The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought in the Ottoman Empire: The Rise of the Halveti Order, 1350-1650 9780748643714

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THE TRANSFORMATION OF MUSLIM MYSTICAL THOUGHT IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

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This work is dedicated to: Professor Carl Petry for his support and introducing me to the field of Islamic studies so many years ago and the late Professor S¸inasi Tekin for without his tireless endeavors to teach a generation of new scholars the secrets of Ottoman Turkish, this book could never have been written rahmet olsun canına

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THE TRANSFORMATION OF MUSLIM MYSTICAL THOUGHT IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE The Rise of the HalvetI ˙ Order, 1350–1650

John J. Curry

Edinburgh University Press

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© John J. Curry, 2010 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in JaghbUni by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3923 6 (hardback) The right of John J. Curry to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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CONTENTS

List of Maps and Figures Abbreviations for Frequently Cited Works in the Text Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration Map 1 Map 2 INTRODUCTION: ON THE STUDY OF OTTOMAN MYSTICAL TRADITIONS PART I.

2

EARLY SUFISM AND THE ORIGINS OF THE HALVETİ PATH, C. 900–1400 THE GREAT EXPANSION: FROM REGIONAL ORGANIZATION TO FAR-FLUNG NETWORK, C. 1400–1600

PART II.

15 21 50

THE EVOLUTION OF A HALVETİ SUB-BRANCH: THE LIFE AND CAREER OF S¸AʿBÂN-I VELİ AND HIS FOLLOWERS IN THE KASTAMONU REGION

INTRODUCTION

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1

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF THE HALVETİ ORDER FROM ITS ORIGINS THROUGH THE ELEVENTH/ SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

INTRODUCTION 1

vii viii xiii xvi xvii xviii

89

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vi 3 4 5

The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought ECHOES OF A DISTANT PAST: S¸AʿBÂN-I VELİ’S EARLY LIFE AND CONVERSION TO SUFISM GENESIS OF A SUB-BRANCH: S¸AʿBÂN-I VELİ’S STRUGGLES IN KASTAMONU AN UNEVEN LEGACY: THE SUCCESSION TO S¸AʿBÂN-I VELİ TO THE END OF THE TENTH/SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PART III.

93 108 156

DEFENDING THE CULT OF SAINTS IN ELEVENTH/ SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY KASTAMONU: TRANSFORMING THE S¸AʿBÂNİYE ORDER UNDER ʿÖMER EL-FUʾÂDÎ

INTRODUCTION ʿÖMER EL-FUʾÂDÎ AS SUFI ASPIRANT AND HAGIOGRAPHER: THE ROAD TO S¸AʿBÂNİYE SUCCESSION 7 INSCRIBING THE S¸AʿBÂNİYE ORDER ONTO KASTAMONU’S LANDSCAPE 8 THE POLITICAL AND DOCTRINAL LEGACY OF ʿÖMER EL-FUʾÂDÎ

197

6

199 223 268

CONCLUSION: WHAT CAN THE S¸AʿBÂNİYE TEACH US ABOUT TRANSITIONS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD OF WORLD HISTORY?

292

Appendix I Appendix II Works Cited and Further Reading Index of Persons Index of Places Index of Subjects

299 303 305 321 326 328

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MAPS AND FIGURES

MAP 1 MAP 2

THE MIDDLE EAST TURKEY

FIGURE 1

INTERIOR OF THE S¸AʿBÂN-I VELİ MOSQUE IN KASTAMONU, TURKEY THE ENTRANCE TO THE S¸AʿBÂN-I VELİ COMPLEX THE TOMB OF SEYYID AHMED SÜNNETÎ EFENDİ THE TOMB OF HAYREDDÎN TOKÂDÎ THE COMPLEX OF BENLİ SULTAN IN THE VILLAGE OF AHLAT NEAR MT İLGÂZ THE INSCRIPTION OVER THE S¸AʿBÂN-I VELİ MOSQUE

FIGURE 2 FIGURE 3 FIGURE 4 FIGURE 5 FIGURE 6

xvii xviii

9 90 95 102 113 226

vii

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Abbreviations FOR FREQUENTLY CITED WORKS IN THE TEXT

AG-MM AKAK

AK-IM AYHC

BGM

BKTZ

CAMA CF-MA

CHVS

Gölpınarlı, Abdülbâkî, Mevlanaʾdan Sonra Mevlevilik, 2nd edn (İstanbul: Gül Matbaası, 1983). Abdulkadiroğlu, Abdulkerim, Halvetilikʾin S¸aʿbaniyye Kolu: S¸eyh S¸aʿban-ı Veli ve Külliyesi (Ankara: Turk Hava Kurumu Basımevi, 1991). Knysh, Alexander, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000). Ayvansarâyî Hüseyîn Efendi, et al., Hadîkatüʾl-Cevâmiʿ: İstanbul Câmileri ve Diğer Dînî-Sivil Miʾmârî Yapıları. ed. Ahmed Nezih Galitekin (İstanbul: İs¸aret Yayınları, 2001). Martin, B. G., “A Short History of the Khalwati Order of Dervishes,” in Nikki R. Keddie (ed.), Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions Since 1500 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 275–305. Tezcan, Baki, “Searching for Osman: A Reassessment of the Deposition of the Ottoman Sultan Osman II (1618–1622),” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 2001. Seyyid Seyfullah Kazım b. Nizâmeddîn (d. 1009/1601). CâmiʿüʾlMaʿârif, İstanbul: Süleymaniye Ktp. MS Haci Mahmud Efendi 2335. Fleischer, Cornell, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Âlî (1541–1600) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). Çavusoğlu, Semiramis, “The Kadızadeli Movement: An Attempt of S¸erîʿat-Minded Reform in the Ottoman Empire,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1990.

viii

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Abbreviations CI DİA DLG DTZ

EI2 EI3 ESO

FA

GAR HA-TFM HSN

IJMES JC-GTH

JC-HWS

JC-IPP

JESHO JMIAS JP-DO

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ix

Imber, Colin, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Türk Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, 2nd edn. Le Gall, Dina, A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World, 1450–1700 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005). Terzioğlu, Derin, “Sufi and Dissident in the Ottoman Empire: Niyâzî-i Misrî (1618–1694),” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1999. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edn. Ohlander, Erik S., Sufism in an Age of Transition: ʿUmar alSuhrawardî and the Rise of the Islamic Mystical Brotherhoods (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2008). Ferîdüddîn ʿAttâr, Tezkiretüʾl-evliyâ: Tezkiretüʾl-evliyâʾsının Eski Türkiye Türkçesi ile Tercümesi, ed. Orhan Yavuz (Ankara: Kültür ve Türizm Bakanlığı, 1988). Griswold, William J., The Great Anatolian Rebellion (1000– 1020/1591–1611) (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1983). Hacı ʿAlî (d. after 1074/1664), Tühfetüʾl-mucâhidîn, İstanbul: Nuruosmaniye Lib., MS 2293. Mehmed Mecdî Efendi (d. 1000/1591), Hadâʾikuʾs¸-S¸ekâʾik-i Nuʿmâniye (S¸ekâʾik-i Nuʿmâniye ve Zeyilleri), vol. 1, ed. Abdullah Özcan (İstanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1989). International Journal of Middle East Studies Curry, John J., “The Growth of Turkish Hagiographical Literature Within the Halveti Order in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” in Hasan Celâl Güzel et al. (eds), The Turks, vol. 3 (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2002), pp. 912–20. Curry, John J., “‘Home is Where the Shaykh Is’: The Concept of Exile in the Hagiography of İbrâhîm-i Güls¸eni,” Al-Masâq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 17:1 (2005), 47–60. Curry, John J., “The Intersection of Past and Present in the Genesis of an Ottoman Sufi Order: the life of Cemâl el-Halvetî (d. 900/1494 or 905/1499) and the Origins of the Halveti Tarîqa,” Journal of Turkish Studies 32 (2008), 121–41. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society Paul, Jürgen, Doctrine and Organization: The Khwâjagân Naqshbandîya in the First Generation after Bahâʾuddîn (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1998).

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x JST JW-CCE KA KC-BT KC-KZ KKE LAK LCH

LH

MBEH MCZ-KZ

MCZ-PP

MDI MİG

MİO MN-Hİ

MRSY

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). Woods, John E., The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire, rev. edn (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1999). Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî (d. 1009/1601), Künhüʾl-ahbar, İstanbul: Süleymaniye Lib., MS Esʿad Efendi 2612. Kâtip Çelebi (d. 1067/1657), The Balance of Truth, trans. Geoffrey Lewis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957). Katip Çelebi (d. 1067/1657), Kesfüʾz-zunûn ʿan esâmi ul-kutûb veʾlfunûn, 2 vols, 3rd edn (Tehran: al-Maktabat al-Islamiyya, 1947). Eyüpgiller, Kemal Kutgün, Bir Kent Tarihi: Kastamonu (İstanbul: Eren Yayıncılık, 1999). Muhammad ʿAbd al-Hayy al-Laknawî (d. 1303/1886), Al-Fawâʾid al-bahiyya fî tarâjim al-Hanafiyya (Beirut: Dâr al-Arqam, 1998). Lâmiʿî Çelebi, Mahmûd b. ʿOsmân b. ʿAlî Nakkâs¸ b. İlyâs (d. 938/1532), Nefehâtüʾl-Üns: Evliyâ Menkıbeleri, eds Süleyman Uludağ and Mustafa Kara (İstanbul: Marifet Yayınları, 1998). Hulvî, Mahmud Helvacıbas¸ızade (d. 1064/1654), Lemezât-ı Hulviye ez-Lamaʿât-ı ʿUlviye, İstanbul: Süleymaniye Lib., MS Halet Efendi 281. Behcet, Mehmet, Kastamonu Âsâr-ı Kadîmesi, İstanbul: Matbaʿa-yı Amire, 1925. Zilfi, Madeline C., “The Kadizadelis: Discordant Revivalism in Seventeenth-Century İstanbul,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45:4 (1986), 251–69. Zilfi, Madeline C., The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600–1800) (Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1988). Schimmel, Annemarie, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975). Muhyî-yi Güls¸enî (d. 1014/1606), Menâkib-i İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî ve S¸emeli-zâde Ahmed Efendi S¸îve-i Tarîkat-i Güls¸enîye, ed. Tahsin Yazıcı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1982). Oğuz, Muhammed İhsan, Hazret-i S¸aʿbân-ı Velî ve Mustafa Çerkes¸i, 2nd edn (İstanbul: Oğuz Yayınları, 1995). Mehmed Nazmî Efendi (d. 1112/1701), Osmanlılarda Tasavvufî Hayatı Halvetîlik Örneği: Hediyyetüʾl-İhvân (İstanbul: İhsan Yayınları, 2005). Rıhtım, Mehmet, Seyid Yəhya Bakuvi və Xəlvətilik (Baku: Qismət Publishing, 2005).

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Abbreviations

xi

MSV

ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Menâkıb-ı S¸erîf-i Pîr-i Halvetî Hazret-i S¸aʿbân-ı Veli ve Türbenâme, İstanbul: Süleymaniye Lib., MS Hac Mahmud Efendi 4598. MSV(T) The Türbenâme section of the preceding citation. NC Clayer, Nathalie, Mystiques, état et société: les Halvetis dans lʾaire Balkan de la fin du XVe siècle à nos jours (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994). NVA Nevʿîzâde ʿAtâʾî (d. 1044/1635), Hadâʾikuʾl-Hakâʾik fî Tekmîletiʾs¸S¸ekâʾik (S¸ekâʾik-i Nuʿmâniye ve Zeyilleri), vol. 2, ed. Abdullah Özcan (İstanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1989). NYIL Yılmaz, Necdet, Osmanlı Toplumunda Tasavvuf: Sufiler, Devlet ve Ulema (İstanbul: Osmanlı Aras¸tırmaları Vakfı, 2001). OF-DS ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Risâle-i devrân-ı sufiye min teʾlîf-i Zenbilli ʿAlî Efendi (K. S.), İstanbul: Atatürk Kitaplığı, MS Osman Ergin 781/1. OF-MT ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Maqâlat al-tawthîqiyya wa risâlat al-tawhîdiyya, Istanbul: Süleymaniye Lib., MS Esʿad Efendi 1734/1. OF-RMN ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Risâle-i muslihüʾl-nefs, Istanbul: Atatürk Kitaplığı, MS Osman Ergin 614/25. OF-RV ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Makâle-i ferdiye ve risâle-i virdiye, İstanbul: Süleymaniye Lib., MS Esad Efendi 1734/3. RCR Repp, Richard C., The Müfti of İstanbul: A Study in the Development of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London: Ithaca Press, 1986). RÖ-OT Öngören, Res¸at, Osmanlılarʾda Tasavvuf: Anadoluʾda Sufiler, Devlet, ve Ulema (XVI. Yüzyıl) (İstanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 2000). RÖ-Z Öngören, Res¸at, Tarihte bir Aydın Tarikatı: Zeynîler (İstanbul: İnsan Yayınları, 2003). RTAJ Mahmûd (Efendi) b. Nafs b. Kamâl b. Maʿsûd (d. c. 967/1560), Risâlat al-tâjiyya fî tarîqat as-sûfiyya, Istanbul, Süleymaniye Lib., MS Esʿad Efendi 1734/2. SCLO Mehmed Süreyyâ (d. 1327/1909), Sicill-i ʿOsmânî, 4 vols (İstanbul: Matbaʿa-yı Amire, 1890). SIV Sivan, Emmanuel, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics, 2nd edn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). SM-KM Murad III, Sultan (d. 1003/1595), Kitâb-ı Manâmât, İstanbul: Nuruosmaniye Lib., MS 2599. SOTS Chodkiewicz, Michel, Seal of the Saints: Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn ʿArabî, trans. Liadain Sherrard (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1993).

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xii SPK

STI THV URB

ZD ZVM

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought Chittick, William C., The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabiʾs Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989). Studia Islamica Sinaneddin b. Yusuf b. Yaʿkub (d. 989/1581), Tezkîretüʾl-Halvetiye, İstanbul: Süleymaniye Lib., MS Esʿad Efendi 1372/1. Rubin, Uri, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims, A Textual Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995). Demircioğlu, Ziya, S¸eyh S¸aʿbân-ı Veli ve Postnîs¸înleri (Kastamonu: Azim Matbaası, 1997). Ocak, Ahmet Yas¸ar, Osmanlı Toplumunda Zındıklar ve Mülhidler (15.–17. Yüzyıllar) (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1998).

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Acknowledgments

Much like the Muslim mystics that are the subject of this study, I too endured long years of struggle and had recourse to many different guides during its evolution. As with any endeavor requiring years of primary source research, I have accumulated many debts that I can never repay in full. Without the support of my academic advisor, Professor Jane Hathaway, this work would not have reached completion. Leaving aside the writing of endless recommendation letters, she has also been an invaluable source of constructive criticism throughout the process. Indeed, it was she who first suggested that a study of the Halveti order would prove illuminating in filling gaps within the literature on Ottoman cultural history for the early modern period. I only hope the result offers some justification for the time and effort she expended on helping me produce it. My thanks also to Professor Carter Findley for his comments on the work as it evolved over time. Throughout my graduate student training, his unwillingness to accept anything but the best work I was capable of has been an instrumental part of my success. Even when overwhelmed by multiple projects as the dissertation process drew to a close, he somehow found time to provide the necessary suggestions and recommendations at critical times. I also thank Professor Stephen Dale for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of the work during its evolution. He also cheerfully allowed me to use his seminars as a testing ground for a number of the arguments advanced here. Without the insights I gained from him on Central Asian and Iranian history during the medieval and early modern period, the work might not have advanced beyond its provincial origins. I also thank Professor Michael Zwettler of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures who assisted with challenging Arabic texts I encountered

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought

during the course of my career, and Dr Alam Payind and his staff at the Middle East Studies Center of Ohio State University, who provided assistance in obtaining important Title VI FLAS funding that supported the project’s completion. The Graduate School at Ohio State also provided me with a Presidential Fellowship for the academic year 2003–4, which allowed me to complete the dissertation on which this work is based. I also thank my undergraduate advisor, Professor Carl Petry of Northwestern University, for additional help in the Presidential Fellowship process. One of the great joys of this project has been that assistance was not limited to just one side of the ocean. The American Research Institute in Turkey, Tony Greenwood, and its staff provided research funding and logistical support for the project during my first year of research abroad. Thanks also go to Dr Nevzat Kaya and his staff at the Süleymaniye Library in İstanbul, Turkey, for their assistance in locating manuscripts and creating digital copies that allowed me fully utilize critical historical works after my return. My gratitude also extends to Dr Nail Bayraktar and his staff at the Atatürk Kitaplığı for their help in identifying, examining and making copies of additional manuscripts from microfilm there. I also thank Dr Mehmet Saray for assistance in navigating some of the difficulties posed by working in Turkey, and also Professors Res¸at Öngören and Sait Özervarlı of the İslam Aras¸tırma Merkezi (İSAM) in directing me to important resources that contributed to the success of this project, and the staff of the Nuruosmaniye Library in İstanbul for allowing me to examine a number of rare works on Ottoman Sufism. I reserve a special thanks to Professor Mehmet Rıhtım of Qafqaz University in Baku for sharing the results of his research on the early Halveti order during the time of Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî with me. I also thank Professors Halil Berktay and Tülay Artan for offering me the opportunity to present early drafts of my findings at a Sabancı University colloquium in 2001. Finally, I thank the shaykh and members of the Cerrahî branch of the Halveti order in Istanbul for allowing me to observe a modern Halveti semâʿ and devrân ceremony in their historic lodge. Thanks go also to Günhan Börekçi for following the project with interest, and offering assistance and suggestions multiple times throughout the process of research and writing. It is no understatement to say that without his help, much of this project would not have been as insightful. Others who have offered useful assistance, constructive criticism, or just plain supportive friendship over the years of this project include Erik Ohlander, Tijana Krstic, Serpil Bilbas¸ar, Isa Blumi, Nabil al-Tikriti, James Grehan, Nathalie Clayer, Berat Fındıklı, David Defries, Febe Armanios, Devin DeWeese, Timothy Gregory, Yücel Yanıkdağ, Mustafa Shah and Gordon Witty. I also thank my colleagues Eugene Moehring, David Wrobel, Andy Fry, David Tanenhaus and Paul Werth, along with the rest

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Acknowledgments

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of my colleagues in the Department of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for supporting the conclusion of this project as an Assistant Professor despite growing economic instability in Nevada. Moreover, I am indebted to Nicola Ramsey, James Dale, my two anonymous readers, and the rest of the staff at Edinburgh University Press for their suggestions, assistance and extraordinary degree of speed and professionalism in dealing with a publishing neophyte. I also wish to thank Dr Robert Dankoff, who offered numerous last-minute suggestions in regard to translation. A special mention must go to the late Harvard Professor S¸inasi Tekin, his wife, Gönül Tekin, his student, Professor Selim Kuru, and Professor Wheeler Thackston for teaching me Ottoman Turkish over the course of two summers in Ayvalık, Turkey in 1997 and 1998. The paleographical training and experience I gained allowed me to decipher and gain access to the necessary manuscripts. Professor Tekin’s sudden passing in the late summer of 2004 was a blow to all of us, and I can only hope that this study is a fitting contribution to his memory. Finally, I acknowledge my debt to my mother and father, Joan and John Curry, Sr. for their ceaseless financial and emotional support during these long years. Without them, I could not have re-entered graduate school to realize this work and my other dreams, much less borne the burdens that followed. My father’s contribution extended to designing the maps for this volume. In addition, I must thank (and beg forgiveness from) my wife, Suna Curry, for enduring a project that affected her life as much as mine. I also thank her extended family, both in İstanbul and elsewhere, for making my years of research and life in Turkey rewarding. I have undoubtedly forgotten to mention others; please accept the apologies and gratitude of this hakîr pur-taksîr in response. John J. Curry January 2010

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Note on transliteration

Attempting to transliterate words and phrases from Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian is a difficult task, especially when research ranges across these multiple linguistic groups. For Ottoman Turkish language words and phrases, I have generally opted for a transcription modeled on that which appears in the Redhouse Turkish–English Dictionary, but intersected with a modified form of the transliteration system as given by IJMES to represent orthographic conventions such as long vowels and the Arabic letters hamza (ʾ) and ʿayn. Names and terms appearing in Arabic and Persian defer to IJMES standards; however, as a compromise between the needs of specialists and non-specialists and to speed the publishing process, I have opted not to use some of the more complex diacriticals, such as dots and underlining under the letters d, s, t and z. The assumption here is that the specialist will not encounter difficulty in decoding the orthography of the originals if necessary. Inconsistencies invariably remain; where I have not been able to identify a specific linguistic context for a name or term, I have chosen whatever rendering seems most widely accepted by the sources themselves.

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Map 1 The Middle East M2313 - CURRY PRINT.indd xvii

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Map 2 Turkey M2313 - CURRY PRINT.indd xviii

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Introduction: On the Study of Ottoman Mystical Traditions

In studying the Ottoman Empire, many scholars have focused heavily on the social, economic, and political history of its various regions, while neglecting the field of religious and cultural history. Specialists in the field, regardless of nationality or ideology, have regarded the Ottoman period as one of cultural and intellectual stagnation, especially in its later years. Recently, however, scholars have begun to rethink their perceptions about the Ottomans and assess more objectively their important contributions to the religious, intellectual, and cultural life of their time. Nevertheless, a lack of critical studies on this aspect of the Ottoman legacy has hampered attempts to present a coherent picture of the Empire’s history.1 The majority of the past six decades of scholarship has targeted political and economic history, seeking to explain the trajectory of the Ottoman enterprise within the realm of secular phenomena. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that this economic and political history cannot, and should not, be completely separated from its religio-cultural background. Studies tackling religious and cultural topics indicate that both intellectual production and everyday religious activity among Ottomans enjoyed an extraordinary dynamism. In addition, political and economic crises during the Empire’s history often went hand-inhand with spiritual crises that were equally influential in shaping the course of events.2 This is often obscured by studies of modern mysticism: for example, in a study of mystics in Egypt during the 1980s, Valerie Hoffman noted the generally apolitical form which their mystical expression took. She concluded that the political power of mystical orders during Ottoman times thus represented an anomaly rather than the norm.3 One of the Ottoman orders to which Hoffman referred was the Halveti

1

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought

(Arabic: Khalwatî), a Sufi order that had appeared in the region of Azerbaijan and northwest Iran in the wake of the Mongol invasions of the seventh/thirteenth century and spread into the Ottoman domains within three centuries of its emergence. The Halveti order played an important role in Ottoman politics and society that remains poorly understood. It often took the lead in defending Islamic mysticism, philosophy, and practice from factions that insisted on puritanical interpretations of the Qurʾan and other sacred texts. These debates centered on issues that still divide contemporary Muslim communities, such as conflicts over what constitutes acceptable forms of Muslim belief and practice.4 Furthermore, the order retained a broad public appeal, notably in parts of the Balkans and Asia Minor, which continued well into modern times. This sustained popularity may have derived in part from Halveti efforts to propagate their vision of Islam into regions that did not receive the direct attention of political and religious leaders in the imperial centers. In contrast, others argue that their growth resulted from a conscious collaborative effort between Halvetis and the Ottoman government from the tenth/sixteenth century onward.5 The Halveti order forces us to reflect on the role of mystical religious institutions in pre-modern Muslim societies like the Ottoman Empire. Traditionally, past research has advanced several answers that act as conventional wisdom on the subject. The earliest theoretical foundations, laid by the first generation scholars during the Republican period of Turkish history, suggested that Turkish-speaking mystics from the east, having founded institutional centers (tekkes, or lodges) in Asia Minor from the Seljuk period onward, acted as protectors for a population that was increasingly strained by conflicts with Byzantium, the Mongols and others. They also argued that the Turkic Sufism espoused by such figures as Ahmed Yesevî in Central Asia and Yunus Emre in Anatolia were more influential in Turkish history than other variants.6 Following this lead, subsequent scholarship posited that Sufi orders acted as “colonizers” willing to take doctrinally flexible forms of Islamic belief and practice to the physical and spiritual frontiers of the Muslim world to lay the foundation for their eventual incorporation into the Islamic world.7 However, questions about the extent to which this process actually took place, or whether it was even a consciously articulated goal of the Ottoman rulers still seems open to debate, since tensions between Halveti Sufi leaders and the states to which they were subject clearly exist in historical sources. More recent scholarship has challenged the idea that state and mystical orders worked in lockstep, noting that Ottoman Sufi orders like the Halveti were often at odds with the state. Some have argued that Sufi orders offered an outlet for those who could not find spiritual comfort in literalist readings of Islamic sacred texts and rituals; they could even act as safe havens for the propagation

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Introduction

3

of heterodox movements.8 Anthropological variations on this theme, especially in the context of North Africa, have further argued that Sufi leaders provided a religious system that was flexible enough to mix with popular tradition and local custom among uneducated and illiterate majorities.9 These scholarly projects posit instead the existence of religious tension between central, urban-based authorities and their more rural, provincial subjects. But Ernest Gellner recognized a problem of terminology in attempting to define the category of a “Sufi” in Morocco, and chose to contrast two different groups to the more recognized tradition of scholarly Islam embodied in the ʿulama class: Under the general category of Sufism, people tend, for instance, to group together genuine mystics and tribal holy men whose connection with mysticism is minimal . . . Roughly speaking: urban Sufi mysticism is an alternative to the legalistic, restrained, arid (as it seems to its critics) Islam of the ʿulama. Rural and tribal “Sufism” is a substitute for it. In the one case, and alternative is sought for the Islam of the ʿulama because it does not fully satisfy. In the other case, a substitute for it is required because, though its endorsement is desired, it is, in its proper and urban form, locally unavailable, or is unusable in the tribal context.10

While accepting a fundamental contradiction between scholarly Islam (as embodied in the reference to an ʿulama class) and mysticism, Gellner also posited a distinction between urban- and rural-based mysticism that implicitly determined the inferiority of the latter. As a result, his views have generated considerable criticism within the discipline of anthropology recently.11 A related trend in discussions about the emergence of Sufi orders in later eras was to portray them as second-rate heirs to a higher intellectual tradition that appeared during a “golden age” of Islamic intellectual and cultural production that occurred between the third/ninth and seventh/thirteenth centuries. In contrast to mystics of the formative period, marked by greater intellectual and personal freedom to pursue mystical speculation, the Sufi orders that emerged over the course of the later medieval and early modern period became increasingly enmeshed in dogma and ritual that sapped their creative spirit and turned them into stagnant institutions. As Trimingham suggested, early Sufism represented a “natural expression of personal religion,” as opposed to the more “orthodox” Islam of the ʿulama, which represented “institutionalized religion based on authority, a one-way master–slave relationship, with its emphasis upon ritual observance and a legalistic morality.”12 These views represent a projection of the good attributes of mysticism back into the distant past, while demeaning its value in more recent eras.13 With the adoption of this Orientalist construction

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of Sufism’s history, Western and Muslim intellectuals alike came to characterize the orders as being in need of reform, if not abolition.14 In contrast, other scholars have pointed out that Sufi organizations formed one of many potential reference points available to Muslim populations, which could assist in their daily struggle to maintain or improve their lives. In her study of the religious leadership of the Ottoman Empire during the eleventh/ seventeenth and twelfth/eighteenth centuries, Madeline Zilfi argued that Sufi orders like the Halveti in İstanbul were attracting an increasingly broad-based following.15 As a result, Halveti leaders also rose to positions of authority. A corollary of this was that members of the Halveti could also negotiate with the state on behalf of local communities during political or economic crises which increasingly disrupted the empire, especially in the turbulent years after the latter half of the tenth/sixteenth century.16 With the arrival of modernity, however, the strengthening of the state and the spread of better education and literacy, complemented by challenges from Western-based intellectual currents, caused mysticism to become increasingly marginalized and relegated to the realm of superstition and social backwardness. As one observer suggested: [T]he delegitimization of Sufism in the Middle East was accelerated by modern conditions and especially by the dominant power of the central state, but was also rooted in a deep and pervasive conflict between Sufism, with its apotheosis of saints and demand for absolute obedience from disciples, and the characteristic Middle Eastern and Islamic values of equality and autonomy. It is no surprise then to find that Sufis have slowly lost their essential role in Middle Eastern society, and now serve only as mediators in marginal tribal areas, or provide ecstatic performances in impoverished communities, or serve as guides for cultured elites seeking a less demanding, more aesthetic, intellectualized version of Islam. This is where Middle Eastern Sufism is today, and most likely will remain for the foreseeable future.17

This idea posits that the appeal of Sufi leaders has declined precipitously, except in certain rare cases where the orders were able to adapt themselves for survival in new contexts.18 Yet even this observer was forced to qualify his own assertions by contrasting the general situation described here to that of South Asia, where the greater autonomy of the orders under British colonial rule and cultural tendencies toward greater acceptance of hierarchy in the community had allowed Sufism to maintain its position or even gain in strength. Even more interestingly, he mentioned Turkey as another exception that does not necessarily fit the pattern of Sufi stagnation in modern times.19 Such explanations neatly encapsulate political, social, and intellectual roles

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for Islamic mysticism in a broad historical sense. But do these assumptions really encompass all mystical orders, especially in their local contexts and manifestations? Were the first Muslim mystics appearing in predominantly non-Muslim contexts invariably acting as fifth-columnists allied with Muslim rulers to incorporate non-Muslim peoples into their empires? Did medieval Muslim mystics reject the opinions of jurisprudents, theologians, and their legacy of canonical scholarship in favor of oppositional interpretations of Islam? How could these organizations, based on principles that stressed the renunciation of worldly things and contempt for temporal political and economic power, act as a base for social advancement or even political power themselves? Finally, there is the question of mysticism’s so-called “irrelevance” in the face of modernity – is mysticism really an outdated intellectual trend, or does it still remain an alternative path to which Muslims can turn, despite negative associations with superstition and irrationality that many have attached to it?20 In recent years, the field of Near Eastern studies has seen an upsurge of interest in mysticism and mystical orders. New research, often focused on the modern era, frequently takes as its goal an elucidation of the fractures between local conceptions of the mystical path and the meta-narrative of the classical philosophy of mysticism as elaborated by the great thinkers of Muslim history.21 In contrast to the hierarchy of Christian saints achieved through official canonization by a central authority in Catholicism, Muslim saints are inherently local in character; thus, the nature of Muslim mysticism and sainthood varies considerably from one context to another. This is because the relationship between a devotee and his teacher is of paramount importance in conveying mystical knowledge in the Muslim context, and because normative Islam rejects an official hierarchy of saints along Roman Catholic lines.22 As a result, studies of mysticism tend to break down into two types. The first is anthropological studies which usually focus on a specific group in the hope of elaborating wider theories about human thought and behavior. The second group focuses its attention upon the historical development and classical elaboration of the intellectual and philosophical theory of Islamic mystical thought in its aforementioned “golden age.” Yet there is a basic and obvious disjunction between the two types of research. The first often treats areas or groups that might be labeled “marginal” in terms of wider influence or importance for Islamic intellectual history as a whole. The subjects of many respected anthropological studies on Muslim mysticism and religious practice tend to cluster on the geographical or economic fringes of the Islamic world, with an imbalance of studies focusing on Morocco,23 Indonesia,24 and, more recently, Yemen.25 One is often struck by just how limited in size or how marginal the mystical groups in question are. On the other hand, the dominant studies of classical mysticism in the Islamic world are

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often hampered by a focus on the highest levels of philosophical and intellectual thought, with little attention given to how these ideas might have been received in practice throughout subsequent periods of history.26 So can a way be found to bridge this gap between the anthropological and historical aspects of Islamic mysticism? How might researchers analyze Sufi orders in a pre-modern context, where direct access to personal interactions with the subjects under study, so integral to the anthropological approach, are lacking? Despite attempts by recent scholars to challenge the hegemonic position of modern thought and concepts in Muslims’ interpretation and practice of their beliefs, and to link modern practice with classical intellectual conceptions, a major field of inquiry which could help to bridge this gap has largely been ignored. The Ottoman Empire, which encompassed the entire eastern Mediterranean and most of North Africa at its height, was a critical historical entity bridging the transition of the region from the medieval period into the modern. Not surprisingly, scholars have frequently had trouble fitting the Ottoman Empire into general theoretical frameworks for Islamic civilization – it is often portrayed as a “special case” that does not fit into either the “medieval” or “modern” period of Islamic history, thereby ghettoizing the field of Ottoman studies as a whole.27 To make matters even more difficult, as William Chittick pointed out in his article on Islamic mysticism from the seventh/thirteenth through the twelfth/eighteenth centuries in the Encyclopedia of Islam, there is a glaring gap in our knowledge about mystical literature and thought from the Ottoman period.28 Yet we are not completely lacking in resources. Other recent projects have revealed the importance of the Ottoman context for analysis of the historical trajectory of Sufism. Dina Le Gall, in her recent study of the Ottoman Naks¸bendi order, has demonstrated that previous conceptions about the Naks¸bendi leadership from the ninth/fifteenth to the eleventh/seventeenth centuries do not hold up under serious scrutiny of the Ottoman sources. Later incarnations of the Naks¸bendi order’s leadership, emanating from the Indian subcontinent, were more aggressive in promoting a sharîʿa-based orthodoxy and in taking a “missionary” approach to replicating their order in Ottoman lands. But in earlier periods of Ottoman history, Le Gall found that retrojecting these stereotypes of the later Naks¸bendi back onto earlier generations are misleading. In fact, the Ottoman Naks¸bendi of the early modern period proved to be much the opposite of more contemporary Nakşbendi: extremely diverse in their outlook and often skeptical about extending their teachings to broader swathes of Ottoman society.29 Such findings provide encouragement to rethinking the role and practice of mysticism in Islamic history, thereby examining more critically the prevailing historical interpretations of these Sufi orders in political, religious, social, and economic spheres of life.

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The present work will contribute to this growing body of literature by focusing specifically on the experiences of the founders of the Halveti order and one of its specific sub-branches, known as the S¸aʿbâniye. An examination of the order’s literary production from the ninth/fifteenth through twelfth/eighteenth centuries demonstrates that important transformations in the order’s doctrines and priorities took place in various contexts as the Halveti adapted to changing conditions both before and after their incorporation into the Ottoman Empire. Before proceeding to a detailed examination of the S¸aʿbâniye sub-branch of the order, however, the emergence of new historical sources force us to re-examine the master narrative of Halveti origins and how they became Ottoman subjects. Only then can we proceed to the story of how S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, founder of the S¸aʿbâniye, established himself in the town of Kastamonu in north-central Anatolia. The issues raised by the history of the S¸aʿbâniye point the way toward new insights for the study of mysticism. For one, the historical period examined here suggests an environment marked by challenges aimed at inherited forms of spiritual belief and practice. There was an increasing need to clearly codify and spread basic knowledge about mysticism to make it available beyond just welleducated circles of the elect. Moreover, a growing awareness emerged that the concerns of mystical ideology could not be completely divorced from political and social realities – if in fact they ever were. All this raises future questions about how to compare the trends seen here with those of the contemporary events of the Reformation and Wars of Religion in Europe, even given critical distinctions that marked the European context (such as the extensive use of the printing press, for instance). Furthermore, it is also worth considering the ultimate trajectory of the Halveti in the Ottoman heartlands, who declined in numbers and influence relative to the arrival of the aforementioned Mujaddidî-based branches of the Naks¸bendi order from the thirteenth/nineteenth century onward. Even here, this apparent decline masks the fact that spiritual descendants of Halveti sub-branches continued to spread across various regions of northern and western Africa. This book provides a revised overview of Halveti origins during a transitional period following the Mongol invasions that culminated in the order’s implantation in Ottoman society. More importantly, by following the evolution of the key sub-branches of the S¸aʿbâniye, scholars can better address the problems evoked by the incomplete literature on this subject. The book’s narrative contrasts the philosophical outlook of the S¸aʿbâniye’s eponymous founder to the vision of the order propagated by its successors, who had to adapt to a changing Ottoman context. From this foundation, historians can establish a framework for comparison with both modern and medieval mystical orders and their practitioners that can shed light on the historical transitions that occurred in both their structures

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and intellectual production. It can also shed light on the influence of movements of religious renewal and purification on Islamic and Ottoman history. Before embarking on this study, however, a brief discussion of the basic ritual practices of the Halveti is required. The basis of Sufism lies in the relationship between the shaykh or spiritual guide (mürs¸id ), and the devotee or “seeker” (mürîd). The seeker must offer an oath of allegiance, or bîʿat, to the shaykh, and the shaykh must decide whether to accept that declaration and confirm the seeker as one of his followers. In so doing, the seeker would often renounce all their worldly possessions and repent of the sins of their former life. He or she was then required to devote himself or herself wholeheartedly to the shaykh, and to report any events or spiritual experiences of significance and receive the shaykh’s guidance and interpretation of them. Furthermore, important ceremonial occurrences marked the life of a Halveti dervish. The first of these is the halvet, derived from the Arabic word khalwa or “seclusion.” The members of the Halveti order often engage in spiritual discipline by secluding themselves in small rooms or cells for long periods of time to grapple with spiritual problems or discipline their carnal souls – these cells still exist in the S¸aʿbân-ı Veli mosque even today (see Figure 1). Participants do not speak to anyone during this time, and emerge from their cells only for ritual prayers. The halvet ceremony could extend from a short retreat lasting a couple of days to the more formidable erbaʿîn, lasting forty days. During the halvet, the devotee ate little or no food, drank as little as possible, and tried to avoid falling asleep. Indeed, a mark of sanctity within the order was the ability to carry out multiple forty-day retreats while breaking one’s fast only once every ten days. Any dreams or spiritual visions the devotee had while in the halvet had to be reported to the shaykh immediately for interpretation and guidance. Another important ritual was performances of the semâʿ and devrân. These rituals were usually performed on Thursday evenings at sundown, and began with a gathering of the order’s followers in a mosque or Sufi lodge to listen to recitations from the Qurʾan and the chanting of the Halveti litany of the Vird-i settâr. Following the completion of the ritual, the assembled group formed themselves into concentric circles, and following the lead of the shaykh, would begin to swing their heads from right to left while chanting “there is no god save God” (lâ ilaha illâ Allah), often to the accompaniment of musical instruments and rhythmic percussion. Placing their right hand on the shoulder, and their left hand on the waist of the person next to them, the devotees circled around the shaykh until the ceremony reached a climatic state of ecstasy, at which point the shaykh would cry out Hû Allah (He is God!), and break free into the center of the circle as the devotees milled around him in a state of utter joy at the proximity of God’s

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Figure 1 Interior of the Şaʿbân-ı Veli mosque in Kastamonu, Turkey

presence. Following the ceremony, a period of rest, followed by a modest meal or drinks with the shaykh concluded the gathering.30 The devotees and shaykhs of the Halveti order also placed a high premium on their spiritual ancestry, and lived in close proximity to tombs of their pious figures if possible. Halveti shaykhs also preserved an initiatic chain of authorities, known as a silsile, that linked themselves back to the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad across the sweep of Islamic history. As the shaykh authorized the best of his followers to act as his representatives, or his successors (halîfe) after his death, they were taught to preserve the historical memory of these connections and to insert themselves into the silsile. It is to the origins of this process that we must now turn. Notes 1 For a critique of the “uneven report card” of Ottoman historians on cultural history, see Leslie Peirce, “Twentieth-Century Historians and Historiography of the Ottoman Empire: The Early Centuries,” Mediterranean Historical Review 19:1 (2004), 13–17; Jane Hathaway then echoed Peirce’s concerns about this lacuna for twelfth/eighteenth-century

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought Ottoman history; see Jane Hathaway, “Rewriting Eighteenth-Century Ottoman History,” Mediterranean Historical Review 19:1 (2004), 38–42. For an illuminating example of this, see MCZ-PP and MCZ-KZ. Valerie Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 15, 266–7 and 362; many contemporary Egyptians expressed this view through their condemnation of one shaykh’s relationship with President Gamal ʿAbd al-Nasir during the 1960s. For an example of how Sufi practices continue in modern times while also raising the suspicions of their contemporaries, see David Meyer Buchman, “The Pedagogy of Perfection: Levels of Complementarity Within and Between the Beliefs and Practices of the Shadhiliya/ʿAlawiya Sufi Order of Sanaʿa, Yemen,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998. NC, pp. 363–6. Fuat Köprülü, Türk Edebiyatında İlk Mutasavvıflar, ed. Orhan F. Köprülü, 4th edn (Ankara: Gaye Matbaacılık, 1981), pp. 195–217. The classic exposition of this thesis, representing in part an ideological attempt to demonstrate Turkish origins for Ottoman institutions, appears in Ömer Lutfi Barkan, “İstilâ Devirlerinin Kolonizatör Türk Dervis¸leri ve Zaviyeler,” Vakıflar Dergisi 2 (1942), 279–304, followed by a catalogue of Sufi foundations that appear in the evkaf registers of various cities. Barkan’s thinking is echoed in Nathalie Clayer’s study of the “implantation” of Halvetî dervishes in the Balkans during the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/ seventeenth century; see NC, pp. 143–79. Ahmet Yas¸ar Ocak references this idea in his work on atheism and heresy in the early modern Ottoman Empire, and situates the Halvetî order squarely in the context of providing shelter for those holding unorthodox ideas about Islam; ZVM, pp. 119–31. In doing so, he stakes out a position somewhat contrary to Clayer’s, who argued that some prominent Halvetî leaders were at the forefront of a “sunnitization” campaign in the Balkans; NC, pp. 63–112. This viewpoint appeared in the anthropological works of Ernest Gellner, often in a Moroccan context; see Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 114–30. However, these views can be traced back as far as the early Orientalist writings of Ignaz Goldziher, for example, “The Veneration of Saints in Islam,” Muslim Studies, vol. 2, trans. C. R. Barber and S. M. Stern (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), pp. 255–341. Gellner, Muslim Society, p. 115. See, for instance, the nuanced summary of this debate in Dale F. Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach, 3rd edn (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1998), pp. 251–4. JST, p. 2. See, e.g., the criticism of Trimingham’s thesis by Katherine Pratt Ewing, Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and Islam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 46–47. In an odd echo of Western discourses of modernity, Muslim thinkers have also blamed Sufi orders for corrupting the spirit of classical Islamic thought and practice; see, for example, Fazlur Rahman, Islam, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 235–54. More recent scholarship suggests that this shared paradigm is rooted in ideas about modernization trajectories that should be questioned; see Ewing, Arguing Sainthood, pp. 2–4 and 41–4.

