Introduction
Most closely associated with the fabled Silk Road, Central Asia is known for its evocative landscape and the extensive network of overland trade routes that connected the Asian continent to the Middle East and the Mediterranean until roughly the eighteenth century.Footnote 1 Yet even after the relative decline in the overland caravan trade, these routes continued to connect people from the region to the central Islamic lands, most notably the scores of pilgrims who set out annually for the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. In fact, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Russian imperial expansion across the region had the unintended consequence of bringing broader segments of Central Asian society into sustained contact with western Asia, as innovations in transportation technologies such as railroads and steamships made travel to Ottoman cities more accessible. Travelling westwards and northwards through the Russian empire, pilgrims from increasingly diverse economic backgrounds embarked on journeys that often included extended visits to Istanbul, where many stayed in ‘Uzbek’, ‘Kashgari’, and ‘Bukharan’ lodges that were part Sufi confraternity and part urban caravanserai. In the Ottoman capital, these travellers took up odd jobs and engaged in commerce to finance their journeys, and sought out the ceremonial blessing of the sultan-caliph at Friday prayers before continuing on to the Hijaz. Without doubt, they built on and expanded the reach of Central Asian networks in the Ottoman empire. But what exactly did these networks look like and how did they function? Who were the people who patronized them and brought them to life?
This paper tells the story of a particular lodge, the Üsküdar Özbekler Tekkesi,Footnote 2 and the many hundreds of people who passed through its doors in turn-of-the-century Istanbul. This site, which was also referred to as the Sultantepe Tekkesi, was affiliated with the Naqshbandi order of Sufism. It welcomed pilgrims who had set out from distant towns and cities across Russian and Chinese Turkestan and helped facilitate their continued travels across the empire and to Mecca. Over the course of the late nineteenth century, it emerged as a primary locus of interactions between arriving and departing pilgrims, and Ottoman state and society.
Through an examination of this site, the objective of this paper is to engage in an empirically grounded discussion of trans-imperial networks that focuses on lesser known actors and mediators in Ottoman-Central Asian history. It departs from an exclusive focus on the experiences of elites, to which much of the current historiography on Ottoman-Central Asian relations has confined itself, and examines the butchers and bakers, craftsmen, and students who left few other historical records of their travels through Ottoman lands. It also focuses on the conduits and mediators, the structures and buildings—the actual sites—where connections were forged, in an effort to explain how sites such as Sultantepe linked peoples to one another, to places, and to the state.Footnote 3 To this end, the first part of this paper focuses on the question ‘What kind of interactions?’ It does this by attempting to reconstruct life in this tekke and to highlight the geographical and occupational diversity of the pilgrims who travelled through Istanbul. The second section of the paper continues to take up this question through an investigation of the myriad functions of the Sultantepe lodge. Contrary to the widely held view that such sites constituted informal Central Asian embassies, this paper suggests that by the mid-to-late nineteenth century, Sultantepe was essentially an Ottoman institution that employed bureaucrat-cum-shaykhs who were central figures in delivering on the paternalistic rhetoric made famous by sultan-caliphs such as Abdülhamid II (reigned 1876–1909). This was achieved primarily by quotidian acts such as providing guests with lodging and assistance during their journeys, not—as suspicious tsarist administrators imagined—by disseminating propaganda or inculcating guests with religious and/or ethnic ideologies such as pan-Islamism.Footnote 4 By fleshing out the vague contours of the connections that took place at this site and charting the experiences of a diverse range of remarkably mobile actors, this paper suggests that the role of Sufi networks in trans-imperial politics and history needs to be approached in a more nuanced way.
Reading between the (ledger) lines
Although there are no official records documenting the numbers of Central Asians who undertook the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, imperial Russian and British sources indicate that thousands made the long and arduous journey each year, taking various routes overland and by sea through the domains of the Russian, British, and Ottoman empires.Footnote 5 Depending on the chosen route, travellers could pass through the Hindu Kush or Tien Shan mountain ranges into India, and then by sea to Jeddah in Arabia. They could also travel northwards across Russia, by sea to Istanbul and then overland or by sea to Damascus and Cairo to join the Ottoman caravans for the last leg of the journey. New forms of rail and steamship travel across tsarist Russia, the Black Sea, British India, and the Suez Canal swelled the numbers of pilgrims as modern transport lowered the costs, if not the overall difficulty, of the journey. Trains to the Russian port city of Odessa and steamships to Istanbul facilitated the travel of many Central Asian Muslims to the imperial capital of the Ottoman empire and the abode of the sultan-caliph, the spiritual leader of Muslims worldwide.
