Ottoman History Podcast - Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia

Episode Date: March 8, 2014

with Ayfer Karakaya-Stump hosted by Chris Gratien The history of Anatolia's Alevi or Kizilbash community has long been written by outsiders who have variously portrayed them as mysterious, heretical, heterodox, or uncivilized. Alevism has been often juxtaposed with the high religion would-be orthodox Sunni practice. This historical understanding of Alevis has continued to influence the way these communities are represented in the present. In this episode, Ayfer Karakaya-Stump challenges this binary. Drawing on previously unexamined sources produced by the Ottoman Alevi community itself, she seeks a new road to understanding Alevism and the relationship of Alevi communities with the Ottoman and Safavid states, Sufi movements of the time, and the communities that surrounded them. « Click for More »

You're listening to the Ottoman History Podcast. To find out more about today's topic or to check out some of our other episodes, along with maps, images, documents, and other materials related to the history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East, visit us on the web at ottomanhistorypodcast.com. Hello and welcome to another installment of the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Chris Grayton. Today our guest is Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, an assistant professor of history at William & Mary. Dr. Karakaya's research focuses on the formation of the Qazilbash Alevi communities in Anatolia,

particularly in the borderlands region between the Safavid and Ottoman empires during the early modern period. And she explores the transformation of these groups, typically referred to as heterodox Muslim communities, and we're certainly going to problematize that notion and unpack it a little, but she studies the transformation of these groups over those centuries using, in part, a new source base for historians, which is manuscripts from private collections and scattered in various libraries that are produced within these communities themselves. And Dr. Karakaya, as I understand it, one of the principal issues with the historiography surrounding Qizilbash or Alevis in the Ottoman Empire is that the history and indeed the very categories, have been sort of created from without. That is,

whether with the perspective of the Ottoman commentators that wrote on them, or for example, European Orientalists, these movements have always been defined on a basis of some kind of alterity. So before we talk about your sources and how they can help us rethink the history of Qizilbash, Alaviz, in Anatolia, could you give us a definition, sort of based on your experience in research, a new definition of what we mean when we say Qizilbash, what we mean by the Qizil al-Bash movement in the Ottoman Empire and what it represents. Well, you're absolutely right because scholars indeed have often approached so-called heterodox communities in the Islamic world with an attitude of mystery.

They've been seen as eccentric, marginal groups and treating them in general, these so-called heterodox groups, and the Kızılbaş Alevi's in particular, within this hazy category of heterodox folk Islam, gave the scholars the sense that these are just amorphous communities who lacked organization or any sense of unity. But my research reveals that these communities, and when I'm talking about the Alevis, I'm specifically referring to the, these are the descendants of the Qizilbash,

of the early modern period. Their own documents, and these are documents that have been preserved for generations in the private archives of Alevi Dede families. These documents and manuscripts, which have come to the surface relatively recently after the Alevi cultural revival of the early 90s,

they show a much more complex and sophisticated socio-religious organization, what I call the Ocak system. I mean, this is at once a decentralized and semi-hierarchical socioreligious system but it functions obviously it functioned really well for centuries because it it maintained it sustained the collective identity uh of these of these communities And so you mentioned this dichotomy between folk Islam and I guess high Islam or even maybe orthodox Islam. Right. And sort of the way you're asking us

to look at the issue of Alevis, is that they, much like all the other religious communities in the Ottoman Empire, especially Muslim communities, are sort of centered around these Sufi orders or these lineages, for example, like the Bektashi order. So before we get into this, I want to know how did how did Alaviz come to be known as Qazilbash? Where does this term come from? And why did this become a category?

