This presentation will examine the influence of late fifteenth-century Persian scholarly and courtly circles on the formation of an Ottoman legitimating ideology at the turn of the sixteenth century by considering the life and work of Idris Bidlisi (d. 1520). Through his authorship of Hasht Bihisht, a major history of the Ottoman dynasty, Idris Bidlisi became a well-regarded Ottoman historian of the sixteenth century and a prominent contributor to a new Ottoman conception of rule. Despite the inclusion of his work in the Ottoman historiographic canon, Idris’ upbringing, education, and formative professional activities all unfolded within the western Iranian context of the Aqquyunlu court. These experiences were fundamental in conditioning Idris’ scholarly and professional outlook and highlight the extent to which the Ottoman dynasty’s ideological platform of the sixteenth century depended upon broader political and intellectual currents within Islamic lands. The presentation will demonstrate how Idris’ networks of scholarly and professional affiliation conditioned his thinking on the nature of rule. Idris’ appraisal of his own life as presented in a number of his unedited works focuses on a central personal tension between an intention to pursue a mystical path of learning and a desire to seek the limelight of the court through sultanic service. Indeed, his own scholarly and professional trajectory was molded as much by his educational and mystical experiences under the direction of his learned and pious father, as by the literary proclivities and ideological emphases of the Aqquyunlu chancery at the court of Sultan Ya‘qub. Idris’ vision for rule as presented in Hasht Bihisht clearly reflects both of these experiences. In the work, Idris presents a theory of kingship for the Ottomans that emphasizes the cosmic role of a ruler in ordering man’s political affairs. The theory draws on Sufi vocabularies to articulate the specific characteristics of virtuous rule. Idris’ experiences within the politically unstable Aqquyunlu court helped him identify the practical consequences of such rule. For Idris, justice remained the fundamental concern of governance and could be assured only through the establishment of a strong central state grounded in the shari‘a.

Muhyi-i Gülşeni (d. 1606)—known in studies of Ottoman Sufism as the hagiographer of Ibrahim-i Gülşeni, the founder of the Gülşeni order of dervishes—contends that his own Esperanto-type language, Baleybelen, a hybrid of Persian, Turkish, and Arabic, demonstrates his unique position in the Ottoman world of letters. Indeed, Muhyi’s divinely guided and singular linguistic product, alongside his authorship of over 200 works, some 40 of which are extant, attest to his significance. Muhyi was a polymath who penned works in a variety of genres, including ethics, grammar, linguistics, dictionaries, pilgrimage guides, hagiographies, commentaries on hadith, counsel for sultans, poetry, memoirs, treatises on speculative mysticism, the science of letters, cosmology, philosophy, history, and medicine. While there are a few isolated studies on Muhyi’s select oeuvre, his overall intellectual place in, and contributions to early modern Ottoman letters and the culture of Sufism remain largely unknown. In this paper, I will introduce the only known copy of Mecmu’a-i Muhyi, a manuscript collection of some 38 different treatises of varying lengths, totaling 466 folios, with the aim of connecting Muhyi to a wider network of learned men of his time. In addition, I will also compare this work with a second text, known as the Reşehāt-i Muhyi. This second work best illustrates the scope of Muhyi’s relationships with Sufis, scholars, intellectuals, and the members of the Ottoman courtly circles and ruling elite. It is a translation of the prominent Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī”s (d.1532-3) Reşehāt-i Aynü’l-Hayat, a Naḳshbandī hagiography of their shaykhs and their silsiles, composed in Persian in 1503 or 1504. Completed in 1569, the Reşehāt’s 299 folios include discussions of Muhyi’s initiation into the Nakshi and Ahrari paths, his connections with and memories of Naskhi, Ahrari, and Kubrevi shaykhs, and detailed information on the spread of Nakshbandiyya in Anatolia and in the Ottoman imperial capital, Istanbul. By sharing my findings on the works and world of a prolific but generally overlooked Sufi author, I hope to contribute to our understanding of the complex intellectual and cultural topography and networks of knowledge in the early modern Ottoman world.

