Culture of Disputation: Debating, Delineating, and Refuting Legal and Mystical Thought within Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Lands and Beyond
Panel IX-17, 2021 Annual Meeting
On Friday, December 3 at 2:00 pm
Panel Description
This panel aims to bring forth scholarly debates into the discussion of legal, philosophical and mystical thought within a particular focus on the Ottoman lands of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By problematizing reductionist approaches to the Ottoman religiosity as mere appropriation of the canonical texts, authorities and methods of the legal schools and discourses, our panel takes up Ottoman religiosity in its multiple aspects as the configurations of a culture disputation and confrontation.
We argue that even the authority and veracity of legal arguments in canonical sources were open to constant negotiation and came to be debated within the forms and genres of this textual culture of disputation. Legal theorists applied varied methodologies in formulating their hermeneutical methods, and became more and more engaged with rhetoric and logic in order to hone their skills of debate and dialectic. Laying out the textual problematics of the past authorities based on the methods of deep reading turned out to be the essential concern of Ottoman `ulamā.
On the other hand, scholars and sufis came to be more polemical against the rival groups, schools and epistemologies. While preoccupied with different modes of meaning making, more mystical and philosophical applications seem to be in competition in order to create new and articulated epistemologies. In doing so, writers created new attributions around certain nomenclature (such as the science of letters or the unity of being and knowledge of Truth) which could be understood as pejorative terminology or totally preferable philosophical positions depending on their standing.
We seek to problematize the dynamics of the Ottoman intellectual spheres in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries via discussions from monism to legal theories or from Sunnism to lettrism. Such, in our view, reflects a dual dynamic: On the one side, a relative ease in bringing in and dealing with the competing epistemologies under the culture of commentary and philology; yet on the opposite side, an increasing concern about delineating the correct path to Truth vis-a-vis ‘corrupt’ religious thoughts and practices. In the end, this panel offers an alternative to the recent attempts to conceptualize Ottoman Sunnism as simply institutional and/or imperial initiative. We rather would like to reframe it as an open-ended process of Ottoman textual culture of disputation.
It has been widely accepted in the scholarship that the Ottoman Sunnism had been consolidated vis-à-vis the Shi’ite Safavid state thanks significantly to the agents like Kemalpaşazāde (d. 1534) and Ebussu`ūd (d. 1574), two of the most significant chief jurisconsults in the sixteenth century. They are being held responsible for enforcing the Sharia in everyday life and bringing it in line with the dynastic law through their fatwas and epistles. Although their legal opinions (fatwas) did indeed have a deep impact on the social and political life in the “classical age” of the Ottoman Empire, their scholarly works could hardly be reduced to the outcome of an endeavor to shape public religiosity and politics. Their intellectual pursuits lay out much more complex engagements with various bodies of knowledge and had a particular leaning on textual criticism of the past authorities on the grounds of a meticulous philological study. Far from appropriating and enforcing orthodox positions in the tradition of the legal school, their methodology was informed by the ways of verification (tahqīq), meaning exposing truths and errors buried in the texts by means of logical reasoning. This textual undertaking also seems to have been informed by their vast erudition in the Arabic language theory and rhetoric, which enabled them to address the textual problematics. In my presentation, I will bring in Kemalpaşazāde’s “correction” (ıslâh) to one of the classics of Hanafi legal canon, Burkhan al-Shari‘ā’s Wiqāya, in order to shed light on this philology-oriented methodology in legal reasoning. I will attempt at problematizing the picture of the Ottoman muftis as the upholders of an orthodox tradition by looking into the textual criticism directed by Kemalpaşazāde to Wiqāya tradition, in order to shed light on how Ottoman legal thought was configured on the discursive level through rhetoric and philology.
Being one of the most controversial figures of the premodern eastern Mediterranean, Şeyh
Bedreddin’s (d.1420?) life and deeds constitute a focal point in the historiography on early
Ottoman history and Sufism. He was a member of a clandestine network of scholars who called
themselves the Brethren of Purity. He has been mostly celebrated as a great revolutionary or a
heretic up until now. However, his philosophy and intellectual activities remain poorly studied.