Well, the existing paradigm in the fields, which I call the Kuprili paradigm, sees these groups as, you know, like a continuation of some pre-Islamic Turkish religious ideas under a superficial Islamic veneer. So there's that kind of a reading, right? This is a variation on, of course, an Orientalist narrative wherein these communities are like crypto-Christians or formerly Christian-Anatolian population that are only superficially Muslim. Right. There's actually an interesting dynamic there. I mean, the first people who used the term syncretism for the Qazilbash Alevis,

they were the Protestant missionaries in the 19th century. And their reason for using this term, I mean, what they were trying to do was to prove that these groups were actually ancient, some ancient peoples of Anatolia who were converted by the force of the sword, sort of like crypto-Christians. And this concept, syncretism, worked really well for them

because that way they could explain away some of the Islamic components. And the Turkish nationalists in the early 20th century, they were in fact responding directly to the missionaries' ideas about these groups when they formulated their own narrative of Alevi, Qazilbash-Alevi history. You know, people like Bahasaid, for instance, they borrowed the same concept. They borrowed the concept of syncretism from missionaries, but they said these peculiar rituals and beliefs of these communities, they in fact go back to the pre-Islamic Turkish religions or shamanistic cults.

And Fuat Köprülü was the first scholar to sort of formulate this idea in a more scholarly fashion. And his thinking functions within a binary framework based on a rigid separation between high Islam and folk Islam, and he establishes a direct connection between the so-called folk Islam and the pre-Islamic Turkish shamanistic beliefs. And then he tries to further sharpen and reinforce this dichotomy by several overlapping binary oppositions of urban versus rural, settled versus nomad, pure versus syncretistic, and finally orthodox versus heterodox. So that's sort of the general approach in the field

to the whole question of where these communities came from, their genealogies basically. But what I'm suggesting is that these groups or the entire Kızılbaş movement should be viewed as a union of various mystical currents and antinomian dervish groups that came together under the leadership of the Safavids in the mid-15th century. So rather than, like in the literature, the way they presented is that the Safavid shahs somehow went to these Turkmen tribes who are naive and credulous and, you know, simple peoples, and they somehow, they deceived these shahs, sort of, or exploited

their naivete, right, and sort of made them believe that they were divine, and then they suddenly turn into these Qizilbash armies. But it really is a very simplistic way of looking at it. And it doesn't really explain to us how the Qizilbash movement could spread so fast and over such a broad geographical region. So what I'm suggesting is that the Safavishas, they in fact brought together various different mystical communities under their leadership. And so these groups, of course, shared in common some very basic ideas about religion and Islam. These were all allied movements, heavily mystical, and they were antinomian, meaning they disregarded Sharia. They did not think of Sharia as the fundamental aspect of religion,

or they saw it as basically a step towards greater spirituality. So these groups, they came together under Safavid leadership. That happened over the course of the second half of the 15th century. So it's those groups that we call Alevis today. They were called Qazilbash at the time, even though, I mean, as a side note, the idea that the term Alevi is of 19th century origin, I personally am not quite sure about that. I think the term Alevi had been used before by these communities themselves, even though the Ottomans refrained from using it because it's such an honorary name,

and they didn't want to use it for groups whom they regarded as heretical. We have much earlier references to these groups as Alevi, both in the Alevi documents themselves and in Ottoman sources as well. So another problem that arises out of the Koprulu paradigm you sort of critiqued here, or that you're seeking to kind of refute, is this notion of ethnicity, right? In the Koprulu paradigm, these would-be heterodox communities reflect aspects of an ancient or an old Turkish spiritual, pre-Islamic spiritual practice. And of course, you mentioned Turkmen communities sort of on the borders between the Safavid and Ottoman spheres. These communities would not be Turks in the 20th century definition of Turkishness, right? Many of them are speaking various Kurdish dialects and languages, some Turkish, some Kurdish.

Could you unpack this issue of ethnicity that we are always trying to deal with when we talk about Alevis in the present, sort of with a view to the Ottoman past? Yeah, I mean, first of all, I want to underline that my work at some very fundamental level involves a comprehensive critique of the Köprülü paradigm. So when I use the term Türkmen, I actually was referring to the way Köprülü talked about these groups.

