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Acknowledgements
Warriors, Martyrs, and Dervishes grew out of my doctoral dissertation for the joint (cotutelle) doctoral program at Université de Paris 1 Panthéon—Sorbonne and Bogazici University in 2010. I benefited from the assistance and support of numerous individuals and institutions during the development of the dissertation and its evolution into a book.
My deepest gratitude goes to Michel Kaplan and Nevra Necipoglu, my thesis supervisors, who guided, mentored, encouraged, and supported me with their wisdom, perfectionism, tact, and friendship. The comments and constructive criticism of the members of the thesis jury—Gilles Veinsteiny, Elizabeth Zachariadout, Marie-Héléne Congourdeau, and Derin Terzioglu—helped pave the way to the present book.
I was fortunate to receive comments, guidance, suggestions, articles, advice, criticism, and encouragement from a number of colleagues and friends. Among them, I warmly acknowledge Ilias Anagnostakis, Marie-France Auzépy, Zeynep Aydogan, Michel Balard, André Binggeli, Marie-Héléne Blanchet, Pierre Chuvint, Buket Coskuner, Ali Ciftci, Yaman Dalanay, Melek Delilbasi, Olivier Delouis, Vincent Déroche, Paul Dumont, Koray Durak, Anthony Greenwood, Zoe Griffith, David Durand-Guédy, Giilden Giineri, John Haldon, Tamer flbuga, Ahmet Insel, Cemal Kafadar, Vangelis Kechriotis+, Elif Keser, George Kiourtzian, Denise Klein, Nikos Kontogiannis, Savvas Kyriakidis, Paul Magdalino, Sophie Métivier, Jana Mokrisova, Brigitte Mondrain, Ayse Ozil, Arzu Oztiirkmen, Brigitte Pitarakis, Annie Pralongt, Joanna Rapti, Scott Redford, Ozge Samanci, Amy Singer, Kostis Smyrlis, Giilru Tanman, Oguz Tekin, Ece Turnator, Umit Topuz, Tolga Uyar, Niikhet Varlik, and Anestis Vasilakeris.
I am grateful to Jean-Claude Cheynet, Oya Pancaroglu, Marie-Héléne Congourdeau, and H. Erdem Cipa, who kindly agreed to read and comment on parts of the first draft. Their thoughtful commentary on the manuscript was of immense help in giving shape to the final product. I also wish to thank Robin O. Surratt for copyediting the text, Haris Theodorelis-Rigas for checking of texts in Greek, Ayca Unliier for drawing the maps, and Sofragiu Petru for providing the cover photo.
Material support for this work was provided by generous grants from a number of institutions: l'Université de Galatasaray, research grant (2002-2003); French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Institut des études anatoliennes (IFEA), cotutelle fellowship (2003-2006); Bogazici University, BUVAK Fahir Ilkel scholarship (2003-2006); Kog University-RCAC/ANAMED, junior fellowship (2006-2007); Suna-Inan Kirac Foundation, Istanbul Research Center (1AE), scholarship (2007-2008); American Research Institute in Turkey—Istanbul (ARIT), scholarship for Turkish Ph.D. students (2008); AaRIT—Ankara and American School of Classical Studies—Athens, Coulson-Cross Aegean Exchange Program fellowship (summer 2009); Ecole francaise d’Athénes (EFA), scholarship (summer 2009); Kog University-ANAMED, senior fellowship (2015-2016). A postdoctoral fellowship at Kog University-GABAM since 2017 has afforded me the time and space to conduct further research. I extend great thanks to all the members and staff of these institutions.
This journey would not have started, or surely would have taken a different direction, if Isik Tamdogan and Bertrand Lafont had not launched a fundraising drive among friends for my first year of graduate studies in Paris. I am humbled by the friendship, generosity, and faith of Isik, Bertrand, Hubert Lafontt, Michéle Lafont, Panagiotis Kanellakist, Reha Erdem, and Niliifer Giingérmiis Erdem. I would also like to thank Anne-Marie Lycuong and Manuel Gasquet, Pascal Laugier, Rugsen Gakir, Onur Soyer, Mehmet Tuncel, Diane-Pasquier and Thomas Chambolle, Katarina and Dimitri Amprazogoula, Elcim Orcaner Barkay, Benin Haznedar, Giilin Ustiin, Sebnem and Sedat Abayoélu, Gaye Boralioglu, Feyhan and Tony Jurkovic, Siikran Bayn, Evrim Kitapgi and Tardu Aslanoglu, Birsin and Emin Kitapci for their support, friendship, and hospitality during long years of “aller-retour” between Istanbul and Paris. Last but not least, warm thanks to my husband, Haldun Bayn, to my daughter, Leyla, and to my son, Fikret Cem, for patiently standing by my side.
