Persecution of Alevis in the Ottoman Empire
The persecution of Alevis in the Ottoman Empire is best known from the reign of Sultan Selim I and his war against the Safavids in 1514. The reasons for the persecution of the Alevis were power-political interests, the interpretation of the Koran and Sharia .
Persecution of Heretical Groups Before 1500
The 13th century
Under the leadership of the dervish Baba Ilyas, the Babai uprising broke out in 1239 , which the Seljuk army found it difficult to suppress. The uprising was preceded by attempts at proselytizing among the Turkmens by Baba Ilyas'. The Mongol general Baiju Noyan exploited the resulting chaos and conquered Erzurum from the Seljuks. In the battle of the Köse Dağ that followed, the Seljuks were defeated by the Mongol army and lost their state sovereignty.
The 15th century
In the 15th century there was conflict with heterodox groups. One of the most famous events was the Sheikh Bedreddin Rebellion, which began in 1416. Sheikh Bedreddin was executed in 1420.
There was also the conflict with the Shiite sect of the Hurufiyya , which was widespread in Persia and Anatolia .
In the middle of the 15th century there was a conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Beylik of the Karamanids . In 1468 Mehmed II defeated the Karamanids. In the years from 1468 to 1474 resident tribes, including the Alevi Qizilbāsch , were expelled to Rumelia .
Persecution of Alevis from 1500
Rule of Sultan Bayezid II. 1481–1512
During the reign of Sultan Bayezid II , relations between the Ottoman state and heterodox Islamic groups deteriorated further. When the spiritual Safavid leader Sheikh Haidar was murdered , the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II declared that this news had multiplied his joy . About Haydar's Alevi supporters, the Qizilbāsh, he said: May God curse Haydar's heretical followers. Only four years later, in 1492, there was an attempt by a dervish to assassinate the sultan, and a document from 1501 shows that Bayezid II ordered the execution of all qizilbāsh captured while traveling to Persia . The rest of his rule was marked by numerous Qizilbāsch uprisings, which Bayezid II tried to suppress by deporting thousands of Qizilbāsch from Anatolia to the newly conquered coastal areas of Greece : Morea , Modon , Koron and Lepanto . The official reason for the deportations was that the qizilbāsch - according to the clergy and religious scholars - were " infidels ".
The oldest surviving religious statement ( fatwa ) about the Qizilbāsch was written under Bayezid II by the Ottoman Mufti Hamza Saru Görez (d. 1512).
Reign of Selim I 1512–1520
However, the son of Bayezid II, Selim I , thought his father's measures against the Alevis (qizilbāsch) were not harsh enough. As governor ( Vâli ) of the Vilâyet of Trabzon he was informed about the success of the Safavids and the Qizilbāsch in Persia and Eastern Anatolia. Against his father's wishes, he had repeatedly mobilized military forces and launched attacks on Safavid lands. Selim I had a strong aversion to Shiite Muslims in general, and qizilbāsh in particular. He liquidated three of his brothers and forced his father to abdicate. He sent his father Bayezid on "vacation", after which he was also killed.
As one of the first decisions that Selim I carried out as sultan, he caused the Ottoman Shaykh ul-Islam Ibn-i Kemal (died 1533) to prepare a new fatwa against the Qizilbāsch in order to justify their killing. He then gathered an army of 200,000 men to wage war against the Safavids . On the way to the Safavid Empire in the east, he had a register made of all the qizilbāsh he found. 40,000 Qizilbāsch were killed on the way of Selim I to the Safavid country. In the Ottoman source Selimşâh-name it says:
“ Her şeyi bilen Sultan, o kavmin etbâını kısım kısım ve isim isim yazmak üzere, memleketin her tarafına bilgiç katipler gönderdi; yedi yaşından yetmiş yaşına kadar olanların defterleri divâna getirilmek üzere emredildi; getirilen defterlere nazaran, ihtiyar-genç kırk bin kişi yazılmıştı; ondan sonra her memleketin hâkimlerine memurlar defterler getirdiler; bunların gittikleri yerlerde kılıç kullanılarak, bu memleketlerdeki maktullerin adedi kırk bini geçti. "
"The omniscient Sultan [Selim I] sent correct scribes all over the country to note the supporters of the group [Qizilbāsch], piece by piece and name by name, it was ordered by the Diwan [an institution of the senior executive of the Ottoman Empire] to collect records from the divan for everyone from seven to seventy years of age and the names of forty thousand people, old and young, were recorded in these registers; afterwards officials took these registers to the administrators of all regions [of the country]; in the places they went to, they killed more than forty thousand by sword in their home regions. "
Battle of Chaldiran 1514
With Selim I at its head, the Ottoman Empire began a war against the Safavid dynasty in 1514, which ended in an Ottoman victory. The battle of Tschaldiran marked a turning point for the qizilbāsh, as this war was the culmination of the long Ottoman-Safavid conflict.
In the 17th and 18th centuries
In the 16th century, the Vilayet Sivas poet Pir Sultan Abdal led the Alevi revolts against the Ottomans. They put down the uprisings with blood and hung Pir Sultan Abdal. After the reign of Selim I, the subsequent sultans continued the harsh treatment of the qizilbāsch in Anatolia . The qizilbāsh responded with increasing revolts against Ottoman rule, which continued into the early 17th century.
