes how a chosen sample of Ottoman histories from the 16th century depicted the Qizilbash image and iv how they identified the “self” through depiction of the “other.” This thesis argues that religio-political discourses created in the 16th century led the Ottoman state to espouse a more Sunni-minded imperial ideology, and to identify the social and religious status of the Qizilbash.
Open Access
The formation of Alevi syncretism
(2006) Selmanpakoğlu, Ceren
The aim of this study is to explore the formation of Alevi syncretism by examining historical facts and religious interactions. By understanding how Alevis adapted various cultural, religious and social phenomena, and how they have reflected these phenomena on their practices and social representation, almost ten-century-old heterodox Alevi syncretism’s nature will be comprehended. Since the Cem Ceremony signifies the reflection and representation of all influential features’ unification, it has a significant role in Alevi understanding. The concept of syncretism, which indicates Alevis’ opposition to the concepts like ‘true faith’ and ‘absolute Truth’ of orthodoxy, reveals itself throughout the study. Like in the notion of birlik (oneness) of God-human-universe, with its inextricable components Alevism represents the ‘unity’ of all religious and political features that contributed to its formation.
Open Access
Turkomans between two empires : the origins of the Qızılbash identity in Anatolia (1447-1514)
(2008) Yıldırım, Rıza
This thesis aims to evaluate the emergence of the Qizilbash Movement and the Qizilbash Identity during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century within the struggle between the Ottoman and the Safavid power. The process of the making of the Qizilbash Identity, which was, in essence, the concurrent process of the Turkoman milieu’s gradual divergence from the Ottoman axis and convergence to the Safavid affiliation, is reflected in available sources as if it were predominantly a religious issue. The present study argues, however, that the religious aspect of the developments was simply the ‘surface’ or ‘outcome’ of a rather inclusive process including anthropological, cultural, sociological, and political dimensions. It is argued that the Qizilbash Identity was a product of the intercession of two separate but interrelated lines of developments: on the one hand being the alienation of the ‘nomadic-tribal Turkoman world’ from the ‘Ottoman imperial regime’, while on the other hand being the synchronized rapprochement between the ‘Turkoman milieu’ of Anatolia and the Safavid Order. One of the prominent promises of the present thesis is that the most decisive factors governing the course of both lines of the developments stemmed from the structural inconsistencies, or ‘unconscious structures’ of societies as Lévi-Strauss states, between two ‘ways of life’: one is sedentary life, which accomplished its socio-political organization as bureaucratic state, and the other is nomadic or semi-nomadic life organized around tribal axis.