While we tend to think of pilgrimage as a journey to a specific location, before the advent of air travel, it signified a journey that did not generally go from point A to B and back. Instead, it was marked as much by detours and digressions as by the circumambulation of the Kaaba. Istanbul was one of these detours for pilgrims who sought the ceremonial blessing of the Ottoman sultan at the Friday congregational prayer before performing the hajj as well as for those who wanted to visit the tomb of Abu Ayyûb al-Ansârî, the standard-bearer and companion of the Prophet Muhammed, who is said to have been killed on the European shores of the Bosporus during the first Muslim siege of Byzantine Constantinople in 674–678 AD.Footnote 6
According to the Ottoman historian Ayvansarayî, Sultan Mustafa III (reigned 1757–1774) was passing through the neighbourhood of Üsküdar when he came upon a large group of pilgrims in an encampment filled with unfamiliar embroidered silk and hair tents.Footnote 7 After riding over, the sultan learned that they were travellers from Turkestan and promised their leader, a Naqshbandi shaykh, that he would build a lodge for the patronage of future pilgrims. It is in these hills above Üsküdar, overlooking the Bosporus from the Asian side of Istanbul, that the Sultantepe Özbekler Tekkesi was constructed. It came to be joined by three other important Central Asian tekkes—two in Eyüp, the neighbourhood that takes its name from the Abu Ayyûb mosque complex and shrine, and another in Sultanahmet, in the heart of the old city and in close proximity to Hagia Sophia.Footnote 8
Despite Ayvansarayî's colourful account, Sultantepe was not actually built by a sultan for his exotic guests, but was erected in 1752/53 by Abdullah Paşa, the governor of Maraş (who died in 1754/55). It was later expanded during the reign of Mustafa III and completely rebuilt by Sultan Abdülmecid (reigned 1839–1861) in 1844. During the 1877–78 Russo-Ottoman War, a number of wooden rooms were added in the courtyard to house the influx of refugees from the Caucasus. Sultan Abdülhamid II also repaired the lodge in the late nineteenth century.Footnote 9 According to a draft of a report prepared for the Ministry of Pious Endowments on 7 July 1915, the tekke was part of the Naqshbandi order and founded to ‘strengthen the bonds of Islam’ between the Central Asian arrivals and the Ottoman empire.Footnote 10 The report also explained that the tekke was intended as a ‘philanthropic foundation or charitable institution (“müessese-i hayriyye”) open every day for the housing and maintenance of the poor and destitute of the khanates of Khiva and Bukhara and the people of Russian and Chinese Turkestan, who set out on the hajj and came to perform a pilgrimage to the seat of the Caliphate and the centre of the illustrious sultanate’.Footnote 11 Unlike commercial inns (hans) and caravanserais, as well as other Sufi lodges whose endowment deeds often stipulated that guests could only stay for three nights, the tekke opened its doors to long-term guests—as long as they met the eligibility criteria for charitable assistance.Footnote 12
The historiography of these tekkes frequently suggests that they were important centres of informal diplomacy.Footnote 13 This was indeed true in the 1860s and 1870s, when such sites hosted numerous diplomatic missions and envoys from Bukhara, Khoqand, and Kashgar. In particular, Buharalı Şeyh Süleyman Efendi (1821/22–1890), the postnişin (head of a religious order) of the Buhara Dergâhı, is known for his role as both a Bukharan and an Ottoman diplomat. He came to the Ottoman empire as the official representative of the emir of Bukhara in 1847 and during his long career in Istanbul hosted various Central Asian dignitaries in his tekke, including Sayyid Yaqub Khan (1823–1899), first in his capacity as an ambassador from the Khanate of Khoqand and later from the Islamic Emirate of Kashgar. In addition to being a member of the Meclis-i Muhacirîn-ı Çerâkise (Circassian Refugee Council) and the Meclis-i Meşâyih (Council of Shaykhs), Süleyman Efendi also served as an informal Ottoman envoy to Bukhara in 1869 and to Hungary in 1877.Footnote 14
By the late nineteenth century, however, shaykhs were no longer hosting many high-level dignitaries, and figures such as Yaqub Khan were replaced by ordinary Central Asians intent on making the pilgrimage and visiting the capital of the Islamic world in the process. The ebb of diplomatic and religious elites and the flow of non-elite travellers, mainly from the Ferghana Valley and Chinese Turkestan, coincided with the tightening hold of imperial Russia over Central Asia, Qing China over Kashgar and its environs, and the virtual cessation of any noteworthy Ottoman missions and contacts with the protectorates of Khiva and Bukhara. Thus, until the celebrated role that Atâ Efendi (1883–1936), the last shaykh of Sultantepe, played in the Turkish War of Independence of 1919/20–1922, when the lodge was used as a base for transferring weapons to the Turkish resistance,Footnote 15 there is very little written about the Central Asian lodges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even less is known about the people who stayed in them.
A snapshot: 1905
In a letter dated 15 October 1905,Footnote 16 the shaykh at Sultantepe wrote a petition to an unspecified Ottoman official on behalf of 17 Central Asians who wanted to board the ‘sürre vapuru’, the imperial ‘caravan’ steamship that transported pilgrims and the Ottoman annual gift to the Sharif of Mecca and the Holy Cities of Islam.Footnote 17 Ships had started to leave the day before and the petitioners had not yet booked a ticket. High up in the hills above the waterfront, the lodgers could view the hustle and bustle of pilgrims boarding ships to Beirut, where they would connect with the overland caravans from Damascus to Mecca. According to an 1899–1906 register of guests, 16 of the 17 petitioners had arrived on 14 October 1905. They were followed by six people who arrived a week later, and an additional 21 Central Asians over the next couple of weeks. All but one of these 43 arrivals would leave the lodge on 18 November 1905.Footnote 18 The shaykh's petition had been effective and the men were able to leave Istanbul in time to make the hajj of that year. The alternative would have been a costly additional year in Ottoman lands while awaiting the next hajj or, worse yet, returning home without performing the pilgrimage.
The group that departed in November 1905 was all male and included only one child, an eight-year-old boy travelling with his father. Many were probably nervous, or worried about sailing, as the steamships they had taken from Odessa were crowded and uncomfortable, and most of the men were not used to sea travel, feeling much more comfortable on their horses back home than they did on the cramped boats. The men told stories about Andijan, Bukhara, and Kashgar, as well as the Ottoman cities of Bursa, Adana, Cairo, and Jerusalem, where there were Central Asian lodges and, in some cases, neighbourhoods. New arrivals brought news from Ferghana and China, and returning pilgrims described terrifying encounters with Bedouin en route to the Hijaz and told stories of quarantine stations where they were stripped down and disinfected by doctors intent on putting an end to cholera epidemics.
