There was, however, no noteworthy nomad rebellion against the authority of the Ottoman state until about 1500, when the nomads and semi-nomads, for whom Ottoman rule had become a distant and alien entity, finally found a focus for their political discontent. This happened at the accession of Sheikh Ismail, of the Safavid order of dervishes, to the Persian throne as Shah Ismail I (1501), in whose state nomad groups were allowed a considerable political role. The Safavids, descended from Sheikh Safi al-Din Ishaki (1252-1334), initially resided in the town of Ardabil in western Iran. But in the fifteenth century the ancestor of Shah Ismail, Sheikh Cunayd, emigrated to Anatolia. There, among a group of nomads, already heterodox from a conventional Sunni Islam point of view, he began to preach an extreme version of the Shia. In the sermons of Sheikh Cunayd and later in those of Ismail himself, Ali, the son in law and nephew of the Prophet Muhummad, was accorded a cosmic significance which far exceeded his historical role. As the religious leaders of extreme Shiite nomads, the Safavid gained the support which Shah Ismail was then able to use in seizing political power.
Marginalized in the Ottoman state, the nomads of Anatolia often gave their support to the newly-emerged Safavid dynasty. One of the resulting rebellions, that of Sahkulu (1511-12), represented a real threat to the Ottoman State, which still only had a fragile grip on Anatolia. This situation brought about a change in the attitude of the Ottoman sultans towards the heterodox religious practices of many nomads and recently settled villagers. In earlier times, the Ottoman sultans had largely concentrated on expansion at the expense of their Christian (i.e. Byzantine, Serbian or Albanian) neighbors. In the process they exhibited considerable tolerance towards the heterodoxy of many of the dervish sheikhs who fought at the frontier along with their nomadic or semi-nomadic followers. This changed with the arrival on the scene of the Safavids; in the sixteenth century the Ottoman Sultans became militant fighters for Sunni beliefs and practices.
These circumstances probably prompted Sultan Bayezid II (reign:1481 - 1512) to encourage the devish order of the Bektashis to guide the nomads towards Sunni Islam. To this end he sponsored the enlargement of certain lodges belonging to the order, such as those located in the small town of Osmancik in northern Anatolia or else in Hacibektas itself. However, in order to communicate with the nomads, the dervishes had to adapt to their way of thinking, and, as a result accepted some of the beliefs they had been sent out to combat. Moreover, heterodox dervishes - that is, those suspected of sympathizing with the Shiite Safavids - were subject to violent persecution in sixteenth century Anatolia. Many of them sought refuge amoung the well established and therefore less threatened Bektashi dervishes. In this way an order which was still more or less Sunni in character around 1500, metamorphosed in the course of a single century into a spiritual community dominated by Shiite conceptions.
ref: Faroqhi, S (2007). Subjects of the Sultan (pg 23-24) London: I.B Tauris & Co Ltd.
