We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback which helped us improve our paper. This contribution is part of the project ‘Alevi Archive: Ethnohistory of Alevi Communities in Anatolia, 16th to 20th Centuries’, a research project of the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig. The research conducted by Janina Karolewski was initially funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under the Research Grants Program (Basic Module) – MO 1024/4-1, ‘The Turkish Alphabet Reform and the Alevi Tradition – The End of a Manuscript Culture?’, project no. 439403168, led by Prof. Dr. Raoul Motika. The contribution by Markus Dressler to this work has been produced with funding by the Heisenberg program of the German Research Foundation (project number DR 1118/2-1).
1Alevism, as we know it today, is a socio-religious tradition built around sacred lineages (today usually called ocaks) which base their legitimacy on descendance from the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his extended family and Anatolian saintly figures (Langer et al. 2013; Yaman 2004). Historical traces of some of these lineages date back to as early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which puts them in the historical context of the Turkification and Islamization of Anatolia (Ocak 2014; Karakaya-Stump 2020: 102–109).
- 1 For ethnographies, see Shankland (2003); Tee (2012), for instance. For ethnomusicological studies, (...)
- 2 See Baltacıoğlu-Brammer (2014; 2026); Gülten (2011; 2013); Karakaya-Stump, Kafadar (2024); Karakaya (...)
- 3 See, for example, Gezik, Çakmak (2010); Gezik, Gültekin (2019); Gültekin (2020).
2Alevi Studies have gained considerable momentum in recent years and by now constitute a highly divers and trans-disciplinary field of research. While a focus on contemporary issues in Alevism prevails,1 there has been major progress in historical research on Alevism as well.2 Most recently, some researchers advance a specific focus on Dersim and highlight the differences of Zaza/Kurmanci-Dersim-Alevis from the Alevi community at large.3 These academic debates and dynamics are accompanied by contested public debates, in Turkey as well as the diaspora, on the origins of Alevi communities and of Alevism in general.
3Despite a growing number of publications on specific Alevi texts or contexts and increasing awareness of methodological concerns, very basic historiographical questions of Alevi origins, socio-religious dynamics and their respective historical developments are still fiercly debated. This article, on the one hand, aims for a methodological contribution to historical research on Alevism. On the other, it constitutes an intervention in debates on Alevi origins, providing a perspective on historical dynamics such as migration and shifting hierarchies as they are negotiated within the groups themselves.
4Recent scholarship has emphasized the ocak system as central to Alevism as a socio-religious tradition, at the same time anchoring it in decisively Islamic structures of authority and legitimacy. Karakaya-Stump (2020: 7–8) argues that:
[…] [t]he Kizilbash as a socio-religious collectivity emerged within the Safavid-led Kizilbash movement over the course of the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth. […] But as a system of religious ideas and liturgical practices, with particular organizational underpinnings, the Kizilbash milieu was far from being an entirely Safavid creation but had an autonomous and prior existence grounded in a cluster of separate but interconnected Sufi and dervish groups and sayyid families.
5Karakaya-Stump (2020: 14) further contents that this framework of analysis “dispelled the myth of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities as being a nebulous collection of tribes devoid of any identifiable religious structures”. Rather, she argues that, “[t]he basic doctrinal, devotional and organisational features of Kizilbashism/Alevism must be sought within Sufism broadly defined” (Karakaya-Stump 2020: 48).
6Yıldırım R. (2019: 450), on the other hand, argues that “the Qizilbash-Alevis were not an extension of the Bektashi ṭarīqah or of any other Sufi orders, such as the Yasawi, Qalandari, or Wafaʾi order, but adherents to the Safavid dynasty as well as disciples of the Safavid ṭarīqah.” He further contents that “the transformation of Shaykh Ṣafī’s quietist and Sunni-oriented ṭarīqah into a Messianic revolutionary movement was, above all, due to Turkoman disciples who hailed from among tribes of Anatolia, Syria, and Azerbaijan.” (Yıldırım R. 2019: 452).
7Thus, while Karakaya-Stump emphasizes Vefai-related Sufi lineages as the historical backbone of the Alevi tradition, Yıldırım puts the premium on tribal communities adhering to the Safavid dynasty and Sufi order. Karakaya-Stump’s and Yıldırım’s findings are both well-founded in historical sources and diligent philology. While sympathetic to their respective interpretations based on specific sets of sources, we caution to be careful with generalizations.
- 4 Throughout the article we refer to the ocak founder with the short form Şeyh Ahmed. For the ocak, h (...)
- 5 Throughout the paper, we use proper nouns in the Turkish version, written according to the spelling (...)
8Studies that systematically address the heterogenous character of both ocaks and tribes (varying according to region and period) and the relation between these two social formations have so far been limited. Our paper attempts an intervention into this research field, arguing for attention to different kinds of social formations and their interplay in the historical development of Alevi communities. With this aim in mind, we choose as our case study the relationship between the ocak lineages of Şeyh Ahmed4 and Şeyh Hasan Onar, the settlements that these lineages are connected to, mostly the villages Şeyh Hasan Köyü in the province of Elazığ and Onar Köyü in the province of Malatya, and the tribe of the Şeyh Hasanlılar in Dersim.5 Based on our case study, we argue that ocak and tribe should not be conceived as neetly separated actors but as deeply interwoven social formations, sharing numerous traditions and characteristics.
9The article’s historical argument concerning the importance of the relations between lineages, settlements and tribes in Alevi community-building is paralleled by a methodological intervention: We probe ethnohistory (Bellér-Hann 2008: 5; Gingrich, Zips 2013), as an interdisciplinary research method to approach contestations over origin and belonging as part and parcel of multivocal, interactive, thereby certainly powerful negotiations of community-building (Wernhart, Zips 2014 [1998]: 31–32). Most basically, this approach means examining historical findings against the background of ethnographic findings and, complementing this, placing ethnographically collected data into a longer perspective using historical sources (for instance, Fenton 1953; Braun 2013).
- 6 With Vansina (1985: 12–13) we distinguish between oral tradition as intergenerationally transmitted (...)
- 7 Among the sources for our ethnographic inquiry are, next to interviews by one of the authors, inter (...)
10The ethnohistorical approach thus allows us to combine oral traditions and histories,6 written testimonies and other material sources from within Alevi communities with records from the Ottoman administration, Turkish bureaucrats and other non-Alevis. As history within Alevi communities was and still is largely transmitted orally, we take Alevi oral traditions and their recent textual fixation and public articulation7 as starting point of our investigation. Doing so we do not privilege these traditions when later relating them to archival and material culture sources. We rather acknowledge and render transparent the ambiguities and contingencies of Alevi pasts as they emerge from a variety of narratives, records, and sources.
- 8 This lines up with research in Islamic Studies that does not try to resolve ambiguities and “clarif (...)
11Describing and analyzing the ambiguities of Alevi community-building is not, however, a claim for relativism in our historiographic epistemology. To the contrary, by positioning and interpreting bits of information in relation to their sources and the perspectives they entail—to the extent that our contextual understanding allows for it—we are committed to the most basic task of historicization. History only comes to the fore in the practice of narration and is thus bound to perspectives which themselves need to be integrated into the picture. Our goal is thus not to provide an authoritative narrative about Alevi pasts, but instead to conceive of the (re-)construction of Alevi pasts as an enterprise of multiperspectivity fraught with ambiguity.8
12During previous research that prepared the ground for the present article (Karolewski 2021b; Weineck 2020), we encountered that Alevis make ambiguous and partly contradicting claims about the origins and history of Şeyh Ahmed and his lineage. Alevi oral traditions and recent Alevi history-writing put the ocak of Şeyh Ahmed in relation with the ocak of Şeyh Hasan Onar and the tribe of the Şeyh Hasanlılar. Historical entanglements between these different groups are suggested not only by oral lore, and by the abundant occurrence of the name “Şeyh Hasan” in various historical sources of the region (Çakmak 2022: 103), but also by the fact that the related groups live in the historically closely interconnected regions of the Upper Euphrates and the Greater Dersim.
