Peirce|115venerable frontier province, familiar with the local terrain as well as with the
ways of conquerors, shows how dominions are won.
When exactly these stories took hold is uncertain, but it is likely that they
joined the canon of Aintab’s lore soon after 1516, for the two holy men actually
prospered in the postconquest years. Dülük Baba, or rather the shrine dedicated
to him, and the shaykh of Sam, an actual contemporary of the conquest, were
beneficiaries of sultanic largesse. Selim may have ordered the enhancement of the
existing shrine complex at Dülük (the Roman Doliche), although it was his son
who guaranteed its prosperity by actually endowing it with new revenues. As for
Sam, at some point during his reign Selim transformed the village and its revenues
into a religious foundation (waq f) entrusted to the shaykh and his descendants.
The Sam shaykh’s family would go on to construct a new madrasa, primary
school, and commercial center in 1548, no doubt with revenues from the founda-
tion. The patronage of the sultan had enabled the shaykh’s family to themselves
become local patrons. It is quite possible that Selim actually met with the shaykh
from Sam during his brief sojourn in Aintab. The shaykh supposedly performed
a personal service for the sultan, curing him of constipation before the decisive
battle with the Mamluks. It was the habit of traveling sultans to meet with local
civic and spiritual leaders to gain local knowledge and exchange respects.
These legends configuring the Ottoman conquest as a local victory prompt
two speculations. Both go to the question of how Aintab regarded its entry into
the empire. The first concerns the city’s voluntary surrender to Selim. History
credits the initiative of the Mamluk governor Yunus, but he was unlikely to have
ceded the city without the backing of its leading citizens, or some of them at
least. One wonders if powerful figures in Aintab, including perhaps the shaykh
of Sam, pressured Yunus Beg to embrace the Ottomans. The wily frontier city had
long experience in negotiating with armies. Yielding to the advancing sultan was
certainly a move that made good sense, as the Mamluks were by then too weak to
either control or protect the province. The legend of Dülük Baba’s prediction may
reflect the calculation that the Ottomans would sooner or later prevail.
The second question concerns how Selim was remembered. The legends do
not explicitly assert admiration for him. Rather, remembered history renders Se-
lim an admirer of Aintab, or at least of its holy men, for whose memorials he
showed a supplicant’s gratitude. On the other hand, Selim may have eventually
become valuable to Aintab’s self-esteem. He was the only Ottoman sultan ever to
come to Aintab. Although some residents of the province no doubt turned out to
watch Süleyman and his army as they crossed the southeast corner of the prov-
ince on their return march from the 1535 victory in Iraq, the sultan did not stop
at Aintab city. Indeed, not a single Ottoman sultan after Süleyman visited any of
the lands taken by Selim in 1516 and 1517.