My findings definitely contradict his assumption that these were all Turkmens. He had to make that assumption because, I mean, obviously his views were shaped partially by the nationalist currents of the time. And he was sort of looking for a reservoir of Turkishness that was lost among the cosmopolitan Ottomans. And he thought that he located them among these so-called heterodox communities. that he located them among these so-called heterodox communities. But a major finding of mine in this regard is the previously unrecognized widespread presence in the region in the late medieval Anatolia of the Iraqi-born Vefayi Sufi order, cutting across social,

ethnic, and even sectarian divisions, and the historical affinity between this order and several prominent Kızılbaşı Alevi Ocak's. This finding, insofar as it foregrounds the multi-ethnic Sufi milieu of the Middle East as the most appropriate context within which to explore genealogies of Qasr al-Bashr al-Aliyyevism, challenges the long-standing Kuprullah paradigm in the field, which assumes a rigid separation between high and low Islam and traces the origins of the latter to the pre-Islamic Turkish culture or shamanistic.

In that regard, I totally agree with you. It's not only that today we obviously have Alevis who speak Kurdish or Kurmanci or Kırmanç or the Zaza language, which is a different language. It's not actually a dialect of Kurdish. But these three language groups were always, also historically, represented within the Kızılbaş Alevi milieu.

We have historical sources who refer to Kızılbaş tribes tribes in the Cemişgezek region, for instance. So that's definitely an important point that I also emphasize in my research. And as far as the term Turk versus Turkmen, I mean, that's another interesting question because among the Qizilbash, and really in the Ottoman world, Turk often had the connotation of Sunni Muslim. So even in the Balkans, rather than saying they converted into Islam,

they would say they became Turkified or something like that. So among the Alevis as well, in many regions, even among the Turkmen, Kizilbash, Alevi communities, the term Turk has that kind of sectarian connotation. So we really shouldn't conflate the two terms either because historically Turkmen and Turk had really different signifiers and so through this conversation about sort of definitions with reference to present categories

or categories existing in the historical record if anything what we've really seen is perhaps these categories aren't the most useful for trying to study the movements you're dealing with. So from here on out, I think we're going to be talking really, as you said, of lineages, of Sufi lineages, and of certain orders that, again, converged and then took on the form of this movement. And so in order to find a road out of these either anachronistic or exonymic categories, why don't you tell us about the sources that you're dealing with, the sources produced by these orders that you found in the private collections and in the archives

that reflect a more internal view of Alevism in Adam and Anatolia. Before I start with the documents, let me just say one more thing about this whole issue. I think we have spent so much time focusing on Alevism's constituting components and primordial origins, that we have lost track of the real question, which is what provided these communities with coherence, right? And what held them together? What defined their communal boundaries, both in terms of elements of cosmology and belief,

and at the more tangible level of socioreligious structures? And that's sort of the focus of my work, right? One of the assumptions of Köprülü that sort of comes with this whole idea of folk religion is that these communities had no written sources. Because like I said, you know, so high versus folk Islam, that sort of overlaps with many other dichotomies, one of which is orality versus literacy. So high Islam represents, you know know it's a book-centered

belief system right whereas the other one has to be based on reality because that's what explains its syncretistic nature so it's all connected with one another um and for a long time i mean historians didn't really care about these communities i, they didn't really try to sort of study them for their own sort of intrinsic value. They sort of only, they would only refer to them within the context of the Ottoman-Soviet conflict and never sort of, like I said, never really cared about the history of these groups just for its own sake.

And one excuse that was always used was that, well, they don't have any written, there are no written sources about these communities, which turns out to be not true at all because when I first started my research, my idea was that I would have to use the Ottoman archival sources, sort of the typical, the usual suspects, right?