13In the following subchapters, we will take the Alevi lineage of Şeyh Ahmed and its wider, (partyl tribal) network to exemplify our ethnohistory approach. As Şeyh Ahmed, Şeyh Hasan Onar and the communities related to them have been dealt with in numerous ways and to varying extents, we will start with a short and selective overview of recent works on this matter. After this short introduction, we will continuously include information from other studies, non-academic publications and interviews in the more detailed discussion of the origins, trajectories and hierarchies of these figures and groups. In doing so, we will not only deal with contested narratives of origins from within the communities, but also follow the communities’ historical trajectories, migration as well as socio-religious networks and hierarchies through Ottoman up until Republican times and analyze how the communities’ own accounts resonate with the contexts established through Ottoman, Republican and other outsider sources.
14The Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak has its centre in Şeyh Hasan Köyü, situated a few kilometres to the east of Malatya. Research so far has given considerable attention to Ottoman records and documents, partly preserved by the ocak. As Aksüt H. (2002: 372–375; 2012 [2009]: 327–334); Aşan (2005); Karakaya-Stump (2012/2013: 294–295; 2020: 102–103); Weineck (2020: 160–164); Yılmaz (2017) show, Şeyh Ahmed appears in these sources (dating back as far as the fifteenth century) as a member of the Vefai Sufi Order and as seyyid. Aşan (1987) documents the mausoleum, or türbe, of Şeyh Ahmed and the historical graveyard, and Polat (2023: 77–78, 248) shortly mentions the Sufi lodge, or zaviye, that no longer exists.
15The centre of the Şeyh Hasan Onar ocak is in Onar Köyü, situated around twenty kilometers to the south-east of Arapgir. Most publications on the village and the ocak are by two authors from the village: İsmail Kaygusuz (1944–2022) (e.g. 1983 and on his website)9 and İsmail Onarlı (1949–2007) (e.g. 1999, 2001, 2002). In contrast to Şeyh Ahmed, we are not aware of any documentation that sheds light on a Sufi affiliation of Şeyh Hasan Onar, but Onarlı (1999) and Kaygusuz (n.d.) published documents that attest to his seyyidlik. Kaygusuz (1983) documents the historical graveyard, and Polat (2023: 74–77, 247) mentions the zaviye and türbe of Şeyh Hasan Onar in the village.
16The Şeyh Hasanlılar are an Alevi tribal confederation from western Dersim. In his pioneering work on the tribe’s history, Çakmak (2022: 104–107) elaborates on the connection of the tribe to Şeyh Ahmed. The tribe first appears in Ottoman records from the sixteenth century and is regularly mentioned throughout the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, as, for instance, Demir and Aksın (2023) show. The leaders of the various units of the Şeyh Hasanlılar were recognised by their followers as seyyids.
17In what follows we provide an account of how various contemporary and historical accounts establish (or deny) relations among these three communities. While some currently debated claims about the relations of Şeyh Ahmed, Şeyh Hasan Onar and the Şeyh Hasanlılar were published by non-Alevi and Alevi scholars, most such claims go back to Alevis from within these groups. Thereby Alevis draw on academic knowledge production and position themselves in relation to larger narratives of Alevi community-building, which address both Alevi and broader Turkish publics. These debates on Alevi pasts find their way back into oral and written knowledge production of community members.
18In all oral traditions documented, Şeyh Hasan appears as the brother of Şeyh Ahmed. The brothers are said to have founded Şeyh Hasan Köyü on the shores of the Euphrates after migrating from Horasan. However, there are two fundamentally different oral traditions as to what happened to Şeyh Hasan after the village was founded. In parallel, there also exist two different story lines about how the tribal group of the Şeyh Hasanlılar in Dersim evolved.
19According to İsmail Onarlı, an author from the village of Onar, Şeyh Hasan moved on from Malatya to Arapgir, where he founded a village and a zaviye. His descendants there established a Sufi lineage, today known as Şeyh Hasan Onar ocak. Şeyh Hasan Onar married the daughter of a tribal chief from Dersim. The two brothers Seyyid and Şeyh Hasan, his grandchildren, founded their own ocaks in Dersim, named after them. Later both groups became known as the tribal confederation of the Şeyh Hasanlılar (Onarlı 2001: 686–687). In this narration, Şeyh Ahmed’s brother Şeyh Hasan is identified with Şeyh Hasan Onar, the eponym of the zaviye, village and ocak in Arapgir (Onarlı 2001: 684; Şahin 2020: 12).
- 10 The affiliation with Hoca Ahmed Yesevi as part of a Turkist narrative of national origins will be d (...)
- 11 Onarlı also equates Şeyh Hasan Onar with Şeyh Hasan Bey (presumably fourteenth century), the builde (...)
20Onarlı traces the origins of Şeyh Ahmed and Şeyh Hasan Onar to Horasan, where they were students of Hoca Ahmed Yesevi (d. 1166)10 and from where they later migrated together with their Türkmen tribe to Iran, Iraq, Syria and many other regions, before settling in Malatya under the Seljuks. In his endeavor to gather historical information, Onarlı (2001: 674) seems to be determined by a preconceived idea about who Şeyh Hasan Onar was: a seyyid and the bey of a Türkmen tribe from Horasan, who played an instrumental role in the Islamization and Turkification of Anatolia in the thirteenth century. Indeed, it remains often unclear where he uses written or oral sources and where he offers his own corrections and assumptions. He mostly draws on works about events and figures in the Seljuk and Ottoman history of Anatolia with no direct connection to Şeyh Hasan Onar.11 Interviews with dedes from the Şeyh Hasan Onar ocak and other ocaks, he integrates only selectively (Onarlı 2001: 670 n. 9).
21İsmail Kaygusuz from Onar Köyü criticises Onarlı for his “completely speculative thesis” about the relation between Şeyh Ahmed and Şeyh Hasan Onar (cited in Yalgın 2017: 263 n. 173). Hamza Aksüt (b. 1958), an Alevi non-academic historian (araştırmacı-yazar), similarly labels the work of Onarlı a “scenario” lacking historical evidence (Aksüt H. 2002: 216–223; 2012 [2009]: 332–334). This view is also rejected by members of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak. For instance, Ali Göktürk (1932–2020), a dede of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak from Şeyh Hasan Köyü, contradicts Onarlı’s claims about Şeyh Hasan Onar being the brother of Şeyh Ahmed and the forefather of the Şeyh Hasanlılar in an interview with Aksüt A. (2013):
- 12 Nevertheless, Onarlı’s work found reception among some members of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak. One exa (...)