Misfortune had already befallen many of the guests. Fifteen-year-old Ahmed bin Tohta,Footnote 19 for example, had become ill and checked into the Gureba-yı Müslimîn Hospital,Footnote 20 where he was treated and released in time to rejoin his friends and family before they departed for Arabia. Hacı Sultan, a 40-year-old from Marghilan who had arrived on his own, had also fallen ill and been sent by the shaykh to the hospital.Footnote 21 However, he was not as lucky as Ahmed and passed away. Already a hajji (one who has completed the hajj), Sultan had completed the pilgrimage and his entry indicates that his birth certificate and Ottoman travel documents (‘mürûr tezkiresi’) had been destroyed in Baghdad. Perhaps this more seasoned traveller had warned the potential pilgrims of things to watch out for during their journey.
The mood in the tekke was mixed and the guests were anxious. They knew they were lucky to be boarding the steamship, but they might not have known of their good fortune until the last minute. Until then, many were busy selling silks and goods they had brought with them from Bukhara, Marghilan, Khoqand, Andijan, and Kashgar in the commercial districts where many of their countrymen had shops. Some, like the Afghan subject Hacı Muhammed bin Abdullah, found work in the tekke, while others sought work in the old city as day labourers.Footnote 22 Although the men were grateful to be lodging at Sultantepe and for the shaykh's assistance in arranging their passage, it had been months since they had set out on their journeys and talk tended to turn to this as they sat in the courtyard of their home away from home and drank tea, conversing about what lay ahead and what they had left behind.
What kind of connections?
In what was a rather modest Sufi lodge and urban caravanserai, group after group of Central Asian travellers interacted not only with subjects of Russia, China, Afghanistan, and the Ottoman empire, but also with Ottoman shaykhs of Central Asian extraction who facilitated their travel, health care, and employment. In narrating this ‘snapshot’ of life in the tekke, this paper draws on guest registers that include information on the comings and goings of hundreds of travellers who are otherwise almost impossible to trace. As Daniel Brower put it, these pilgrims are often ‘a shadowy presence’ in studies of the region, ‘emerging only as they appeared in the gaze of tsarist officials’.Footnote 23 This scene does not pretend to be coherent or comprehensive; numerous interactions are clearly taking place outside the site itself. However, they are nonetheless rendered at least partly traceable by a collection of guest registers that provide rare information about the trajectories and experiences of Central Asian pilgrims.
Among the many other ‘Uzbek’, ‘Kashgari’, ‘Hindi’, and ‘Afghan’ Sufi lodges throughout Istanbul and in the empire at large, Sultantepe stands out because of the survival of a small private archive that includes three guest registers and various documents extant within their pages. The registers are labelled as ‘nüfus ve kayıt defteri’ (identity and registration register), ‘künye defteri’ (register of names), and ‘resmî misafirîn defteri’ (official guest register), and cover the years 1899–1906, 1907–1923, and 1919–1925, respectively.Footnote 24 They were kept for the state and include information such as the guest's name, father's name, homeland, date of arrival, and date of departure. Some of the registers also include information on family members and occupations, as well as physical descriptions of guests, travel routes, and destinations upon leaving the tekke.
The registration of guests in the tekkes appears to have been part of a wider governmental initiative to centralize the administration of pious endowments and Sufi lodges that began with the creation of the Evkâf-ı Hümayûn Nezareti (Ministry of Pious Endowments) in 1826, and which culminated in the establishment of the Meclis-i Meşâyih (Council of Shaykhs) in 1866. The council was a governmental institution designed to put the tekkes under closer surveillance and it had the power to appoint and dismiss shaykhs. As part of new bureaucratic measures aimed at diminishing the independence of Sufi orders, tekkes were increasingly subject to investigations and inspections. For example, in 1860 bureaucrats were assigned to register all students, dervishes, and guests within the empire.Footnote 25 The state's efforts ‘to bring [the orders] more fully under inspection and control as part of its broader project to render more visible and calculable an ever-increasing number of micro-level, daily social practices and institutions’Footnote 26 also helped the central government to monitor and police a non-Ottoman population that was to a large extent under the diplomatic protection of Russia.Footnote 27
An examination of the 1899–1906 register indicates that the average age of guests was 37.25, with 35 as the median and 30 the mode. Registered parties were largely male, but also included women and children, and guests ranged in age from one to 90. Approximately 31 per cent of those registered were aged 21 to 30, and 28 per cent were between 31 and 40 years old. With less than seven per cent of guests in their teens, students appear to have accounted for only a small proportion of those staying in this institution (which is confirmed in later entries when occupations are listed alongside age and origin).Footnote 28 The oldest guests tended to originate mainly from cities in Chinese Turkestan and many were already listed as hajjis. For example, 70-year-old Niyaz bin Aşir of Kashgar, who must have appeared youthful as he was described as still having a black beard (‘kara sakallı’), was a resident.Footnote 29
There is also an entry for 80-year-old Hacı Sabir Şah of Bukhara, who had arrived on 9 June 1900 with his wife Kerime and daughters Havva, Saliha, and Talime. Hacı Sabir and his family were expelled (‘seyyah verilmiş’)Footnote 30 after living in the dergâh for 21 years. If Hacı Sabir was 80 when he first arrived, he would have been at least 100 years old when he left on 16 November 1921. His wife, Kerime, must have been significantly younger because she was involved in a scandal circa 20 January 1902 when Hacı Leyl Şah, age 25 of Khoqand, was said to have tried to seduce or deceive her (‘merkum 50 numeroda mukayyed Hacı Sabir'in zevcesini kendusi almak üzere iğfal eylediği anlaşılmış’).Footnote 31 Leyl Şah was expelled for his unacceptable behaviour.Footnote 32 Hacı Sabir Şah's entry indicates that in addition to the resident dervishes generally associated with Sufi lodges, married men and their families could also reside in the tekke—and for extended periods of time. Also, as the scandal involving Kerime and Hacı Leyl Şah suggests, both licit and illicit connections were forged in the close quarters of the lodge.
