~ ON SOVEREIGNTY AND SUBJECTS ~
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neglect purely domestic reasons for this state of affairs, such as the intermittent warfare between the sons of Süleyman the Magnificent contending for the imperial throne. It must, however, be kept in mind that a major uprising in favour of the Dulkadir, an eastern Anatolian dynasty with links to Mamluk Egypt, took place as late as the 1520s/926–36, and was repressed with a good deal of bloodshed.73 Was this really the last rebellion attempted by adherents of a dynasty that had controlled this or that province prior to the Ottoman takeover? Unfortunately our knowledge of Anatolian provincial history during the 1560s/967–77 is quite limited, and probably will remain so due to a persistent lack of primary sources. As a result, we do not know whether certain movements that the Ottoman central authorities loosely described by the term eşkiyalık (robbery, rebellion) were not really gestures of support for deposed non-Ottoman dynasties. Unbeknown to officials in Istanbul, loyalties to such figures may have continued for a long time among the nomads inhabiting the dry steppes of central Anatolia. Even more complicated was the role of the ‘Kızılbaş’ tribesmen who lived in more or less compact groups throughout Anatolia, but were especially concentrated in the south-western section of the peninsula. There were also many adherents of this heterodox brand of Islam in the province of Rum, that is the area around Amasya, Tokat and Sivas, and as we have seen, quite a few of them showed a pronounced attachment to the Safavid dynasty emerging in Iran at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Throughout, the Ottoman government continued to be wary of religiously motivated discontent in these isolated regions of Anatolia. Moreover, it appears that under Süleyman the Lawgiver Safavid and non-Safavid dervishes deemed heterodox by the authorities were persecuted with equal relish. This common peril may have induced the two groups to form connections that they would not otherwise have established. Thus the Bektashi order of dervishes, with its central lodge in what is today the town of Hacıbektaş, received all manner of adherents who thus attempted to escape persecution. Given the paucity of sources we can surmise, but cannot claim with any certainty, that some desperate or disillusioned former adherents of the Safavid order also figured among the Bektashi recruits. In any event, Pir Sultan Abdal, a religious poet who may have lived in the sixteenth or seventeenth century and whose poems were transmitted among both Bektashis and the adherents of an Anatolian variety of ‘folk’ Islam known today as Alevis, was also an ardent follower of the shahs of Iran. If his poetry adequately reflects the state of mind characteristic of certain Anatolian heterodox circles, there were people in this region willing to lay down their lives for the sake of the shah.74 Dervishes were not necessarily unarmed, and sometimes could mobilize adherents among professional soldiers such as active and candidate janissaries. Complaints about the sheiks of dervish lodges making common cause with known eşkiya are not at all rare in the Registers of Important Affairs. Often it is unclear whether the eşkiya in question were ‘ordinary’ robbers or whether, at least in certain cases, they were religious dissenters of one kind or another.75 Deciding this question is made even more difficult by the fact that so many