When Sheep Hunted Tigers: Anatolian Postpastoralists in India

During the period between the battle of Manzikert in 1071 and the subjugation of the Celali rebellions in the early seventeenth century, nomadism represented a powerful political force in the borderlands between eastern Anatolia and western Iran, affecting the centers of Muslim power in Iraq and Christian states in the Caucasus as well. Older patterns of pastoralism as practiced by various Kurdish peoples and Arabs were to some extent supplemented and superseded by the newcomers from the east, including sundry Turkic speakers as well as the Mongols. While the impact of the Mongols was formidable initially, it gradually waned. In contrast, Turkic nomads developed complex and long-lasting patterns of interactions with sedentary peoples of the region, including Armenian and Syriac speakers. The Ottomans eventually emerged as the most significant political force in the area, yet this was a process which lasted for longer than a century. In her presentation, M. Petrovich will focus on the period which preceded Ottoman hegemony. During the 15th century, eastern Anatolia witnessed numerous attempts at establishing an imperial order, occasionally through a short-lived renewal of invasions from central Asia (by Timur), and subsequently in the internecine struggles between the tribal federations of Qaraqoyunlu and Aqqoyunlu ("black" and "white" sheep, respectively). The core of the presentation will analyze a side effect of the persistent violence in the region. Having been shaped by their pastoralist surroundings, many young men left as mercenaries to rise to positions of power and prestige across the Indian Ocean, in lands which were hungry for expert horsemen. Of particular interest to us will be the uses to which they put their military prowess, and the ways in which they coped with both forgetting and manipulating their obscure origins in order to achieve their goals in very different natural and social environments.