According to another narrative, there is a Şeyh Hasan community from our village [i.e.] Şeyh Hasan Köyü] that went to Tunceli. [...] Our ancestors used to say that our village had no connection with the ziyaret named Şeyh Hasan in the village of Onarlı [sic] in Arapgir.12
22Göktürk provides an alternative version of what happened with Şeyh Hasan after he and his brother Şeyh Ahmed founded Şeyh Hasan Köyü. According to this tradition, Şeyh Hasan died childless and was buried in Şeyh Hasan Köyü. Şeyh Ahmed, however, had numerous sons, and one of his descendants, also named Şeyh Hasan, was the forefather of the Şeyh Hasanlılar in Dersim (Aksüt A. 2013). It is this tradition and, as we will see, the remembered kinship between the Şeyh Hasanlılar and inhabitants of Şeyh Hasan Köyü that we will focus on in the next section. For the rest of this article, we will not discuss Onar Köyü any further, as, so far, we only have Onarlı’s narrations and no historical evidence to support a connection to Şeyh Hasan Köyü and the Şeyh Hasanlılar. Yet this narrative strand is an important example to understand how making sense of history within the Alevi community is a multi-vocal and contested process.
23Against the background of the ongoing debate on the origins of Alevism as touched upon in the introduction, we now follow the further historical trajectories and the wider socio-religious network of the Seyh Ahmed Dede ocak with particular focus on its relation to the tribal community of the Şeyh Hasanlılar. Juxtaposing narratives from within the communities with findings from Ottoman documents, we encounter the Şeyh Hasanlılar as an important historical actor within a vast geographical area and as a socio-religious entity with a considerable resemblance to ocaks. This requires going beyond a perspective that conceives of the Şeyh Hasanlılar merely as tribal, seminomadic lay followers of an ocak center that stems from a settled, elite Sufi community.
24In the last decade, non-academic interest in the Şeyh Hasanlılar and their relations to Şeyh Hasan Köyü has grown. Most of the recent publications appear on a website, a YouTube channel, a facebook and an instagram account, all related to each other and named “Şeyh Ahmed Dede Ocağı”.13 Here, we find contributions from members of either the ocak or the Şeyh Hasanlılar, and a collection of materials related to the ocak and the tribe (such as academic works, documentaries and photographs). Numerous short texts on the website, for instance, underline the kinship between the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak and the Şeyh Hasanlılar. We understand this engagement as a claim to research, write and assert their own tradition and history; and possibly also as a reaction to Onarlı and other authors, whose narratives were widely received in the Alevi community. This engagement became manifest in a conference on the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak and the Şeyh Hasanlılar organised in Ovacık (Tunceli) in 2019, to which both academics and members of the two communities contributed (Çelik 2019).
- 14 Şeyh Ahmed Dede Ocağı (2021, April 10), Şeyh Hasan Köyü Muhsin Topalcengiz Dede ile Söyleşi [Video] (...)
- 15 Şeyh Ahmed Dede Ocağı (2019, July 9), Bodik Şeceresi Tarih Kültür ve İnanç Mirasının Tanıtılması Ko (...)
25Today, we find numerous published oral traditions and histories on the relation between the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak and the Şeyh Hasanlılar. Some of these accounts are available on YouTube, often presented in the form of personal accounts. Muhsin Topalcengiz (b. 1954), a dede from Şeyh Hasan Köyü, for instance, stated in an interview (presumably in 2021) that he remembers how visitors from Dersim came to Şeyh Hasan Köyü during his childhood. There were, he said, religious and family ties between the Şeyh Hasanlılar and the village, but not with Onar Köyü.14 Correspondingly, the account by İhsan Gültekin (b. 1940), another dede from Şeyh Hasan Köyü, confirms the tradition that the Şeyh Hasanlılar descended from Şeyh Ahmed, including the families of Mıço Ağa (d. 1938), Seyyid Rıza (1863–1937) and Diyab Ağa (1852–1935), who were important personalities of the tribe in the early twentieth century. As related by Can Ali Çelik in 2019, İhsan Gültekin remembered visits by dedes from Şeyh Hasan Köyü to Dersim and vice versa;15 the same was reported by Ekrem Gültekin, yet another dede from Şeyh Hasan Köyü, and Muhammed Can Delice in private communication with Çakmak from 2020 (Çakmak 2022: 107).
- 16 Read “Seyyid Hasananlıs”, which most probably goes back to Turkish “Şeyh Hasananlılar”, a variation (...)
- 17 It is important to note that this first recorded reference to Horasan as origin of the tribe’s ance (...)
26In the following overview of written recordings from the late Ottoman and early Republican period, we grasp older traditions and histories concerning the continuous relationship between Şeyh Hasan Köyü and the tribe of the Şeyh Hasanlılar, albeit in differing arrangements (for details, see Çakmak 2022). The earliest known mention, although in passing, of such a relationship appears in the 1868 travel report by John George Taylor, British consul for Kurdistan. He relates that the Şeyh Hasanlılar (“Seyd Hassananlees” in his words16) were from Horasan, but recently migrated from Akçadağ, Malatya, to Dersim (Taylor 1868: 318).17 In 1908, an Ottoman official reports that according to the tribe’s own tradition, the Şeyh Hasanlılar arrived in Dersim one or two hundred years earlier, having left Malatya after an earthquake (mentioned in Yıldırım M. 2013: 47). In 1921, Hasan Hayri Bey (1882–1925), a member of the Şeyh Hasanlılar from Dersim, mentions that his tribe descended from Şeyh Hasan, son of Şeyh Ahmed and the sister of Sultan Alaaddin Kayqubad I, and sought refuge in Dersim after the Battle of Çaldıran in 1514 (T. B. M. M. Gizli Celse Zabıtları (1921: 253); mentioned in Yıldırım M. 2013: 47; Çakmak 2022: 107).
- 18 In some traditions, Seyyid is not related to Şeyh Hasan, but is his servant; while in other traditi (...)
27From the early Republican era, we have accounts that trace the Şeyh Hasanlılar back to either Şeyh Ahmed or his brother Şeyh Hasan. Ali Kemali (1884–1963), a bureaucrat and writer, who was vali of Erzincan in 1930, mentions that Şeyh Ahmed’s sons Şeyh Hasan and Seyyid formed separate tribal units in Dersim, namely the Şeyh Hasanlılar and the Seydanlılar, with the former name serving also as umbrella term for both tribal units (Ali Kemali 1932: 192–194). The traditions that attribute the brothers Şeyh Hasan and Seyyid to Şeyh Hasan, Şeyh Ahmed’s brother, we find recorded by Nazmi Sevgen (1890–1980), a colonel of the Turkish Army and author, who served in East Anatolia, particularly Dersim, and Mehmet Zülfü (1880–1959), an Ottoman bureaucrat from Pertek (Sevgen 1951: 882–884; Yolga 1994: 82, 84–85).18 Sevgen (1951: 882) further relates that Şeyh Hasan and Seyyid would have left Şeyh Hasan Köyü in the sixteenth century in order to take refuge in Dersim during the campaign of Sultan Selim I against the Kızılbaş.
- 19 Nuri Dersimi (1992: 140–141) also mentions a seyyid named Teslim from Şeyh Hasan Köyü who took refu (...)