Note on Transliteration
I have in general used Greek transliteration for Byzantine proper names and technical terms. Some common first names are rendered in their modern English form (for example, John for Ioannes, and Constantine for Konstantinos). For well-known place names, modern English spellings are used (for example, Constantinople, Crete, Athens). In some instances where the places are mentioned both in medieval Turkish Muslim and Byzantine sources, both Greek and Turkish names of the places are cited to make it easier to locate them in different reference works (for example, Philadelphia/Alasehir and Malatya/ Melitene). For the transliteration of proper names and technical vocabulary pertaining to the Turkish-speaking Anatolian /Balkan medieval world, modern Turkish orthography is used in most cases (for example, Bedreddin instead of Badr al-Din, gazi instead of ghazi, gaza instead of ghazw, and ahi instead of akhi). For the Persian-speaking medieval Anatolian world, modern Turkish orthography has been adopted, but in the index, it is coupled with a slightly modified version of the systems used in the second and third editions of the Encyclopedia of Islam (for example, Izzeddin Keykavus / ‘Izz al-Din Kaykaus, Menakibii’l Arifin / Manaqib al-‘Arifin, Aksarayi / al-Aqsarayi)
Introduction
Since the time of Constantine I (r. 306-337) until 1453 or alternatively until 1461, there had been constant fluctuations in the geopolitical and cultural borders of the Christian Roman Empire, what today is commonly called the Byzantine Empire.! The arrival, conquest, and settlement of Turkish Muslim groups from the east at the end of the eleventh century ultimately resulted in the empire’s political demise in the fifteenth century, triggering one of the last chapters in the history of cultural change in the Mediterranean basin.”
This cultural change—the Islamization and Turkification of Asia Minor (Anatolia) and the Balkans—was a highly complicated and non-linear process in the midst of a plethora of policies by the Byzantines, Latins, Franks, Armenians, Georgians, Syrians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Turks, Persians, Arabs and Mongols resulting in constantly shifting geopolitical borders (see maps 1-8). These groups all constructed their own political histories and interpretations of events in as many or more languages.*
The Turkish Muslims’ military and political conquest of Anatolia was swifter than the cultural incorporation of the territory and its people into the Turkish-speaking Muslim world. Islam achieved its dominance over Christianity between 1100 and 1400. Significant evidence for the minting coins or literary production in Persian and Arabic, the established languages of Islam, dates to the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Turkish vernacular gained currency as a literary language only at the end of the thirteenth and the early fourteenth centuries.° It was a process in which peoples along the territorial, political, and cultural spectrum interacted across porous and permeable frontiers. Groups of people changed allegiances not only through conquest, raid, enslavement, and conversion,® but also because they had ethnically or culturally mixed families or chose to live in polities and serve rulers different from their own political, ethnic, cultural, or social group. Hence integration and mutual influence became inevitable.’ On the Byzantine land, which began to be ruled by Turkish Muslim groups, the Byzantines continued to live and speak their native languages including after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the conquest of Empire of Trebizond in 1461.8
Although called Byzantines today, they called themselves Romans. To the Turkish Muslim groups, they were Rum or Rumis. This study focuses on the Byzantines living under Muslim rule in Asia Minor and the Balkans and the broader political and cultural transformation of these areas. It examines the Byzantines’ encounters with Turkish Muslim groups ina shared space, here called “land of Rome,’ as imagined and represented through intersecting stories transmitted in Muslim warrior epics and hagiographies written in Turkish and Byzantine martyria in Greek produced between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The stories they tell informed the actions and perceptions of certain segments of the Turkish Muslim and Byzantine groups.?