Between 1907 and 1923, there was a noticeable change in the profile of guests: the average age decreased from 37.25 to 34.27, the median from 35 to 25 and the mode from 30 to 25. The sharpest trend was an increase in 21 to 30-year-olds.Footnote 33 This could be due to the fact that as the hajj became more accessible, people were more inclined to go when they were young. Surges in the early twentieth century might also be correlated to high cotton yields in the Ferghana Valley during this period, which in turn would have translated into a greater disposable income.
The registers also reveal that there was a great deal of geographical diversity in terms of place of origin and that, despite its name, the tekke was not exclusively for Uzbeks. The majority of guests originated from Chinese Turkestan (which was populated by Uighurs, Uzbeks, Dungans, and Kazakhs) and the Ferghana Valley. There was also the occasional guest from the Tatar city of Kazan or Khiva (in today's Uzbekistan), as well as a party of eight from Kuhistan (possibly the city in Afghanistan or in present-day Tajikistan) who arrived in December and January of 1902 and departed for the Hijaz within a little over two weeks.Footnote 34 From 1899 to 1906, 42.8 per cent of travellers were from Chinese Turkestan, 29.9 per cent from cities in the Ferghana Valley, and 8.9 per cent from Bukhara.Footnote 35 In the early twentieth century, however, there was a noticeable decrease in the number of pilgrims from Chinese Turkestan as compared to pilgrims from the Ferghana Valley: travellers from Chinese Turkestan (Kashgar and other cities such as Hotan, Yarkend, and Kulcha) had declined from 42.8 per cent of all pilgrims in the period 1899–1906 to 29.6 per cent in the period 1907–1923.Footnote 36 This decline was not due to an increase in travel from other regions, but to an overall decline in pilgrims from China.
At any given time, groups of Chinese and Russian subjects—sometimes joined by co-religionists from Iran and Kabul—were assembled in the tekke. But who were they? What did they do? Were they all dervishes who were travelling to Mecca via Istanbul? We can deduce that most of the guests were not ascetics who had renounced worldly pursuits and dedicated themselves to a life of prayer and meditation, since the shaykh specifically noted when guests were dervishes. In one letter, for example, the postnişin of the kalenderhâne (dervish lodge) at Eyüp wrote to the shaykh at Sultantepe to tell him that one of their dervishes was coming to stay there for a ‘tebdil-i hava’ (change of air). The letter states that the dervish, Buharalı Hacı Baba, was leaving of his own accord and that he was an upright man who had never ‘broken anyone's heart’ (‘hiç bir kimesnenin kalbini şikest etmediği’).Footnote 37 Similarly, 50-year-old Hacı Niyaz of Aksu, visited for a week from the Buhara Dergâhı in March 1902 for ‘a change of scenery’.Footnote 38
With the exception of small numbers of dervishes, students, and mullahs, the majority of guests were in fact workers and labourers or craftsmen of some sort. The occupations listed in the registers include: farmer, glazier, cook, barber, shoemaker, grocer, coal seller and coal stoker, chimneysweep, baker, carpenter, butcher, weaver, acrobat, milliner, driver, cattle merchant, engraver, merchant, ironworker, day-labourer, plasterer, house-painter, confectioner, ironsmith, wheel maker, mechanic, silk merchant and/or manufacturer, fitter, and porter.Footnote 39 Most of the travellers were men of modest means. In fact, wealthy guests who could afford other lodgings were often expelled: for example, the brothers Tohta Hacı and Muhammed Said of Yarkend, age 70 and 59, were evicted because they were ‘people of power and wealth’ (‘eshâb-ı iktidar ve kudret’).Footnote 40 Similarly, Berat bin Osman of Hotan was expelled after an investigation determined that he was a man of power (‘eshâb-ı iktidardan oldukları ahiren icra edilen tahkikattan anlaşılmağla seyyah verilmiştir’).Footnote 41
While many of these craftsmen and merchants worked in various commercial inns in the city, others went into the service of the tekke as işçis or workers. This seems to have been a flexible arrangement for travellers who were staying for an extended period. In the first register, there are eight people who are listed as having worked in the dergâh, and six in the second. There was overlap at times, so we know that there was more than one such position available at the dergâh. Hacı Abdulkayyum, for example, was employed as a cook. According to Belkıs Özbek, the daughter of Şeyh Atâ Efendi, there were also workers who helped to draw water from the well, clean the courtyard, and perform chores around the tekke.Footnote 42 The workers slept in the matbah, or kitchen, across the courtyard from the shaykh's receiving room and the mosque. This type of flexible working arrangement may have served as a springboard for other positions in the city (many of the workers went on to become domestic servants) or a way to earn some extra money before leaving for the Hijaz.