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15 MCZ-PP, pp. 30–40. 16 Suraiya Faroqhi, “Sainthood as a Means of Self-Defense in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Anatolia,” in Grace Martin Smith and Carl W. Ernst (eds), Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam (İstanbul: Isis Press, 1993), pp. 193–208. The article should be read in conjunction with Faroqhi’s study of population decline during this period: “Population Rise and Fall in Anatolia,” Middle Eastern Studies, 15 (1979), 322–45. 17 Charles Lindholm, “Prophets and Pirs: Charismatic Islam in the Middle East and South Asia,” in Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (eds), Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 224. 18 A Sufi order in Egypt that was able to buck the trend of decline in the mid-twentieth century appears in Michael Gilsenan, Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt: An Essay in the Sociology of Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). 19 Lindholm, “Prophets and Pirs,” pp. 224–9, see also p. 230, n. 10. 20 Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt, pp. 1–4. 21 Katherine Ewing’s work is a good example of a growing critique of the assumptions undergirding much of twentieth-century scholarship. Specifically, she analyzes how paradigmatic ideas about medieval and modern Sufism were created to define contemporary Sufis in India and Pakistan as negative influences in support of the British colonial project; see Ewing, Arguing Sainthood, pp. 47–64. 22 See, for example, the evocation of the importance of this relationship between a recent author and her own Bektâs¸î master in the United States; Frances Trix, Spiritual Discourse: Learning with an Islamic Master (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); see also Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia, pp. 274–88. 23 Classics in the field are Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Ernest Gellner, Saints of the Atlas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1969); Vincent Crapanzano, The Hamadsha: A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973); Dale Eickelman, Moroccan Islam: Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1976). 24 Mark Woodward, Islam in Java: Normative Piety and Mysticism in the Sultanate of Yogyakarta (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1989); John R. Bowen, Muslims Through Discourse: Religion and Ritual in Gayo Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). 25 See the aforementioned thesis of David Meyer Buchman, esp. n. 4. 26 These works have been extremely valuable in advancing the study of Muslim mysticism. However, the foundations that they laid are often not integrated with studies of Sufism in the modern period. Two outstanding examples are Annemarie Schimmel’s Mystical Dimensions of Islam and William Chittick’s The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination. On the other hand, for an amusing account of how attempts to reconcile the historical traditions of early Sufis with modern realities can go awry in anthropological studies, see William Hickman, “Ümmi Kemâl in Anatolian Tradition,” Turcica 14 (1982), 155–67. 27 Rifaʿat ʿAli Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 1–11; see also Gellner, Muslim Society, pp. 1–84. 28 William C. Chittick, “Tasavvuf: 2) Ibn al-ʿArabi and After in the Arabic and Persian Lands,” EI2, vol. 10 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), pp. 317 and 321.

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29 DLG. 30 For a good overview of the ceremonial, ritual and liturgical practice of a sub-branch of the Halvetî in Egypt, see Earle H. Waugh, Visionaries of Silence: The Reformist Sufi Order of the Demirdashiya al-Khalwatiya in Cairo (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008), pp. 56–93.

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PART I

. . . THE RISE AND SPREAD . OF THE HALVETI ORDER FROM ITS ORIGINS THROUGH THE ELEVENTH/ SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

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The historical background for the rise of Islamic mysticism in its formative phases (second/eighth to seventh/thirteenth centuries) is beyond the scope of this work, and is treated in a much more thorough fashion elsewhere.1 However, since many of our sources for the Halveti are grounded in hagiographies (i.e. biographical works describing the lives and activities of pious figures), it is worth briefly tracing the roots of this literary genre and how it grew out of earlier periods of Islamic history. After the revelation of the Qurʾan to the Prophet Muhammad, his companions and successors began to collect anecdotal materials about his sayings, acts, and personality in the hope of a better understanding of how to conduct their own lives. As the era of the Prophet and his immediate contemporaries receded into history, anecdotes about them having varying levels of acceptance among the Muslim community (known in Arabic as hadîth) began to circulate around the various regions that made up the early Arab empire. Some of these anecdotes were intended to clarify points of doctrine with regard to the new faith. However, this material was also mixed with other types of narratives and legends that detailed not only the Prophet, but his companions, the first four caliphs (successors to the Prophet as leaders of the Muslim community), and other well-known figures who developed a following. This sîra literature sometimes came into conflict with emerging doctrinal positions developing among religious leaders of the Muslim community. However, in the end much of this literature also found a canonical place among Muslims; in time, parts of it were integrated into the hadîth. Parallel to these developments taking place between the second/eighth and fourth/tenth centuries, the contours of Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, also began

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to develop. It would initially be characterized by the activities of well-known ascetics (zuhhâd), whose activities and growing prominence resulted in their being acclaimed by fellow Muslims as figures of extraordinary grace and piety, called evliyâ (Arabic: awliyâ’), who were viewed as being the “friends of God.” Naturally, the model of compiling oral anecdotes about their activities and sayings that could serve as a guide for individual conduct would mirror the process that documented the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. But the latter half of the fourth/tenth and the fifth/eleventh century seem to have witnessed a major upsurge in the creation of a distinctly Sufi mystical literature that achieved wide acceptance. A number of authors, writing in either Persian or Arabic, established large biographical compilations documenting hundreds of figures from Islam’s formative centuries who were viewed as exemplary holy men (and, in some cases, women). While the earliest compilations appear not to have survived into modern times or were subsumed in later works,2 this transition point began with the appearance of Abû Nasr al-Sarrâj’s (d. 378/988) Kitâb al-lumaʿ and culminated in the compilation of Abû ʿAbd al-Rahman Sulamî’s (d. 412/1021) Tabaqât al-sufiyya. Sulamî was the first to adopt the organizational framework of dividing his accounts of the early Sufi masters into five distinct classes (tabaqât) based on their chronological position in history. Other authors followed his example by introducing other models, such as the work of Abû Nuʿaym al-Isfahânî (d. 429/1038), who sought to divide his subjects into two categories: “sufis” and ascetics. Later writers and Persian translators, such as Hujwirî (d. 464/1072), Harawî (d. 481/1088), and Ibn al-Jawzî (d. 594/1198) were influenced by these foundational works and expanded upon them.3 After this initial flurry of activity, various hagiographical literatures proliferated throughout the Islamic world, occupying literary spaces between biography, history, and spiritual mythology. Modern scholars have struggled with their content, since they often incorporate miraculous or supernatural occurrences that have been deemed incompatible with the secular phenomena in which modern thinkers ground their historiography. Nevertheless, historians have still been tempted by some narratives in Islamic hagiography, for they often intersect with important and recognizable historical events and personages. Moreover, others have noted that even when the narratives are not “believable,” they still retain a historical context that provides a window onto a now lost worldview of the audiences who enjoyed hearing them recounted. As one scholar put it: . . . hagiographical narratives . . . deserve to be liberated from the tyranny of blind facticity . . . knowing whether the events actually happened has generally been far less important than the tales’ ability to create a sense of connection with the

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larger community of believers, entertain and edify, and allow the listening and reading public to identify immediately with the characters.4

This book will likewise seek to present and preserve the voices of narrators as much as possible to better convey the power these narratives had for their audiences. In order to fully contextualize important Halveti figures within the multiplicity of sub-branches that came to mark the order, this section provides a revised overview of the broad sweep of the order’s macro-history. Luckily, for the Halveti order, the groundwork for this macro-history already exists. The German historian, Hans Joachim Kissling, first took up the subject of the Halveti in the early 1950s with the publication of an article about the rise of the Ottoman Halveti, followed by another on the S¸aʿbâniye sub-branch of the order.5 B. G. Martin elaborated upon Kissling’s contribution in a subsequent article, one of the few to be written in English, and Ernst Bannerth mapped the contours of the Halveti expansion in Egypt in another extensive article.6 These pioneering studies culminated in an extensive examination of the Halveti order in the Balkans by the French scholar, Nathalie Clayer, which developed a theoretical framework about its role in Ottoman history.7 These works contributed various pieces of the Halveti puzzle; all framed their contribution as important for Ottoman political and religious life. However, interpreting the Halveti order as playing a role in Ottoman ideology and state formation has been more controversial. Some have questioned whether the relationship between the order and the Ottoman state was invariably positive. In a seminal article, Madeline Zilfi examined the puritanical religious reformers that came to be known as the Kâdızâdeli movement and their oppositional stance toward the Halveti and other Sufi movements. This work later evolved into a book detailing the impact of the Kâdızâdeli–Halveti conflict on the evolution of the Ottoman religious and scholarly hierarchy, in which she concluded that neither Halveti nor Kâdızâdeli were able to gain complete influence over it. But by the time of the twelfth/eighteenth century, when the conflict receded, both factions may have been marginalized in favor of more narrowly-defined scholarly hierarchies tied to exclusive, powerful families.8 More recently, an unpublished study of the eleventh/seventeenth-century Halveti shaykh, Niyâzî-i Misrî (d. 1105/1694), argued for framing his life and career in terms of a pattern of dissident resistance against Ottoman persecution rather than a friendly collaboration.9 Part I of this book will reassess this contested historiography through a reevaluation of primary sources for the formation and spread of the Halveti order from its vague origins in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran. While many of

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Kissling’s ideas about the basic contours of the order remain relevant, and subsequent contributors to the study of the Halveti have also contributed key parts of the broader history of the order, the conclusions these studies reached must be coupled with a more critical evaluation of the sources on which they were based. This, in turn, will set the stage for a more in-depth examination of the S¸aʿbâniye sub-branch that follows. Furthermore, recent work by Turkish scholars has discovered additional sources that still remain largely untapped.10 However, engaging in this process is among the greatest challenges from a historiographical perspective. The narratives about early Halveti shaykhs, and origin myths for the order itself raise questions about the reliability of historical memory among Ottoman hagiographers of later eras. The first section tackles the task of reconstructing the origins of the Halveti during the formative period of later medieval Islam. For the Halveti shaykhs, their path dated back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad and his son-in-law ʿAlî b. Abû Tâlib, but their actual context of origin was much later. Chapter 1 begins with a critical examination of the chain of authorities that make up the Halveti silsile, a spiritual and chronological genealogy of religious figures anchoring the religious legitimacy of contemporary Halveti shaykhs by linking them to the founding figures of Islam. It will also address the extent to which Halveti conceptions of their distant past reflect what historians now know about the formative centuries of Islamic mysticism. This evaluation continues up to the time of the collapse of the Mongol Ilkhanids and the turbulent decades that followed in the eighth/fourteenth century. It locates the true origins of the Halveti order among a mixture of influences, including the founders of the Suhrawardiyya order in Baghdad, who inherited the mantle of previous mystical trends in Islamic history. However, the Suhrawardiyya components embedded in the order’s ideological grounding also came to be intertwined with more elusive elements grounded in charismatic Sufi movements tied to figures like Muhammad al-Halvetî, ʿÖmer el-Halvetî and Akhî Mîrem el-Halvetî. Chapter 2 grapples with an equally murky historical context, despite narrowing chronological proximity to contemporary Ottoman sources. It provides an overview of the leaders credited with the founding and systematization of what would become the Ottoman Halveti order after the Timurid irruption at the end of the eighth/fourteenth century. It also evaluates narratives that have survived about a series of shaykhs active over the course of the ninth/fifteenth-century section of the Halveti silsile. In particular, it analyzes the tensions that marked the order through a critical burst of activity initiated by the order’s “second pîr”, Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî (d. 869/1465), which was instrumental in spreading the order westward into Anatolia. Only after this point does more solid historical ground emerge, as the order registered its presence more firmly in the consciousness

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of Ottoman historical writing during the Empire’s rise to hegemony in the Near East. From there, we can trace the spread and evolution of several major branches of the Halveti order from the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century through the concurrent process of expansion of the Ottoman state through to the end of the tenth/sixteenth century. This will include an analysis of the careers of critical Halveti figures such as Cemâl el-Halvetî (d. 905/1499), İbrâhîm-i Güls¸eni (d. 940/1534), Sinâneddîn Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî (d. 979/1571), and S¸ücâʿuddîn Efendi (d. 997/1588), personal confidant to Sultan Murad III. In conclusion, the full picture allows a re-evaluation of the ambiguous role played by prominent Halveti shaykhs and their followers concurrent with the rise of the Ottomans to regional power. Notes 1 For a good survey of Islamic mysticism from a historical perspective, see AK-IM; for a perspective more oriented toward religious aspects and doctrine, see William C. Chittick, Sufism: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2000). 2 These are Abû Saʿîd b. Aʿrabî’s (d. 340/952) Tabaqât al-nussâq and Abû Bakr Muhammad b. Dâvûd’s (d. 341/953) Hilyat al-awlîyâʾ; surviving copies have not yet come to light; see Uludağ and Kara’s remarks in LCH, pp. 17–18 for an overview of the early mystical biography. 3 For this fifth/eleventh- and sixth/twelfth-century literature, see LCH, pp. 18–21. The proliferation of biographical notices during this period requires further research; see L. Massignon and B. Radtke, “Tasavvuf: 1) Early Development in the Arabic and Persian Lands,” EI2, vol. 10, pp. 313ff. 4 See ch. 10 of John Renard, Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment, and Servanthood (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), esp. p. 257. 5 Hans Joachim Kissling, “Aus der Geschichte des Chalvetijje-Ordens,” Zeitschrift der Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft 103 (1953), 233–89; and Kissling, “Šaʿbân Velî und die Šaʿbânijje,” in Dissertationes Orientales et Balcanicae Collectae (Munich: Beiträge zur Kenntnis Südosteuropas und des Nahen Orients, 1986), pp. 99–122. 6 BGM, pp. 275–305; Ernst Bannerth, “La Khalwatiyya en Égypte: Quelques aspects de la vie d’une confrérie,” Mélanges de l’Institut Dominicain d’Études Orientales du Caire 8 (1964–6), 1–75. 7 See the first half of NC in particular. 8 See MCZ-KZ and MCZ-PP. 9 DTZ. 10 A good example is the recent study of the “second pîr” and root for most Ottoman Halveti branches, Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî; see MRSY.

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Chapter

1 Early Sufism and The Origins of the . Halveti Path, c. 900–1400

The Origins of the Halveti Path, c. 900–1400

Modern historiographical theory leads most contemporary historians to be critical of origin myths for various Sufi orders that tie them back to revered founding figures in their respective traditions. Historians recognize that the search for legitimacy in subsequent periods led all manner of Sufi intellectuals to construct narratives by which they could link themselves to irrefutable sources of authority for their community. Thus, the Halveti silsile, which all Halveti shaykhs from the earliest times up to the present would cite as an authoritative document linking themselves and their doctrines back to the founding figures of Islamic tradition, might quickly be dismissed by modern historians as having little or no historical value. At the very least, most historians of the Islamic mystical tradition now argue that what came to be called Sufism began to form, at the earliest, only during the second/eighth century, and that the consolidation of Sufi orders themselves may only have begun centuries after the first Muslims had expanded out of the Arabian peninsula.1 Be that as it may, historians must also recognize that the Halveti narratives about their origins maintain a remarkable continuity over time and place when they did begin to consolidate their narrative histories and set them down in written form. Whatever lack of historical truth the Halveti silsile embodies for modern critics, it does not detract from the fact that their narratives about their foundation and origins were quite meaningful to the Halveti shaykhs and their followers, and undergirded their claims to religious legitimacy in the context of the societies they inhabited. This reflects itself most clearly in the fact that any attempt to understand the historical records they produced often requires a knowledge of their references to earlier figures and the founding narratives of the order. Therefore, any jumping-off point for a study of the order must grapple

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with the way in which its origin myths were constructed, followed by an examination of the way in which they constructed the chain of authorities responsible for passing down the mystical secrets of the past to the generations of the present. This chapter aims to analyze the information that the Halveti silsile provides us about the origins of the order from the time of its earliest links in the chain of its authorities up to the emergence of the Timurids in the late eighth/fourteenth century. The activities of Temür-e Lang and the foundation of his empire mark a convenient point of division, for they mark a key moment at which the Halveti order began to build a significant presence in Anatolia and what would later become the Ottoman domains. However, any attempt to trace the Halveti order’s foundations in the silsile for the centuries preceding this point are problematic, in that the process of the formation of Sufi orders was profoundly disrupted and reoriented by the breakdown of Islamic institutions in the Islamic world wrought by the Mongol invasions. Despite these problems, understanding the nebulous origins of the Halveti order may not be entirely outside of our grasp, thanks to a resourceful son of an Ottoman janissary and Sufi devotee, Mahmûd Cemâleddîn Hulvî (d. 1054/1654). In his work entitled Lemezât-ı Hulviye ez lemaʿat-ı ʿulviye (“The Sweet Morsels from the Exalted Flashes of Light”), he sought to reconstruct a series of narratives and information that documented the historical figures who made up the Halveti silsile for his contemporaries in the early eleventh/seventeenth century. The Lemezât represented a twelve-year project undertaken between 1018/1609 and 1030/1621.2 In this work, Hulvî attempted to stitch together a body of anecdotes surrounding every figure in the Halveti silsile from its very beginnings to the most recent shaykh, ʿAdlî Hasan Efendi (d. 1026/1614). Despite his chronological and contextual distance from his subjects, Hulvî periodically incorporates interesting narratives that may offer us some clues about the emergence of the Halveti order from earlier, pre-Mongol Sufi roots. Before commencing with a study of its contents, however, the historiographical peculiarities of the work should also be noted. For example, Hulvî imposed a structural logic on the work that defined the way in which the various figures in the Halveti silsile were presented and narrated. The structure consisted of defining each of the figures in the silsile by the term lemze (literally, “morsel [of food]”). Each lemze was then coupled with three subordinate followers or helpers, whom Hulvî referred to as zâʾika (literally, “tasters”). Only after describing these three subordinates did Hulvî move on to the immediate successor of the previous lemze in the silsile-chain. Thus, Hulvî’s defining structure for earlier generations of Halveti shaykhs is an artificial one. Matters are complicated by the fact that the work of Hulvî becomes demonstrably unreliable in places with regard to both content and chronology.3 In sum, we cannot adopt a

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strategy of mining his narratives directly for factual accounts about figures who lived in the distant past. Still, despite the Procrustean implications of his historiographical method and periodically ahistorical claims, the Lemezât stands alone as our sole Ottoman source that deals with the lives and activities of many of the earlier figures in the Halveti silsile. For this reason alone, it must be taken seriously. While Hulvî undoubtedly incorporated material that reflected the concerns of later Ottoman Halveti leaders and devotees, he did draw on earlier oral tradition and recorded accounts that may have preserved some elements of the context that marked the emergence of the proto-Halveti shaykhs of the medieval and Later Middle periods.4 When combined with other sources and several recent studies by noted scholars, we can perhaps hazard a hypothesis, however vague, about the origins of what would later become the Ottoman Halveti. Origin myths: the telkîn and silsile foundations of the . Halveti order

One of the most important elements among the traditions of the Halveti order was the telkîn, best defined as “inculcation by oral transmission,” of the foundation narrative for the origins of Halveti practice and doctrine, followed by the silsile’s chain of mystical authorities, through whom the means for teaching these secrets had passed from the earliest times up to the present. One of the earliest preserved Ottoman records of this narrative appears in the Tezkîretüʾl-Halvetiye of Sinâneddîn Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî (d. 989/1581), a work in which the author sought to explain to the Ottoman sultan, Murad III, how the order came to originate and spread throughout the Ottoman domains. In this work, Sinâneddîn translates from Arabic the conversation that marked the first transmission of the Halveti path from the Prophet to his son-in-law and future caliph ʿAlî: . . . One day, ʿAlî b. Abî Tâlib (R.A.) came into the presence of the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.S.) and said [in Arabic]: “Guide me to the closest of paths to God Most High, and the most virtuous of them before God, and the easiest of them in regard to the worship of God” . . . The exalted [Prophet Muhammad] said: “What prophecy has bestowed upon me is [an action] incumbent upon you” . . . As soon as ʿAlî asked what type of action [it was], the exalted [Prophet] said: “It is perseverance in the remembrance of God in solitude.” ʿAlî said: “Is the benefit of remembrance excellent in this way, for all people are those who recall?” . . . [The Prophet] said: “O ʿAlî, while there is a man on the face of the earth saying ‘Allah, Allah’ the Day of Judgment will not come.” ʿAlî said: “O Messenger of God, then by what means is it necessary to make the remembrance

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought (dhikr), [to] let it be acceptable, tell me the information (talqîn)?” [The Prophet] said: “Close your eyes and be silent, until I recite three times, you listen, then afterwards you also recite, let me tell you.” So he closed his kohl-tinged eyes to the two worlds and said “there is no god save God” in a loud and drawn out voice, beginning with a negation three times from the right side, and finishing with an affirmation from the left side. ʿAlî was silent and listened. Then he said, “there is no god save God” three times according to this practice. The most noble Prophet spoke and confirmed [it], saying “the trustee [angel] Gabriel taught it to me also according to this practice by the command of the Lord of the Two Worlds.” ʿAlî did not neglect the process of struggle as the days and nights passed, and he was guided to so many spiritual advancements and sublime manifestations that the world of spirits was opened with an opening of openings, and he began to see that which they did not see, and know that which they did not know; he came to that which no eye saw, and no ear heard, and not entered the heart of any human being.5

This narrative establishes the basic practice of the Halveti zikr as drawing on the same sources of authority as did prophecy, in that it was brought by the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. It also set the stage for the basic relationship between a teacher (the Prophet) and his follower (his son-in-law ʿAlî). Moreover, as all Muslims knew, the Prophet Muhammad had his first encounter with the angel Gabriel and the text of the Qurʾan in the cave on the mountain of Hirâʾ in Mecca, so the narrative would have had a powerful ring of authenticity to its audience. Leaving aside our obvious inability to corroborate this narrative to the time of the Prophet Muhammad, further investigation shows that this narrative has deep historical roots. Later Ottoman Halveti authors like Sinâneddîn Yûsuf and Mahmûd Cemâleddîn Hulvî were not the first to advance this origin mythology and its accompanying silsile; it first appears in the text of a treatise on the zikr written by Shihâb al-Dîn Abû Hafs ʿUmar b. Muhammad al-Suhrawardî (d. 632/1234), who credits his paternal uncle Abûʾl-Najîb ʿAbd al-Qâhir alSuhrawardî (d. 563/1168) with teaching it to him via a chain of authorities stretching back to the foundational mystic, Junayd al-Baghdâdî (d. 297/910).6 While the narrative does not contain references to the later practices and techniques of the order in any detail, its connection to the historically verifiable Suhrawardî family is worthy of note. We will return to that connection momentarily, but to return to the narrative of the telkîn, at the point when it was completed the Halveti shaykh reciting it would then teach the chain of authorities linking himself back to this foundational point. This was the silsile that, by Ottoman times, had come to document

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the means by which Halveti teachings had been passed down over the centuries. By the tenth/sixteenth century, this list of successive masters and followers came to maintain a general level of consistency across the various branches that made up the Ottoman Halveti order. Halveti devotees came to unify around this line of descent as expressed from the time of the Prophet Muhammad up until sometime between the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth century. Yet what, if anything, can the earliest links of this silsile tell us about the origins of the Halveti? The earliest links in the chain suggest little grounds for optimism in being able to locate Halveti origins in the early medieval period. The first seven shaykhs in the chain were composed of a number of well-attested historical figures from the formative centuries of Islam. Once the teaching had passed from ʿAlî b. Abû Tâlib to his sons, Hasan and Husayn, the chain begins with the noted early Muslim preacher and proto-Sufi figure of Hasan al-Basrî (d. 110/728). The inclusion of Hasan is hardly unique to the Halveti, as many other Sufi silsiles had built spurious genealogies linking back to this foundational figure in early Islamic history in a process that began as early as the fourth/tenth century CE.7 From there, the teaching passed to Habîb al-ʿAjamî (d. 130/748) and Davûd al-Tâʾî (d. 165/782), a contemporary of Abû Hanîfa (d. 150/767) who was one of the founders of the four schools of Sunnî Islamic law.8 However, at this point some Halveti shaykhs also offered an alternative chain of transmission that passed down from ʿAlî’s son, Husayn, through what would become the major Shiʿî imâms, including Zayn al-ʿÂbidîn (d. 95/713), Muhammad alBâqir (d. 114/732), and Jaʿfar al-Sadîq (d. 148/765). Both chains of transmission culminated in the figure of Maʿrûf al-Karkhî (d. 200/815), a noted practitioner of renunciant ideals. The inclusion of the alternate imamate chain, both here and in other Sufi contexts, suggested to some scholars that there was an inherent interplay between Shiʿism and Sufism during the latter’s formative phases. However, more recent studies have demonstrated that the appropriation of the imams by Shiʿism did not preclude their being venerated figures in the Sunnî tradition also. In the end, the inclusion of the six imams of the Shiʿite tradition in the constructed identity of the Halveti silsile need not be taken as decisive proof of crypto-Shiʿism.9 The next three figures in the chain, Sarî al-Saqatî (d. 253/867), his nephew, Junayd al-Baghdâdî, and Mamshâd al-Dinâwarî (d. 299/912) are also recognizable as important parts of the history of classical Sufism. Both Sarî al-Saqatî and Junayd were important figures in developing Sufi doctrines based on sobriety; often articulated in opposition to the more ecstatic versions of Islamic mysticism pioneered by figures such as Bayâzid al-Bistâmî (d. 261/875) and Mansûr al-Hallâj (d. 309/922).10 Mamshâd al-Dinâwarî, for his part, remains a pivotal eponymous figure for the origins of the Chistiyya order of the Indian

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subcontinent. However, it should be noted that other prominent Sufi silsiles that employ this “golden chain” of authorities stretching from Hasan al-Basrî to Junayd tend to diverge into different personalities rather than Mamshâd from this point forward.11 This leaves the historian to conclude that the formative period of the Halveti silsile, up to the deaths of Junayd and Mamshâd by the end of the third/ninth century, had appropriated earlier constructions of mystical legitimacy claiming to document the transmission of mystical teaching through a noted group of early religious figures. Once the recognizable figure of Mamshâd al-Dinâwarî appears, however, the Halveti silsile diverges from the generally accepted structures of early Sufism. and takes a more unique form by embracing a more obscure figure, referred to as either Ahmad al-Aswad al-Dinâwarî, Abû ʿAbdullah al-Dinâwarî, Muhammad al-Kurdî, or Muhammad al-Dinâwarî (d. 370/980?), depending on which source is consulted.12 At this point, yawning chronological gaps open up in the chain of transmitters, as the next link in the chain, Qâdî Wajîh al-DinʿUmar alSuhrawardî (d. 532/1137), was not born until 455/1063.13 Only with the appearance of Qâdî Wajîh al-Dîn do we reach a figure that can be clearly documented and corroborated by multiple sources as a jurist and transmitter of Prophetic traditions, although we receive only fragmentary information beyond those basic attributes. He may have received the title of “judge” (qâdî) for serving in that office in his home town of Suhraward; he later moved to Baghdad, where he was appointed as a director of a Sufi convent by one of the caliph’s mamlûks.14 After this, there is an intervening link in some Halveti silsiles through the otherwise obscure figure of ʿUmar al-Bakrî, about whom we know almost nothing save that he may have gone on the pilgrimage with Wajîh al-Dîn.15 Despite the vagaries, however, at this point a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence links the foundations of the Halvetî Sufi order to the activities of the prominent Baghdadbased scholars of the Suhrawardî family who, as the figure of Wajîh al-Dîn suggests, fused together elements of religious scholarship, jurisprudence and Sufi mysticism as part of their careers. By the time we reach the next figure in the chain, Abûʾl-Najîb ʿAbd alQâhir al-Suhrawardî, another critical foundation point in the history of Sufism become apparent. Known as the author of the Kitâb âdâb al-murîdîn (“Book of the Etiquette of Sufi Novices”), Abûʾl-Najîb’s sole written work marked the culmination of a series of writings that had aimed to develop a Sufi pedagogy from the third/ninth century onward. It also heralded a new beginning, in that these teachings would be extended to a much wider circle of followers as Sufi orders became more formalized.16 Hulvî’s greater familiarity with figures from this period, based on sources well known to later Muslim thinkers, becomes evident in the biographical entry on Abûʾl-Najîb. In addition to noting his authorship of

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the work on Sufi etiquette, Hulvî gave Abûʾl-Najîb’s alternate silsile “according to another viewpoint,” which ran through Ahmad al-Ghazâlî (d. 520/1126), brother of the influential polymath, Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî (d. 505/1111), deviating somewhat from the later standard Halveti silsile. This “alternate” chain is identical to the silsile personally expressed by the noted Sufi leader ʿUmar alSuhrawardî in one of his works.17 Both lines ultimately terminated in the figure of Junayd al-Baghdâdî, so for later Halveti thinkers there was no possibility of undermining Halveti legitimacy by recognizing multiple possibilities for the transmission of knowledge. Hulvî also drew on additional sources, such as ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî’s hagiographical compilation, Nafahât al-Uns, for a narrative about Abûʾl-Najîb’s encounter with a butcher who was forced to repent after the uncanonically slaughtered animals in his shop spoke to the shaykh to condemn his behavior.18 In addition, potential echoes of Abûʾl-Najîb’s strained relations with the caliphate might be read into a second narrative that told of a hostile encounter between the soldiers of a local governor and the shaykh while he was visiting a village.19 Yet despite these appropriations of key elements of the later medieval Suhrawardiyya tradition, Abûʾl-Najîb’s more illustrious and ambitious nephew, Abû Hafs ʿUmar al-Suhrawardî, played only a bit part in Hulvî’s construction of the Halveti silsile. Moreover, Hulvî was remarkably ill-informed about his history. For one thing, he incorrectly claimed that ʿUmar had died as a martyr fighting against the Mongols at the siege of Baghdad in 656/1258. In so doing, Hulvî tied his biography to a narrative about how ʿUmar had predicted the defeat of the last ʿAbbâsid caliph based on God’s anger at his inability to come to a peace agreement with the Khwârizm Shah ʿAlâʾ al-Dîn Muhammad (d. 617/1220). This prediction drew on the idea that God was punishing the Muslim rulers of the day for defying Sufis like himself, who had tried to broker a peaceful accord. While elements of these tales reflect an actual mission that ʿUmar al-Suhrawardî undertook to try and broker a peace between the caliph al-Nâsir li-Dîn Allah (d. 622/1225) and the Khwârizm Shah in 614/1217, it is difficult to understand why Hulvî did not follow the more correct information in sources like Jâmî’s Nafahât al-Uns, which we know was readily available to him.20 The central role of the Mongols in this narrative, however, raises an important point in its own right. Hulvî wrongly described the next shaykh in the Halveti silsile, Qutb al-Dîn Abû Bakr b. Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Abharî (d. 577/1181), as having died during the time when the Khwârazm Shah had been forced to flee from the Mongol invasions. Moreover, Hulvî described one of his followers, the otherwise obscure Rukn al-Dîn al-Kirmânî (d. 656/1258), as having supposedly died during the sack of Tabriz at the time of Hulagu’s invasion and destruction of the ʿAbbâsid caliphate.21 This foreshadowing of what was to come would

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obscure the history of the Halveti order in a number of ways, for the coming of the Mongols from the second decade of the seventh/thirteenth century onward would complete a process that decentralized and detached the last of the older Islamic institutions of the classical period from their foundations. This would lead to an upsurge in local religious leaders and regional figures grappling with a predominantly nomadic power structure, whose activities would characterize the environment from which the Halveti order would later emerge. At this stage, circumstantial evidence might suggest that the Halveti order originated and grew out of a period in which the first Sufi orders were consolidating into broad-based groups in the last years of the ʿAbbâsid caliphate. This is not to say that this general hypothesis about Halveti origins is untrue. The basic framework of the Halveti telkîn and silsile drew on models pioneered by the emerging groups that would later come to represent the Suhrawardiyya order, even if the links back to them are garbled. Moreover, given the active program of spreading the teachings of the order during the time of the ʿAbbâsid caliph al-Nâsir, hazarding an educated guess that the foundations of the Halveti order might be found in the various offshoots of the Suhrawardiyya tradition makes sense. Still, we should not be too quick to assume that the founding principles of the Halveti are a direct result of a process of evolution grounded in the projects of the seventh/thirteenth-century Suhrawardiyya. Since the works of various members of the Suhrawardiyya were well-known and respected by Ottoman times, Hulvî and his informants may well have simply laid claim to them by constructing their silsile in such a way that it could draw on those elements. It is important to keep in mind that by Ottoman times, both Halveti and non-Halveti authors could draw upon a deep reservoir of literature about the formative figures in Islamic mysticism, and intersect elements from multiple sources into their accounts. Thus, Ottoman authors’ accounts of key figures in the Halveti silsile can bear a strong resemblance to ideas and accounts that predate the Ottoman period by centuries.22 . The Halveti “Dark Ages”: constructing identities in a postMongol world

It is a recognized irony in the historical study of many regions of the world that the medieval or “middle” periods of their civilizations are more poorly understood than their earlier, formative periods, in part because they have either been neglected or lack a substantial source base. In the case of what is sometimes called the “Later Middle Period” of Islamic history, dating from about the time of the seventh/thirteenth century up to the beginning of the tenth/

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sixteenth century, this gap is especially acute.23 The history of the emergence of the Halveti order out of this period is therefore difficult to track. While we can construct some of the origin points for the doctrines and silsile chains of the later Ottoman Halveti out of the foundational materials that accompanied the activities of the Suhrawardiyya, the question of how these elements came to be incorporated into Ottoman Sufi historiography is somewhat more murky. So the second challenge will be to examine what, if anything, can be drawn from Hulvî and other sources about the Mongol and post-Mongol age in which the earliest recognizable Halveti shaykhs emerged. While the Ottomans could draw on a number of hagiographical and biographical sources for information about mystical figures from earlier periods, few of those sources had attempted to compile a full account of all the figures in the Halveti silsile into a single record before Hulvî took up the task. Bits and pieces did emerge in at least one source, in the form of an Ottoman follower of a Naks¸bendî shaykh based in Bursa, Lâmiʿî Çelebi (d. 938/1532). Lâmiʿî is a critical figure, in that his grandfather Nakkâs¸ ʿAlî Pas¸a had apparently been deported to Samarqand by Timur and spent a number of years there before returning. As a result, Lâmiʿî developed relationships with prominent figures based in the eastern Islamic world, which allowed him to both translate and expand the ninth/ fifteenth-century hagiographical compilation of the Timurid author ʿAbd alRahman Jâmî (d. 898/1492). This work, following Jâmî’s, took the title Nafahat al-uns min hadarât al-quds, and was completed in 927/1521.24 Lâmiʿî’s importance for the historian of the Halveti order comes via a series of disconnected discussions about various early Halveti shaykhs that he appended to Jâmî’s work. These explanations of early Middle Period Halveti shaykhs offer valuable but confusing clues about the order’s origins. Jâmî himself had encountered or heard of some of the earliest Halvetis, but his biographical sketches are brief, as he was more interested in other Sufi branches and personalities of the time. Lâmiʿî, on the other hand, who was more aware of the subsequent growth and spread of the Halveti order in his own context, felt obliged to contribute additional information about them. He first offered a concluding remark at the end of his translation of one of Jâmî’s entries on an early Halveti figure, Zâhirüddîn Halvetî (d. 800/1398), and says: [A]ccording to what I heard from the great ones who lived in Herat, these aforementioned Halvetî shaykhs [like Zâhirüddîn] are not the Halvetî shaykhs which in our time are well-known in the area of S¸irvân and Anatolia. The exalted silsile of these aforementioned shaykhs derives from Shaykh Rükneddîn ʿAlâüddevle Simnânî. As for the silsiles of those which are famed among us, they go back to İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî.25

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In making these claims, Lâmiʿî raises the intriguing possibility that the Sufi order that came to be known under the moniker of “Halveti” may not have been a unified group during the post-Mongol Middle Period. The only thing that Rükneddîn ʿAlâüddevle Simnânî (d. 736/1336) and İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî (d. 705/1305) appeared to have in common was their ties to the Mongol Ilkhanid state under whose rule they lived and worked.26 Since we know that the majority of Halveti shaykhs that Lâmiʿî tied back to Rükneddîn ʿAlâüddevle later settled in the area of Herat and other Timurid regions, this otherwise obscure note suggests that the Halveti order may have consisted of both a “western” Ottoman branch and an “eastern” Timurid one that developed and operated in separate spheres from one another. It is therefore unfortunate for the historian that Lâmiʿî Çelebi went on to undermine his own claims by subsequently appending a continuation of the Halveti shaykhs going back to the figure of Hacı İzzeddîn-i Türkmânî (d. 828/1425). Lâmiʿî had little to say about Hacı İzzeddîn himself, save that a pomegranate tree supposedly grew near his grave that had curative powers. But Lâmiʿî took the opportunity raised by his discussion of Hacı İzzeddîn to append our earliest known silsile of the Halveti shaykhs of the Middle Period, which he described as follows: Hacı İzzeddîn’s shaykh and chain of authorities for the order are as follows: Hacı İzzeddînSAkhî Mîrem HalvetîSPîr ʿÖmer HalvetîSAkhî Muhammad HalvetîSİbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî. They say that the traversing of the path via the seven names has been around since [the time of] İbrâhîm Gîlânî. His shaykh in turn was Cemâleddîn Tebrizî. The prominent Naks¸bendî shaykh Uzun Muslihuddîn Halife organized the Halvetî shaykhs this way in the [work entitled] S¸ecere-i Silsile-i Mes¸âyih, and recorded that Zâhirüddîn Halvetî’s shaykh Seyfeddîn Halvetî, his bond [of attachment] was to Pîr ʿÖmer Halvetî.27

Thus, within the space of a single entry, Lâmiʿî Çelebi contradicted his former claim that the two branches of the Halveti order were separate! Instead, he weaves the shaykhs of the two posited branches of the Halveti back together again, with both lines claiming an intersecting line of descent from figures shared in common. It may have been that when Lâmiʿî was putting together his work, he ended up with two separate narratives or sources about the early Halveti shaykhs, and simply recorded both of them without recognizing the subsequent need for editing to resolve the contradiction. Still, Lâmiʿî did recognize a need among his contemporary audience for this information, and went on to recount a number of important ninth/fifteenth-century Halveti shaykhs up to the time of Cemâl el-Halvetî. Cemâl was responsible for definitively establishing the order in the

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Ottoman capital after the accession of Bayezid II to the throne in 887/1481, and would have been a figure prominent in living memory at the time that Lâmiʿî was completing his work. A desire to construct an explanatory mechanism for the rise of the Halveti order in the Ottoman capital in recent memory may have led Lâmiʿî to seek information that inadvertently contradicted his first impression about their history. Luckily, this impasse can be broken via other means, for the problem of the “eastern Halveti” and its origins has recently been taken up in an article by Devin DeWeese.28 In it, he argues convincingly for the fascinating proposition that the early Halveti shaykhs of Iran, the ʿIshqî shaykhs of Central Asia, and the later Shattârî shaykhs of the Indian subcontinent all appear to have emerged out of a common context, which included narratives that overlapped around the figure of a mysterious Muhammad el-Halvetî (d. 751/1350).29 Muhammad elHalvetî was a murky figure at best, aside from a curious reference that he was among the descendants of the noted Shaykh Ahmed-i Jâm (d. 535/1141). In fact, a number of the references to Muhammad el-Halvetî that appear in the sources DeWeese consulted, especially those tied to the emerging Naks¸bendî groups, came to express hostility to him because Muhammad was an advocate of a vocal form of dhikr. Notably, one of the narratives suggests a tantalizing link to the later Halveti practice of using tambourines as a component in their semâʿ and devrân ceremonies. The narrative, told from a hostile point of view, stated that Muhammad was given a tambourine as a gift by Central Asian shaykh who disapproved of his spiritual practices. The shaykh in question intended to demean Muhammad’s spiritual aptitude, because the tambourine gathered “followers of defective mind” and that “children and slave girls and madmen gather at the sound.”30 DeWeese’s painstaking reconstructions of the various silsile construction activity of the various Sufi groups of Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent offers a potential hypothesis that allows for a resolution of Lâmiʿî Çelebi’s contradictory discussion about “eastern” and “western” branches of the Halveti order. Muhammad’s clearly articulated position in the silsile of the “western” Halveti tradition in multiple Ottoman sources suggests that the memory of Muhammad el-Halvetî, just as with the “eastern” silsiles, proved to be an equally malleable point of reference around which the “western” silsile could build itself. DeWeese himself suggests that the specifically “western” Halvetî silsile’s inclusion of İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî may point to the competition of later Halveti silsile builders with emerging Safavid order devotees. He deduces this from the silsile’s inclusion of the figure of İbrâhîm, whom both Muhammad el-Halvetî and Safî al-Dîn Ardabilî (d. 735/1334), the founder of what would later become the Safavid order, supposedly shared as a common teacher.31 Ironically, this would