The Turkish Muslim epics are viewed from the perspective of their depicting the transformation of Byzantine territories into Turkish Muslim lands through conquest involving the transformation of landscapes and people. The late Byzantine martyria are set in a story-world in which the frontiers of the territories under the authority of the Byzantine emperor, ruling from Constantinople, are shrinking. They situate their heroes in a much vaster space over which Byzantine emperors once held political authority and over which they and the Byzantine church continue to claim authority. The martyrs of these stories, living under Muslim or Latin political rulers, defend their Christian faith to the end, in the process legitimizing the claims of authority by the Byzantine emperor and the church in Constantinople. They are thus the defenders of the Byzantine political and cultural space.
The relationship of this literary world of epic, legend, and historical fiction to the real-historical world’s geopolitical, social, and cultural realms is approached through examinations of setting (especially the land of Rome), characters (in particular the Byzantines), author, audience, and historical context as provided by secondary sources. The aim, however, is not to reconstruct the real-historical world of medieval Asia Minor and the Balkans but to understand perceptions of the land of Rome, its changing political and cultural frontiers, and in relation to these changes, the shifts in identity of the people inhabiting this space.
1 Sources
The principal sources of inquiry are through the Battalname, the Danismendname, and the Saltukname, Turkish Muslim epics that deal with different cycles of the conquest of the Byzantine territory, which the Muslim groups call Rum ili or Rum (Roman land, land of Rome);10 late Byzantine martyria (sing. martyrion) dating between the 1230s and the 1430s that narrate the persecution of Orthodox Christians by Muslim, Latin, and Lithuanian authorities;11 dervish vitas (menakıbname or velayetname / vilayetname) recounting the lives and deeds of Muslim dervishes, most of whom belong to the Abdalan-ı Rum dervishes, among them Baba İlyas (d. 1240), Hacı Bektaş (d. 1270), Hacım Sultan (ca. early fourteenth century), Abdal Musa (ca. early fourteenth century), and Otman Baba (d. 1478).
Analysis of the warrior epics and martyria also include reference to the
Byzantine frontier epic Digenes Akrites,!3 Turkish Muslim epics, including the Book of Dedem Korkut* and the Diisturname,!> Menakibii'l Arifin (“virtues of the gnostics”), a collection of biographical anectodes written in Persian, concerning Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi (1207-1273) and other founding fathers of the Mevleviyye order, and the vita of Seyh Bedreddin (d. 1416), an Ottoman scholar, judge, Sufi, and rebel.
2 Scholarship
Both the Turkish Muslim epics and the Byzantine martyria examined are interesting in terms of understanding the different ways in which the Turkish Muslim groups and the Byzantines imagined and represented the appropriation of the land of Rome—Rum or Rum [li—and its people as well as the dialectic formation of identity stemming from the arrival, conquest, settlement and political rule of the Turkish Muslim groups. In the Battalname, the Danismendname and the Saltukname, one can easily see that the storytellers, authors, or commissioners attached great value to Rum as a geopolitical and cultural space. The ultimate desire of the heroes is to conquer Rum and then to transform and convert its landscape and its people to incorporate them into the abode of Islam. In the Saltukname, the hero self-identifies with the geopolitical and cultural space into which the Turkish Muslim groups had intruded, calling himself a Rumi, a Roman. The heroes of the Turkish Muslim epics do not always identify themselves as Turks.
In these epics, there is always the “other,” which is always the Rum. It is clear that the storytellers, compilers, or authors were well aware of what being Roman meant and how this identity changed over time. One can also detect the deliberate selection of a certain Byzantine character from a particular social milieu as the hero’s companion, enemy, or wife or lover. All the choices are closely linked to the political structure and power dynamics in the Byzantine political space of each epic. Of note, the Byzantine women are not simply appendages, but useful players for manipulating the existing political structures.
In the late Byzantine martyria, the martyrs are almost always identified as Christians. The defining of this Orthodox Christianity, however, resembles the exclusive Roman identity developed after 1261, when emphasis was put on the central and hegemonic position of Constantinople in the world,” and when the personal elements of identity—descendants and family (genos), and fatherland (patris)—determined one’s Romanness. In short, one’s personal identity as Roman was incumbent upon one’s political loyalty to the emperor in Constantinople.!® In the late Byzantine martyria, the territory once a part of the empire was still considered to be a part of the Christian Roman oikoumene. In the real world, however, the empire could not extend its territory, as the Byzantine polity and the imperial Constantinopolitan city-state were in no position to impose political authority through military means.!9
The late Byzantine martyria reflect how the Byzantine emperors and the Byzantine Church tried to bolster their political and cultural authority in the lost territories by presenting themselves as the protectors of the Christian communities, the saints’ relics and the churches and monasteries in these territories. Christian martyrs there sacrificed their lives for their faith, which was guided and protected by the Byzantine emperor and Byzantine patriarch of Constantinople. The martyrs of the late Byzantine martyria defend not only their faith by asserting their Christian identity, but also the political and cultural space of the Christian Roman oikoumene, whose definition or outline is rationalized in the telling of the martyrs’ story.