Generally, people tended to work in the tekke for short periods. However, there were also individuals such as the aforementioned Hacı Muhammed, a 27-year-old Afghan subject, who worked at the lodge on and off for years. His record indicates that after arriving in the dergâh on 7 February 1902, he found employment as a servant in the household of Adil Paşa. After several trips back and forth (from the Buhara Dergâhı, for example), he settled into the lodge and worked there for three years before leaving for the hajj in December 1905. He returned almost four years later and took up his previous job, before leaving again on 26 September 1912.Footnote 43
In addition to the better-known ‘mendicant’ dervishes who set out for the pilgrimage with little other than their begging bowls and the rough woollen robes on their backs, we find that the ordinary men and women discussed above made multiple trips between the tekke, various Ottoman cities, and their homelands. Their movements were recorded by the tekke shaykhs with great care. There are numerous examples of pilgrims whose association with the lodge spanned several years and that are marked by extraordinary mobility. Over the course of approximately five years, Muhammed Alim, for example, moved to the Buhara Dergâhı in Istanbul, travelled to Adana, returned to Sultantepe, and worked as a domestic servant for approximately five months in Istanbul before travelling to Marghilan (in the Ferghana Valley). He returned to Sultantepe less than two years later in November 1903, and left for the Fincancı Han in Istanbul four months after that.Footnote 44
In addition to travelling, sometimes several times to the Hijaz, many pilgrims also journeyed between Ottoman cities. For example, 50-year-old Bukharan Hacı Hüseyin arrived at the dergâh on 5 July 1902 and travelled to Izmir almost a year later in late May of 1903. He returned within two months, only to leave for Izmir again on 30 October 1903. On 23 September 1905, he was back at Sultantepe, where he appears to have stayed until 10 February 1907 before leaving for Eyüp Sultan (it is not clear if he set out for the Kaşgar Dergâhı or the Kalenderhane there, or more generally the neighbourhood).Footnote 45 Another guest, Hacı İsmail, traced and retraced an arc from Istanbul to Adana and Konya, before leaving for Tefkurdağ. Thirty-five years old and from Khoqand, Hacı İsmail was described as an unbearded dwarf (köse, cüce). After arriving at the tekke on 17 February 1912, he left a month later for the ‘Molla Tekke’, returning ten days later and leaving shortly thereafter on 5 April for Adana. He then proceeded to make another trip to Adana, then to Konya and Baghdad—overland—in 1913. In between trips he continually returned to Sultantepe.Footnote 46
It is important to note that Hacı İsmail and many others were probably travelling for business. To paraphrase the Turkish expression, ‘hem ticaret hem ziyaret’, the pilgrimage was equal parts ‘honour and profit’. This would account for the large numbers of merchants and craftsmen who travelled to and within the Ottoman empire, where they were in all likelihood engaged in commerce, religious study, or both. According to Brower, ‘one tsarist observer compiled a sort of social register of the pool of pilgrims from the Sart (Turkish) population in the Fergana Valley’ which included ‘merchants hoping to attract more customers once they had completed the hajj, community leaders counting on the prestige of pilgrimage to augment their clientele, and mullahs seeking entry into the Naqshbandi movement’.Footnote 47
How else to explain the experiences of individuals such as Hacı Nur Muhammed of Marghilan, a peripatetic traveller who was neither a dervish nor a student? After arriving in 1899, this Marghilani worked at an unspecified job in the tekke for four months before resigning and leaving with a certificate (ilmühaber), possibly attesting to the fact that he had worked there and had left on good terms. Although he was later expelled for verbally threatening another guest on his second visit, he returned a third time four months later, before leaving again within three months for the Buhara Dergâhı in Sultanahmet. On 27 July 1902, he had returned yet again, and a new page was started for him in the back of the register that filled up almost as quickly as the first. On 16 November 1902 he left the dergâh for a han, either a caravanserai or a large commercial building, in the Uzun Çarşı neighbourhood, only to return six-and-a-half months later. His movements to and from the tekke continued in this manner over the next six years. On 25 August 1903 he went to the hospital for nine days. Then on 18 October 1903 he left for another han in Uzun Çarşı, returning on 3 February 1904, and then leaving exactly two weeks later for Adana, where there was a large community of Central Asians and a major tekke nearby in Tarsus.Footnote 48 Hacı Nur Muhammed came back to the dergâh on 17 March 1904, only to leave for Adana at the end of May. He returned on 28 January 1905, but was expelled from the tekke for a second time on 8 May 1905. The next note in the register states that after the hajj, he returned to the dergâh on 7 August 1907, then again on 8 May 1908, before leaving for Uzun Çarşı on 10 July 1908. The record ends here.Footnote 49
If we consider these entries together, we can begin to answer the question, ‘What kind of connections?’ Within the site itself, guests mixed with diverse groups of people from all over Central Asia, in touch with long-term residents of Istanbul who knew the city well, and in contact with travellers who had experience with Ottoman institutions such as the Gureba-yı Müslimîn Hospital. Upon their arrival and departure, during their job searches, and the weekly religious gatherings (ayins) that were a natural part of life in a Sufi institution, they interacted with the shaykh of the lodge, as well as other adepts of the Naqshbandi order who would take part in the rituals and interact with those in attendance.
It is apparent from the tekke registers that people moved between the same handful of sites where they lived and/or worked and that they formed networks between the tekke and the old city in Istanbul. These sites included the Fincancı Han, Han-ı Halil, and unspecified hans in Uzun Çarşı—all located in the vicinity of Eminönü and Sultanahmet, neighbourhoods close to the central bazaar and the Buhara Dergâhı. In some cases, guests are said to simply have ‘gone to a han’ (‘hana gitti’) and at other times it is specified that they rented a room in a particular han. In either case, we can assume that they worked as labourers or merchants in these parts of the old city, forming diasporic clusters that helped new arrivals find rooms and employment. For example, after travelling extensively between Istanbul and Bursa, 25-year-old Hacı Muhiddin found work in a kahve (coffeehouse) in Mahmudpaşa, a bustling commercial district just below the covered bazaar and near the Golden Horn. He worked there from 15 September 1911 to 28 November 1911 before going to Mecca and, in all likelihood, finding another Central Asian to fill his place.Footnote 50
Health, death, and bureaucracy
A central goal of this paper is to flesh out the many functions of sites such as Sultantepe and to highlight that they were not confined to the religious realm; rather, such institutions provided non-Ottomans with various forms of assistance commonly understood as social welfare. They not only acted as sites that travellers and pilgrims could return to again and again while they were in between jobs or cities, but they also functioned as institutions that absorbed destitute Central Asians who were in transit and often unable to return to their homelands. This, combined with the system of sultanic gift and alms distribution to pilgrims (and later the more bureaucratized version of alms distribution by the government of the Committee for Union and Progress), formed the basis of an informal, albeit imperfect, system of social welfare that facilitated the hajj via Istanbul.Footnote 51 Petitions to various Ottoman ministries from Central Asians in need reveal that many destitute travellers and pilgrims benefited from the shelter and provisions provided by these Sufi lodges while they were continuing on their journeys or waiting for responses to their petitions for governmental assistance.