This presentation begins with a reevaluation of his ideas based on new findings coming from his
unknown or neglected works. The larger aim in doing so is to locate him in his scholarly network
not only through his personal or formal networks, but also through his philosophical views —that
are, to a large degree, a distilled versions of larger intellectual currents of his time.
The second part of the presentation deals with accusations of unbelief, hurūfism and magic
directed against him, his master al-Akhlati, and his pupils — especially the accusations coming
from the Zayniyya order through the works of ʿAbd al-Latīf al-Qudsī (d. 1452). Among many
allegations that al-Qudsī raised against Bedreddin and his peers, the charges related to wujūd
are of vital significance to conceptualize the philosophical background of the controversy. Al-
Qudsī seems to have distinguished the views of those that he calls wujūdi from the monism of
more mainstream Sufis. His descriptions seem rather to be directed against Bedreddin’s more
“pantheistic” monism.
The presentation will end with the defense written by Bedreddin’s pupil Akşemseddin (d.1459) in
order to safeguard monistic ideas and the Sufis who deeply engaged with them. Most of the
material in this presentation is obtained from unknown works and manuscripts that help us shed
light on a large panorama of intellectual activity within the Mamluk, Ottoman and Timurid worlds
in the fifteenth century.
The sixteenth century marks an important breaking point for the evolution of “Ottoman Sunnism.” Recent scholarship has discussed this change almost exclusively in light of the challenge that the Safavids posed to Ottoman legitimacy. However, the role of the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate and the encounter of the Ottoman and Mamluk scholars has not attracted the attention it deserves. Ottoman sultans and the scholar-bureaucrats may have tried to redefine Sunnism against the Safavid threat. Yet, they were perceived by some of the Mamluk scholars as newcomers to the Sunni tradition that long existed in the Arab lands. For them, the Ottomans were “not Sunni enough” and they were exceeding the limits of the Sharia and Sunna with certain practices, one of which was the act of “standing-up” during the recitation of the canto (bahir) about the Prophet’s birth in Mawlid ceremonies. An important and famous scholar, Ibrahim al-Halabi (d. 1549), who came from the Mamluk lands to Istanbul around 1500, criticized various customs of the “people of Rum” as overly affected by questionable Sufi practices. I will discuss the issue by focusing on al-Halabi’s treatise in which he criticized the practice of standing up during the Mawlid. Despite al-Halabi’s influence on Ottoman legal thought and practice, Ottomans kept on practicing this custom as a part of the state protocol in which sultans and high officials participated. The presentation aims to complicate the narratives about the emergence of “Ottoman Sunnism” by emphasizing the necessity of studying it in the context of Ottoman-Mamluk relations as well.
This presentation aims to conceptualize the engagement of fifteenth-century vernacular texts with the debates of knowledge/science (ʿilm) and gnosis (maʿrifa). The fifteenth-century Ottoman vernacular intellectuals did not follow passive authorial practices while compiling their texts in various genres through the information gathered from Arabic and Persian Sources. Their reconfiguration of knowledge in their compilations denotes the original part of their scholarly contributions. This presentation starts off from the debates about the esoteric interpretation of a specific Quranic verse: “I did not create jinn and humans except to worship (yaʿbudūn) me” (Quran 51:56). Sufi commentators usually construed yaʿbudūn (worship/serve) as yaʿrifūn (know/recognize). However, the fifteenth-century Ottoman vernacular intellectuals that this presentation investigates rejected the aforementioned construal in an attempt of transmitting knowledge for Turkish-speaking reading communities. In this presentation, I examine guidebooks such as Manyasoğlu’s (d. after 1438) ʿAcebü’l-ʿÜccāb, the several books of The Wonders of Creation, Ahmed-i Dāʿī’s (d. after 1421) miscellaneous pieces, along with the books of creed (ʿaqāʾid) and catechism (ʿilm al-ḥāl). I argue that in terms of attaining the truth or practicing sciences, vernacular intellectuals such as Manyasoğlu and Dāʿī attempted to “exotericize” the mystical sciences, and rejected the idea of gnosis, whereas other Sufi-minded authors underscored the esoteric aspects of the truth; hence vernacular texts represent a spectrum of dialogue, challenge and refutation within the larger context of Islamicate intellectual activities.