Both the Turkish Muslim epics and the Byzantine martyria have been examined by scholars in researching the transformation of Anatolia through or arriving at the paradigm of Muslim-—Christian or sedentary-nomad antagonisms, that is, the nomadic Muslim Turks versus the sedentary Christian Byzantines. The scholarship has considered the heroes of the Turkish Muslim epics as representatives of the Turcoman (nomadic Turkish) social milieu without consideration of whether the hero is a nomad or whether he identifies himself as a Turk. The Romanness of the “other” in the epics has been equated with their Orthodox Christianity, and the Christianity of the martyrs in the martyria have been examined as only reflecting a religious dimension. The relation of these identities with political and territorial elements of identity has not been considered.
21 Nomadization The Turkish Muslim epics do not represent or imagine a gradual transformation of Asia Minor and the Balkans as a result of the arrival of the loosely connected groups of Islamized Oghuz Turks (Tiirkmen or Turcoman), who having combined cultural and linguistic features of the Turkic peoples of the Central Asian steppes, with a life style of nomadic pastoralists, serve as superficially Islamized warrior groups.”° Instead, the epics represent and imagine the experiences of various coalitions and groups in different parts of Asia Minor and the Balkans at different periods. The “nomad? is present as a character in each epic, but he is not necessarily the hero of the epic or necessarily a Turkish-Muslim nomad.
The only epic that reflects an Oghuz tribal social and cultural space is the Book of Dedem Korkut. The heroes of this epic, however, are not much interested in conquering and settling on Byzantine lands. They prefer to raid and plunder and return home. This is not because the frontier (serhadd) between the infidels and the home of the Oghuz begs (lords) is well-protected as in the Battalname, but because they have no desire to remain in the land of the infidels. The Oghuz begs do not have Byzantine companions like the heroes of the three Turkish Muslim epics analyzed, but they seem to have close and friendly relations with some infidel rulers, especially the ruler of Trebizond, who voluntarily offers his daughter for marriage to the son of one of the Oghuz begs.”! At the same time, neither Trebizond nor the regions around it is considered as Roman land in the Book of Dedem Korkut. Rum is only mentioned in a story about Biire Beg, who sends his merchants to Constantinople to buy gifts for his son.22
The hero of the Danismendname, Ahmed Danigmend, is not a nomad, and contrary to the arguments of Irene Mélikoff, the Danismendname does not testify the social organization of the Turkish nomads (Turcomans).?9 In this epic, the nomad character is a Byzantine who eventually becomes the closest companion of the hero. The epic’s progression resembles Alexander Beihammer’s depiction of an encounter and transformation in which there is a merging of different cultural, religious, and ethnic elements rather than the replacement of one entity by another; engagement by the newcomers in the power struggles of the local elites, warriors and mercenary groups; and the “Turkish-Muslim’” groups infiltration of the existing political structures and control of urban centers.?4
The social and cultural milieus of the Saltukname, in which the hero, Sani Saltuk, is a nomadic shepherd, are quite different than that of the Book of Dedem Korkut. San Saltuk’s ambitions are not similar to those of the Oghuz begs, nor are his actions on the frontier or in the land of Rome, his perceptions of the world or his attitudes toward Islam and Christianity. Sari Saltuk represents the warrior-dervish, on a mission to proselytize Islam and conquer the world for it. In contrast, the Oghuz begs, although they pray to God (Tanrt) before raids appear to be only superficially Islamized.
