cultural geography and identity in the lands of rum 7

CEMAL KAFADAR

A ROME OF ONE’S OWN: REFLECTIONS ON CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY AND IDENTITY IN THE LANDS OF RUM

When writing of the Ottoman forces vanquished near twentieth century, under the influences of cultural rel- Ankara in 1402 by his patron, Timur, the chronicler ativism and political correctness, such discourses may Nizamüddin Øami mentions the Efrenc (Frankish, Eu- have been shunned or pushed beneath the surface, rochristian?), presumably implying the forces under but both the underlying categories and the means of the command of the Serbian king, an Ottoman vassal, analysis remain intact. but reserves most of his disparaging remarks for the As for Turkish scholarship itself, it developed un- R¢mºy¸n, that is, Turkish-Muslim soldiers serving Sul- der the paradox-ridden circumstances of the late Ot- tan Bayezid. To add injury to insult, he cannot resist toman Empire and after its demise, but even then in the temptation to cite the second verse of the sura al- the hands of those who grew up with the legacy of R¢m (Qur}an 30), “The Romans [i.e., the Byzantines] those circumstances. On the one hand, there was a have been conquered.”1 This is harsh but not par- project to articulate their archaic empire to the mod- ticularly creative. Many learned and presumably some ern imperialist world order as an empire among em- not-so-learned Muslims of Asia Minor knew the verse pires that, statesmen and intellectuals hoped, would well, as did others in the rest of the Muslim world, survive against all odds and refurbish itself with the but saw nothing wrong with identifying themselves as techniques and technologies of modernity for proper Rumis, or people of the lands of Rum. recognition in the civilized world. On the other hand, Today, the Battle of Ankara is remembered primar- there was an anti-imperialist current, not always in op- ily as a confrontation between Ottoman Turks and position to the first project but ensconced within its Central Asian Turks, in narratives that tend to erase all frustrations and the recognition of what the European other layers of identity and their historical transforma- powers “really thought” of Turks. The latter attitude tions in favor of a linear story of Turks moving from would grow strong in the context of the First World Inner Asia to the Middle East, building, and of course War and especially after the invasion of the Greek destroying, state after state. In Orientalist scholarship armies into Asia Minor in 1919. It would also be ac- and its current offshoots, the Turks, even after being companied by defensive and fanciful theories about rooted in the Middle East and the Balkans for a mil- Turks civilizing the world, in response to historical lennium, remain latecomers, marginal at some levels theses aimed at robbing those “nomadic and Asiatic” to the essence of Islamic Middle Eastern civilization, people of any legitimacy in maintaining political con- and certainly to the Greco-Roman Mediterranean tra- trol over (western) Anatolia, Thrace, and Istanbul. dition, even if they are recognized for their military, The truth is not always somewhere in the middle. political, and, perhaps, administrative skills and ac- I cannot simply say that the two approaches schemat- complishments. They may have protected the Islamic ically presented above are both wrong or misguided, Middle East from going under during the destabiliz- and that we should find the middle ground and be ing incursions of the Crusades and the Mongols, or happy. They cozily share an unproblematized concep- they may have created successful polities by being re- tualization of Middle Eastern and Balkan history (of ceptive of Byzantine institutions and traditions, but ul- world history, for that matter) in terms of both es- timately they were not wielders of culture (other than, sences and ethno-national collective agents (Turks, perhaps, the culture of yoghurt), and their high art Arabs, Greeks, Germans, etc.)—a conceptualization and literature were but an imitation of Arab, Persian, still dominant in history writing in general, no mat- and Byzantine precedents. Since the latter part of the ter how fashionable it is to crack jokes about trendy

BBookook 11.indb.indb 7 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:479:13:47 PMPM 8 cemal kafadar postmodern intellectuals. It might thus be useful to re- plistically brought together under that rubric, the cul- fer not merely to nationalism but to “nationism” as a tural space and configuration that we are studying are broader problem, because the implied conception of not subsumed by state control and state patronage. history and identity can be shared between nationalist The term “Seljuk Anatolia” is, by now, standard us- and, say, colonialist discourses and in fact derives its age in referring to a period of more than two centu- very power partly from that double imbrication. Many ries before the beginning of the story of the Ottomans non-nationalists, or those who embrace (the illusion around 1300. Thereafter, a “beylik (emirate, principal- of?) the downfall of nation-states in an age of global- ity) period” is recognized but almost always located ization, still write history through national identities within the orbit of the rising Ottoman state; worse, it as primary analytical categories. So long as contin- is also conventional to move straight into a narrative uous ethnic-national units and their cultures (Volks- of “Ottoman Anatolia” at the turn of the fourteenth geist defined by Stamm, to use the ur-vocabulary of century. From my point of view, the period of four and this discourse) are taken as the main analytical units a half centuries between Manzikert (1071) and the of historical study, the Turks naturally get to be the Ka lender Çelebi revolt (1526), instigated during the descendants of Inner Asian nomads and warriors, and Ottoman incorporation of the Dulkadirid lands, the their culture reflects those twin essences: nomadism last remaining principality, needs to be characterized and militarism. in its own right, at least for the purposes of cultural Modern Turkish historical consciousness generally and social history. It might be useful for this purpose takes that story to heart, qualifying or reversing some of to adopt the term «av¸}if (short for «av¸}if al-mul¢k), the attached values, and adding that there were many which was used in late medieval Arabic sources with who emigrated from the urban centers of Central Asia respect to Iberia, where the fortunes of a waxing and and Khurasan as well, or that the steppe tradition al- waning set of “party kings” (los reyes de taifas or sim- lowed Turks to be much more tolerant than other ply taifas in Spanish) rather than of a single polity kinds of Muslims, or that their conquests, achieved are recognized as having constituted the framework with minimal bloodshed, brought order and justice of the narrative.2 to peoples who were suffering from chaos or tyranny. One might quibble with the temporal boundaries of What others might see as militarism can equally be this periodization and end it with, say, the annexation translated as state building, and that is a matter of of the Karaman lands in 1473–74, when Mehmed II deep pride in the long national history of the Turks. had extended the Ottoman realm to that diagonal At a more popular level, many modern Turkish hab- line in the east that more or less overlapped with the its, charming faults, or quirks are often explained as boundaries of the empire of Basil II (d. 1025) and survivals of nomadic customs, just as academics have had consolidated unitary rule over the former “Byz- observed avatars of “shamanism” in all sorts of “un- antine Anatolia.” It is clear that the Ottomans had al- orthodox” practices among Turkish Muslims. ready emerged supreme in that setting before the end In narratives of this long history, nationism is sup- of the fourteenth century and reasserted this suprem- plemented by statism, again with variants among Turks acy two or three decades after Timur. It is also clear, and others. From the teleological perspective of “the however, that we are not always well served by the term emergence of modern Turkey,” it can be described as “Seljuk (or pre-Ottoman) Anatolia” for the whole pe- a funnel-vision statism: Manzikert happens (according riod between 1071 and 1300, followed by “the Beylik to Seljuk designs), and Turks pour into Asia Minor; period” or, even worse, “Ottoman Anatolia” imme - then, in neat order, we have Seljuk Turkish Anatolia, diately after the demise of the Seljuks. It is only an the empire of the Ottoman Turks, and the Turkish obsession with state as one of the twin protagonists of Republic. State formation by Turks—conceptualized history, and with national unity under a single state— through moments of real or presumed, but always de- Anadolu Türk birliqi (Anatolian Turkish unity)—as the sirable, unity—provides the backbone of the historical inevitable telos of Manzikert, or a pragmatism that narratives, which in turn provide points of departure lives comfortably with nation- and state-based history, and reference for all sorts of cultural analyses. Even that would conventionalize the term “Seljuk Anatolia” if “state” remains a significant category of historical from 1071 to 1300. understanding, after historicizing and differentiating In my reckoning, the Seljuks of Rum, as they were types of political organization that are often too sim- called in their own time and for many centuries there-

BBookook 11.indb.indb 8 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:489:13:48 PMPM cultural geography and identity in the lands of rum 9 after, ruled over a relatively unified Turco-Muslim ally considered to be the Ottoman core lands. It is Anatolia for only a few decades during that period. also worth applying some caution in using the term Ibn Bibi, for instance, who wrote the only history of “Turkish Anatolia,” because not all Anatolian Mus- the Seljuks of Rum that might be considered an im- lims, rulers or subjects, were necessarily Turkish in a perial chronicle, starts his book with the reign of Gi- strict ethnic sense. Admittedly, terms like “Turco-Mus- yaseddin Keyhusrev (r. 1192–96, 1205–11). In his lim Anatolia” or “Turkish-speaking Muslims” are inele- thoughtful introduction, Ibn Bibi justifies his start- gant when compared to “Seljuk Anatolia” or “Turks,” ing point by saying that he is uncertain of how to but historical accuracy sometimes does not warrant organize the earlier materials, since he finds them such shortcuts. At any rate, these qualifications should confusing in their apportioning of the roles of con- not in any way detract from the profound association queror and sovereign among the Seljuks and mighty that emerged over time between the historical setting emirs like Mengücek, Artuk, and Danishmend.3 In and the Turkish identity scrutinized here. As early as much of the territory designated as Seljuk Anatolia the late twelfth century, the word “Turchia” appears by modern scholarly convention, dynasties founded on a Latin map as a caption on Asia Minor, a harbin- by those emirs, particularly the Danishmendids, were ger of future European-language usages such as “Ot- in control for several generations after Manzikert, of- toman Turkey” or “European and Asiatic Turkey” all ten in rivalry and sometimes in direct confrontation the way into the early twentieth century. A similar us- with the Seljuks. The Seljuks themselves seem to have age can be located in Arabic sources, as in the travel been conscious of their graduation to a higher level book of Ibn Battuta, whose account of Anatolia in of rulership in the age of Kælæç Arslan II (r. 1155–92), the 1330s introduces the region as barr al-Turkiyya al- who eliminated the Danishmendids in 1177 and es- ma{r¢f bi-bil¸d al-R¢m (the Turkish land known as the tablished a semblance of political unity in the lands lands of Rum).6 A historicized approach cannot, how- of Rum. The practice of naming Rum Seljuk princes ever, overlook the fact that it is only in the aftermath after the heroes of ancient Persian imperial epics be- of the First World War that the predominantly Turk- gan during his reign, which also witnessed the demise ish-speaking Muslims of the peninsula, now adopting of the Great Seljuks of Iran.4 So long as the latter wholesale the self-designation “Turk,” embraced the maintained power, the Anatolian branch was bound word “Türkiye” for their country. to remain the lesser one. Even after Kælæç Arslan, the Based on such considerations, some students of late period between 1192 and 1205 can be deemed an in- medieval («av¸}if-era) Anatolian and Ottoman stud- terregnum, and the Seljuks’ power was on the wane ies have been trying to move beyond a critique of after 1243, when Mongol armies defeated them. Ilkha- the nationist and statist paradigms and to develop, nid-Mongol rule in Asia Minor turned more direct in or to forge out of that critique, a more historicized 1277, only a year after Baybars, the Mamluk sultan of perspective on the dizzyingly complex realities of the Egypt and Syria, marched all the way into Kayseri, in lands that we study, without assuming the fixity and a context that clearly signaled to the oligarchic elites transparency of categories like “Turkish” or “Islamic” of the late Seljuk era and to leaders of the Turcoman in designating and analyzing cultural processes. This tribes that the political future of the peninsula might approach is driven by a search for a new historical be redesigned without much Seljuk input. Compet- geography and cultural history of identity in south- itive principalities emerged under the leadership of western Asia and southeastern Europe (after a point, begs (modern Turkish bey, chieftain or lord) from both the realm of the Ottoman empire) in the late medi- Seljuk elite and Turcoman backgrounds and included eval and early modern periods: hence the focus on one under a certain Osman Beg. Rum and Rumi.7 In considering the vicissitudes of Seljuk rule, it The word “Rum” or diy¸r-æ R¢m for defining a cul- is appropriate to speak of “Turco-Muslim Anatolia,” tural as well as a physical space (the lands of Rome, rather than of all Anatolia, since there were parts of limited over time to the eastern Roman lands, i.e., the peninsula outside Muslim control until the Beylik Byzantium) was adopted from earlier Arabo-Persian period or even until the reign of Mehmed II,5 whose usage but now stretched by Turkish speakers to re- imperial vision could not coexist with the Swiss-cheese fer to the zone that they inhabited and in large part configuration of the lands of Rum and called for a also governed. Turks and others who moved westward homogenization of sovereignty in what were eventu- during and after the eleventh century adopted and