Writing in 1920, for example, Hacı Abdullah of Bukhara explained that he and his family of six were staying at the Sultanahmet dergâh because he had no way of providing for his family in Istanbul. After living for seven to eight years as mücavirs (long-term residents) in Medina, he and his family had been sent to Damascus, from where the Refugee Commission had sent them to Istanbul. However, because the roads were still obstructed after the war, the family was unable to return to their homeland. Hacı Abdullah was therefore requesting travel documents to Konya, where he might have had hopes of finding work or lodging. Although he did not specify it in the petition, in a letter to the Interior Ministry the Istanbul Police explained that he would be engaged in commerce in Konya.Footnote 52
Hacı Abdullah's case was by no means exceptional. The Sultantepe registers are full of examples of individuals who returned again and again to the tekke in between their travels to the Hijaz and other Ottoman cities, as well as to their homelands. People seem to have used the tekkes as a base for their movements in the empire, and at times as a halfway house when they were out of a job or in transit. For example, Cöre Bay, who arrived in January 1900 from Shahrisabz (in today's Uzbekistan) at age 70, was present at the Sultantepe tekke several times in a five-month period: on 28 January 1900 he went to the Gureba-yı Müslimîn Hospital, was sent there again on 25 February 1900, and returned after being restored to health on 12 March 1900. He then stayed on for about two more months before leaving for the city of Kütahya in May 1900.Footnote 53 Hacı Ahmed, age 28, of Hotan, also travelled between the tekke and the hospital, then to Konya and back before ultimately leaving for the Hijaz.Footnote 54
In a petition to the Ottoman Interior Ministry asking for free passage to Central Asia, one Chinese Muslim alluded to the difficulties of finding lodging in Istanbul and described how he and his companions were ‘living in misery here and there’ (‘ötede beride sürünmekte’).Footnote 55 Pilgrims with limited means had few options for room and board in Istanbul: they could stay at hans such as the Fincancı Inn, in the courtyards of mosques or at tekkes. Although we do not know how access was determined and just how many rooms or spaces were available to pilgrims, having a relationship with the tekke allowed people to stay for periods ranging from a few days to several years in what must have seemed like an oasis in the hectic city.
In sickness and in health
During these extended stays, people inevitably got sick. Others arrived ill. Due to the close quarters of life at Sultantepe, treating illness before it spread was of paramount importance. Based on the prevalence of water- and air-borne illnesses such as cholera and tuberculosis among pilgrims in this period, we can assume that the postnişin was quick to send potentially ill guests to the hospital to prevent outbreaks of infectious disease in the tekke. While people were expelled and sent away from the lodge for various reasons—for having fake passports, for playing cards at the local coffeehouse, for fighting—illness was not a reason for turning away lodgers. Rather, we see numerous entries that state that people were ‘sent to the Gureba-yı Müslimîn hospital’, only to return after receiving treatment.
Originally established for men, Gureba-yı MüslimînFootnote 56 was one of many hospitals built for the Muslim poor throughout the empire. With only 200 beds and large numbers of sick and destitute people in the city, it was a privilege for non-Ottoman Muslims to receive treatment. In a letter dated 11 April 1909, Istanbul Director of Police Lütfi Paşa wrote to the police explaining that there was a demand of 15 to 20 people each day, but only three to four available beds. In this situation, he reasoned that because many of the ill were from distant places and physically incapable of going home, they should be given priority in being admitted to the hospital because they had nowhere else to go and posed a threat to public health if left untreated and on the streets of the capital.Footnote 57
In the case of the Central Asian travellers, many of them were also in the middle of a would-be pilgrimage. Receiving treatment could not only mean the difference between life and death, but in some cases between dying before performing the hajj or after. Such was the case for 33-year-old Abdülnazar of Shahrisabz, who was sent to the hospital twice before leaving for the Hijaz.Footnote 58 Like Abdülnazar, others returned from the hospital, recuperated at the tekke, and continued on their journeys. Molla Baba, age 27 from Marghilan, for example, spent approximately two weeks at Gureba-yı Müslimîn before being discharged to the tekke on 9 July 1904.Footnote 59 It appears to have taken him another month to get back on his feet, before leaving in the worst of Istanbul's heat for the Fincancı Han on 7 August 1904. In the first register alone there are at least 23 documented individuals, or about 5 per cent of the total number of guests, who were sent from the tekke to the hospital. For those who recovered and returned to their homelands, receiving free treatment at what was then a state-of-the-art hospital was surely part of what would become their narrative of the hajj and their experiences in Ottoman lands.
Even in death, the tekke—along with the state—extended assistance to travellers whose journeys were cut short. For example, Hacı Abdülcelil of Marghilan died aged 42, only a week after arriving at the tekke in July 1901. The shaykh documented that he was buried by combining the money found on his person (21.5 kuruş) with 50 kuruş obtained from the municipality and an unspecified amount of sultanic charity (‘sadaka-yı hazret-i padişah’). The shaykh specified in this entry that he was recording the details of the burial because he had not been able to find any relatives of the deceased (‘bir gune müteallikatı bulunmadığı içun işbu mahalle şerh verilmiştir’).Footnote 60 Similarly, Hacı Molla Hüseyin of Andijan did not have any relations when he passed away at the age of 42, six days after arriving at the tekke on 14 September 1901. The shaykh took care of his funeral and he was laid to rest in the cemetery next to the lodge.Footnote 61
While the registers are vague as to how treatment and burials were arranged, it is apparent that the shaykh played an active role; he ‘sent’ the sick to Gureba-yı Müslimîn and ‘obtained’ the additional funds required to properly bury the dead, signifying that he made use of channels between the tekke and the hospital as well as the Ottoman agencies and ministries that would dispense sultanic charity. He was a central figure in this network, acting as a mediator between sick and deceased travellers and ‘the state’.
