Turkey has been the cradle of many civilizations throughout history, creating a mosaic of different cultures, languages and traditions intertwined in this geography. Therefore, migrations are undoubtedly one of the elements that constitute the spatial organization and cultural heritage of the land we live on today. Anatolia's migration history is deeply connected not only with a geographical border, but also with the fact that it is the meeting point of different civilizations, ethnic groups and religions.\The series of blog posts I will be discussing aims to provide an overview of the history of Anatolian migration. However, I should point out here that since the history of Anatolian migration is almost as deep-rooted as the history of humanity, it is necessary to impose a time limitation or to start from a period closer to the present day. At this point, at first glance, it would be appropriate to focus on the founding of the Ottoman Empire and the period of Turkish settlement in Anatolia before that. We will then consider the role of migration throughout the Ottoman period and examine the major population shifts during the founding of modern Turkey. In this series, I aim to explore how the migrations that began with the Turkish settlement shaped Anatolia culturally, economically and politically.\\With each article, we will address a specific period of population mobility and try to understand the interactions and changes in this period. This colorful and complex migration story of Anatolia on the stage of history constitutes an important part of not only a country's but also a global history. Let's embark on this interesting journey through Anatolia's migration history together.
We can state that the formation of Muslim mystical orders was influenced by Turko-Mongolian shamanism and in this context, new religious currents spread to Anatolia with the incursions from Central Asia. The dervishes I want to talk about are people who brought with them the traditions, religious customs and rituals of their native lands. This group includes entrepreneurial caravan leaders who led the wave of migration from Turkish-Islamic countries to Anatolia, colonies that formed the pioneers of this resettlement, and important personalities of lineage and status who established dynasties in the places where they settled. The religious and universal understandings of these dervishes paralleled the religious and universal understandings brought by the masses of migrants from earlier Turkic regions, and their followers often belonged to their own family and lineage ties. Therefore, Anatolia was the scene of a merging of the religious and mystical currents they brought with them, along
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They emerged as heroes of social and political significance for the masses of people settling in a new world, representative personalities emerging from among the people in this period.
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Here, I do not intend to talk about the history of religion in Anatolia, nor about the similarities and differences between different orders. The relevance lies in the fact that dervishes and zawiyas appear as representatives and pioneers in these westward raids that we insist on in order to understand the founding of the Ottoman Empire. The dervishes who gave their names to many villages, who cleared land on the mountain tops with their own hands, who worked in vineyards and gardens; the dervishes who continuously moved westward and gave birth to similar ones; the sheikhs of these dervishes who went to war, who used their political influence in the service of the sultans, who hosted the sultans and gave them advice, have many qualities to attract our attention. The fact that they operated mostly among semi-nomadic Turkmens, lived in villages, engaged in agricultural work, and turned to the mountains and slopes to clear land further strengthens this interest. Indeed, the lifestyle of
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This is how many sheikhs, together with members of what would later become the Ottoman dynasty, settled in the western regions of Anatolia. While some of the newly arrived dervish immigrants were engaged in land digging and conquest activities together with the veterans, others settled in villages or completely empty and desolate places in those regions and engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry with their disciples. Indeed, religious communities were ubiquitous in that period, and especially the zawiyas they established on vacant lands turned them into important centers of culture, development and religion. The fact that these dervish lodges crossed borders and became established was one of the factors that facilitated their movement.
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