Battal Gazi - The Legends

The Legends

Sources available on the historic personality consist of legends often written in the mesnevi style, and which may comport historically correct elements or points that support each other, as well as contradictions. For example, he is cited as having participated in his twenties to the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople in 718, and the legends name his Byzantine enemy as Leon, which could be no other than Leo III the Isaurian, the Emperor during the siege. On the basis of this information, his date of birth is reckoned to be around 690-695 and there is a consensus among historians for accepting 740 as the year of his death, at the Battle of Akroinon. One the other hand, in one story Battal Gazi raids the Maiden's Tower and rides away from Üsküdar, on the city's Asian side, with the Emperor's treasures and daughter, an event that is not confirmed by any historical record.

Battal Gazi was revindicated as an ancestor of Danishmend Gazi in the romanced epic on the Turkish Bey, Danishmendnâme, in which stories relating to the two figures are blended, possibly with a view to stress the presence of Islam in Anatolia even before the main Turkish advance following the Battle of Manzikert (modern Malazgirt). The verses that compose Danishmendnâme were compiled from Turkish folk literature for a first time by order of the Anatolian Seljuk Sultan Alâeddin Keykubad, a century after Danishmend's death, and the final form that reached our day is a compendium that was put together under the instructions of the early 15th century Ottoman sultan Murad II.

Battal Gazi remains a very vivacious figure in Turkey's modern day urban culture. This is partly due to a series of films in which Battal Gazi was incarnated by and immortalized anew under the chiselled features of the Turkish film star Cüneyt Arkın. These modern references sometimes involve touches of indirect humor.