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come to be a liability for the Ottoman Halveti in later centuries, as the conversion of the Safavid order’s descendants to state-sponsored Shiʿism after the rise of Shah İsmâʿîl I made these links a source of suspicion. DeWeese’s recent work suggests that what we can know about the origins of the various early figures of the Halveti order is nebulous, which is part of the reason why later historiographies about the various silsiles that drew on that legacy branched off in different directions. The various figures who came to take the name “Halveti,” DeWeese argues, are best described as groups who appealed to their audience through practices that could achieve rapid spiritual advancement. This was why the names of these orders – such as the Halveti (meaning, those who withdraw into isolation in cells for mystical reflection) – reflected a practice or spiritual method rather than being named after an eponymous figure.32 DeWeese’s article thus offers up the frustrating possibility that even our earliest mentions of the Ottoman Halveti silsile are, to a great extent, ahistorical and constructed texts insofar as they precede the points in the historical record where their process of construction comes into view among later generations. Nevertheless, he also leaves open the intriguing possibility that these narratives did draw on a common point of reference in the figure of Muhammad el-Halvetî who, however nebulously defined, had existed previous to the process of silsile construction. For later generations, Muhammad acquired overwhelming importance and was reworked to fit later ideological concerns about a given order’s legitimacy. Unfortunately, most Ottoman sources are far less detailed than those provided by “eastern” Halveti offshoots during this early period. Lâmiʿî Çelebi excepted, Ottoman records of the Halveti silsile are frustratingly vague about the people and events that preceded the appearance of Cemâl el-Halvetî, who was the founding figure for the Ottoman Halveti. The silsile in most Halveti hagiographies was provided in Ottoman sources, but it was also passed over as something self-evident, with no attention or narrative being given to any but its most recent members. That is, until Hulvî took up his pen in 1018/1609. The question then becomes whether or not Hulvî’s work can offer us any insight on the following points: (1) does it preserve anything useful about the figures who made up the silsile between the period marked by the rise of the Suhrawardî family’s project and the rise of historically attested figures from the ninth/fifteenth century?; (2) does it offer us any understanding at all about how these early Halveti figures might have related to the turbulent historical context of the post-Mongol world?; and (3) can it resolve the question of how to disentangle the eponymous figures of ʿÖmer el-Halvetî and Muhammad el-Halvetî, who are each credited with giving rise to a “Halvetî order” of some kind? To tackle these questions, we must first reconstruct Hulvî’s silsile of the Halveti order from the period of its Suhrawardî origins up to the mid-ninth/fifteenth century. Table 1 in

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Appendix I summarizes what Hulvî provides us in the way of basic information about the lives and geographical contexts of each of the shaykhs in the silsile. An examination of the shaykhs included in Hulvî’s work suggests several points. First of all, some of the earlier seventh/thirteenth-century parts of the silsile have a strong air of the spurious about them. Figures like the executed Shihâb al-Dîn Yahyâ al-Suhrawardî, of Illuminationist philosophical fame, appear as followers of Rükneddîn Sincâsî, a supposed contemporary of Ibn al-ʿArabî. Moreover, some of the critical figures in the origins of the Mevlevî Sufi order, like Shams al-Dîn al-Tabrizî, noted companion of the order’s founder, Mevlânâ Celâlüddîn Rûmî, are also present. Most strikingly, however, is the inclusion of figures like Kutbüddîn Ebherî, Rükneddîn Sincâsî, and Evhadüddîn-i Kirmânî, each of whom were associated with the spread of the Suhrawardiyya order. We also see mention of figures like İbrâhîm-i Hemedanî el-Irakî (also known as Fakhr al-Dîn ʿIraqî (d. 688/1289) and Hüseyin-i Saʿdâd (d. c. 718/1318), who are tied to another first-generation Suhrawardiyya shaykh, Bahâʾ al-Dîn Zakariyya Multanî (d. 661/1262). This line of Suhrawardiyya shaykhs were tied to the expansion of the order’s teachings in the Indian subcontinent.33 This strongly suggests a process of integration, in which later generations of Halveti Sufis like Hulvî and his mentors were working to bond their legacy together with that of other prominent and accepted Sufi figures representative of an earlier, pre-Ottoman past that Ottomans themselves had come to revere. Moreover, the wide gaps between the death dates of Rükneddîn Sincâsî (d. 628/1231) and his successors, S¸ahâbüddîn-i Tebrizî (d. 702/1302) and Cemâleddîn-i Ezherî (d. 760/1358), followed by an extraordinarily jump backwards in time to İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî, suggest an ahistorical construction. It corroborates DeWeese’s argument that the process of silsile construction based around eponymous figures emerged out of a later historical context of legitimization for Sufi orders. Curiously, Hulvî himself challenges the validity of this type of dating for other parts of the Halveti silsile as laid out in the Lemezât. When discussing the figure of Seyfeddîn el-Halvetî (d. 813/1410), a follower of the Halveti founder Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî (d. 800/1397), Hulvî says: “Although Mevlânâ [ʿAbd alRahman] Jâmî indicated a death date of 763/1362 in his work entitled Nefahât al-Uns, in that case, it is necessary that Pîr ʿÖmer have died before Shaykh Muhammad [el-Halvetî]. So it is against these historical facts.”34 Hulvî’s subsequent expression of historical awareness in this subsequent case makes his omission with regard to the earlier parts of the Halveti silsile all the more glaring. Given this obvious set of difficulties, the scholar is on fairly safe ground in asserting that the institutional memory of how the Halveti order linked back to the teachings from the earlier Suhrawardî period had been considerably obscured

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by the time Hulvî set about compiling his work. He either could not or did not note the discrepancies involved in the silsile’s construction, most likely due to a lack of historical resources by which he could resolve them. The hypothesis that holds the origins of the “western Halveti” silsile to be the product of ex post facto construction by later generations receives similar corroboration from the equally sketchy position of İbrâhîm Zâhid in the silsile. Hulvî posits Muhammad el-Halvetî, whom he recorded as dying in 780/1378, as the successor of İbrâhîm Zâhid. To explain how the two shaykhs connected with each other, Hulvî states only that “[Muhammad] was born in the region of Khwârazm and grew up there; while he was among the most prominent scholars of the community, he pledged his allegiance [to İbrâhîm Zâhid] by means of a dream, and was with the Shaykh in Gilan. After that he came with the successorship to Khwârizm and settled there. After that he came to Herat (Herî).” He then expands on a narrative extracted from Jâmî’s Nefahât al-Uns about Muhammad’s use of the vocal dhikr, whose echoes could be heard some three farsakhs away, but without giving a clear origin for the subsequent elaboration: They asked him: What a strange matter! Your voice for recitation of prayers is invariably neither farther or nearer than three farsakhs . . . He replied: Shaykh Zâhid one evening, while conversing with his wife, in the middle of the conversation his wife asked, “when you pass on, who will be the heir apparent and holder of the position . . .? This much is clear: it will be one of your sons.” When she said this, he said: “O wife, if you want to know this answer, now everyone is lying in their bed in the world of dreams and sleeping. Come now, let’s call out to each one of them clearly, whichever youth hears our call and replies, it is assigned to him . . .” He must have first recalled all of the dervishes from among the children and successors and called each of them by name, and awaited a reply accepting his call. Each time, no reply came; no awake person was among the people of inner consciousness. Finally, he addressed this well-wisher also. The first time I was sunk in ecstatic contemplation and brought myself to a sober state. Upon his second call, I heard it in garbled form. Upon the third, I responded saying “I am here” (lebbeyk). I waited on his reply and realized I was in a place three farsakhs distant.35

The narratives suggest a certain tension in the initiation of Muhammad el-Halvetî as a follower (alternate interpretations might suggest it is a reworking of a more hostile narrative suggesting that he failed a test imposed by his shaykh!). It also suggests a need to explain issues of both distance and the origin of the vocal dhikr that captured the attention of many of Muhammad el-Halvetî’s contemporaries – Jâmî had made a reference to it in his Nafahât al-Uns, for instance.36

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Aside from these curious and uncorroborated accounts, we receive little further detail on the matter of Muhammad el-Halvetî’s relationship with his ostensible master. Hulvî concludes his biography with a long story about how the shaykh helped a local man salvage his marriage, and then by locating the shaykh’s death and tomb in the Gazergâh cemetery in Herat, which was the site of a Halveti graveyard.37 So once again, up to the appearance of Muhammad el-Halvetî in the historical record, the connections in the western Halveti silsile seem problematic. The question now shifts to whether or not Muhammad el-Halvetî can be esteemed as a decisive figure for the western branch of the Halveti. To approach this question, we need to examine Hulvî’s biography of the nominal founder of the Ottoman branches of the Halveti order, Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, which is the most extensive record discovered so far and includes an unusual level of detail. Hulvî claims that ʿÖmer was the child of a brother of Muhammad el-Halvetî, and that his family resided in the town of Lahîcân, which is a town in the province of Gilan a short distance from the southern shore of the Caspian Sea.38 But a more interesting contribution is the narrative on how ʿÖmer came to become a Sufi in the first place, which Hulvî relates as follows: In his youth, he became enthusiastic about being a cavalryman for a while, he loved being a soldier and joined the gâzis to make war upon the unbelievers. While involved in conflict and war for many long years in this way, he participated in a campaign together with Çoban Girây Hân of the family of Chingîz (Hân)39 who was the ruler of the time. But while passing by a place, they were unexpectedly attacked. When their army, defeated and crushed, disintegrated and fled, ʿÖmer Efendi also fled, spurring his horse in a direction out of fear for his life. But he ran into a group of bandits by chance. As soon as they saw ʿÖmer Efendi, they said “hey, aren’t you Çoban Shah’s market-inspector (muhtesib)?” They crowded around him in the hope of finding money, and wanted to kill him. ʿÖmer Efendi, while in this grave situation and condition, reached out for the help of the secret of his forefathers, who said to him with a spiritual sign, “will you enter the [Sufi] path, or will you give up your head on this road?” ʿÖmer Efendi, with tears of regret, became a seeker of the path from [the depths of] heart and soul.40

This narrative takes a sharp turn from the vagueness that marked earlier members of the Halveti silsile up to this point, as the narrative can help date a part of ʿÖmer el-Halvetî’s early life. We learn that ʿÖmer el-Halvetî took up an official post in the final years of the Mongol Ilkhanid state, and from the anecdote, it appears that he probably suffered from its growing weakness during the reign of the last Ilkhanid ruler, Abu Saʿîd (r. 716/1316–736/1335). It is also highly likely that the

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Çoban Shah referred to in the narrative is Amîr Çoban (d. 728/1327), who had been a prominent general and statesman under multiple Ilkhanid rulers, having fought in his first battle as early as 688/1289. We know that his power reached its apogee at the time of Abu Saʿîd’s rule, and that his influence even reached a point where he could challenge the power of the ruler. Ilkhanid concerns about his disobedience to the ruling house eventually led to his downfall.41 The defeat mentioned in this narrative strongly implies that ʿÖmer made his break with the Ilkhanids probably at the point when Amîr Çoban’s power was collapsing during the mid-1320s. As we know that İbrâhîm Zâhid and his descendants had ties to the Ilkhanid state, and had been given land and sources of vakıf revenue as a result, we might hypothesize that ʿÖmer’s family also had connections with his order and the Ilkhanids.42 Therefore, the idea of a “western Halveti” grounded in the figure of İbrâhîm Zâhid, however inchoate, seems possible. But this still leaves open a critical question: how could Hulvî claim that ʿÖmer had also come to be associated with Muhammad el-Halvetî and the shaykhs of the “eastern” branch? Hulvî continues his narrative of ʿÖmer’s mystical conversion by telling of his miraculous escape from the bandits. At the moment they were about to seize him, one of them suddenly fell off his horse and died on the spot, and in terror, the remainder fled the scene. Having lost his horse, ʿÖmer walked a full day and night until a town appeared before him: While coming and going among the orchards of the city, he encountered Shaykh Muhammad at that moment on account of his going out for a morning journey together with his friends. ʿÖmer was attracted to the shaykh, and pledging his allegiance to him, threw off his military garb that he was wearing and donned the garb of a dervish. Shaykh Muhammad said to Pîr ʿÖmer, “praise be to God; he bound you to us, we also bind you to the people of sainthood,” and commended him to utmost exertion and discipline.

Interestingly, we know that Amîr Çoban suffered his final defeat somewhere between Rayy and Herat; he retreated to the latter shortly before his capture and execution. Might this narrative allow us to fix a potential meeting between ʿÖmer el-Halvetî and Muhammad el-Halvetî in 728/1327, at the point when ʿÖmer staggered back into Herat after the decisive and final defeat of his patron, Amîr Çoban? The evidence, circumstantial though it may be, makes this interpretation possible. Moreover, this suggests another potential problem with the Halveti silsile, given the difficulty of finding viable links between Muhammad el-Halvetî and İbrâhîm Zâhid. Perhaps ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, having grown up as a scion of a family with ties to the family of İbrâhîm Zâhid, had also attached himself at

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some point to the charismatic, Herat-based shaykh Muhammad as well. After all, when we leave aside the concerns of later silsile builders concerned about chains of transmission, the Sufis of ʿÖmer and Muhammad’s time would have seen nothing wrong with this pattern of multiple associations. Could the later Halveti traditionists and biographers, whom Hulvî subsequently channeled in compiling his own work, attempted to harmonize this otherwise discordant step away from İbrâhîm Zâhid’s tradition by “adopting” the outsider, Muhammad el-Halvetî, as a linking figure in the Zâhidiyya legacy? Hulvî continued his narrative by describing ʿÖmer el-Halvetî’s character as a mystic once he had converted to Sufism: According to what is related, Pîr ʿÖmer struggled to such a degree that no one before that had done it as much as him. When he completed the path, and was given a prayer [of blessing], he did not accept giving guidance and went to the mountains. He settled in the hollow of a tree in isolation from people. He made it into a cell and entered into the forty-day retreat. Our noble one Necmeddîn Hasan Efendi used to say that he did forty [of these] forty-day retreats back-to-back, and that the [Halveti] headgear was reformed by means of indication of the dâl cap with forty pleats [in it] from the secret of the most noble Messenger, peace be upon him.43

The narrative of taking up residence in the hollow of a tree would later become central to the historical understanding of the branches of the Ottoman Halveti order. One popular offshoot described how when Pîr ʿÖmer departed from his retreat in its hollow, the tree would try to uproot itself and follow him while making loud noises.44 Moreover, Hulvî, citing his first shaykh Necmeddîn Hasan Efendi (d. 1019/1611), also credits him with the creation of a form of headgear that would come to define the Halveti as an order which was based on the practice of the forty-day retreat. According to Hulvî, Pîr ʿÖmer was eventually sent by Muhammad to the mountain town of Khoy, west of Tabriz, perhaps out of recognition of his follower’s love of solitude in nature. At this point, however, an alternative narrative emerges to challenge that of Hulvî. A follower of the noted Halveti shaykh Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî in Azerbaijan, Yûsuf Müskûrî (d. 890/1485), also penned an Arabic-language work entitled Silsilatu’l-ʿuyûn that documented Yahyâ’s spiritual lineage. In it, he claimed that the “Lâhicân,” as referenced by Hulvî, instead referred to the Azerbaijani town of Lahıc, near the modern day city of S¸amâhî, and that ʿÖmer el-Halvetî had been born there, and later returned to live out the remainder of his life in the mountain town of Avahıl in the vicinity north of the two aforementioned settlements. Qafqaz University professor Mehmet Rıhtım,

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after exploring the region, found an ancient graveyard referred to by the local population as the “ʿÖmer Sultan ziyâretgâhı” in the area of Avahıl marked by a large, hollowed out tree.45 Rıhtım’s findings do correlate well with the fact that many of the subsequent Halveti leaders who followed ʿÖmer el-Halvetî were based in the region of S¸irvân, and suggest that Hulvî’s information on this point might be contested on geographical grounds. Whatever the truth of the matter, the remoteness of ʿÖmer el-Halvetî from society was probably what drove earlier historians of the order to describe him as “not [a] man to propel an organization very far in the institutional sense.” Yet given the tenor of Hulvî’s narratives about him, these dismissals of ʿÖmer may prove to be anachronistic and in need of revision.46 Whatever the truth of his geographic framing, Hulvî’s narratives about ʿÖmer point to the idea that he was a prominent official in the Ilkhanid military and a descendant of prominent lineage even before he became a Sufi mystic, which would have given him some stature. Hulvî’s description of events from his subsequent career, wherever it might have taken place, also suggests some intersection with various political figures and events. In one narrative, Hulvî relates that when Muhammad died, he willed his position to ʿÖmer, but ʿÖmer attempted to reject it in favor of staying in the mountains, much to the dismay of shaykh’s followers, who “complained about him to the spiritual presence of their shaykh.” He was compelled to accept his new role only when a band of raiders attacked the community near where ʿÖmer was living in the mountains and plundered it. The local population armed themselves, defeated the bandits, and pursued them into the mountains. When they found ʿÖmer, they arrested him and dragged him to the town. Only at the last minute did the local official in charge realize what was happening, and saved ʿÖmer from execution. He then took ʿÖmer to the dervishes and had him seated as the proper successor to Muhammad.47 In another narrative, an unnamed local governer (hâkim), while hunting in the mountains, was chasing a doe through the woods when he and his horse got stuck in the middle of a river, where he feared he was about to drown. ʿÖmer suddenly appeared before him and asked, “why are you harassing and killing the little animals on my mountain? Are you hungry? Don’t do it again!” He then pulled the general and his horse to safety, earning the latter’s gratitude.48 Another more problematic narrative suggested that ʿÖmer had traveled to Egypt to make the pilgrimage at some point during his life, and that he was gone for many years. Only after the Jalâyrid ruler, Shaykh Uways (d. 776/1374), sent an emissary to the Mamluk ruler was the shaykh compelled to return, although the narrative stressed that ʿÖmer did not come to the ruler, but instead went back to Tabriz.49 Still, after examining all this material, we are still left with a critical problem, which is that, given our present knowledge, corroborating many of Hulvî’s

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narratives is impossible. Furthermore, the tenor of the narratives may in fact argue against the possibility that they might be corroborated by contemporary sources. The first narrative, for example, has a strong didactic element to it, in that it is intended to teach its listener the importance of following the will of one’s shaykh. In addition, it implicitly criticizes ʿÖmer for being overly attached to solitude. As we shall see in subsequent chapters that outline the history of the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the order, these concerns betray hints of contemporary shifts in Halveti belief and practice that inclined to a more activist stance. This shift affected the activities of Halveti leaders and their followers in the Ottoman context in which Hulvî was active. Moreover, in the latter two narratives, the desire to tie the shaykhs’ spiritual power to influence over political leaders in the community runs extensively through Muslim hagiographical narratives in general, a characteristic that offers proof of sainthood. Still, there is some evidence that suggests not all of Hulvî’s account can be dismissed as a trope-ridden construction grounded in didactic narratives. Another source corroborates the existence of Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, and suggests that the narratives on which Hulvî drew may have had some grounding in reality. At some point during the 750s/1350s, a devotee of Shaykh Sadr al-Dîn al-Ardabîlî (d. 794/1392) was asked to compile a work describing the origins of the Safavids. This devotee, Tawakkulî b. İsmâʿîl b. al-Bazzâz al-Ardabîlî (fl. c. 759/1358), carried out his master’s wishes by compiling a massive Persian-language work entitled Safvât al-safâʾ (“The Purest of the Pure”). This work extensively describes the lives and practices of both İbrâhîm Zâhid and his successor, Safî al-Dîn al-Ardabîlî, which he completed in the summer of 759/1358.50 In at least four places in the work, the author mentions an “ʿUmar Khalvatî” as a key informant for narratives that he collected for the work. In two of those narratives, ʿÖmer talks about how he had heard about İbrâhîm Zâhid’s encounters with troops of the Ilkhanid army who had been hostile to him. In the first, one of the amirs leading the military force tries to seize ʿÖmer for execution, only to find himself afflicted with a mortal disease that kills him almost instantaneously. In the second, an Ilkhanid military force accosted İbrâhîm Zâhid and his followers for some food, and despite the fact that little remained in the pot, İbrâhîm was nevertheless able to make seventeen bowls of food and oil miraculously appear without using up the small amount that remained.51 Whatever the truth of these miraculous accounts, what is most striking about them is that they derive from within a military context – which fits with Hulvî’s description of ʿÖmer’s military service. He may well have drawn these narratives from former soldiers who developed ties to İbrâhîm Zâhid and his circle. Moreover, in another narrative about Shaykh Safî al-Dîn, the founder of what would become the Safavid order,

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Ibn al-Bazzâz, talks about how ʿÖmer el-Halvetî was present at a gathering at which the semâʿ was being performed and was therefore a witness to it. Since we know that Safî al-Dîn died in 735/1334, this suggests that ʿÖmer el-Halvetî’s connections to İbrâhîm Zâhid remained strong, whatever the possibilities invoked by his connection with Muhammad el-Halvetî in Herat. None of these narratives preclude the idea that ʿÖmer had made the acquaintance of both Sufi leaders during the course of his career, and could have acted as an integrating figure for the teachings of both. In the shifting cross-currents of religious thought and practice that marked the collapse of the eastern Islamic world during the Mongol invasions, and would also eventually make the Safavid order Shiʿite in orientation, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that ʿÖmer el-Halvetî might also have experimented with a hybrid of Zâhidiyya/Suhrawardiyya ideas coupled with the more charismatic Sufism of the “eastern” Halveti order under Muhammad el-Halvetî. That being said, the overall picture may also indicate that later Halveti silsile builders upon whom Hulvî drew for his work simply ignored geographical and chronological gaps among these figures known from the past and whose legitimacy they sought to appropriate. The later narratives that emerged about them simply aimed to bring them all together and harmonize them to form a historical – or ahistorical – justification for the order. Speculative though it may be in parts, we now have some idea about who the ostensible founders of the Halveti order were. On the other hand, it is less speculative to note that the broader geographical region out of which the antecedent figures to the Halveti shaykhs had emerged was about to suffer a catastrophic reversal of fortune through the emergence of Temür-e Lang (d. 807/1405). By the end of the eighth/fourteenth century, the regions of Persia and the Caucasus from which the Halveti founders came had become a battlefield. Azerbaijan in particular, which would act as a launching pad for the ninth/fifteenth-century Halveti shaykhs, was a contested region caught between the forces of Temür and the Golden Horde led by Toktamıs¸ (d. 807/1405). Timurid interference in the internal politics of the region led Toktamıs¸ to invade and ravage Azerbaijan in 788/1385. This gave rise to back and forth conflict between the two forces that did not conclude until a decade later. The political and military turmoil occasioned by these difficult years of Timurid–Golden Horde conflict is reflected in the career of the ostensible successor to the figure of ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, whom we know only as Akhî Mîrem el-Halvetî (d. 812/1410). The connections between Akhî Mîrem and his ostensible master ʿÖmer elHalvetî are problematic from the outset. Given ʿÖmer’s connections with Safî al-Dîn, whom we know from other sources died in 735/1334, he must have had extraordinary longevity to have lived up to 800/1397 as Hulvî claims.52 Moreover, if it seems plausible that ʿÖmer remained tied more closely to the

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geographical area of his origins, Akhî Mîrem’s clear ties to Herat and the Halveti community there suggest that there are problems either with Hulvî’s chronology or with a conflation of two separate strains of early Halveti leaders. According to the Lemezât, Akhî Mîrem was born in a village called “Kelibâd” in the vicinity of Herat, and also traveled to S¸irvân in the course of his education. With the coming of the Timurid depredations, however, he fled westward into Anatolia and eventually settled in the town of Kırs¸ehir, which was a surviving island of prosperity in the region and home to a number of mystical groups. Hulvî, perhaps opportunistically, links Akhî Mîrem to the figure of Akhî Evrân (d. 854/1450), a patron saint of sorts for the guild of tanners in a later Ottoman era.53 The very designation of Mîrem el-Halvetî as an akhî strongly suggests his incorporation into the futuwwa tradition that had spread to Anatolia, perhaps deriving from the Baghdad-based Suhrawardî tradition of the earlier seventh/thirteenth century.54 In a partial mirroring of the career of his ostensible mentor ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, Hulvî also describes Akhî Mîrem as having been attached to a political context, in that he was presenting poetic kasîdes to an unnamed “emîr of that time” who was having them read at court for entertainment. Despite this budding success as a court poet, Akhî Mîrem was troubled by his activities. Soon after, he dreamed that the Prophet Muhammad commanded him to recite a poem for his enjoyment. After praising Akhî Mîrem for doing so, he commanded him to abandon his neglectful behavior. From this encounter, Akhî Mîrem sought out Pîr ʿÖmer to become one of his followers.55 However, Hulvî’s information proves somewhat chaotic from this point, as he places the tomb of Akhî Mîrem in three separate locations: one in the village of Tepevirân near Kırs¸ehir (a mosque and zâviye are also mentioned), one at the side of the tomb of Pîr ʿÖmer in Tabriz, and one in the Halveti cemetery in Herat near the Gazergâh bridge along with other prominent Halveti figures.56 Given the tenor of subsequent biographical information in the Lemezât, the final scenario appears most likely, for in another part of the work he deputized one of his followers, Amr-ı Rabbanî (d. 848/1444), to stand in for him in Herat during his long absence.57 This indicates that he returned to Herat at some point, perhaps as a result of the subsiding of the Timurid furor at the end of his life. We also cannot rule out the possibility of a deportation back home after Temür had overrun Asia Minor during his war with the early Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I (d. 805/1403); we know that Temür’s campaign included Kırs¸ehir as one of its targets.58 Akhî Mîrem’s career, however confusingly articulated, still offers up the tantalizing suggestion that he could have acted as a link back to the figure of Muhammad el-Halvetî. Given that they both had connections to Herat on some level, this raises some interesting possibilities. Could Akhî Mîrem have been both the true “connecting figure” between the tradition of İbrâhîm Zâhid and

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ʿÖmer el-Halvetî as a part of his migrations, and the Herat-based Muhammad elHalvetî through his flight westward into Asia Minor? Unfortunately, additional sources do not exist to give us any definitive evidence on this point. What we do have suggests that later silsile builders sought to harmonize multiple traditions from the post-Mongol world that existed in an era where chains of transmission were either not important or had come to be obscured by the political and military disruptions of that era, thus allowing for reconstruction to serve the new needs of Sufi leaders in later times. Yet the biography of Akhî Mîrem also suggests a broader pattern that was taking shape by the beginning of the ninth/fifteenth century. We do have intimations that other shaykhs, usually minor, within Hulvî’s silsile were able to lay claim to connections in Asia Minor, such as Akhî Yûsuf (who spent time in Niğde and whose name indicates similar futuwwa-style connections, d. 708/1308), Muhammad el-Karsî (who was from Kars and died there during the Timurid campaign into Asia Minor, d. 803/1401), and Kütbüddîn Tebrizî (who was tied to the early Ottomans and was supposedly in İznik, d. 818/1415). The biographical information about these figures can be potentially problematic, as even Hulvî himself admitted at one point.59 Nevertheless, the geographical origins of these subjects indicate that Akhî Mîrem represented the first point in which a member of the Halvetî silsile was tied to the region of Asia Minor for any length of time, and points toward early connections of the Halveti with other mystical communities and leaders further to the west. According to Hulvî, while in Kırs¸ehir, Akhî Mîrem won over an initially hostile and anti-mystical scholar by the name of Abû Tâlib al-Makkî (d. 824/1421), trained him, and sent him to Egypt. Abû Tâlib later returned to Kırs¸ehir to take Akhî Mîrem’s place after his death (or after his return to Herat).60 Moreover, even after returning to Herat, Akhî Mîrem continued to attract followers from Asia Minor. For example, Pîr Tevekkül (d. 837/1433), who hailed from the Black Sea port of Sinop, pledged himself to Akhî Mîrem after a miraculous occurrence in which the shaykh was speaking about the phenomenon of tayy-ı zamân ve mekân in a gathering of his followers. When Pîr Tevekkül recalled the great distance that separated him from his mother and father in far-off Sinop, he suddenly found himself in their home. He was able to speak to them, and his family was able to hear but not see him. When he snapped out of this state and found himself back in the shaykh’s gathering in Herat, he found that a ewer he had reached for while in the house to perform his ablutions was still in his hand. He was subsequently sent back to Sinop, where he died and was buried.61 These types of narrative evoke a period in which the Halveti shaykhs and others were on the move and spreading their teachings more widely beyond their traditional centers of activity.62

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In sum, Hulvî’s record of the flight of Akhî Mîrem and his followers westward could represent genuine recollections of the introduction of the Halveti order into Anatolia. We know from other sources that Pîr İlyâs Amâsî (d. 837/1434) was recognized as being among the first Halveti shaykhs to appear in the Amasya region in the historical record, having taken control of a Sufi lodge built there as early as 815/1412, which roughly correlates with the time frame of Akhî Mîrem.63 While the order appears to have transplanted itself back to the east after the chaos wreaked by the Timurid invasions, it also planted seeds in the west as a result of those events, and subsequent Halveti shayhks could build on those linkages. Moreover, we know that the Timurid invasions had also forcibly relocated large numbers of Anatolian intellectuals and artisans from their homes and sent them to the east, where they undoubtedly encountered mystics as part of their experiences (Pîr Tevekkül may be a good example). We know that later generations of intellectuals, including Halveti shaykhs, continued to make journeys aimed at visiting the eastern regions of the Timurids as a proving ground for gaining religious education and skills.64 Ultimately, however, the question of the exact set of events and connections that marked this period in the Halveti silsile are not as clearly defined as we would like. The remembrances of the period that Hulvî records reflect an attempt to bring structure and order to an amalgamation of different Sufi movements and trends that overlapped in different geographical regions during a period of political and military disorder in Islamic history. Conclusion

Most histories of the Halveti order have chosen to begin their discussion of its history with the ninth/fifteenth-century figure of Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî and his multitudinous followers, some of whom were critical in establishing the order among powerful figures in the Ottoman hierarchy. Yet in proceeding from this point, they have chosen to ignore or dismiss, inadvertently or otherwise, the potential information to be found in lesser known Ottoman hagiographers like Hulvî, who sought a more thorough presentation of his order’s origins. Hulvî’s work, if used carefully, may preserve elements that can help us piece together a more distant set of past traditions to which he was heir, in addition to explaining how his order sought to restructure that legacy to serve their later needs. The evidence shows that the earliest parts of the Halveti silsile are the product of the consolidation that took place in the formative period of Sufism, and can be dismissed as such. However, through the intersection of works like Hulvî’s with other sources that have become available, we find evidence that a primary component of the Ottoman Halveti origin narrative grounded itself in the projects of the Suhrawardiyya in the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries. While Hulvî’s

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work does not provide enough detail to trace directly the links of the Halveti shaykhs of the Later Middle Period back to the Suhrawardiyya, the presence of multiple Suhrawardiyya figures in the silsile, spurious though they may be, testify to the influence that the works of the Suhrawardiyya and their teachings exercised over the Halveti shaykhs, who transmitted the accounts to Hulvî. Perhaps tellingly, the sources claim that İbrâhîm Zâhid sought out the noted poet Saʿdî-i S¸irâzî (d. 691/1292) for his initial training in Shiraz. Not coincidentally, Shiraz was a major Suhrawardiyya center that was also home to a first-generation follower of ʿUmar al-Suhrawardî, ʿAlî b. Buzghush (d. 678/1279). ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî in his Nafahât indicated that both had ties to the Suhrawardiyya.65 However, historians must also resist the temptation to reduce the Halveti to a strictly imitative latter-day descendant of the great Suhrawardiyya project of the late ʿAbbâsid caliphate. With the weakening of the traditional institutions of knowledge after the destruction of the Mongol invasions, a space opened up for alternate forms of Sufi belief and practice, and Hulvî’s work suggests that the subsequent welding together of traditions represented by figures like ʿÖmer el-Halvetî and Akhî Mîrem may well have been more important than previously supposed in creating a Halveti path that would later spread to the west. By grafting together the older, more sober tradition of the medieval period with a new, charismatic form of authority espoused by Muhammad el-Halvetî and other “eastern” shaykhs, we can locate a foundation for the Ottoman Halveti in the uncertain period between the collapse of the Ilkhanid state and the rise of the Timurids. In the end, the geographical range that appears among the successors to ʿÖmer el-Halvetî in Appendix I indicates that the disruptions wrought by the Timurid invasions of the later eighth/fourteenth century would trigger a growing spread of this new hybrid order into Anatolia and other parts of the Islamic world. These movements toward the west and the lands that would become the Ottoman Empire proved to be opportunities for ʿÖmer’s successors. The growing strength of the order in these regions, coupled with the rise of the Safavids after the end of the ninth/fifteenth century, would detach the “western” Halveti from their Azerbaijanî and Gilanî origins and allow for their re-foundation as a cornerstone of Ottoman Sufism. It is to that process of shifting gravity to the west that we must now turn.

Notes 1 See the remarks of Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 1–3. 2 Mustafa Uzun, “Hulvî, Cemâleddin (ö. 1064/1654),” DİA, vol. 18, p. 347. At least twelve

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6 7

8 9

10 11 12

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manuscript copies have survived, according to the modern Turkish translator and editor of the Lemezât, Mehmet Serhan Tays¸i; see his introduction to Mahmud Cemaleddin elHulvî, Lemezât-ı Hulviyye ez Lemezât-ı Ulviyye (Yüce Velilerin Tatlı Halleri) (sic), ed. Mehmet Serhan Tays¸i (İstanbul: Marmara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Vakfı Yayınları, 1993). See, for example, the remarks of RÖ-OT, p. 27, n. 1. In citing the Lemezât from this point forward, I include both the folio reference to the Halet Efendi 281 manuscript of the work found in the Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi in İstanbul (see “Frequently cited Works”) and the more readily accessible modern Turkish printed text published by Mehmet Serhan Tays¸i in parentheses, as given in n. 2 above. It should be noted that the binder of the Halet Efendi manuscript has improperly ordered two sections of the work from 150b–160a and 160b–170a that correspond to 298–319 and 319–340 in the printed text of Tays¸i’s edition (ignore marginal note claiming that a section is missing by anonymous archivist on LH, p. 170a). THV, fols 4b–6a; the narrative is a mixture of Arabic coupled with Turkish translations. Perhaps because it was a well-known narrative among Hulvî’s circle in later decades, he included only a shortened version of the narrative and built it into a chapter on the biography of ʿAlî b. Abû Tâlib; see LH, fols 19b–20a (49–50). ESO, pp. 224–5. The phenomenon of Hasan al-Basrî’s appropriation as a founding figure in the chains of authority for multiple Sufi orders has been thoroughly documented in the work of Suleiman Ali Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History: al-Hasan al-Basrî (d. 110 H/728CE) and the Formation of His Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), pp. 112–20. Karamustafa, Sufism, p. 104. B. G. Martin suggested that the inclusion of these figures in the Halveti silsile made them suspect during the tenth/sixteenth century on account of the Safavid threat, and this led them to strike out the imamate chain from their silsile; see BGM, pp. 284–5. However, I have not found that to be a widespread phenomenon in other manuscripts of the period, and Hulvî cheerfully includes all of the twelve Shiʿite imams in an introduction to his construction of the Halveti silsile; see LH, fols 38b–68a (85–132). Jawid A. Mojaddedi, The Biographical Tradition in Sufism: The tabaqât genre from alSulamî to Jâmî (Richmond: Curzon, 2001), pp. 36–7. K. A. Nizami, “Čishtiyya,” EI 2, vol . II, p. 50; compare also Mourad, pp. 112 and 118. This figure was most likely the individual who initiated ʿUmar al-Suhrawardî’s greatgrandfather into the Sufi path, Ahmad al-Aswad al-Dinâwarî; see ESO, pp. 67–8. However, this figure also appears under the other aforementioned names in LCH, pp. 414–15; THV, fol. 6b; and LH, fols 123b–27a (237–42). Hulvî’s confusion becomes even more pronounced when he attempts to explain the lineage of the better-known Qâdî Wajîh al-Dîn al-Suhrawardî, where he claims Muhammad al-Dinâwarî was his uncle, while otherwise correctly indicating that Ahmad al-Aswad had initiated Wajîh al-Dîn’s father Muhammad b. ʿAmmûya (d. 468/1076); compare LH, fol. 129a–b (249) and ESO, pp. 68–9. Perhaps in recognition of this fact, a more recent copy of the Halveti silsile preserved in Kastamonu inserted Muhammad b. al-Bakrî as a connecting link; see Musa Seyfi Cihangir, S¸eyh S¸aʿbân-ı Velî Hazretleriʾnin Hayatı ve Manevi Silsilesi (Kastamonu: Bilge Kastamonu Gazetesi Basın Yayın Ltd. S¸ti., 1997), p. 50. However, chronologically

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16 17 18 19 20

21 22

23

24 25 26

27 28

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought speaking, this still does not resolve the gap, as Hulvî gives a death date of 380/990 for this figure, whom he defines as a subordinate figure in the silsile associated with Muhammad; see LH, fols 128b–9a (247–8). ESO, pp. 71–2. Hulvî improbably gives his death date as 487/1094, and offers no information aside from the pilgrimage story, in which ʿUmar al-Bakrî described the miraculous protection of the pilgrimage caravan from bandits by Wajîh al-Dîn; see LH, fols 131b–2b (253–4). Karamustafa, Sufism, p. 86; Erik S. Ohlander, “Adab e) In Sufism,” EI3, pp. 40–3 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009). ESO, p. 71. LH, fol. 134a–b (259–60); compare with ESO, p. 61. LH, fol. 135b (260–1); compare with ESO, p. 79. LH, fols 137a–b (263–4); compare with the accounts in ESO, pp. 98–104. The motif of Sufi shaykhs assisting the Mongols as a means of enforcing a divine punishment on fractious or pernicious Muslim rulers appears frequently in post-Mongol Sufi literature; see Devin DeWeese, “‘Stuck in the Throat of Chingiz Khan:’ Envisioning the Mongol Conquests in Some Sufi Accounts from the 14th to 17th Centuries,” in Judith Pfeiffer and Sholeh A. Quinn (eds), History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006). LH, fols 141b and 143b (272 and 277–8). Compare, for example, the similar texts of Mahmud Hulvî and Feridüddîn al-ʿAttâr (d. c. 627/1230) on the fourth figure in the Halveti silsile, Maʿrûf al-Karkhî (d. 200/815); LH, fols 95a–99a (183–8) and the sixth/twelfth-century work of Farîd al-Dîn al-ʿAttâr, Muslim Saints and Mystics: Episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Auliyaʾ (“Memorial of the Saints”), trans. A. J. Arberry (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 161–5. These terms have their origin in the formulation of Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, vol. 2 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974), pp. 371–3. See the introduction of Süleyman Uludağ and Mustafa Kara in LCH, p. 43. LCH, fols 697–8. For İbrâhîm Zâhid’s connections with political power, see Jean Aubin, “Shaykh İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî (1218?–1301),” Turcica 21–23 (1991), 39–53 and V. Minorsky, “A Mongol Decree of 720/1320 to the Family of Shaykh Zâhid,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 16:3 (1954), 515–27. For a synopsis of al-Simnânî and his family’s political connections with the Ilkhanid state, see Jamal J. Elias, The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Times of ʿAlâʾ ad-dawla as-Simnânî (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 15–31. LCH, p. 698. Devin DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice and Corporate Identity in Medieval Sufî Communities of Iran, Central Asia and India: The Khalvatî/ʿIshqî/Shattârî Continuum”, in Religion and Identity in South Asia and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Patrick Olivelle, ed. Steven Lindquist (Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, forthcoming). I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. DeWeese for sharing this work with me before its publication and discussing its elements via correspondence thereafter. Muhammad al-Halvetî’s historical context is difficult to determine. DeWeese’s finding in one of his sources that Muhammad died in 751/1350 seems most reliable under the

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43 44

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circumstances, see “Spiritual Practice,” p. 238; but other death dates as early as 717/1317 and as late as 780/1378 appear as well. See, for example, Osmanzâde Hüseyin Vassâf, Sefîne-i Evliyâ, vol. 3 (İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2006), p. 133 and LH, p. 159b (337). DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice,” pp. 238–41. Hostility to the use of tambourines among other religious figures at the time is corroborated by contemporary fatwâs given against it; see, for example, Hafız al-Dîn Muhammad b. Muhammad b. Shihâb al-Kurdarî al-Bazzâzî (d. 827/1424), Al-Fatâwâ al-Bazzâziyya, included in the margins of Mawlânâ al-Shaykh Nizâm et al., Al-Fatâwâ al-hindiyya wa taʿarafa bil-fatâwâ al-ʿAlâmgîriyya fî madhhab al-Imâm al-Aʿzam Abî Hanîfah, vol. 6 (Beirut: Dâr al-Maʿrifah, 1973), p. 338 (margin). DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice,” pp. 241–4. DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice,” 229–31 and 266–7; see also Devin DeWeese, An “Uvaysî” Sufi in Timurid Mawarannahr: Notes on Hagiography and the Taxonomy of Sanctity in the Religious History of Central Asia (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1993). ESO, p. 306 and n. 1. LH, fol. 176b (352). Compare LH, fols 157b–8a (335–6) with LCH, p. 697. The narrative appears designed to defend what seemed to be an extraordinary loud vocal dhikr practiced by Muhammad el-Halvetî as recorded in earlier biographical notices about him in Jâmî’s Nefahât. For more on how the vocal dhikr was a central element for many of Muhammad elHalvetî’s critics, and how other shaykhs were presented as looking down on Muhammad as being of poor spiritual quality, see DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice,” pp. 231–44. LH, fol. 159b (337); LCH, p. 697. According to sources in Herat, the graveyard still exists and is known as the “Khalvatî Cemetery.” LH, fol. 172b (345); see also Guy Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, rev. edn (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966), p. 174. This assertion cannot be fully correct. The Çobânids could not claim Chinggisid descent, though they did claim that their tribal ancestor, Sûrghân Shîra, once saved the life of Chinggis Khan; see R. M. Savory, “Čūbānids (Čobanids),” EI2, vol. 2, p. 68. Moreover, the reference to “Girây” is probably a mistake on Hulvî’s part, given the prominence of the Girây Khans of the Crimea to Ottoman history during his time. LH, fol. 172b (346). It is worth noting here that another contemporary of Pîr ʿÖmer, ʿAlâʾ al-Dawla al-Simnânî (d. 736/1336), also underwent a Sufism-oriented conversion experience while fighting for the Ilkhanid armies in 683/1284; see Elias, Throne Carrier, pp. 18–22. Savory, “Čūbānids (Čobanids),” p. 68. See, for example, the dispute over the properties mentioned in Minorsky, “Mongol Decree of 720/1320,” pp. 515–27. It has also been noted that in surviving Sufi sources record events of the Ilkhanid period evince a distinct embarrassment over their ties to the Mongol dynastic house; see Judith Pfeiffer, “Reflections on a ‘Double Rapprochement’: Conversion to Islam among the Mongol Elite during the Early Ilkhanate,” in Linda Komaroff (ed.), Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Khan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), pp. 376–82. LH, fol. 173a (346); the original here deviates from Tays¸i’s translation somewhat. MSV, pp. 30–1; as we shall see later, this narrative would develop an additional component where the shaykh would then criticize the tree for revealing his secret to the followers who had come to find him, and thereby to the rest of the world.