BBookook 11.indb.indb 9 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:499:13:49 PMPM 10 cemal kafadar reworked many geographical names in the eastern about a Turkish Islam—tending toward modernity and Roman lands on the basis of what had already been democracy in its essence, of course11—with respect “Islamized” and used by Arabs, Persians, or Kurds. to relaxed attitudes among Turks toward ritual ob- They also borrowed or “corrupted” many usages of servance and, primarily, to a worldly pragmatism of the non-Muslims of those lands. To take full account Turkish states and certain lenient features of Sufism of the complexity of ethnic, linguistic, and religious in Anatolia. Those very features themselves, however, identities they encountered would be impossible here; were developed or inspired to a large degree by Arab it cannot be subsumed even under the neat trinity of and Persian Sufis, many of whom spent some part of Muslims, Christians, and Jews. There were other com- their lives in Anatolia or settled there. One might re- munities, such as Yezidis, who are reported to have call the likes of Ibn {Arabi (d. 1240, a Maghribi who fought with the Turcomans against the Mongols in lived in Seljuk Konya for several years and inspired the late thirteenth century; in the 1330s, Ibn Battuta the theosophical school of Sadruddin-i Konevi) or observed that the lineage of the Sons of Germiyan Shahab al-Din Abu Hafs {Omar al-Suhrawardi (1145– (based in Kütahya, northwest Anatolia) was alleged 1234), who was sent by the Abbasid caliph Nasir li- to go back to Yazid b. Mu{awiya.8 Din Allah in 1221 to initiate neo-Anatolian Muslims Words like “Rum” and “Rumi” were in common and neo-Muslim Anatolians into the futuwwa. This is currency among some of those people and moved not to say that there are no regional dialects of pi- seamlessly into old Anatolian Turkish. “Istanbul,” too, ety and faith, or that it might not be worth speaking predates 1071: it is mentioned as early as in the tenth of an Islam of the lands of Rum, or of a Turkish Is- century in an Arabic work by the polymath al-Mas{udi lam as it eventually took shape. Ibn {Arabi himself was (d. 955).9 Also bearing in mind the legends concern- shocked to see certain practices in Rum, particularly ing Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, and his burial site outside the lack of enforcement of certain shari{a principles the city walls, etc., it is clear that some significant as- with respect to non-Muslims there.12 This should not pects of what the city of Constantine would become make us overlook the fact that versions of Rumi Su- after 1453 had been prepared before Turks (and their fism, primarily the less rigid ones, owe a good deal to associates) settled in Asia Minor. In short, the Turk- his intellectual legacy. Likewise, the Rumi variant of ish encounter with Hellenic Asia Minor was in some futuwwa (ahilik) is unthinkable without Suhrawardi. measure supplemented and filtered by the Turkish en- Kalenderism and some other antinomian movements counter with an earlier Arab (and other peoples’) re- that flourished in the lands of Rum in the late medi- ception of the heritage of the lands of Rum. eval era originated in Iran, and the representatives of As they are written, modern histories tend to erase these movements in Rum received a good part of their that filter and prefer to present the whole post-Manzi- intellectual sustenance and some of their membership kert story in terms of a direct encounter between through continued migration from and communica- “Turkish settlers” and “autochtonous” others. The tion with Iran. It is only with such awareness that we historical consciousness of the Rumis themselves did may deal with regional dialects or inflections—spe- not operate in the same manner, however. In the cific historical configurations—of belief and practice Saltukn¸me, compiled by a certain Ebu’l-Hayr-i Rumi according to a regional habitus among the Muslims of in 1474 on the basis of oral narratives presumably cir- the lands of Rum, who were apparently distinguishable culating for generations, we encounter a hero who in that manner as of the thirteenth century. starts his adventures after receiving, in a dream, bless- As in the case of many loan words, something new ings and tactics from a legendary Arab warrior of the happened in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries earlier Islamic-Byzantine frontier operations. Follow- to the word “Rumi.” It came to be adopted by, or ing his oneiric instructions, Saltuk retrieves Seyyid Bat- used with respect to, some Muslims of that geogra- tal Gazi’s long-idle weapons and horse, waiting for him phy, perhaps at first by outsiders but eventually also in a cave, and only then moves on to his own adven- by insiders. Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi (d. 1273) is tures of conquest deeper in the lands of Rum. Vari- the best-known example, as he is invoked today sim- ous Arab companions accompany him in his exploits, ply as “Rumi” by millions of modern readers around and they occasionally converse in Arabic.10 the world. There is no evidence that he called himself All this must be borne in mind in dealing with the thus, nor does the word appear in Man¸qib al-{¸rifºn, current vogue, in Turkey and elsewhere, of speaking the main source on the life of the poet, compiled be-

BBookook 11.indb.indb 1010 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:509:13:50 PMPM cultural geography and identity in the lands of rum 11 tween 1318 and 1353; but he was called Mevl¸n¸-i R¢m “cultivation of the world belongs to Rumis, and devas- (our master [who is] of [the lands of eastern] Rome) tation of the universe is confined to Turks.”18 In time, in Hamdullah al-Mustawfi’s Persian history, T¸rºkh-i a finer distinction emerged between “Rumi” and the guzºda, completed in Iran in 1330.13 While he is known other meaning of “Rum”; when applied to persons or as Rumi in most of the world today, the heirs of the communities, rather than lands, “Rum” designated the heritage of the lands of Rum prefer to refer to him as Greeks (or sometimes, even more broadly, the Greek Mevlana, since they know of several other Rumis. Orthodox) of the former Byzantine realms. The kin- Whether or not it was then tagged onto the name of ship between the two words obviously did not make one of the most respected poets of the lands of Rum, anyone squirm. the nisba has been used since the thirteenth century by As for the word “Turk” itself, its historical uses de- and for a large number of poets, scholars, and mystics. mand much more attention than they have hitherto Moreover, it was also used for men and women (for been given. It should suffice here to observe some of an instance of r¢miyya, see below) of no such distinc- the ambiguities and ambivalences, since the conven- tion. In fact, the earliest usage I have been able to lo- tional scholarly view that “Turk” was a term of den- cate thus far is in Rawandi’s chronicle—again written igration in late medieval and Ottoman usage is too in Iran, and dedicated to Giyaseddin Keyhusrev soon simplistic.19 Such usage was indeed common, imply- after 1207—where the author writes of a certain Ce- ing Turkish-speaking country bumpkins, ruffians, and maleddin Ebu Bekr bin Ebi}l-{Ala el-Rumi, a merchant uncouth tribal or peasant populations. In its Arabi- who came from Asia Minor to Hamadan and brought cized plural, etr¸k (Turks) often designated Turcoman news of Keyhusrev’s conquests and generosity to the tribes, sometimes merely descriptively, but at times pe- chronicler.14 It was also used regularly to denote the joratively, with the same associations. Still, the Otto- collective identity of a particular segment of society, man elites and Rumi urbanites called their language upon the emergence of new forms of stratification in “Turkish” and knew well that it was related to other the late medieval era: those who spoke Turkish (pref- kinds of Turkish spoken and written by “Turks” else- erably a refined kind of Turkish, but not necessar- where. Mütercim Asæm’s eighteenth-century translation ily as their mother tongue) and acquired their social and elaboration of a Persian dictionary occasionally identity within or in some proximity to urban settings, points to usages in bizim Türkî (our Turkish) as op- professions, institutions, education, and cultural pref- posed to the Turkish spoken in Iran or in Turkistan, erences—as opposed to “Turks,” a usage that primar- highlighting a sense of “we” as defined, in part, by ily had associations of ethnicity-not-transcended and the western Turkish language.20 Genealogies of the attachment to tribal ways and cultural codes. In his House of Osman proudly linked them to the tribal tra- commentary on one of the poems of Yunus Emre (d. dition of the Oghuz Turks; in their own conception 1320–21?), a prominent Sufi intellectual of the seven- of their history and identity, Ottoman writers inserted teenth century writes that emre is a laudatory title “in the formation of the polity into a narrative of Seljuk Turkish, like the word atabeg among the Turks or lala and post-Seljuk Turkish (etr¸k) political communities. among the Rumis.”15 “Rumi vs. Turk,” in other words, Moreover, the Ottoman literati (and presumably their also resonated with a social class distinction and had audiences) were aware that, no matter what they pre- connotations similar to “bourgeois vs. rustic.” ferred to call themselves, others called them Turks. It There was a period of transition, and perhaps con- is striking that Ottoman sources often use the word fusion, when some sources written by Anatolian Mus- “Turk(s)” to refer to themselves when they are quot- lims continued to use “Rumi” to refer to Byzantine ing or paraphrasing Byzantine and European charac- or ex-Byzantine Christians.16 In the D¸ni×mendn¸me, ters. In a chronicle of the early sixteenth century, for written in the first half of the fifteenth century but instance, seven of eight relevant occurrences of the likely based on an original composition of the mid- word are instances of such ventriloquism.21 thirteenth, “Rumis” regularly appear as the Christian The Rumi identity was differentiated but not nec- enemies of “Muslims.”17 It is not so much a matter of essarily detached from its Turkish counterpart. The religious identity in Man¸qib al-{¸rifºn, where Mevlana most general and eloquent account of the usage with Celalüddin is reported to have said that Rumi ser- respect to a collectivity is given by Gelibolulu Mus- vants should be preferred if one wanted to build and tafa Âlî (1541–1600), who undoubtedly embraced that Turkish workmen if one wanted to demolish, since identity with enthusiasm:

BBookook 11.indb.indb 1111 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:519:13:51 PMPM 12 cemal kafadar Those varied peoples and different types of Rumis living ers. Before that, it was able to turn “Osmanlæ” (those in the glorious days of the Ottoman dynasty, who are who belong to [the ruling apparatus shaped around not [generically] separate from those tribes of Turks the House of] Osman) into the corporate identity of and Tatars…are a select community and pure, pleasing a political elite, namely a growing number of warriors people who, just as they are distinguished in the origins and scholar-bureaucrats. The misty beginnings of that of their state, are singled out for their piety, cleanliness, corporate identity can be found in the tribal inclu- and faith. Apart from this, most of the inhabitants of siveness of the first generations of begs, or chieftains, Rum are of confused ethnic origins. Among its notables there are few whose lineage does not go back to a con- from the House of Osman. Along the way, it was able vert to Islam…either on their father’s or their mother’s to forge a prestigious lineage for what became the dy- side, the genealogy is traced to a filthy infidel. It is as if nastic family. There was no unanimity on this issue at two different species of fruitbearing tree mingled and first, but the Kayæ lineage from the legendary Oghuz mated, with leaves and fruit; and the fruit of this union Khan, which makes its appearance in written sources was large and filled with liquid, like a princely pearl. in the 1430s, is accepted by an overwhelming majority The best qualities of the progenitors were then mani- of our sources after the late fifteenth century.23 Their fested and gave distinction, either in physical beauty or rivals among the competitive lot of emirs with their in spiritual wisdom.22 own principalities, some older and once more distin- Some might be tempted to romanticize this avowal guished, evidently considered the Ottomans to be up- of hybridity, but it is not devoid of its own manner starts: in both the Bazm u Razm and the pro-Karamanid of pride, even a touch of chauvinism. Still, Âlî’s for- chronicle of Øikari, the sons of Osman are called bî- 24 mulation is striking because of the different concep- aªæl (without [a worthy] origin). tualization of identity when compared to the modern As for the members of society, there were several obsession with purity of origin and linear narratives different pigeonholes into which they could be placed, of ancestry. according to religious affiliation, tax-status, etc. Over Unlike “Osmanlæ,” “Rumi” was not a signifier forged time—rather gradually over centuries—there is an un- by or for a state; it was not even a part of the official mistakable trend in official documents toward improv- discursive grid of the Ottoman administration. Vari- ing the scribal means of making distinctions among ous place names, as used by the state and the public, subjects of different sorts. There were no identity had “Rum” in them, but all of them were strictly lo- cards or fingerprints, of course, but subjects had to calized and frozen. Such usage was merely a legacy be somehow identified and differentiated into func- of the process whereby Turkish-speaking conquerors tional categories when they appeared or were counted and settlers, as they moved westwards, found it useful in front of authorities. The means for doing so were to mark some regions or cities in terms of their lo- ever refined by increasingly sophisticated bureaucratic cation in Roman lands: Erzurum (short for Erzen er- cadres. R¢m), the province of Rum (former Danishmendid Cadastral surveys of the fifteenth century, for in- lands in central and east-central Anatolia), or Rumeli stance, are likely to use veled as well as ibn (or bin) for a (designating Ottoman lands to the west of Istanbul). Muslim as “son of” so-and-so. From the sixteenth cen- Diy¸r-æ R¢m, or the lands of Rum, was not itself a reg- tury onward, veled is used only for non-Muslims and ular part of the official language used in documents ibn only for Muslims. The earliest surviving court doc- to denote “Ottoman lands.” As for “Rumi,” no land uments were rather sloppy in naming each person’s survey, tax register, or court document would use it as father and his or her residential neighborhood; begin- an operational category. Somewhat anachronistically ning around the mid-sixteenth century, probably after and tongue in cheek, it can be said that “Rumi” is a the judicial reforms of Sultan Süleyman (r. 1520–66) category shaped by the civil society. and Øeyhülislam Ebussuud Efendi (d. 1574), every in- This is important because premodern states, too, dividual was also identified by these bits of informa- were ready to manipulate or engineer identities and tion. Again in the court records, where thousands of collective memories. The Ottoman enterprise was suc- Muslims and non-Muslims appear regularly, a Muslim cessful in turning itself into an imperial state in part would “pass away,” but a non-Muslim would “perish”; because it was able to erase or marginalize other narra- that was standard, based on assumed inequalities be- tives of conquest and settlement, competing memories tween Islam and other faiths. Some distinctions, how- of accomplishments that were once attributed to oth- ever, are not so easy to explain, and these appeared