I mean, the Muhammed records, et cetera. But then, you know, this was after the Alevi cultural revival, and I was coming across references to these documents that the families owned. And then when I started doing my own field work and sort of trying to locate some of these documents, I was really struck by the amount of written sources that these groups produce over the centuries

and preserved in their private archives, as well as, of course, manuscripts as well. So I'm a little bit confused as to why these sources, which are relatively untapped, I guess is what you're saying, why there was not more suspicion that they would be there? We're talking about Sufi orators. Of course, why would Sufi orators not have produced manuscripts? Right.

Could you explain a little more why these remained unknown for so long? Yeah, well, first of all, we have to realize that even talking about Alevism or mentioning the word Kızılbaş Alevi in public was a taboo in Turkey until the early 1990s. And still today, many Alevis feel the need to hide their true religious identities so that they wouldn't be stigmatized or lose their jobs, etc. So, I mean, this is not a topic that people freely talked about. And these families, you know, they always felt the oppression of the state, as well as sort of the Sunni majority around them. So they were very careful. They very carefully guarded these documents from the gaze of outsiders. These documents were a type of sacred trust, as well as a testimony to the family's Ocakzade status and Sayyid descent, which have been handed down from generation to generation.

So, I mean, it's basically, you know, that there was never, they never felt comfortable enough to reveal their documents. And we also know that historically, there were cases where the state authorities would confiscate these documents. So it's not just general sense of fear, but there were cases of confiscation by the state. And the other thing is, like I said, no historian was really truly interested in learning about these communities. There was this sense that, okay, we know these are these amorphous communities, they are sort of shamans, and there's really no clear structure to what they believe in. And so I guess a follow-up to that question is the question of, were there also sources that would fall into the category of the Alevi sources you're talking about that maybe have long been in circulation and in libraries

but were not identified as Alevi. They were just part of a broader corpus of Sufi learning and Sufi manuscripts. There are several, actually dozens of buyruk copies in the libraries in Turkey. Often they go under the name of Menakibi Imamcafer or Menakibi Şeyh Safi. Abdülbaki Gölpınar'la, in fact, collected a number of them,

and they're already in catalogs. So yes, that too. And also what I have found is, like for instance, the Ocak of Dedekargan, which is a very important Ocak, same lineage, centered in Malatya. They have documents going all the way to the Memluk era and earlier, actually.

And when we do archival research, we also find shekeres that were confirmed by the Ottomans themselves, and copies of those shekeres, some of them also can be found in the Ottoman archives. It's just a matter of knowing where to look and which families to follow. But yes, definitely we can correlate some of these documents with their counterparts in the archives. Let me actually give a specific example here. For instance, among the documents of this ocak, the dede kargıns,

documents of this ocak, the dede kargins, I found a summary, like a hülasa, of a tahrir entry among their documents and then I went back to the 16th century tahrirs of the Malatya region and there I found the exact entry in the tahrir's so apparently I mean my understanding is that and this is of course about this family's said identity and how they endure that they were seeds and dervishes and that they were recognized as such by the mem looks and and that the Ottomans basically preserved the same or confirmed the same privileges.

So it seems like what happened is after the conquest of this region by the Ottomans, when they went to do the tahrirs, they put down this entry in the tahrirs and then gave a copy of it to the family so that next time a tahrir imini comes, they would have a document to prove it. And here you've raised another issue, probably we'll finish with this issue, which is that the dichotomy we started out with also implies that there aren't strong connections between the proper, so to speak, the proper Ottoman sphere and the Alevi sphere, that somehow these groups are separate and that they were not formally incorporated

into the institutions, the various institutions of the Ottoman Empire, which, of course, we find that idea to be a bit flawed. Yes, well, that's a very good question, because a lot of people, including Alevi historians themselves, for a long time, they worked with this idea that somehow, especially after the 16th century, after Yavuz, Sultan Selim's harsh policies and massacres, etc., that Alevis could only survive in the most remote parts of Anatolia, like in mountains, in the mountains, in sort of isolated areas like that. You know, with that assumption comes the idea that the Alevi community somehow survived

outside the Ottoman system. And that, of course, also fits well with the observation that you don't really come across Qizilbash Alevi communities in the Ottoman sources after the 16th century. I mean, I don't think that's completely true, but still, Alevis definitely were within the Ottoman system, and they do show up in the Ottoman archival sources, but they don't show up as Kızılbaş Alevi communities because if you refer to a community as Kızılbaş, it's like calling them terrorists. You have to punish them.