In all Turkish Muslim epics and the Byzantine martyria, peaceful and hostile encounters between the Byzantines and Turkish Muslim groups take place in and around cities and on the frontiers. The nature of the frontiers is different in each story, ranging from a thughur type frontier typical of the ninth- and tenth-century Abbasid-Byzantine frontier to the Ottoman open frontiers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Both the Turkish Muslim epics and the Byzantine martyria although written for different purposes and audiences by different authors of different social and cultural backgrounds do not imagine and represent any encounter on rural areas between the Byzantine and Turkish Muslim groups. The dissension between nomads and urban dwellers is only visible in the Book of Dedem Korkut and in the Saltukname and in the vitas of the Abdalan-1 Rum dervishes. While in the Book of Dedem Korkut, the dissension is between the Turkish nomads and the rulers of the Byzantine and Georgian cities, in the Saltukname and the vitas of the Abdalan-1 Rum dervishes, it is between the Turkish Muslim city dwellers and the nomadic Abdalan-1 Rum dervishes and warriors.
2.2 Islamization
In the Battalname and Danigsmendname, the heroes are identified as Muslims and gazis,”> in the Saltukname as gazi, Turk, and Rumi, and in the Byzantine martyria, the martyrs are Christians. Given this and because the texts are full of conversion stories, scholars have analyzed both in terms of conversion to Islam and Islamization, in other words, the transformation of religious identity. Although it is clear that being Roman in the epics does not refer solely to the religious component of the identity of the “other,” the Byzantine (Rum /Rumi / Roman) topos, as companion, opponent and wife or lover in the Turkish Muslim epics has been reduced to being Christian.
Speros Vryonis in his seminal work, Decline of Medieval Hellenism and the Islamization of Asia Minor highlights the inclusive nature of group formation in Turkish Muslim epics and dervish vitas as evidence of the missionary nature of “colonizing” dervishes in the so-called Islamization process,2® whereas he considers the neo-martyrdom narratives as proof of forced conversions to Islam. These epics are also considered to be a part of gazi lore, in which the heroes identify as gazis. Cemal Kafadar has examined the conciliatory attitudes of the protagonists toward the Byzantines in the Turkish Muslim epics in light of gaza thesis, which ties the Ottomans’ ascendance to gaza against Christianity.2” Countering the idea of gaza being fervently violent and exclusive, he analyzes selective scenes of Byzantine—Muslim conciliatory encounters and the inclusive nature of group formations in the epics. He also links the gaza phenomenon to the broader notion of the frontiers, where the practice of Islam was perhaps as fluid as the frontier itself.2®
Tijana Krstic, who has examined the early Ottoman Turkish narratives and revisited some of the Turkish Muslim warrior epics, in particular the Saltukname, argues against the idea that they are examples of syncretism and against warrior -dervishes having conciliatory attitudes toward the Christians. According to Krstic, these narratives of violence and converting zeal demonstrate an ideological investment in the firm upholding of religious boundaries. She supports this idea with analysis of the martyrdom narratives of the early Ottoman period.?9
Some of the late Byzantine passions of the saints martyred under Ottoman rule were included in the post-Byzantine neo-martyrdom collections, which were first gathered in the seventeenth century, by loannes Karyofylles (d. 1692), a high-ranking official in the patriarchate in Istanbul, and later by Nikodemos the Hagiorite, an Athonite monk (1749-1809). The collection of Nikodemos, the Neon Martyrologion, became a prototype in creating a collective memory for the reconstitution of the Orthodox Christian “flock” under the Tourkokratia. First, in 1821, during the Greek war of independence, and later, during the formation of other Balkan nation-states, the neo-martyr became a symbol of opposition and liberation. Among late Byzantine martyrdom narratives, those stemming from Ottoman or Muslim rule have been popular subjects among students of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, probably because of this connection to political events.3°
Elizabeth Zachariadou was the first and last to approach these stories as a late Byzantine hagiographical corpus with an ideological agenda of transmitting a message.®! She examined the martyrdoms under late medieval Muslim rule in Anatolia and in the Balkans as well as those under Latin rule and compared the patterns with those of martyria from the earlier Arab conquests. Zachariadou argued that the martyria of the concerned period reflect the ideology of the Byzantine church and that the martyria under Ottoman rule point to the church’s pro-Ottoman tendency, which was reflected in instances of collaboration of metropolitans with the Ottoman sultans and of some monastic centers’ accepting protection and tax exemption from the sultans.