The shaykh as state bureaucrat
A recent study by Brian Silverstein has argued that the bureaucratization of Ottoman Sufi orders essentially led to shaykhs becoming state bureaucrats. Silverstein traces this development to the foundation of the Council of Shaykhs, which ‘marked the formal bureaucratization of the orders and increasing rationalization of the conditions for Sufi practice, [and] meant that more and more aspects of the life of the orders would be subject to explicit calculation, according to the emergent criteria of reason and performance, as targets of “policy”’.Footnote 62 Similarly, in his study of Ottoman state-tekke relations, İrfan Gündüz explains that due to the establishment of central fiscal control over Sufi institutions, even dervishes were effectively state bureaucrats.Footnote 63 While it may be true that shaykhs of the Uzbek lodges ‘acted as lobbyists and representatives of their han [sic] in Buhara, Kaşgar, Khiva, and so on’,Footnote 64 by the late nineteenth century, these figures were among the Ottoman ulema (the learned class). The shaykhs whom foreign arrivals encountered might have spoken Persian and Turkic languages such as Uzbek, but they were essentially state-appointed (or approved) Ottoman bureaucrats and their lodges were in fact Ottoman institutions under the auspices of the Council of Shaykhs, and ultimately the central state. It is important to note that Sultantepe was funded by and large by the state: the Ministry of Pious Endowments administered the lodge's waqf (Islamic endowment) and provided food allowances (taamiye) for the guests and regular supplementary funds for maintenance and repairs. It was essentially an Ottoman charitable institution that served Central Asians, not an ‘informal [Central Asian] cultural embassy’, as has been suggested in the secondary literature.Footnote 65
As state bureaucrats, the postnişins were charged with following the letter of the law and making sure that guests were registered, that certain rules were followed, and that all guests had the proper paperwork and travelling papers. In addition to working with the state by registering all of the travellers, the tekke was in contact with the Russian consulate in Istanbul about the whereabouts of certain guests. For example, in the entry for Hacı Abdulkayyum, there is a note that someone from the Russian kançılarya (the registry office of the consulate) was looking for him as part of an investigation regarding another person. However, this was after Hacı Abdulkayyum had already left the tekke.Footnote 66 In an 1899 case, two young men from Samarqand were turned over to the Russian authorities and sent back to their homelands. According to the register, Abdülhak bin Abdülhekim and Murat Kuli bin Muhammed, age 25 and 19, had run away from home and one of their fathers had notified the Samarqand Russian consulate, which then notified the Istanbul Russian consulate. The two were handed over to the Russian consulate and sent back to Samarqand.Footnote 67
In another instance of the shaykhs acting as Ottoman bureaucrats, there are two examples in the Sultantepe archives of formulaic pledge letters that confirm that new Ottoman subjects would not later attempt to reclaim foreign citizenship (which provided them with the rights afforded to Russian subjects through concessions and capitulation agreements). Because many Central Asians (and other Russian Muslims) saw citizenship as a flexible bureaucratic field that could be pragmatically navigated, the issue was emerging as an area of contestation between the Russian consulates and the Ottoman Foreign Ministry, and the shaykh seemed to be doing his part to ensure that new Ottoman subjects would not later claim Russian citizenship and cause diplomatic problems between the Sublime Porte and the Russian empire. For example, in an undated letter to Şeyh Sadık Efendi and another statement dated March 1904, two Central Asians staying at the tekke from Khoqand and Marghilan signed formulaic letters attesting to the statement that they would henceforth make no claims to foreign citizenship.Footnote 68
Cooperation with the state also meant that shaykhs were charged with maintaining order and prohibiting certain types of behaviour. Even if the Uzbek tekkes of Istanbul were equal parts Sufi lodge and urban caravanserai, they were by nature religious and charitable institutions serving the Muslim poor. Guests like Leyl Şah who made a pass at the younger wife of a fellow traveller, or the wealthy brothers Tohta Hacı and Muhammed Said who tried to take advantage of free lodging, were not welcome.
