Nomad thesis

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The nomad thesis was published in the early 1980s by Rudi Paul Lindner , professor of history at the University of Michigan . It serves to explain the rapid rise of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century.

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Lindner shows that the early Ottomans were an association of nomadic tribes. Unlike today's tribal societies, it was not so much the family loyalty of related tribal members but rather common interests, such as suitable pasture land or spoils of war, that ensured cohesion. At the beginning of the Ottoman expansion to the west of the nomad Association have in the Byzantine frontier lands in northwestern Anatolia found suitable grazing areas, which also by the Byzantine army were poorly defended. The traditional nomadic warfare using horsemen armed with lances and bows initially made it impossible for the Ottomans to successfully besiege and conquer the fortified cities of the region. Only the change from a nomadic to a more sedentary way of life and warfare made the first conquests of fortified cities like Bursa (1326) possible.

Differentiation from Paul Wittek's Ghazi thesis

Lindner's nomad thesis is in contrast to the older Ghazi thesis of Paul Wittek , who saw in the early Ottomans a religiously motivated community of religious warriors. Their zeal for faith motivated them to achieve their successes, and with the loss of religious zeal, the decline of the Ottoman Empire began. This view was criticized as too simple by the Turkish historian Mehmet Fuat Köprülü as early as 1943 . There is one single cause that does not do justice to the complex process of founding the Ottoman Empire. The historian Ömer Lütfi Barkan also denied that the Ghazi thesis was of paramount importance and pointed out that famous Ottoman personalities of the early period had continued to carry Christian names. The Osmanist Halil İnalcık demonstrated examples of cooperation between the Ottomans and the Christian Byzantines in the early days. Lindner cites more detailed studies of sources that Wittek had not yet had access to: According to this, Wittek's main source, the Ottoman chronicler Ahmedi, was guided by his need to find a simple, Muslim explanation for the Ottomans' success and at the same time to refer to the new rulers flatter. Other contemporary chroniclers such as Şükrullah, the anonymous Oxford Chronicle or Ruhi do not have such pronounced indications of the necessity of a holy war. On the contrary, the emphasis on religious warfare by the early Ottoman chroniclers tried to make people forget that the Ottomans had also waged war on the neighboring Muslim Beyliks . Even in the Byzantine chronicles there are no references to religious wars.

Early Ottoman chroniclers such as ʿĀşıḳpaşazāde (around 1400 - around 1484) describe the first Ottoman sultans as faithful fighters and contrast them stereotypically with the unbelievers (“kāfir”) . In 1959, Cemal Kafadar published an analysis of the "Chronicle of the House of Osman" (tevārīḫ-i Āl-i ʿOsmān) by ʿĀşıḳpaşazāde. In it he emphasized the time-bound character of the work, which was created under the conditions of political and social upheaval in the course of the reorganization of the Ottoman state by Mehmed II . After the conquest of Constantinople, the members of Kafadar's traditional elites, which were assigned to the dervīş-ġāzī milieu, were ousted from influential positions in the state by Byzantine officials. ʿĀşıḳpaşazāde contrasted the alleged misconduct of later rulers with the faithfulness of their ancestors. However, the fighter's narrative would be opposed to the coexistence of Muslim and non-Muslim groups and people. The Ottoman chronicler himself reports of trade between Osman I and the Byzantine administrator (tekfur) of Bilecik , to whom Osman entrusted his property during the summer pasture.

reception

Citing more recent research results that Wittek was not yet aware of, several modern Ottomanists have followed Lindner's view. Heath Lowry gives an overview of the debate. Colin Imber also critically discusses the concept of Ghazi .