The violent period between the 16th and 17th centuries later subsided, but the suppression of the qizilbāsh continued until the Ottoman surrender in the course of the First World War.
Prohibition of the Bektashi order in 1826
From the 19th century onwards, the Bektashi , previously accepted, also became the target of persecution. The starting point was the dissolution and destruction of the Janissary Corps in 1826, to which the Bektashi order had maintained close connections.
Sultan Mahmud II announced through a fatwa that he would create a new army that should be organized and trained according to European standards. As expected, the janissaries marched mutinously against the sultan's palace. In the battle that followed, the Janissaries' barracks burned down after a heavy artillery attack . 4,000 (-8,000) Janissaries were killed. The survivors were evicted or executed and their property confiscated. The event is called Vaka-i Hayriye ( The Beneficial Event ).
The remaining Janissaries were beheaded in a tower in Thessaloniki , which was later called the "Blood Tower". Another fatwa was enacted, which resulted in the ban on the Sufi Bektashi order. The head of the Bektashi order, Hamdullah Çelebi , was first sentenced to death, then exiled to Amasya , where his mausoleum still exists today. Hundreds of Bektashi- Tekken were closed and dervishes were executed or driven out. Some of the closed Tekken were transferred to the Sunni Naqschbandi Order. In the course of the events over 4,000-7,500 Bektaschis were executed and at least 550 Bektashi monasteries ( dergâh ) were destroyed.
The official justification for banning the Bektashi order was " heresy " and "moral deviation".
Religious judgments and fatwas
According to the majority of historians under Bayezid II, the first religious judgment on the Alevis (Qizilbāsch) was issued within the first years of the 16th century, but the oldest fatwa that has survived is that of Hamza Saru Görez (d. 1512), a Ottoman mufti of the reign of Bayezid II.
See also
literature
- Rıza Yıldırım: Turkomans between two empires: the origins of the Qizilbāsh identity in Anatolia (1447–1514), Bilkent University, 2008
- Shahzad Bashir: Fazlallah Astarabadi And The Hurufis , Oneworld, 2005
Individual evidence
- ↑ Shahzad Bashir: Fazlallah Astarabadi And The Hurufis, Oneworld, 2005, pp. 106-107.
- ↑ Klaus Kreiser , Christoph K. Neumann: Small history of Turkey. Reclam, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-15-010678-5 , p. 84.
- ^ Rıza Yıldırım: Turkomans between two empires: the origins of the Qizilbāsh identity in Anatolia (1447–1514), Bilkent University, 2008, pp. 141–142.
- ^ Adel Allouche: Osmanlı-Safevî İlişkileri - Kökenleri ve Gelişimi, Anka Yayınları, 2001, p. 63
- ↑ Adel Allouche: Osmanlı-Safevî İlişkileri - Kökenleri ve Gelişimi, Anka Yayınları, 2001, p. 64
- ^ Rıza Yıldırım: Turkomans between two empires: the origins of the Qizilbāsh identity in Anatolia (1447–1514), Bilkent University, 2008, p. 306
- ^ Rıza Yıldırım: Turkomans between two empires: the origins of the Qizilbāsh identity in Anatolia (1447–1514), Bilkent University, 2008, p. 318
- ^ Rıza Yıldırım: Turkomans between two empires: the origins of the Qizilbāsh identity in Anatolia (1447–1514), Bilkent University, 2008, p. 319
- ↑ Şehabettin Tekindağ: Yeni Kaynak ve Vesikaların Işığı Altında Yavuz Sultan Selim'in İran Seferi, Tarih Dergisi, Mart 1967, sayı: 22, s. 56 i Saim Savaş: XVI. Asırda Anadolu'da Alevîlik, Vadi Yayınları, 2002, p. 111
- ↑ a b İsmail Özmen & Koçak Yunus: Hamdullah Çelebi'nin Savunması, - Bir inanç abidesinin çileli yaşamı, Ankara, 2008, p. 74
- ↑ Patrick Kinross: The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire London, Perennial, 1977, pp. 456–457.
- ↑ İsmail Özmen & Koçak Yunus: Hamdullah Çelebi'nin Savunması - Bir inanç abidesinin çileli yaşamı, Ankara, 2008, pp. 70–71
- ↑ Cemal Şener: Osmanlı Belgelerinde Alevilik-Bektaşilik in uzumbaba.com: BEKTAŞİLİĞİN KALDIRILMASI . Retrieved May 19, 2010.
- ↑ İsmail Özmen & Koçak Yunus: Hamdullah Çelebi'nin Savunması - Bir inanç abidesinin çileli yaşamı, Ankara, 2008, p. 207
- ↑ İsmail Özmen & Koçak Yunus: Hamdullah Çelebi'nin Savunması - Bir inanç abidesinin çileli yaşamı, Ankara, 2008, p. 205
- ^ Rıza Yıldırım: Turkomans between two empires: the origins of the Qizilbāsh identity in Anatolia (1447–1514), Bilkent University, 2008, p. 320.