28Among the recorded oral traditions and histories about the Şeyh Hasanlılar, the memoirs of the intellectual and politician Nuri Dersimi (1893–1973) are particularly detailed. Nuri Dersimi grew up in an Alevi family in Dersim where he was active until his exile in 1937. His family had close ties to the leaders of the Şeyh Hasanlılar, not the least İbrahim Ağa and his son Seyyid Rıza (Nuri Dersimi 1992: 17–22, and passim). According to Nuri Dersimi, the Şeyh Hasanlılar trace their origin back to a Şeyh Hasan who is buried in Şeyh Hasan Köyü. He mentions the türbe of this Şeyh Hasan as a place of pilgrimage for the Şeyh Hasanlılar; Şeyh Ahmed is not mentioned. Three or four persons in the village, Nuri Dersimi (1992: 133–134, 140) posits, claim descent from Şeyh Hasan, accept donations from visitors at the türbe and travel to Dersim once a year, where the Şeyh Hasanlılar host them. The seyyidlik of Şeyh Hasan was continued to his ancestors in the village and to the leading family of the Şeyh Hasanlılar (Nuri Dersimi 1992: 134). Nuri Dersimi (1992: 86) also recounts that he was in Şeyh Hasan Köyü in 1916 when his uncle’s family took refuge there from a military operation.19
29Though in their details at first sight complex, these oral traditions on the genealogies and relations between Şeyh Ahmed and the Şeyh Hasanlılar profess a certain coherence with regard to some key claims on the tribe of the Şeyh Hasanlılar: the testimony of a migration history from Malatya to Dersim some time between the sixteenth and early nineteenth century, and a connection to Şeyh Hasan Köyü, either through descent from Şeyh Ahmed or his brother Şeyh Hasan.
- 20 Yıldırım M. (2012) surmises that the toponym “Dersim” goes back to the Desimliler, but scribes in t (...)
- 21 Supposedly Kizir Köy in Keban Nahiyesi, Çemişgezek Livası, Diyarbakır Vilayeti (TD 998/172).
30Juxtaposing these oral traditions with Ottoman archival documents, we find matching evidence regarding the localities: Earliest known Ottoman records on the Şeyh Hasanlılar date to the late sixteenth century. An order from the mühimme defterleri holds that the Şeyh Hasanlılar raided villages in the vicinity of Arapgir in 1578 and sent parts of their booty to Ardabil as votive gifts, indicating a close relationship with the Safawid Sufi Order and thus connecting them to the socio-religious milieu of the Kızılbaş (Genç 2020: 57). Later documents, also for the Arapgir region, show the Şeyh Hasanlılar raiding together with the tribe of the Desimliler.20 A document from 1720 holds that these groups were originally from Kiğı in the far east of the Greater Dersim region, suggesting a wide-ranging mobility between this alleged place of origin, Arapgir, and Dersim (Genç 2020: 162). Yet another entry from the mühimme defterleri from 1726 indicates a nomadic way of life, stating that their summer pastures were in Kizir Köy21 and their winter residence in Harput (Genç 2020: 162). Based on the earlier mentioned report from 1908, Çakmak (2022: 102) assumes that Dersim was their residence during the summer months.
31While oral accounts suggest that the Şeyh Hasanlılar moved from Malatya to Dersim during the sixteenth centry, in Ottoman documents related to Dersim they first appear in the eighteenth century (Demir, Aksın 2023). As in the abovementioned documents, numerous further examples from various Ottoman chanceries qualify the Şeyh Hasanlılar as trouble-makers, mostly together with other (Kurdish) tribes, in particular the Desimliler. Looking at the various orders on the persecution and punishment of the Şeyh Hasanlılar, we see that many different agents from among the local Ottoman bureaucracy were involved in getting hold of them—yet again bearing witness to their intense mobility. In 1733, for instance, the vali of Diyarbakır is responsible for finding and disciplining them, in 1780 the kadıs from Kuruçay, Çemişgezek, Eğin and Erzincan and in 1782 the vali of Erzurum (Hezarfen, Şener 2003: 37, 56, 83).
32Thus, Ottoman documentation corroborates oral tradition that connects the Şeyh Hasanlılar historically with Malatya and Dersim. However, the various sources differ regarding the time and context of migration: Oral lore holds that the Şeyh Hasanlılar escaped from Malatya to Dersim in order to evade their persecution as Kızılbaş in the sixteenth century or to take shelter after an earthquake sometime in the eighteenth to nineteenth century. In Ottoman records, on the other hand, they appear in connection to Dersim since the beginning of the eighteenth century (Gündoğdu, Genç 2013: 128).
33In this subchapter, we explore the broader Kızılbaş-Alevi contexts in which the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak and the Şeyh Hasanlılar are embedded. While the evidence discussed before already defies narrow perspectives on Alevi socio-religious makeup, consideration of the role of these two groups within the wider network of Alevi hierarchies makes for an even more complex scenario of internal dynamics and interdependences.
- 22 See also Weineck in this special issue.
34As for the relations of the Şeyh Hasanlılar to other Kızılbaş-Alevi groups in the vicinity, Ottoman administrative sources are rather silent. The abovementioned document from 1720 reports that the Şeyh Hasanlılar attacked various villages between Arapgir, Malatya and Harput, among them Hasan Patrik (now Fethiye) and Kesrik (now Gümüşlü) (Genç 2020: 162), which lie in the north of Malatya and are Alevi villages today. The population of Kesrik is furthermore known to be related to the Dede Garkın ocak during the sixteenth century, as they were regularly obliged to provide votive gifts for the zaviye of Dede Garkın (Ocak 2014).22 This indicates that other Kızılbas-Alevi communities might have been victims of the bandit economy of the Şeyh Hasanlılar. In other cases, we do not know which villages suffered at the hands of the Şeyh Hasanlılar, and thus we can not assess whether the tribe did distinguish between Alevi, Sunni, Armenian or mixed villages during their raids.
35In the eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire used various means to stop the raids by the tribe (Hezarfen, Şener 2003: 53, 86) and apparently succeeded in co-opting some of the Şeyh Hasanlılar. Thus in 1802, we find two representatives from among the Şeyh Hasanlılar, Mikail and Seydihan, agreeing on a contract (taʿahhüd) that they and their men were henceforth to protect the streets from Çemişgezek to Erzincan, thus entering Ottoman auxiliary service (Hezarfen, Şener 2003: 111–112; see also Yılmazçelik 2011: 53–54, 116, 131).
- 23 Mürşid, pir and rehber are positions within the hierarchy of, and between, ocaks. Today, the male r (...)
- 24 The institution of musahiblik connects two married couples into a pseudo-family relationship of mut (...)
36As for the relations between the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak, the Şeyh Hasanlılar and the Seydanlılar in Dersim, Ottoman administrative texts offer no information. The same holds true for the socio-religious life of these and other Alevi communities in Dersim in general; this renders the information we can draw from oral tradition and oral history even more important. Though our focus in this section lays on one ocak and one related community only, we must consider their involvement in religious institutions and relationships, hierarchies and dependencies, which extend beyond these particular communities: For instance, the relationships between mürşid, pir, rehber, and talib,23 or the bond between musahib24 couples, which all connect individuals and families within a community, but also from different communities and settlements (for Dersim, see Gezik 2025).
- 25 The Turkish version “Ağuiçen” is often said to be the equivalent of “Ağuçan” in Zazaki and Kurmanci (...)
37Given the claimed descent of the Şeyh Hasanlılar from the family of Şeyh Ahmed, or his brother Şeyh Hasan, it is conceivable that the tribe and the lineage are hierarchically related to the same ocaks. The dedes of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak from Şeyh Hasan Köyü accept the Zeynel Abidin ocak in Mineyik (today Kuyudere) as their mürşid or pir (Aksüt H. 2012: 337; Aydın 2000: 158). As for the Şeyh Hasanlılar, however, Ali Kemali (1932: 184–185) and Nuri Dersimi (1992: 132) mention that they submit themselves to the Derviş Cemal ocak from the north of Dersim (the latter acted either as pir or rehber for the tribe; Aksüt H. 2012: 336). But Nuri Dersimi (1952: 27; 1992: 125) also insinuates that the Ağuçan25 ocak was regarded as mürşit ocağı among the Şeyh Hasanlılar. Based on recent oral lore and family documents, Karakaya-Stump (2020: 106–113) posits that the Ağuçan ocak and the Zeynel Abidin ocak (the mürşid ocağı of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak) are related to each other (see also Aksüt H. 2012: 337). This may hint at a socio-religious relationship shared by the Şeyh Hasanlılar and the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak.