BBookook 11.indb.indb 1212 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:529:13:52 PMPM cultural geography and identity in the lands of rum 13 only over time. Muslims were always s¸kin (resident, The loose and linguistically creative attitude to but the word also has connotations of being peace- identity and diversity must be understood in light of ful) of a neighborhood, non-Muslims sometimes müt- the fact that things were much more complex than emekkin (established). In the eighteenth century at the can be subsumed under encounters and exchanges latest, that distinction became standard usage, and between Turkish invaders and those who were already another one was introduced. A second (or further) there (“indigenous” or “autochtonous” populations). reference to a Muslim involved in a case would men- Even though Oghuz Turks clearly constituted the dom- tion him or her as mezk¢r[e] (the above-mentioned); inant element among those who emigrated westward, if a non-Muslim were involved, the second reference there were also other Turks, leading for a while to the would use mesf¢r[e] (the foregoing)—not necessarily a coexistence of different kinds of Turkish, not just re- denigration, but a differentiation. Again in the eigh- gional dialects.26 The role of non-Turks as co-wayfar- teenth century, if not earlier, “misspellings” for non- ers in the migrations and conquests also needs to be Muslim names also became standard if those names taken into account. The earliest extant piece of writ- could be shared with Muslims: Ish¸_, for instance, ing by Muslims in the lands of Rum after 1071 is a cu- would be spelled, consistently, with a correct sºn for rious artifact in this regard. Some Arabic tombstones a Muslim but an incorrect ª¸d for a Jew.25 In other from the first, brief conquest of Nicaea (1081–96) by words, Ottoman bureaucrats and scribes were devel- the forces moving in with the Seljuk prince Süleyman oping ever more refined means of making distinc- bin Kutalmæ× survive because they were used as slabs tions, by way of inscribing ever more improved identity to buttress the fortifications after 1096, when the city markers into their ledgers. There are good reasons for was captured by the Crusaders and turned over to the calling the Ottoman state an early modern one. Byzantines. Four of these tombstones have writing on One should not confuse this administrative predi- them, two of them with the names of the deceased: lection with social convention, however. Social con- “a believer, Ahmed, the tanner” and “Mahmud son of ventions had their own logic, which displayed a much {Abdullah of Isfahan.”27 The sources for the lands of more freewheeling attitude to identity, by way of la- Rum, it seems, were destined from the outset to con- beling or denigrating others through a rich reper- found modern scholars and resist their comfortable toire of slurs and stereotypes but also by recognizing conventions. fluidities for what they were. Macaronic texts (also The areas held by Turco-Muslim warriors were con- known as aljamiado, from the Andalusian experience) stantly replenished thereafter, by Turks but also by are abundant from the fourteenth century onwards. many other emigrants. Most of the Turks came from It is hardly possible to follow the bewildering array of the east, while there were some movements of Turk- words that appear and disappear to designate min- ish populations from the north—the Kipchak Steppe ute differences of faith, ethnicity, language, locality, or the lands of the Golden Horde. The formation and and the like: iqdi×, turkopouloi, çitak, potur, torbe×, gacal, articulation of tribal bodies that accounted for much manav, etc. (A similar comment can be made about of that mobility included members of different eth- sexual identities, as defined by various preferences, for nic communities that joined the Turks, willingly or which there is a scandalously long list of words.) In through coercion. There were also migrating scholars, fact, what we would like now to think of as ethnonyms scribes, Sufis, and artisans from Central Asia, Iran, and were hardly mere ethnic categories; they also carried the Arab lands. While conquests in many instances immediate sociological and moral associations (per- led to outward migration by or dislocation of Chris- haps a bit like the still unfortunate word “gypsy”). tian subjects of former Byzantine lands, many Chris- There was even a word that might be worth rein- tians simply stayed put because they preferred to or troducing for circumstances when “Do you speak this had to, and some moved from Byzantine-held territo- language?” is not a simple yes-or-no question. Çetrefil, ries to Turkish-held ones. which simply means “very difficult” or “complicated” The sad institution of slavery was another significant in modern Turkish, once referred to those who spoke factor in the demographic changes in Rum. In 1429, a language badly, and to a badly constructed sentence Murad II was presented a treatise on the medical prop- uttered or written by someone who spoke a language erties of stones, tonics, and perfumes. In the introduc- badly. This must have been an important part of life tion, the sultan is praised for his dominion extending in the plural environments of premodern empires. “from the gate of Erzincan to the gate of Hungary,”

BBookook 11.indb.indb 1313 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:539:13:53 PMPM 14 cemal kafadar wherein “every year more or less fifty thousand male humanist of the mid-seventeenth century, to look at and female infidels are taken from the abode of war Ottoman society in its full complexity. After warning as captives; those become Muslim, and their progeny his European readers that they should not heed the join the rank of the faithful until the day of resurrec- reductionism in so many travelers’ accounts that speak tion.”28 There may be an exaggeration in the num- of an essential Turkish this and Turkish that, he raises bers, but there is no hesitation about including the the question, “What is the Turkish character?” and re- converts and their progeny among the faithful, among sponds: “us.” In a generation or two, descendants of those for- mer slaves could blend into Rumi society without any This is a most difficult question, since it is not one nation stigma, as far as we know now; if there were memories [millet in the Turkish text; una gens in the Latin] but con- sists of all sorts of people of the world— Germans, Poles, among those later generations of the unhappy circum- French, English, Dutch, Hungarians, Muscovites, Czechs, stances that initiated the process, they are not overtly Rus, Cossacks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians, Abkhazians, stated in our written sources (but there is room for Georgians, Kurds, Persians, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, some imaginative research here). Ethnic backgrounds Tatars, Wallachians, Moldavians, Circassians, Croatians, were not always obliterated among the slaves/servants Italians, Jews, Indians, and many others. Whoever wishes 29 of the Sublime Porte, for instance, but they do not to speak of the Ottoman character (Osmanlænæn tabiatæ), seem to have mattered—over the long run, at any he must know the character of all [these] people (natio). rate—as much as belonging to larger categories such Those who are born Muslim have different customs than as Osmanli or Muslim or Rumi. those who have converted from Christianity; the edu- Above all, the reconfigurations of identity must cated have their way, the uneducated theirs; people of have been determined by religious conversions, most the frontiers develop different customs than those who of which seem to have taken place independent of are born in the central lands of the empire; everyone coercive mechanisms. Some Turkish communities ev- learns both good and bad things from Christians and idently adopted Christianity within the Greek or Ar- [other] neighbors.31 menian Orthodox church, but this process remains Renegadism may have been common among the cor- marginal compared to the massive conversions in the sairs, and so, evidently, was the need for denigration other direction. Over time, huge numbers of Chris- of converts: Nasche un greco, nasche un turco (When a tians in the lands of Rum moved into the fold of Is- Greek is born, a Turk is born) is a saying recorded lam, and thereby into Turk-ness. The account book of among the corsairs in the seventeenth century. It was Giacomo Badoer, a Venetian merchant, refers a few apparently used to disparage Greeks by indicating that times to “Choza Isse turco” as one of hundreds of peo- ple with whom he had transactions in Constantinople they could easily “turn Turk”—a compound verb once readily encountered in English tales of renegades and in the 1430s; on one of those occasions, we are given 32 an eye-opening detail, identifying his son with a Greek corsairs. From the beginning of the eighteenth cen- title and name: “chir Jacob fiuol de Chogia Ise.” Cho- tury onwards, both the proverb and the verb seem to gia Ise (Hoca or Koca Isa) may or may not have called have lost their relevance and thus their currency. himself “turco,” but to the Europeans, Muslims of that If only to highlight differences and regional spe- geography were Turks.30 (Thus also, until now, were cificities, the circumstances and processes of Turkish Bosnian Muslims to some of their neighbors.) To pres- settlement in the lands of Rum need to be compared ent the post-1071 cultural transformations in the for- to those in Iran, another realm where substantial mer Byzantine lands through the encounters of one Turcophone populations settled in the medieval era. side with another is simply not going to work, even if Vladimir Minorsky, for instance, a modern historian we focus on receptivity, adaptability, and similar pro- of medieval Iran, tendentiously asserts, “Like oil and cesses. And even if we prefer to speak in terms of sides, water, the Turcomans and the Persians did not mix we need to recognize that millions of people changed freely.”33 The history of the lands of Rum clearly of- sides and homelands, bringing with them tales and fers us images very different from oil and water and proverbs and skills and crafts and styles and—not to perhaps parallels the history of South Asia in the same let the nasty aspects of it out of our minds—experi- period—a setting of mixture and exchange that in- ences of violence and suffering. cluded much more than two actors (Turks and Greeks, It takes a particularly perceptive student of things or Turcomans and Persians) and called for new terms Ottoman like Jakab Nagy de Harsány, a Transylvanian of identity, such as Rumi.

