An evaluation about not mentioning milan/milli tribe in sharafnama
Authors: GÜMÜŞ Ercan 
Published: October 2023

The fact that the Milan Tribe was not dealt with in the Sharafnama is a matter that draws the attention of many researchers who are somehow interested in the history of the tribe and the region. The absence of Milan Tribe in an ambitious work on the Kurdish dynasty and tribes in the 16th century deserves to be questioned.

After the Ottoman Empire established its dominance in Mardin and its surroundings in the 16th century, it is known that the Milan Tribe, whose names are frequently encountered in the censuses (tax registers, tahrir), was strong in and around Mardin. It is known that especially in a date as early as 1579, the members of the Milan rulers saved timar and ziamet in and around Mardin. It is a question that needs to be answered that this tribe and its rulers are not mentioned in the Sharafnama, which was completed shortly after this date.

This question, whose answer is sought, requires evaluating some possibilities. The first is a claim that has been dealt with before, and according to this, the Milan confederation was not yet a political focus in this period, and some of the Milanese members were ruling around Chabakchur under the name "Sivedi". Sharaf Khan dealt with this household and tribe in his work. If this claim is taken as a basis, the Milan Tribe was not yet known with the name "Mil" at that time. The following conclusion is reached from the claim; The Sivedis, who came from the Siverek environs and established dominance in Chabakchur, formed the core of Milan.

A second possibility is that a few titles that Sharaf Khan left incomplete in his work can be devoted to this subject. As it is known, there are incomplete chapters in Sharafnama. Would Milan tribes be included in the missing titles?

One of the weakest possibilities is that Sharaf Khan does not have enough information about the desert region called "Barriya". As a matter of fact, as it will be remembered, he spent most of his life with the Safavids in the center of Iran and returned to Bitlis, which was his ancestral land in the end of his life. However, it is known that during this period, the Milan Tribe used the highlands on the Van-Erzurum and Azerbaijan sides as a plateau. It is unlikely that the Rojkan historiography tradition, which includes Sharaf Khan and historians such as Shukri-yi Bitlisi and İdris-i Bitlisi, does not recognize the Milan Tribe. As a matter of fact, in some periods, the Rojkan and Milan confederations were called for help by their vassals, the Ottoman Empire, and they took part in the campaigns with close statuses. The Basra Campaign in the south at the beginning of the 18th century and the Persian Campaign in the east towards the middle of the same century are examples of this.

Finally, the fact that the Milan Tribe is not mentioned in the Sharafnama should be sought in the rapid political transformation in the nature of the tribal structure. The Kurdish tribal structure, unlike its Arab neighbors, was shaped by political and geographical factors rather than blood ties. For this reason, the tribal administration and name, which was a super structure in some periods of history, could continue to exist within another political power with a lower status after a short time. It should be remembered that the Omarans, one of the tribes of Milan, formed a great confederation that would later become known by their own name. Another example of Milan's sub-tribe tribes evolving into a larger political situation where they roamed as a new confederative structure is the Hasanans. Yezidi tribes such as Musyan and Sharafan, who were considered as Milan tribes while living nomads, are other examples of this phenomenon.