Babai

The Babai were a religio-social movement that disturbed the Turkman centres of Asia Minor a few years before the Mongol invasion, and it was of great importance in the social and cultural development of the Turkish people. It arose from the tensions between the Saljuq state of Rum, which by the seventh/thirteenth century had a strong Iranian-influenced administrative and Sunni urban framework, and the Turkman countryside and frontiers, which kept older Turkish traditions and were more open to heterodox doctrines from Central Asia. Shortly before 638 AH (1240) the baba Ishak, known as "Rasul (Allah)", from the Kafarsud region on the Syrian border, preached to the Turkmans of the eastern Taurus and of Amasya. He raised the standard of revolt in 638 AH, defied several large Saljuq armies, and was finally captured through Frankish mercenaries; even then the movement was not completely suppressed. ¹

Little is known of the distinctive features. The adepts wore a red cap (later also worn by the Kizilbash), black robes and sandals. Ishak claimed to be a prophet and allied himself with the extremist forms of Shi'ism prevalent in Irano-Turkish popular circles. The movement was fundamentally opposed to the aristocratic movement of Jalal al-Din Rumi and the Mawlawis. It is mentioned by Ibn Bibi, by Sibt Ibn al-Jawzi, by the Franciscan Simon of Saint-Quentin and by Bar Hebraeus, and the question of its connection with the Karamanid principality of Taurus and with the religious group of Hajji Bektash, which Eflaki connects with the Babai, remains open. The Babai current was at the head of the popular movements that the dislocation of the Saljuq state later made irresistible. ²