So in the Ottoman sources, they appear as regular Muslims. And these Dede families, they were often recognized as Sayyids by the Ottoman authorities as well and given certain tax privileges. Again this was not a recognition of their status as

religious leaders but a recognition of their Sayyidhood. So yes I agree with you that that's kind of a myth that we have to do away with and sort of try to come up with new innovative ways of working with the archival sources. Right, it's all about the clues. If you can follow the clues, you see a lot more presence in the archives than you would get from, say, a keyword search for Kuzlobash at the Ottoman Archives. Absolutely.

I'd like to ask, now that we've established this framework, what are some of the themes that arise from your sort of Alevi-centered reading of this history based on the sources you've just described to us? Right. Yeah, I mean, these documents, the oldest layer of these documents, with the exception of a 14th century Ahi Ijazetname, include over a dozen Wafaa-i Ijazahs.

These are all in Arabic. The two oldest ones that I work with in my dissertation date from the 15th, second half of the 15th century, the rest from the 16th century. But since then I have received, I have located more Fai ijazahs from the 15th century. So these ijazahs, they clearly show a historical affinity between these families and the WFI order. The second theme that comes to the forefront has to do with the documents that originated in Iraq. with the documents that originated in Iraq. These are documents from the 16th century onwards.

This is the second oldest layer, and they include genres like ziyaret names, basically documents confirming these dedes, annual visits to some Shi'i Ali sacred sites. And they are paying homage to the Bektashi or quasi-Bektashi convent in Karbala. This is actually very important. There was a convent in the tomb complex of Imam Hussain, which appears as a convent of the Abdals of Rum in the 16th century, but then from the 17th century onwards, it appears as a Bektashi convent. And these Alevi Dede families, they would pay annual visits to this convent to renew their ijazahs as well as to update their genealogies.

Can I ask a little question about this type of source, the ziyaretname you mentioned? What's the content of a ziyaretname? Right. Basically, it lists all the places that the individual dedes visited. Usually when they go to Karbala, I mean, the expectation was that a member of each dede family would pay an annual visit to Karbala. Both to sort of receive this kind of a ziyaret, it was like comparable to hajj, right?

To Mecca. And also to renew their ijazets, right? So basically go to this convent in Karbala. And also, they would also oftentimes get an updated shejere from the Nakub al-Ashraf in Karbala. So it's a type of travel log, but it's a travel log that has sort of a formal function that it affirms the position of these travelers, so to speak. So it shows a kind of an institutional linkage. Right. It's kind of how these informal networks function, right?

I mean, yeah, it was an important part of sort of maintaining this sense of collective identity. This is a textual community in terms of sort of sharing certain common texts, but it's also a community of sort of informal network of ziyaretgahs and dergahs. And these annual visits sort of were really significant in terms of, like as a mechanism of sort of communication, etc. There were also wandering minstrels and wandering dedes who went from one community to another, which was another mechanism for sort of maintaining communications and unity. So this is sort of the second group of documents.