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45 MRSY, pp. 101, 106–7 and 156–8; see also Rıhtım’s photographs of the places discussed on pp. 244 and 249. DeWeese also argued for the geographical license of the later silsile builders that shifted the gravity of the order westward from Herât; see DeWeese, “Spiritual Practice,” p. 243 and n. 36. 46 BGM, p. 276; it should be noted that at the time of publication in the early 1970s, Martin was not aware of Hulvî’s work. 47 LH, fol. 173a–b (347). 48. LH, fol. 175a (349). ʿÖmer is described as a vegetarian on fol. 173a (346–7), and other narratives for other shaykhs in Hulvî’s work define avoiding meat dishes as a sign of sanctity. 49 LH, fol. 175b (350). However, this narrative is problematic in that Hulvî claims that the Mamluk ruler at the time was Sultan Farâj b. Barqûq (d. 815/1412). A cursory examination of the life of Farâj b. Barqûq shows that he was not even born until 791/1389, and his rule would not have coincided with that of Shaykh Uways; see J. Wansbrough, “Farâdj, al-Mâlik al-Nâsir Zayn al-Dîn Abuʾl-Saʿâdât,” EI2, vol. 2, p. 781. Perhaps Hulvî mixed up Farâj with another Mamluk figure. 50 See E. Glassen, “Ibn al-Bazzâz al-Ardabîlî, Tawakkulî (Tûklî) b. Ismâʿîl,” EI2, vol. 12, p. 382; this work has also been edited and published as Ibn-e Bazzâz-e Ardabîlî, Safvât alsafâʾ, ed. Gholâm-Rezâ Tabâtabaʾî Majd, rev. edn (Tabriz, 1994); it was first published in 1373/1953. 51 Safvât al-safâʾ, pp. 240–1. 52 For a discussion of this problem, see RÖ-OT, p. 27 and n. 1; Öngören suggests that an earlier recorded date of 750/1349 is most likely accurate. 53 LH, fol. 178a (357). 54 For a critical discussion of this important moment in the history of Anatolia and Sufism’s influence there, see ESO, pp. 271–91. 55 LH, fol. 178a–b (358). 56 LH, fols 178b and 180a (358 and 360). 57 LH, fol. 182b (366). 58 Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, p. 146. 59 LH, fols 155b–6b, 159b–60a and 170b–1b (329–31 and 339–42). Akhî Yûsuf receives a burial both in Kırs¸ehir and a hopelessly unclear geographical location that could be interpreted as being either in Herat, Gilan or Tabriz, while Muhammad el-Karsî’s biography is fairly limited. As for Kütbüddîn-i Tebrizî, Hulvî remarks that “those who claim this personage is not Halvetî err, on account of his wearing headgear of Moroccan leather rather than the plain headgear of the Halvetî shaykhs,” which suggests that objections had already been voiced to what some critics viewed as an unjustified Halveti appropriation of this prominent early Ottoman figure. See also HSN, pp, 58–59. 60 LH, fols 178b–9a and 180a–b (358–9 and 361–2). 61 LH, fol. 181a–b (363–4). 62 I have noted in a recent conference paper that the incidence of “transcending time and place” (tayy-ı zamân ve mekân) triples in frequency in the 1200–1500 period in Hulvî’s work from earlier periods; John Curry, “Traversing Time and Space in Later Medieval Muslim Hagiography: Evolution of a Trope Among the Halvetî Mystics”, paper presented at the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association conference, Flagstaff, AZ, April 4, 2009. 63 HSN, pp. 93–4; see also RÖ-OT, p. 29.

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64 See, for example, an anecdote about the intent of the Halvetî shaykh İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî in his youth to travel to Transoxiana, only to be diverted into the court of Uzun Hasan of the Akkoyunlu before he could reach his destination; MİG, pp. 23–5. 65 LH, fol. 150b (319–20); LCH, pp. 648–50 and 816–17; ESO, p. 306 and n. 2.

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2 The Great Expansion: From Regional Organization to Far- Flung Network, c. 1400–1600

By the middle decades of the ninth/fifteenth century, a clearer picture of the activities of Halveti leaders begins to emerge, as the chronological distance between them and their Ottoman biographers narrows. As a result, historians can be more certain when they discuss linkages between prominent Halveti figures and other personalities and events appearing in their societies.1 During this period, dating from the ninth/fifteenth to the eleventh/seventeenth centuries, the range and activities of Halveti leaders expanded dramatically. This chapter provides a broad outline of how the order spread and its sub-branches multiplied and took a position of widespread political, religious, and social power and influence in the Islamic world as a whole. This process of growth and expansion also became intimately intertwined with the expansion of the Ottoman Empire’s power and influence. In the centuries that followed the disruptions wreaked by the Timurid invasions, several factors encouraged the growth of the Halveti order’s membership. The first of these was increased interest among Anatolian Turkish Muslims, who wished to gain a better knowledge of the traditions of their faith. Initially, not all Anatolians embarked on this quest willingly. We know that Temür forcibly relocated many captured intellectuals and artisans eastward to Iran and Central Asia, who later returned bearing an increased knowledge of the traditions and scholarship of the eastern Islamic world as a by-product of their exile there.2 In addition, a number of sources corroborate the fact that the Ottoman Empire was considered to be something of a socio-cultural backwater, even in the decades following its capture of Constantinople and its expansion across Anatolia and the Balkans. Up until the end of the ninth/fifteenth century, many aspiring Muslim intellectuals, Anatolian or otherwise, preferred to travel eastward to Iran and Transoxiana,

50

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make the pilgrimage to the holy cities of the Hijaz, or go to Mamluk centers such as Cairo or Damascus to pursue the best educational opportunities.3 But by the final decades of the ninth/fifteenth century, the growing power and importance of the Ottoman Empire could not be ignored. Starting in the 870s/1470s, the Ottoman Empire dealt its major Muslim regional competitor, the Akkoyunlu Sultanate, military blows from which it ultimately could not recover. With the subsequent collapse and absorption of the Mamluk territories in Egypt and the Levant, the other major western center of Islamic culture also became part of the Ottoman domains. By the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, the rise and consolidation of the Shiʿite Safavids as arch enemies of both Ottoman rule and Sunnî Islamic institutions drastically limited the scope of religious interaction between Persia and the west, even though those links were never completely cut.4 This shift into what Marshall Hodgson called the “Gunpowder Empires” period of early modern history also transformed the Halveti order dramatically by detaching it from its roots in the Caspian littoral and north-western Persia and shifting the gravity of its membership westward. This process transformed them into a predominantly Ottoman mystical brotherhood, and by the eleventh/ seventeenth century, they had become one of the most widespread Sufi orders there. Between the ninth/fifteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries, their influence in the Islamic world increased exponentially. Previously, we have examined the process by which the Halveti order evolved as a hybrid of Sufi trends and ideas across an Islamic world buffeted by multiple nomadic invaders from the Mongols to Temür. This chapter follows them as they expanded their reach westward into Asia Minor and other lands that eventually became part of the Ottoman Empire. It will then examine how the Halveti order developed associations with powerful Ottoman statesmen and leaders that facilitated its rapid rise among the Ottomans. At the same time, hostility intensified against the Halveti from some quarters that either deemed their practices as deviant, or distrusted their “Persian origins” in an age of powerful anti-Safavid feeling. Finally, it examines how the far-flung Halveti groups branched out and created a kaleidoscopic mosaic across various regions of the empire. That diversity sets the stage for the remaining chapters’ more detailed treatment of the regional sub-branch of the S¸aʿbâniye and its place in Ottoman and Islamic history. The return to normalcy?: uneven transitions among the . Halveti in a post-Timurid age

As we have seen with the case of Akhî Mîrem el-Halvetî in the previous chapter, the chaos that marked the Timurid invasions drastically affected the lives of the

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Halveti shaykhs and their followers. A particularly striking example of this is the figure of Baba Resûl-i Rûmî (d. 840/1437), who may have begun his career as a janissary under the fourth Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I. He was forcibly deported to the east along with a group of Türkmen by Temür after his defeat of the Ottomans at Ankara in 804/1402. After living with Kalandar dervishes for a time, he eventually joined the following of the Halveti shaykh İzzeddîn-i Türkmânî (d. 828/1425). He spent the remaining years of his life in Niğde after his shaykh died.5 Another example is the career of the Halveti scholar Pîr İlyâs of Amasya. With Temür’s invasions of eastern Anatolia between 802/1400 and 804/1402, he was captured and deported from his home city to S¸irvân, where he was forced to become a judge (qâdî) for the region. He resigned from this position when Temür turned his attention to campaigns further east, but stayed in the region and eventually became associated with the Halveti shaykhs there. Later, he was sent back to Amasya to spread the order’s teachings.6 The sources suggest that few viewed the events of the time as positive, even though they were contributing to the spread of the order. Narratives about İzzeddîn-i Türkmânî, the nineteenth Halveti shaykh in the silsile, reflect a time of tension, and Hulvî recounts that İzzeddîn converted to Sufism because of a traumatic event. İzzeddîn’s father had been a trader who worked on the routes that ran between Mamluk Egypt and Azerbaijan. This occupation had allowed İzzeddîn to travel extensively and make the pilgrimage several times. But on his return to Azerbaijan after his last pilgrimage, his caravan was raided by bandits and İzzeddîn was captured. After seeing that the bandits were respectful only to an Indian Sufi who happened to be traveling with them, İzzeddîn resolved to give up his wealth and follow that path as well if he could only escape the bandits’ depredations, since they were murdering a number of his traveling companions. Contemporary observers might also link İzzeddîn’s shift away from commerce toward Sufism to the decline in security that marked the Timurid upsurge. Moreover, in another account, İzzeddîn’s spiritual power was supposedly tested by Temür himself. Temür ordered his men to steal a sheep from one of the defenseless local people, and then tried to feed it to the shaykh, on the assumption that the shaykh would get caught eating something forbidden under Islamic law because it was stolen property. When the shaykh ate some of the food, Temür thought that he had exposed İzzeddîn as a fraud who did not know the difference between canonical and uncanonical foods, only to learn that an old woman was standing outside his camp crying out for justice because the sheep she was taking as a gift to İzzeddîn had been stolen by Temür’s men.7 The declining security of the region, coupled with a growing proclivity toward questioning the legitimacy of Halveti leaders, came to be reflected in the biographies of subsequent Halveti personalities. In fact, ʿÖmer-i S¸irvânî

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(d. 831/1428), whom Hulvî records as being the first zaʾika of the shaykh, was initially a noted jurisprudent hostile to the Halveti practice of the devrân. He pledged himself to İzzeddîn’s service only after making a journey to the lodge in Merağa, where he initially sought to disrupt one of İzzeddîn’s forty-day retreats and incite attacks against him. Instead of achieving his intent, he joined the shaykh in his retreat after a confrontation with one of his dervishes.8 Hulvî also stresses that another zaʾika, İbrâhîm-i Kubâdî (d. 850/1446), was supposedly descended from the founder of the Hanafî school of law, Abû Hanifa, and that his father was a noted legal scholar in Tabriz.9 The emphasis of these narratives on the scholarly backgrounds of İzzeddîn’s prominent followers suggests a growing need for an apologetic defense of the order from its detractors; this was also a serious issue in Hulvî’s own historical context. The question then becomes whether or not the narratives reflect a ninth/fifteenth-century context of rising intolerance based on a reassertion of power by anti-Sufi scholars and religious leaders, or if Hulvî was back-projecting later didactic narratives, meant to challenge contemporary views, into a particularly nebulous part of the Halveti past. The continuation of Hulvî’s biographies suggest the former, in that Halveti shaykhs were afflicted by a number of challenges during the turbulent years that surrounded the conflicts between the rising Karakoyunlu and Akkoyunlu tribal configurations in eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan. Hulvî’s narratives, interestingly enough, make no attempt to conceal the tensions surrounding the figure of Sadrüddîn-i Hıyavî (d. 860/1456). Even after İzzeddîn had recognized him as his successor, Sadrüddîn struggled to retain the respect of his own followers. Much of the tension revolved around Sadrüddîn’s purported illiteracy. Perhaps in a reflection of the social world of tradesmen from whom his predecessor İzzeddîn had come, he initially worked as a merchant selling woolen clothes in a rural village. İzzeddîn encountered and recruited him into the ranks of the order only after he was asked to visit the village by some of his devotees.10 One particularly graphic example of the uneasy position Halveti shaykhs occupied at the time was the relationship of shaykh Sadrüddîn with Muhammad al-Jilvânî, an ostensible follower who had been based in Egypt and taught the works of the famed mystic Muhyî al-Dîn b. al-ʿArabî. Muhammad’s background as an Egyptian scholar suggests that this follower may have been a holdover whose entry into the order had preceded Sadrüddîn’s becoming its leader. He may have been tied primarily to İzzeddîn through his Egyptian connections. He apparently did not have sufficient respect for İzzeddîn’s choice of successor, however, for during one of the semâʿ gatherings, he insulted Sadreddîn by implying that “you are an illiterate person . . . the reason for your fame is

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the followers which come from exalted lineage like myself.” This drew a bitter rebuke from Sadrüddîn, who glared at this wayward follower and replied: Some little boys take their father by the arms, and by making them go around pressed to their breast, that little one sees himself as tall, he thinks “I’m even bigger than my father.” But he does not know that if his father drops his arms, he will tumble to the ground and be ruined!

With that, Muhammad returned to his room, grew ill and died after three days. His corpse immediately withered away and was scattered to the four winds. Hulvî also included a second narrative about a “censurer” who came to Sadreddîn’s lodge and, in a pattern mimicking that of ʿÖmer-i S¸irvânî and İzzeddîn, found the shaykh waiting for him at the door with a cloak. When the shaykh challenged him to carry out his intent, he repented and joined the order as a dervish instead.11 These narratives reflect a pattern whereby the growing tension between the order’s followers and groups hostile to them had begun to influence even members of the order itself. Even less confrontational members of the order seemed to experience doubts about their new leader. The aforementioned Pîr İlyâs, after returning to his home region of Amasya, developed doubts about the his new master’s illiteracy, and resolved instead to travel to Khorasan to seek the knowledge of Zayn al-Dîn al-Khâfî (d. 838/1435), the eponymous founder of what would become the Zeyniye order.12 Interestingly, Hulvî offers conflicting accounts of what happened thereafter. In one account, Pîr İlyâs dreamed that his shaykh came to him while he was journeying to the east and convinced him to return; in another account, he actually reached Zayn al-Dîn’s lodge in Khorasan, only to find his dervishes waiting at the entrance to tell him that Sadrüddîn had informed them of his arrival.13 However, both narratives intersect in demonstrating how the mystical power of Sadrüddîn should have overridden any misgivings about his illiteracy. The tensions over Sadrüddîn’s viability as a Sufi leader continued even in the narratives about his successors. His relationship with his son-in-law, Pîrzâde Muhammad Takiyüddîn (d. after 860/1456), a son of Sadrüddîn’s own shaykh, İzzeddîn, also evoked tension.14 During his youth, Pîrzâde seems to have fallen into an intoxicated and blameworthy state, drinking in taverns rather than pursuing the more sober path espoused by his father İzzeddîn and his fellow Halvetis. At one point, Pîrzâde even managed to seduce one of İzzeddîn’s dervishes into his dissolute lifestyle after the dervish had been sent by his father to try and remonstrate with him. İzzeddîn was so troubled by this turn of events that he even sought the intervention of a governor and relative of the reigning S¸irvâns¸âh

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Khalîl Allah I (d. 866/1462) by the name of Muhammad Beg to try and reform his son’s behavior, a relationship which demonstrated the growing connections between this local ruling house and the Halveti order.15 After a confrontation between all the parties, father and son were reconciled and Pîrzâde returned to the fold, married Sadrüddîn’s daughter, and was subsequently chosen to succeed his father-in-law as the head of the Halveti order in Azerbaijan.16 Still, these biographical sketches of the figures of Sadreddîn and his followers suggest that Sadreddîn remained a controversial figure, and that his credentials as a religious leader evoked some doubts. These doubts ultimately crystallized in a dispute over who would eventually succeed Sadrüddîn as head of the order. By the middle of the ninth/fifteenth century, the members of the order, despite their survival and expansion in the wake of the Timurid expansion, would enter into a period of division and disarray that transformed them from a regional Sufi order into a more universal one. The “Second Pîr” Yahyâ-yı ¸irvânî S (d. 869/1465) and the . beginnings of the Halveti expansion

In fact, the story of Pîrzâde may offer an important clue about the increasing fractiousness among the order’s members during this period. The involvement of local political figures tied to the S¸irvâns¸âhs, who were based primarily in the towns of S¸amâhî and Baku where İzzeddîn had settled, suggested that the Halveti had reconfigured their political loyalties. While the S¸irvâns¸âhs were never the dominant political power and often were forced to show deference to the Karakoyunlu or Akkoyunlu rulers who emerged on the political scene during the ninth/fifteenth century, they also benefited from governmental stability bequeathed to them by the extraordinary longevity of three successive rulers who emerged out of Timurid vassalage: Shaykh İbrâhîm (d. 820/1417), Khalîl Allah I (d. 866/1462), and Farrukh Yasar (d. 906/1501).17 Perhaps due to that longevity and stability in an otherwise politically chaotic era, their activities came to intersect with Halveti shaykhs and their followers, and intervention in the affair of the wayward son Pîrzâde was only the beginning of their involvement. The S¸irvâns¸âhs became even more involved with the Halveti order with the emergence of the “Second Pîr” of the order, Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî. The importance of his contributions to the order would later win him recognition as an important founding figure for the silsile of the Ottoman Halveti. However, Yahyâ’s road to this position of prominence was not an easy one, and his activities appear to have engendered a split in the order between his followers and those of his mentor’s son. Yahyâ’s own father, who we know only by the name Bahâʾüddîn, served as the naqîb al-ashrâf under the S¸irvâns¸âh Khalîl Allah I. This meant that Yahyâ

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both traced his lineage back to the members of the Prophet’s extended family,18 and that he had important political connections to the court of the S¸irvâns¸âhs. Hulvî’s biography of Yahyâ devotes much time to discussing the troubled relationship that he had with his father, who saw Yahyâ’s pedigree as incompatible with any association with a Sufi like Sadrüddîn. Bahâʾüddîn complained that his son’s involvement with the Halveti order was preventing him from perpetuating the family legacy and that people were gossiping about the relationship. Given the aforementioned misgivings about Sadreddîn as a public figure, this was perhaps not surprising. Moreover, the hagiography makes suggestions about Sadreddîn acting as a “spiritual father” to Yahyâ. At one point, Bahâʾüddîn even challenged Sadrüddîn directly about his activities, but was eventually won over by both his son and the shaykh’s responses to his complaints.19 However, the remark about being a “spiritual father” evoked other potential tensions within the order as well. Yahyâ’s background among the nobility, in both the political and spiritual sense, gave him the potential to be viewed as an upstart among the Halveti following – and this seems to have bred some resentment within the order. At some point, Yahyâ broke with many in the order’s following and withdrew from their home base in the town of S¸amâhî to settle in the vicinity of the S¸irvâns¸âhs’ palace in Baku, where his tomb is located today. By Hulvî’s account, Sadrüddîn had indicated that Yahyâ was to act as his successor, but his son-in-law Pîrzâde, claiming direct descent, bid for the leadership of the order instead. Since the majority of the order’s followers chose to side with Pîrzâde, Yahyâ withdrew from the region with his remaining followers and settled in Baku. His family connections to the S¸irvâns¸âhs likely came in handy in this relocation process. There is some disagreement among the sources as to when exactly these events took place, however. Hulvî suggests that this happened after Sadrüddîn’s death in 860/1456, whereas other sources claim that Yahyâ lived in Baku for close to forty years after his arrival, which would place his departure closer to 830/1426.20 Another intriguing possibility, given what we know about Pîrzâde’s controversial practices, is that Yahyâ may have been forced into a subordinate position by Sadrüddîn himself once his future son-in-law returned to the fold and married into the family. In this case, Yahyâ’s actions might even indicate a split in the order at a time when Sadrüddîn was still alive. Given Yahyâ’s later prominence in the order’s history, the sources would likely seek to downplay any differences with his immediate predecessor in the silsile and seek to pin the blame entirely on Pîrzâde instead. Whatever conclusions can be drawn about the tensions between Yahyâ, Pîrzâde, and the Halveti following during Sadrüddîn’s lifetime, one element is indisputable: Yahyâ was a respected figure who worked in close proximity to

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the court of the S¸irvâns¸âh rulers. We know this because his tomb, marked by a large octagonal Selçuk-style tower, still stands in the inner palace complex of the rulers in Baku today.21 Moreover, perhaps in response to the tensions over the succession, he recruited an extraordinarily large number of followers and supporters. Hulvî claims that he attracted over 10,000 followers and trained 360 successors; more interestingly, he suggested that he designed seventeen different types of headgear and turbans for various followers who subsequently spread the order’s teachings to other places.22 Tensions with Sadrüddîn and his descendants may have led Yahyâ to aggressively cultivate a broader following to defend his alternative branch of the order against the S¸amâhî-based branch, even if this proved to be only a temporary rift that was mended later. In building up this following, his connections with the local S¸irvâns¸âh rulers and their supporters undoubtedly helped. The combination of political clout and a need to build up a new following quickly in the context of a rift with his former colleagues subsequently launched a new era for the Halveti order. Yahyâ’s major contribution to the development of the Ottoman Halveti was his composition of the order’s primary litany to be recited during the zikr ceremony, a work called the Vird-i Settâr. This work represents a recitation of praises for God, followed by a recitation of His ninety-nine names, praises for the Prophet Muhammad and his followers, and concluding with a plea for forgiveness of those performing the recitation.23 While the multiple sub-branches of the Halveti order that would emerge out of Yahyâ’s activities would see a great deal of divergence in terms of dress and practice, the touchstone of the Vird as a primary prayer would help to maintain a unifying point of reference in later generations. This became especially important as the ninth/fifteenth-century Halveti shaykhs and their Ottoman descendants became increasingly detached from their homelands by subsequent hostilities with the Safavids. Yahyâ’s activities proved so critical to the spread and evolution of the Halveti order in later generations that his memory may have come to overshadow the order’s earlier foundations as discussed in the previous chapter. For example, some elements in Halveti teachings, such as their seven-stage path of progression, are sometimes attributed to Yahyâ even though their roots seem to lie much earlier in the period of İbrâhîm Zâhid.24 Hulvî recognized the importance of the Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî era by dividing the remainder of his biographical work into two halves, which he labeled the Sünbüliye (İstanbul-based) and Güls¸eniye (Egyptbased) branches of the order.25 However, in building up his substantial following, Yahyâ appears to have fallen victim to the some of the same troubles that had swirled around his own shaykh, Sadrüddîn. Several of his followers clashed over who would succeed Yahyâ as the leader, a tension that is reflected in eleventh/seventeenth-century

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Halveti hagiographies that put forth variant claims about the foundational figures in their silsiles. For example, clashing narratives exist about the careers of Pîr S¸ükrullah Halife (d. after 868/1465)26 and Yûsuf Mahdûm (d. 890/1485), the ostensible founder of the Ottoman Sivasiye branch of the Halveti order. Hulvî’s account of Pîr S¸ükrullah describes how he went on the pilgrimage to avoid the developing power struggle, only to learn in a dream from Seyyid Yahyâ that “his son” had been “sacrificed” so that S¸ükrullah could take his place. On the other hand, the later Halveti hagiographer from the Sivâsî sub-branch of the order, Muhammad Nazmî Efendi (d. 1112/1701) preserves an argument in favor of a foundational figure for their own silsile, Yûsuf Mahdûm, that suggests that Yahyâ viewed him as being like his son.27 The similarity in language and description of both candidates as being “like a son” to Yahyâ suggest a shared origin in the tensions surrounding the succession.28 Even if Yahyâ had trained only a fraction of the number of successors that the sources claim, it was probably inevitable that different spiritual descendants of the order would diverge in different directions. One source notes that Yahyâ tried to deal with the potential problem that could have arisen from this strategy by issuing the following command to his followers: “The multitude of successors is suitable for teaching etiquette and customs to the people. As soon as it comes to the guide who will take his place after the shaykh, however, he can only be a single person.”29 Such a statement invited controversy when the potential successors numbered in the dozens, and it is ironic that the course of subsequent events and conflicting source materials deprive historians of opportunities to identify any one clear successor to emerge after Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî’s death. The collapse of both the Akkoyunlu dynasty and the S¸irvâns¸âhs by the end of the ninth/fifteenth century meant that any record of the subsequent development of large numbers of Yahyâ’s successors fell into obscurity, especially as some of the order’s members began to migrate away from the rising hostility of the Shiʿite Safavids. When tracing the subsequent history of the Halveti, it becomes clear from both an examination of Hulvî’s silsile and other works that the order’s foundations rapidly shifted westward into the rapidly expanding Ottoman domains (see Appendix I). An exception that proves the rule in this case is the history of the Ottoman Sivâsiye sub-branch of the Halveti order, the only group which we can confirm continued their activities well into the period of Safavid rule. One of Yahyâ’s followers, Yûsuf Müskûrî (d. 890/1485), returned to his master’s old provingground of S¸amâhî, and in an apparent posthumous victory, reclaimed the town for the Yahyâ-based branch of the Halveti order and expanded its institutional framework there. After his death, the succession passed to Muhammad Rükkî (d. 903/1498), about whom little is known save that he attracted a scion of the

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weakening S¸irvâns¸âh house in the form of S¸âh Kubâd S¸irvânî (d. 950/1544), who was a descendant of the S¸irvâns¸âh ruler Khalîl Allah I and served as a governor for the province.30 Perhaps due to the fact that Azerbaijan was situated in a border region between the Ottomans and the Safavids after the decisive battle at Çaldıran in 920/1514, this branch of the Halveti order managed to carry on their activities in S¸amâhî up until 963/1556. At this point, S¸âh Kubâd’s successor, ʿAbdülmecîd S¸irvânî (d. 972/1565), migrated away from Azerbaijan to settle in the Ottoman provincial town of Tokat, thereby founding the Halveti sub-branch known as the Sivâsiye.31 The earliest shaykhs of the Sivâsiye silsile may not have been unique, and the possibility that some followers of the Halveti order persisted in their heartlands after the rise of the Safavids seems to be corroborated by other sources. At one point, the hagiography of İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî issued a potent criticism of those who chose to stay behind and tried to maintain their place under the new Safavid rulers who had persecuted him.32 However, the only reason we have a record of this surviving branch of the Halveti order from its former heartlands is that it migrated into Ottoman territory and became a major force in the struggles between Halvetis and Kâdızâdelis during the eleventh/ seventeenth century, which is what led Muhammad Nazmî Efendi to memorialize their history. According to most Halveti accounts, the İstanbul-based Sünbüliye and Egypt-based Güls¸eniye branches of the Halveti order framed their conception of the deeply-contested succession to Yahyâ’s legacy by situating their spiritual lineage upon two key figures. In the case of the Sünbüliye, the Halveti line passed to a man who otherwise seemed to be an unlikely and obscure provincial successor by the name of Muhammad el-Erzincânî (d. 879/1474). The Güls¸eniye, on the other hand, traced their lineage to the more historically attestable figure of Dede ʿÖmer Rüs¸enî (d. 892/1487), the teacher of the well-known İbrâhîm. The two figures did, however, share one thing in common, in that their careers were increasingly intertwined with prominent members of the Akkoyunlu dynasty, rather than that of the S¸irvâns¸âhs further to the east. As the Akkoyunlu weakened in the face of growing Ottoman and Safavid power, the stage would be set for the institutional base of the Halveti order to shift westward into the Ottoman Empire. . Halveti emigration to the west and south: . the GülS ¸eni ye branch

Given the fractiousness that had become especially pronounced during Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî’s lifetime and which marked an expansion of the Halveti order, it is not surprising that Yahyâ’s death opened a new era in its history. Yahyâ’s broadening of the order’s base, connections with the political leaders of his time, and

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expansion of its leadership to encompass multiple candidates who spread the order’s ideas throughout the wider region of the Near East would guarantee increased attention for the proliferating sub-branches of the order in the Islamic world. While the present work cannot aspire to full coverage of all the important sub-branches that evolved out of the process between the ninth/fifteenth and twelfth/eighteenth centuries, the two sub-branches that came to be known as the Güls¸eniye and Cemâliye/Sünbûliye are critical for understanding the milieu from which subsequent groups like the S¸aʿbâniye originated. The first of these sub-branches, the Güls¸eniye, took their name from the Halveti shaykh İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî, a figure who would become well known in Ottoman society and history even beyond Sufi circles. However, the name “Güls¸enî” from which the sub-branch’s name was taken was given to him by a successor of Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî by the name of Dede ʿÖmer Rûs¸enî, whom many hagiographical works posit as the founder of this new branch.33 Dede ʿÖmer, like many of the Halveti devotees that appear in the Halveti silsiles from the ninth/fifteenth century, traveled from the western regions of Asia Minor and the emerging Ottoman Empire to the heartlands of the Halveti order in Azerbaijan. According to Hulvî, Dede ʿÖmer was born in the region of Aydın in western Anatolia to a family of local grandees, the Aydınoğulları, who had initially competed with the Ottomans during the beylik period. After gaining a religious education there, he moved to the old Ottoman capital of Bursa to take up a scholarly position as an assistant to Çandarlı İbrâhîm Pas¸a (d. 905/1499), a teacher at the medrese that was attached to the well-known Green Mosque and Tomb complex of the Ottoman ruler Çelebi Sultan Mehmed I (d. 824/1421).34 He seemed poised to become a player of some importance among the early Ottoman ʿulemâ, but his career veered off course when he struck up a relationship with one of his students, Hızır Bâlî, and the two began spending a lot of time together. Some of the narratives imply a deep suspicion that developed in the community over the relationship between the two men. Hulvî’s account states that “some corrupt people” went to the youth’s father, a merchant in the Gelincik market, and accused the two of having a homosexual relationship. This led Hızır Bâlî’s parents to intervene and forbid their son from seeing his teacher. Both the teacher and student reacted badly to this turn of events, with Hızır Bâlî falling into a deep depression and sickness, and Dede ʿÖmer abandoning his career and falling into a dissolute lifestyle. Eventually, intervention came in the form of a successor of his older brother ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî, who came and ordered ʿÖmer into an isolation cell to reflect on the name “Hızır,” a name that also referred to a prophetic figure in the Islamic tradition.35 On the final day of his first forty-day retreat, the otherworldly Hızır appeared to ʿÖmer in a vision and commanded him to go to Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî, to “exchange your worldly [feeling]

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for true ones,” and spat into his mouth. Cured of his spiritual maladies at last, ʿÖmer emerged from isolation only to encounter a seriously ill Hızır Bâlî, who had finally convinced his parents to release him from his captivity to meet with his teacher. Before his departure to the east, ʿÖmer proceeded to place some of the Hızır saliva into Hızır Bâlî’s mouth, thereby curing him in turn. According to the narrative, Hızır Bâlî would later go on to become a shaykh in his own right as a result of this experience.36 While the narrative points to a happy ending, it also suggests at first glance that young elite intellectuals who got themselves into trouble, such as the disaffected ʿÖmer, could re-invent themselves by traveling to the east. However, the narrative suggests other possibilities lurking behind the narrative itself due to the appearance of ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî (d. 867/1463), another successor of Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî who was active in the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Sultan Mehmed II after his conquest of Constantinople. In another part of the work, Hulvî explains that ʿAlâeddîn had gone to S¸irvân to escape the “confusion” of the Karamanoğlu dynasty in southern Anatolia in the years preceding its conquest and incorporation into the Ottoman Empire.37 After completing his training with Yahyâ in Baku, he was sent to Anatolia to spread the order’s teachings, and was apparently so effective in doing so that he attracted the attention of Sultan Mehmed II himself, who demanded that he be brought to Edirne. He proved so effective at winning followers among the Sultan’s entourage that he aroused suspicion among other factions at the court and eventually fled the scene, leaving a successor by the name of Maʿsûd Rûmî in the lodge built for him on the banks of the Tunca river near Edirne. He then returned to his home region of Aydın, before returning to Larende in Karaman to become a powerful figure at the Karamanid court shortly before its collapse to Mehmed’s forces. What all this tells us is that Dede ʿÖmer’s family relationship with prominent Halveti shaykhs was not uncontroversial during the reign of Mehmed II, as one of Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî’s prominent followers had fallen out with factions at the Ottoman court and had gone over to the court of one of their rivals in Anatolia, the Karamanoğlu.38 A second narrative suggests some reasons why ʿAlâeddîn might have run afoul of some factions at Mehmed’s court. Since ʿAlâeddîn was a shaykh who brought his audiences to a state of ecstasy, and was very influential as a preacher, he seems to have attracted the attention of a young firebrand named Molla ʿArab (d. 938/1531), who would later become a prominent S¸eyhülislâm noted for his opposition to Sufi rituals and practices. When ʿAlâeddîn came to Bursa, Molla ʿArab planned to attack him publicly in order to discredit him, only to find himself drawn into a state of ecstasy through his encounter with ʿAlâeddîn.39 While the narrative is transparently apologetic in tone and aimed at discrediting

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opponents of Sufism, it nevertheless suggests that hostility had emerged toward Halveti leaders like ʿAlâeddîn, given their connections with regions the Ottomans deemed to be potentially hostile to their interests. Moreover, the fact that these prominent religious leaders tended to take up residence with Mehmed II’s opponents among the Karamanoğlu and Akkoyunlu could not have contributed to positive relations between the emerging Halveti shaykhs and Mehmed II’s court. When this context is brought to bear, Dede ʿÖmer’s flight to Baku may have had additional dimensions that went above and beyond the Hızır Bâlî incident. Perhaps tellingly, he never returned to western Anatolia and spent the remainder of his life in the east even after Yahyâ’s death. Instead, he eventually became a prominent figure at the court of the Akkoyunlu Sultanate at some point after Yahyâ’s death; perhaps Yahyâ may have sensed the rising power of the Akkoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan and his followers after their victory in the Battle of the Tigris in 861/1457, and dispatched followers like Dede ʿÖmer westward into their power bases to influence them.40 This plan proved to be shrewd, for Dede ʿÖmer soon attracted the attention of Selçuks¸âh Begüm, the wife of Uzun Hasan and a daughter of one of the dynasty’s founding fathers; she would later act as queen mother for Uzun Hasan’s successor, Sultan Yaʿkûb.41 She had a lodge built for Dede ʿÖmer outside Tabriz and sent various members of the court back and forth to him; his eventual successor, İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî, would be recruited in this way. As the Akkoyunlu emirate weakened in the wake of its defeat by the Ottomans in 877/1473, figures like Dede ʿÖmer may have provided much needed legitimacy to the dynasty. For example, one narrative credits Dede ʿÖmer with backing Yaʿkûb in a revolt against him by one Hibe Sultan in Baghdad who had overthrown one of Yaʿkûb’s relatives.42 Moreover, part of the value of Muhyî-yi Güls¸enî’s hagiography is that it records the biography of Dede ʿÖmer Rûs¸enî primarily through his and his follower İbrâhîm’s interactions with various rulers, dignitaries, and religious leaders tied to the Akkoyunlu court. Interestingly, Muhyi frequently presented Dede ʿÖmer and his followers as checking various abuses of power committed by prominent Akkoyunlu men of state. The Menâkıb claims that both Dede ʿÖmer and, more prominently, his successor İbrâhîm periodically advised a senior scholar at court by the name of Qâdı ʿÎsâ Sâvajî (d. 896/1491). Despite their friendship, some of the narratives evoke tension between the Halveti leaders and Qâdı ʿÎsâ, and suggest that they periodically clashed with him on matters of religion and policies of state centralization and taxation that eventually contributed to the unraveling of the Akkoyunlu state.43 Nevertheless, Dede ʿÖmer and his followers had established close relations with the Akkoyunlu, especially during the reigns of Uzun Hasan and Yaʿkûb, even if they became strained from time to time, and these bonds

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would continue beyond Dede ʿÖmer’s death in 892/1487. Having taken a page out of his mentor’s book by attaching himself to a prominent dynastic family and spreading the order’s teachings through their ranks, Dede ʿÖmer comes across in our sources as a figure who emulated the model that his teacher Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî had pioneered. Still, the relationship between the Halvetis and the Akkoyunlu had begun to deteriorate by the time of ʿÖmer Rûs¸enî’s death. Moreover, the career of ʿÖmer’s successor, İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî, would not benefit from the same degree of stability. With the death of Sultan Yaʿkûb, the subsequent execution of Qâdı ʿÎsâ, and the coming to power of İbrâhîm’s enemy Sultan Rüstem by 898/1492, İbrâhîm soon found himself under threat of persecution, and he often struggled to defend his former followers from the attacks unleashed upon them by the new regime.44 He eventually went on pilgrimage to escape the tense situation back at home, only to find his enemies had followed along with him to undermine his position. He was persuaded to return to the Akkoyunlu domains after returning from pilgrimage only with some difficulty.45 The life and career of İbrâhîm, his descendants, and the rise of the Güls¸eniye sub-branch of the Halveti order requires a separate study in and of itself, both on account of both the massive hagiography written about him and his followers by the later Ottoman Halveti scholar and activist Muhyî-yi Güls¸enî (d. 1014/1606), and the deep roots that the order struck in the Ottoman province of Egypt from the tenth/sixteenth century onward.46 Nevertheless, some elements of the Güls¸eniye story cannot be ignored, in part because later Halveti authors like Hulvî seized upon the foundations laid by Muhyî’s literary work as an opportunity to reunify the various branches of the order by the beginning of the eleventh/seventeenth century. Whether or not the Egyptian sub-branch of the order maintained or developed links with other evolving sub-branches as the Ottoman Empire consolidated its conquests of the former Mamluk domains of Syria, Egypt, and North Africa is more difficult to determine, although we know that many Ottomans passed through Egypt on their way to the pilgrimage and intersected with the Güls¸eniye there.47 The Menâkıb-i İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî, an under-studied treasure trove for the history of the Akkoyunlu, Mamluks, and Ottomans during a key transitional period in their history, compiles a lengthy record of anecdotes about the life, career, and successors of İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî from multiple sources throughout the Ottoman Empire. While any attempt to summarize its contents does not do justice to the complexity of its presentation, the work tells how İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî eventually fell victim to the political shifts that marked the collapse of the Akkoyunlu Sultanate after the death of his patron Sultan Yaʿkûb in 896/1490. Faced with the rise of the heterodox Safavid movement by the end

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of the ninth/fifteenth century, İbrâhîm and his young son Ahmed el-Hiyâlî (d. 980/1571) barely escaped the onslaught, and after much trial and tribulation, reached Cairo and settled there during the waning years of the Mamluk Sultan Qansûh al-Ghawrî (d. 922/1516).48 Despite the apologetic presentation of its author Muhyî, the Menâkıb cannot obscure the obvious linkages between Güls¸enî and the Mamluk rulers, for Güls¸enî was invited to take up residence in the central mosque of the Muʾayyadiyya near Bab al-Zuwayla, and his son Ahmed would be married to the widow of the last Mamluk Sultan Tumânbây after his execution in 923/1517. After anti-Ottoman revolts flared up in Egypt in 930/1524, some accused the Güls¸eniye of involvement and had an aged shaykh İbrâhîm summoned to İstanbul for an investigation of his activities. İbrâhîm, in part with the help of key allies, was able to make the case for his innocence, for despite the hostility of Süleyman’s grand vizier İbrâhîm Pas¸a toward him, he was exonerated in 935/1529 and allowed to return to Egypt to live out his remaining years there. His tomb complex subsequently became a center for the order’s followers under his son Ahmed and his descendants well into the twelfth/eighteenth century. The flight of İbrâhîm westward into Egypt also draws our attention to two other successors to Dede ʿÖmer Rûs¸enî in some hagiographical sources, Shaykh Timûrtâşî (d. 903/1498) and Shaykh S¸âhin-i Misrî (d. 935/1528). Both these figures had preceded İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî to Cairo, and Muhyî mentions them in a respectful tone, though the scope of their contact with İbrâhîm’s followers cannot be clearly determined.49 Both Timûrtâsî and S¸âhin were said to have been recruited into the order by an otherwise unknown successor of Dede ʿÖmer’s by the name of Shaykh Husayn al-ʿAyntabî. They then traveled to the Akkoyunlu Sultanate to join Dede ʿÖmer’s circle, subsequently returning to Egypt to prepare the way for the order there. While Muhyî’s and Hulvî’s historical records have privileged the Güls¸eniye over these other adherents to the Rûs¸enî tradition, they remain influential into the present in a way that the Güls¸eniye have not.50 One thing sets the Güls¸eniye branch of the order apart from some of the branches in the more central regions of the Ottoman Empire to the north. Its leadership, from İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî onward, was passed down through a hereditary chain well up into the eleventh/seventeenth century. The head of the order, based at İbrâhîm’s tomb in Cairo, would be a direct male descendant of the order’s founder.51 This may have been the Güls¸eniye order’s way of maintaining Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî’s injunction about having only one true successor acting as the overall leader of the order. Despite this hereditary conservatism in the order, however, this did not limit its range to its headquarters at Güls¸enî’s tomb in Cairo alone, as successors were sent to İstanbul and other regions of the Ottoman Empire, and additional members of the order maintained a substantial