Zachariadou also concluded that these texts were composed to warn Orthodox Christians against Islamization and aimed to prove to the Roman Catholics that contrary to their claims, Christians living under Turkish rule were by no means less faithful than those living under Byzantine or Latin rule. According to Zachariadou, the Byzantine church preferred the Turks to the Latins, because it knew that Greek Orthodox Christianity, although degraded, could survive under the sultan.3? As martyria are about Christian martyrs and the martyrdom narratives were written so that they could be inserted in the church calendars, Zachariadou took for granted that the authors of the texts were members of the Byzantine church. She therefore related the patterns of martyrdom in the texts to the ideology of the Byzantine church of the late Byzantine and early Ottoman period.
2.3 “Romanization”
Anumber of scholars have discussed the importance of Rum Ili as a geopolitical and cultural space for the Turkish Muslim groups through examination of chronicles, artifacts, architecture, and numismatics. The Turkish Muslim begs who penetrated Byzantine territories during the later eleventh century, such as the Danishmendids, styled themselves on their coins as the “Great King of Rhomania and Anatolia.”33 The Anatolian Seljukids, whose principalities were based on the region of Konya and southern Cappadocia, referred to their state as Rum, at least in informal usage and to themselves as Seljuks of Rum, thereby in some measure conceiving of themselves as heirs to the Byzantine territory in south-central Anatolia.3+ Rum at the same time continued to signify both the territory under the political authority of the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, the people under his authority, and the Greek Orthodox living under the political authority of Turkish Muslim rule.
The Ottomans’ expansion in the fourteenth century eventually made them masters of the former Byzantine territories in both Anatolia and the Balkan region.®> Since the territories of the late Byzantine Empire were mainly in Europe, these areas became for the Ottomans Rumeli or Rumelia, the land characterized by its predominantly Orthodox Christian population, the Rum. The Ottoman ruler Bayezid I (11389-1402) assumed the title swltan-1 Rum (sultan of Rum), probably to express his supremacy over the other Turkish emirates in Anatolia and to emphasize his claim to be the true successor of the Seljuks of Rum.36 Other Ottoman rulers, including Mehmed I (r. 1413-1421) and Mehmed 11 (r. 1444-1446, 1451-1481), adopted the title sultan-1 Rum even before the capture of Constantinople, regarding themselves the heirs to both the Byzantine Empire and the Rum Seljuk sultanate. Especially from the fifteenth century onward, one perceives in the Ottoman sources, the terms Rum and Rumi definining the Ottoman elite as well as a cultural geography and a certain artistic style in literature and architecture.?”
Rum /Rum Ili, as the geopolitical and cultural setting of all the Turkish Muslim epics of this inquiry, is ascribed central value in these works. With few exceptions, however, scholars have not been interested in the depiction of Rum and Rum ili as a center of value or as a geopolitical space in the epics. Sevket Kiiciikhiiseyin, who analyzed the depictions of the self and external perception in the process of cultural transformation based on the chronicles of Ibn Bibi and Aksarayi, the Battalname, and Menakibii'l Arifin, has provided insight into what Rum meant for the authors of these texts.38 Kiiciikhiiseyin argues that Rum ili constituted a center of value for the Muslim authors of these sources, in which they positioned Rum as a special place, a center and world in its own right, home to immigrants coming from different parts of the Muslim world. Kiiciikhiiseyin noted the depiction of Rum as a place of protection and liberation from the evils of the world and a transition zone from Christianity to Islam.°° Yet he interpreted Rum (Roman land) and the Rumis (Romans) through the lens of the Muslim and Christian dichotomy and equated the Roman designation in the sources with being Christian, without addressing other parameters of Romanness.
The scholarship has not adequately considered the different elements inherent in Roman identity. Most frequently, the emphasis is on the religious and sometimes ethno-cultural aspect of being Roman; the political and territorial aspects are ignored or overlooked. Zeynep Aydogan, in an article and in her Ph.D. dissertation, analyzed Rum as a geopolitical and cultural space and traced the definition of Rum [li and its borders in the Turkish Muslim epics of our inquiry. In interpreting her findings however, she did not deal with Roman identity, the territorial elements of Roman identity, and deliberately chose not to examine the Byzantines (Rums /Rumis) in the sources? because for Aydogan, Bilad al-Rum (the land of Romans) in the epics mirrors Bilad al-Islam (the land of Islam), and the Byzantine/Roman topoi are devoid of any particularities, only used as a mirror for reflecting the self, as “negative identification.”™!