My paper aims to investigate the close relationship between geographical knowledge and imperial politics in the Ottoman Empire during the eighteenth century. During this period, different parts of the world experienced Enlightenments, in other words, movements of philosophical, geographical, and historical inquiry which changed societies and governments. Recent studies try to understand these Enlightenments as responses to “cross-border interaction and global integration.” So far, the Ottoman Empire has been completely omitted from these discussions. The studies, which adopted global historical analysis, tend to focus on the accomplishments of the Muslim intellectuals prior to the thirteenth century and discuss their contribution to the European Enlightenment. These studies argue that the early modern Ottoman Empire represents the dark age of the Muslim scientific inquiry. According to this analysis, Ottoman involvement with modern science and technology did not begin until the nineteenth century when the Ottoman state enacted a series of reforms in education, economy, and military. My paper aims to challenge this traditional understanding and argues that Ottoman ruling elites and geographers did indeed participate in intellectual and political networks of the eighteenth century. The knowledge exchange between the Ottoman geographers and their contemporaries around the world laid the foundations of the Ottoman Enlightenment. Among these Ottoman geographers were Katip Çelebi (d. 1657), who translated Gerardus Mercator’s Atlas Minor and wrote the first Ottoman encyclopedic work on world geography, Cihannüma and Ebu Bekir ibn Behram ed-Dimashki (d. 1691) who translated Dutch cartographer Joan Bleu’s Atlas Maior into Ottoman Turkish. These works informed the Ottoman imperial court of the world’s geography and the importance of geographical knowledge for the affairs of the Empire. In their works, both geographers offered an organized and explicit definition of the science of geography for their readers and emphasized the usefulness of geographical knowledge in resolving political and military conflicts. These geographers informed the Ottoman imperial court of the latest developments in geographical knowledge while also helping the ruling elites to reevaluate the role of the Ottoman Empire on the world stage during a period that is typically regarded as the beginning of Ottoman decline. Through a historical analysis of the works of Dimashki and Katip Çelebi, my paper will aim to demonstrate the extent to which Ottoman geographers took part in global networks of knowledge and politics and how participation in those networks formed their ideas about the role of geographical knowledge in state and society.

The hagiographical writings and spiritual genealogies of Sufi orders have attracted increasing levels of scholarly attention over the past two decades in the field of Islamic history. These materials have not been fully exploited, although a solid foundation allowing for the critical use of these sources has emerged. More importantly, attempts to intersect these narratives with other types of Ottoman sources remain limited. This paper seeks to bridge the gap between the manuscript literature that marks the Süleymaniye and other libraries, and archival documents such as those found in the Prime Ministers’ Archive. To narrow the gap between these source bases, I will examine the evolution of a sub-branch of the Halveti Sufi order as it expanded its following into the Ottoman capital. During the latter half of the eleventh/seventeenth century, the Kastamonu-based Şa`baniyye began to expand westward out of their traditional heartlands in north-central Anatolia. By the 1670s, their leader, Karabaş `Ali Veli, developed an extensive following after settling in the Istanbul suburb of Üsküdar. However, his aggressive recruitment of followers ran afoul of the powerful leaders of the puritanical Kadızadeli movement, and he was exiled to the island of Limni along with his son, never to return. Due to the large number of followers he had cultivated, the order risked fragmentation after his death, especially after his son died in 1702. Ultimately, the confusion that followed Karabaş `Ali’s death was resolved in favor of Muhammad Nasuhi, whose descendants would carry Şa`baniyye teachings all the way down to the founding of the Turkish Republic. However, the later success and influence of this branch of the Halveti order obscured the fact that his assumption of leadership was hardly a foregone conclusion early in the twelfth/eighteenth century. The reasons for the emergence of the Nasuhiyye therefore require scrutiny, and this is best accomplished by intersecting hagiographical literature with more mundane writings, such as bureaucratic documents and correspondence. From these materials, an outline of the network of figures that helped to bring Muhammad Nasuhi to prominence can emerge—many of whom were not Sufi notables. In fact, the most prominent figure contributing to Nasuhi’s rise may well have been an Ottoman naval captain, Mezzemorto Hüseyin Paşa. This paper will use various sources to outline the story of his involvement with the order.