Heretics, Atheists or Simply Undesirable? Ottoman Officials’ Treatment of Melami-Bayrami Sufis and the Anatolian Kızılbaş in the Late Sixteenth Century

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the second half of the sixteenth century, Ottoman authorities carried out two waves of persecution of the members of the Melami-Bayrami Sufi order in the Ottoman European province of Bosnia. At the same time, similar persecutions took place in central Anatolia against the Kızılbaş and their sympathizers. Two different groups of religious subalterns at two opposite ends of the empire, one, a Sufi order with strong urban support and links with trade-guilds, and the other, a militant Shi’a movement with a rural power-base and links with the neighbouring Safavids, were afforded almost identical treatment by the Ottoman state. Information on these persecutions can be found in legal opinions (fetvālar) and investigation or arrest warrants (ḥükümler) contained in the Ottoman ‘registers of important affairs’ (mühimme defterleri). This article examines a sample of these documents to ascertain the extent to which the Ottoman government saw these two groups as parts of the same phenomenon. It also assesses whether, in these persecutions, political and security concerns were of more pressing importance than the ostensive religious ones – a valuation that nuances the academic debate on the ratio between Ottoman administrative pragmatism on the one hand, and ‘Sunnitization’ tendencies on the other.