BBookook 11.indb.indb 1414 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:549:13:54 PMPM cultural geography and identity in the lands of rum 15 Let us consider the case of E×refoqlu Rumi (d. acquired “the grace and generosity of the Arabs, the 1469–70?). According to a short entry in the Encyclo- elegance and politesse of the {Acems, and the intelli- paedia of Islam, for instance, he was a “Turkish poet gence and attractiveness of the Rumis.”34 and mystic…His father E×ref left Egypt as a young man The biographical dictionaries of poets (or schol- and settled in Iznik.” Here, in a nutshell, is the story ars, calligraphers, and others) spoke about the poets of somebody for whom a word like “Rumi” would have of the lands of Rum, not the Ottoman Empire, and had to be coined if it did not already exist. E×refoqlu distinguished them from the {Acem and Arab poets. indeed wrote some of the most admired lyrical Sufi Rum was a cultural space inhabited by a community poetry in Turkish, in the vein of Yunus Emre, but that shared a literary language, Turkish; it included a his grandfather’s nisba was al-Misri (the Egyptian), his few Armenian poets who used that language (Mesihi emigrating father’s was al-Misri al-Rumi, and his own of Diyarbakær, for instance). One of these biographical was al-Rumi al-Izniki (the Roman the Nicaean, if you dictionaries of “the poets of Rum” was in fact written will). by an {Acem, a certain {Ahdî, who is defended by an- The binary of “Rumi” is not necessarily “Turk,” other biographer: “We need to be fair: he did a good even though we currently focus on “Rumi” in order job. He does not deny [the qualities of] Rum and Ru- to question the facile application of a linear and ahis- mis, like other {Acems.” Of another poet, we read that torical Turkishness to the past. In Ottoman usage, he “is {Acem. He came to Rum as an envoy, married “Rumi” is most often paired with “{Acem” (primarily someone in Istanbul, and settled there. Having lived “Persian,” but those who spoke and wrote in “Eastern in the lands of Rum for quite some time, he became Turkish” might also be categorized among “the poets like a Rumi (R¢mº gibi olup). Many conversations and of {Acem”), and sometimes both “{Acem” and “{Arab,” disputes of his, making use of the same discourse as neither of which should be understood as simply eth- most of the poets of Rum, have been committed to nic categories. This is clearer in the case of competitive memory. He has [also] written Turkish poetry.” One cultural discourse, when one wishes to speak of the ac- of our poets is “from an area close to the Iranian complishments of Rumi poets, for instance, as having frontier. Having spent most of his time in this land, “surpassed” those of {Acem poets. The Rumi-{Acem he conforms in his style of poetry to the ׺ve (inflec- binary is also used in a non-competitive vein, namely tion) of verse in the Turkish manner and to the i×ve in descriptive or analytical discourse: “The poetry of (gesture, manner of flirtation, coquettishness) of the so-and-so lacks Rumi qualities; it comes closer to the poets of Rum.”35 style of the {Acem.” The word “Turk” is of a different A good Rumi intellectual or artist may have boasted order of things; ethnicity, undoubtedly with social and that the Rumis had outdone the {Acems and Arabs but cultural associations, is embedded in it. On the other would never doubt the need to be steeped in Arabic hand, “Rumi,” in its new meaning, was used in large and Persian classics and compete with contempora- measure to designate a novel social and cultural con- neous exemplars in those traditions, which he or she stellation, namely the identity of those from a variety would consider his or her own. Mihri Hatun (d. after of backgrounds but with a shared disposition toward 1512), for instance, one of the few women to appear a certain style of expression in the arts as well as quo- among the poets of Rum, is described by another poet tidian life. The limits of Rumi-ness were delineated, of her time as a “poetess of gracious sense.” The word to some degree, by linguistic and geographic criteria. shºrºn (gracious) here skillfully alludes to the female The area around Diyarbakær, for instance, plays a lim- protagonist of the medieval Persian romance, Farhad inal role as a frontier. Someone from Diyarbakær is in- and Shirin, well known among the Rumis and subject cluded among the poets of Rum but at the same time to a few Turkish renderings. Whether in Persian or in identified as being “from the Eastern lands“ (diy¸r-æ Turkish, it was not received as a story of “some other Øar_). Another poet is “from the Eastern lands; some people”: Amasya, Mihri Hatun’s hometown, boasted say he is a Rumi”; yet another is “a Turcoman; he has of being the setting of the original story. arrived from the Eastern lands.” All of them neverthe- For the truly ambitious, it was almost obligatory to less find a place in books on, say, “the poets of Rum,” write one’s own poetry collection not only in Turkish since “Rumi” identifies not only social or geographic but also in Persian and/or Arabic, or venture a com- background but also style and character (üsl¢b, «arz, mentary on an important work of Arabic or Persian {i×ve, etc.). A certain Haleti, having served as a judge literature (say, the Qaªºda al-Burda or Sa{di’s Gulist¸n). for many years in Aleppo, Rum, and Diyarbakær, has And even if one wrote only in Turkish, rarely but some-

mmuqarnas24-1_CS2_kada.indduqarnas24-1_CS2_kada.indd 1155 225-9-20075-9-2007 11:06:5011:06:50 16 cemal kafadar times even called R¢mºce (in the Rumi manner), one ature in India in the sixteenth century, writes of the would turn to a rich set of allusions deriving from the lands of Rum as being “all the way over there” (t¸ Persian and Arabic classics, which Rumis considered diy¸r-æ R¢m). A Bolognese sailor who was in South Asia part of their own heritage, as well as from a whole with the Portuguese in the first decade of that century body of Hellenistic, Roman, and late antique concepts relates that Diu was called “Divobandirrumi,” presum- and figures, often filtered through those classics. ably because of the preponderance of Rumis.38 The quasi-amnesia in modern scholarship regard- The heyday of “Rumi” as a socially and culturally ing the once-abundant usage of “Rumi” is deeply meaningful category spans the thirteenth to seven- rooted in the preference, long predating Turkish na- teenth centuries. A certain Isma{il-i Rumi (d. 1643) tionalism, for the wholesale designation of the Otto- founded a branch of the Kadiri order of dervishes that mans, and of Turcophone Muslims of the Ottoman was thereafter known as the Rumiyye, indicating that Empire, as “Turks”—a preference manifested since the word was still used to generate new coinages.39 It the late medieval era in both European and, to a lesser seems to have slowly fallen out of favor in the eigh- but significant extent, many non-Turkish Middle East- teenth century. Still, Nevres-i Kadim (d. 1762), in his ern or Balkan languages (Greek and Arabic, for in- history of a Safavid assault on Erevan in 1731, writes stance). Such a designation remained standard despite of the {Acems as planning to massacre the “Rumis”— the countervailing preference among those very Ot- i.e., the Ottoman soldiers inside the fort.40 tomans and their educated urban Turcophone sub- As the designation of a physical and cultural geog- jects for calling themselves not “Turks” but “Osmanlæ” raphy “the lands of Rum,” or simply “Rum,” enjoyed or “Rumi.” The Moroccan ambassador to Istanbul in currency somewhat longer. The beginnings of the us- 1589 was at least aware of this dissonance, while it ob- age by Turcophone Muslim Anatolian communities viously confused him a bit: to designate their turf is already attested in a poem by Ahmed Fakih (d. 1221?): “I passed through the That city was the capital of the lands of Rum [rendered “grecs” by the French translator], and the seat of the lands of Rum and Sham [i.e., Syria] and fell upon 41 empire, the city of caesars. The Muslims who live in Arabia.” Thereafter, it appears regularly in both the that city now call themselves “Rum” [again rendered somewhat rarefied writings of the poets of Rum and “grecs” by the translator] and prefer that origin to their the hugely popular art of the likes of Yunus Emre, Ka- own. Among them, calligraphy, too, is called kha«« r¢mº racaoqlan, and Pir Sultan Abdal, in juxtaposition with [“l’écriture grecque”].36 place names like “Sham,” “Frengistan,” and “{Acem” (or “{Acemistan”). In fact, the word “Anadolu” (Ana- Another sixteenth-century Arabic source was appar- tolia) hardly ever appears in the “folk poetry” that ently more cognizant of the usage, but that is pre- today is considered the “echt-Anadolu” poetry of Turk- cisely why it baffled a modern scholar. After having ish bards.42 lived in Mecca for a few years, a woman went to the While “{Acem” constituted the most common binary authorities in Istanbul in 1544 and complained of the of “Rumi” in Ottoman cultural discourse, as geograph- use of coffee in the holy city (only a decade before ical designations the “lands of Rum” were regularly coffee conquered Istanbul itself). She must have been differentiated from the “Arab lands,” even after the so convincing that the caravan going from Damascus incorporation of the latter into the Ottoman Empire, to Mecca that year “brought word that coffee was for- as well as from the “lands of {Acem.” In the capacity bidden.” The Arabic source that relates this incident of a place name, too, the word “Rum” could carry an identifies her as a Rumi woman (imr¸}a r¢miyya), and emotive content of cultural affinity. In a quatrain at- the modern scholar writes: “It is hardly likely that a tributed to Øeyhülislam Ibn Kemal (d. 1534) and ad- ‘Greek,’ as the original reads, would have lived in dressed to Sultan Selim I, the scholar is alleged to Mecca…It is therefore best to assume that ‘rumiya’ have expressed the sentiments of the soldiery, who here means a Turk from Anatolia, or perhaps Istan- were tired of their lengthy campaign into Arab lands bul.”37 and yearning to return to Rum, in the sense of go- The designations “Rum” and “Rumi” were also com- ing back home: mon in Iran, Central Asia, and India and are even attested in Indonesia. Bayram Khan (1504?–61), states- What have we left to do in the Arab realm? man and contributor to the flourishing Chagatai liter- Long have we stayed in Aleppo and Sham:

BBookook 11.indb.indb 1616 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:569:13:56 PMPM cultural geography and identity in the lands of rum 17 People are all living in pleasure and charm. but he quickly headed from there to diy¸r-æ R¢m.45 Let us go [back] then to the lands of Rum.43 With or without cultural associations, the “lands of Rum,” or simply “Rum,” referred to the region one en- A 1649 vefey¸tn¸me of Bursa—namely, a biographical dictionary of the “distinguished dead” of that city—re- tered coming west from the lands of {Acem or north fers to Rum on a few occasions with rhyming formulae from the Arab lands. In this geographical scheme, of obvious emotional attachment: diy¸r-æ R¢m-æ cennet- Arab lands often start in Syria (Sham), but there is rüs¢m (paradise-like lands of Rum) or diy¸r-æ cennet- a grey area, or zone of transition, where Turcoman ×i{¸r-æ R¢m (paradise-signaling lands of Rum).44 tribes mixed freely with Arab and Kurdish tribes of Perhaps the most striking, even precociously “patrio- northern Mesopotamia. An impossibly precise bound- tic,” expressions of affection for the lands of Rum are ary is sometimes given by sources that take the politi- encountered in admiral Seydi Ali Reis’s immensely cal boundaries of a particular moment or very specific popular account of his adventures in diy¸r-æ Hind, writ- geographic points to heart: a chronicle written for the ten after a disastrous naval expedition in the Indian Akkoyunlu in the 1470s refers to a site called “Karabel, 46 Ocean and his return journey. Having described him- which constitutes the line between Rum and Sham.” self in the introduction as “K¸tibº-i [his penname] In general, the boundaries were vague. They could be R¢mº, the poor soul” and boasted of generations of ser- conceived to extend as far north as Malatya, for in- vice by his family members at the arsenal in Istanbul, stance: the early-sixteenth-century chronicle of Yusuf his beloved home city, the captain runs through his b. Abdullah refers to “Aleppo and Aintab, the whole 47 expedition to the ocean, the misfortunes of the navy, Arab province beyond Malatya.” Firdevsi-i Rumi (d. and the shipwreck that took him to Gujarat. There after 1512), on the other hand, referred in the 1490s he begins to negotiate his way back home, rendering to “Türk ili (the province/land of Turks) all the way services to different rulers in northern India, includ- down to Jerusalem,” even if he did not necessarily have 48 ing Humayun and Akbar, demonstrating his always- a political project in mind. In interpreting Selim I’s superior poetic skills at every opportunity, avoiding commission to rebuild the shrine of Ibn {Arabi outside palace coups and bandit-infested roads, and turning Damascus upon his conquest of the “Arab lands,” we down offers of mighty posts. Soon after the section need to consider as the audience of this grand ges- on Gujarat, he starts to write poems that pepper the ture of patronage not only the sedentary Arab popu- text in Chagatai Turkish, as if to accentuate his sense lations of Syria but also those very tribes of different of exile (Úurbet). The very first poem in Chagatai ends and sometimes confused identity, many of whom were with a prayer that God grant him success in his “jour- potential targets of Safavid propaganda and their kind ney back to the patria (va«an seferi).” He returns to of Sufism. composing poems “in the manner of Rum (R¢m «arzæ For Fuzuli, a Turcoman of Iraq, who was and is üzere)” only when he comes close to the Safavid-Otto- one of the most revered poets of Ottoman and Azeri man boundary. In the meantime, he tells us that the Turkish literature, the significant (and, again, vague) “yearning for the patria (va«an ¸rz¢sæ)” never left his boundary was not between Syria and Rum but rather heart. How could it, when he knew that he was a sub- between Baghdad and Rum. He considered himself ject of the grandest of countries? When Humayun asked to be out of touch with the patronage networks of him a tricky question as to which country was bigger, the lands of Rum, where many a lesser poet flour- the country of Rum (vilayet-i Rum) or Hindustan, he ished, while he, a Shi{a to boot, suffered the fate of had boldly answered: “If, by Rum, one means Rum the downtrodden of Karbala. In more prosaic and de- strictly speaking, that is, the province of Sivas (called scriptive fashion, the lands north of Mosul, too, could Rum in Ottoman administrative division), then Hindu- function as the entry to Rum in chronicles depicting stan is bigger. But if one means the lands under the the movement of armies or individuals. rule of the Padishah-i Rum, Hind does not amount Somewhere to the west or north of any of those to one-tenth of it…When people speak of Alexander points, one crossed into the lands of Rum, which since having ruled over the seven climes, that must be like the early twentiety century has almost mechanically the rule of Padishah-i Rum.” He knew well, however, been translated as “Anatolia.” But where, exactly, is that “Rum” implied something more limited than Anatolia, historically speaking? Today, the word is the whole Ottoman Empire. He felt he had found used almost universally to cover all of the lands of safety (sel¸met) when he reached Ottoman Baghdad, Turkey to the east of the straits. It is also regularly in-

