The Forgotten Forefathers: Wafaʾi Dervishes in Medieval Anatolia

Abstract

Using Alevi documents and Seljuk and Ottoman-era archival sources, chapter 2 tracks the various Sufi figures and sayyidfamilies who are purported to be spiritual and/or biological descendants of Abu’l-Wafaʾ and who thrived in Anatolia from the late twelfth century or early thirteenth until the mid-sixteenth century. It shows how, from the second half of the fifteenth century onward, most Wafaʾi offshoots in eastern Anatolia came to be assimilated under the common flag of Kizilbashism, gradually losing their group identities and order structures as they evolved into components of the Kizilbash/Alevi ocaksystem. This chapter also argues that the erosion of the Wafaʾi memory, to some extent a natural corollary of the incorporation of the Wafaʾi affiliates into the Safavid-led Kizilbash movement, also involved the conflation and blending of the Wafaʾi legacy with that of the Bektashi tradition as it was configured in the Bektashi hagiographic and oral tradition compiled at about the turn of the sixteenth century.