The definition of Rhomania42 as a geographical entity and the definition of being Roman43 went through important changes between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. With the exception of a work by Rustam Shukurov, who has examined the accommodation of the Turks within the Byzantine oikoumene between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries,** changes in Byzantine identity and culture have been analyzed only in relation to the events in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade and the loss of Constantinople to the Latins in 1204.45
In this study, the Turkish Muslim epics and the Byzantine martyria are brought together not in regard to a religious space, as has been the tendency, but on a broader geopolitical and cultural space, the land of Rome, the storyworld of these texts. The analysis looks at how this geopolitical, social and cultural space is imagined and how its appropriation is historicized by the Turkish Muslim groups and the Byzantines. It focuses on the Romans not only as Christians, but also considers other elements of Romanness reflected by the stories to trace the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and to better understand the perception of the transformation of Byzantine lands and Byzantine identity as a result of Muslim conquests, settlement and political rule. It addresses the meanings of Muslim, Turk, Christian, and Roman, in terms of perception of “as,” and “them” and traces the social and cultural frontiers establishing views on us versus them.
The study highlights the complex relationships between the character of specific places and the cultural identities of the people who inhabited them when the newcomers made Byzantine space their own and how the Byzantines reacted by re-appropriating the same space. It demonstrates how and why the authors of the narratives, who represent only a subset of their own cultural group, provide and impose new meanings on their communities concerning place and homeland. It is hoped that the study improves the understanding of mechanisms by which “imagined communities came to be attached to an imagined place, as some of the displaced created new homelands and others clustered around remembered or imagined homelands, places, and communities.’*6
This is done by searching for clues in each source concerning four major themes: the land of Rome, examining similarities and differences in how this center of value is depicted; frontiers, analyzing the political and territorial frontiers of the land of Rome and the social and cultural frontiers between “us and them”; us, determining ways in which the group represented by the hero is depicted; and them, looking at the ways in which the adversaries of the hero are represented.
The ultimate desire of the heroes of these epics is to conquer Rum. How then do the Turkish Muslim epics define the land of Rome, Rum [li or Rum? In the Byzantine martyria, what is the geopolitical space that determines the territorial element of the heroes’ identities? Do these terms stem from a welldemarcated geopolitical, social, and cultural space? If so, how are the geopolitical, social, and cultural frontiers of the Roman space represented and why? What are the specific areas within the stories’ land of Rome in which encounters take place between the protagonists and their antagonists? How are the protagonists and antagonists identified with regard to the land of Rome? Are there differences in the tropes of the heroes and their adversaries and if so why? To which social milieu do the protagonists and antagonists belong? Are they nomads, warriors, religious men, urban dwellers, rich or poor, elites or common people?
3 Organization of the Book
The historical conquest of Byzantine territories by Turkish Muslim groups, their settlement on this land, and the political and cultural transformation of the political and cultural Byzantine space were not linear processes, but the epics about it adopt linear narratives to trace the change from Byzantine Rum into a Turkish Muslim space in terms of the conquering and transformation of its landscape and its people along a time, space, and thematic continuum. All three epics are connected through constructed ancestral ties between Seyyid Battal, hero of the Battalname; Ahmed Danigmend, hero of the Danismendname; and Sani Saltuk, hero of the Saltukname.
The stories of the legendary Abbasid, Muslim Arab hero Seyyid Battal and his confrontations with the Byzantines along the Taurus and Anti-Taurus Mountains in the ninth and tenth centuries emerged first, followed by the epic about the historical figure Anmed Danismend (d. 104)—a Turkish emir who founded an emirate in the late eleventh, early twelfth century—which relates Danismend’s military exploits and his establishment of a Muslim presence within Rum, in Cappadocia and the western Pontic regions. These were followed by the life and deeds of the legendary warrior-dervish San Saltuk, who is believed to have become the leader of the first Turkish Muslim settlers in the Balkans in the thirteenth century.