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presence around Diyarbakır and northern Syria well into the eighteenth century. Hulvî implies that in the case of the Diyarbakır-based Güls¸eniye, powerful family ties governed that branch as well. Sâdık ʿAlî Efendi (d. 961/1554), whose father ʿAlî Çelebi had donated a substantial part of his mercantile wealth and property to the order, and whom İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî had left in charge when he fled Diyarbakır for Egypt, later passed the leadership of the order to his nephew, Hasan el-ʿAmidî (d. 1019/1611), perhaps with his father serving as shaykh in between them.52 . The shift of the Halveti order into the Ottoman Empire: . the Cemâliye and its sub-branches

The origins of a second influential branch of the Halveti order that emerged out of the chaotic environment in the Halveti homelands is somewhat more obscure than that of the Güls¸eniye. Contemporary observers might well have deemed the powerful Güls¸eniye, with their links to the Akkoyunlu state, to be the most powerful and influential at the time. With the shift in political fortunes in the region by the tenth/sixteenth century, however, the Cemâliye and various sub-branches of the order that emerged from it, such as the Sünbüliye of İstanbul, proved to be far more influential in Ottoman circles. It may have been a simple case of geography, for the Cemâliye eventually implanted themselves in the Ottoman capital of İstanbul and spread outward from the political center, whereas the base of the Güls¸eniye in Egypt defined them as provincial after the events of 923/1517. By the end of the century, Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî’s account of Cairo depicted Sufi orders like the Güls¸eniye as strange and alien in comparison with groups in the political center of the Empire.53 Also, as Hulvî noted, they still suffered from suspicions about possible anti-Ottoman sentiment, in part due to a perceived linkage with the former Mamluk dynasty.54 Still, no one could have predicted the turn of events that led to the rise of the Ottoman Empire as the dominant power in the region, and in the immediate period following Yahyâ’s death, the rise of the Cemâliye branch of the order proves fairly obscure as compared with their Egyptian counterparts. Part of that obscurity derives from the overshadowing presence of Cemâl elHalvetî as a pivotal figure in the spread of the Halveti order among the Ottoman domains. Born in the central Anatolian city of Aksaray to a prominent and influential family that also included such luminaries as the future s¸eyhülislâm Zenbilli ʿAlî Efendi and Sultan Selim I’s vizier Pirî Pas¸a, he was a figure of potential influence in the Ottoman context. Moreover, the family ancestor, Cemâleddîn Aksarâyî (d. 791/1388), was well known for authoring works on ethics, philosophy, and the religious sciences, and Cemâl himself may have been pursuing a

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career in jurisprudence in the earlier stages of his life.55 After becoming attracted to Sufism, some sources suggest that he initially began his training with a shaykh of the Zeyniye order, Hacı Halife Kastamonî (d. 895/1489), but quickly became attached to the Halveti order through Shaykh ʿAbdullah, one of the followers of ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî. This initial connection grew in strength with the arrival of ʿAlâeddîn in the Karamanoğlu emirate after he left Mehmed II’s court. However, ʿAlâeddîn died in 867/1463, and ʿAbdullah soon followed him, leaving the young Cemâl in limbo with no shaykh.56 With the subsequent collapse of the Karamanoğlu emirate to the rising power of the Ottomans after the death of İbrâhîm Beg in 869/1464, the fortunes of the Aksarâyî family may have gone into temporary eclipse, and it is perhaps telling that Cemâl reappears in the historical record far from the centers of Karamanoğlu power in proximity to the northern Anatolian city of Tokat. Here, he spent a number of years under the guidance of an illiterate Halveti Türkman shaykh, whom we know only by the name Tâhirzâde. An air of the antinomian surrounds Tâhirzâde, who was described as being one of the followers of the “order of Shaykh Safî,”57 and who seems to have espoused extreme forms of asceticism. Several sources record that Tâhirzâde used to have his followers dig deep holes in the wilderness and then remain in them for forty days of retreat. Once, Cemâl nearly died of starvation while under his tutelage. Yet here again, Cemâl’s bad luck with his choice of teachers continued, since Tâhirzâde also died before he could complete his training.58 Still, Cemâl’s association with Tâhirzâde strongly suggests an initial disillusionment with the growth of Ottoman power, and it is interesting that his activities paralleled that of later disaffected Ottoman subjects who gravitated to Safavid leaders by the end of the ninth/fifteenth century.59 Once Tâhirzâde died, however, he made a fateful decision to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors and head eastward to seek out Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî. During the course of his journey, he stopped in the town of Erzincan, where he encountered a follower of Yahyâ’s by the name of Muhammad el-Erzincânî, who suggested that Cemâl would not be able to complete his quest and that he should instead stay in Erzincan; at this point, the various narratives about these events diverge somewhat. One version of events told of how Cemâl traveled to Baku, only to find that he had arrived shortly after Yahyâ’s death and burial in 869/1465. After deciding to sleep at the foot of the newly built grave, Cemâl saw a vision of Yahyâ commanding him to return to Erzincan to complete his training with his chosen successor.60 Other sources suggest that Cemâl had not traveled more than a day or two before receiving word that there was no need to continue to Baku since Yahyâ had already died, so he returned.61 The variant narratives suggest a desire by some later hagiographers to tie Cemâl el-Halvetî directly to Yahyâ as a means of giving him additional legitimacy. However, they also point

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to the somewhat obscure origins of the Cemâliye branch of the order through the figure of Muhammad el-Erzincânî.62 In this case, the ostensible pupil would outshine the master in terms of his impact upon the order’s future. This does not mean that we should dismiss Muhammad el-Erzincânî out of hand, however, for Hulvî does record a number of interesting narratives about Muhammad and his followers. One prominent motif of Muhammad’s biography is his relationship with the prominent Akkoyunlu ruler, Uzun Hasan. Hulvî records that on the eve of the decisive battle of Otlukbeli between the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and Uzun Hasan in 877/1473, Muhammad warned Uzun Hasan not to engage Mehmed’s force because “it is better for you and your soldiers; they are the gâzis of the Muslims and intelligent people know to be afraid and cautious of them.”63 When Uzun Hasan failed to heed the shaykh’s advice, his forces were cut to pieces on the battlefield, his sons were killed, and he was forced to make a peace treaty after enduring a lecture from the shaykh about his heedlessness. This narrative strongly suggests an ex post facto justification of the shaykh as a supporter of the Ottoman cause who tried to avert conflict between the Akkoyunlu and the Ottomans; however, we have little in the way of corroboration that this was the case. Still, Hulvî also claims that one of Muhammad el-Erzincânî’s followers, Pîr Ahmed el-Erzincânî (d. after 877/1473), was instrumental as the primary diplomat who met with Mehmed II and his entourage after the battle to conclude a peace treaty between the two sides. Interestingly, Pîr Ahmed had married a woman who was another descendant of the Aksarâyî family from which Cemâl el-Halvetî also came, suggesting how the descendants of this prominent family had spread across the eastern Anatolian landscape. It also may explain why Pîr Ahmed was tapped for the diplomatic assignment. Pîr Ahmed succeeded in his mission by supposedly winning over the Ottoman sultan with the argument that by ending the spilling of blood between Muslim powers, he was doing Mehmed a favor by saving him from judgment in the afterlife. Mehmed responded by inviting Ahmed to İstanbul, where he preached in the Aya Sofya mosque and attended Mehmed’s court before returning to Erzincan.64 Yet Pîr Ahmed’s biography contains echoes of the criticisms leveled at Mehmed II for his over-zealous campaigning against other Anatolian Muslim powers, even as it also seeks to legitimate the Halveti shaykhs by having them win his approval and trust. The overtones in the narratives lend further support to the conclusion that the Halveti shaykhs had tense relations with an expanding Ottoman state as they extended their reach across the region. We do not know when Cemâl el-Halvetî came to Erzincan, nor do our hagiographies give us much information about his activities there. However, Hulvî does include a narrative about another follower of Muhammad el-Erzincânî that

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strongly suggests that Cemâl was not his primary choice as a successor. Perhaps because Pîr Ahmed was engaged with the Ottomans, another successor by the name of Pîr Fethullah (d. after 879/1474) took Muhammad el-Erzincânî’s place after his death for a time. According to Hulvî’s discussion of him, however, one of his acts of grace was that after his dervishes asked him about what to do following his death, he predicted that his funeral prayer would be given by someone who would come from the mountains into town on the day of his death. The shaykh then commanded his followers to accept that person as their successor. It was as the shaykh predicted; however, after completing the funeral prayer and its arrangements, the person disappeared again. His followers eventually identified the stranger as Cemâl el-Halvetî, who was at the time based in ʿAyntab to the south. But when they sent envoys to call Cemâl to take their master’s place, they found that Cemâl had performed an act of grace of his own. They arrived at his lodge and asked the dervish in charge to see Cemâl, only to be told that they could not because he was still in the final days of a forty-day retreat and had not left the lodge for over a month. At that moment, it became clear to all involved that Cemâl had transcended the fabric of time and space to perform the funeral prayer, thus his immediate disappearance after its end.65 This narrative may suggest that Cemâl succeeded to the leadership of Muhammad’s order in a more indirect manner that the silsile would otherwise indicate. When Cemâl did re-enter the historical spotlight once again, it would mark a definitive moment in both Halveti and Ottoman history as a whole. In the years following the defeat of the Akkoyunlu, Cemâl may have recognized the inevitability of Ottoman rule and adopted a different approach to its growing power. At some point after 880/1475, he emigrated to the provincial capital of Amasya, which had become a center for the regional court of the future Ottoman sultan Bayezid II. Shortly before the death of Sultan Mehmed II, Cemâl appears to have attracted the attention of Bayezid and his allies. Amasya already had a Halveti legacy in the form of the aforementioned Pîr İlyâs el-Amâsî, and Cemâl must have found a welcoming environment for himself and his followers, since he was given a position at the Hoca Sultan Tekke there.66 Given the fact that Bayezid was not on terribly good terms with his father, who distrusted him and favored his other sons, Cemâl may have recognized an opportunity to co-opt former Ottoman adversaries by winning the support of their easternmost representatives. A substantial number of both Halveti and other Ottoman histories record what happened after the succession struggle for the Ottoman throne accelerated in 886/1481. These accounts stress the participation of Cemâl el-Halvetî in the events that would catapult Bayezid II to the throne. Bayezid knew full well that Sultan Mehmed II’s grand vizier, Mehmed Pas¸a, had sided with Bayezid’s rival Cem Sultan (d. 900/1495), who was based in recently conquered province

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of Karaman, and he also knew that Mehmed Pas¸a had tried to undermine Bayezid’s position at the court in İstanbul. At some point, Bayezid sent an emissary to Cemâl to ask for his spiritual support in combating Mehmed Pas¸a’s intrigues against him. Cemâl responded to these entreaties by noting that Mehmed Pas¸a always wore a magic square talisman (vefk) to protect himself, which had been drawn up for him by a prominent Zeyniye leader, Shaykh Vefâ (d. 896/1491).67 Interestingly, this proves to be yet another point in which tensions emerged between the early representatives of the Halvetiye and Zeyniye, and suggests that the two may have been in competition for influence in Anatolia in the period immediately following the Ottoman eastward expansion. Cemâl confessed to Bayezid’s representatives that he could do nothing to challenge the spiritual power of Shaykh Vefâ and his mastery of vefk, but that if the Sultan would wait for thirty-three days, an important event would take place and a way might be found to solve his problem. A month later, news of Sultan Mehmed II’s death arrived, and the various contenders to the throne began to mobilize their forces. Luckily for Bayezid’s faction, Mehmed Pas¸a accidentally rubbed off some of the writing on his talisman, and was forced to give it to one of Shaykh Vefâ’s dervishes for repair. Shortly thereafter, the janissaries rose up and murdered him in İstanbul, clearing the way for Bayezid’s eventual accession to the throne.68 The story of the vefk talisman proved popular among later Ottoman historians, and even makes an appearance in Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî’s Künhüʾl-Ahbâr.69 This should not distract modern historians from additional contributions that Cemâl el-Halvetî was in a position to make in order to contribute to Bayezid’s eventual victory. Given the evidence in his biographical corpus, his help may well have had a practical and political side to it. Cemâl likely had connections within the circles of mystics and ʿulema in the region of Karaman who might be persuaded to rethink their support for the candidacy of Cem Sultan and his partisans. Thus, he was a natural choice for Bayezid to help advance his own cause. With his family connections and years of travel in the regions of the former Karamanid provinces, his association to the region were still strong. Still, this did not mean that Cemâl’s work on behalf of Bayezid met with immediate success, and some hagiographies imply this by a curious set of references to a set of supernatural encounters. While the hagiographical accounts situate a debate between Cemâl and a number of Karaman-based religious figures in an otherworldly context, the source for the account comes from Tâcizâde Caʿfer Çelebi (d. 920/1514), who served as both an Ottoman kazʿasker and the keeper of the royal seal (nis¸ancı).70 According to him, after Bayezid’s request for help, Cemâl entered the unseen world and sought out the Karamanid shaykhs to try and turn them against the

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plans of Cem and his vizier. His initial attempt to sway them was unsuccessful and the Karamanid shaykhs threw flaming embers at him. Cemâl did not escape the conflict entirely unscathed, for he witnessed one of his daughters being hit by an ember during the conflict; two days later, the young girl contracted a high fever and died. Cemâl then confronted the shaykhs a second time, and asked them why they persisted in supporting an oppressor, for Mehmed Pas¸a had refused to respect the inviolability of the pious foundations (vakıflar) under his administration. Instead, he had confiscated many of them for the royal treasury in order to help pay for Sultan Mehmed II’s campaigns. These narratives suggest that Cemâl may well have acted as an intermediary on Bayezid’s behalf, who knew how to tap into the deep and growing unpopularity of Mehmed II’s incessant military activity by the closing years of his reign, especially among the recently conquered populations of Karaman. Moreover, he could adeptly deploy an argument that could win the support of Sufis and scholars alike in undermining Cem’s candidacy for the throne.71 According to the hagiographies, the persuasiveness of Cemâl’s arguments led all the shaykhs, with the notable exception of the Zeyniye leader Shaykh Vefâ, to withdraw their support from Cem and his vizier.72 In sum, Cemâl played at least some role in helping Bayezid’s partisans undermine Cem’s support, for the dispute over the pious foundations can be corroborated by other historical sources as an important element in the outcome of the struggle. Many of the religious scholars, Sufi or otherwise, depended on these types of revenues for the support of their institutions and families.73 The victory of Sultan Bayezid, coupled with the support he received from Cemâl, allowed the Halveti order to become one of the most prominent Sufi groups in the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire. While the hagiographies narrate that the newly influential Cemâl and his followers were initially hesitant about their new patron’s entreaties to join him in the capital, the balance of power had clearly shifted with the change of ruler. While Mehmed II had often found Halveti representatives among his opponents, his successor Bayezid emerged from very different circles from those that rejected his father’s legacy and opened the door for a shift in the order’s fortunes. After a brief interlude, Cemâl and his followers did eventually settle in the capital, and were given the area occupied by a former Christian church in the southwestern part of the city. They subsequently converted this structure into a mosque, which still stands today and is known as the Sünbül Efendi mosque, with the support of Bayezid’s grand vizier, Koca Mustafa Pas¸a.74 Still, Cemâl and his followers did have their detractors. Molla ʿArab, who was noted for his opposition to ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî, re-emerges in this context, and he may also have targeted Cemâl and his followers over their practices; we

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will return to those issues later. Some hagiographical narratives also suggest that even his own successor to leadership in the order, Sünbül Sinân Efendi, initially kept company with scholars who rejected Cemâl’s Sufi orientation and criticized him.75 Moreover, the hagiographies seem to be at pains to stress Cemâl’s unwillingness to accept any financial support as part of his residence in the capital. In one narrative, he and his followers could not cross over the Bosphorus to enter the capital until all Cemâl’s dervishes renounced all their wealth. Cemâl had to seek out the follower who had withheld a few coins before the storm blocking their passage would subside. In another, he refused to take up residence in the building that Koca Mustafa Pas¸a had set aside for him until he was guaranteed that no state salary would be given to himself or his followers. Finally, in a supreme act of self-sacrifice, Cemâl later died on the pilgrimage, where he was sent to offer prayers of supplication to end an outbreak of plague and earthquakes that afflicted the capital, reflecting events which probably took place in 905/1499.76 Still, despite the need for hagiographical defense of Cemâl’s close relationship with Bayezid II, he and his successors had laid a foundation that would guarantee a long and prosperous future for the Halveti order in the Ottoman domains. A final set of sources have survived that complement our picture of Cemâl’s personality, in that some of his writings have survived to give us some additional insight into his character and the mystical thought that he espoused. One important point is that these surviving manuscripts were written almost entirely in Arabic, and were aimed at a well-educated scholarly audience. For example, one tract that Cemâl wrote was a commentary on the reported proverbs of the first caliph, Abu Bakr. It went on to imbue each of Abu Bakr’s supposed statements with a mystical meaning, which Cemâl subsequently interpreted in the context of a couplet of Persian poetry by famed literary and mystical figures such as Celâleddîn Rûmî and ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî.77 Another tract, which Cemâl claimed to transmit on the authority of Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî himself, sought to define the basic Muslim ritual of ablutions before prayer with an additional, deep spiritual philosophy aimed at cleansing the soul.78 This type of mystical philosophy, written in the learned languages of the period, assumed an audience of educated elites who knew Arabic and Persian, and only in much later times do we see some of Cemâl’s tracts being translated into Turkish for a wider audience.79 Even Cemâl’s successor, Sünbül Sinân Efendi, wrote his only major tract in Arabic during the early decades of the tenth/sixteenth century.80 It was only in the later decades of the tenth/sixteenth century that prominent Halveti leaders began to produce works in Turkish as a means of broadening the audience for them. When it became clear that he would not complete his pilgrimage to the holy

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cities in 905/1499, and as he lay dying at a pilgrimage station in the area of Tabûk, Cemâl el-Halvetî sent for one of his successors, Sünbül Sinân Efendi (d. 935/1529), to come to his side to receive the symbols of leadership for the Halveti order in İstanbul. To some extent, this may have been a matter of convenience, since Cemâl had sent Sünbül Efendi to the Mamluk capital of Cairo to spread the order there. He may have been the closest potential successor of high rank whom Cemâl felt was ready to take his place. Whatever the reason, the transition set the Cemâliye branch of the order on a somewhat different trajectory of succession than the Güls¸eniye, in that hereditary succession was not nearly as prominent in this branch of the order. Sünbül Sinân had come from Merzifon, and shared no family origins or relationship with Cemâl. Nevertheless, Cemâl did not seem entirely unconcerned about this issue, for he made it known in his will that part of the succession would entail that his daughter Sâfiye Hâtûn be married to Sünbul Efendi.81 Cemâl’s prominent origins probably protected him to some extent from attacks on his person, and he may have hoped to protect Sünbül Efendi by tying him into his own family tree. The strategy worked, for Sünbül Efendi returned to the Koca Mustafa Pas¸a lodge shortly thereafter to be greeted by over 300 of the order’s followers.82 . Growing tensions over Halveti power in the Ottoman Empire from the tenth/sixteenth century

With the death of prominent founding figures like Cemâl el-Halvetî and İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî by the early tenth/sixteenth century, the torch of Halveti leadership passed on to new generations. With the conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate by the Ottomans, and the completion of the migration of various Halveti groups from the Safavid Empire into the Ottoman domains, the sub-branches of the order went on to proliferate to the point where a single study cannot encompass them all. Thorough examinations of the various sub-branches of the Halveti remain a desideratum for future research.83 Leaving this issue aside, however, it is necessary to note the problems that surrounded the order’s rise to power in the Ottoman context before proceeding to the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order. The close association of Cemâl el-Halvetî and his followers enjoyed with the court of Sultan Bayezid II appeared to have created political tensions for the order. With the weakening of Sultan Bayezid II’s rule under Safavid and Kızılbâs¸ attacks, followed by his death in 918/1512, a power struggle emerged between three of his sons: Ahmed, Korkud, and Selim. Bayezid himself favored Ahmed over his eldest son Korkud and his youngest son Selim; most of the religious leaders of the time, including the Halveti leadership, probably shared Bayezid’s views on the succession. Yet in the chaos that surrounded the

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succession struggle, Selîm demonstrated shrewd tactics and won the support of much of the military, and went on to gain control of the throne.84 Disturbed by his father’s overly cautious attitude toward the increasingly aggressive Safavids, Selîm would go on to launch a number of campaigns that would nearly double the size of the Ottoman Empire and permanently transform the power structure of the Islamic world. In the short run, Selîm’s dazzling victories over his opponents, both foreign and domestic, did not prove beneficial to the Halveti cause. Shortly after his accession, Selîm imprisoned and executed the grand vizier Koca Mustafa Pas¸a, whose patronage had helped to establish Cemâl el-Halvetî and his order in the capital, on account of the former grand vizier’s questionable loyalties. This turn of events quickly proved threatening for Sünbül Efendi and his followers. As part of his attacks on Mustafa Pas¸a’s legacy and supporters, Selîm moved against the mosque complex that Mustafa Pas¸a had endowed, and even sought to demolish part of the mosque by removing its supporting columns as construction material for an addition to his palace. The hagiographies suggest that this plan led to a tense confrontation between Sünbül Efendi’s following and the sultan in the streets before the mosque. Given that the mosque still exists, we know that the upshot of the encounter was that Sünbül Efendi and his allies convinced Selîm not to carry out his plan. Hulvî narrated that Sünbül Sinân cleverly allowed the new ruler to save face by allowing him to carry out his threat, at least in part, by suggesting that Selîm destroy the chimney flues on top of the Halveti lodge rather than accept the public humiliation of being forced to rescind his own command. Having proved his loyalty to the new sultan, Selîm responded by repenting of his action and allowing the Halveti dervishes to continue their activities.85 Narratives like these suggest that by the time Selîm came to power, the Cemâliye branch of the order had become well entrenched enough to weather the political storm that their links to the previous regime had generated. Nevertheless, this confrontation must also be set within the context of the early tenth/sixteenth-century Ottoman expansion. Selîm and his allies were much more ruthless toward the Safavids and their supporters, whom they deemed to be heretics. Selîm launched a massive campaign against suspected Safavid sympathizers in Anatolia and elsewhere that intertwined with his victory over Shah İsmâʿîl in 920/1514. Much of the scholarly activity of the period was aimed at extirpating heretical beliefs and practices, and Sufi orders like the Halveti who came from eastern origins and had nominal links to Safavid ancestors came under increased scrutiny, and could become targets of suspicion in the eyes of the Ottoman rulers and scholars.86 The biographical notices on Sünbül Efendi suggest that he and his followers suffered a decline in their political fortunes;

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some scholars even sought legal decisions that sought to declare Halveti ceremonies illegitimate.87 Still, trying to draw black and white battle lines over these issues can be difficult for the historian. We also know that Selîm went on to restore the tomb of the renowned mystic İbn al-ʿArabî in Damascus in 923/1517, from whom the Halveti drew some of their own inspiration.88 Given this activity on the part of the reigning sultan after his rule had become well established and legitimized by his conquests, it is likely that the gap between the sultan and mystical groups like the Halveti could have narrowed considerably once Ottoman victory was assured. The success of Selîm’s conquests, followed by the continuing success of his son Süleymân, may have reduced the pressure on the Halveti order thereafter, so they survived this first wave of persecution. However, one lasting legacy of this encounter appears to have been to increase Halveti reticence toward building overly close links with political power. One result was that not all prominent Halvetis come across as universally favorable toward the Ottoman leadership. During later times of trouble in the long reign of Süleymân, such as the conflict in the 950s/1550s and 960s/1560s with his potential heirs to the throne, Mustafa and Bayezid, there is evidence that some prominent shaykhs were imprisoned for suspected opposition to the sultan, perhaps because they were thought to favor one his sons. A good example of this was the figure of Gazanfer Dede, a Bayrâmî shaykh who was respected by later Halveti leaders. One of the biographical narratives about him takes place in the context of a prison cell during the reign of Süleymân after he had been brought to İstanbul for cross-examination.89 Moreover, one of the later Sünbüliye shaykhs, Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî, fled a public assembly that Sultan Süleymân had organized to pray for relief from drought. When the assembly called upon Yaʿkûb to lead the prayer, he instead fled the scene, which was interpreted as disobedience to the ruler’s order.90 Still, these tensions did not stop the order from expanding its membership and range. The Cemâliye/Sünbüliye Halveti shaykhs continued to uphold the strategies pioneered by Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî and his descendants, and many of the Halveti successors were increasingly expected to complete their training by being sent to provincial areas to build the order’s following (such as Sünbül Efendi in Egypt). An evocative description of this process appears in a biographical notice on Sünbül Efendi’s successor, Muslihuddîn Merkez Efendi (d. 959/1552). He was first sent by Sünbül Efendi to teach in a complex built by Hafsa Sultan, the mother of Sultan Süleyman.91 However, shaykhs like Merkez Efendi apparently did not maintain a fixed residence in the place where they had been assigned, and parts of his biography discuss how he frequently traveled into the countryside in western Anatolia to interact with local communities there:

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It is related that while going on a journey, if Merkez were to see a peasant, he would go to him, ask “do you know the faith,” and would explain the conditions and duties of prayer. He would then scatter the seeds of knowledge among the fields of the heart, saying [things like]: “[The way to do it] is so-and-so and such and such. It is prayer that separates Islam from unbelief, and one who neglects prayer is more useless than an unbeliever,” [and] “verily the prayers are incumbent on the believers in a fixed book,” [followed by the] poem, “upon the believers the fixed book assigned prayers/those who don’t do it are detested in the two worlds,” [and] “beware, don’t let these farm animals lack for food, water or provisions; don’t load them with more than they can bear; don’t strike them with endless blows. [To] that the scholars say, ‘the striker of animals runs up a bill, it garners nought but its equal [in the afterlife],’” [and] “in this place full of seeds you are walk around, your intent should be to revive [empty land] and to make it a benefit to the male and female believers . . .”92

Here, it becomes clear that Halveti shaykhs like Merkez Efendi burnished their credentials as Sufi leaders by logging many years in the countryside spreading their teachings, and this was often quite basic in nature. The passage above suggests that they sought to guide the peasantry on how to best pursue their endeavors in their fields, and one wonders how the peasants might have perceived these outsiders. In this case, the hagiography makes a backhanded reference suggesting that wandering Sufis like Merkez Efendi might not have always been viewed positively: It is related that one Friday the shaykh was in Balikesir [a town directly west of Bursa], and he ascended to the pulpit after the prayer and commenced giving advice. It was harvest time and the people got up in droves and went out, and they themselves took him lightly on account of their being devotees of Emir Sultan in Bursa, thinking “he’s a Halvetî shaykh in any case.” The noble custom of the late [Merkez Efendi] was to close his eyes in the midst of preaching. He commenced immediately by saying, “I take refuge with God.” The guardian of the mosque listened for awhile, then he also had business outside. He wanted to depart, and he brought the keys and called out, “Shaykh Efendi, when you leave, you should not leave the mosque open; you should lock it up.” Merkez opened his eyes and saw that not a single person remained in the mosque. He closed his eyes again and said to the mosque guardian: “Depart, come on and go; I began with the intent of relating the commentary of several of the blessed verses. The angels are desiring a teaching session. It is fixed to the section ‘and the angels surrounded them.’” He continued speaking until the following afternoon prayer. By this sincerity of the late [Merkez Efendi], the devotion of those who saw his [mystical] states

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought was also increased. He used to preach to his dervishes, saying “[be a] wandering dervish (abdâl),” and if he were to go to a place, he would go alone, and the light of sainthood and the marks of guidance were glittering on his face.93

In this case, we get a strong hint that the wandering Halveti shaykhs sometimes had to contend with other strongly entrenched Sufi traditions in their region, such as the following built by Emîr Sultân (d. 833/1430), a son-in-law of the fourth Ottoman sultan Bayezid I. Building a following in the countryside was no easy task, and success in doing so could provide a means by which individual Halveti shaykhs would gain legitimacy that would later allow them to succeed to the head of their order. The career of Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî followed the same pattern, for before acceding to the leadership of the Sünbüliye branch of the order upon the death of Merkez Efendi in 959/1552, he served as a shaykh in Yanya (today’s Ioannina in northwestern Greece) for several years before being recalled to İstanbul in 940/1534.94 Moreover, not all Halveti shaykhs were suspect in the eyes of the Ottoman rulers, and the impact of the Safavid threat did not necessarily damage the Halveti order. After all, the Halveti shaykhs could easily point to the anti-Halveti persecutions of the Safavids, which had led many prominent Halveti leaders and their followers to flee westward and settle in Ottoman domains. Not only did the Egyptian branches of the Halveti order, in the form of the Güls¸eniye and others, rise to prominence in this way, but increasingly powerful Halveti sub-branches, such as the Sivâsiye, also became prominent players in the region after fleeing the Safavid borderlands in the mid-tenth/sixteenth century. Many Persian and Azerbaijanî exiles from the east had settled in Ottoman domains, and some served both shaykh and sultan. By the end of Süleyman’s reign, Halveti shaykhs had begun to gain official favor. In one account, Merkez Efendi was chosen by Süleymân to act as an official representative in a campaign to recapture Corfu, and another prominent Halveti shaykh played an integral role in convincing Süleyman to undertake his final military campaign to the west in 973/1566.95 The Halveti ascendancy accelerated after the death of Süleymân and culminated in the reign of Sultan Murad III (d. 1003/1595), who developed a number of special relationships with prominent Halveti Sufis. In fact, the high point of Halveti ascendancy within the Ottoman Empire in a political sense may not have come with the reign of Bayezid II, but with Murad III. For both supporters and detractors alike, one of the most influential figures at Murad’s court was the enigmatic Shaykh S¸ücâʿuddîn, a Sufi who claimed membership in the S¸aʿbâniye order.96 A substantial amount of Murad’s personal correspondence with Shaykh S¸ücâʿ over a number of years was recompiled into a book and survives in a single copy, and the correspondence demonstrates a substantial commitment

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on Murad’s part to reporting his dream visions, mystical experiences, and fears to the shaykh.97 We will learn more about S¸ücâʿ’s controversial legacy for the S¸aʿbâniye order later. However, Shaykh S¸ücâʿ was not the only Halveti shaykh to attain a prominent position during Murad’s reign. The son of the Sünbüliye shaykh Yaʿkûb elGermiyânî, Sinaneddin b. Yusuf b. Yaʿkub, also caught the attention of Murad shortly before he acceded to the throne in 981/1574, as evidenced by a short tract he wrote for him entitled Tazlîluʾl-taʾvîl.98 Shortly thereafter, he presented the sultan with a short work called the Tezkîretüʾl-Halvetiye, a short history of the Halveti shaykhs of the Sünbüliye branch of the order and their origins. Written partly as an apologetic for the aforementioned disobedience of his father, Yaʿkûb, late in the reign of Murad’s grandfather, the success of the work eventually led Sinâneddîn to request the prominent position of Shaykh al-Haram in Medina.99 Based on a subsequent letter dispatched to the sultan from Medina a few years later, we know that the request was subsequently granted, and that the two men maintained their connections up to the time of Sinâneddîn’s death in 989/1581.100 Moreover, we also know that Muhyî-yi Güls¸enî, the son-in-law of the Güls¸eniye shaykh Ahmed el-Hiyâlî in Cairo and author of the massive hagiography for İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî, came to İstanbul sometime in 984/1577. While he came primarily to lodge a complaint about lands that had been usurped from him by a judge there, Murad soon tapped this rising Halveti figure as well, and had Muhyî write an abridged handbook of ethics for him entitled the Sîret-i Murâd-ı Cihân in return for his intercession in Muhyî’s case.101 The work proved to be an interesting intellectual exercise on at least one front. While much of the work represented an abridged version of Nâsir al-Dîn Tûsî’s Nasirean Ethics, Muhyî made at least one major change. Instead of retaining the traditional philosophical division of personal ethics, household ethics, and the ethics of society as followed by previous authors, Muhyî chose to replace the traditional second section of household ethics with a section relating to Sufism.102 All of this suggests a sustained campaign on the part of Murad III to inject a strong Sufi element into his style of ruling from the very earliest period of his accession to the throne, and this Sufi element included a number of Halveti shaykhs. Perhaps as a result of this ascendancy, over the course of the latter half of the tenth/sixteenth and early eleventh/seventeenth centuries, the descendants of the first wave of Halveti leaders attained some of the highest and most publicly visible posts as preachers in various Ottoman religious institutions throughout the empire. Yet as the order reached the height of its influence in Ottoman circles, the empire came to confront political, economic, and social turmoil that led to a growing backlash against Sufi orders such as the Halvetiye. Oddly, this

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backlash was not confined just to the opponents of the Halveti shaykhs. It is noteworthy that the three aforementioned shaykhs, S¸ücâʿ, Sinâneddîn, and Muhyî, all came to receive a skeptical treatment in the wake of their involvement with the Ottoman state. S¸ücâʿ’s contemporaries complained bitterly about his influence, and later Sufi biographers criticized Murad’s dabbling in Sufism as unsuccessful.103 In addition, both Sinâneddîn and Muhyî were later denied the most prominent leadership roles in their respective branches of the order by Hulvî in his ordering of the Lemezât, and his accounts of the two figures both betray a critical view of their activities. In his narrative, Sinâneddîn was portrayed as having to repent of a sinful youth through the agency of his father, while Muhyî was denied the succession to the leadership of the Güls¸eniye because he was too fond of traveling about the Empire.104 The inability of many Halveti shaykhs to reconcile their commitment to otherworldly pursuits with attempts by Ottoman dignitaries to place them in prominent positions in their society put them at a disadvantage against a far more troubling trend of rising hostility toward themselves and their followers. One of the most important manifestations of this turmoil was the emergence of what would come to be called the Kâdızâdeli movement, which took its name from a puritanical scholar by the name of Kâdızâde Mehmed (d. 1045/1635). We now know that momentum for this movement began much earlier than Kâdızâde’s appearance on the historical scene, but from the end of the tenth/ sixteenth century onward, it gained strength and began to spread rapidly across the Ottoman Empire, reaching its peak at the end of the eleventh/seventeenth century during the long reign of Sultan Mehmed IV. The basic ideology of the Kâdızâdeli movement was an attempt to “purify” Islamic belief and practice by rooting out all of the “innovations” that had corrupted the Muslim community since the days of the Prophet Muhammad. In this sense, the movement is often described as a precursor to modern-day Islamic “fundamentalist” movements in the Near East. The Kadızâdelis became increasingly vicious in their attacks on religio-mystical orders. In addition, they challenged many of their fellow Ottoman Muslims to defend the validity of practices as mundane as drinking coffee, smoking tobacco, or even shaking hands. The Kâdızâdeli movement, in the course of its attacks on Ottoman religious institutions and figures during the eleventh/seventeenth century, reserved its special ire for the followers of Halveti doctrines and practices. Kâdızâdeli leaders took aim at their ceremonies and the lodges in which they practiced them, and sought to have individual Halveti leaders removed from high positions in the religious and political hierarchy, disregarding their claims to be sacred intermediaries between the believers and God. In some cases, they even succeeded in having Halveti lodges torn down, often by inciting mob action against them.105

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Recent studies, such as those of Madeline Zilfi, have suggested that many of the issues over which the two groups clashed derived directly from the social and economic context of the Ottoman Empire at the time. Demographic pressures and economic strains caused by a growing population, along with long wars with the Habsburgs in Europe and the Safavids in Iran led to population pressure upon the land and the growing inability of the state to pay its own troops and officials. One result of these problems was that too many people were being trained in the scholarly hierarchy for too few actual positions. Moreover, the spread of firearms among mercenary forces and the rise of the notorious Celâlî revolts that intensified by the end of the tenth/sixteenth century also led to disruptions in the Anatolian countryside, especially as inflation made it more and more difficult for Ottoman officials to pay their troops and rebellions against state officials grew more frequent. The collapse of order in many parts of the Ottoman countryside led many rural or small-town scholars to be displaced; some of these subsequently fled to the larger cities to swell the ranks of disaffected leaders increasingly sympathetic to the Kâdızâdeli reform program. The height of Halveti ascendency ran headlong into this increasingly disaffected and hostile group of leaders during the height of what came to be called the “Seventeenth-Century Crisis” throughout much of the wider world. Sufi leaders among the various branches of the Halvetiye, who had been granted a number of prominent posts, found themselves in competition for posts with displaced migrants or hostile skeptics. Thus, one facet of the emerging Kâdızâdeli–Halvetî conflict from the end of the tenth/sixteenth century onward was economic and political in nature; that is, competition over limited positions in an era of economic scarcity. Yet the Kâdızâdeli forces also gave voice to concerns that had nothing directly to do with these problems, and to dismiss the movement as simply another cynical attempt at manipulating the Ottoman power structure to the advantage of a particular interest group, as some scholars have suggested, can limit our understanding of its full impact.106 Kâdızâdeli polemic also extended to seemingly obscure doctrinal matters, such as whether or not it was considered righteous to curse the name of the late first/seventh-century Umayyad caliph Yazîd b. Muʾawiya (d. 63/683), who was responsible for the killing of Husayn, son of the early caliph and revered Muslim leader ʿAlî. Interestingly enough, the Ottoman historian Naʿîmâ (d. 1128/1716), writing in the decades after the Kâdızâdeli heyday, described the movement not as a novelty, but as a manifestation of a recurring ideological and social problem that had troubled Islamic civilization almost from its very inception,107 and a close examination of Halveti history, as we shall see, lends some support to the historian’s claims. Ultimately, the Kâdızâdeli movement did not succeed in its goals of eradicating groups like the Halveti and purifying Ottoman society of everything they

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defined as “innovations.” Still, this does not mean they were ineffective, and how the branches of the Halveti order coped with hostile forces in their social and intellectual environment is a key part of the history of mysticism and Ottoman religious life during the early modern period. The formation and subsequent development of the S¸aʿbâniye order is therefore an excellent case study of how the branches of the order evolved in response to the threats that arose during the transitional periods of the Ottoman Empire’s history. *** Given the rapid proliferation of the various branches of the Halveti order throughout the Ottoman Empire, and the prominence that they had achieved in some of its major urban centers, the historical picture of the Halveti order as a whole becomes increasingly fragmented and kaleidoscopic, much like the history of the Ottoman enterprise as a whole. As research for this study progressed, it became increasingly clear that a micro-historical approach aimed at sub-branches of the order in Ottoman society would be more effective in conveying the world in which Halveti leaders and devotees operated. In the course of research in Ottoman libraries, an especially rich treasure trove of material emerged about a particular sub-branch of the order whose activities intersected with many of the historical trends discussed in this chapter. This sub-branch, which came to be called the S¸aʿbâniye after the name of their founder S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, established itself in Kastamonu from the tenth/sixteenth century onward. From its modest Black Sea mountain roots, it would later emerge as a major Halveti group with branches extending from the Ottoman capital to the Balkans and beyond. Perhaps frustratingly, a study of the S¸aʿbâniye will mimic some of the patterns established up to this point. Whereas in the early stages, we can piece together a fairly full picture of the order’s activities when they represented a smaller group of leaders and devotees, by the latter stages of the order’s evolution, the narrative will once again fragment down to very specific personalities and their followers who operated in a much wider social, political, and religious network than can fully be grasped. Despite these limitations, however, the story of the S¸aʿbâniye and their expansion, however incomplete, provides an invaluable inside look at the way in which the Halveti legacy came to shape Ottoman society and culture – or alternatively, be shaped by it.

Notes 1 Notably, earlier studies begin their analysis from this point in time; see BGM, p. 277, for example.