- 26 The latter does not correspond with the inheritance of dedelik within the ocaks as we know it today (...)
38A related aspect concerns the socio-religious positions of dedes and seyyids and the duties and prerogatives attributed to them. Already Taylor (1868: 319) mentions both positions and, interestingly, states that only seyyidlik was hereditary, while dedelik was passed on to disciples.26 Ali Kemali (1932: 199–200) describes how dedes and seyyids in Dersim were important in tribal matters such as conflict resolution. The leading personalities of the Şeyh Hasanlılar, however, despite being recognized as seyyids, were allegedly unable to perform the assembly ritual and acted as rehbers (Nuri Dersimi 1992: 143). For the Seydanlılar, Erdal Gezik (2012: 223) states that certain families from among them acted as rehber for the tribal unit. These relations may have been dynamic, as Qurzeli Usiv, for example, relates in a personal account about how a Seydanlı took over the talib of another rehber in the late 1930s (Çem 2014: 41–42).
39We may indeed assume that the interactions and dependencies between Alevi religious and political powerholders, including those between ocaks and tribes, were subject to constant negotiation and could change over time. A manifestation of this may also be the relation between the dedes of the Ağuçan and Derviş Cemal ocaks and the Şeyh Hasanlılar. As Nuri Dersimi (1992: 125–129, 131–132) posits, these dedes were responsible to lecture and counsel the Şeyh Hasanlılar, since it would have been inappropriate to conduct the assembly ritual (Nuri Dersimi calls it “tarikat ayini” and “Alevi ayini”) for armed tribes.
- 27 See also Boryayın Tv (2017, September 17), Boryayın-Şıhametede-Şeyh Ahmet Dede Ocağı ve Ziyareti-Şa (...)
40Another important aspect, which needs future research, concerns the migration of dedes from the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak to Dersim. As much as the Şeyh Hasanlılar were mobile actors across the Greater Dersim region but related themselves to Şeyh Hasan Köyü, we must also inquire into the mobility of members of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak. The Aktaş babas, or dedes, from Işıkvuran (Ovacık), for example, claim descent from Şeyh Ahmed and represent his ocak in Dersim (Şenol 2023; 2025: 27–29, 32). The Aktaş family is connected to other members of the ocak in the region, among them the babas from Bornek (today Düzpelit) (Şenol 2025: 32–33). Members of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak also lived or still live in Gölek, a hamlet belonging to Koyunuşağı, and Hezirge (now Aşağı Tarlacık) in the district of Mazgirt. For some of these families, dedes of the Zeynel Abidin ocak claim to act as pir ocağı (Aydın 2000: 158).27 As Şenol (2025: 32–33) mentions relations of the Aktaş family to the Şeyh Hasanlılar; for instance, in form of the musahiblik between Kocali, an Aktaş baba, and Koca Sori, a seyyid from the Seydanlılar (roughly nineteenth to early twentieth century), this leads to other questions: In which hierarchical and relational position stood the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak to the Şeyh Hasanlılar in Dersim? Did the ocak members follow the Şeyh Hasanlılar or what was their motivation to settle in Dersim?
41Closely connected to the position of the Şeyh Hasanlılar within Alevi hierarchies are the socio-religious characteristics of the tribe and its leaders. As already mentioned, some tribal leaders carried the title “seyyid” and, although not to the full extent, are said to have acted as religious authorities. Another such characteristic that resembles peculiarities usually associated with ocaks are the legitimizing importance of historical documents belonging to the leading families of the Şeyh Hasanlılar and the practices and beliefs around these objects. Often referred to is a document that is said to date from the sixteenth century and to contain the history of the Şeyh Hasanlılar. Nuri Dersimi (1992: 135–138) and Ali Kemali (1932: 188 n. 2) relate that this document was first with the family of Seyyid Rıza in Lertik but then taken to Bodik and appropriated by the Seydanlılar (both settlements were in the east of Ovacık). In the 1930s, the document was kept in the house of Poso oğlu Koca Sori, a highly respected seyyid, and covered with prayer rugs and expensive clothes. Visitors brought gifts and sacrificed animals, and the Şeyh Hasanlılar sealed treaties and swore on the document. However, the owners at the time did not open and show the document to Nuri Dersimi, as this would bring great misfortune (Nuri Dersimi 1992: 137).
- 28 Şeyh Ahmed Dede Ocağı (2019, July 9), Bodik Şeceresi Tarih Kültür ve İnanç Mirasının Tanıtılması Ko (...)
- 29 Sevgen (1951: 884) mentions another written genealogy that is said to have been in the possession o (...)
42Although Sevgen and Onarlı claim that they had access to the document, they do not provide detailed information about its contents. Sevgen (1951: 884) writes that the document was issued in 1523 to a certain Seyyid Kemal, who, according to Sevgen, was Seyyid, eponym of the Seydanlılar unit of the Şeyh Hasanlılar. Onarlı (2002: 19 n. 8, 32) explains that the şecere actually consisted of several documents, which were partly damaged. In 2019, Can Ali Çelik, a member of the Şeyh Hasanlılar, said that the document would name Şeyh Hasan, who migrated to Dersim, as a fourth-generation descendant of Şeyh Ahmed.28 To our knowledge, there is yet no edition or other kind of publication of the document that would allow us a detailed assessment.29
- 30 Şeyh Ahmed Dede Ocağı (2013, July 8), Şeyh Hasan Köyü (2) [Video], YouTube, https://www.youtube.com (...)
- 31 Şeyh Ahmed Dede Ocağı (2019, July 9), Bodik Şeceresi Tarih Kültür ve İnanç Mirasının Tanıtılması Ko (...)
43As we have seen earlier, Ali Göktürk Dede from Şeyh Hasan Köyü remembered that his ancestors used to recall their relatives, the Şeyh Hasanlılar, in Dersim. In a television interview, most probably from the 2010s, he said that he personally had no contact with members of the Şeyh Hasanlılar.30 Is this a consequence of the social changes of recent decades, such as migration from the countryside and the impact of secularization on Alevi communal relations and networks? Did the Dersim Massacre in 1937/38, the 1980 Coup, the armed conflict between PKK and the Turkish military in the 1990s and other violent and traumatic events of recent history lead to a break in the relations between these communities? We would surmise that a combination of these factors has contributed to a decline of the contacts between inhabitants of Şeyh Hasan Köyü and the Şeyh Hasanlılar in recent decades. As a matter of fact, we know that the events of 1937/38 reached Şeyh Hasan Köyü, as related by Ekrem Gültekin Dede and Muhammed Can Delice. In 1937, the military searched the village and interrogated the inhabitants about their connections to Dersim (Çakmak 2022: 107). Relations were not yet severed in the following years. Gültekin recalls that Seyyid Rıza’s grandson Ali Rıza Polat and his mother used to come to the village during the winter months, recounting what happened to them in 1937/38.31
44The migration by descendants of Şeyh Ahmed, or his brother Şeyh Hasan, to Dersim and the formation of a powerful tribal confederation named Şeyh Hasanlılar is only one aspect of a tradition shared by members of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak and the Şeyh Hasanlılar. In the next section, we will focus on two other aspects that are equally contested: The origin of Şeyh Ahmed and his descendants in Horasan and his affiliation with, at times identification with, Hoca Ahmed Yesevi.