BBookook 11.indb.indb 1717 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:579:13:57 PMPM 18 cemal kafadar voked in a metaphorical fashion, by Turks in partic- ern shoreline of the peninsula. The inhabitants of ular, to imply “the deep country,” the soil, the soiled Istanbul had been accustomed for centuries to think but true essence of Turkey, minus the cosmopolitan of many aspects and landmarks of their city in terms corruption and money of Istanbul (and perhaps also of a playful bipartite division: the castle, lighthouse, “infidel Izmir”). But “Anatolia” was used even as late as etc. of Rumelia vs. those of Anatolia. If one crossed the nineteenth century primarily in terms of physical the straits eastward, one crossed into Anatolia. geography, and as such the designation has the same Towards the end of the eighteenth century, how- vagueness beyond the diagonal line from Trabzon to ever, “Anadolu” acquired a broader usage: coming the eastern edges of the Taurus Mountains, namely north from Syria, one now did not necessarily enter the uncannily overlapping eastern boundaries of the the lands of Rum, but one might enter Anadolu. The empires of Basil II and Mehmed II. If one ever wanted chronicle of Ahmed Vasæf Efendi, written in the 1780s, to consider deep geographic structures à la Braudel, uses “Rum” only twice in the traditional sense of “Asia one would also need to take into account a botanical Minor” and on two other occasions to refer to a Rus- frontier that natural scientists have discovered along, sian political plot to establish an independent R¢m 49 more or less, the same diagonal line. devleti (Greek state) and to appoint a Russian noble- In that sense, the usage of “Rum” in our late medi- man as the Greek king (R¢m kralæ).50 In other words, eval and early modern sources can indeed be identi- the word “Rum” had acquired a new political mean- fied most of the time with the current delineation of ing that would only intensify during the Greek War Anatolia, with the same attendant vagueness about its of Independence in the 1820s and thereafter. An ac- boundaries, but only those to the east or the south. count of the annihilation of the Janissaries in 1826 Rum, in other words, included Asia Minor, or Anato- castigates the “heretical” soldiers for having been too lia, but the Ottoman usage had more than the south- cozy with the Greek rebels during the “sedition of western Asian peninsula in mind. The Balkans, too, the wicked Rum infidels (kefere-i fecere-i R¢m) in the were included in Rum as cultural space after the late year 1820–21.”51 It must have something to do with fourteenth century. Ottoman lands west of the Mar- this new sensitivity that “Anatolia” acquires a broader mara Sea were called R¢m ili (Rumelia), which is an- range. In the same source is another striking usage: other way, after all, of saying “the lands of Rum.” the brief vitae of Hacæ Bekta× Veli mentions his migra- Traveling westward from Iran or northward from Syria tion “from Khurasan to Anatolia,” offering a new take or Iraq, one would walk into the lands of Rum, but as on the time-honored Khurasan-to-Rum axis that pre- one crossed the straits of the Bosphorus or the Darda- vails in late medieval and early modern hagiographies nelles eastward, one entered not Rum but Anadolu. of saintly figures of the lands of Rum, many of whom The same Haleti who was mentioned above had held are said to have hailed from Khurasan.52 three judgeships, respectively, “in Gelibolu, Yeni×ehir, It is ironic that, at around the same time, many and Salonica, of the grand cities in Rum.” In other Greek intellectuals were feeling embarrassed about words, the lands of Rum as a cultural zone had two the Greeks’ self-designation of Romaioi and exerting parts in Ottoman usage: what is now Anatolia and what their energy and influence to replace it by “Hellenes” used to be Rumelia. and “Greeks.” When those intellectuals of the Greek Beginning in the late eighteenth century this usage enlightenment and, later, independence started to of “Rum” as a geographical designation was likewise feel uncomfortable with the Byzantino-Ottoman asso- gradually abandoned, to be replaced by the broaden- ciations of the word, their observations were based on ing semantic field of “Anatolia,” but at first only in a perception of Romaioi identity as defining a whole the sense of physical geography. Anadolu, the Turki- variety of institutions and attitudes. In 1787, for in- cized form of the Greek word Anatoli (east), had been stance, Dimitrios Katartzis, in analyzing the ideas of used for centuries in frozen institutional terminology, another writer, wrote: as in “the province of Anadolu” (the central and cen- tral-western parts of Asia Minor), or “the treasurer Two ethni, the Hellenic and the Roman, covering two of Anadolu” (in juxtaposition with the same office thousand and more years between them, he holds to be held in Rumelia). In terms of physical geography, “the one, the Hellenic, simply because the latter descends shores of Anadolu” (Anadolu sev¸¥ili) had been com- from the former; but they differ one from the other monly used since the late medieval era for the north- in fortune and constitution and religion and customs

BBookook 11.indb.indb 1818 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:589:13:58 PMPM cultural geography and identity in the lands of rum 19 and language and conduct, even in their clothing and vancement in these respects of the Greeks of Greece. utensils.”53 “The government of the Ottoman Empire” is no obsta- cle, he writes; “the Rums of Anatolia” or “Anatolians” “Rum” did not just keel over and disappear, however. (Anadolu Rumlaræ and Anadolulular, interchangeably), No matter what he thought of a Greek state and a should establish new schools and do our best to pull Greek king, Ahmed Vasæf Efendi took some pride in ourselves into the new age.” He then proceeds to a the “dil¸ver¸n (bravehearts) of Rum,” namely, Otto- long list of “Anadolulu” philosophers, scientists, po- man soldiers who fought valiantly against some rebels ets, and painters from ancient and Byzantine history in Egypt in 1787.54 Seyyid Muhammed Nurü’l-{Arabi, a as examples of past achievements that need to be re- prominent nineteenth-century mystic, was sent in 1829 vived. His proud list includes Hippocrates, Strabon, (?) to “the lands of Rum” by his sheikh in Cairo.55 Sappho, Palamas, and many others, who are identi- Even as late as 1874, Namæk Kemal, who invented pa- fied as having hailed from Anadolu, and a few occa- triotic poetry in the Ottoman/Turkish tradition, would sional figures from areas such as Antioch, Damascus, casually drop “Rum” in a couplet and assume that his 56 and Cyprus, which he obviously considers as natural readers would recognize the word in its old sense. extensions of an Anatolian cultural geography.59 The entry on “Rum” in the celebrated Turkish diction- Those lines were written in Istanbul in the 1870s ary of Øemseddin Sami, published in 1900, sealed the for practical purposes, to serve as a source of inspira- trajectory of the usage in the late nineteenth century, tion for educational reform in a community rooted in however: “People of Central Asia in our day apply this Ottoman Anatolia. Competing designs on the penin- name to Anatolia...According to us, this name belongs sula in the early twentieth century would render Misa- only to the new Greek people.” Under “Anadolu” he ilidis quaint. All of his Anatolians were forced to leave would write, “It constitutes the most important part for Greece as refugees, and Muslim refugees from Ru- 57 of the Ottoman realm in our day.” melia and the Caucasus were moved to Anadolu, the For “Anadolu” to acquire regular usage with deep heartland of the new country of Turkey, where they cultural resonance among the Ottomans, one needs joined others learning to think of themselves as Turks. to wait until the turn of the twentieth century, or, New histories had to be written about “our people” more definitively, until the end of the Balkan Wars in and “our homeland.”60 1912–13, when the empire had lost nearly all its lands “Our people,” it has proven relatively facile for na- in Europe. Before that, experimentation with a pan- tionalists everywhere to argue, have been around for Ottoman identity for the sake of creating a modern a long time, perhaps since the misty beginnings of his- sense of citizenship in the late empire, and the appli- tory—but where? Some consider themselves to have cation of this new notion of Ottoman-ness in a widen- been “at home” since time immemorial, but most peo- ing network of schools and print cultures, rendered ples must reckon with the fact that their forebears “Osmanlæ” a broader category than it had been earlier. (the Germans, the Turks, the Slavs, the Aztecs, and One could now write about Osmanlæ ×airleri (Ottoman all Indo-Europeans if one goes back enough in time) poets), for instance. Toward the end of the century indeed moved around until they struck the felicitous Turkishness, too, was embraced by a small but influ- bond with “our patria.” Blut met Boden and acquired ential group of intellectuals. Lage.61 They may have walked into “vast empty lands,” There were, however, new ways of speaking about as is said of the Europeans in North America, or they Anatolia, and perhaps the most original conceptual- may have come with “offerings of love and fraternity ization is found in a novel published in 1871–72 by as well as a superior civilization and political stabil- Evangelinos Misailidis (1820–90), of the Turcophone ity” (accompanied by the requisite military action). Greek Orthodox community. It is both a popular and Now that the destined embrace between “our peo- a scholarly convention to speak of this community as ple” and “our patria” is complete (Why did our an- Karamanli, but Misailidis himself objects to this and cestors share it with others? They were tolerant, to tells us that he would like to be called Anatolian.58 begin with. Moreover, the Seljuks and the Ottomans Obviously, he has in mind the Greek Orthodox pop- forgot they were Turks and fell for Persian and Arab ulations of Asia Minor, whether Turcophone or Hel- and Byzantine cultures…), now that the Greeks and lenophone, and contrasts what he observes to be their the Armenians are here no more, how do we re-cog- backwardness in education and learning to the ad- nize our homeland?

