Networks of Knowledge and Connectivity in the Early Modern Mediterranean and the Near East
An intriguing letter dated c. 1436 in Feridun Bey's (d.1583) Munseat (correspondence collection) tells an unlikely story about the Ottoman ruler Murad II's request to the Mamluk Sultan Barsbay regarding an inheritance case. This letter exemplifies just one instance on how these two societies were connected through complex and surprisingly interwoven commercial, diplomatic, and social networks. Cases, such as this one, illustrate moments of intersection among members of diverse career/cultural/political backgrounds and social "classes" and invites us to reconceptualize the formation(s), adaptability, and utility of networks that shaped socio-political and cultural realities in early modern Islamicate societies.
Existing scholarship treats these networks as separate categories from one another. The four papers in this panel hope to reasses this idea by showing how these networks were connected through different angles demonstrating how merchants, thinkers, scholars, and intellectuals often shared mentalities. The first paper questions the assumed clear-cut epistemological borders between Muslim and non-Muslim literati, and shows that intellectual discussions and formation of scientific knowledge were not limited to the exchanges between the scholars of the same denomination. The second paper investigates the connections between the mercantile and intellectual networks via the use of Arabic and Turkish primary sources to asses their impact on different segments of Ottoman and Mamluk societies. The third paper is about a scholar, whose intellectual connectivity exceeded geographic boundaries and whose biography places Mecca and Medina back into center of intellectual networks, and reassesing the role of these two cities as vibrant cultural hubs. The last paper investigates lawmaking as part of an intellectual dialogue and a complex negotiation process between diverse groups of local (Egyptian) and ruling classes (Egyptian and Ottoman). All four papers show that reconceptualizing the socio-political, intellectual, and cultural connectivity beyond the typical solitary and exclusivist frameworks such as travel, commerce, education, and physical mobility open up rich venues to understand Mediterranean and Islamicate early modern mentalities.
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Both Arabic and Turkish evidence in narrative, diplomatic, and archival sources (i.e. inheritance records, custom registers, etc.) suggests that a solid relationship of trade was established between the Ottoman and Mamluk lands. Although existing scholarship proves us the existence of these networks, no one has considered the social, cultural, and intellectual ramifications of these networks for the relationship between these two societies. The investigation into these implications lead us to a larger historical question of what types of networks these merchants build during their sojourns and how did they contribute to the dissemination and production of knowledge. Recently, there has been an awakening interest in the intellectual networks of the Islamicate world, and specialists have argued that trade networks often overlap with intellectual ones. This paper investigates the connection between the mercantile and intellectual networks and the impact of these connections on the relationship between the Ottoman and Mamluk societies. Thus, by looking into Arabic and Turkish narrative, diplomatic, and archival sources it offers a new lens to evaluate the relationship between the Ottoman and Mamluk societies that has been primarily defined by warfare and conquest, as well as into the broader Islamicate Mediterranean.
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Dr. Abdurrahman Atcil
In the pre-modern Muslim societies, there was a broad consensus about the authority of sharia laws to regulate the horizontal relationships between individuals, including in such areas as personal status, transactions, and inheritance. Underneath that consensus, however, there could be significant differences of opinion, especially about how to put that law into practice. For example, which of the doctrines of the four legal schools (Hanafi, Shafi?i, Maliki and Hanbali) would become the basis of legal procedure, endorsed and sanctioned by the state apparatus? Who would implement sharia rules in the courts? What would be the relationship of the sharia judge with the ruling class? After the Ottoman takeover of Egypt, these questions were all matters of contention. The kanun laws in the form of decrees (ferman) brought about several shifts in the organization of sharia courts and the nature of their relationship with the Ottoman government.
