The Ahi Tradition

Called “Gaziyân-ı Rûm” by Âşıkpaşazâde and alps or alperens in other sources, this was an old and widespread organisation known across the Turkic world even before Islam. The ancient ideal of the alp, the hero, became that of the alperen and the gazi once the Turks accepted Islam. Serving the Ottomans, the Turkmen gazis eased the conquest and settlement of the Balkans; those who distinguished themselves on campaign were granted timar estates and went on serving the state.

Mudurnu’s entry into the Ottoman realm is part of this story. Osman Bey is said to have come to the area around 1307 and, together with Gazi Samsa Çavuş, who knew the region well, taken Mudurnu, Göynük and Taraklı, leaving the government of Mudurnu to Samsa Çavuş. The present-day villages of Çavuşderesi and Samsaçavuş take their names from the community that came and settled with him.

From then on, the Ahis and the Bacıs led the building of a new life in Mudurnu — in education and trade, craft and manners, faith and public affairs — and carried that tradition down to our day.

The Ahis were the bazaar’s face of the four groups: tradesmen and craftsmen working in the same market, standing surety for one another and training apprentices at their masters’ side. Their lodges were both guild halls and guest-houses; welcoming, feeding and protecting the traveller were among the best-remembered Ahi virtues.

Mudurnu is one of the places where this tradition has stayed alive. When Ibn Battuta reached the town in the winter of 1333–34 he lodged with the Ahis, and his account shows there were at least two such lodges in and near Mudurnu at the time. The Mudurnu Ahi Museum in the arasta and the tradesmen’s prayer said every Friday are living traces of that heritage.

The sheikhs, dervishes, spiritual guides, poets, minstrels and wanderers who came to Anatolia in the 13th century fleeing the Mongol invasion of Central Asia are known as the Abdalân-ı Rûm, the abdals of Anatolia. They spoke to country people in Turkish, through poems, sayings and the saz; travelling the roads in large companies of men, women and children, they knocked on the doors of the heart.

Earning their living as circumcisers, blacksmiths, tinners, farriers, cauldron-makers, sieve-makers, basket-weavers, camel drivers, drummers, musicians and storytellers, the abdals became both an example and a harmony wherever they went. They cared nothing for dress, wealth, rank or worldly goods; their maxim ran: “An abdal does not come shouting; he does not walk to claim a self or an identity, nor make enmity out of identity.” Abdal-hood is a matter of a heart cleansed of such cares — a spiritual stance described as “dying before death”.

The men who rescued Ibn Battuta from the snowbound mountain on the road to Mudurnu were dervishes of just such a lodge: that Friday eve the villagers had carried food up to it, and remembrance of God went on until morning.

In the old Turkic societies the khagan and the khatun ruled the land together; man and woman were held to be children of sky and earth, neither of whom could exist without the other. The Orkhon inscriptions, the Kutadgu Bilig, the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, the tales of Dede Korkut and the Oghuz-names speak often of women warriors. This outlook survived the coming of Islam, and women went on taking part in learning, the arts, education and production.

Fatma Bacı — daughter of Evhadüddîn Kirmânî, one of the great scholars of the age, and wife of Ahi Evren — founded the Bacıyân-ı Rûm together with the women of Kayseri. Taking on weaving, sewing, knitting, laundering, the hosting of guests at the lodges, cooking and the clothing of soldiers, women carried half of social life, of the economy and of mutual aid. Through her learning, her Sufi path, her skill and her enterprise, Fatma Bacı showed other women the way.

Ibn Battuta cannot hide his surprise when he compares Anatolian women with those of other lands: they ride horses and stand in the front ranks of the markets. The tradition lived on in Mudurnu too. The town had a separate “women’s market” where women sold what they made themselves; from village and town alike they brought food, weaving and lace to sell.

In 16th-century Mudurnu, famous then for making needles, women turned needle lace — iğne oyası, worked in silk they raised and dyed themselves — from a craft into an art. Besides everyday things such as headscarves, fezzes and handkerchiefs, the bridal crown inspired by wild roses, worn by the bride and her friends on henna night, is known as an ornament unique to Mudurnu.