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2 A good example of this phenomenon is discussed in the biography of the Halveti shaykh, İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî, see MİG, pp. 23–5; see also the remarks of Carter Vaughn Findley, The Turks in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 102–3. 3 For instance, the great Persian scholar and poet, ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî (d. 898/1492) was invited to the court at İstanbul by Sultan Mehmed II during the 1470s while he was making the pilgrimage to the Hijaz; however, he rejected the offer, probably because he viewed the emerging Ottoman state as a backwater compared to his own region; see ʿAbd al-Wâsiʿ Nizâmî-ye Bâharzî, Maqâmât-e Jâmî, ed. Najîb Mâyil Harawî (Tehran: Nashr-e Nay, 1377/1999), p. 183. (I thank Ertuğrul Ökten for the reference.) 4 Hulvî does mention one Güls¸enî shaykh, ʿAbdurrahman Gîlânî (d. 1008/1599), who traveled from the province of Gilan to Egypt to receive his mystical training there from two separate Güls¸enî shaykhs. Subsequently, he was sent by the second to visit the tomb of the Imam ʿAlî Rezâ in Mashhad, and later died in Herat. Whatever the possibilities inherent in this potential outreach across the great divide between Ottoman and Safavid realms, it should be noted that ʿAbdurrahman was a notable exception to an otherwise general pattern of separation; see LH, fols 276b–7a (585). 5 LH, fol. 187a–b (379–380). 6 LH, fol. 192a–b (393); see also HSN, pp. 93–4 and LCH, 699. Hulvî claimed that he left the position once Temür turned his attention to India, but he may instead be referring to Temür’s final campaign to China that was never realized due to Temür’s death in 807/1405. 7 LH, fols 182b–4a (367–9). A third narrative, reflecting a recurrent trope in Halveti hagiographies, also discusses how some of İzzeddîn’s followers who were merchants were traveling by sea when a storm overtook them. They were saved when İzzeddîn miraculously transported one of his dervishes to the scene to see to their safety. 8 LH, fols 185a–6a (373–4). 9 LH, fol. 186b (377–8). 10 LH, fol. 187b (381–2). 11 LH, fols 188b and 189b (382–4). 12 Being a known rival of the Halveti shaykhs by the end of the ninth/fifteenth century in the Ottoman context, the introduction of the founder of the Zeyniye order into this narrative may reflect subsequent tensions between the two orders; for more on this, see RÖ-Z, p. 30. 13 The first account appears in the biography of Pîr İlyâs himself, the second more complex narrative appears as part of the biography of Sadreddîn; see LH, fols 188b–9a and 192a–b (383 and 393). 14 Pîrzâde’s death date as given by Hulvî in his biography of Pîrzâde cannot be correct, for in another part of his work, Pîrzâde appears as an active figure after his father’s death in 860/1456; compare LH, fols 191b and 195b (389 and 398). 15 In an earlier article, I had mis-identified this figure as a member of the Akkoyunlu family, Khalîl Beg (d. 883/1478); however, I have now realized that the earlier context into which the narrative falls does not allow for this possibility; see LH, fol. 190b (388) and JC-IPP, p. 131. For more on the S¸irvâns¸âh ruling house and its longevity in the region, see W. Barthold and C. E. Bosworth, “Shîrwân Shâh, Sharwân Shâh,” EI2, vol. 9, p. 488. 16 These narratives are analyzed in greater detail in JC-IPP, pp. 131–2; compare also LH, fols 190a–91b and 195b (387–8 and 398). 17 Barthold and Bosworth, “Shîrwân Shâh, Sharwân Shâh,” EI2, vol. 9, p. 488.

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18 For more on this position, see A. Havemann, “Nakîb al-Ashrâf,” EI2, vol. 7, p. 926. 19 LH, fols 193a–5b (395–8). 20 Mehmet Rıhtım examines the various sources that discuss this issue, and argues in his study of Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî that Sadrüddîn must have died a lot earlier than Hulvî indicated in his work; see MRSY, pp. 17 and 21–3. 21 MRSY, pp. 30–3; see also the illustrations on pp. 234–5. 22 LH, fol. 195a (398); although given his motives in writing the Lemezât, we should not discount the possibility that Hulvî recorded this as an explanatory device to legitimize the diversity of the different Halveti sub-branches in his own day, or make an argument for greater Halveti unity based on the suggestion that the founding figure of Yahyâ was responsible for that very diversity. 23 MRSY, pp. 122–8. 24 MRSY, p. 106. 25 LH, fol. 197b (403). 26 Once again, Hulvî’s dates of death for Pîr S¸ükrullah do not match up with the narratives connected with him; he gives the date of death as 868/1464 which would be before the death of Yahyâ and would not have allowed him to contest the succession; note contradictions in biographical entry for S¸ükrullah in LH, fols 197a–8b (403–5). 27 Compare the accounts in MN-Hİ, pp. 256–60 with LH, fols 197b–8a (403–4). 28 See also my earlier remarks on these issues in JC-IPP, p. 132. 29 MSN, p. 288. 30 MRSY, p. 158; see also LH, fol. 248b (519). 31 A full study of the Sivâsiye remains to be done, which is somewhat curious given their documented role in the Halveti conflict with the Kâdızâdeli movement, cf. the work of Madeline Zilfi in the bibliography. However, see Cengiz Gündoğdu, Bir Türk Mutasavvıfı Abdülmecîd Sivâsî (971/1563–1049/1639): Hayatı Eserleri ve Tasavvufî Görüs¸leri (Ankara: T. C. Kültür Bakanlığı, 2000), and the remarks in RÖ-OT, pp. 107–10. 32 See MİG, p. 249; and the discussion of this in JC-HWS, p. 57. 33 The narratives about this incident state that Rûs¸enî, while one day in a state of contemplation, found himself walking in a garden with the Prophet Muhammad. The Prophet picked a rose and handed it to İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî, who was walking with them, and commanded that he bring it to Rûs¸enî. When Rûs¸enî emerged from his contemplative state, he saw İbrâhîm coming in with a rose in hand to give him. Rûs¸enî recognized that the Prophet had anointed his successor, and thereafter gave him the name “Güls¸enî” after the rose-giving incident. See LH, fol. 251b in margin (525) and NVA, p. 67. Interestingly, this story does not appear in Muhyî-yi Güls¸enî’s biography of İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî anywhere, and their initial encounters are framed within the context of İbrâhîm’s duties as a member of the Akkoyunlu entourage; see MİG, pp. 48–9 and 55–6. 34 Interestingly, this individual would later go on to become a tutor (lâlâ) to the future Sultan Bayezid II, and rise to the rank of grand vizier shortly before his death; see Münir Aktepe, “Çandarlı İbrahim Pas¸a,” DİA, v. 8, p. 214. 35 For more on Hızır and his importance in the Sufi traditions, see İlyas Çelebi and Süleyman Uludağ, “Hızır,” DİA, v. 17, 406–11. 36 LH, fols 245a–6a (512–13). 37 LH, fol. 198b (407); Hulvî refers to him as ʿAlâeddîn er-Rûmî rather than ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî.

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38 LH, fols 198b–9a (407–8); see also the discussion of this incident in BGM, pp. 280–1, which ties it to the later struggle over the succession of Bayezid II to the throne. 39 LH, fol. 199a–b (408); all of the incidents discussed in Hulvî also appear in abridged form in LCH, p. 704. More will be said about Molla ʿArab’s intersection with the Halveti order in Chapter 9. 40 For more on the trajectory of Akkoyunlu power under Uzun Hasan, see JW-CCE, pp. 78–123. 41 Hulvî refers to her as “Selçuk Hâtûn” and claims that she was also a descendant of the Karakoyunlu leader Cihâns¸âh, but this is most likely erroneous; see the genealogical charts in JW-CCE, pp. 208 and 211. 42 LH, fols 246a–247a (513–515); this may represent an allusion to an otherwise unknown figure in the the Mushaʿshaʿ revolt in Khuzistan, see JW-CCE, 129. 43 İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî recalled Qâdı ʿÎsâ with fondness many years after going into exile in Egypt; see MİG, pp. 80–1. See also the remarks about Qâdı ʿÎsâ’s important role in the power structure of the Akkoyunlu state and its unraveling; JW-CCE, pp. 132 and 143–5. 44 See, for example, MİG, pp. 218–20. 45 The story of İbrâhîm’s pilgrimage and the tensions that accompanied it in the final decade of the ninth/fifteenth century can be found in MİG, pp. 227–54. 46 Side Emre, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, was in the process of completing a study of this period at the time this book went to press, but I was not able to consult it; see Side Emre, “İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî (1442–1534), Founder of the Güls¸eniye Order of Dervishes in Egypt: Saint, Heretic, and Political Dissident,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 2009. In addition to MİG as previously referenced, see also the preliminary study of Himmet Konur, İbrâhîm Güls¸eni: Hayatı, Eserleri, Tarikatı (İstanbul: İnsan Yayınları, 2000) and JC-HWS. 47 Res¸at Öngören argues that these interconnections were already building during İbrâhîm’s lifetime; see RÖ-OT, pp. 99–104. 48 A detailed presentation of these events can be found in JC-HWS, pp. 47–57. 49 MİG, pp. 314–17. 50 Waugh, Visionaries of Silence, pp. 30–1. 51 The last Güls¸eniye shaykh to whom Hulvî refers reflects this hereditary descendant, as his full name is given as “Shaykh İbrâhîm b. Shaykh Hasan brother of ʿAlî el-Safvetî b. Ahmed el-Hiyâlî b. İbrâhîm el-Güls¸enî,” see LH, fol. 277a (587). Oddly, our knowledge of the post-Hulvî Güls¸eniye and other Halveti branches in Egypt is surprisingly sketchy until the emergence of reformist shaykhs like al-Bakrî (d. 1162/1749), al-Hifnî (d. 1181/1767), and al-Bayyumî (d. after 1144/1732), cf. Waugh, Visionaries of Silence, pp. 34–9. However, if the silsile of the later Hâletiye branch of the Güls¸eniye, which later established itself in Edirne, is any indication, the hereditary principle remained alive and well; see Sâdık Vicdâni, Tarikatler ve Silsileleri (Tomâr-ı Turûk-ı ʿAliyye), trans. İrfan Gündüz (İstanbul: Enderun Kitabevi, 1995), p. 203. 52 LH, fols 260b–1a and 272a–3a (543–5 and 571–2). 53 Gelibolulu Mustafâ ʿAlî, Mustafâ ʿAlî’s Description of Cairo of 1599: Text, Transliteration, Translation, Notes, ed. Andreas Tietze (Vienna: Verlag Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1975), p. 47. 54 In a biography of the Güls¸eniye shaykh Kâsım Efendi (d. 970/1563), a contemporary of Ahmed el-Hiyâlî and Muhyî-yi Güls¸enî, Hulvî described how a former Mamluk soldier tried to secure Kâsım Efendi’s prayers for the defeat of the Ottomans, only to be rejected

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56 57

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60 61 62 63

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought by Kâsım, who foretold his eventual capture and execution at the hands of Ottoman soldiers in Basra some years later. The apologetic in these types of narratives indirectly indicates the idea that Güls¸eniye shaykhs were viewed as potential fifth-column figures even after the Ottoman conquest; see LH, fols 280b–1a (564). For more on the various members of the Cemâlî family in Ottoman history, see Yusuf Küçükdağ, II. Bayezid, Yavuz ve Kanûnî Devirlerinde Cemâlî Ailesi (İstanbul: Enderun Kitabevi, 1995); I have also dealt with this subject at length in JC-IPP, pp. 121–41. HSN, p. 284. LH, fol. 208a (429); given the time frame, this suggests that Tâhirzâde may have had ties to the early Safavid order during a time in which it was beginning to make its transition away from Sunnism. LCH, pp. 706–7; Lâmiʿî Çelebi met Cemâl el-Halvetî at least once and likely had access to sources who could relate accounts about Cemâl’s life, assuming he did not learn of these things from Cemâl himself, see p. 707. These accounts also appear in Hulvî as well; see LH, fol. 208a–b (429). Faruk Sümer noted in an article on the Karamanid dynasty that İbrâhîm Beg was deeply distrustful of the children born to him by his Ottoman wife, a daughter of Sultan Çelebi Mehmed I (d. 824/1421), and was eventually displaced by his Ottoman son Pîr Ahmed shortly before his death. Given the Halveti connections with the Karamanids and their strained relationship with the Ottomans at this time, the evidence strongly suggests that Cemâl and other Halveti devotees would not have been happy with the changes; see Faruk Sümer, “Karamânoghulları (Karmanids),” EI2, vol. 4, p. 619. THV, fol. 11a; see also LH, fols 208b–9a (430). LCH, p. 707. See the analysis in JC-IPP, p. 135. LH, fol. 201a (412); this may reflect a thinly veiled criticism of Uzun Hasan’s alliances with the Venetians and his own attempts to claim that Muslims should not fight other Muslims in the letters he sent to the Ottomans a few years previous, see JW-CCE, pp. 114–15. LH, fols 203b–4b (417–18). LH, fol. 205a–b (420–1). RÖ-OT, p. 44. For an extended discussion of the life and career of Shaykh Vefâ that includes a discussion of this anecdote and Vefâ’s relations with Sultan Mehmed II and Sultan Bayezid II, see RÖ-Z, pp. 130–154. This narrative appears in THV, fols 11a–12a and LCH, pp. 707–8, among others. KA, fols 177b–8b. LCH, p. 707. For a revisionist view on the activities of Mehmed II in regard to pious foundations and the question of unpopular fiscal reforms in the years before his death, see Oktay Özel, “Limits of the Almighty: Mehmed II’s ‘Land Reform’ Revisited,” JESHO 42:2 (1999), 226–46. HSN, p. 285; see also a similar variant of this tale in LH, fol. 210a (432). See, for example, the remarks of CI, p. 37; Halil İnalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600 (London: Phoenix Press, 1973), p. 30; this interpretation has also been suggested by Küçükdağ, II. Bayezid, p. 22. For a more in-depth analysis of Cemâl and other Sufi figures’ role in the conflict, see JC-IPP, pp. 136–9.

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74 For more on the history of this structure and Mustafa Pas¸a’s role in constructing it for the Cemâliye, see AYHC, pp. 220–7 and LH, fols 210b–11a (432–3). 75 LH, fols 215b–16b (445–6). 76 LH, as scattered over fols 210b–12a (432–5) 77 Cemâl el-Halvetî, a.k.a. “Çelebi Halife” (d. 905/1499), Risâlah fî tâʾwîl kalîmat Imâm ʿalâ tahqîq Amîr al-Muʾminîn Abû Bakr as-Siddîq, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1555/2; documents like this are yet more evidence that we must rethink Martin’s claims about the early Halveti having a strong Shiʿite influence; see, for example, BGM, pp. 284–5. 78 Cemâl el-Halvetî, a.k.a. “Çelebi Halife” (d. 905/1499), Risâlah fî tahqîq al-wudûʾ albâtinî, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1683/1, fols 2a–9a. 79 See, for example, the thirteenth/nineteenth-century translation of the aforementioned tract by one Veliyüddîn Maras¸î Emirzâde, Vuzûʾ-ı bâtinî ve gusul hakkında risâle, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1740. 80 See the many copies of Sünbül Sinan Efendi (d. 935/1529), Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya, as noted in the bibliography in İstanbul’s Süleymaniye Library, along with their subsequent Turkish translations from later eras. 81 See THV, fol. 19a–b; LH, fol. 212a–b (435). 82 THV, fol. 19a. 83 Substantial progress has been made in laying an infrastructure for future studies on this front in the decade since I initiated my own research in the late 1990s, often but not invariably by Turkish scholars; note the works of Nathalie Clayer, Res¸at Öngören, Himmet Konur, Cengiz Gündoğdu, Kerim Kara, Ahmet Ögke and others in the bibliography. 84 Halil İnalcık, “Selîm I,” EI2, vol. 9, p. 127. 85 LH, fol. 217a–b (447–8). 86 BGM, pp. 283–4. 87 See, for example, the narratives about Sünbül’s confrontations with a number of religious dignitaries in LH, fols 217b–20a (448–51); these will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8. 88 KA, fol. 265a. 89 This is one of the earliest Turkish language hagiographies, and recounts the narrative of a scholar imprisoned together with the Halveti shaykh Gazanfer Dede. Despite demonstrating a miraculous ability to allow himself and his cellmate to walk freely outside the prison when the guards were not looking, the scholar recounted that Gazanfer Dede voluntarily returned to the jail cell so that he would not violate the law by disobeying the sultan’s order; see CAMA, fol. 10b. While Gazanfer Dede was eventually freed, others were not so lucky, and several Halveti shaykhs were executed or subjected to inquisitorial processes during Süleyman’s reign, see the remarks in ZVM, pp. 306–27. 90 See THV, fol. 36a–b and the remarks in JC-GTH, pp. 914–15. 91 Res¸at Öngören, “Merkez Efendi (ö 959/1552),” DİA, v. 29, p. 201. 92 THV, fol. 27a–b; I found parts of this passage were corrupt in the original, and had to be reconstructed from the printed text of the manuscript in the Süleymaniye Library, MS H. Hüsnü 808. 93 THV, fols 27b–8a. 94 THV, fols 32a–4a. 95 See LH, fol. 225b (464) and NC, p. 115. 96 THV, fol. 17a.

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97 See SM-KM. 98 This earliest preserved sample of Sinâneddîn’s writings survives only in a single, poorly copied manuscript; see Sinâneddîn b. Yusuf b. Yaʿkub (d. 989/1581), Tazlîluʾl-taʾvîl, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Esad Efendi 3689/1. 99 LH, fol. 234a (485); see also the analysis in JC-GTH, pp. 913–15. 100 This tract has survived in multiple copies, most notably Sinâneddîn b. Yusuf b. Yaʿkub (d. 989/1581), Tenbîhüʾl-gabi fî rüyʾatuʾn-nabi, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Yazma Bağıs¸lar 3431/1. Sinâneddîn also received acclaim as a specialist on performing the pilgrimage, and also penned a guide to performing the pilgrimage that was re-copied multiple times in later generations, the earliest copy can be found as Sinâneddîn b. Yusuf b. Yaʿkub (d. 989/1581), Menâsik-i hacc-i s¸erîf, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Serez 1032. 101 For the circumstances surrounding the composition of the work, see Muhyî-yi Güls¸enî (d. 1014/1606), Sîret-i Murâd-ı Cihân, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Fatih 3496, fols 2a–4a. 102 Compare Muhyî-yi Güls¸enî (d. 1014/1606), Sîret-i Murâd-ı Cihân, fols 31a–54a with the structure of the earlier seventh/thirteenth-century work of Tûsî as translated by G. M. Wickens, The Nasirean Ethics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964). 103 Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî went as far as to declare S¸ücâʿ as one of the reasons for the decline of the empire at the end of his life; see KA, fols 497a–498b. Interestingly, Sufi biographers such as Hacı ʿAlî were also critical of this; see HA-TFM, fol. 553a. 104 Compare the biographies of these figures, and their classification by Hulvî as zâʾika rather than successors in the order’s silsile in LH, fols 233a–4a and 266b–7b (483–5 and 557–9); in another part of the work, Hulvî chronicled Muhyî’s shocking rejection as successor to the Güls¸eniye shaykh ʿAlî el-Safvetî, see fol. 274b (578–9). This will be discussed more fully in an article yet to be published, John J. Curry, “The Meeting of the Two Sultans: Three Sufi Mystics Negotiate with the Court of Murad III,” The Nexus of Sufism and Society, eds John J. Curry and Erik S. Ohlander, forthcoming. 105 For more on the Kâdızâdelis and their attacks against the Halveti institutions in İstanbul, see MCZ-PP, pp. 129–72. 106 See, for example, the critique of recent scholarship on the topic in the aforementioned dissertation of Derin Terzioğlu, “Sufi and Dissident,” pp. 248–50, 260–3, and 451–7. 107 Mustafa Naʿîmâ (d. 1128/1716), Târîh-i Naʿîmâ (İstanbul: Matbaʿa-yı Amîre, 1863), v. 6, p. 218.

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PART II

. . . THE EVOLUTION OF A . HALVETI SUB- BRANCH: THE LIFE AND CAREER . OF ¸AʿBÂNS I VELI AND HIS FOLLOWERS IN THE KASTAMONU REGION

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INTRODUCTION

On the southwest side of the modern town of Kastamonu in the Black Sea region, behind the hilltop fortifications that once guarded this strategic route through northern Anatolia, lies the tomb and mosque of the great Halveti saint S¸aʿbân-ı Veli Efendi (d. 976/1569). It remains an important spiritual and historical landmark in the city of Kastamonu to the present, and is still visited regularly by the local community (see Figure 2). While tracing his spiritual ancestry back to Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî, like most of the other Halveti shaykhs, S¸aʿbân is best known for founding the major branch of the Halveti order known as the S¸aʿbâniye, whose silsile can be seen in Appendix II. While this branch of the order became a powerful political and social force in Ottoman circles in the second half of the seventeenth century under the guidance of key figures such as Karabâs¸ ʿAlî Veli (d. 1096/1685) and Nasûhî Efendi (d. 1130/1718),1 its earlier history and development have still not received the comprehensive study that they deserve.2 Our sources on S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s life and history derive almost entirely from the work of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1044/1636), who is the subject of Part III of this work. A complex interaction between author and subject informs Fuʾâdî’s writing about S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, so a certain degree of foreshadowing of some of the circumstances surrounding the composition of the hagiography and a brief explanation of its character are in order before proceeding to the events that it describes. The Menâkıb-ı S¸aʿbân-ı Veli (or “Virtuous Anecdotes of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli”), in the form that it has come down to us, is not the original text of the work as ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî first produced it.3 It is instead an abridgment of a longer work written in Arabic,4 of which no copy has yet come to light. Scholars who have attempted to find a copy of the original have concluded that it has been

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Figure 2 The entrance to the Şaʿbân-ı Veli complex

lost.5 Thus, a frustrating aspect of the account is that Fuʾâdî frequently refers his audience to the longer hagiographical work for further details, and periodically stresses that the present abridgment covers only a portion of the events surrounding the life of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli and his successors. The abridgment, as we have it today, is divided into six sections: an introduction and five chapters. For understanding the life of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli himself, the third, fourth and fifth chapters are the most important in that they narrate various anecdotes about S¸aʿbân and the context in which he established his sainthood. However, these chapters, which represent over half of the work’s content, are not just a cut and dried compilation of anecdotes about the saint’s life. Adopting a strategy somewhat similar to, but not exactly following that of his contemporary hagiographer, Muhyi-yi Güls¸enî,6 ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî intersperses the material he has chosen with his own scholarly observations on various aspects of doctrine evoked by the narratives. He conveniently identifies his own interjections in the work by labeling each of them as “advisory notes” (lâyiha). As a result, the reader cannot ignore Fuʾâdî’s hovering presence within the work. In some places, his commentary explaining or clarifying various points channels, controls, and occasionally even dominates the way in which his audience receives the narratives.

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This interaction raises awkward methodological problems in interpreting the picture of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli that we receive from the Menâkıb. Which character should the critical scholarly account present first, the saint or his hagiographer? After much consideration, I came to the conclusion that it is more helpful for the modern audience to understand the narratives that the hagiographer and his informants give us about S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s life and career over the course of the tenth/sixteenth century. This is not to say that the circumstances surrounding the composition of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s hagiography in the first third of the eleventh/ seventeenth century will remain absent; on the contrary, they must be referenced in order to interpret the degree to which historians can know “what really happened” during S¸aʿbânʾs life and career. In sum, this study takes the position that a careful parsing of the narratives about S¸aʿbân-ı Veli can allow researchers to tease out expressions of both the historical context of that era and the challenges faced by mid-tenth/sixteenth century Halveti shaykhs in building a following. In the process, we can learn a great deal about the process of establishing subbranches of the Halveti order and the evolution of Sufi mystics’ leadership roles in the provincial areas of the Ottoman Empire. To better clarify both the historical figure of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli and the meanings that the stories of his life took on among later generations, the following chapters seek to lay out a interpretative account of his life and legacy. Chapter 3 offers a brief summary of the limited evidence we have for the earliest period of S¸aʿbân’s life, along with the pre-existing religious and social context that paved the way for his appearance in Kastamonu. Chapter 4 examines the development of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli and his following in Kastamonu from his arrival during the 1520s to his death in 1569. Chapter 5 concludes with discussion of S¸aʿbân’s successors, and the challenges faced by his nascent sub-branch’s followers in the decades after his passing.

Notes 1 The lives, works and successors of both men are given in NYIL, pp. 102–23. Nasûhî Efendi and his works have been the subject of a recent monograph; see Kemal Edib Kürkçüoğlu, Shaykh Muhammed Nasûhî: Hayatı, Eserleri, Divanı, Mektupları (İstanbul: Alem Ticaret Yayıncılık, 1996); this period will be discussed more fully in Part IV of this study. 2 The first modern historical study of this branch of the Halveti order was written by Muhammed İhsan Oğuz at the close of the First World War in 1918, with the study on the later eighteenth-century figure of Mustafa Çerkes¸î appended much later in 1961; see MİO, pp. 11–12. The study is still worth consulting, as Oğuz seemed to have insights from his time that are otherwise lost today. The order first came under scrutiny in Western scholarship in the early 1950s by the great German Orientalist scholar Hans Joachim Kissling, whose “Šaʿbân Velî und die Šaʿbânijje,” Dissertationes Orientales et Balcanicae

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3

4

5 6

The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought Collectae (Munich: Beiträge zur Kenntnis Südosteuropas und des Nahen Orients, 1986), pp. 99–122, contains useful insights on the connection of the sources about the S¸aʿbâniye with the context of anti-Sufi movements of the period, but focuses primarily on the events described in the later work attached to the Menâkibnâme ten years after its composition under the title Türbenâme. I thank Prof. Machiel Kiel for informing me of the existence of this article, and then sending me a copy. Subsequently, a pair of Kastamonu-based Turkish scholars contributed more substantial studies of the order and its hagiographical and epigraphical remnants in the tomb complex. The 1991 study of Abdülkerim Abdulkadiroğlu provides a thorough overview of the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order, the career of S¸aʿbân and his successors, poetry produced by the order, and the structures of the S¸aʿbân-ı Veli complex, but it is thoroughly descriptive in most cases and makes little attempt at a deeper historical analysis of these materials; see AKAK. The short tract of Ziya Demircioğlu, which is based on a longer work examining all of Kastamonu’s known saints published in 1962, is a much briefer overview, but contains a very good drawing of the complex and its inscriptions; see ZD. While these Turkish-language works are based on the hagiographical source materials, they generally do not move beyond the descriptive accounts of the anecdotes contained in the sources to further assess the historiography of the order. Numerous manuscript copies of this work have survived from previous centuries, but few of them differ significantly from the printed text of the manuscript that first appeared in the nineteenth century, which is entitled Menâkıb-ı S¸ erîf-i Pîr-i Halvetî Hazret-i S¸ aʿbân-ı Veli ve Türbenâme and published in Kastamonu in 1294/1877; see MSV. A copy of this work also exists in a published modern Turkish translation that I purchased on-site at the tomb complex in Kastamonu, which succeeds in conveying an abridged form of the original, but without retaining the expression of certain key details that enhance our understanding of the text; see Muhammed Safi (ed.), Menakıb-ı S¸ eyh S¸ aʿbân-ı Veli ve Türbename (Kastamonu: S¸aʿbân-ı Veli Kültür Vakfı, 1998). Fuʾâdî describes the events that led to his decision to prepare an abridgment for broader circulation among the general public of his day in MSV, pp. 5–6. We know that the original was written in Arabic based on a reference to a chapter heading in the longer hagiography, which Fuʾâdî cited in its original Arabic; see MSV, p. 68. AKAK, p. 64. For a brief study on the narrative strategy of Muhyi-yi Güls¸enî, see JC-HWS.

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Chapter

3 Echoes of a Distant Past: ¸aʿbânS ı . Veli’s early life and conversion to Sufism

While some Muslim saints were born into prominent family lineages and attracted historical attention from their earliest years, S¸aʿbân-ı Veli was not among this group and only rose to prominence in a later era. Therefore, the picture we receive of his early life and his eventual incorporation into the following of the Halveti order is among the most ill-documented parts of his life. Nevertheless, these events are not without value for the historian if they are placed within the political, religious, and social context of early tenth/sixteenthcentury Asia Minor under a recently ascendant Ottoman state. Antecedents of Islamic and Sufi Culture in Kastamonu Before the Arrival of ¸aʿbânS ı Veli ˙

By the time S¸aʿbân-ı Veli made his home in Kastamonu in the first half of the tenth/sixteenth century, the city had already been integrated into the Islamic world for several centuries. After the invasions of the Seljuks, various Turcoman tribes, and Latin Crusaders following the defeat of the Byzantines by the Seljuk ruler Alp Arslan at Manzikert in 463/1071, a Turcoman dynasty known as the Danishmendids established themselves in north-central Anatolia. They appear to have first taken control of Kastamonu in 498/1105. Although the city passed briefly back into Byzantine hands periodically over the subsequent three decades in conjunction with campaigns of various Byzantine rulers and generals into the Anatolian plateau, a nominally Muslim sovereign ruled over the city until the Ottoman absorption of the province following the conquest of Constantinople in 857/1453. After the weakening and dissolution of the Danishmendid polity toward the end of the sixth/twelfth century, the city and settlements in its

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environs, while theoretically a part of the imperial polities of their day (e.g. Seljuk, Ilkhanid, and briefly, Ottoman), often operated in a quasi-autonomous manner under local Turcoman rulers. With the growing weakness and eventual break up of the Ilkhanids in the fourteenth century, Kastamonu became an increasingly autonomous political unit, or beylik, that would maintain a certain degree of independence until almost a decade into the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror, when it was finally incorporated into the Ottoman state.1 Even in modern times, the city of Kastamonu and its environs are still home to some of the oldest Turco-Islamic architecture in the region, with mosques and tombs from the pre-Ottoman period prominently displayed in many parts of the city.2 Going hand-in-hand with this growth of Islamic monumental heritage was a proliferation of saints’ tombs and holy places, some of which were built by the ruling families of the Çobanoğulları (r. c. 660/1262–691/1292) and Candaroğulları (also known as the İsfendiyaroğulları, r. 691/1292–863/1459) from the seventh/ thirteenth through ninth/fifteenth centuries. Many of these structures are still maintained today, and proudly shown to visitors as a part of the local culture and lore.3 These holy places, and the Muslim populations that attached themselves to them, probably played an important role in the gradual conversion of the former Byzantine subjects to Islam over the course of subsequent centuries. Thus, by the time of Ottoman ascendancy in the region, a process of Islamicization, albeit still incomplete, had long been underway. Incoming Halveti devotees would undoubtedly have found fertile ground for their activities by the ninth/fifteenth century, and S¸aʿbân-ı Veli was not the first prominent Halveti shaykh to enter the region. Interestingly enough, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî made an editorial decision to devote the third chapter of his hagiography to an earlier Kastamonu-based Halveti saint, Seyyid Sünnetî Efendi (d. 863/1459), who pre-dated S¸aʿbân and the founding of his sub-branch of the order by several generations. Sünnetî Efendi’s tomb still exists, and is marked by a refurbished tombstone on the site of the S¸aʿbân-ı Veli complex today, lying just outside the prayer niche within the present mosque (see Figure 3). We learn very little about Sünnetî’s early life, except that he was esteemed as having been a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and was born and raised in the area of Kastamonu.4 Beyond this, we are told only that he proved to be remarkably adept on the mystical path and had natural poetic abilities. Thus, the shaykhs of Kastamonu eventually concluded that they lacked the means to guide him effectively, and insisted that he travel east to complete his mystical training with Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî. When he arrived outside Yahyâ’s Sufi lodge in Baku, Yahyâ sensed his presence and told his followers that a descendant of the Prophet wishing to join the order had just arrived and they should bring him inside. Yahyâ’s dervishes

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Figure 3 The tomb of Seyyid Ahmed Sünnetî Efendi

dutifully trooped outside to find Sünnetî waiting for an audience, but were surprised to find their guest was not wearing the green turban characteristic to those from the Prophet’s lineage. After Sünnetî had entered and sat down, Yahyâ was equally confused, as ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî relates: When [Sünnetî] had kissed his hand, he said, “welcome, dervish, but why didn’t you bring your green [turban]?” The dervish responded, “my lord, I came to your threshold to serve with sincerity. I am not capable of anything other than service. But [with the excuse] that ‘he is among the descendants of the Prophet,’ I would not be given that latrine cleaning service that is necessary in the rules of conduct, and by not completing my service, which is required at your threshold, I would also not find perfection in the knowledge of God that I obtained. I came [dressed this way] out of fear that I would remain deficient.” Sultan [Yahyâ] commanded, “dervish, you completed the service with this sincere intent; we know the service that is suitable and necessary for you. Come, bring your green [turban].”5

Such anecdotes betray hidden tensions behind their emphasis on the spiritual pedigree and judicious mystical insight of their subjects. They reflect echoes

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of issues that troubled an earlier, mid-ninth/fifteenth century generation of the Halveti order. The crux of the matter was that there was a question over whether or not the class of sayyids (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) and Sufis could mix without compromising the cultural expectations that governed their respective places in society. Muslim leaders, even if they were respected and powerful Sufi masters like Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî, still found it unseemly to make members of the sayyid class engage in the type of demeaning work that the Halveti order considered necessary in order to humiliate and tame the passions of the carnal soul. Yahyâ deflected this tension by recognizing his disciple’s attempt to temporarily renounce his “sayyid-hood” as proof that he has already surpassed this stage of the order’s training. It would also have succeeded in preserving the reputation of a figure who had a built-in claim to sanctity. As a future purveyor of the order’s doctrine, this was a quality which would not have escaped Yahyâ’s notice, given his strategy of seeking followers to spread the order’s teaching far and wide. ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî confirms the wisdom of Yahyâ’s decisions by noting that Sünnetî was sent back to Kastamonu as one of his many successors. He settled in the northern part of the city in an area behind the hill where Kastamonu’s fortress stood, built a small mosque, and guided his following there until his death. Yet leaving aside this mention of earlier Halveti concerns over political and religious doctrines, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî had another important purpose in including these anecdotes about this Halveti predecessor from an earlier, preOttoman period of Kastamonu’s history. Perhaps following the lead of his informants, he felt compelled to link the founder of his own sub-branch of the order, S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, with this illustrious Halveti predecessor. Even during the early eleventh/seventeenth-century period in which Fuʾâdî wrote his hagiography, local spiritual descendants and followers of this earlier figure might have still been around to offer resistance to an upstart group that had established itself in comparatively recent times. The Menâkıb notes that Sünnetî’s son, Seyyid Muzaffereddîn Efendi, was a müfti and teacher in the prominent Atâbey Gazi medrese and mosque complex in Kastamonu, and was buried close to his father.6 While the Menâkıb does not elaborate further, this suggests that the legacy of Seyyid Sünnetî and his descendants was perhaps not all that distant when S¸aʿbân-ı Veli first came to Kastamonu, and their influence may have persisted even into Fuʾâdî’s own lifetime. Thus, these narratives seek to allay concerns about the potential for conflict or disconnect between the two traditions: On account of [Sünnetî’s] capacity for divination being powerful, and his knowing the Preserved Tablet (levhe ʿâlim), knowledge came to him that his

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silsile would be cut off, and that his prayer rug would go empty for a time. When he beseeched God with a measure of heartfelt remembrance, it is related . . . that he used to meet with the Prophet Hızır, peace be upon him, on many troubling matters and important issues, and he used to benefit from him. This time, at the end of his supplication, the Prophet Hızır . . . was ready, and predicted: “O Seyyid Ahmed Sünnetî, do not be concerned at all! In fact, by the command of God your silsile will be cut off, and your prayer rug will go vacant for a time. But after some time a lord of the Pole of the Age will come from the silsile of Seyyid Yahyâ Sultan, and he will once again revive your prayer rug. The teaching and guidance on your prayer rug will again be established in a permanent and uniform way with his divinely granted power, and the divinely granted states and God-given benefits of his successors, and the successors of the successors who will give guidance after him on his prayer rug. They are also yours, and you will not be forgotten; you will be remembered until the Day of Judgment, and you will be remembered with a prayer of blessing.” After he gave this good news, [Sünnetî] became calm, and when he went to the other world, he was buried in the area of the prayer-niche of the aforementioned mosque.7

Meetings between saints and Hızır were not an unusual occurrence in the literature of Ottoman mysticism.8 In this case, the meeting served to link the earlier figure of Seyyid Sünnetî with the career of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli a century later. By including this narrative, Fuʾâdî conferred legitimacy on the career of his protagonist among Kastamonu’s population, and invited the followers of Sünnetî Efendi to join a revived mission by linking the two orders into a divinely ordained and unified whole. This strategy succeeded in placating local devotees of an older tradition, who might otherwise have felt marginalized within the new one. It also contributed to enlarging the following of the order under the direction of S¸aʿbân and his successors by localizing S¸aʿbân himself, who was an outsider at first (as we shall see, S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s shaykh was based in another part of Anatolia). Fuʾâdî’s work clinches the sacred character of the relationship between the two saints by concluding with an anecdote from his father-in-law, Hüsâmeddin Halife, who related that a flood that had occurred during Fuʾâdî’s teenage years. It destroyed the walls surrounding the mosque and the tombs, so both Sünnetî’s and S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s tombs had to be opened for repairs. In the course of the exhumation, they found that Sünnetî’s body had miraculously failed to decay, a standard hagiographic recognition of divine favor. But they also found that S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s feet had assumed a position that clearly indicated the respect and honor in which he held his predecessor.9

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Having addressed this potential sticking point, Fuʾâdî then went on to devote the majority of his work to the life and career of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, starting with his birth and childhood. In contrast to some of his predecessors and contemporaries in the Halveti order, S¸aʿbân’s early life is not particularly well documented, nor is it corroborated by additional sources. We depend solely on Fuʾâdî, who tells us that S¸aʿbân was born in a small village close to the town of Tas¸köprü to the east of Kastamonu near the end of the ninth/fifteenth century. Supposedly, his mother and father died when he was very young, leaving him to be brought up by a generous woman who saw to his early education, which included lessons with local scholars in Kastamonu and Tas¸köprü.10 She even had the means to help him go to İstanbul to continue his studies, but died shortly after he arrived there. Interpreting the historicity of this part of S¸aʿbân’s life story is probably impossible, as it reflects constructed narratives that allow the hagiographer to demonstrate parallels between the saint’s life and the life of the Prophet Muhammad. S¸aʿbân’s benefactor perhaps combines elements of the role played by the both Prophet’s wet-nurse, Halîmah, with the support he enjoyed from his first wife, Khadîja.11 Still, we cannot rule out that it could reflect the important role that generous female benefactors might play in provincial urban centers like Kastamonu in supporting children who became orphans before the age of maturity. Moreover, a female audience for the narrative could take a didactic and pious example from the story that would see numerous opportunities for realization in the Hobbesian historical context of pre-modern societies. Closely paralleling standard accounts, after his arrival in İstanbul and some acquisition of the exoteric aspects of the Islamic sciences, S¸aʿbân felt dissatisfied with his training and became attracted to the mystical aspects of Islam instead. He began to search among the Sufi masters of İstanbul for a mystical guide. But most of the Sufi masters whom he sought out in İstanbul were unable to help him; rather he is presented as spending a good deal of his time alone and withdrawn from the company of others.12 While Fuʾâdî presents this as praiseworthy, even inserting some of his own poetry praising the importance of solitude in pursuing the mystical path, the anecdote could also reflect the difficulties an aspiring provincial scholar like S¸aʿbân may have faced in being taken seriously as a student in the imperial capital.13 In fact, there is some confusion in İstanbul-based biographical sources about who S¸aʿbân’s shaykh actually was. The generally accepted figure for S¸aʿbân’s

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successors was a Bolu-based shaykh by the name of Hayreddîn Tokâdî (d. 932/1525), one of the successors to Cemâl el-Halvetî. However, Nevʿîzâde ʿAtâʾî (d. 1045/1635), author of a biographical dictionary of Ottoman Muslim scholars and saints, provides contradictory information about S¸aʿbân’s place in the Halveti chain of transmission. At one point, he concurs with the standard account and names Hayreddîn Tokâdî as S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s shaykh, but in another part of the work devoted to the biography of S¸aʿbân himself, he claims that S¸aʿbân’s shaykh was, in fact, a man by the name of Konrapalı Muslihuddîn Efendi. In Fuʾâdî’s Menâkıb, on the other hand, this individual was a contemporary follower of Hayreddîn Tokâdî alongside S¸aʿbân.14 So can we reconcile these conflicting pieces of evidence? A close reading of Fuʾâdî’s hagiography suggests that we can. Fuʾâdî attests that S¸aʿbân received an inspiration by means of a dream to return to his home region after failing to attain his goals in İstanbul. While he was on the road back to Kastamonu, the caravan in which he was traveling stopped on the road some miles west of the town of Bolu. Awaiting their departure on the next stage of the journey, S¸aʿbân’s companions decided to go and visit a nearby Sufi hospice. As Fuʾâdî recounts it, S¸aʿbân was skeptical about this plan: In fact, when his companions said, “come, let’s go and listen to the tevhîdchanting15 of the Sufis,” S¸aʿbân Efendi’s wishes also leaned strongly toward coming to Sultan [Hayreddîn] right away with the urge of attraction and divine love which was in his heart, and spending the whole night. But being a rational and judicious man in his basic character, he didn’t show an open attraction. He made a polite indication and showed a cautious countenance before going, saying, “you shall come to the Sufis and their tevhîd-chanting. But their states of ecstasy are dominant; as soon as the ecstasy imposes itself on those who are excessive in divine zeal and [who have] the light of faith in their hearts, they become a group of chain-makers.16 They pull [others] into their own path and silsile [chains of authority]. Don’t be careless, or it will be a difficult situation.” But his traveling companions were attracted to the zikr; they went, saying, “get up, let’s go, what are they capable of?” They entered into the zikr circle, and afterward S¸aʿbân Efendi sent them back to their lodging places, saying, “didn’t I say to you that they were a group of chain-makers? A state has come over me [such] that I have no remedy but to stay. I’ll come in the morning,” and he himself remained there.17

Ironically, given his initial reaction to the whole affair, S¸aʿbân never rejoined his traveling companions to continue their journey. He spent the remainder of the night explaining his troubles to Hayreddîn Tokâdî, reciting the Halveti litany

