Architecture and Hagiography in the Ottoman Empire: The Politics of Bektashi Shrines in the Classical Age

摘要

By examining the patronage and remodeling of two Anatolian shrine complexes, Zeynep Yiirekli addresses the historical, religious, and ideological complexities that shaped the political and spiritual geography of the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth century. A specific form of architectural patronage at the shrines, which were built to venerate medieval religious figure Haci Bektas Veli and eighth-century warrior saint Seyyid Battal Gazi, shaped the architecture at the important Anatolian centers that housed the saints' tombs and attendant communities of dervishes. These were places of pilgrimage visitation, known in Turkish as ziyaretler. The sites sat on the borders of regional principalities, or beylikler, that were formed following the Mongol conquest of Anatolia in 1243 and were eventually brought into the Ottoman Empire. Yiirekli posits that the shrines subsequently became key sites in a "Bektashi network" that grew between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries to include more than 150 such sites, all under the centralized governance of the leaders of the Haci Bektas Veli shrine in central Anatolia.