And again, it is significant in a number of ways, but most importantly, I think, in sort of revealing us a completely new front to tackle when it comes to this whole question of alevi bektashi symbiosis, you know. And finally, you know, we already talked about it, this whole broader question of the formation of these communities. question of the formation of these communities. Because we have, for instance, Safa v. Hilafet names. They are much fewer in number because it was a lot more dangerous, obviously, to preserve a document like that. These Alevi Dede families, it seems, preserved more of the documents

that show their sainthood and their tax privileges. So, I mean, in these private archives, you have dozens and dozens of documents that were issued by the Ottoman authorities related to this whole question of sainthood and tax relief. But I think the Safavi Hilafet names are particularly important because we have so few of them. And they basically sort of complement the revelation of the earlier older documents that, you know, some of these families had affinities with the Vefa order because the Safavi Hilafet Names were given to members of these Vefa-affiliated families.

So these people were not only representatives of some well-established Sufi tradition, but then as part of the Qizilbash movement, they were also appointed as Safavi khalifas in Anatolia. So it sort of complements the whole picture. But before I finish this, let me just say this, because I think it's important. I looked at more documents than the ones that I used in my dissertation,

and because there were so many, I just couldn't tackle them all. So I limited my study to the Alevi saint lineages of Wafai origin. That was my question. But there are others too, yeah. So Kizilbash in that regard incorporates a number of lineages such as Wafai that comprise a loosely organized whole. Could you give examples of some of those lineages? Right. Another sort of strain that went into this,

the making of the Kızılbaş Milö in southeastern and eastern Anatolia was obviously the Nurbaşıya order. There are some amazing documents from a number of ocaks that still await a systematic examination, but I could clearly see that they were of Nurbaşi origin. In the Balkans, obviously, it was the Bedredinis who joined the Kızılbaş. So you have a number of these groups who had a lot in common in terms of their religious outlook, but then they were sort of, they reproduce a new or

they produce a new collective identity under the umbrella of the Qazilbash movements over time. So the Ocak system, even though it has a clear historical affinity with the Sufi structures, with the Sufi orders, though more sort of the antinomian, not just Sufi orders, but also antinomian dervish groups, such as the Abdals of Rum. There are also Ojaks whose founders were most likely members of the Abdals of Rum. And today there is a debate in Turkey, actually. they can solve the Alevi question issue is by sort of granting them the status of a tarikat, right? That way they would not only sort of appease the Alevis, but also undo the devrim yasası, one of the key aspects of the Republican reforms, right?

The closing of the tariqats, right? But there is a problem with that. And actually, it's part of that idea that recently they have supported the creation of Jami Jemavi complexes. Right? So what the government is trying to do

is to sort of reduce Alevism to a classical Sufi order. But I find that problematic because having some historical affinity or having a classical Sufi order. But I find that problematic because having some historical affinity or having their origins in some

sort of Sufi structure doesn't mean that they are a Sufi community in the classical sense of the word. I think over time, as a result of an organic development, they created their unique social religious system, which I think should properly be called the Ocak system. So what is it that makes them

different from what you said, a classical Sufi order? Is it that antinomian flavor or what is it? Yeah, I mean, we really need to be wary of using established categories of Sharia-centered Islam when we study these groups. When people ask you, okay, so tell me, what is Alevism? What they want to hear from you is, well, is it within Islam or is it, you know, something, some other religion? And then if it is within Islam, then, okay, well, is it a madhab, like a madhab, right? Or is it a tarikat? As if there can't be anything, any other conceptualization, right, outside of these two categories. So if it's a sect within Islam, it has to be technically either a legal school, like a mashab, or a tarikat.

What I'm saying is we need to free ourselves from these categories and look at what these structures are in their own term. And what differentiates the Alevis from the sort of classical tariqats is, I mean, you already mentioned a very important point here. These groups, the way they approach religion is very different. It's not legalistic. They disregard Sharia. They don't think sharia is the center of religion

their vision of God is very different it's not a low giving God so if you reduce alivism to a classical tarikat then basically what you're telling them is, first you have to go to the mosque because the real ibadat is the kind of ibadat that's prescribed by Sharia. And whatever else you do is just a sort of a lower category of zikr. Whereas for the Alevis, you know, alevis have a certain type of namaz

but they call it halka namaz and the namaz is part of the gem ritual they don't face kubla they sit in a circle men women together and they face each other's jama'at, right? And they don't think there is any other namaz other than this. So if you reduce them to a classical tariqat, you are basically imposing on them this differentiation between sharia-prescribed real ibadat, which has to be in the mosque, you know, men separate, women separate, etc. And then this extra zikr, you know, which is sort of secondary.

