The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed an outburst of commentary writing, especially on canonical Arabic learned religious texts (jurisprudence, Qur'anic exegesis and traditions, dialectic theology, or kalam), and works in the religious auxiliary fields (logic and grammar). This phenomenon may be related to the increasing numbers of madrasa, the main locus of commentary production. Rather than strictly comprising a genre, the commentary served as a pedagogical and interpretive mode of writing. It textually reproduced the interaction between teacher and student through the mechanism of explanation, either in an elaborated or abridged format. It was thus through commentaries that the student first familiarized himself with authoritative religious texts. Commentaries, however, were not limited to pedagogical purposes. Aspiring scholars engaged in commentary writing in order to establish themselves textually within an isnad of scholarship leading back to authoritative texts around which textual communities took shape. Finally, as a tool of interpretation, the commentary format likewise facilitated debate and discussion of an authoritative work, as well as provided a platform for critique, amendment, and even refutation of certain stances, views and texts. Thus, through the commentary mode, a canon of authoritative works was continually refashioned, updated, and even displaced within changing conditions of understanding and interpretation. Despite their integral place in Ottoman intellectual life, commentaries have received relatively little attention by scholars. Thus, in addition to briefly touching upon the role and function of commentary writing in the early Ottoman period, this paper traces a particular textual community of commentaries explicating a cluster of related late thirteenth-century works by al-Urmawi, al-Qazvini al-Katibi, and al-Baydawi, all produced under the patronage of the Ilkhanid financial minister al-Juwayni in the interrelated disciplines of tafsir, kalam and logic. Here the relationship between scholarly networks, the commentary mode of textual production, and its relationship to the original text will be considered. We will examine specifically the commentaries and super-commentaries produced by fifteenth authors such as Şemseddin Fenari, Cürcani (al-Jurjani), ‘Ala’eddin ‘Ali et-Tusi, and Molla Hüsrev.

‘Ilm al-kalām in Arabic, refers to philosophically oriented theology within the general structure of Islamic thought. Through its historical transformation, it differs from ‘aqīda (catechism), which is a presentation of the matters of belief, and from usūl al-dīn (the principles of faith), which clarifies and defends Islamic theological doctrine. Scholars of the post-Ghazzālian period beginning with Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī mixed Sunni kalām with philosophy, by including most physical and metaphysical issues of philosophy in their works. As a result, their texts combined Ash‘arite thought with an Avicennan interpretation of Aristotelian philosophy, absorbing earlier Muslim philosophical tradition within its theological framework. This transformation gave Islamic theology a more theoretical nature within a broader framework dealing with all metaphysical issues and methodological principles of Islamic thought. Kalām was not a new phenomenon in the Ottoman heartlands, since it was a continuation of an existent religious culture established earlier by Anatolian Seljuqs since the twelfth century. It has been observed that Ottoman scholars, although they were officially followers of Maturidism, one of the two rationalist Sunni theological schools, the nature of their loyalty to Maturidism has not been examined yet with careful textual studies. In other words, how faithful were Ottoman scholars to the principles of Maturidism? Were they influenced by other theological schools? Furthermore, Ottoman scholars appear to have been engaged in the further exploration of interaction between philosophy and theology, and as a result were attracted to the Ash‘arite texts of the post-classical period. This paper proposes to analyze the characteristics Ottoman theological texts by taking in considerations their differing stances and perspectives and examining scholarly debates that took place under sponsorships of the sultans or viziers. The paper likewise will explore the reasons behind the selection of sources and the addition of new discussions by the Ottoman kalam authors, such as Hayali (d. 1470), Hocazade (d. 1488) Kesteli (d. 1495), and Kemalpaşazade (d. 1534) as a basis for their interpretation and engagement in debates with other scholars.

The biographical dictionary tradition is one of the best-researched of Islamicate genres; the origins and flowering of Arabic tabaqat have been documented thoroughly and thoughtfully, and Ottoman Turkish tezkires are increasingly being approached not as mere mines for data, but as complex cultural products with their own intellectual and political agendas. However, rarely have these different strands been examined together. This paper will place the Ottoman biographical tradition in its synchronic and diachronic contexts, showing how it grew out of and responded to its Persian, Arabic and Turkish-language counterparts. Premiered in the sixteenth century, the Turkish-language Ottoman tezkire had its immediate predecessor not in the Arabic tabaqat, but in works produced in the fifteenth-century Persianate lands. However, with the maturation of Ottoman imperial claims and the increasing influence of the Arabic tradition, the target audiences, models and aims of Ottoman biographical compilations changed significantly. This paper will examine how this biographical literature altered its language, form and content in response to shifting cultural and political constellations. In the complexity of its roots and routes, the biographical tradition is typical of the Ottoman written corpus. The paper thus opens up onto a number of larger issues surrounding Ottoman participation in the Islamic intellectual tradition in an age of imperial expansion. How did Ottoman scholars use biographical compilations both to locate themselves within a wider Islamic tradition, and to distinguish themselves from it? How did they alter the genre selectively in order to profile themselves to various groups within and outside of the empire’s borders? How did these texts emerge from and help to constitute certain communities? Placing the Ottoman written tradition within the longue durée of Islamic thought shows it to be both more idiosyncratic, and more indebted to a larger intellectual world than often assumed.

Among the most widely read books in the Ottoman world were ilmihals, manuals of religious instruction that were written to teach ordinary believers the basics of Islamic doctrine and practice. The genre’s origins lie in the aqa’id works, Islamic creeds, the later examples of which also incorporated matters of religious practice alongside doctrine. The earliest known Turkish ilmihals, dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were, in large part, translations-cum-adaptations of such creedal works, but they also covered various topics that would normally come under the purview of conduct books and books of practical ethics. As such, ilmihals fulfilled both a more local need to transplant knowledge of Islamic norms to the lands of Rum and a more general tendency in the post-Mongol period to codify Islamic belief and practice. This second dimension of ilmihal writing became even more important when the Ottoman state elites embarked upon a project of Sunnitization in the sixteenth century. It was also in this period, and particularly after the late sixteenth century, that the genre truly proliferated. Many more ilmihals were written then, and circulated in greater numbers, a development that was aided by the spread of literacy among the urban populace. Moreover, even though ilmihals were written with the explicit aim to homogenize Islamic belief and practice, the genre itself became diversified in the first half of the seventeenth century, when the top ranks of the learned establishment lost their monopoly over the religious debates, and when a socially and ideologically more diverse group of writers turned ilmihals into a platform for religious controversy. The present paper also focuses on this rather prolific period of ilmihal writing, running from ca. 1550 to ca. 1660. The 110 years in question are examined both as a distinctive “moment” in the longer history of the genre, and as a period in which the genre went through different phases in line with the rapidly changing social, political and religious climate. A central concern of this investigation will be to map out the principal textual communities that produced and circulated ilmihals. To this end we shall examine which texts tended to go with which, and the intellectual genealogies claimed for each text. We shall also examine how the content and form of ilmihals varied according to the social profile of both the writers and the intended audience.