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Sakaltutan Four Centuries Ago

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Ronald C. Jennings
Ronald C. Jennings
Affiliation:
University of Illnois, Urbana
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Extract

Twenty-five years ago, when anthropologist Paul Stirling did the fieldwork for his book Turkish Village, he tried to find out what the villagers of Sakaltutan knew about the origin and history of their village. The villagers apparently had very little sense of their past, and the longest genealogies covered only six generations. On the basis of their information and other observations and opinions, Stirling estimated the age of the village at about two hundred years and suggested that the village ‘was probably founded by people from villages nearer Kayseri, who had made a temporary summer camp there for pasture, and later decided to settle permanently and plough’.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , February 1978 , pp. 89 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 Stirling, Paul, Turkish Village (London, 1965), pp. 22 f.Google Scholar

2 The name occurs in the documents as Sakḳāl Tūtān and Saḳāl Dūtān. Saḳal probably means beard, although that word is more commonly written ṣaḳāl. Tutan means one who holds, from tutmak, to hold or to hold on to. Dutmak is a common old alternate form of tutmak. W. Ainsworth refers to a mountain pass called Sakal Tutan on the road from şarkşla (midway between Kayseri and Sivas) south to Gürün: ‘Before us was a stony chain of limestone hills, which we soon entered by the pass called Sakal Tutan (Beard-stroker), from its requiring patience and resolution to get through it, a man stroking his beard being expressive of these qualifications among Asiatics’ (‘Journey from Angora by Kaisariyah, Malatiyah, and Gergen Kalehsim to Bir or Birehjik’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 10 [1841] 275–340 at p. 315). Perhaps traveling between Zincidere and Sakaltutan villages required patience and resolution before the modern graded road connecting Talas and Tomarza was built, although the site of Sakaltutan is at some distance from the pass. An attempt has been made to render place-names as they occurred in the sixteenth century, although even then there was no fixed orthography. In recent decades the Türk Dil Kurumu has been busily engaged in transforming or disguising certain of the village names in Kayseri province, but here that practice has been ignored.Google Scholar

3 Küstere is mentioned in a law code (kanunname) of Karaman province in the first half of the sixteenth century, although the editors have mistaken its location. See Beldiceanu, Nicoara and Beldiceanu-Steinherr, Irene, ‘Recherches sur la Province de Qaraman au XVIe Siècle’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 11 (1968), 71.Google Scholar (Published separately, Leiden, 1969.) Küstere district (nahiye) was between Kayseri and Zulkadir, not near Ulukişla between Karaman and Zulkadir. In the middle of the nineteenth century the district was cited by Mordtmann, A. D. in Anatolien (1850–1859) ed. Babinger, F. (Hannover, 1925), p. 143.Google Scholar The well-known rye of Küstere is mentioned by üzdoĚan, Kazim in Kayseri Tarihi (Kayseri, 1948), p. 40.Google Scholar

4 Four tax surveys survive from the sixteenth century with data on Kayseri province, which includes Sakaltutan village and Küstere plain. The oldest three are preserved in the Başbakanlik Arşivi in Istanbul: tapu defters no. 38, dated c. 1490; no. 33, dated 1500; and no. 976, dated c. 1550. The most recent is preserved in the Tapu ve Kadastro Dairesi in Ankara, no. 136, dated 1583. While residing in Ankara from August, 1969 to June, 1971, the author made numerous visits to the city of Kayseri, as well as to its towns and villages; he spent one day at Sakaltutan in July, 1973.

5 For the description of the provincial frontier in the kanunname of 1500, see Gükbilgin, M. T., ‘XV–XVI. asir başlarinda Kayseri şehri ye livasi’, in Zeki Velidi Togan'a armağan (Istanbul, 1950–1955), pp. 98 ff.Google Scholar