But again, this just totally goes against, you know, the whole Alevi belief system. In fact, I think part of the problem is when we talk about orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the Islamic context, aside from the problematic nature, the normativeness of these terms,

I think we tend to think along the lines of Sunni Islam versus Shi'i Islam. We think that Sunni Islam represents the orthodox, Shi'i Islam represents the sort of the heterodox version of Islam. But this is very problematic because, I mean, to begin with, it sort of disregards the fact that within Shi'i Alid tradition, there also developed an orthodox,

a legalistic Sharia-bound Shi'ism, right? So in that regard, Sharia-bound Shi'ism and Sharia-bound Sunni Islam are very much alike, right? If you leave aside the whole issue about, like over the Imamate issue. Whereas the main difference between these so-called heterodox communities, including the Alevi, the Qazilbash Alevis, and the rest of the mainstream Muslims, is that the latter group rejects Sharia. So I think the real difference is between mystical, esoteric Islam and Sharia-bound Islam. So in that sense, again, classical tariqats represent a completely different tradition. This is, of course, I mean, I haven't even said anything about the different ways the ojak system functions,

its differences from the classical tarikat system. You know, in the classical, of course, tarikat system, you have individual talibs who go and join an order and then they receive a certain kind of training, etc. Even though in the post-Mongol period, you have this notion of collective, communal disciples, right? So an entire community becoming a disciple of an order. So the Alevi-Ojak system has an affinity with that communal discipleship.

But today, I mean, as a result of its own organic development, the Ojak system works like this. Each Alevi community, whether you define it on the basis of a village or a tribe or a subsection of either of the two, is attached to a particular saintly lineage called ocak. And members of these ocaks, the dedes or peers, function as the religious leaders of their respective talib communities. The ocaks are in turn connected to one another in a loosely hierarchical structure with certain ones being recognized as the Murshid lines

within the Ojak network of particular regions. So, again, I mean, when you put it this way, it does sort of, you see some similarities, but it's still not quite the same as a classical Tariqat system.

And when you describe this, maybe it's just a function of my own research, but it strikes me that the late 19th century in the Ottoman Empire, when we saw a major shift in the redefinition of what sharia is, what orthodoxy is, and various attempts, particularly during the Abduhamid II period, to build mosques and schools in these various would-be heterodox communities. This period really created a long legacy in terms of present thinking about Alevis and Anatolia. And so, in some way, the logical approach to rethinking this question is, of course,

going to that pre-19th century period that you've worked on in your dissertation. And for those who have followed the podcast, they might remember John Curry's interview with Nir Shafir and Amr Safa Gurkhan, where he explained the early history, the early Ottoman history of the Helvetii order in Eastern Anatolia. Could you maybe explain any possible links between the Alevi orders you're looking at and this Helvetii order, which was very important in the early Ottoman period? I'm familiar with John Kerry's work. Of course, he's a friend and a colleague, even though I wasn't able to listen to the podcast. But what we know is that the Ottomans tried to use the Halveti order

to assimilate some of these Qizilbash-Olivier communities because of the prominence of Ali or some Shiite elements within the Halveti order. So that's what we know. I mean, it's interesting the way the state looked at these communities. The Ottomans, their policy functioned, towards these communities, functioned at different levels. On the one hand, they used a heavy hand and persecuted them and exiled them into different parts of the empire.

