Hazirlayanlar

508

HOŞGÖRÜ TOPLUMUNDA ERMENİLER

prosperity there is also confi rmed by sources. Father Pacifi c de Provins 

(1628) records in his voyage that the Armenian merchants brought with 

them sequins et piastres(each –58 sols), they took them to the seque?or 

Mint which paid them interest. The coin received a Persian imprint and the 

king gained some benefi t from this operation. The king’s coins never left 

Persian territory because they were nowhere accepted except by weight. 

Thus foreign gold penetrated into Persia chiefl y in the form of Venetian 

Ducats probably in payment for silk exported by Armenian merchants. Ar-

menians had served as the agents of Shah also and dispersed silk on which 

the Shah took one third of the produce. Even court European merchants 

took the services of their Armenian subjects as their trading agents for dis-

posing of the chief exportable commodity namely silk. (48)

Another feather in the cap of Armenians was that they were never 

bought or sold as slaves to Baghdad or other places. Ibni Hauqal says that 

“from all over the infi del lands in the vicinity, the slaves are brought to the 

city of Babul abwab. However he claims to have noticed personally that not 

an Armenian was ever sold as a slave. In TazkiratulMuluk and other works 

Georgian slaves are frequently mentioned. Ibni Hauqal further stresses the 

fact that no one gave the permission for that venture. The Armenians were 

predominantly Nusrani, paid Kharaj to the sultan whose men could have 

harassed them but they enjoyed the status of zimmis and were not to be 

sold as slaves as they did possess a farman to that effect.(49).

In Tarikhi Manazili Rum,there is the mention of Istanbul as”Islam 

bol” presumably to indicate its newly acquired Islamic character.(50) For 

a variety of reasons,the Turks established an empire which was apparently 

a Muslim state par excellence. The institution of Devshermah, the decree 

of Sultan Murad III, Millet system etc. go hand in hand with several social 

and liberal movements and reforms eg. Bektashia order with pantheistic 

and eclectic approach, Akhi movement which supported the interests of 

common man and the sufi  thought which preached the message of love 

and peace..A number of instances can be quoted to substantiate the point.

To be sure, a kind of harmony prevailed in the multilingual, multi religious 

and multi social Eurasian Empire of Turks, despite all kinds of imaginary 

or somewhat true or biased statements of chroniclers.It is interesting to 

note that Rumi had a number of Christian disciples. They cried in a state 

of ecstasy on hearing Rumi’s spiritual discourses. When Rumi was once 

asked how did these non believers could understand and appreciate Rumi’s 

spiritual thoughts, Rumi had explained it in a convincing manner: “Al-

---

509

Prof. Mansure HAİDAR

though ways are many, the destination is one. Dont you see many a paths 

to the Kaba... Therefore, if one looks at only one ways, then differences 

are big and distances among one another are infi nite, but if one looks at 

the end, all agree unanimously that the destination is one and the same.”:

The Europeans who went to Quniya to attend the sama and to participate 

in the ecstasy of dance and music,they were called Darvishan-i-charkh zan 

or Raqsanda because during the zikr and sama, they keep their right leg 

fi rmly on foot and with the music they rotate their body in round circular 

motions called dast afshani. It is believed that Mevlana Rumi had person-

ally taught them this method of dancing (51). Thomas Coryat was an eye 

witness to such an assembly (in 1613) where he went alongwith his friends 

and some other Englishmen and enjoyed this scene “at the college of Turk-

ish monks in Galata, called Dervishes near to one of their public burial 

places Every Thursday and Friday, they met in a pretty fair room ---full of 

Turks to serve God in their superstitious, kind way and had put off their 

shoes (according to their wonted custome) and placed them upon shelves. 

The dervishes differed much from the other Turkes, fi rst in the covering of 

their heads. These dervishes, though they are religious men have no lands 

to maintain them as the Christian monastries have but a certain stipend paid 

them every day by the Grand Signior and partly by certain Bashawes and 

it is esteemed for so holy an order the diverse bashawas have renounced 

their dignity and pomp of the world and entered themselves into this or-

der for the better salvation of their souls.” (52)Rumi had pointed out that 

the religious differences were like the lingual variations. Ibni Arabi con-

veys this truth directly without recourse to a parable like Rumi “Arabs 

call to God, O Allah; Persians, O Khoda Greeks O Theo, Armenians O 

Asolvaz; Turks O Tingri; Frank, O Creator Etheopeons O, Waq. Thus the 

pronounced words are different but the meaning is one for all the crea-

tures.(53)” “Proof of the tolerance with which sufi sm, specifi cally those of 

its forms that fl ourished in Asia Minor, approached other faiths, and their 

adherents, is provided by the fact that the Armenians, Vartan and Mec-

nuni, who lived in the 18

th

 century were remarkable exponents of mystic 

poetry, and belonged the Bektashi Brotherhood. (54) The Bektashia order 

was popular and had the conviction that the value and signifi cance of this 

order lay in the fact that all religions are considered to be equal (yaksan) 

and no religious ceremonies or external rituals of the Bektashir order are 

given any particular importance.(55)In the Asia Minor, Saurya and Egypt 

another silsila known as “Tariqai Raushni” became popular in the ninth 

---