45Today, the narrative of Horasan origins is present among many Alevi communities and can be attested in both written and oral sources. We find this tradition in oral lore from Onar Köyü and Şeyh Hasan Köyü, as well as among the Şeyh Hasanlılar and other Alevi communities in Dersim and beyond. Çakmak (2022: 91–98) provides us with a framework for understanding this tradition in a historical context and regarding its contemporary implications for discourses about ethnicity. The topos of “coming from Horasan” has often been interpreted as evidence of a Türkmen (Horasan) belonging, but it also has a religious connotation, which is prominent in modern Alevi and Bektaşi traditions. The topos, according to Çakmak (2022: 94), can be an expression of seeing oneself as follower of the Melamiyye that originated in Horasan. The currently widespread affiliation of Alevi ocaks with Hoca Ahmed Yesevi, Çakmak (2022: 96–98) suggests, may go back to the growing influence of the Bektaşiyye since the nineteenth century. Moreover, the emphasis on the Yeseviyye as Turkish and Turkic Sufi tradition in Anatolia, embodying a continuity of religio-cultural traditions in line with nationalist agendas, was publicly promoted in Turkey since the early twentieth century (Dressler 2013; Karakaya-Stump 2012/2013). In the following we will focus on the Yesevi affiliation and the related Horasan topos in traditions from Şeyh Hasan Köyü and the Şeyh Hasanlılar.
- 32 Interviews with Ali Göktürk Dede by Janina Karolewski, 1 October 2013, 3 March 2014, 8 July and 27 (...)
46The earliest known example of the Şeyh Hasanlılar claiming descent from Horasan can be found in the already mentioned account by Taylor, who relates what his interlocutors from the tribe told him (1868: 318). A connection to Hoca Ahmed Yesevi, more specifically, we encounter for the first time in Ali Kemali (1932: 174, 192) and Nuri Dersimi (1992: 134), both of which provide traditions mentioning Şeyh Ahmed as the evlad (offspring) of Hoca Ahmed Yesevi. Similarly, Sevgen (1951: 882) describes Şeyh Ahmed as originating from Hoca Ahmed Yesevi (“neslinden”). While the latter is a clear statement about family descent, evlad can also mean religious affiliation, e.g. to a Sufi community. Indeed, in Şeyh Hasan Köyü exists a tradition according to which Şeyh Ahmed and Şeyh Hasan were sent to Anatolia by Hoca Ahmed Yesevi. As Ali Göktürk Dede narrated, Hoca Ahmed Yesevi took a burning mulberry branch from the fireplace and threw it away, instructing Şeyh Ahmed to build a village where he would find the branch again. Together with his brother Şeyh Hasan, Şeyh Ahmed arrived on the banks of the Euphrates and built the village at the location where he found the branch. The branch began to sprout and a mulberry tree grew, which is said to have stood in the same place until recently. Later, Şeyh Ahmed married Gevher Hatun, the sister of the Seljuk Sultan Alaaddin Keyqubad I, and they had children.32
47When the historian Muhammet Beşir Aşan researched the graveyards of Şeyh Hasan Köyü in 1984/85, shortly before the village was submerged under the Karakaya Dam, he listened to a version of this tradition as presented by the then oldest inhabitant of the village, Hacce Ana (i.e., Hatice Gültekin, b. 1890). In his record of her narration, we encounter a significant difference from Ali Göktürk Dede’s version, mentioned above:
- 33 “Ecdadımız Garipler Mezarlığında türbesi bulunan, ŞEYH AHMED YESEVİ ile birlikte buraya gelmişler. (...)
Our ancestors came here together with Şeyh Ahmed Yesevi, whose türbe is in the Garipler Graveyard. Şeyh Ahmed Yesevi threw a burning branch from Horasan, and this piece fell down where the village is today, on the shores of the Euphrates, and it came into leaf here. He, together with our ancestors, settled here.33 (Aşan 1987: 157)
48Why would her account conflate Hoca Ahmed Yesevi with Şeyh Ahmed? Could it be a wrong interpretation by Aşan? Aşan (1987: 148) describes that a board on the said türbe stated in Latin script: “The master of all masters, the main spiritual guide of all spiritual guides, Hoca Ahmed Yesevi, b. 1103, d. 1163.” Correspondingly, the following was inscribed into the headstone of the sarcophagus: “Horasanlı Hoca Ahmed Yesevi, descendant of Celal Abbas, the son of his Sacredness Ali, b. 1103, d. 1166 [?]” (Aşan 1987: 149 image 2). Thus, it is possible that Aşan overcorrected the statement by Hatice Gültekin, based on what he had read on the board and gravestone. Aşan (1987: 161) suggests that the mentioned sacred place is either the türbe of a Yesevi shaykh named Ahmed Yesevi or a makam of Hoca Ahmed Yesevi (i.e. a türbe made in the name of this saint, although himself not buried there).
- 34 See also the case of a manuscript from 1820, which, according to the colophon, was donated to the t (...)
- 35 Fieldtrip by Janina Karolewski in October 2018.
49According to İsmail Şahin (2020: 3) from Şeyh Hasan Köyü, the said board was attached in 1972 during a restoration of the türbe. One of those involved in attaching this board explained to Şahin later on that the inscription had been based on hearsay (söylemler) (Şahin 2020: 3).34 We may assume that the gravestone with the dedication to Hoca Ahmed Yesevi has a similar origin. Possibly, these writings were attached when interest in the türbe increased, especially by academics and officials engaged in documenting, and partly preserving, the cultural heritage of the region before it was submerged by the dam. According to Şahin (2020: 3), the board was only changed when scholars had uttered criticism against the identification with Hoca Ahmed Yesevi (cf. Aksüt H. 2002: 373). Most probably, the inscriptions we saw at the new türbe in 2018 are still those that replaced the earlier mentioned ones. The board reads: “His Sacredness Şeyh Hasan and his brother Şeyh Ahmet Dede;” and the headstone reads: “Şeyh Ahmet Dede, descendant of the Ehli Beyt and one of the Horasan Erenleri, when he came to Anatolia in 1235 [?] ce, he established this village as his settlement and deemed it appropriate to name the village Şeyh Hasan, the name of his brother, may your soul rest in peace, b. 1176, d. 1290 [?].”35
- 36 Ahmet Şen Kapadokya (2024, September 7), Fırat Göl Olurken 5.Bölüm Oyun ve Kuralları 1985-1987 [Vid (...)
50Yet another variant of the name appears in an archaeological survey conducted in the Lower Euphrates Basin in 1975: “According to statements by Hüseyin Dede from the village, and the beliefs of the villagers, the larger [tomb] in the north belongs to a person called Ahmed Yesevî whose actual name was Şeyh Ahmed-i Tubî.” (Serdaroğlu 1977: 73). In their documentary “While the Euphrates Becomes a Lake” (“Fırat Göl Olurken”, 1985–1987), Süha Arın and Hasan Özgen provide similar information: The türbe would have been constructed in honor of Hoca Ahmed Yesevi, but according to scholars, another Muslim authority, namely Ahmed-i Tubi, would be buried there.36
- 37 A certain Şeyh Hamid Tavil is named among the disciples of Ebü'l-Vefa in the latter’s hagiography ( (...)