BBookook 11.indb.indb 1919 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:599:13:59 PMPM 20 cemal kafadar Remzi Oquz Aræk, with his influential explorations deal with the fact that those stories inform political ar- of “how geography turns into patria,” provides one of guments at least implicitly sustained by historical nar- the best examples of the obsession with the question ratives? When a celebrated and controversial poet like that loomed large in the minds of many early repub- ~smet Özel, for instance, asserts that “this soil awaited lican intellectuals: the Turks,” he is sketching a historical narrative and How misty is the initial birth of nations? Which peo- advancing a political argument about Turks and Ana- ple has freely chosen its patria? How big is the role of tolia that is not irrelevant to our concerns here. What- chance…? Had Turks passed by the northern side of the ever one thinks of his line, or the lines of different Caspian, who knows in what religion and in what place neo-nationalist writers, where does their fury come we would now be? Imagine the difference of the coun- from? And, more important, why does it find such tries of origin, the reasons for the departure from those fertile ground? Much as their preoccupation with na- countries, of the people who established the United tional essence and their exclusivist discourse strike States. Who among them had the purpose of establish- me as deeply worrisome, I am afraid that, in a self- ing the country, the state, of today? proclaimed age of globalization, undermining nation- Once a people and a geography labor for centuries based conceptualizations and narratives can also serve to mutually shape each other, however, mere land new forms of imperialism, articulating them with some turns into homeland. That is how, according to Aræk, hypocritical discourses (on human rights, democracy, 63 the Oghuz Turks made Anatolia their own after 1071, minority rights, women’s rights, etc.). while all other people before the Turks either were It has turned into a postmodern sport to take too dispersed to unify the land or merely exploited shots—often cheap shots—at nationalisms and na- it.62 tional histories. We tend to forget that nationalisms A different understanding of Anatolia was devel- did and do appeal to millions of people because they oped by the “Blue” school of thought that embraced provide, among other things, a sense of dignity and the pre-Islamic past of the peninsula, but only after a pillar of sovereignty, none of which, in my opinion, introducing a sharp distinction between “this land of is to be disdained or undermined. The political dis- ours” and Greece; Homeros, for instance, was of “this course of this age of globalization, and its critique land” and “ours,” not “theirs.” There were yet other of nationalism, has not grown out of a problemati- approaches that developed in the context of compet- zation of nation- or ethnos-based narratives as such; ing irredentisms in the post-Ottoman political space, it simply wishes to deem certain parts of the world including a Turkish one, and in response to the new and certain peoples so utterly steeped in ancient ha- era of colonialism. Necip Fazæl Kæsakürek’s Büyük Doqu treds and incomprehensible disputes that they must (The Great East) paradigm, elaborated in his influen- be taught better. tial journal of the same name, found nothing worthy To return to the lands of Rum, the appropriation in Christian or, especially, Jewish survivals and survi- of “Roman-ness” by Turcophone Muslims in the late vors; it would be best not to have any traces of them medieval and Ottoman era, or its recognition today, in the new Turkish state. The novelist Kemal Tahir’s is not comparable to, say, the nineteenth-century Brit- Anatolia was a land where Turks built a kerim devlet ish elite’s claims and attachment to the heritage of (munificent state) in the form of the Ottoman Em- Rome: what was being appropriated was not the im- pire. Various other “Anatolias” could be treated here, age of Rome but the soil that the Rumis inhabited and but the topic is ultimately as demanding as a broad some of the continuous cultural traditions and dispo- intellectual history of republican Turkey. sitions. Nor was it to draw glamour or political baraka One cannot escape the fact that all these readings from Roman-ness, as was the case with British colo- of cultural geography came with their own political nial administrators and is now true of the neo-cons twists, in their conception as well as their continued of the United States. reception. The questions themselves keep multiply- For different reasons, the avowal of an identity de- ing in our own time: how does one write about the riving from the physical and cultural geography of cultures of the lands of former Yugoslavia? Where eastern Rome among members of Ottoman society, is Macedonia? To come back to Anatolia: What is a including its most renowned writers and artists, now Turk? a Kurd? How should we tell their stories and seems difficult to recognize for many in the Turkish

BBookook 11.indb.indb 2020 99/20/2007/20/2007 9:13:599:13:59 PMPM cultural geography and identity in the lands of rum 21 nation-state. A translator of Joseph von Hammer-Purg- one’s own identity free of history. Self-knowledge, stall’s monumental Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches too, is implicated in relations of power. One is always (published between 1827 and 1835) finds a reference forced to rethink and redesign one’s own conception in the original work to Ottoman art as “the art of of self according to others within and outside the “na- Rum” unpalatable, even if the Viennese historian’s tion,” under historical circumstances shaped by asym- intention is merely to attribute the glorious dome of metries of power or seduction of/by others. Thus it the Taj Mahal to Ottoman architects. To the transla- was that those who eventually learned (preferred?) to tion is amended a footnote: call themselves Turks and Greeks abandoned, for dif- ferent reasons and toward different ends, their attach- Although Ottoman architecture may have borrowed from ment to Rumi/Romaioi identity during the course of Byzantine architecture, the two are not the same; while Ottoman architecture has been influenced by other [tradi- the eighteenth century, just as new hegemonic powers tions of] architecture, it has produced works in accord with were emerging with a new take on the Roman past. an original style in full conformity with Turkish-Islamic That, of course, is the “real” Rome, not the lesser— taste and as an autonomous [tradition of] architecture, the Anatolian, i.e., eastern—version. and has thus imposed its stamp in history.64 History Department, Harvard University It would be sheer romanticism to present this exer- cise as an attempt to recycle “Rumi” as a panacea to the excesses of nationalism, a mechanical alternative NOTES to “Turkish” or “Ottoman,” or as an attempt to rein- sert the “Turks-as-Romans” into European identity. In 1. Ni¬¸m al-Dºn Sh¸mº, Zafername, Turkish trans. Necati Lugal our rethinking of history writing through essential- (Ankara, 1987), 307. The Ottoman sources write of Timur’s ized national, religious, and state-based categories, forces as Tatar (making the important association with the however, we can benefit from deeper excavation of Chingisids) and of themselves primarily as warriors of Islam premodern conceptualizations of identity as embod- and the soldiers of Rum. 2. The term has already been applied by Halil Edhem (Eldem) ied in the notion of Rumi-ness, among others, and in a more restricted fashion, namely to western Anatolia in better understand the vicissitudes of selfhood in the the post-Seljuk period: Garbi Anadolu’da Selçuklularæn Varisleri: plural environments that we study. That excavation Tevaif ül-Müluk (Istanbul, 1926). would need to be followed by more intensive micro- 3. Ibn Bºbº, El-Ev¸mirü’l-{Al¸’iyye fi’l-um¢ri’l-al¸’iyye, facsimile edi- geographical studies of exchange and reception, for- tion, ed. Adnan Sadæk Erzi (Ankara, 1957), 11, and the Turk- ish translation by Mürsel Öztürk, 2 vols. (Ankara, 1996), 1:29. 65 mation, or elaboration of cultural identities. The actual circumstances were, in fact, even more compli- Identity has always been a political resource (“di- cated, with many lesser emirs enjoying short-lived power on vide and rule” is partly based on that fact), but the their own in small but not insignificant regions. That is why ever more refined forms of production of knowledge I referred, in an earlier publication, to a “Warholian Anato- lia” of this era, where many an aspiring warrior enjoyed fif- about identities is now fed directly into the strategic teen days to fifteen years of glory. calculus of security assets and security risks. I may for- 4. Franz Taeschner, s.v. “Kaykhusraw I,” in Encyclopaedia of Is- get Foucault, as I am advised to do by Baudrillard, lam, New Edition (henceforth EI2) (Leiden, 1950–2004); also but how can I forget in this context Sheikh Bedred- see Alexios G. Savvides, “A Note on the Terms Rûm and Anatolia in Seljuk and Early Ottoman Times,” Deltio Kentrou din, a child of the lands of Rum who thanks to his Mikrasiatik¡n Spoud¡n 5 (1984–85, publ. 1987): 99. The Dan- education in Egypt grew into a highly accomplished ishmendids were not modest in this regard, either: there was scholar and Sufi and developed a utopian vision and an adolescent prince of that dynasty in 1177 named Afrºd¢n: a huge following among diverse sorts of Rumis, only Irene Mélikoff, s.v. “D¸nishmend,” in EI2. The Sh¸hn¸ma, to be executed in 1416 by the Ottoman state? About which constitutes the font of names for Rum Seljuk rulers after this point, is indeed the “Persian epic par excellence,” the {ulem¸-i ¬¸hir (scholars of the exoteric aspects of as modern scholars often characterize it, but the relation- religio-legal learning) of his time, Bedreddin wrote, ship of medieval Turkish rulers to the epic material is not “They say their goal is the acquisition of knowledge, as predatory as it might seem, and not only because many but all their knowledge is for power and status (c¸h Turkish rulers were patrons of Persian and Persianate litera- ve riy¸set).” ture, including the Sh¸hn¸ma. In the epic, the Iranian-Tura- nian distinction is much more porous than is implied by Ultimately, there is no Rome of one’s own, unless modern ethno-national conceptualizations of cultural patri- one remains in a position to design and propagate mony. First of all, Farºd¢n (Feridun) is the ancestor of both

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the Iranians and the Turanians. Moreover, Kai Khusraw (Key- Muqarnas 16 (1999): 70–95; and Tülay Artan, “Questions of husrev) is born to Siyavush and a daughter of Afrasiyab, af- Ottoman Identity and Architectural History,” in Rethinking ter the Iranian prince takes refuge in Turan. Kai Khusraw Architectural History, ed. Dana Arnold, Elvan Altan Ergut, and eventually assumes the Iranian throne, but not without fac- Belgin Turan Özkaya (London and New York, 2006), 85– ing an objection that he is “sprung from the race of Afrasi- 109. yab.” Cited and analyzed in Øener Aktürk, “Representations 8. The defeat and execution by the Mongols of Sharaf al-Din of the Turkic Peoples in the Shahnameh and the Greco-Ro- Muhammad, the Rum Seljuks’ Yezidi governor of Harput, man Sources,” Akademik Ara×tærmalar Dergisi 8 (2006): 15–26. is mentioned in Bar Hebraeus, Chronography, ed. Paul Bed- It was the unusual combination of this heritage and the spirit jan, trans. E. A. W. Budge, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1932), 1:425. On of the new age that led Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to commis- the dynamics of Islamization and Turkification in late me- sion an opera to be composed by a European-trained Turkish dieval Asia Minor the monumental work of Speros Vryonis musician when Riza Shah Pahlavi was due to visit the Repub- is essential reading: The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia lic of Turkey. Performed in 1934 during the shah’s sojourn Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through in Ankara, the opera dealt with the story of the two sons of the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley, 1971). Also see the informa- Faridun, from whom descended the Iranians and the Tura- tive article by Ahmet Ya×ar Ocak in Türk Diyanet Vakfæ ~slâm nians. Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul, 1988–), s.v. “Anadolu: Anadolu’nun 5. Note, for instance, the empire of Trebizond; the realm of Türkle×mesi ve ~slamla×masæ.” Ocak has no qualms about the Lascarids who ruled parts of western Asia Minor from characterizing the Yezidis as sapæk (deviant). The association their base in Nicaea until 1261, and some Byzantine-held of Yezidism with Yazid b. Mu{awiya might well be pop etymol- towns even thereafter; brief control enjoyed by some Latin ogy, or simply slander by their Muslim neighbors who thus warriors after 1204 in some towns; and the tiny but commer- linked a “bizarre” faith with one of the disliked characters cially significant autonomous zones of the Genoese in Foça of early Islamic history, but it was accepted by the Yezidis and Samsun. for centuries. In any case, they are of late evidently attempt- 6. Ibn Battuta, Voyages d’Ibn Batt¢tah, ed. and trans. C. Defre- ing to disassociate themselves from such a linkage: Sabiha méry and B. R. Sanguinetti, 4 vols. (Paris, 1853–58), 2:255ff. Banu Yalkut, Melek Tavus’un Halkæ Yezidiler (Istanbul, 2001), See, with respect to the chapter on Anatolia in particular, 86. While, according to Yalkut, Armenian nationalism has the useful notes in the reedition of the French text by Sté- claimed them as a proto-Armenian community that experi- phane Yerasimos, Voyages (3 vols., Paris, 1990), and in the enced a linguistic conversion (13), and Saddam Hussein’s Turkish translation by A. Sait Aykut, ~bn Battuta Seyahat - Iraq categorized them as Arabs because of the presumed link namesi (2 vols., Istanbul, 2000). with the Umayyad dynasty through Yazid (85), the Yezidis 7. My initial perplexity with the “Rumi” identity is buried in are historically Kurdish-speaking and generally considered a long footnote in my first academic article, “A Death in Kurds: see John S. Guest, Survival among the Kurds: A History Venice: Anatolian Muslim Merchants Trading in the Sereni- of the Yezidis (London and New York, 1993). For some pri- ssima,” in Raiyyet Rüsumu: Essays Presented to Halil ~nalcæk, Jour- mordialist Kurdish nationalists, Yezidism is indeed the origi- nal of Turkish Studies 10 (1986): 191–218; see 193, n. 8. In nal faith of the Kurds. Ibn Battuta’s reference to Yezid as the his dissertation (Princeton University, 1980), which consti- ancestor of the Sons of Germiyan, even if it is related by the tutes the basis of his Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Otto- traveler as a disparaging remark by their resentful neighbors, man Empire: The Historian Mustafa Âli (1541–1600) (Princeton, has thus led some modern scholars to deem the Germiya- 1986), Cornell Fleischer also touched upon the significance nids Kurds and occasioned a rebuttal by a Turkish historian: of Rumi identity. More recently, Salih Özbaran, scholar of see Mustafa Çetin Varlæk, Germiyanoqullaræ Tarihi: 1300–1429 Ottoman adventures in the southern seas and indefatigable (Ankara, 1974). The actual circumstances may indeed have critic of the textbook versions of Turkish national histori- been so complex as not to allow for a designation of some ography, has published Bir Osmanlæ Kimliqi: 14.–17. Yüzyæl- of those tribal confederations with a straightforward ethnic larda Rum/Rumi Aidiyet ve ~mgeleri (Istanbul, 2004). As it often marker comfortably recognized by modern readers. Ethnic happens, one eventually discovers that some earlier scholar and linguistic transformations could be drawn-out, complex has already made pertinent observations: see M. F. Köprülü, processes and did not always tend towards Turkification; in “Anadolu Selçuklu Tarihinin Yerli Kaynaklaræ,” Belleten 27 the regions traditionally inhabited by the Yezidis (now north- (1943): 455. Also see Paul Wittek, “Le Sultan de Rûm,” An- ern Iraq and southeastern Turkey), for instance, there was nuaire de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves also a process of Kurdification, as argued by ~hsan Süreyya 6 (1938): 361–390. Architectural historians have lately dis- Særma (who expanded an article by Th. Menzel in the orig- played a sensitivity to related issues: see Gülru Necipoqlu, inal Encyclopaedia of Islam): see ~slâm Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul, “Challenging the Past: Sinan and the Competitive Discourse 1950–88), s.v. “Yezidiler.” of Early Modern Islamic Architecture,” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 9. Cited in Halil Inalcik, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfæ ~slâm Ansiklopedisi, 169–80; idem, “L’idée de décor dans les régimes de visual- s.v. “Istanbul: Türk devri.” Mas{udi’s rendering, Stanbulin, is ité islamiques,” in the forthcoming Musée du Louvre exhibi- slightly different and closer to the Greek original rendering tion catalogue Purs décors? Arts de l’Islam dans les collections des of eis-ten-polin. Casim Avcæ, “Arap-~slâm Kaynaklarænda ~stan- Arts Décoratifs, ed. Remy Labrousse (Paris, 2007), 10–23; Çiq- bul,” in ~stanbul Üniversitesi 550. Yæl Uluslararasæ Bizans ve Os- dem Kafesçioqlu, “‘In the Image of Rum’: Ottoman Architec- manlæ Sempozyumu (XV. Yüzyæl), 30–31 Mayæs 2003, ed. Sümer tural Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Aleppo and Damascus,” Atasoy (Istanbul, 2004), 99–111.