On the other hand, they always were interested in bringing them to the right path, so to speak. And they used different ways towards that goal. ways towards that goal. And using the Halvetis as agents of assimilation was one of the earliest attempts, I think. And then in the 19th century, what's interesting is the classical Ottoman discourse about these communities is very different from the way Köprrulu, for instance, presented them. According to the sort of the traditional Ottoman discourse, which very much sort of it owes

itself to the classical heresiographical tradition, right, in Islam, which, you know, according to the heresiographers, all these heterodox movements were the result of a plot that was masterminded by an insincere convert, like a Jewish convert, right, who tried to subvert Islam from within. I mean, that's the kind of metanarrative that you find in the heresiographical literature about the genesis of Shi'ism in general

and these heterodox groups in particular, right? They are called the Gulat. I mean, they're called Gulat not only by, actually the first ones to call them Gulat were the Shi'i, like the Sharia-bound Orthodox, I should maybe use that term, Shi'is. Orthodox, I should maybe use that term, she's. But so basically, I mean, one sort of tradition, one way of looking at these communities is that they are somehow enemies of Islam.

They're botanists, they're dangerous. You know, they're trying to subvert Islam from within. So they need to be crushed, right? This goes all the way to Imam Ghazali and the Ismailis and then Ibn Taymiyyah and the Nusayris or the Alawis in Syria. But then

when we come to the 19th century, even though we have these earlier precedents, like earlier manifestations of similar ideas, right? Trying to use the Halwetis to simulate them. But the real sort of mindset behind this becomes much more clear in the 19th century.

So basically, rather than viewing these communities as these dangerous botanists who are trying to subvert islam from within and sort of giving them an agency like that they start writing about these people as ignorant uh nomads villagers juhal you know, so basically they deny any kind of agency to them, and they say they have been led into these kinds of heresies because they are, you know, ignorant, and they have been manipulated by some bad intentioned charlatans, whatever. And therefore they need to be reformed. They need to be reformed. They need to be brought to the right path. So that's sort of, in a way, it's an improvement because in the first instance,

they need to be destroyed completely. Whereas in this case, at least they are sort of willing to work with them and then bring them to the right path. And this really, in a very systematic fashion, starts with Abdulhamid. But we have, have again earlier precedents like Kanuni

for instance at the time of Kanuni we have this campaign to build mosques in Anatolia in villages not only in Kizilbash Alevi environments but also in areas where I mean in

nominally Sunni regions, right? And because they want to bring them into the sort of the more proper Sunni fold. So the modern Turkish government is very much inspired by these earlier examples, particularly the 19th century efforts sort of, you know, to send Sunni missionaries to these communities to convert them. It's interesting that you call them missionaries because the comparison is really clear between what American Protestant missionaries were saying about Armenians or Greeks in the Ottoman Empire

or even Catholic missionaries from France were saying about their Eastern Catholic counterparts. Yes. I actually worked on the American missionaries and their activities among the Qazilbash. And one of the things that really struck me was how closely the Ottoman government followed their activities among the Qazilbash,

especially during the Abdulhamid era. And they were really concerned. They really feared that these communities may convert and then collaborate. There are a lot of concerned reports sent to Istanbul by the local wali's about how these Qazilbash are prone to work together with the Armenians and the East Ottoman government.

So I use the term missionary intentionally here because that whole activity was very much inspired by the Christian missionaries, I think. And I think with that, we've really come full circle from the beginning of our discussion about undoing the historiographical baggage surrounding Alevi's in the Ottoman Empire. And I think we've succeeded in doing that today throughout this lengthy but very informative discussion that raises a lot of questions that are discussed further in some of your research.

So I want to thank you for coming on the podcast and talking with us. And for those who are listening and interested in finding out more, we're going to have a bibliography that includes some of Dr. Karakaya's publication, as well as some other secondary reading for those who want to gather a greater depth of knowledge about the topic. We'll also have links to some of the podcasts related to today's topic. It's also a space where you can leave some of your comments and questions. Thank you for listening to the Ottoman History Podcast. That's all for this episode. Until next time, take care.