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of the Vird-i Settâr and, once morning came, praying the dawn prayer. He then renounced all his worldly property, accepted the garments symbolic of initiation into the Halveti order, and began his life anew on the mystical path. He would remain for a number of years receiving mystical training from his shaykh before finally setting out on his own.18 The anecdote represents a decisive turning point in S¸aʿbân’s life (along with that of any potential Sufi adept in the audience who would hear this narrative). Yet it also gives us some clues about how the Halveti order was perceived among the religious classes of that time. S¸aʿbân’s initial resistance probably stemmed from some level of conviction among the exoterically minded religious scholars with whom he had studied in İstanbul that Sufi gatherings suffered from a questionable legitimacy. Given the tensions surrounding the Sufi origins of the Safavids during the first quarter of the tenth/sixteenth century, this would have been especially elevated during the time period when this narrative occurred. Nevertheless, Sufi ceremonies and gatherings were magnets for social activity in the community, especially for travelers who lacked other connections in any given local milieu. S¸aʿbân himself would have been an example of someone who lacked strong family or political connections in society based on the circumstances of his childhood, and Halveti shaykhs like Tokâdî undoubtedly recognized this. They could draw on these struggling groups of people to expand their followings and ensure the survival of their branches of the order. A person like S¸aʿbân, who had received some degree of religious education above that of the typical individual, would have been especially attractive as a recruit. However, multiple dynamics are at work in the story, and we should not overlook Fuʾâdî’s didactic intent. The narrative of S¸aʿbân’s initial resistance to the order acted as an illustration of how potential aspirants to the Halveti order should not enter into it based solely on their enjoyment of the social experiences it entailed. While S¸aʿbân’s more enthusiastic companions enjoyed only the social aspects of the zikr ceremony and did not join the order, S¸aʿbân engaged in a good deal of critical reflection on the matter. Only afterward did he undertake the actions that involved pledging himself to the order. One final aspect of the first meeting between S¸aʿbân and his shaykh Hayreddîn can be easily overlooked without reference to geography, however. An uninformed reader examining the text for the first time might be forgiven for thinking that these events took place on the outskirts of Bolu; in fact, they most likely did not. At the time, the lodge and tomb of Hayreddîn Tokâdî lay a solid day’s journey west of the town of Bolu, and most likely took the form of a de facto outpost, akin to a menzilhâne, that could also double as a travelers’ hospice and facilitate travel along the main east–west trunk road.19 The Tokâdî complex

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was strategically located at the top of a mountain pass by which all traffic coming from İstanbul and other cities in the region of the Sea of Marmara would have to pass on their way into the interior of Anatolia (and still does today). Passing travelers and caravans undoubtedly took advantage of this outpost as a waystation during their travels back and forth in the region. Given the subsequent career of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, we can assume the success that Tokâdî’s institution had in spreading the Halveti order throughout the region. Given the critical role that Hayreddîn Tokâdî played in S¸aʿbân’s life, one would think that the hagiography would have much more to say about him. Nevertheless, citing length concerns, Fuʾâdî declines to give details of further interaction. At the very least, the name Tokâdî informs us of the shaykh’s origins in the north-central Anatolian town of Tokat, and his recently restored tombstone informs us that he died in 932/1525 (see Figure 4).20 However, we have no information on his relationship with his ostensible teacher, Cemâl el-Halvetî, nor on how he came to settle in this remote mountain pass. Fuʾâdi’s only other narrative that offers us any insight on Tokâdî’s activities focuses on an anecdote related on the authority of Tokâdî’s son Mehmed Çelebi Efendi, who took his father’s place as shaykh after moving to Amasya and building his own following there.21 Rooted in a contemporary observer of the careers of both S¸aʿbân and his shaykh, this anecdote reveals interesting aspects of Halveti practice in training aspirants on the path in the early tenth/sixteenth century. It also clarifies reasons why the later seventeenth-century Ottoman biographer ʿAtâʾî was confused about who S¸aʿbân’s shaykh was: When they sent Konapavî22 Muslihuddîn Efendi, who was a famous scholar and a contemporary of S¸aʿbân Efendi in Bolu, to his homeland of Konapa, the esteemed [Muslihuddîn] was a knowledgeable one, sound of intellect, and gentle in nature like Hazret-i ʿOsmân. S¸aʿbân Efendi also, by having a cheerful disposition and a persevering character like Hazret-i ʿAlî,23 went to support and help him by the will of God. While traveling, Muslihuddîn Efendi halted alongside the road and thought for a while. Then he turned and wanted to go back to Bolu again. As soon as S¸aʿbân Efendi asked, “why are you turning and going back to Bolu?” he replied, “a sensation came over me [such] that I didn’t find the strength to guide others and the capacity to be a deputy in myself, [so] I’ll go back to my esteemed [shaykh], and I’ll serve the order some more, and I’ll go be a deputy after that.” S¸aʿbân Efendi said, “O brother, this feeling is necessary for you on account of leaving behind pride and vanity and the annihilation of existence. This means that nothing remains of base characteristics in you, and you are perfected in the righteousness of the self, the purification of the heart, and the cleansing of the soul. But it is clearly a mistake to consider this, because it is necessary to

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Figure 4 The tomb of Hayreddîn Tokâdî think badly about a perfected guide, saying ‘he sent me without perfecting my state and unprepared to be a deputy.’ Here’s what is proper right now: you should obey the order, and go to the place where you were sent, with the assistance of the spiritual power of the esteemed [shaykh].”24

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S¸aʿbân’s timely intervention succeeded in fortifying his companion and allowed him to continue the mission to which he was assigned, but this is not the most interesting element that the anecdote reveals. Instead, it suggests that in earlier periods, the newly minted Halveti shaykhs of rural Anatolia may have worked in groups of two, with a lower ranking member of the order acting as an assistant to a successor in order to gain experience before receiving his own assignment. Was this normal, or was Fuʾâdî choosing to wield this anecdote as a demonstration of how S¸aʿbân had achieved a superior spiritual presence over that of his contemporaries even at a comparatively early stage of his training, and thereby establish a common hagiographical trope to the benefit of the hagiography’s protagonist? While this question would require further corroboration, that of reconciling our biographical sources does not. We now see that since the İstanbul-based biographer and Fuʾâdî contemporary, Nevʿîzâde ʿAtâʾî, was probably not directly acquainted with the narrative given in Fuʾâdî’s work. He must have received a garbled second-hand report on the activities of prominent S¸aʿbâniye leaders at the time he was compiling his own work. This would explain his erroneous suggestion that Konrapalı Muslihuddîn was S¸aʿbân’s shaykh. Corollary to this is that he probably never obtained or heard anything substantial about Fuʾâdî’s hagiography, because the story so clearly implies that if anyone was acting as a shaykh in this relationship, it was S¸aʿbân Efendi: [W]hen they came to Konapa, no disciple or follower appeared for some time, but S¸aʿbân Efendi couldn’t slight the esteemed [shaykh Tokâdî] and depart. One day he said to Muslihuddîn Efendi: “Go up to the pulpit on Friday and draw the people to the house of the order with the strong cord of the manifest sacred law from an aspect of exoteric guidance. One hopes that by attraction from an aspect of the esoteric state, the people will become your disciples and followers for this reason.” On account of the esteemed [shaykh]’ s being a knowledgeable and judicious figure, when he encouraged and invited [people] to the s¸eriʿat and tarikat with spiritual preaching and devout admonition, everyone slipped into rapture and emotion according to his own level and condition. That day, all of those who were present became followers, and several of the people took the oath of allegiance and became dervishes.25

Behind the vague wording, what the narrative implies is that S¸aʿbân Efendi recognized that the best strategy for establishing themselves in this milieu was not to flaunt their esoteric credentials as Halveti Sufis, but to adapt themselves to the more basic levels of religiosity found among the local population, and draw them into the order gradually from this starting point. While the wording does not make it explicit, this may have included appealing to local customs and

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superstitions.26 It was a lesson that many of the comparatively well-educated literati of the Halveti path struggled to learn in the early stages of their careers as shaykhs, especially if they were sent to regions that did not resemble the urban centers of the Ottoman world where many of them originated. Indeed, this may have been part of the test that their guides set for them as they neared the end of their training.27 S¸aʿbân may have been especially valuable in this particular enterprise due to his roots in one of the smaller Anatolian rural communities, which may have been why Shaykh Hayreddîn sent him along as an assistant for this venture with Muslihuddîn Efendi. *** Our sources have little else to tell us about S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s early life and career beyond these carefully selected anecdotes. This is a frustrating gap, largely because it glosses over a potentially interesting provincial offshoot of Cemâl el-Halvetî’s legacy during a tense time in Ottoman history. In fact, we cannot rule out the possibility that Ömer el-Fuʾâdî did not want to discuss this part of the history too much, as S¸aʿbân’s predecessors did not represent a strong link to the founders of the Halveti order in the Ottoman context. This may have led to a strong desire on his part to direct the focus of his audience to the life and career of the local founder of his own sub-branch of the order, a story about which he was much better informed. Since the environment and geography of Kastamonu itself acted as a protagonist for most of his narratives, Fuʾâdî’s frame of reference shifts back to that region permanently. His audience, be they his own contemporaries or ourselves, have no choice but to follow his lead, and to that part of the story we must now turn. Notes 1 For more on the dynastic and political history of central Anatolia during the Seljuk and beylicate periods, into which Kastamonu and the Turcoman groups based in its environs periodically intrude, see Claude Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey: A General Survey of the Material and Spiritual Culture and History c. 1071–1330, trans. J. Jones-Williams (New York: Taplinger, 1968), esp. pp. 310–13. The same author also tackled the issue of Kastamonu’s ambiguous position among the more prominent states of its era in a separate article; “Questions d’histoire de la province de Kastamonu au XIIIe siècle,” Selçuklu Aras¸tırmaları Dergisi 3 (1971), 145–58. 2 Indeed, Kastamonu province is home to a number of painted wooden mosques from early periods that are unique contributions to the history of Islamic architecture and art; see, for example, Zühtü Yaman, Kastamonu Kasaba Köyüʾnde Candaroğlu Mahmut Bey Camii (Ankara: Kano Ltd S¸ti., 2000).

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3 While visiting Kastamonu, I and my wife were taken to the tomb of As¸ıklı Sultan, one of the oldest surviving structures in town. The lower half of the two-storey tomb structure holds the mummified remains of five bodies, including that of As¸ıklı Sultan, a Seljuk commander who was reported to have fallen as a martyr fighting the Byzantines in the early sixth/twelfth century. Local people tell a story about a governor from the period of the early Turkish Republic who, after seeing a fire atop the tomb in a dream, awoke and looked out to see that the area of the tomb was on fire. After extinguishing the fire, they found that the feet of one of the mummies in the tomb were miraculously undamaged by the blaze. For a brief study of the remains of the As¸ıklı Sultan complex, see KKE, pp. 60–1. 4 MSV, pp. 34–5. 5 MSV, pp. 34–5. 6 MSV, p. 35. For more on the now renovated Atâbey Gazi mosque and its medrese, which survived into the 1960s but has now been destroyed, along with other constructions attributed to the Çobanoğlu leader Muzaffereddin Yavlak Arslan (d. 691/1291), see KKE, pp. 58–9 and 67. 7 MSV, pp. 35–6. 8 See, for example, the discussion that the Halveti shaykh Ümmî Sinân (d. 975/1568) had with Hızır and his counterpart İlyâs, as witnessed in CAMA, fols 13a–14b. 9 MSV, p. 36. 10 Abdülkerim Abdulkadiroğlu mentions an anecdote, probably from Hüseyin Vassaf’s Sefine-i Evliyâ, that S¸aʿbân took lessons from one Hoca Veli b. ʿOsmân (d. 917/1512), who is buried in the Abdürrezzak Camii Türbesi in Kastamonu. However, Vassaf’s sources may reflect oral traditions and additions formulated at a much later date, as Fuʾâdî does not mention it himself; see AKAK, p. 38. 11 MSV, p. 37; see also the remarks of AKAK, pp. 37–8, who correctly notes that Fuʾâdî presented S¸aʿbân as an orphan, raised on the kindness of a milk-mother, thereby making his situation identical to that of the Prophet Muhammad. 12 S¸aʿban’s dissatisfaction with exoteric knowledge, or ʿilm-i zâhir, and his search for a proper mystical guide fall squarely into a hagiographical trope that guides the lives of most Halveti shaykhs, if not all Sufi shaykhs. See, for example, the mind numbing regularity of this pattern for the early Halveti figures up through Cemâl el-Halvetî and his Sünbüliye order successors in the seventeenth-century biographical encyclopedia of HA-TFM, fols 517b–50a. 13 MSV, p. 38. 14 The two references can be found in NVA, pp. 62 and 199. For a laudable attempt to resolve the confusion in the sources that also includes information found in Vassaf’s Sefine-i Evliyâ, see RÖ-OT, pp. 80–1. 15 A repeated chant invoking the monotheistic formula, usually in the form of “Lâ ilaha illâ Allah,” or “There is no god but God.” 16 The expression S¸aʿbân used here is zincirci tâʾifesi, which I interpreted as having a negative meaning, implying a group that seeks to bind someone irrevocably to them, somewhat like a modern-day cult. It may also reference the silsile idea as well. 17 MSV, p. 39. 18 Abdulkadiroğlu, perhaps relying on Vassaf’s Sefine-i Evliyâ, suggests that S¸aʿbân first pledged his allegiance to Tokâdî in 925/1519, and did not depart with the successorship to Kastamonu until sometime in 936/1530 or 937/1531. However, this does not correspond

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought with Tokâdî’s date of death, which is generally accepted as having occurred in 932/1525. Still, if we accept Fuʾâdî’s assertion that S¸aʿbân spent twelve years in the company of his shaykh (MSV, p. 42), then S¸aʿbân would have been little more than a teenager when he first met Tokâdî. While this is not outside the realm of possibility, our information about this period in S¸aʿbân’s life is at best marked by a good deal of chronological uncertainty; see AKAK, p. 40. For more on the historical evolution of the Ottoman menzil system, see Yusuf Halaçoğlu, “Menzil,” DİA, vol. 29, pp. 159–60. During the course of my research in Turkey, I discovered that I had also made this mistake at the time when I visited Bolu to seek out on-site evidence of Hayreddîn Tokâdî’s tomb and lodge. Since Bolu is not a large town, I assumed a taxi ride to these places would not require a substantial investment. Instead, the taxi driver was ecstatic to learn that he was going to earn a weighty fare by driving my wife and me some 20 km out of town and back – a fact which we did not ascertain until the damage had already been done. In the past decade, the tomb and lodge complex of Hayreddîn Tokâdî has re-emerged as a local pilgrimage site and park. Little remains of the original foundations except Hayreddîn Tokâdî’s tomb and a small room with a tree growing out of its middle that may indicate the original central room of the lodge, and now surrounded by a brand new mosque complex. MSV, p. 40. The existence of Mehmed Çelebi is corroborated by other sources; see Abdîzade Hüseyin Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, eds Ali Yılmaz and Mehmet Akkus¸ (Ankara: Amasya Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 1986), vol. 1, p. 197. In modern parlance, Konrapalı would be substituted for this more Persianized form of the word. The narrator of this anecdote is comparing the two subjects of the story with ʿUthmân b. ʿAffân (d. 35/656) and ʿAlî b. Abu Tâlib (d. 40/661), the third and fourth of the RightlyGuided Caliphs of early Islamic history. When narrating the initiation of S¸aʿbân into the Halveti order under his own shaykh, Fuʾâdî had earlier had compared his submission with that of the first Rightly-Guided Caliph, Abu Bakr (d. 12/634) to the Prophet Muhammad. Some of Fuʾâdî’s other writings and teachings specifically focus on the example of the first four caliphs as important models for the followers of the order, as will be discussed in Part III. MSV, pp. 40–1. MSV, pp. 41–2. The Sünbüliye Halvetî shaykh Merkez Efendi (d. 959/1552) also traveled in the rural areas around Bursa attempting to guide the local people there in the earlier part of his career. One of the anecdotes preserved about him suggests that he was not always successful. One day, he was preaching in the local mosque with his eyes closed in reverence, but because it was close to harvest time, the local farmers did not feel inclined to stay and listen to him. Since they were more attached to the Bursa-based saint, Emîr Sultân, they had little interest in what he had to say. Despite the fact that the mosque had rapidly emptied out, Merkez Efendi continued to preach, much to the exasperation of the mosque’s guardian, who sarcastically remarked that he would just give Merkez Efendi the key and have him lock up when he was done. In response, Merkez Efendi informed him that while the people may have departed, the spirits invisible to the sight of the uninitiated had not, and it was to them that he was directing his admonitions. This narrative also suggests the tactics to which newcomers to a given region may have

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had to resort in order to compete for the attention of the local population; see THV, fols 27b–8a. 27 In his younger years, the famed Halvetî mystic, Niyâzî-i Misrî (d. 1105/1694), would leave a rural community in the area of modern-day Denizli to which his shaykh had assigned him in disgust, because the people there were more inclined to boast about his having come to their community than in actually listening to what he had to say; see DTZ, pp. 82–4.

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4 . Genesis of a Sub- branch: ¸aʿbânS ı Veli ’s Struggles in Kastamonu

We cannot determine the exact date that S¸aʿbân-ı Veli arrived in Kastamonu as a designated successor of Hayreddîn Tokâdî. His hagiography is silent about the specific circumstances that led to his departure from the region of Bolu; we do not even know if Tokâdî sent him or if he migrated there after his shaykh’s death. The hagiography states only that he remained in service to the Bolu-based branch of the order for twelve years. However, we do know that he spent the majority of his life, probably exceeding four decades, as a resident of Kastamonu after leaving Bolu. When compared with our knowledge about S¸aʿbân’s early life, we receive far more information about his activities in Kastamonu, and the personality of this saint-to-be comes into much greater focus. What is most striking about S¸aʿbân’s life, however, is not the success he experienced in building a sub-branch of the order in Kastamonu. After all, the hagiographer ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî would not have written such a substantial work about him had he failed in that task. What is most striking about Fuʾâdî’s work is the degree to which S¸aʿbân-ı Veli appears in these narratives as a saint capable of both personal and public failings, both in his own eyes and that of his community. While the very term “hagiography” implies that one will receive a laudatory, or even triumphant account of its subject’s life, the reality of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s life and career did not always lend itself to this type of presentation. As a result, Fuʾâdî’s presentation of S¸aʿbân’s life reads as a fairly candid record of the realities that confronted budding Halveti leaders as they strove to build their own following among the provincial populations of the Ottoman Empire.

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. . ¸aʿbânS ı Veli’s Struggle to Establish Himself as a Halveti Shaykh in Kastamonu

Given S¸aʿbân’s experience as a shrewd assistant to his fellow shaykh-intraining, Muslihuddîn Efendi, the audience of the Menâkıb might have been forgiven for expecting that he would have been more successful when the time came to take up a leadership position of his own. This would not be the case, however. S¸aʿbân, like so many other Muslim mystics who had reached advanced stages on the mystical path, would find that he had to overcome some hidden weaknesses of his own. The opening narratives about his time in Kastamonu present his initial attempt to settle in the area of Seyyid Sünnetî’s old mosque on the north-western side of the fortress as suffering from a major drawback – it was on the edge of town and few of the townsfolk visited or lived near there. So he had to move to a more centrally located mosque, known as the Cemâl Ağa mosque, in order to rub shoulders with the local population.1 He initially proved to be no more successful than Muslihuddîn Efendi had been in Konapa. As Fuʾâdî recounted: He came and he worked and meditated there for a time with the large crowd, [but] never formed connections with the people. His tongue was [engaged] in the remembrance of God, and his heart in the thought of God. Under the influence of spiritual poverty and true annihilation, his actual poverty and poor state were very visible. One day while he was waiting in the corner of solitude, as a test and chastisement from God, a pure-hearted person saw the esteemed [shaykh]’s state of utter destitution and said: “Hey there shaykh, you’ve sat in this mosque hungry and alone for how long now! You’re a good and trustworthy person. It’s spring, and every shepherd is necessary. Take our animals to pasture, let it be a salary for you.” S¸aʿbân said, with a smile on his gentle face, “I also came to take animals like you to pasture,” indicating and alluding [to the fact] that he came from God to guide the people of Kastamonu. That person didn’t understand the wish of the shaykh, and said, “if you’re free from anxiety, you know best!”2

S¸aʿbân’s determination in the face of desperation was admirable, and Fuʾâdî turns this passage to a didactic end in order to educate his audience about avoiding the temptations of the world. He also relates another anecdote about S¸aʿbân in which a friend tries to help him by washing his undershirt, only to have the threadbare material rip apart in his hands as he tried to wash it. Loss of clothing in the cold environment of Kastamonu was no laughing matter, but S¸aʿbân responded by shrugging off the loss, saying, “the judgment is God’s; we came into the world naked, and we’ll go out naked.”3 The hagiographer misses no

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opportunity to illustrate S¸aʿbân’s credentials as a mystic capable of denying anything of worldly value, no matter how humble. Yet it is critical that we not overlook another subtle message that lurks behind the narrative, which is that aspirants to true mystical leadership cannot ignore the broader society in which they live solely to focus on their own spiritual state and relationship with God. The kind-hearted herdsman acts as a foil, delivering a message from God bluntly reminding S¸aʿbân that he is losing his way. This intertwined with the very real concern of survival in a pre-modern age, as the anecdote alludes to the difficulties a newly arrived stranger like S¸aʿbân faced in attempting to establish spiritual leadership in a community that still saw him as an outsider. One cannot help but wonder how many Halveti shaykhs-to-be failed to gain acceptance in the environments to which they were sent, perhaps giving up and accepting more mundane ways of making a living, or even dying alone in the corner of some mosque in the process, as S¸aʿbân almost did. The story also suggests how the general population of the Anatolian plateau in the early tenth/ sixteenth century had little understanding of the subtlety of Sufi aspirants like S¸aʿbân. It doesn’t take much imagination to suspect that the kind-hearted shepherd walked away from this encounter thinking his altruism had been wasted on a person who was extraordinarily foolish, crazy, or both! The modern reader is not the only one who could conceive of this narrative as being a rather negative portrait of the saint’s early life. In compiling his work, Fuʾâdî recognizes a competing narrative that was circulating on the authority of a person he called “our brother by birth” (sulbi birâderimiz), Yâycı Haci Mehmed Dede.4 Yâycı’s narrative framed the basic elements of this narrative in a somewhat different light. Instead of placing the incident in Kastamonu, he narrated that this event took place in the village of Çağa, east of Bolu, at a time in which S¸aʿbân was en route to take up his assignment in Kastamonu. When he reached Çağa, he decided to undertake the traditional Halveti practice of the forty-day spiritual retreat in Çağa’s Beg mosque, and after several days the people of the village began to take a liking to him. A man came and said, “Sufi shaykh, you are poor, and a way of making a living is necessary for you, and you also like solitude. Come and let’s give the hand of animal-grazing to you; take our animals to pasture.” When S¸aʿbân replied, “I take animals out to pasture by the command of God, just let it be that I don’t let the wolf take them!,” the uncomprehending shepherd responded by exclaiming, “don’t wait, go out to pasture, may God make it easy [for you]!” Clearly, this narrative frames S¸aʿbân in a more positive light, whereby he is not failing in his mission outside of being guilty of the minor error of temporarily neglecting his duty to guide others, and perhaps expressing a fear of failure. Nevertheless, Fuʾâdî still feels compelled to nervously interject a brief explanation of his own in the wake of presenting his audience with these two competing narratives:

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The wish to write down these anecdotes is not to insult [S¸aʿbân’s] good renown. But these suggestive actions, narrated in a demeaning form, come forth from God to the prophets and saints to augment the attainment of the mystical state, to test [them], and to serve as a warning to others. It is known to the mystics.5

Fuʾâdî sought to frame these events as a didactic tool aimed at teaching its audience how to avoid potential long-term mistakes on the Sufi path. That is, all Sufi aspirants must maintain a sense of humility, as they may be reminded of their failings by even the humblest and basest of people. In so doing, Fuʾâdî is able to recast S¸aʿbân’s weaknesses as strengths instead of censoring potentially unflattering accounts of his protagonist’s early failings. In other words, Fuʾâdî presents these stories as examples of necessary setbacks in the spiritual training of every holy figure in the Islamic tradition, rather than letting the audience think that this was a failure inherent only to S¸aʿbân’s character. In turn, historians realize that Fuʾâdî does not shy away from an element in his saint’s history that might have raised doubts about his legacy among a contemporary audience. The reader can recognize Fuʾâdî’s need to present the narratives in a constructive manner for his own purposes, but also see the difficulties faced by shaykhs-to-be at the earliest stages of their career reflected in them. In addition to confronting his own problems and an indifference to his form of mysticism among Kastamonu’s people, S¸aʿbân also had to contend with the fact that Kastamonu was not a spiritual vacuum, even if we leave aside the case of Sünnetî Efendi. This was reflected in another anecdote narrated by Muhyiddîn Efendi, the Friday prayer leader at the Atâbey Gazi mosque and a son of one of S¸aʿbân’s successors. Muhyiddîn prefaced his story with a remark stating that the narrative was specifically intended to address the question of why S¸aʿbân did not immediately rise to prominence upon his arrival in Kastamonu, nor immediately manifest any acts of grace. The protagonist of the narrative is an otherwise unknown shaykh of the Bayrâmî order by the name of ʿÎsâ Dede, who reacted to a premonition of S¸aʿbân’s arrival as follows: ʿÎsâ Dede commanded his dervishes, “a master painter from the area of Bolu is coming to Kastamonu; go and meet [him].” When he indicated [this], they went as far as the place named Derbend and Soluk, and they saw that an impoverished but rich-hearted Halveti dervish was coming alone and on foot, giving off a ray of the light of annihilation in [both] his exterior and interior. The esteemed [S¸aʿbân] was aware through the inspiration of God that they were coming with this intent, but he hid his true state, his secret and state being strong in his heart, and he acted to preserve the secret. In short, those dervishes shook hands and talked with the esteemed [S¸aʿbân], but they didn’t get any reply from his mouth

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that indicated his mastery or successorship. They continued to look [for another], thinking, “this is not the person that the esteemed [shaykh] gave news about and requested.”6

ʿÎsâ’s dervishes eventually returned empty-handed, although their shaykh knew they had in fact encountered the person they were seeking. Nevertheless, Muhyiddîn contended that he kept the secret hidden out of admiration for S¸aʿbân’s modesty. While we could read this narrative as a means for reducing potential competition in a later era between the adherents of two local orders by granting ʿÎsâ Dede’s approval of S¸aʿbân, the narrative also suggests an undercurrent of tension or suspicion. S¸aʿbân’s unwillingness to reveal himself to his questioners may hint at a need to keep a low profile early in his career, perhaps to avoid scrutiny from other more well-established shaykhs and their followers active in a smaller, less anonymous urban settlement of the region. For his part, Fuʾâdî presents his reader with two additional pieces of commentary that probably reflect the type of questions previous audiences had directed at this tradition when it was related to them. Knowing that his audience would struggle with the idea that a saint might be unknown to his fellow men for much of his life, Fuʾâdî cites the desire of all good dervishes to remain in a spiritually annihilated state, devoid of existence, as an explanation for S¸aʿbân’s avoidance of recognition. S¸aʿbân had no use for gaining worldly fame by making his presence known, and so he had no desire to reveal himself to the group sent out to meet him. His unwillingness to take the easy way forward, so to speak, became a critical building block for achieving his later status. Fuʾâdî also felt compelled to explain ʿÎsâ Dede’s description of S¸aʿbân as a master painter. The greatest ability of a Sufi shaykh, says Fuʾâdî, is to replace the bad character traits of his followers with good ones; thus, he has the power of “painting them anew.” He concludes by linking this discussion to another prominent local figure, a Kastamonu-based poet named Mahvî Efendi, who praised S¸aʿbân in his poetry for doing just that.7 Another example of reconciliation with other prominent Sufis in the region references the Sufi leader Benli Sultan, who had established himself in the region early in the tenth/sixteenth century. Like his contemporary Hayreddîn Tokâdî, Benli Sultan had established a menzilhâne on the road linking Kastamonu to Tosya at the point where it passes through the remote İlgaz mountain area (see Figure 5). From this base, his foundation attracted all sorts of travelers and passers-by as a way-station, in addition to a local, more devoted religious following.8 Fuʾâdî links S¸aʿbân to Benli Sultan’s legacy by arguing that he completed the training of one of his more prominent followers, Muharrem Efendi, after Benli Sultan had died. S¸aʿbân also paid occasional visits to Benli Sultan, as one

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Figure 5 The complex of Benli Sultan in the village of Ahlat near Mt İlgâz

anecdote recounts how S¸aʿbân received a premonition of the premature death of ʿOsmân Fakîh, a friend whom Benli Sultan had authorized to lead his funeral prayer upon his death. S¸aʿbân responded by commanding his followers to carve a stone by the side of the road into a tombstone for ʿOsmân.9 Like the anecdotes about ʿÎsâ Dede, these narratives can be read as reflecting potential sources of tension between S¸aʿbân’s followers and those of a more established local shaykh of some significance. In particular, the anecdote about ʿOsmân demonstrated how S¸aʿbân’s knowledge of unseen events surpassed that of Benli Sultan on a matter of considerable significance to him – who was designated to perform his own funeral prayer! Whatever the extent of these tensions with other pre-existing Sufi traditions, S¸aʿbân slowly began to adapt to his new home, albeit with limited success. He started by renewing his attempts to revive the Halveti presence in the largely abandoned Seyyid Sünnetî mosque. Making some inquiries among the local population, he learned about Seyyid Sünnetî from some of the older people in the area, and was told how he died before his son was old enough to take over his position. Perhaps sensing an opportunity, S¸aʿbân immediately stated his intention to perform the traditional forty-day retreat of the Halveti order in Sünnetî’s

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old cell in the mosque. This act drew the attention of his contemporaries in Kastamonu, who began to spread the word that a holy man had come and taken up residence there. S¸aʿbân soon found an assistant, Eyüb Halife, who later told of his experiences in helping the aspiring saint. Fuʾâdî quotes his son, Abdülvâsiʿ Dede, the prayer-leader for the S¸aʿbâniye order, as relating: Our father Eyüb Halife was a true friend of the esteemed [shaykh], and undertook to send food to him every day in his cell in the mosque. By being distracted somehow, he forgot to send [the food], and saying, “help, everyone; we forgot the esteemed [shaykh] and he goes hungry at the mosque!” he hurried with the food to the mosque with great regret. When he apologized, the esteemed [shaykh], in order to give guidance, said, “this is the state of affairs, and this is the lot and share of this place. The esteemed [shaykh Sünnetî ] who came before, whose Sufi we could not be, experienced this struggle. Several days ago, I found the crumbs of a mouse [living] in the wall, and thinking that he should not go hungry, I didn’t eat all of it, and I left some of it for him. I gave myself up to God, and didn’t demonstrate a need for anyone. Praise be to God, the gifts of God are many; we didn’t go hungry,” and he revealed that he had found satiety through divine nourishment and gave thanks and praise [to God].10

This act of humility may have marked a turning point. It succeeded in establishing S¸aʿbân’s credibility among key members of the community that he needed in order to begin building his own order. Nevertheless, his initial attempts to revive the Sünnetî Efendi complex remained unsuccessful, a point underlined by the fact that Eyüb Halife forgot to go there to bring him food! Eventually, a generous and pious man by the name of Seydi Efendi, whom the local people called “Çetin Baba,” invited him to take up residence at the Honsâlâr mosque. Since the Honsâlâr mosque complex was located on the other side of town, within the settled area of the city, S¸aʿbân Efendi accepted the offer and abandoned the old Sünnetî mosque.11 It seems that his exile from his preferred place of settlement would last for quite some time, as he did not return there until the last decade of his life. Having reached this point in the story, Fuʾâdî suddenly drifts off into what, at first glance, appears to be a tangential discussion about an interpretation of a snippet of a Qurʾanic verse, “God brings forward a people whom he loves and who loves him.”12 He goes on to explain that according to this verse, when God makes it known that a given believer has reached an advanced mystical stage and truly loves God, the angels that surround the divine Throne become aware of this. They then pass the word down through the various layers of angels in the seven heavens, until it reaches the level of the angels who descend to earth.

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Those angels who descend to earth by God’s command then inspire Muslims to recognize these people through their love for God, and to love and follow them in turn. This will then allow those so inspired to be saved on the Day of Judgment by being resurrected with the beloved friends of God. Fuʾâdî goes on to clarify this point by explaining that this favor is not bestowed on everyone, nor is it bestowed randomly: The angels . . . inspire that person who manifests angelic qualities, who is attracted to self-improvement, who seeks out goodness to the extent that is possible, by achieving dominance over the human condition and the spiritual power in his body. But that person that Satan wins over, by not disciplining his carnal soul and not purifying his heart, and by being attracted to the carnal passions of the soul . . . is not granted the angelic inspiration. If the situation were not like this, then any rational person in the world would find the pious ones and the friends of God, he would love [them], and he would become a dervish and a lover. No ignorant and censuring people would remain, and they would all have followed the people of God. If he is a follower and lover only because of the needs of the carnal soul, without the aforementioned good condition in his body, he has no forward progress, and he falls into the passions of the carnal soul, and censures with doubt and suspicion on account of some little issue, and does not achieve the wish to be guided on the path of God. He remains veiled from the councils of the lords of the Knowers and the people of God.13

On closer examination, the message that Fuʾâdî seeks to convey here does not in fact represent any digression at all. Rather, it is a justification of S¸aʿbân’s apparent lack of success in the early part of his career, based on the fact that it was not the saint who was deficient, but the people around him who were in need of guidance and the angelic inspiration necessary to recognize him. In addition, Fuʾâdî’s remarks also introduce, for the first time in the narrative, another danger within the community in the form of censurers of the practices of Sufi saints as being un-Islamic. The lesson exhorts his audience to remain alert for otherwise hidden holy figures, and to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the welfare of pious Sufis. Fuʾâdî had good reason to stress this point: S¸aʿbân’s life story reflected an inherited struggle over the paradoxical tension inherent in the relationship between the ideals of the Sufi path and the development of a greater public presence that accompanied success on it. Fuʾâdî’s narratives strongly suggest that the idea of a heightened public profile did not suit S¸aʿbân’s temperament. After being offered the position at the Honsâlâr mosque, S¸aʿbân achieved a certain measure of success in conveying his religious teachings to the local people through preaching there. The son of one

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of S¸aʿbân’s appointed successors, Haci İlyâs Efendi, recalled this period of the saint’s career with admiration, and perhaps even a tinge of regret and disappointment. He related to Fuʾâdî that: When the exoteric knowledge of the noble [S¸aʿbân] became known, he used to go to the pulpit in the Honsâlâr mosque to preach about exoteric knowledge in the time of my father Hayreddîn’s training as a dervish and when I was a youth, with the intent of increasing strength in [both] the order and esoteric guidance through the divine wisdom. He used to comment on the exalted Qurʾan, and transmit and explain the noble traditions of the Prophet connected with the s¸eriʿat and the order, and [give] many pleasant sermons. They were sublime gatherings! But with his esoteric guidance on the path becoming stronger, and no need remaining for exoteric guidance, and increasing in the weakness of old age, he left preaching and advising from the pulpit.14

S¸aʿbân’s voluntary withdrawal from what had become at least a modestly successful preaching career troubled the circle of followers he had amassed. Other contemporary Halveti figures who preached in mosques cheerfully did so until their deaths and saw no problem in maintaining this type of public presence in the community. Thus, a development like this begged for an explanation: S¸aʿbân’s withdrawal, this account suggests, may have been on account of old age. However, Fuʾâdî also includes other anonymous sources who suggest that S¸aʿbân offered a more important philosophical reason for withdrawal from public preaching: It is related that [S¸aʿbân] used to say that knowledge of the hidden and existing, and vanity don’t come to the guide who passes time with the basic principles in the corner of solitude with honesty and uprightness, and taught the Knowledge of Divine Providence on the surface of the hidden. Rather, it was a reason for complete annihilation and advancement toward annihilation. But he used to warn his successors and dervishes among the people of knowledge, saying, “if someone were to go to the preacher’s pulpit or the dais [of a mosque] and give sermons and advice, he has to be fearful of the possibility of mixing the nature and condition of exoteric knowledge, which gives existence, into the knowledge of the hidden and Divine, which is a cause of annihilation.”15

Given the pattern of anecdotes in which S¸aʿbân is gently chided for hesitance in engaging with the people he is supposed to be guiding, the historian gets a strong sense that S¸aʿbân never felt truly comfortable fulfilling the duties of guidance with which he was charged.16 Interestingly enough, however, his arguments

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about abandoning the world of existence bear an uncanny resemblance to that of his contemporary in the Sünbüliye branch of the order in İstanbul, Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî. Just as in the case of Yûsuf and his son and hagiographer, Sinâneddîn, Fuʾâdî and his contemporaries clearly felt the existence of a generational chasm between their predecessors in the order and themselves on the point of the need for a public presence.17 Ottoman society and culture were changing, not just in İstanbul, but also at the provincial level in Kastamonu. Anticipating the cognitive dissonance that could emerge among his contemporaries, Fuʾâdî interjects himself into the discussion again. He relayed a tensely worded warning to those who might suggest that S¸aʿbân’s intstructions required that Halveti shaykhs engage in a form of self-marginalization vis-à-vis society: But the [words] mingled with wisdom and enjoining of protection of the master [S¸aʿbân] are not absolute [in meaning]; they are contextually-based. He spoke in absolute [terms] for emphasis in making them wary of this issue, meaning his noble wish was this: If a person’s state and honor are good, and the attribute of pride and vanity not present in his being, and if his spiritual annihilation, intellect, state, and knowledge in mysticism are powerful, then he will not fall into pride, vanity, materiality, or pleasure by preaching and admonishing on the dais and [in the] pulpit. Now, his permission and acceptance are confirmed for the trustworthy ones who are perpetually in esoteric guidance and who have not lost their state or the purity of their gnosis in both the inner world and the real world, because this situation is the situation and action of the prophets also. It is in no way censured or forbidden! This apparent and manifest state and action would never be suitable among the perfected ones of the great shaykhs . . . It would be necessary to disprove the perfected ones’ being the heirs of the Prophets . . . and [they would] be defective in their legacy . . . If [a shaykh] were not to choose to preach and admonish while perfected and in [this] state, and if he were to focus his state and action on esoteric guidance as much as possible while he was able, no weakness would come to his state or to his honor. Free choice is preferable in a perfected one, and the state of the perfected one is committed to the command of God. God most High knows his wisdom, and the people of wisdom know those who are like them.18

This message was so critical for his audience that Fuʾâdî invoked it a second time in a later section of the hagiography, when introducing anecdotes about the successorship of Haci İlyâs’s father, Hayreddîn Efendi (d. 987/1579), as the second leader of the S¸aʿbâniye order. By doing so, he guaranteed that if his work was introduced to an audience as isolated parts, rather than as a unified whole, the lessons about the nature and importance of preaching in this context would

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not be overlooked!19 Just as in the stories of S¸aʿbân’s encounter with the shepherd, Fuʾâdî once again felt obligated to defend his protagonist from skepticism about his actions. But what made this such a sensitive subject for the hagiography’s potential audience? Most likely, this narrative ran contrary to expectations by Fuʾâdî’s time. By the early eleventh/seventeenth century, the figure of a Sufi leader engaged in preaching in mosques was a common sight – but it was not without its controversies either. The generation of Halveti figures like S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, who came of age in the first half of the tenth/sixteenth century, had reservations about tying their mysticism too closely to public (and by extension, political) positions in society. This likely stemmed from their bad experiences during Selim I’s and his son Süleymân’s reigns, where many Sufis risked getting caught up in the witch hunt for Safavid sympathizers that saw the imprisonment and even execution of a number of mystics.20 On the other hand, the generation that Fuʾâdî and his contemporaries represented at the turn of the eleventh/seventeenth century no longer found these reservations compatible with effective strategy, and had to develop rationales to address the discrepancy. This was a reflection of the growing tension between Halveti Sufis and their detractors in Ottoman public discourse, which was already being felt by the time that Fuʾâdî assumed the leadership of the S¸aʿbâniye.21 . Conflicts within the ¸aʿbâni S ye Sub-branch under . ¸aʿbânS ı Veli

Whatever S¸aʿbân’s reticence as a public figure, this did not translate into outright avoidance of organizing a following in Kastamonu and its environs. It is noteworthy that S¸aʿbân laid down a rule that no more than one successor could operate within a given region of the countryside. The immediate situation that sparked this ruling came in response to a crisis involving one of S¸aʿbân’s successors, ʿAlî Dede, about whom we know very little aside from the fact that he had left his position and disappeared. Yet in a rejection of his earlier experience as an assistant to Muslihuddîn Efendi in Konrapa, S¸aʿbân refused to accede to his dervishes’ request to send them a new successor in his place: When it appeared the prayer rug of the quarter would remain empty, and some of his dervishes requested a successor in his place, the lord [S¸aʿbân], being the sovereign of wisdom of the city of the province [of Kastamonu], said, “is there absolutely nothing left from his hırka22 or other objects in the lodge where he lived and gave guidance?” After they responded, “there is,” the lord [S¸aʿbân] commanded: “Dervishes! Even if there were only a carpet or rush matting

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in place of a successor, one does not immediately send a successor in its place.”23

S¸aʿbân’s cautious response to the situation indicates that he was wary of attempts to replace one of his successors in an arbitrary manner, and concerned about the potential for conflict among his successors if two of them came to establish themselves in the same location. Thus, S¸aʿbân seized on the opportunity that the crisis generated to establish a clearer policy for how and when a successor could be removed from a position, or a new one introduced to a region: While [a successor] is teaching principles and guiding in a small city (küçük s¸ehir) or town (kasaba), it is never suitable that another successor head off to that place and live there, since he will not be leader for all of them, and the leader [there] will not be under his command. When he reaches that town, it is against proper etiquette to leave his own prayer rug and to pray,24 unless [the other successor’s] abandonment [of his post] has been established, or he demonstrates a state of being opposed [to the order’s principles]; then it is deemed proper to depose [him]. At that time, he who is the leader of all and the head of the district removes him, and shall choose another person to sit in his place. Or, if a city becomes big, each of its neighborhoods should be judged to be a town (kasaba). At that point it is suitable [to place additional successors]. And this specific point is an area which will be strictly adhered to!25