51In documents of pre-Ottoman and Ottoman times, we find no reference to Şeyh Ahmed or his brother Şeyh Hasan being from Horasan or belonging to the Yeseviyye. Still, these documents can shed additional light on our case. Members of the ocak, for instance, have preserved the oldest known Vefai genealogy from an Alevi family archive in Anatolia. This şecere dates from 1425 and indicates a certain Ahmed el-Cemmi as one of the descendants of the medieval Iraqi Sufi Ebü’l-Vefa, patron saint of the Vefaiyye Sufi Order (Aşan 2005; Karakaya-Stump 2020: 103). The nickname (lakab) “el-Cemmi” is registered in a slightly modified form in an Ottoman vakıf record from 1530 about Şeyh Hasan Köyü, here named Şeyh Hasanlu: “Şeyh Ahmed Tavil, with the secondary name Tecemmi [or Tecemma?]” is mentioned as a descendant of Ebü’l-Vefa (Gülsoy and Taştemir 2007: 42).37 In the same record, the village and four surrounding fields, or hamlets (mezraa), are registered as endowed lands—lands that were donated to Şeyh Ahmed Tavil by an unspecified Sultan Alaaddin, who must, based on circumstantial evidence, have been Alaaddin Kayqubad II (r. 1249–1254) (Aksüt H. 2012 [2009]: 328; Weineck 2020: 162–163). This reminds of the abovementioned tradition about Şeyh Ahmed’s marriage with the sister of Sultan Alaaddin Kayqubad I (r. 1220–1237). Both archival documentation and oral tradition thus coincide in their ascertion of the village being a foundation from the Seljuk period.
- 38 “Tubi” may be a dialectal variant of “Tavil”, or it may go back to the potential palaeographical re (...)
52A tax record from 1560 contains an entry about Şeyh Hasan Köyü according to which twenty-eight people, descendants (evlad) of Şeyh Ahmed Tavil, were to be tax-exempt as the village was located on a road and the villagers supplied travelers (Yinanç, Elibüyük 1983: 103). A Vefai origin of Şeyh Ahmed Tavil is confirmed in various documents from between 1696 and 1777, which concern tax exemption of his descendants in Şeyh Hasan Köyü grounded on their administration of the endowment and provision of travellers (Yılmaz 2017: 234–240). It seems clear that Şeyh Ahmed‑i Tubi, identified in oral tradition with the saint buried in the türbe, is Şeyh Ahmed Tavil as mentioned in archival sources.38
53The case of Şeyh Ahmed and his ocak demonstrates how our ethnohistorical approach enables us to first crossread ethnographic and archival material and to then draw a more complex picture and develop evidence-based hypotheses on certain aspects pertaining to Alevi history. Furthermore, this example shows that the history of the wider Alevi spectrum, like the one of some ocaks, is only indirectly related to the history of Kızılbaş tribes as followers of the Safeviyye.
54Recently, members of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak have begun to regain sovereignty over their own tradition and history. They draw on traditions and histories remembered within the community, while also making use of academic and non-academic works. On the website of the ocak, we find a good example of how they re-write history to their ends. Şen and Delice used the above-quoted account of Hatice Gültekin, as preserved in Aşan (1987: 157), and changed it to what they consider to be the actual wording. (We marked new wording in bold characters and crossed-out omissions.)
- 39 “Ceddîmiz, Garipler Mezarlığı'nda türbesi bulunan Şeyh Ahmed Dede ile birlikte buraya gelmişler, Şe (...)
Our ancestors came here together with Şeyh Ahmed Yesevi Şeyh Ahmed Dede, whose türbe is in the Garipler Graveyard. Şeyh Ahmed Yesevi threw a burning piece of wood from Horasan, and this piece fell down where the village is today, on the shores of the Euphrates, and it came into leaf here. He Our ancestor Şeyh Ahmed Dede, together with our ancestors his brother Şeyh Hasan, settled here.39 (Şen, Delice n.d.; see also Şen 2021, 9)
- 40 See also the short statement by Mustafa Düzgün Dede, head of the vakıf, on Boryayın Tv (2023, Octob (...)
55Here and throughout the website, we recognize an attempt to negate Şeyh Ahmed being identical with Hoca Ahmed Yesevi. This is, however, not a general trend among members and followers of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak. Şenol (2025: 29) reports that members of the ocak in Dersim insist on their connection to Hoca Ahmed Yesevi. In 2022, they even founded the Seyyid Ahmet Yesevi-Şıahmed Vakfı.40
56Ottoman administrative texts studied or published so far provide no reference to a relation of the Şeyh Hasanlılar with the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak, the Şeyh Hasan Onar ocak or their respective main settlements. These relations can only be reconstructed based on oral and, if available, written accounts from within Alevi families. What Ottoman documentation shows, however, are privileges of the respective ocak families and villages, which appear well integrated into the vakıf system. The descendants of Şeyh Ahmed in Şeyh Hasan Köyü enjoyed tax exemption for their administrative services surrounding the endowment during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. This corroborates recent scholarship arguing that the social and political realities of different currents associated with the Kızılbaş-Alevi milieus were as complex as society at large: highly diverse and internally stratified in accordance with different political and socio-economic contexts (Weineck 2020: 80, 138).
- 41 Interview with Ali Göktürk Dede by Janina Karolewski, 27 August 2017, Malatya, Turkey.
57Regarding the case discussed here, it is interesting to note that only the tribal community of the Şeyh Hasanlılar appears as Kızılbaş in Ottoman documents (Genç 2020: 172). The other groups, the Şeyh Hasan Onar and Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocaks, are not mentioned in such contexts. Correspondingly, Ali Göktürk Dede from Şeyh Hasan Köyü holds that the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak was not part of the “rebelling” Kızılbaş.41 Indeed, it is important to emphasize against widely held assumptions that not all parts of the Alevi community see themselves as descendants from Kızılbaş communities. In other cases, such as the Hubyar ocak, Alevi communities do relate themselves to the Kızılbaş (Andrews, Temel 2010: 288), although hitherto no historical connection of this group to the Safawids could be established. Debates about the early history of the Kızılbaş-Alevis must therefore consider these different (historical) Alevi lifeworlds and networks of belonging and approach their respective histories with an approach capable to grasp this heterogeneity.
58In many cases, the status of Alevi groups as given in Ottoman documents stands in stark contrast to the depictions found in oral traditions from within these groups. As discussed above, the Şeyh Hasanlılar most often appear in Ottoman documents as bandits together with the Desimlis in the vicinity of Dersim, with numerous orders dispatched from Constantinople to get hold of them in accordance with Sharia and sultanic law (kanun) (e.g. in 1726, 1732, 1733, 1787; Hezarfen, Şener 2003: 9–13, 27–29, 37–43, 63–69). In this context, they were labelled Kızılbaş and rafızi, and accused of sebb, the practice of cursing the first three caliphs—an accusation regularly brought to bear against Kızılbaş, Shiites and other socio-religious groups seen as deviant from a Sunni point of view.
59The case of the Şeyh Hasanlılar reminds us of the Selmanlılar, tribal lay followers of the Şah İbrahim Veli ocak (Aksüt H. 2013). These, much like the Şeyh Hasanlılar, were a tribal community in southern Anatolia that was recurrently persecuted due to unlawful actions—and it is exactly in this context that the Selmanlılar were regularly labeled Kızılbaş (or rafızi, respectively) (Weineck 2020: 147). As we have seen with the Şeyh Hasanlılar, and the same holds true for the Selmanlılar during the sixteenth century, tribal groups accused of banditry could eventually be integrated in Ottoman semi-military networks (Weineck 2020: 147). Apparently, during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the relation of the Şeyh Hasanlılar with the different Ottoman authorities changed from hostility and enmity to cooptation.
- 42 Interestingly, the Dede Garkıns are equally attested an origin from Horasan, and documents in the p (...)
