The examination of oral and written practices of knowledge transmission during the first four centuries of Islam has proved extremely productive (Sezgin 1967-84; Schoeler 2006). A subset of this field, the reconstruction of lost works, has led scholars in various disciplines to substantially revise the early history of religious movements or redate the advent of literary genres (inter alia: H. Modarressi 2003, E. Landau-Tasseron 2004, D. Stewart 2008), and allowed others to demonstrate the significant influence of previous works on the organization of major literary or exegetical works (Sezgin 1956, Fleischhammer 1974, S. Günther 2009). The present paper argues that the positive identification of biographical works written by and devoted to Sufis from the first half of the 4th/10th century necessitates a reconsideration of the early written systematization of Sufism, with particular reference to the Baghdad school of Sufism. Major studies on the systematization of Sufi biography date the advent of the tradition to the early 5th/11th century, based primarily upon extant prosopographical sources (“group biographies”) such as al-Sulamī’s Ṭabaqāt and al-Iṣfahānī’s Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ (henceforth HA; Cooperson 2000, Mojaddedi 2001). Contrary to this characterization, both Massignon (1975 [1922]) and Sezgin have identified no fewer than seven lost prosopographical works of Sufi biography composed during the first half of the 4th/10th century, mostly by Baghdad-based Sufis; these findings have been restated by Böwering (1980), Knysh (2000), and Karamustafa (2007). Mojaddedi, conversely, has stated these works are misidentified and should instead be described as “notebooks” (2001, p. 56-61). Until the present, no study has attempted to determine to what extent these works have been preserved and can be reconstructed. To test Mojaddedi’s claims about the works previously identified as Sufi prosopographies, I have compiled the notations of transmission between al-Iṣfahānī and his immediate informants from the final three volumes of HA, the largest extant work of Sufi prosopography. The dataset comprises 4,615 accounts from 291 biographical notices. Parsing these data in a non-relational database reveals consistent patterns of usage indicating both the persistent citation of substantial literary works which can be considered books, and that the organization of HA was heavily dependent on them. Consequently, the advent of the written biographical tradition of Sufism can be dated 50-70 years earlier than previously argued, and it is hypothesized that the reconstruction of these works will reveal substantial differences in emphasis between the earlier and later traditions.

Recent scholarship on Ottoman history has stressed the beginning of the 16th-century as an era in which confessional identities strongly crystallized. It has been argued that the Empire’s Sunni identity developed as a strong force against the emergence of a Shiite Safavid Empire. Recent Ottomanist scholarship has viewed the 15th-century as an era of “confessional ambiguity” or “metadoxy”, whereby no clear distinction existed between orthodox and heterodox versions of Islam in the Ottoman polity. In this paper, I will be focusing on a major representative of 15th-century Ottoman Sufism, Eşrefoğlu Rumi (d. 1469) and his work Tarikatname (Book of the Sufi Path). Written as a manual for Sufi initiates to choose the ideal path and Sufi guide, this work opens a window into the ideals of 15th-century Ottoman Sufi piety. While Eşrefoğlu Rumi favors a Sunni Sufi path, he attributes a special position to Ali b. Abi Talib. Considering Eşrefoğlu Rumi’s position, I would argue that, at least in the eyes of pious individuals like himself, there was a distinction between “the right path” of Islam and what these pious individuals regarded as more “heretical” ways that they condemned. Later conceptualizations of Ottoman “orthodox” Sunni Islam tended to emphasize a clash between the “orthodox” and Sufi versions of Islam. However, Eşrefoğlu Rumi’s work demonstrates otherwise. Sufism and his 15th-century pious “orthodox” understanding of Islam were not mutually exclusive within the evolving Ottoman religion-political milieu. Similarly, the fact that Ali held a special place in Eşrefoğlu Rumi’s Sufi ideals does not indicate that he strayed from his Sunni position. On the contrary, the special place attributed to Ali originates from the latter’s established image as the ideal “friend of God”. This paper will demonstrate Eşrefoğlu Rumi’s attempts to articulate his version of “orthodoxy” in the context of an evolving Ottoman imperial vision under Mehmed II (d.1481). In addition, it will analyze his Sufi ideals within the paradigm of the vernacularization of Islamic culture and piety in Ottoman Anatolia. Tarikatname thus provides the modern historian with a framework to discuss and reconsider the definitions of confession and orthodoxy, and illuminate Sufi piety and mentalities of the 15th-century.

This ethnographic study investigates a distinct Islamic tradition of a Turkish Sufi society, named Rifaiyye, which confronts many conventional Islamic norms on gender. The Rifais, led by an unveiled female sheikh, named Cemalnur Sargut, are marked by their upper middle class, educated, professional and cosmopolitan social profile. They intellectualize Sufism in particular ways that are conducive to their modern pious subjectivities, which finds little resemblance in other modern-pious Islamic movements. They reconfigure the discourses and practices of Islam and modernity in novel ways with particular implications for gender norms. Their disruption of normative Islamic gender discourse involves discarding bodily modesty codes, such as veiling and gender segregation, and extending women’s public participation to the level of community and spiritual leadership. By contextualizing the Rifais in their socio-historical trajectory from the fall of the Ottoman Empire, through the early years of Turkish Republic to the contemporary Turkey, this paper traces their evolving engagement with the dynamic and contested discourses of modernity, secularism, neoliberalism and Islam in Turkey, with its specific ramifications for the status of women. Kenan Rifai (1867-1950), the founder of the Rifaiyye, was an unconventional Sufi sheikh. He was educated in French and worked as a civil bureaucrat in national education sector. His diverse circle included Ottoman ulamas, Sheikhul-Islams, philosophers, Orthodox priests as well as Republican elites among others. He welcomed the Republican reform banning the Sufi lodges in 1925 as the will of God on the basis of their degeneration and incompatibility with modern society’s needs. His Sufi ethos was based on love and ethics aimed at disciplining selves into socially responsible moral agents. Mystical union with God was epitomized not in asceticism, but through active civic participation driven by love. Since love was deemed to be the most powerful tool to cultivate Sufi subjectivity, women were exalted for their greater capacity to love. Most of his prominent students were educated women, one of which (Samiha Ayverdi, 1905-1993) inherited the leadership. Between the 60s and the 90s, Ayverdi established several civil society associations that aimed to preserve the Turkish cultural heritage. Having been operating in a relatively more liberal Turkish civil society in which public Islam has been rendered visible, her successor Cemalnur Sargut has foregrounded the Sufi identity of the group openly. She has initiated academic enterprises on Sufism by endowing university chairs in the US, China, Japan and Turkey as well as organizing international academic conferences.