6 There are no grounds for linking the Tecirlu clan with the Sakal Dutan clan mentioned above; the Tecirlu perhaps replaced the Sakal Dutan. The name Sakal Tutan as a clan name (cema'et) occurs only in the oldest register, thereafter it refers to arable fields (mezra'a) and finally a village (karye). The Tecirlu, according to Faruk Sümer, were one of twenty-one Zulkadir Turkman tribes. He associates them with Kayseri and Kirşehir but says they ranged as far west as Ankara in the sixteenth century. See Sümer, Faruk, Oğuz1ar (Türkmenler) (Ankara, 1967), pp. 174 f.Google Scholar The Tecirlu at the winter pastures of Sakaltutan in 1500 – four adult males – could only have been a clan of the greater tribe, of course. Incidentally, in the cadastral registers, the Tecirlu of Sakaltutan are listed among what appear to be a group of Yürük clans, and in fact the information given about them at least superficially resembles a Yürük tribe more than a Turkman one. A tax of 1,380 akçe on grain means a volume of 46 müdd of grain at 30 akçe apiece. In names, v. stands for veled, son of. Bad-i heva is defined as ‘irregular and occasional revenues from fine, fees, registration charges, and other casual sources of income’ (Lewis, B., ‘Bad-i Hawa’, EI2, 1, 850).Google Scholar

7 The Tecirlu disappear from view; the şarklu and Delu Budaklu are mentioned nowhere else except at Sakaltutan. şark means east. Deli Budak, a personal name, means ‘crazy lips’. The suffix ‘lu’ (belonging to) is an older form of ‘li’. The taxes collected from Sakaltutan were less in 1550 than in 1500. The reason for this is not clear. Possibly the list is incomplete, for the sheep tax is omitted. Divani was revenue due the imperial government, probably diverted to supporting a timar-holder in this instance; malikane was revenue due a private owner or a vakif. The kile of Konya, probably the standard measure in Kayseri province, weighed 32.07 kilograms. The müdd of Konya measured 225 litres. See Beldiceanu, and Beldiceanu-Steinherr, , Recherches sur Qaraman, pp. 89 f., 57 f., 46 f.Google Scholar

8 Talas, called the ‘Versailles of Kayseri’ by a nineteenth-century European visitor, is best known as the seat of a junior high school run by the American Board. The school closed in 1967.

9 In the oldest two surveys the Yürüks in the registers are not clearly listed by districts, and only sometimes is the name of a district written in with the entry. Since all the clans and winter pastures cannot be identified, it is not possible to give precise figures.

10 This includes Sosun and Sakal Dutan, which erroneously were listed under Kenar-i Irmak nahiye in 1550.

11 See, for example, the documents published by Refik, Ahmet, Anadolu'da Türk Aşiretleri, 966–1200 (Istanbul, 1930);Google ScholarGükçen, ĺbrahim, Saruhan'da Yürük ve Türkmenler (Istanbul, 1946);Google ScholarSu, Kamil, Balikesir ve civarinda Yürük ve Türkmenler (Istanbul, 1938).Google Scholar

12 Whether the name of Sakaltutan village was derived from a local geographical feature near winter pastures or from a clan that was for some other reason called Sakal Tutan is a moot question. In the defter of 1490 the clan name was given as Sakal Tutan, but the place-name was different; from 1500 onward in the defters Sakal Tutan becomes a place-name and different clan names are indicated.

13 The figure of 1,204 adult males excludes the 33 at Sosun village and the 34 at Tiraviş (Travşun) which were registered with Tomarza in the district of Mount Erciyes and Ali mountain.

14 Stirling, , Turkish Village, pp. 3, 24.Google Scholar

15 Stirling, , Turkish Village, pp. 14 f.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. 206. People at Sakaltutan told me that they intermarry with persons from all over Küstere but they do not intermarry with persons from the villages within Kayseri's orbit. Villagers at Küpekli and Kümür in Küstere, near Tomarza, spoke similarly. That possibly means that those in the villages long ago settled by Yürüks intermarry with one another but not with outsiders. Conversations with people in ‘prosperous’ villages like Zincidere, Gesi, and Nizye also supported this view.

17 Ibid., p. 186. R. Jennings, Cf., ‘Women in Early Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Judicial Records: The Sharia Court of Anatolia Kayseri’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 19 (1975), 53–114.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., p. 210.

19 Ibid., p. 20.

20 For Sakaltutan, see Ibid., pp. 44 f.

21 In 1584, Sakaltutan's neighbor Sosun had two mills, but only two other mills are recorded for the whole district. Sakaltutan had none.

22 Sakaltutan village today is not at all isolated. In fact villagers jokingly say that ‘no one lives in the village’ any more – men work in Kayseri, in Adana and elsewhere in the çukurova, in Ankara, in Istanbul, and in Germany, and they return only for periodic visits, particularly at harvest time. It is the young men who go away to work, of course.