Citation:
Thesis Type:
PhD dissertationAbstract:
This dissertation is the first comprehensive study of the phenomenon of the urban confraternity in 13th and 14 th-century Anatolia. Urban confraternities in late medieval Anatolia played a range of roles in cities like Ankara, Erzincan, Konya and Sivas. The important political and social void filled specifically by akhī organizations in 13th and 14th-century Anatolia can only be understood within the context of the importance of urban centers during this time period of political instability and attempts at reform, launched by both Christian and Islamic religious institutions.
Despite the fact that these associations of men living in urban centers in late medieval Anatolia have been addressed in scholarship, a real understanding of what functions the organizations performed, how they were organized, their relationship with cities and with various contemporary religious and political authorities has not been established. This is due both to the consistently changing nature of the brotherhoods and also to the ability of the concept of futuwwa (Arab., qualities of youth) to transform itself depending on the social and political reality within which it existed. This dissertation presents a detailed reconstruction of the basis of the moral code of futuwwa as it changed over time; it is also a study of the way in which that code was articulated in Anatolia (in Arabic, Armenian, Persian and Turkish). This dissertation attempts to reconsider one aspect of the history of 13th and 14th-century Anatolia from the perspective of regional urban history rather than a standard rule-oriented (i.e., Seljuk or Cilician) viewpoint. The goal in doing so is to present a more complete picture of the time. This dissertation shows that all over Anatolia in the 13th and 14th centuries urban associations of men existed playing similar roles and interacting with authorities (whether they were Christian or Muslim, Armenian or Turkish) in similar ways. Re-assessing the history of the region from this new perspective allows us to better understand the social realities of the age.