[Armagan]

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§ 11. Karaferia and Baraq stories combined. To link this paragraph to the account of Mas’ūd’s accession in Rūm, Yazjoghlu makes the latter send ambassadors to the basileus. Thus the narrative is given in the form of the emperor’s reply to Mas’ūd’s inquiry. Though intended as a mere bridge leading to the Baraq and Karaferia stories, the passage contains none the less the very important information that some of the Dobruja Turks had joined the prince in Karaferia.
§ 12. The Baraq story. It would need, and deserve, a separate study. My commentary (like my summary) is confined to what is strictly relevant to our purpose. Chronologically the story is remarkably sound: Sheikh Maḥmūd Ḥayrān died at Aqshehir in 1268-9 [68], so that Ṣar Ṣaltq can easily have been his disciple before going to the Dobruja shortly after 1261; after something like fifteen years spent in the desht (-i Qpchaq), Ṣar Ṣaltq returns to the Dobruja in about 1280 (§ 10) and stays there until his death, soon after 1300 (§ 15). As to Baraq, he is supposed to be at the time of ‘Izzeddīn’s escape, in 1265, old enough to become, conjointly with his brother, ‘subash’ of Karaferia; on the other hand, he is then still under his grandmother’s tutelage (§ 4) — all this, however, has to be cut out as a product of Yazjoghlu’s desire to co-ordinate the separate stories; once he had introduced the ‘two younger sons’ he had to keep them together as long as possible. Surely, the prince of the original Baraq story had nothing to do with Karaferia but was in the emperor’s palace from the beginning until his attempt to escape. According to Yazjoghlu this attempt was made some time after Mas’ūd’s inquiry. This leads to the of course completely fictitious date: some time after 1280 — which, however, fits well into the frame of the story; after 1280 Ṣar Ṣaltq is indeed again in the Dobruja, so that the prince can join him there to become the ecstatic dervish Baraq. As such, he is known to have played an important role at the Mongol court in Sultānīye under Öljaitu and to have perished in Gīlān in 1307-8,
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leaving behind him disciples [69]. The name of Baraq is just about 1300, and still later, not uncommon both for men and women [70]. The account of how our Baraq received supernatural powers [71] may be suspected to be nothing more than an explanation of the name: one day Ṣar Ṣaltq vomits a lump which once Sheikh Ḥayrān had spat into his mouth, and the prince, in a fit of ecstasy, swallows it. Ṣar Ṣaltq caresses him and calls him baraghm (‘my dog’).
Most interesting for our present study is the fact that Baraq presents a Christian as well as a Muslim aspect: born a Muslim prince, he is baptized and becomes a monk in the patriarch’s retinue, only to end as the founder of a mystic dervish order. The same is true also for Ṣar Ṣaltq: he appears on the one hand as the spiritual leader of the Muslim nomad Turks and on the other hand is regarded by the patriarch as a saintly man to whom unhesitatingly he entrusts the newly converted prince. This Christian aspect of Ṣar Ṣaltq is clearly recognized in a fetwa of Abu ‘s-Su’ud, which has just come to light [72]. This outstanding scholar and sheikhulislam of the 16th century describes Ṣar Ṣaltq as ‘a Christian monk (keshīsh) who by ascetism has become a skeleton’.
This wavering between the two religions is characteristic of the entire account which time and again, though with much reticence, records cases of conversions to Christianity, or rather apostasy from Islam, some of them only temporary. Historically, the principal figure of the account, Sultan ‘Izzeddīn himself, appears in the same ambiguous light. His mother is described by Pachymeres, as we have seen, as a pious Christian woman [73]. To the same author we owe a detailed account of the trial instigated in 1266 (shortly after ‘Izzeddīn’s flight) by Michael VIII against the inflexible Patriarch Arsenios, a trial in which the Patriarch’s indulgence towards ‘Izzeddīn, his sons and followers, played a great role. Pachymeres records, among other things, as one point of
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the accusation, that Arsenios had ordered ‘his own monk’ to admit the Seljuk princes to the holy communion [74], and as the main argument of the Patriarch’s defence, that in regarding the sultan and his sons as Christians he had acted upon the testimony of the bishop of Pisidia [75]. While Pachymeres reproduces the procès-verbal of the trial, Gregoras reflects a shorter popular version, which as such is for our purpose perhaps even more valuable. According to Gregoras; the Patriarch was accused of having admitted the sultan to the holy ceremonies and of having conversed with him inside the house of God — although, says the author, the emperor and the clergy knew very well what ‘Izzeddīn had declared: that he was the son of Christian parents and had himself received the holy baptism, that he had become sultan of the Turks by the whim of fortune only, but even then had always cherished in secret the essentials of the faith, and that now in Constantinople he was openly adoring the sacred icons and celebrating all the rites of the Christians [76]. As a matter of fact, we shall soon meet a son of ‘Izzeddīn, Melik Konstantinos, who is described as a perfect Christian, Byzantine gentleman.
§ 13. Main part of the Karaferia story, introduced already by §§ 4, 6, 7, and 11. In addition to what Yazjoghlu reproduces it must have contained its own version of ‘Izzeddīn’s stay with and escape from the Byzantines. The ‘mother’ who is the sister of the basileus and is given the tolls levied at the ‘Mother-Gate’ belongs to the Karaferia story — perhaps, as we have seen (§ 4), nothing but an invention derived from the ‘Anacapsi-Gate’ changed into Ana-qaps. Her suicide clearly comes from Ibn Bībī though it has been transferred to Karaferia (§ 6). That she is the mother of ‘Izzeddīn, and thus the grandmother of the prince, is probably a further concession to Ibn Bībī: in a story of this kind and in view of the ‘Mother-Gate’ one would rather expect her to be the prince’s mother — a Byzantine princess married to the sultan and left behind with her son (one son, since the other, Baraq, has to be dismissed). However this may be, the Karaferia family appears as claiming descent not only from the Seljuk sultans but also from the Palæologi.
The family has its own following: Turks from the Dobruja had joined them at Karaferia but the ‘Muslims’ are said to have returned at a certain moment to Anatolia, the ‘non-Muslims’, as it is implied, remaining at Karaferia — obviously they had become Christians. Astonishingly, the conversion of their leaders, the prince’s family, is said to have taken place only later, in the generation of the prince’s grandsons and ‘in the year when the basileus came to Salonica’. This last indication must mean Andronikos III’s entry into Thessalonica in January 1328, when the citadel, loyal to the old emperor Andronikos II, held out until the defenders themselves, seeing that all hope had gone, forced their