Lindner himself wrote in 2009: “[...] that there is no recognized reference point on which the majority of scholars can agree. At the moment the field is dominated by many approaches, which however rely more on the sources themselves than on learned opinions - […] there is no agreed point of reference about which most scholars gather, and that a more eclectic approach, resting more on the sources than on scholarly tradition, holds the field. "

The historian Halil İnalcık , the Ghazi ideology as the driving force of the West expansion of the border areas ( Uc looked), describes the population due to the increasing pressure immigration Turkmen strains to West Anatolien as a major cause of expansion in the direction west.

literature

  • Rudi Paul Lindner: Stimulus and Justification in Early Ottoman History Greek Orthodox Theological Review 27 (1982), pp. 207-224. online (PDF) , accessed October 11, 2016
  • Rudi Paul Lindner: Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series, 144) . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Ind. 1983, ISBN 978-0-7007-0944-1 .
  • Rudi Paul Lindner: Anatolia, 1300-1451, In: Kate Fleet (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Turkey. Vol. 1: Byzantium to Turkey, 1071-1453 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-62093-2 , pp. 102-137 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rudi Paul Lindner: What was a normadic tribe? In: Comparative Studies in Society and History . 24/4 (1982), pp. 689-711
  2. ^ Rudi Paul Lindner: Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series, 144) . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Ind. 1983, ISBN 978-0-7007-0944-1 .
  3. ↑ Rudi Paul Lindner: Stimulus and Justification in Early Ottoman History Greek Orthodox Iheological Review 27 (1982), 207-224. online (PDF) , accessed October 11, 2016
  4. ^ Paul Wittek: The Rise of the Ottoman Empire. Studies in the History of Turkey, 13th – 15th Centuries. Edited by Colin Heywood. Annotated new edition . Royal Asiatic Society Books. Routledge, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-7007-1500-8 .
  5. ^ Mehmet Fuat Köprülü: Osmanlı İmpartorluğuʿnun etnik menşei meselesi. Belleten 7:48 (1943), pp. 285-86, 297-300, 303. Quoted from Lindner, Stimulus and justification, 1982
  6. ↑ Ömer Lütfi Barkan: Osmanlı İmpartorluğunda bir iskan ve kolonizasyon metodu olarak sürgünler. İktisat fakultesi mecmuası 11 (1949–1950), 539–40. Quoted from Lindner, Stimulus and justification, 1982
  7. ↑ Halil İnalcık: Fatih devri üzerinde tetkikler ve vesikalar. 1 (1954), Ankara, pp. 141-3. Quoted from Lindner, Stimulus and justification, 1982
  8. ↑ Rudi Paul Lindner: Stimulus and Justification in Early Ottoman History Greek Orthodox Iheological Review 27 (1982), pp. 215-216.
  9. ↑ a b Cemal Kafadar: Between two worlds: The construction of the Ottoman state . University of California Press, Berkeley (et al.) 1955, pp. 96 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  10. ↑ ʿĀşıḳpaşazāde , ed. by Friedrich Giese : The old Ottoman chronicle of 'Ašiḳpaşazāde . Harassowitz, Leipzig 1929, p. 9, 14 .
  11. ^ Heath W. Lowry: The Debate to Date (PDF, 9 S .; 89 kB), first chapter from Lowry's work The Nature of the Early Ottoman State. SUNY Press, New York 2003, ISBN 978-0-7914-5636-1 . (English)
  12. ↑ Colin Imber: What does "Ghazi" actually mean? In: The balance of truth: Essas in honor of Professor Geoffrey Lewis. Edited by Ciğdem Balım-Harding and Colin Imber. Istanbul 2000, ISBN 978-9-7542-8162-0 , pp. 165-78
  13. ↑ Rudi Paul Lindner: Anatolia, 1300-1451, In: Kate Fleet (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Turkey. Vol. 1: Byzantium to Turkey, 1071-1453 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-62093-2 , pp. 104 .
  14. ^ Halil İnalcık, Donald Quataert: An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 1994, ISBN 978-0-521-34315-2 , pp. 19 : "The growing Turkoman nomadic migration into the frontier zone in western Anatolia was one of the principal causes of the westward drive of the Turks in the period 1260–1400."