MESA Banner
On the Cusp of Divine Truths and the Everlasting Quest for Knowledge: The Intellectual World of Muhyi-i Gülşeni (d.1606)
Abstract
Muhyi-i Gülşeni (d. 1606)—known in studies of Ottoman Sufism as the hagiographer of Ibrahim-i Gülşeni, the founder of the Gülşeni order of dervishes—contends that his own Esperanto-type language, Baleybelen, a hybrid of Persian, Turkish, and Arabic, demonstrates his unique position in the Ottoman world of letters. Indeed, Muhyi’s divinely guided and singular linguistic product, alongside his authorship of over 200 works, some 40 of which are extant, attest to his significance. Muhyi was a polymath who penned works in a variety of genres, including ethics, grammar, linguistics, dictionaries, pilgrimage guides, hagiographies, commentaries on hadith, counsel for sultans, poetry, memoirs, treatises on speculative mysticism, the science of letters, cosmology, philosophy, history, and medicine. While there are a few isolated studies on Muhyi’s select oeuvre, his overall intellectual place in, and contributions to early modern Ottoman letters and the culture of Sufism remain largely unknown. In this paper, I will introduce the only known copy of Mecmu’a-i Muhyi, a manuscript collection of some 38 different treatises of varying lengths, totaling 466 folios, with the aim of connecting Muhyi to a wider network of learned men of his time. In addition, I will also compare this work with a second text, known as the Reşehāt-i Muhyi. This second work best illustrates the scope of Muhyi’s relationships with Sufis, scholars, intellectuals, and the members of the Ottoman courtly circles and ruling elite. It is a translation of the prominent Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī”s (d.1532-3) Reşehāt-i Aynü’l-Hayat, a Naḳshbandī hagiography of their shaykhs and their silsiles, composed in Persian in 1503 or 1504. Completed in 1569, the Reşehāt’s 299 folios include discussions of Muhyi’s initiation into the Nakshi and Ahrari paths, his connections with and memories of Naskhi, Ahrari, and Kubrevi shaykhs, and detailed information on the spread of Nakshbandiyya in Anatolia and in the Ottoman imperial capital, Istanbul. By sharing my findings on the works and world of a prolific but generally overlooked Sufi author, I hope to contribute to our understanding of the complex intellectual and cultural topography and networks of knowledge in the early modern Ottoman world.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
13th-18th Centuries