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Eighteenth-Century Provincial Fatawa Collections and the Ottoman Archival Consciousness
Abstract
My paper will discuss the history of the fatawa collection of the seventeenth-century officially appointed Hanafi mufti of Jerusalem as the first in a series of Hanafi fatawa collections by officially appointed muftis across the Ottoman Empire over the course of the long eighteenth century. ‘Abd al-Rahim’s collection was compiled by his son who was asked to do so by the eminent chief imperial mufti, ?eyhulislam Feyzullah Efendi (d. 1703). The collection established a new practice, that of the standardized collection of fatawa issued by provincially appointed muftis. These collections were very different from most collections from the fifteenth through the seventeenth century. The latter were non-standardized collections of rulings, or mecmu’as. Accordingly, these compilations varied significantly in terms of their organization and content. Different individuals and groups kept their own collections of rulings by eminent and less eminent jurists. The pre-Feyzuallah collections, then, illustrate the significance of Feyzullah Efendi’s vision of the standardized provincial fatawa collections that were part of the different provinces’ canon of “books of high repute.” The paper will also situate these collections as part of a broader reorganization of the imperial paper trail.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Ottoman Empire
Sub Area
13th-18th Centuries