An investigation into the context of these laws reveals that the will and ideas of the sultan (or his men) did not singlehandedly determine how sharia courts in Egypt would function. Local groups, including local scholars and common people, participated in the interactions that determined how those courts were to function and contributed to the formation of the laws that regulated sharia courts in Egypt. The end result of these interactions appears to have been a product of the hybridization of the Mamluk and Ottoman priorities. The judicial administration of Egypt was incorporated into the Ottoman scholarly-bureaucratic system by the appointment of a top Hanafi scholar-bureaucrat as the single judge formally above all other judicial personnel. However, in Egypt, in contrast to the Ottoman Balkans and Anatolia, the representatives of all legal schools were appointed as deputies and recognized as of equal status in the judicial process.
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Mr. Ertugrul Okten
Intellectual networks in the Islamicate world is one of the thriving subjects in historical studies. There seems to be two major ways of exploring this issue: examining individuals or exploring certain nodes that attracted people from other parts of the Islamic World. In this paper I would like to focus on Imam al-Yafi‘i (‘Afif al-Din ‘Abd Allah b. As‘ad al-Yafi‘i al-Yamani) , a 14th century Yemenite scholar and Sufi, who eventually dwelled in Mecca following a period of voyages to Egypt, Mecca and back to Yemen. In the literature he has not drawn much attention, but initial research shows that he was well-known and influential as a scholar of hadith, history and Sufism, a result of his some thirty year teaching career in Mecca. His renowned Mirat al-Jinan is a chronological history beginning from year 1 (Hijri) ending at the year 750. Especially in the later part of this work al-Yafi‘i seems to have included his observations and personal experiences, also with references to his contacts. By taking this work as my main source I would like to shed light on Imam al-Yafi‘i and his circle. This promises to be a significant attempt for two reasons: First, al-Yafi ‘i’s contacts such as his student Shah Nimat Allah-e Wali (d. 834/1431), a major Central Asian/Iranian Sufi leader, or, Najm al-Din Yusuf b. Abd al-Rahman al-Isfahani (d. 750/1349), one of the prominent individuals of Meccan religious scene in the mid-13th century, indicate that al-Yafi‘i was in the center of a set of connections that included noteworthy intellectuals and religious figures. Identifying those individuals connected with al-Yafi‘i is promises to shed light on one of the long forgotten, but in fact significant intellectual circles in Islamic history. Second, students of personal networks in Islamic history have generally looked at geographical centers other than the two holy cities. Since Mecca and Medina were centers attracting not only pilgrims but also scholars, we need to bring Mecca and Medina under focus as centers where minds met and intellectual exchange took place. My paper also aims to be a preliminary attempt to problematize Mecca as such.
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Mr. Samet Budak
The Turkish Mediterranean lived and breathed with the same rhythms as the Christian, that the whole sea shared a common destiny, a heavy one indeed, with identical problems and general trends if not identical consequences.
—Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean
His theoretical concerns aside, Braudel’s conceptualization of the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century was based on geography, economy and society in a path breaking way. Taking a cue from Braudel, this presentation proposes a cultural and intellectual oecumene within the Eastern Mediterranean basin in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although it seemed politically divided, the Eastern Mediterranean’s idiosyncratic commonalities within its intellectual context transcended all boundaries that were imagined in political spheres including those among the Byzantines, Mamluks and Ottomans as well as their borders with Italian Renaissance.
This presentation will investigate contemporary scholars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, their activities and oeuvre and scholarly networks across the Mediterranean. In line with this purpose, it will particularly focus on three scholars, Gemistus Pletho (d. 1452), Abd al-Rahman al-Bistami (d. 1455), and Bedreddin of Simavna (d. 1420) who were representatives of complex and multivalent networks and members of clandestine scholarly organizations. While drawing the map of their scholarly network, this presentation also hopes to create a textual relationship through intercommunal discussions, especially the one between Platonism and Aristotelianism. In doing so, it aims to offer fresh insights into the study of intellectual history beyond limitations which are imposed by traditional methodologies, unquestioned genres, and undisputed literary and linguistic traditions.
Therefore, this presentation suggests a new map of an intellectual world by connecting seemingly disparate parts of the eastern Mediterranean where scholars developed their long-distance communication and communal sense without borders, and shows that before the domination of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, the Mediterranean witnessed a time when thoughts and thinkers breathed in the same rhythms.