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10. Seyyid Battal Gazi himself was revered as a saintly figure facing walls; while Rum artists labor to produce a magnifi- among the Turkish Muslims of the lands of Rum, while cent piece of art, the Chinese merely polish their wall for a around his shrine grew one of the most popular cults of perfect reflection and thus triumph, since a mirror reflec- post-Manzikert Anatolia. tion is a superior rendering of reality by virtue of its point- 11. See, for instance, the unabashedly presentist political uses of ing to the ideal beauty beyond the phenomenal world. In this argument in Seyfi Ta×han and Heath Lowry, “U.S.–Turk- Mevlana Celaleddin’s rendering of the same parable, the ish Interests: Convergence and Divergence,” Policy Watch roles are reversed; it is the Rumis who turn out to be wiser #661 (Sept. 20, 2002): Special Forum Report, Washington and decide to polish, while the Chinese merely display their Institute for Near East Policy. Internet distribution: policy- artistry. The comparison is made by Serpil Baqcæ, “Gerçeqin [email protected]. According to the auth- Saklandæqæ Yer: Ayna,” in Sultanlaræn Aynalaræ, catalogue of ors, Arabs lack these qualities. an exhibition of the same title held at the Topkapæ Palace 12. Ibn {Arabi’s letter is recorded in Kerimüddin Mahmud-i Ak- Museum in 1998–99 (Istanbul, 1998), 16–19. We may not sarayi, Müsameret ül-Ahbar, ed. Osman Turan (Ankara, 1944), be able, at this point, to tell with precision which communi- 327–29. For a Turkish rendering, see the translation of this ties Mevlana Celaleddin’s milieu had in mind when speaking work by Mürsel Oztürk (Ankara, 2000), 264–66. of Rumis, but it clearly included a certain Kaluyan and an 13. Cited in B. Fur¢z¸nfar, Mevlâna Celâleddin, Turkish trans. F. {Aynü’d-devle, both of whom are identified as “Rumi paint- N. Uzluk (Istanbul, 1997), 66–67. On the basis of an allu- ers” by Aflaki (1:552). Kaluyan is also known as an accom- sion in the Dºv¸n-i Shams-i Tabrºzº, Franklin Lewis suggests plished architect. The early republican authors of a work that the title may have been used in Rumi’s lifetime: Rumi, on Seljuk architecture refer to a controversy concerning the Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching and Poetry Greek or Armenian identity of the famous artist and decide of Jalâl al-Din Rumi (Oxford, 2000), 10. Annemarie Schim- that he must have been Mekhitarist Greek, or rather Ortho- mel has a point but is ultimately imprecise when she trans- dox Turk: see M. Ferit and M. Mesut, Selçuk Veziri Sahib Ata lates Mawlana Rumi as “Our Master, the Byzantine”: Rumi’s ile Oqullarænæn Hayat ve Eserleri (Istanbul, 1934), 121. World: The Life and Work of the Great Sufi Poet (Boston, 1992), 19. See, for instance, Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Tur- 11. key (Oxford, 1961). For a consideration of the uses of “Turk” 14. Mu¥ammad b. {Alº b. Sulaym¸n al-R¸wandº, Râhat-üs-Sudûr by Mevlana Celalüddin, including both the example given ve Âyet-üs-Sürûr, Turkish trans. Ahmed Ate×, 2 vols. (Ankara, above and more positive ones, which have led some mod- 1957), 2:461–62. In the 1260s, a member of the Seljuk cavalry ern Turkish writers to claim him not only as a Turk but even bore the curious name Rumeri (literally, man or soldier of as a Turkish nationalist, see Abdülbaki Gölpænarlæ, Mevlana Rum); his father was a powerful ça×nigºr (taster or cupbearer Celaleddin (Istanbul, 1985), 206–7. Gölpænarlæ rightly insists in royal service) named Türkeri (Turkish man, or soldier): that ethnonyms were deployed allegorically and metaphor- Ibn Bºbº, El-Ev¸mirü’l-{Ala’iyye, 663; Turkish trans., 2:180. ically in classical Islamic literatures, which operated on the 15. “~smail Hakkæ Bursevi Øerhi,” in Mustafa Tatcæ, ed., Yunus basis of a staple set of images and their well-recognized con- Emre Øerhleri (Istanbul, 2005), 143. Atabeg is a construct made textual associations by readers; there, “Turk” had both neg- of two older Turkish words, while lala is a loanword from Per- ative and positive connotations. In fact, the two dimensions sian, indicating the cultural preferences of the two groups could be blended: the “Turk” was “cruel” and hence, at the mentioned here. same time, the “beautiful beloved.” 16. Romaioi was a common form of self-designation among the 20. Mütercim Âsæm Efendi, Burhân-æ Katæ, ed. Mürsel Öztürk and Greeks during the Byzantine and Ottoman eras, and this Derya Örs (Ankara, 2000), s.v. cânkî and heftân. For an in- word, too, has had its own curious historical adventures ex- stance of türkî-i kadîm (ancient Turkish), s.v. bi×-behâr. tending into the modern era of nationalism. For an eth- 21. Yusuf b. {Abdullah, T¸rºÒ-i @l-i {Osm¸n, publ. as Bizans nographic analysis of the usage among modern Greeks see Söylenceleriyle Osmanlæ Tarihi, ed. Efdal Sevinçli (Izmir, 1997), Michael Herzfeld, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the 126/127, 136/137, 146/147, 172/173, 234/235, 250/251, Making of Modern Greece (Austin, 1982). For some striking ex- 254/255 (facing pages of facsimile and Latin-letter transcrip- amples of critical reflections on Romaioi identity by Greek in- tion); the only other instance is in reference to “Turks” among tellectuals in the eighteenth century, see Alexis Politis, “From the rebels who gathered around Sheikh Bedreddin, 102/103. Christian Roman Emperors to the Glorious Greek Ances- There are only two other occurrences of the word “Türk,” tors,” Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity, ed. David Ricks both of them as adjectives, once to designate a person (Türk and Paul Magdalino (Aldershot, Eng., 1998), 1–14. Rüstem, 82/83) and once to define a garb (238/239). On 17. See, for instance, R¢mºler içerü «olup müslüm¸nlaræ hel¸k ey- 180/181, Türkmens (Turcomans) are mentioned as mezheb- lediler (The Rumis rushed in and decimated the Muslims): süz (without a proper sectarian affiliation) among the forces Dâni×mend-nâme, ed. Necati Demir (Cambridge, MA, 2002), of Uzun Hasan, the Akkoyunlu ruler, and as enemies of the 7 and passim. Ottomans, who are often designated ehl-i ~sl¸m (the people 18. Shams al-Dºn A¥mad al-Afl¸kº, Man¸kib al-{¸rifºn, ed. Tahsin of Islam) or Ú¸zºler (warriors for the faith). It remains true Yazæcæ, 2 vols. (Ankara, 1959), 2:721: im¸rat-i {¸lam makhª¢ª- that not all our sources are so consistent, and some of them ast bi R¢mºy¸n va khar¸bº-i jah¸n maqª¢r-ast bi-Turk¸n. Rumi contain a variety of uses of the word “Türk(ler)” in a neu- obviously preferred the art of the Rumis. In a famous para- tral or boastful manner, next to unpleasant ones, as argued ble, related by al-Ghazali (d. 1111) and Nizami (d. ca. 1200), by Hakan Erdem, “Osmanlæ Kaynaklarændan Yansæyan Türk Chinese and Rum (Greek? Byzantine?) painters compete to ~maj(lar)æ,” in Özlem Kumrular, ed., Dünyada Türk ~mgesi determine who will execute the superior painting on two (Istanbul, 2005), 13–26. If the earlier sections of Yusuf b.

