REBIRTH 169tine more or less controlled the western parts, but only more or less; and no
claim went undisputed by the other. Asia Minor had become a lawless no-
man's land, inhabited by both Christians and Turks and ruled by no one.
The Mongol eruptions drove fresh hordes ofTurkish pastoral nomads
out of Central Asia. They drifted until they reached Asia Minor, but here
finally they felt at home. Why here? Because pastoral nomads tended to
like this sort oflawless environment. As autonomous self-ruling dans, they
had their own leaders and laws and just felt crimped by the sort oflaw and
order governments imposed. In a disputed frontier zone they could roam
where they wanted, graze their herds where they wished, and supplement
their needs by raiding settled folks according to the time-tested traditions
of the steppes they had once called home.
Christians still lived in this anarchic zone, small towns and villages en-
dured, but no government guaranteed the safety of the roads, no police
came to the aid of anyone whose store got robbed, and no agency rushed
to help in cases of fire, flood, or other catastrophe. The public sphere had
eroded, so one had nobody to turn to in times of trouble except one's dan,
one's friends and--one's Sufi brothers.
As the new Sufism proliferated through this region, itinerant mystics
began to roam the land. Some came from Persia and further east; some
emerged locally. Many were dervishes, men who embraced voluntary
poverty as a spiritual exercise. They didn't work but lived on alms in order
that they might free up all their time to contemplate God.
Many of these mystic vagabonds were also eccentrics; if you were living
on alms, there was probably some advantage to standing out from the
crowd. Kalendar, one of the earliest of these mystic vagabonds, wandered
from town to town with bands of followers, all beating drums, chanting,
singing, shouting, ranting, wildly exhorting people to come to Allah and
urging them also to fight the infidels, fight them, fight! He and his fol-
lowers had unkempt hair, they dressed in rags, and they disturbed the
peace, but they excited fervid passions and strange ideas, and wherever
Kalendar went, Kalendari brotherhoods sprouted in his wake.
Almost as a defense against wild men like Kalendar, more respectable
people embraced another mystic named Bektash, an austere ascetic. For all
his clerical sobriety, Bektash had a disturbing intensity about him, but at
least he didn't shout. He became the favorite Sufi of the ulama.