Ottoman Mythmaking and Historiographyin Idris-i Bitlisi’s Hasht Bihisht

Abstract

This is article investigates the treatment of early Ottoman history in Idris Bitlisi’s Hasht Bihisht. I will argue that while earlier scholarship sought to find the facts of the origins of the House of Osman from Ottoman chronicles, Idris’ text should be investigated for exactly the opposite–namely, the process of conscious mythmaking by the author. Idris attempted to reconcile two diff erent types of myth. One was the origin myth of the dynasty that traced the sultans to Central Asia. The second was a myth of the formation of the Ottoman polity which he tried to present as a Roman Empire, inheritor of the legacy of Alexander the Great and Byzantine emperors.