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{Abdullah’s chronicle had survived, we might have encoun- 33. This assessment, which may be worth revisiting, is widely ac- tered such counterexamples, since most of Erdem’s instances cepted and cited in later scholarship: see, for instance, John of non-ventriloquial uses are in passages that deal with pre- Woods, The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire (Chicago, or early Ottoman history, where links to Oghuz and Inner 1976), 9. Asian traditions (the “Turkish past” of the Ottomans) are of 34. Harun Tolasa, Sehî, Latîfî, Â×æk Çelebi Tezkirelerine göre 16. yy.da particular relevance. It also should be noted that many of Edebiyat Ara×tærma ve Ele×tirisi (Izmir, 1983), 34. them are in passages where an Ottoman/Turkish character 35. All examples in this paragraph are cited in Tolasa, Sehî, Latîfî, is speaking to non-Ottomans. There needs to be a more sys- 13–14. For a compound word with negative connotations see tematic survey of different sources in order to understand Mütercim Âsæm Efendi, Burhan-æ Katæ: rûmî-hûy (of Rumi dis- and contextualize the preferences of authors or the routes position), explained as “a fickle person who has a capricious of transmission with respect to the relevant vocabulary. nature.” F. Steingass’s rendering, s.v. r¢mº kh¢y, is “fickle, like 22. Translated and cited in Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, a Greek”: A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary (Delhi, 254. 1973; orig. pub. 1892). Also see Julius T. Zenker, Türkisch- 23. Barbara Flemming, “Political Genealogies in the Sixteenth Arabisch-Persisches Handwörterbuch (Leipzig, 1866), “r¢mº-h¢y Century,” Journal of Ottoman Studies 7–8 (1988): 123–37; M. oder r¢m-me×reb von griechischem Charakter, unbeständig, Fuad Köprülü, “Osmanlæ ~mparatorluqunun Etnik Men×ei flatterhaft, treulos.” Meseleleri,” Belleten 7(1943): 219–313. 36. {Alº b. Mu¥ammad al-Tamghr¢tº, En-Nafhat el-Miskiya fi-s-Si- 24. {Azºz b. Ardashºr Astar¸b¸dº, Bazm u Razm, ed. Kilisli Muallim farat et-Tourkiya: Relation d’une ambassade marocaine en turquie, Ræfat (Istanbul, 1928), 382; Øikari, Karamannâme, ed. Metin 1589–1591, trans. Henry de Castries (Paris, 1929), 48. The Sözen and Necdet Sakaoqlu (Istanbul, 2005), fols. 111b– translator, a French officer in North Africa, adds a footnote: 112a. The Aydænoqullaræ at the time of ~zmiroqlu Cüneyd “Understand: they prefer to be considered Greeks more than apparently called the Ottomans “rabbits” and themselves they would wish to be taken for Turks.” “wolves”: see Nihat Azamat, ed., Anonim Tevarih-i Âl-i Osman 37. Ralph Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social (Istanbul, 1992), 69. Beverage in the Medieval Near East (Seattle, 1991), 38 and 147, 25. Exhaustively documented and analyzed in Najwa al-Qattan, n. 23. Özbaran provides a detailed account of modern schol- “Dhimmis in the Muslim Court: Documenting Justice in Ot- arly literature that tends to conflate Rumis with Turks, Ana- toman Damascus 1775–1869” (PhD diss., Harvard University, tolian Turks, or Greeks: see Bir Osmanlæ Kimliqi, 89–98, inter 1996). alia. 26. Øinasi Tekin, “1343 Tarihli Bir Eski Anadolu Türkçesi 38. Bayram Han’æn Türkçe Divanæ, ed. Münevver Tekcan (Istan- Metni ve Türk Dili Tarihinde OlÚa-bolÚa Sorunu,” Türk Dili bul, 2005), 113. Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna is cited Ara×tærmalaræ Yællæqæ-Belleten (1973–74): 59–157. in Kafadar, “Anatolian Muslim Merchants,” 194. Many other 27. Clive Foss, “Byzantine Responses to Turkish Attack: Some instances of the usage in Asian sources, including one in Sites of Asia Minor,” in Aetos: Studies in Honor of Cyril Mango, Southeast Asia, are noted in Özbaran, Bir Osmanlæ Kimliqi, ed. Ihor ³evõenko and Irmgard Hutter (Stuttgart and 58–64; for Portuguese sources, see 78–88. Leipzig, 1998), 156–57 and photographic reproductions. 39. Ramazan Muslu, Osmanlæ Toplumunda Tasavvuf [18. yüzyæl] Foss modestly presents this important finding “as a prelimi- (Istanbul, 2003), 391ff. nary note, intended to draw attention to those unparalleled 40. Nevres-i Kadim, Tarihçe-i Nevres, ed. Hüseyin Akkaya (Istan- documents.” I am preparing a new edition, translation, and bul, 2004), 43. set of photographs, which were taken in collaboration with 41. Urum’æ vü Øam’æ geçdüm, Arabistanlæqa dü×düm. Cited in Isken- Dr. Nejdet Ertuq, to whom I am grateful for his generous- der Pala, “Ahmed Fakih ve Øiirleri Üzerine Bir ~nceleme,” ness with his time and fort-climbing companionship. Türk Kültürü ~ncelemeleri 10 (2004): 131. 28. Muhammed b. Mahmûd-æ Øirvânî, Tuhfe-i Murâdî, ed. Mus- 42. There is only one mention of Anadolu, for instance, in the tafa Argun×ah (Ankara, 1999), 73. For the dynamics of slave new collection of Karacaoqlan’s poetry by Saim Sakaoqlu: and post-manumission experiences in a specific setting, see Karacaoqlan (Ankara, 2004), 556; this poem is likely to have Halil Sahillioqlu, “Slaves in the Social and Economic Life of been composed by a nineteenth-century imitator of Kara- Bursa in the Late-15th and Early-16th Centuries,” Turcica 17 caoqlan, since the poem refers to “~ngiliz, Fransæz, Moskof, (1985): 43–112. Alaman”—a list of European nationalities that could hardly 29. M. Kunt, “Ethnic-Regional (Cins) Solidarity in the Seven- have been put together before that era. “Rum” and its alter- teenth-Century Ottoman Establishment,” International Jour- native, folksy spelling “Urum,” but not “Anadolu,” appear in nal of Middle East Studies 5 (1974): 233–39. two of Yunus Emre’s better-known poems: see Yûnus Emre Di- 30. See 162–64 of the text, Das Osmanisch-Türkische im XVII. Jahr- vânæ: Tenkitli Metin, ed. Mustafa Tatçæ (Istanbul, 2005), 281 hundert: Untersuchungen an den Transkriptionstexten von Jakab and 269 respectively. Nagy de Harsány, ed. György Hazai (The Hague and Paris, 43. Cited by Mustafa Demirel in the introduction to his criti- 1973). cal edition of ~bn-i Kemal, Dîvân (Istanbul, 1996), xxx. This 31. For a full discussion of relevant names in Badoer’s account folksy poem is not included in the scholar’s own collection book see Kafadar, “Anatolian Muslim Merchants,” 193. of his poetry, which is noteworthy for a ghazal with “Rum” 32. For the proverb see Gillian Weiss, “Back from Barbary: Cap- as its refrain (144); another one (182) addresses the beloved tivity, Redemption and French Identity in the 17th- and and depicts loving hearts as “pilgrims who came to the fron- 18th-Century Mediterranean” (PhD diss., Stanford Univer- tier of Rum that is your beauty.” sity, 2005). 44. Baldærzade Selisi Øeyh Mehmed, Ravza-i Evliya, ed. Mefail Hæz -

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læ and Murat Yurtsever (Bursa, 2000), 76, 257, 281. (Istanbul, 1986). From 1849, first in Izmir and then in Istan- 45. Seydî Ali Reis, Mir’atü’l-memâlik, ed. Mehmet Kiremet (An- bul, Misailidis published a periodical called Anadoli, which kara, 1999). he also used as the name of his publishing house. When 46. Ab¢ Bakr Þihr¸nº, Kit¸b-i Diy¸rbakriyya, ed. Necati Lugal and his 1871–72 novel was printed in Latin-letter transcription Faruk Sümer (Ankara, 1962), 44; idem, Kitab-æ Diyarbekriyye, in 1986, a controversy arose as to whether it should be con- Turkish trans. Mürsel Öztürk (Ankara, 2001), 41. sidered “the first novel in Turkish.” The case of Misailidis 47. Yusuf b. {Abdullah, T¸rºÒ-i @l-i {Osm¸n, 269. is a reminder that further study of conceptualizations of 48. Firdevsº-i R¢mº, Kutb-nâme, ed. ~. Olgun and ~. Parmaksæ- Anadolu among Greeks and Armenians should be added to zoqlu (Ankara, 1980), 76. a growing list of related research items. 49. Suavi Aydæn, “Anadolu Diyagonali: Ekolojik Kesinti Tarihsel- 60. Stéphane Yerasimos has garnered exquisite examples, from Kültürel Bir Farklælæqa ~×aret Edebilir Mi?” Kebikeç 17 (2004): various sources published between 1917 and 1920, of the 117–37. discourse that rendered this task an emergency: “As every- 50. Ahmed Vasæf Efendi, Mehâsinü’l-Âsâr ve Hakâikü’l-Ahbâr, ed. one knows, Turks came from Mongolia. While there, they Mücteba ~lgürel (Istanbul, 1978), 23. learned nothing that would enable them to administer a 51. Øirvânlæ Fâtih Efendi, Gülzâr-æ Fütûhât: Bir Görgü Tanæqænæn country. They came as soldiers and conquerors and never Kalemiyle Yeniçeri Ocaqæ’næn Kaldærælæ×æ, ed. Mehmet Ali Bey- became anything else. …When Turks came to Asia Minor, han (Istanbul, 2001), 19. The same source refers (40) to the they had no women with them. …The primitive Turk will “ulema of Anatolia” in a sweeping manner when speaking of always remain at the level of an animal. …If you scratch the the scholars’ declaration of jihad against the invading Rus- polish on the surface, you will encounter a Tatar. …Their sian armies. The rise to prominence of “Anadolu” may also way of living is always military…History has shown us that have something to do with the emergence of the Russians Turks do not have a faculty for intelligence…It is undeniable as the major challenger of the Ottoman Empire and patrons that Turks hate commerce…Turks are merely numbers…Do of its Rum Orthodox populations; a binary of Rus and Rum Turks have the capacity to establish a national identity?… is not so easy to imagine from the Ottoman point of view. Theirs is neither a country nor a nation. …We cannot speak 52. Ibid., 81; the full phrase is Òæ««a-i Anadolu (the land of Ana- of the existence of a Turkish people. …They have left their tolia). real home in Inner Asia and prepared the demise of the 53. Politis, “From Christian Roman Emperors,” 7; also see, in the eastern Roman Empire. It is a burden placed upon us by same volume, Peter Mackridge, “Byzantium and the Greek civilization to make them return to where they came from, Language Question in the Nineteenth Century,” 50. sooner or later.” Yerasimos, “Ne Mutlu Türk’üm Diyene,” in 54. Ahmed Vasæf Efendi, Mehâsinü’l-Âsâr, 357. idem, ed., Türkler: Doqu ve Batæ, ~slam ve Laiklik, trans. Temel 55. Gölpænarlæ, Melamilik ve Melamiler (Istanbul, 1931), 234–35. I Ke×i×oqlu (Istanbul, 2002), 40–49. am not sure that the disciple went astray by going to Serres 61. Roughly, blood, soil, and place: held by Josef Strzygowski (now in Greek Macedonia), as Gölpænarlæ would have it, to be the key determinants of art. See, for instance, his last “since the lands of Rum imply Anatolia.” We should also work, Europas Machtkunst im Rahmen des Erdkreises (Vienna, note that this is an Arabic source, and the trajectory of the 1943), 721, 723, 725. word “Rum/Rumi” may be somewhat different in the dif- 62. Remzi Oquz Aræk, “Coqrafyadan Vatana” (first publ. 1942), ferent languages used in our relevant sources. Here, we are in idem, Coqrafyadan Vatana (Ankara, 1990), 11–17. mostly concerned with the uses of the word in Turkish. 63. Slavoj ´i°ek, “Against Human Rights,” New Left Review 34 56. Ey vakæf-æ her mekanæ Rum’un / Bir adæ da Van mæ Erzurum’un. (July–Aug. 2005): 115–31. See Önder Göçgün, Namæk Kemal’in Øairliqi ve Bütün Øiirleri 64. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Büyük Osmanlæ Tarihi, 10 vols., (Ankara, 1999), 397. Turkish trans. Mümin Çevik and Erol Kælæç (Istanbul, 1983), 57. Øemseddin Sami, ^¸m¢s-æ Türkº (Istanbul, 1900), s.v. “R¢m” based on an earlier Ottoman Turkish translation by Mehmed and “Anadolu.” He had already expanded the nine-line en- Ata Bey, 5:575. try on Anatolia in Bouillet’s Dictionnaire universel d’histoire et 65. The promise of such an approach is borne out in Oya Panca- de géographie to eleven pages in his own encyclopedic work of roqlu’s article “The Itinerant Dragon-Slayer: Forging Paths of history and geography, which took the former as its model. Image and Identity in Anatolia,” Gesta 43, 2 (2004): 151–64, See Ömer Faruk Akün, s.v. “Øemseddin Sâmî,” in ~slam An- in which she brilliantly analyzes exchanges revolving around siklopedisi. the dragon-slaying hero of Christians and Muslims in the re- 58. I am reminded of Elia Kazan’s The Anatolian Smile, the alter- gion of the Arab-Byzantine frontier, the cultural legacy of native title to his film America, America. which played a formative role in the later adventures of the 59. Evangelinos Misailidis, Seyreyle Dünyayæ (Tema×a-æ Dünya ve people of the lands of Rum. Cefakar-u Cefake×), ed. Robert Anhegger and Vedat Günyol

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