60In contrast to the Şeyh Hasanlılar, the descendants of Şeyh Ahmed and Şeyh Hasan Onar were never accused of kızılbaşlık. In a register from 1569, the brothers Yakub and Hüseyin from Onar Köyü are listed as the descendants of Şeyh Hasan Onar and in charge of his zaviye and the associated vakıf (Genç 2020: 488). The descendants of certain Anatolian saints, around whom ocak groups had developed, are regularly found as privileged in Ottoman documentation, especially during the eighteenth century. Most of the time, these descendants approached the Ottoman local state for renewing or confirming their respective status as seyyid, which granted them a privileged social and economic position. Correspondig examples for the ocaks of Hubyar, Şeyh Şadi, Kureyşan and Dede Garkın42 are already published (Gülten 2011; 2013; Weineck 2020). Not perceived as part of the larger Kızılbaş movement, but rather as non-deviant Sufi groups, they were accommodated to the mechanisms of tax exemption—a privilege that other communities, Alevi and non-Alevi, enjoyed, too.
61Despite the social and political heterogenity between various historical Kızılbaş-Alevi communities throughout Anatolia, there are nevertheless similarities regarding community-building across them. The major advances of recent research allow us to formulate provisional ideas on these kinds of patterns. With regard to the origins of the various Alevi ocak communities, publications by Ocak (2006) and Karakaya-Stump (2012/2013) suggest that many of these ocak groups hail from the Iraqi Sufi Order of the Vefaiyye and not from the Central Asian Yeseviyye, as previous, especially early Turkish scholarship had argued (e.g. Köprülü 1918). The latter discourse on the Alevis’ origins has been thoroughly criticised as part and parcel of early Republican Turkish politics of nation-building (Karakaya-Stump 2012/2013; Dressler 2013).
62Yet, by now, scholarship could only show a Vefai pedigree for some Alevi ocak groups. This perspective has been criticised because of its limited reach and the solidity of its evidence (Yıldırım R. 2019). As exemplified in our discussion, the belief of a Horasan and Yeseviyye tradition of Alevi history is thoroughly embedded within oral tradition. For other groups, more north or west of the Upper Euphrates and Greater Dersim regions, these kinds of historical trajectories might be different and await further research.
63It is certainly true that, as Karakaya-Stump (2020: 48) has emphasized, “the basic doctrinal, devotional and organisational features of Kizilbashism/Alevism must be sought within Sufism broadly defined.” She, at the same time, acknowledged that “tribal identities and kinship ties [...] interfaced with a phenomenon known as ‘communal Sufi affiliation’” (Karakaya-Stump 2020: 26). How, and in what many ways these tribes—mostly considered as the first Kızılbaş in Ottoman and Safavid historiography (Yıldırım R. 2017: 2019)—were indeed entangled with Sufi circles also awaits further research. The “organizational features” of Sufism include infrastructure such as the Sufi convents endowed to a number of ocak-centered communities among the Kızılbaş-Alevis. This holds true for the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak as well as for the ocaks of Dede Garkın, Şeyh Hasan Onar, or Hubyar. While the first three are said to have been granted their endowments by Seljuk sultans (also a wider narrative pattern; see Karakaya 2020: 103, e.g.), the ocak of Hubyar was endowed with a zaviye in Gürgençukuru by the Ottomans during the sixteenth century (Weineck 2020: 166–170).
64It can be assumed that Alevi ocaks formed and established themselves around such Sufi structures and survived over time in relative proximity to the Ottoman state, whereas their followers, villagers and tribal, partly nomadic groups had a different social status and economic background, which eventually rendered them more vulnerable towards state violence and marginalization. In fact, evidence so far suggests that only those communities from the Kızılbaş-Alevi milieu that were not integrated as Sufi communities in the management of endowments were regularly persecuted as deviant and referred to as Kızılbaş (or rafızi, for that matter).
65With a focus on long-term community formation, in particular the relations between Alevi lineages, settlements and tribes, the goal of this article has been to provide an ethnohistorical approach for studying the religious and social history of Anatolian Alevism based on a specific cluster of communities in the Upper Euphrates and Greater Dersim regions. This approach starts from the recognition that Alevi community formation evolves through, and only becomes visible as a contested communicative process that as such is never concluded. Extracting data from different kinds of historical as well as contemporary sources does not amount to a homogenous picture following one central perspective, but rather resembles a multidimensional collage, which—this is the starting proposition of our endeavour—allows us to see more and understand better the multiple factors involved in Alevi community formation and history-writing/telling.
66The complex evidence on different domains in which Alevis themselves negotiate and argue for specific and contested perspectives on their origins and historical trajectories corroborates the suitability of the proposed ethnohistorical approach. By including Alevi traditions and juxtaposing them with outsider sources, we understand, among other things, that the case of Şeyh Ahmed, his ocak and the Şeyh Hasanlılar contradicts common claims about Alevi community-building and hierarchies. First, the relationship between the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak and the Şeyh Hasanlılar is more intricate than that between settled ocak families and seminomadic tribal following. Both communities obtain traditions that put them in family relationship; with the Şeyh Hasanlılar descending from Şeyh Ahmed or his brother. Second, and surely linked to the claim of shared descendence, are the socio-religious characteristics of the Şeyh Hasanlılar. Unlike tribal following, as usually thought of in earlier studies, the leaders of the Şeyh Hasanlılar unite political and socio-religious power, thus resembling ocak authorities to a certain extent.
67The ethnohistorical approach furthermore questions overly neat distinctions between written, material and oral sources. In premodern and modern contexts, Alevi texts such as the poetic and hagiographic tradition could exist in parallel in both oral and written forms, in a dynamic exchange. Until the nineteenth century at least the written account was not necessarily superior to the oral. This changed in the course of the twentieth century. Today, we can see the impact of public and text-centric discourses on Alevi memory work and its reflection in oral witnessing. Our case study clearly indicates that, in a process that accelerated since the 1990s, Alevi communities have adopted knowledge by professional and non-professional historians.
68As for our specific case study, Ottoman administrative sources are silent on the origins of Şeyh Ahmed, Şeyh Hasan Onar and the Şeyh Hasanlılar. However, these state-centric texts provide circumstantial glimpses on their internal relations, and their relations to other groups and the Ottoman state, as well as their migration and mobility over time. Connecting these evidences from Ottoman administration with findings on other ocaks will be important for any attempt to reconstruct the social and economic histories of Alevis within the Ottoman Empire of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.
69The combination of findings from written sources with evidence from oral tradition, oral history, and material culture, unveils a complex constellation of origin and belonging—a constellation that due to the multitude of perspectives that shapes it, is pervaded with ambiguities. Our approach is thoroughly historical in its emphasis on source-based argumentation, but at the same time social constructivist in its recognition of meaning (as expressed in narrations about origins and relations) always being produced against the background of changing social environments and knowledge regimes. The ambiguities that are produced through the contemporaneity of different narrations are inherently embedded in both community-building as a communicative process on the one hand and ethnohistorical research on the other.
70As for future investigations on other Alevi groups, we suggest that our ethnohistorical approach to the entanglements between the Alevi communities of the Şeyh Ahmed Dede ocak, the Şeyh Hasan Onar ocak and the Şeyh Hasanlılar may serve as a blueprint. The ethnohistorical method as we employed it in this article can be transferred to (1) other regional contexts, providing a model for gradually broadening a thoroughly source-based inquiry into the historical formation of Alevi groups of Anatolia and beyond, as well as (2) non-Alevi social formations and contexts.
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