Violence was another vice that was not tolerated at Sultantepe. Recall that Hacı Nur Muhammed, who had been a worker at the dergâh, was expelled for verbally threatening another guest. Karı Muhammed Yusuf Hoca, a 24-year-old from Samarqand, was expelled in May 1900 for beating up a Namangani 50 years his senior.Footnote 69 Similarly, 25-year-old Hacı Sultan of Andijan was expelled on 3 July 1909 for fighting with Siraceddin, who was listed as a cook.Footnote 70 In the case of Hacı Kiram, the records show that not only fighting but also discord was discouraged, since this 38-year-old from Marghilan was evicted for not getting along with his hemşers (countrymen).Footnote 71 In some cases, both parties to a fight or dispute could be thrown out: on 19 June 1913, both Hacı Muhammed Salih, a 26-year-old volunteer Ottoman soldier from Andijan, and Hacı Ali, a 22-year-old from Khoqand, were both expelled for engaging in ‘combat’ (‘mudarebe eylediğinden’).Footnote 72
It seems that in some cases, people were warned and given another chance. For example, after residing in the tekke for approximately nine months, 35-year-old Hacı Hasan of Marghilan was expelled in July 1914 for playing cards in the coffeehouse (‘kahvede iskambil oynadığından’). After ‘improving his conduct’ (‘ıslah-ı hal eylemekle’), Hacı Hasan was allowed to return that winter. A year later he was drafted into the army, but returned within a year after being discharged. After staying at the tekke for another extended period, he was expelled once again for unspecified misconduct (‘münasebetsiz ahvalinden dolayı dergâhdan ihrac edilmiştir’).Footnote 73
Guests could also be expelled for drinking and drug use. Such was the case for Hacı Şakir of Marghilan. Performing the hajj had not dampened this 30-year-old hajji's thirst for the forbidden, as he was dismissed on 20 March 1904 for coming back to the tekke drunk (‘sekir hâl geldiğinden seyyah verilmiştir’).Footnote 74 The 33-year-old Andijani Hacı Gaib-i Nazar, on the other hand, was discovered to be a hashish addict (esrarkeş). After spending approximately two-and-a-half years in the Hijaz (30 December 1901 to 15 June 1904), he had returned to the tekke, but was thrown out after it had been ascertained that he was smoking hashish.Footnote 75 Similarly, Hacı Muhiddin of Khoqand was thrown out in February 1913 for being a hashish addict—even though he had an honourable past as a volunteer soldier.Footnote 76 There are also many other cases of expulsion listed in the registers where no reason or explanation is provided.
The expulsion of guests who did not abide by the tekke's rules indicates that the postnişins did not tolerate illicit behaviour. In some ways, the postnişin at Sultantepe seems to have wielded more authority than the Council of Shaykhs in terms of policing forbidden behaviour. In the Üsküdar Atik Valide Sultan tekke, for example, the shaykh, Ahmed Vasfi Efendi, was reported for drinking by his wife.Footnote 77 Ahmed Vasfi Efendi was taken down to the police station, where officers confirmed that he was drunk. A bottle of rakı (an anisette-distilled alcoholic beverage) and a rakı glass were found in his quarters. The shaykh had a previous record not only of inebriation, but also of ‘vile deeds’ such as illicit sex and pederasty. Thus, it was decided that he was not fit for the profession and that someone else should be appointed in his place. What is worth noting is that the entry states that Ahmed Vasfi Efendi had been previously summoned a few times and given the necessary admonition (‘akdemce kendisi birkaç defa Meclis-i Meşâyih'e celb etdirilerek nesâyih-i lazime ifâ edilmiş ise de’).Footnote 78
Conclusion
When 13-year-old Abdülkadir arrived at the Üsküdar Özbekler Tekkesi in late 1898, he soon realized—for better or worse—that although he was far from his home in Marghilan, he had found a new family of sorts in the Ottoman capital. The postnişin, İbrahim Ethem Efendi, registered him at a new school in Üsküdar that was established in 1892 and which promised to deliver a progressive Ottoman education.Footnote 79 Although he attended school from February to September 1899, Abdülkadir ran away, seeking refuge in the Buhara Dergâhı in Sultanahmet, and then in another lodge in Eyüp. However, someone had informed İbrahim Ethem Efendi about the boy's whereabouts and Abdülkadir was promptly taken back to the lodge and then to school. Two days later he again ran away to the Buhara Dergâhı, where he might have been convinced by friends or elders of the folly of his ways, for on 23 January 1900 he returned to Sultantepe and re-registered for school. But by mid-June, Abdülkadir had left yet again. This time, by also committing some sort of theft, he ensured that he would not have to go back to school, or to Sultantepe.Footnote 80
At the lodge he was one of a few teenagers, and found himself surrounded by men in their twenties and thirties and some devout septuagenarians and octogenarians intent on making the hajj to Mecca before they died. It seemed that everyone was passing through Istanbul on their way to Mecca or back to Central Asia, while he was stuck in school struggling with subjects that were supposed to make him into a proper efendi, or Ottoman gentleman. The men around him were full of stories about Andijan, Bukhara, and Kashgar, as well as cities he had never heard of where there were networks of Central Asians. Travellers brought news from Ferghana, where the local government had put the leaders of the Andijan Uprising on trial and razed the village of Mingtepe.Footnote 81 Some of the men arrived ill and went to Gureba-yı Müslimîn to be treated, returning with accounts of their travails. The postnişin was busy trying to help the men write petitions and to find jobs. He had also tried to help Abdülkadir, but the 13-year-old was not interested in becoming an Ottoman efendi and had other (thwarted) ambitions. Even though he was so far from Marghilan, it must have seemed like everyone he knew was interconnected.
In lieu of a conclusion, this paper ends with this story because the broad outlines of this young Marghilani's life illuminate the ways in which his experiences in Ottoman lands were shaped by the Üsküdar Özbekler Tekkesi. The stories of Abdülkadir and his countrymen bring to life an ‘Islamic network’ and help us better understand who it served and how it functioned. As a semi-private, semi-public sphere where diverse groups of travellers convened and interacted with co-religionists from Asia in shared open spaces, the Sultantepe lodge was a multidimensional site that connected people to one another and facilitated the types of services that poor travellers came to depend upon. Unlike coffeehouses, which have been considered as public spheres of interaction and prisms for viewing Ottoman society,Footnote 82tekkes in general have been largely ignored by social historians, regarded alongside mosques exclusively as sites of worship and centres of conservative political protest. By taking this famous Uzbek lodge and approaching it as a nodal point in the forging of trans-imperial connections, this paper has shown that the study of ‘religious’ sites is essential for better understanding the history of connections between the Ottoman empire and Central Asia(ns). Only when we gather the accounts of Abdülkadir and the hundreds of other non-elite actors that animated connections across empires can we say with any certainty what a Sufi network was or how it operated at the crossroads of empires, in turn-of-the-century Istanbul, and in the courtyards of the Sultantepe lodge.