The organization of the book follows a structure suggestive of the three stories examined. While first chapter examines the Battalname and the Danigsmendname,the second chapter begins with the first martyrdom story that took place in 1230 in Cyprus under Latin rule and is related to the period on the aftermath of the arrival of the Seljuks of Rum in 1221 to Kalon Oros under the Seljuk ruler Alaeddin Keykubad 1 (r. 1219-1237), the grandfather of Izzeddin Keykavus II (1. 1245-1262), the patron of the Danismendname. Beginning with this martyrdom story, the martyria are organized chronologically according to the date of the martyrdom event, ending with one from 1437 under Ottoman rule. The third chapter examines the Saltukname and the dervish vitas on Abdalan-1 Rum, whose stories are connected to the realities of the fifteenthcentury Ottoman political and cultural space. In this regard, the book is divided into three parts centered on the role identities of the protagonists in the epics and the Byzantine martyria: warrior, martyr, and dervish.
Chapter 1, “Warriors,” examines the stories of the two warriors in the Battalname and the Danismendname. The first part of the chapter looks at the Battalname. Although chronologically its story belongs to the ninth / tenth century Muslim Arab confrontations, its hero, Seyyid Battal, is referenced to as the ancestor of the heroes of both the Danigmendname and the Saltukname.
Hence the Battalname is the basis for comparison with the other Turkish Muslim warrior epics.
The second part of Chapter 1 analyses the Danigsmendname, which relates the military exploits of Anmed Danismend during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. It offers a new reading of the Danigmendname, including a re-examination of the parameters of identity within the text. A nuanced horizontal reading through analyses of the characters and their movements in the land of Rome beyond ethnocentric and religious definitions helps in understanding how inclusion and exclusion might have been understood within the complex cultural engagement and political fracturing of late medieval Anatolia. Special attention is paid to love affairs and food—, which are frequent themes in the text—. It is argued that while love affairs and women are crucial in this epic in crossing the political, social and cultural frontiers of the Byzantine space, food and commensality are also emphasized for drawing new political and cultural borders to distinguish between “us” and “them.” The last part of Chapter 2 examines the historical figure, who might have inspired the fictive Ahmed Danismend.
Chapter 2, “Martyrs,” analyses martyria (martyrdom narratives) as a corpus within the late Byzantine historical context. The plots of these stories transpire outside the political borders of the Byzantine Empire, but their heroes are considered representatives of the “Byzantines,” who confront “foreigners” and “outsiders.” The stories of nine people martyred under Muslim, Latin, and Lithuanian domination are examined.
In the late Byzantine martyria analyzed, most of the martyrs are commoners so it is not possible to trace the historical figures who might have inspired the fictional characters. In most instances, the authors are known and the time lag between the martyrdom event and the production of the story in written form was relatively short, so one can make connections between the relation of the literary world presented and the real-historical world’s geopolitical, social, and cultural space. The first part of Chapter 2 analyzes the martyria in relation to authorship and is divided into five subsections according to when the martyria were recorded: the Nicene Empire (1204-1261), the reign of Andronikos 11 Palaiologos (1282-1328), the liberation of the city of Philadelphia (1348), the reign of the hesychast patriarchs (1347-1397), and the eve of the Council of Ferrara—Florence (1437-1439).
The second part of the chapter explores the land of Rome and its frontiers as depicted in the martyria. The discourse of the martyria authors in reinterpreting the parameters of membership in the Byzantine community and the characteristics they attribute to its members are also be examined. Contrary to Zachariadou’s assertions, it is argued that the evidence in the late Byzantine martyrdom narratives does not allow one to speak of a clear boundary between the political choices of the Byzantine state and the Byzantine church toward the Ottoman presence on former Byzantine lands. The emphasis in this chapter is on Byzantine identity, which was perceived by the Constantinopolitan elites as rooted in intricately woven political, religious, geographical, and personal characteristics.
Chapter 3, “Dervishes,” analyses the Saltukname and the vitas of the Abdalan-1 Rum dervishes. The hero of this warrior epic, Sari Saltuk, demonstrates similarities with Abdalan-1 Rum dervishes, as depicted in their vitas, in terms of his attitude toward cities and his nomadic background. Nomadism, perspectives on cities and frontiers (zones of encounter in the sources), tensions between the groups that Saltuk represents and the Ottoman center, and tensions between Muslim city dwellers and San Saltuk are all subjects of inquiry. The Book of Dedem of Korkut is examined for assessing differences between the social milieu of the protagonists, attitudes toward Rum, and infidels. Menakubiill Arifin, the vita of Baba Ilyas and Seyh Bedreddin and the warrior epic Diisturname are analyzed in assessing semiotic shifts in the terms Turk, gazi, and Rumi.
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