The firm directive implied in S¸aʿbân’s final statement was no idle warning. It seems that some degree of rebellion threatened the nascent S¸aʿbâniye sub-branch on a number of occasions during S¸aʿbân’s lifetime. S¸aʿbân’s own position as head of the order in Kastamonu was even challenged at one point, which angered the shaykh to the point that he challenged the perpetrators to follow through on their own audacity and witness the consequences: Nurullah Efendi, famous for his perfection, while guiding in a place called the Honsâlâr mosque in [the village of] Dâdây, wanted to send a successor to the people of Kastamonu. But he was warned about the spiritual power of S¸aʿbân Efendi, and couldn’t send anyone, nor could he persuade anyone to come. While on the brink of rebellion, a dervish was found there named Mustafa Dede, who was among the dervishes of Nebi Efendi in the town of İlisu, and is still alive today. Because he was of prominent character, Mustafa Dede was sent [by Nurullah], thinking, “let’s see, does the noble one accept this specific point?” When Mustafa Dede explained his wishes to the esteemed [S¸aʿbân], he thought for a time, and on account of knowing that the wishes of these people were

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against the noble principles and the wisdom of God, he said: “Dervish! One guide is enough to guide the seekers of a province. Duality is not appropriate; it is a reason for discord.” When that dervish spoke again, S¸aʿbân showed much firmness to avoid [further] dispute, and said, “Mustafa Dede, on the path of the saints, and in their presence, stubbornness, impertinence, criticism and opposition are not appropriate . . .” When this report reached Nurullah Efendi, by being fixed in a perfected state and enlightened with the light of etiquette, he understood the real situation, and [his party] renounced [their goal] with submission and acceptance.26

While S¸aʿbân’s triumph over his adversaries as a conclusion to this anecdote is not surprising, the existence of this report in the hagiography is. While clashes among potential successors to the legacy of a deceased shaykh as head of a branch of the Halveti order were not uncommon,27 to challenge a living shaykh’s control over his own branch of the order on his home ground after he had become established does not appear in any other known Halveti hagiographical source of which I am aware. This is indicative of a couple of possibilities. The first follows from what we have seen of S¸aʿbân’s life up to this point, which is that he was not possessed of the most effective personality to take on a broader public leadership role in the region, a role to which he did not really aspire. The shaykh continued to be a quiet and withdrawn individual, especially in his later years. Fuʾâdî notes: When the sultan became old, and weakness came to his body, he was attracted to seclusion and hiding away, like Pîr ʿÖmer [el-]Halvetî. He used to enter the blessed cells which are now a place of visitation in his lodge, which was the place of Seyyid Sünnetî’s residence. It is related that he didn’t see the world for seven years, and he busied himself in worship and obedience to God most High in the station of devotion and witnessing of the Divine.28

Fuʾâdî, by invoking the eponymous ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, establishes an unimpeachable model to which S¸aʿbân could be compared as a way of legitimizing his behavior.29 On the other hand, some of his other successors beyond Kastamonu proper may have aspired to more activist roles in establishing the order in the political and social lives of their communities, rather than following S¸aʿbân’s lead in valuing seclusion. The anecdote may also indicate that proliferating subbranches like the S¸aʿbâniye, founded in predominantly rural areas, lacked a centralized base in the larger population centers of the Ottoman Empire that allowed for closer and more frequent contact between shaykhs and their successors. As a result, they were more fractious and contested the dynamics of power within the

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order. We even see elements of this contest reflected in S¸aʿbân’s own career, as he managed to lay a successful claim to Seyyid Sünnetî’s defunct legacy despite lacking direct contact. Fuʾâdî, with the perspective of hindsight, underscores S¸aʿbân’s point by citing an allusion common to both Sufi and “mirrors for princes” literature that defines the power of temporal rulers and Sufi leaders as belonging to two separate spheres. He likens the issue of multiple successors competing or overlapping in a single area as analogous to the insoluble problem of two political rulers trying to exist in the same realm, remarking that: [S¸aʿbân]’s noble wish is that just as it is not proper to openly seat two rulers in one country, the successors of shaykhs are also like that. The guidance of shaykhs and manifest sovereignty are both a manifestation of the power of disposal [given by] God. They are patterned after each other.30

In other words, the authority of kings and sultans was the exoteric manifestation of God-given power, while the authority of Sufi shaykhs and their successors is the esoteric and spiritual manifestation of this power. This policy established distinct spheres of influence in the various population centers of northern Anatolia, and S¸aʿbân (and Fuʾâdî)’s vision would come to exemplify the S¸aʿbâniye shaykhs’ strategies in establishing their order throughout the Ottoman domains in the eleventh/seventeenth century. It is nevertheless implied in Fuʾâdî’s narrative that this policy objective had become more successfully established at the time he wrote the Menâkıb-ı S¸aʿbân than it had been in S¸aʿbân’s own lifetime. While S¸aʿbân may have successfully forestalled the potential dissenting movements represented by Nurullah Efendi and his followers, Fuʾâdî informs us that others did in fact act to challenge S¸aʿbân’s status as head of the order, or even abandoned the order outright in favor of trying to propagate the teachings of others: While it was established that S¸aʿbân Efendi was the Pole [of the Age] (kutb),31 some people deceived in their own opinion and covered with the veil of existence were not able to know the exalted station of the master [S¸aʿbân] in their own time, and they did not understand his spiritual power after he departed to the world of souls. They also didn’t understand the states and powers of the noble ones who guided according to the divine secret on his prayer rug after him. They did not believe them [to be] perfected ones, but deficient and [people] to be surpassed, and they spread prayer rugs among the people of Kastamonu from their own lines of descent (silsile) and other lines of descent, and they were [aiming] in the direction of [giving] guidance. But none of their guidance became established,

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and their lines of descent didn’t become permanent; they became nonexistent and disappeared. This fact is clearly known and witnessed by everyone in Kastamonu and other places.32

Fuʾâdî, speaking at a time when the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order had become more firmly established as part of Ottoman society, was able to dismiss attempts to abandon S¸aʿbân and his legacy as an impotent challenge, doomed to failure. For the historian, however, the narrative is a rare concession that S¸aʿbân’s success in establishing his order was by no means a foregone conclusion. Many of his countrymen, indeed, even some of his own followers, considered him deficient enough as a spiritual leader that they sought to present themselves as credible alternatives for spiritual guidance within Kastamonu itself, to say nothing of other places. In sum, in its politics and organization, the S¸aʿbâniye order in the mid-tenth/sixteenth century most likely suffered from schisms and wayward followers during the process of establishment. Even with benefit of hindsight, Fuʾâdî did not miss the chance to criticize any potential claimants to the leadership of the S¸aʿbâniye order who might challenge the order’s hierarchy. In a lengthy digression, he continued by directly addressing his audience on the danger posed by a lack of etiquette (edeb): My noble brothers! According to the understanding [of the Arabic proverb] “God is merciful in a matter; he knows its amount and he doesn’t exceed its bounds,” everyone must know his own state and place on every specific point. It is also necessary to know the power of the exalted, aged, and noble ones among the shaykhs and others. Not knowing the states and powers of high and noble ones is a product of not knowing his own state and measure. There is no more useless quality in a human being than this . . . Not knowing their states and powers, or knowing but not observing and respecting their rights, is a product of lack of propriety. Those who abandon etiquette and do not know the power of the people of ability will not find fortune or perfection. He who does not stay close and keep company with the people of good etiquette, and the noble ones who act according to the understanding “all of mysticism is etiquette” . . . and he who keeps company with rude and obnoxious people and converses with and forms bonds with them, will not find nobility or prosperity.33

The key to this entire argument rests on the term edeb. In the context of the Ottoman mystical orders of the ninth/fifteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries, proper etiquette was linked to a form of exaggerated deference that dominated social relations between a shaykh and his followers. However, the principle extended well beyond mysticism itself. In any political or social context in

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Ottoman society, brashly challenging one’s social superiors in the Ottoman hierarchy was generally frowned upon for the simple reason that the power struggle that would ensue would breed chaos and disorder. Indeed, the writings of Ottomans from the elite classes often reflect a disdain for upstarts who sought to displace established elites in various walks of life; the works of the great contemporary Ottoman historian of this period, Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî, are an excellent example.34 This enjoined system of polite deference to one’s superiors, however, was taken to extremes in the ideal Sufi framework. Earlier Sufi intellectuals and theorists had advocated a relationship between guide and seeker whereby the seeker should be like a corpse in the hands of his guide, or a lump of clay that should be fashioned as the master saw fit. To fail to surrender one’s agency to the shaykh and obey his will, even in situations that seemed problematic, were a violation of good mystical edeb.35 Fuʾâdî, much like Mustafa ʿAlî, was aware of pressures that could arise from a new generation of upstarts. The only difference was that his career was located in the sphere of religious rather than courtly or administrative politics. He therefore utilized these long established principles to defend and uphold the established order as being based on the penultimate rung of the divine hierarchy, stating: It is necessary to be humble towards and fear exalted ones, because the perfected men who become the pole of the world, by truly knowing the actions and attributes of God Most High, and by taking their spiritual powers from God the Guider himself through their power’s unification with the manifestation of the divine essence, and with their power’s being a divinely granted power, appear with kindness and favor to the seekers and noble ones who respect the rules of the s¸eriʿat and the order. They act with the attribute of divine wrath, and come out against those who depart from proper etiquette and who do not understand [their own] state and amount. Because they are assistants to God, their acceptance is the acceptance of God, and their wish is God’s wish. As in the case of the Messenger of God, and the Prophet Hızır, their power of disposal in every place appears by the command and will of God.36

Fuʾâdî’s argument was that to show disrespect toward those superior in sanctity is to defy God himself – an unenviable position for any aspiring Sufi to place himself in! Nevertheless, the basic responsibilities inherent in this relationship did not rest solely with the shaykh’s followers. Fuʾâdî also noted the characteristics that mark a proper spiritual guide deserving of the edeb relationship: But this [power of disposal] is not so that . . . they shall act according to their own desires and the requirements of their carnal souls, and they should not

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evince avarice, rancor, malice, envy, and other negative qualities like other people. Don’t you see that the powers of those who act according to a negative attribute and the malice of the carnal soul are ephemeral, and they don’t achieve their wishes? Rather, they will also fall into pain and suffering. S¸aʿbân Efendi, on account of his working with the aforementioned divine power and ability, on every specific point . . . the mark of his powers is present and enduring.37

The perpetuation of S¸aʿbân’s legacy in the decades after his death therefore served as proof that his mastery of the etiquette of Halveti mysticism, and the spiritual qualities that brought him close to God, were of a superior quality and demanded respect. His opponents’ failure to displace or exceed his spiritual legacy likewise served as proof that they lacked the necessary attributes to win God’s favor. On the whole, Fuʾâdî’s philosophy and argumentation conveyed a simple message to his audience: success in the propagation of a branch of the order is the best proof of sainthood. To underscore this point, he cited another informant, Erzerumî Hasan Dede, on how S¸aʿbân had trained 360 successors to his legacy and dispatched them throughout the Ottoman domains.38 . ¸aʿbanS ı Veli’s Network of Support and his Opponents, in Kastamonu and Beyond

All this suggests something else, however, which is that force of personality was not the only reason for the success of S¸aʿbân’s mission in Kastamonu. He also built personal relationships with other prominent scholarly figures in the region. We cannot recover the significance of all of these figures; some appear as names that likely had resonance only for Kastamonu residents of centuries past.39 Still, S¸aʿbân was also able to establish relationships with other prominent figures, not all of whom were Kastamonu-based. In particular, the hagiography mentions two other Ottoman figures who provided critical support to S¸aʿbân during his lifetime. The first was Küreli Mehmed Çelebi, whose origins lay in the mining center of Küre-i Nühâs in the mountains north of Kastamonu. Despite his humble origins, he had succeeded in traveling to İstanbul and participating in the scholarly circles of the famed Ottoman jurist Ebusüʿûd Efendi (d. 980/1573), where he made a positive impression.40 More importantly, however, he had once been a scholar who had publicly attacked Sufi practices, but repented of his anti-Sufi positions to become S¸aʿbân’s follower. When his former scholarly colleagues expressed astonishment at his abrupt change of heart, he replied that he had fallen into a divine rapture whose resolution could not be found in any book or tract. Finally, he presented his case to S¸aʿbân, who was able to solve his problem

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merely by uttering a single word. He concluded by remarking, “how can I not become the dervish and servant of a perfected guide like him?”41 While Küreli Mehmed’s repute was perhaps mostly local in nature – there exists no known corroboration for his activities in other Ottoman biographical sources – the fact that he had rubbed shoulders with prominent figures of the capital would have given him a legitimacy that Kastamonu’s population would have respected. It also would have given the doctrine of sainthood an important defender who had defected from a growing body of critics. A second, more important, figure who would come to play a critical role in the development of the S¸aʿbâniye was Kastamonulu Muharrem Efendi (d. 984/1576). Unlike Küreli Mehmed, a prominent Ottoman biographical source corroborates the existence of Muharrem Efendi, and recounts that he was initially a successor-in-training to Benli Sultan. We have encountered both in the aforementioned discussion of S¸aʿbân’s relationship with Benli Sultan as a potential pre-existing Sufi competitor. According to an Ottoman contemporary, Sufi aspirants like Muharrem Efendi who had the courage to follow Benli Sultan to his remote residence utilized the location as a way of breaking away from “love of the world.”42 Yet in an echo of a changing generation, Muharrem Efendi proved to be a more publicly renowned and enduring figure in powerful Ottoman circles than his reclusive teacher. Diverging from the model espoused by Benli Sultan (and Hayreddîn Tokâdî), he chose to emerge from the remoteness of the menzilhâne after the death of his master. He must have taken up prominent positions in the religious hierarchy in İstanbul by the mid-tenth/sixteenth century, as noted by an entry on him by the Ottoman biographer Tas¸köprüzâde (d. 968/1561), who completed his work in 965/1558.43 Luckily, and unusually, Tas¸köprüzâde’s successor and continuator, Nevʿîzâde ʿAtâʾî, was able to elaborate more fully on the career of Muharrem Efendi during the latter years of Sultan Süleyman’s reign: He came forth from the land of Kastamonu . . . and he benefitted from his service to the scholars of the age, İsrâfîlzâde and Çivîzâde.44 After the labors of struggle and giving of the sweets of the goal of conversation in the house of benefit of the most learned of his time and moment, Saʿdî Efendi,45 he formally pledged allegiance to Benli Muhyiddîn Efendi, among the notables of the Halvetî order . . .After that, he gained the object of companionship . . . with the notables of the Bayramî order. When his fame and reputation became world-renowned by preaching, advising, and the transmitting of Prophetic tradition and commentary [on the Qurʾan] in some of the lands of Islam, he was invited to İstanbul and was appointed with a daily 30-akçe [silver coin] stipend to the Sufi Mehmed Pas¸a school of Prophetic tradition (dâruʾl-hâdis) . . . When Sultan Süleyman

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completed his noble mosque in Zuʾl-hicce of [the year] 964 (1557) . . . the dais of preaching and advising was appointed to these people [of that school]. He made commentary on the speech of [God] on that dais . . . for a long time, and taught repeatedly the commentaries of Beyzâvî and Kas¸s¸âfî [two renowned medieval scholars of Islamic law]. [He died] at the end of Cemâziyüʾl-evvel in [the year] 983 (1576) . . .46

What is striking about this account of Muharrem Efendi’s educational pedigree is that one of his prominent teachers in his formative years was one of the most inflexible anti-Sufi personalities active during Sultan Süleyman’s reign. Çivîzâde’s career was marked by rigidity on any number of controversial religious questions. This often alienated him from his colleagues, and even the sultan himself, as exemplified by a decree condemning the establishment of pious foundations (evkâf) with gold or silver money. He also condemned the works of revered but controversial Sufi masters like Ibn al-ʿArabî, Mevlânâ Celâlüddîn Rûmî, and the Egyptian saint Shaykh ʿUmar b. al-Fârid (d. 1235),47 a position which deeply disturbed many of his fellow scholars and may have contributed to his dismissal from the post of Grand Müfti in 948/1542.48 It is equally important to note that he was also reputed to have been a prominent student of the infamous anti-Halveti jurisprudent, Sarı Gürz, who was a nemesis of the İstanbul-based branches of the Halveti order and attacked the legitimacy of their semâʿand devrân.49 The difficulties in interpreting this connection might be mitigated by the mention of İsrâfîlzâde, a sometime rival to Çivîzâde who had been passed over for a teaching post in one of the most prestigious medreses in 935/1529. He was also known for his interest in the rational sciences (ʿulûm-i ʿakliye), and was once the target of an inquisition about his beliefs by Çivîzâde and several other prominent scholars. Despite the dangers, he was able to withstand the political pressure and preserve his career, and Tas¸köprüzâde personally recalls that one of his tracts achieved fame during the time he was a teacher (dânis¸mend) in the capital.50 What this suggests is that Muharrem Efendi, like so many other Sufis-to-be, began his career by studying with a wide variety of teachers, some of whom were stringent critics of Sufism and others who were not. His eventual support of S¸aʿbân indicates that he ultimately came to repudiate the views of anti-Sufi hardliners like Çivîzâde. This underscores the historiographical problems that accompany Ottoman biographical literature produced in the capital – for this pro-Sufism position is a detail that ʿAtâʾî’s biographical entry does not explicitly report. Saʿdî Çelebi, on the other hand, was probably the most important influence

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on his early career by virtue of the fact that both men had roots in the province of Kastamonu. Saʿdî was reported to have come from one of the towns and villages either in the vicinity of Kastamonu or nearby Sinop. In fact, Saʿdî may have acted as the primary patron to the young scholar, enabling him to enter and mix with the most prominent scholarly circles in the capital. Unfortunately, our biographical sources are not nearly as forthcoming about Saʿdî Çelebi’s impact on the religious debates of his day, perhaps because he sought a more moderate position with regard to those issues.51 The chronology of these figures indicate that Muharrem Efendi abandoned the scholarly circles of the capital and joined Benli Sultan’s remote circle on İlgâz mountain. He did not complete his Sufi training there; ʿAtâʾî suggests that he established relationships with the shaykhs of the Bayrâmî order instead. ʿAtâʾî’s presentation of Muharrem Efendi’s career is potentially at odds with that of Fuʾâdî, who claims that S¸aʿbân stepped in to complete Muharrem’s training after Benli’s untimely death. Which account is more accurate? Some might accuse Fuʾâdî of exaggerating a friendship between the two men into a standard Sufi master–disciple relationship. On the other hand, it is equally clear that Muharrem Efendi never recognized any discrepancy between a career in the scholarly hierarchy and Sufi practices.52 He may have leaned more toward cultivating the companionship of Sufi shaykhs without actually pledging himself to any specific order. We might compare him to the notable Persian Sufi devotee ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî, who was attracted to the Naks¸bendîs and has provided important narrative accounts about their history, but never really became a fully-fledged follower of any given shaykh within that tradition.53 We do know that Muharrem Efendi, like Jâmî, authored a work about the saints, and was able to quote freely from long-established Sufi biographical collections such as the Tezkîretüʾl-Evliyâ of Ferîdüddîn ʿAttâr (d. 617/1221) in his public discourse.54 Muharrem Efendi would go on to play the penultimate role in cementing S¸aʿbân’s legacy among the people of Kastamonu by delivering a eulogy at S¸aʿbân’s funeral that called on the population to recognize his extraordinary nature (see Chapter 5). These connections with prominent local personalities gave Fuʾâdî another weapon to counter the mixed reception that S¸aʿbân may have received during his own lifetime. In addition to confronting the perception that S¸aʿbân was too withdrawn to be taken seriously as a Halveti leader, Fuʾâdî also commented on a misperception that S¸aʿbân was an uneducated or illiterate (ümmî) person,55 a view that ignored his scholarly training in İstanbul early in his life: While there was so much of the rational and scriptural sciences in the manifestation of the prophetic heritage . . . of that lord of the people of annihilation, he

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appeared in the form of an uneducated person like the pole of the Arabs, Habîb-i ʿAcemî,56 and he used to be wary of exoteric knowledge. Because just as knowledge of the esoteric and divine mysteries is a reason for annihilation and unity, exoteric knowledge is usually a reason for materiality and multiplicity. Because of this, S¸aʿbân always behaved like a dervish, and he never engaged in intellectual discussions. Everyone thought he was uneducated.57

Fuʾâdî went on to relate how one prominent figure within the broader framework of the Halveti order learned this the hard way. One of the successors of Sünbül Efendi, a man by the name of Mahmûd Efendi, was teaching in a village called Okçular in the area of his home region of Araç.58 One night, he saw the Prophet in a dream. When he requested increased advancement, the Prophet gave him good tidings that he would attain superior perfection at the hands of a great pole of his time. After this vision, Mahmûd Efendi began to hear scattered reports about S¸aʿbân Efendi’s activities in Kastamonu. Fuʾâdî related that his own spiritual guide and predecessor as leader of the S¸aʿbâniye, Muhyiddîn Efendi (d. 1012/1604), told him that when Muhyiddîn was still learning the Sufi path under S¸aʿbân, he came to Kastamonu with Mahmûd Efendi. Mahmûd related his dream, but to test Mahmûd’s ability to be humble and submit to him, S¸aʿbân refused to interpret it. After three days of speaking about his dream, only to see S¸aʿbân remain silent, a tear rolled from Mahmûd’s eye, and he said that although he was among the successors of Sünbül Efendi, he needed S¸aʿbân’s help to achieve perfection, and renounced his life as Sünbül Efendi’s follower and successor. Having demonstrated complete submission, S¸aʿbân finally accepted his sincerity and interpreted the events in his dream. Only then did Mahmûd learn what S¸aʿbân kept secret from his contemporaries: he was an extremely welleducated individual.59 As a corollary, Fuʾâdî also stressed that S¸aʿbân upheld exoteric aspects of Muslim sacred law, and did not tend toward the wilder extremes of ecstatic mysticism. He reported that S¸aʿbân expressed this to his followers in a simple analogy about the relationship between exoteric law (s¸eriʿat) and the mystical path (tarikat). The s¸eriʿat represented the outer shell of an almond or the skin of a piece of fruit, and the tarikat represented the tasty inner core desired by the seeker. However, the seeker should not go the route of the atheist (mülhid) by saying that the shell or peel can be thrown away once the desired object is reached. Instead, the seeker should visualize it as a process of making an almond ripen on a tree. If the shell doesn’t develop properly, then the tasty inner part fails to develop properly and the entire almond goes rotten.60 Fuʾâdî also includes a defensive anecdote in which some of the congregation of a mosque witnessed one of S¸aʿbân’s dervishes falling into a mystical state

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whereby he did not perform his prayers correctly; he remained stuck in a standing, kneeling, or prostrate position for long periods of time. When the imam of the mosque, Seydî Sâlih Halife, consulted S¸aʿbân on the matter, S¸aʿbân initially defended his follower. However, when he questioned the dervish in private, he recognized that the dervish’s rationale for behaving in this way was flawed, and castigated him for deviating from the path: [S¸aʿbân] asked, “my dervish, when you return to the real world from the state of immersion which occurs while you are praying, do you pray that prayer again?” . . . [Upon receiving a negative response] that source of the s¸eriʿat and mine of piety [S¸aʿbân] was distressed at that dervish. He commanded, “hey dervish, what are you saying, you speak wrongly! It is necessary to pray again with the known principles. If you don’t pray [again] it is atheism and unbelief. If [you are] a dervish and if [you are] of the people of perfecting [the path], it is necessary to respect the noble law as much as possible . . .”61

These anecdotes illustrate the strategy that S¸aʿbân employed in training his dervishes; a strict, shariʿa-based mysticism that probably would have won the approval of Abû Hamîd al-Ghazâlî, another synthesizer of mysticism and exoteric Islamic doctrines.62 The foundations of this earlier medieval synthesis then merged with the overlay of external symbols and systematic training of later Sufi orders like that Halveti in subsequent generations. What S¸aʿbân did was to translate that legacy by expressing ideas in a simple and direct language that his provincial countrymen could understand. Yet historians should also not ignore that Fuʾâdî’s strategic use of these anecdotes could clarify and recast some of the potentially anti-exoteric statements and behaviors that S¸aʿbân exhibited in other situations. The defensive character of the hagiography is underscored by other anecdotes that suggest that S¸aʿbân could not avoid the drum beat of the ever present anti-Sufi critique, even when upholding the exoteric Islam as the primary referent for his followers’ instruction. As he grew more successful at the Honsâlâr mosque in attracting a circle of followers to his preaching and teaching, others in the town censured and attempted to remove him from his position there: But those who were deficient, [the] uneducated shaykhs of the exoteric scholars who didn’t know [S¸aʿbân’s] state, and those who were uncomprehending and trouble-making people, followed their own perverse unfounded opinion . . . and with Satanic urges and the misleading of the carnal passions, [they] censured the Halveti shaykhs and their dervishes. Those who thought badly [of the shaykh], their own statements, actions and other states appeared pleasing to

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them, according to the verse: “Satan made their deeds look attractive to them, and turned them from the path.”63 While bound with the chain of the love of the world, and the shackle of the hopes of the carnal soul, they did not avoid great sin, bad thinking and fanaticism, and left themselves in the manner and sense of the verse: “We will put iron collars on their necks.”64 They censured and interfered with the practice, garb, and cloaks of the order of those who are in state of divine nearness and the masters of the mystics, in the condition of the verse: “Surely the devotees will drink cups flavored with palm blossoms.”65 They used to refer [to the mystics] with words that were not suitable to the dignity of the noble [S¸aʿbân], God forfend, and they denied that the shaykhs were the people of God, and [denied] their states with ignorant and nasty attributions.66

Fuʾâdî’s strategic use of verses from the Qurʾan to divide the censurers from the Sufis, and, indeed, the wider Muslim community, was a useful tactic in defending the order’s foundations from polemical attacks. It could neutralize the detractors of Sufism by employing the same rhetorical strategy that they did. Establishing Qurʾanic support in any battle for religious legitimacy was fundamental in the polemics that came to mark the early modern period, and Fuʾâdî recognized the need to ground the legitimacy of the Halveti order in a Qurʾan- and tradition-based discourse. The accusations of the censurers revolved around the idea that Halveti shaykhs like S¸aʿbân were attempting to establish a self-serving claim to superiority over others that God never granted to individual members of mankind. Fuʾâdî’s rhetoric turned the tables on anti-Sufi censurers, accusing them of having exceeded the bounds of their own legitimacy through arrogance about the level of their own knowledge. Nevertheless, rhetorical cleverness was not enough to win this polemical battle, and Fuʾâdî drove home the additional point that the censurers paid a heavy price for their attacks on S¸aʿbân and the tarikat-based Sufism of their era. In a thinly veiled allusion to the case of Küreli Mehmed Çelebi’s reconsideration of his anti-Sufi feelings, Fuʾâdî remarks: Some of those who censured S¸aʿbân and thought badly about [him] without any good reason were destroyed by God’s command and will, [while] others abandoned their censure by encountering the power of the saints through S¸aʿbân’s grace and God’s help and guidance. The censure of the censurers and the harm [caused by] the people of envy, outside of those who became the disciples and followers of the lord [S¸aʿbân], came to naught. Since God was on the side of the noble one, his own dervishes and successors were in a tranquil state of divine purity, and his detractors were held back from the knowledge of God and the condition and perfection of the people of God. The sign of these conditions is

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manifest and enduring in the [survival of the] silsile and lodge at the present [time].67

Once again, the success and survival of the S¸aʿbâniye after their founder’s death was invoked as proof that the accusations against their legacy were unfounded. Yet in structuring the hagiography, Fuʾâdî was not satisfied with merely stating this basic point; he also included a graphic example demonstrating the fate of those who denigrated S¸aʿbân and the Halveti path. Drawing on the testimony of one Memî Hoca Efendi to illustrate the point, he related that: [A] knowledgeable and virtuous person by the name of Evliyâ S¸ücâʿ came to Kastamonu. While [I] was coming with our fellow city-dweller Bilâl Halife and learning from him, the aforementioned Evliyâ S¸ücâʿ used to say, “it is the Halveti [shaykhs who are to blame]” in the pulpits, on the daises and in the other gatherings, and launch into his own unfounded opinion on the issue of the Sufi devrân,68 and attack and impugn with cursing and vituperation about other states of which he knew nothing. God forfend, he used to say words not suitable to the dignity of the shaykh. On account of being one of the notable scholars, he used to make people think more poorly of the master on account of his words. But the noble one heard and knew, and was tolerant and forbearing, and used to commend the matter to God. One day, [S¸ücâʿ] became sick by the will of God. While the two of us, Bilâl Halife and I, were looking after [him], one night he opened his eyes and said, “whatever shall happen to me, it is because I interfered with and attacked S¸aʿbân Dede. Bring [him] to me, and let us acknowledge his claim,” and he sent Bilâl Halife. When he came, the noble one, while knowing his substance, never showed abstention or affliction. When [S¸aʿbân] wished to come, because of his good moral [character], some of the dervishes said, “that person called you a great swine and an atheist among many people in the pulpits and [on the] daises, and made so much slander and censure like this. Are you going to him?” S¸aʿbân set out, replying, “it doesn’t matter; he did it without knowing; this situation comes to us and those like us. The lot of this position [of being a Halveti shaykh] is like this; let him be accepted by us. A person of knowledge is a brother; he forgave and confessed his sin; let’s reach him before he dies; he is a knowledgeable person; don’t let him depart without faith.” But before the noble one could come, [Evliyâ S¸ücâʿ] died. The noble one still prayed the departed’s funeral prayer and was present for his burial. Bilâl Halife heard about these situations, and became the devoted follower of the shaykh.69

Fuʾâdî concluded his narrative by remarking that, “the great hope is that the knowledgeable one [Evliyâ S¸ücâʿ], by [means of] the breath of the noble one

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and his prayers, has gone to the afterlife with faith.” Nevertheless, the palpable uncertainty surrounding the ultimate fate of Evliyâ S¸ücâʿ was not lost on Fuʾâdî’s audience; he died before he could obtain S¸aʿbân’s formal act of forgiveness. More importantly, Fuʾâdî also used the narrative as a didactic strategy, instructing his audience on to how to deal with the growing criticism of their order and its practices in the public arena. The best strategy, as S¸aʿbân Efendi advised the more self-righteous of his dervishes, was not to lash out at their critics or engage in schadenfreude, but to forgive and attempt reconciliation with them whenever possible. Did this support the argument that the Halveti occupied a weak position in Ottoman society, in that its members dared not stick up for themselves against hostile but respected elite scholars like Evliyâ S¸ücâʿ? Perhaps, but the more likely explanation is that S¸aʿbân’s tactics, if emulated by his followers, would allow the dervishes to maintain an honorable high ground that was an asset in their conflicts with anti-Sufi factions. Furthermore, vengeful competitiveness was a vice that their teachings demanded they avoid if they were to achieve true mystical advancement.70 In fact, Fuʾâdî informed his audience that this latter interpretation was sanctioned by the founding figure of the Halveti path himself, in the form of the caliph ʿAlî b. Abû Tâlib who stated that “whoever does not have the practice of God, the practice of His messenger, and the practice of His saints has nothing.” When the caliph ʿAlî was asked for clarification about the first of the three elements in this statement, he replied, “concealment of the secret and the shameful (kitmân al-sirr waʾl-ʿayb).” Fuʾâdî translated the meaning of this Arabic aphorism for his audience as, “that person must be a concealer of secrets, be it his own secret or that of another, and must be someone who covers up shame, be it his own shame or that of another.” In other words, God forbids using others’ wrongdoing as an excuse to attack them – a policy that took direct aim at the tactics of those who censured Sufis in the public arena. Moreover, when ʿAlî was asked about the second element regarding the practice of the Prophet, he replied “dissimulation (al-mudârât).” Fuʾâdî again translates and interprets the Arabic meaning of ʿAlî’s response to indicate to his audience that: [Dissimulation] is not to inflict pain and suffering on the people who fight [with you] and confront you in anger; it is to abandon conflict and confrontation [in favor of] patience and forbearance. Because if a person does not show patience and forbearance with his enemy, and intends to take his revenge by conflict and confrontation, it increases the enmity of the enemy and the rancor of the malicious. The tranquility of the heart departs, and pain and suffering increase. The upstanding dervish is not he who abandons fighting and confrontation, but rather [he who] does good to his enemy in response to his maliciousness!

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Fu’âdî thus turns the practice of the Prophet to Halveti advantage by seizing the moral high ground from their enemies, not only by refusing to rise to the temptation of avenging slights aimed at one’s own person and honor, but even by doing good to one’s enemy in response. We must take into account the difficulty of this path, given how strongly embedded the culture of honor was in pre-modern Ottoman society.71 However, this did fit well with the Halveti teachings on controlling one’s own carnal desires, of which the desire for petty revenge would be considered an element. Fuʾâdî then concludes the triad of basic virtues by discussing ʿAlî’s response to the question about the practice of the saints of God, to which he replied, “the bearing of suffering (ihtimâl al-adhî).” Fuʾâdî did not elaborate on this aspect of the caliph’s words, saying only that “it is to be patient and endure the cruelty of the people,” and that a full exposition would require another whole tract. He concluded by holding up S¸aʿbân as the best embodiment of these three principles, pointing out that they are what saved him and his followers from his detractors, and warning that contemporary dervishes would be wise to follow his example.72 S¸aʿbân had to be on guard against the constant threat of harassment, and not just from censurers. Another Fuʾâdî informant, Ahmed Sâʿatçi Efendi, recalled that when he was younger, he had been a student of theology (danis¸mend)73 in İstanbul. While paying a visit to his home town of Kastamonu, he heard about S¸aʿbân’s powers of discernment and his knowledge of the inner state of others, so he and a friend went to the shaykh to see if the rumors were true. S¸aʿbân ultimately obliged them with a demonstration his spiritual powers, but expressed his disapproval of their curiosity: As soon as we kissed [his] hand and sat, without even asking about our state and thoughts, he said, “it is not a good thing to test the shaykhs. Because those who want to request exoteric and esoteric help from the people of God and be satisfied on every specific point may not achieve this desire. It is necessary to beware and fear [this tactic] as much as unbelief.” The water was dumped on our heads [along] with the glass, and we immediately sank into the valley of shame and embarrassment. When we made our apologies and kissed the blessed hand again, he asked about our thoughts with a complete level of kindness and concern, and dispelled our embarrassment with wise words, saying, “it wasn’t [out of] vanity [that I did that].”74

The narrator’s career in the scholarly hierarchy clearly imbued him with a distrust of Sufi leaders with whom he was not immediately familiar. Testing shaykhs was a common practice aimed at discrediting or embarrassing personalities who

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lacked proper credentials, and S¸aʿbân firmly censured the insult, even though he treated the offenders fairly leniently. Yet S¸aʿbân’s remarks were controversial, in that he likened testing a shaykh to unbelief. Could the two even approach the same level of sinfulness? Even Fuʾâdî was troubled, and proceeded to offer his customary clarification: The meaning of the noble one’s saying to Sâʿatçi Efendi, “it is necessary to fear and beware as much as unbelief” is attributed to warning and cautioning . . . But his meaning is not “s¸eriʿat unbelief.” The places of consideration on the stages of the path are many, and one of them is the four states [of] s¸eriʿat, tarikat, maʿrifet, and hakikat.75 Every stage among the people of God has [a position of] both faith and unbelief. It is known to the people. If there were to be a possibility of being an unbeliever by testing the shaykhs, it is not being an unbeliever by means of s¸eriʿat unbelief. But it is being an unbeliever through “tarikat unbelief.” Because it means that if the shaykhs are found in a state of unity and solidarity, being friends with God, and not in the state of separateness and lacking unity [with God]. Then, when they are not able to connect with you, and when they don’t reflect the form you want to see in their mirror, you’ll fall into censure, you’ll cover up the truth, thinking, “he’s not the perfected shaykh I wanted,” and you’ll remain blocked off from their secret, their perfection and their state, and you’ll remain a censurer and unsatisfied.76

By reclassifying the nature of unbelief to limit it to transgressions committed on the Sufi path, Fuʾâdî was able to recontextualize the remarks of his protagonist into a less controversial form, limiting Ahmed Efendi’s transgression to a mere failure to uphold the rules and etiquette of the order. Still, the overall point the audience would take from these passages was that making inquisitions to test the powers of a shaykh could have disastrous results, as the seeker could commit a terrible sin by falsely censuring a shaykh who did not behave in the way that the seeker expected or preferred. These anecdotes served to bolster wavering members of the order, under pressure by hostile outsiders to watch for signs that Sufi leaders like S¸aʿbân could be charlatans. The lesson was that a lack of trust in the ability of one’s shaykh resulted in a failure to achieve progress on the Sufi path. One interesting aspect of Fuʾâdî’s account is its implication that the S¸aʿbâniye engaged in a tactical alliance with the dervishes of the Mevlevî order active in Kastamonu and its environs. Unlike the hagiography of İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî, the Menâkıb stops short of trying to establish formal historical links between the Halveti shaykh S¸aʿbân-ı Veli and Mevlânâ Celâluddîn Rûmî.77 However, the work does extend special recognition to the Mevlevî order as an equal partner

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among the groups contending for religious influence in the region. A noteworthy example of this is S¸aʿbân’s refusal to allow one of his successors to appoint a new successor, Hasan Dede: One of the successors of S¸aʿbân Efendi was about to confer a cap (kisve) and place it on the head of a dervish of exalted power by the name of Hasan Dede in his own lodge in the area of Tokat, when a call came from a unseen person, “don’t put it on!” He stopped to reflect, thinking, “is this call divine, or is it satanic?” and in his mystical contemplation he recognized that it was divine . . . so after abandoning the giving of headgear, he went to Kastamonu to visit [S¸aʿbân] with that dervish. When they met in the cells, as soon as he gave word of this state, the sultan said: “I was the desperate one who made that call. Praise be to God that you had an ear, and you heard it.” When he was asked, “so why did you forbid it?” he replied, “this dervish will be one of the perfected people among the dervishes of Molla Hünkâr [Rûmî], and he will be assigned their headgear. I forbid [the wearing of the Halveti headgear], so that he need not remove it afterwards.” In fact, it occurred like that by the command of God, and it is renowned that the dervish Hasan became a perfected Mevlevî, and a scholar of the Mesnevî . . .78

The friendly tone of the anecdote indicates that this event was not perceived as a threat in the same way as that posed by the renegades who challenged S¸aʿbân’s instructions. Fuʾâdî also referenced other elements of Mevlevî–Halveti cooperation by including the story of an abortive attempt at the pilgrimage to Mecca by another Mevlevî contemporary, Mehmed Urgâncîzâde. A local Mevlevî notable who clearly had friendly relations with the S¸aʿbâniye, he told Fuʾâdî how he had come to recognize S¸aʿbân’s presence in his home region: When we reached the province (vilâyet) of Res¸îd [to the east of Kastamonu], in that city we ran into an ecstatic mystic famed in those parts for unveiling [the unseen]. My companion, in order to take the breath of that ecstatic by way of an augury, said: “Poor one, I am going on the noble pilgrimage. I wonder, will my pilgrimage be blessed, and will I be guided to the pilgrimage this year?” He replied with the manifestation of his favor, “go to it; let it be blessed.” Afterwards, when [my companion] requested an augury also for [me] and said, “what do you say about this dervish?” he looked at my face and said, “for this one, S¸aʿbân Efendi’s favor is sufficient.” When it was asked, “which S¸aʿbân Efendi’s [favor]” he said, “the S¸aʿbân Efendi who is buried in his own land of Kastamonu!” By the command of God most high, this poor one [Mehmed] fell ill, and was not guided to the pilgrimage [in] this year. I came back to Kastamonu [instead].

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Fuʾâdî concluded Mehmed’s anecdote with praise for him: He was never absent from contemplation and remembrance, and zeal and experiencing [God] in order to perfect [his] state in the circle of the zikr and other places of purity in the lodge of S¸aʿbân Efendi, thinking, “my pilgrimage was [to] this place.”79

Modern interpretations of Sufi orders might find it odd that a Mevlevî dervish would participate so actively in the rites of another order; however, the two Sufi orders seemed to be closely linked in Kastamonu. Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı noted that parts of the performance of the S¸aʿbâniye zikr in Kastamonu show the influence of Mevlevî practices.80 Moreover, we see a general movement within some branches of the Halveti order toward a closer relationship with the legacy of Rûmî, as exemplified by the Güls¸enî branch of the order in Egypt. There may have been practical considerations involved, as members of the two orders joined forces to defend their ritual practices, both of which involved music and ritual movements, against censurers. We know that Kastamonu was the site of a major Mevlevî lodge ranked sixth in importance behind those of Konya, Bursa, Eskis¸ehir, Gelibolu, and Aleppo. Unfortunately, we lack information at present on the activities of the Mevlevî order in Kastamonu, reflecting the weak state of research in this field to date and underscoring the importance of Fu’âdî’s account.81 Oddly, we have seen that other anecdotes express feelings of tension toward other Sufis, even other sub-branches of the Halveti order such as reflected in the tale of Mahmûd Efendi of the Sünbüliye. These accounts suggest that the S¸aʿbâniye had a strong independent streak that led them to stake out a distinct positions in relation to the other religious groups of their era.82 . The foundation of the ¸aʿbâni S ye lodge, and the . establishment of a Halveti sub-branch in Kastamonu

Up to now, we have seen how S¸aʿbân-ı Veli came to situate himself within his contemporary religious and social networks. Though his hagiographer, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, is not a neutral voice in recounting those events, and tells us as much about how they were to be received by a later audience as they do about S¸aʿbân himself, we can still discern amid the narrative structures the long decades of work required for S¸aʿbân to build the foundations of his sub-branch of the Halveti order. That process would not reach consolidation until the last years of the shaykh’s life. It is not clear when S¸aʿbân decided to leave his preaching position to withdraw to a more secluded life. The narratives suggest that old age and

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disillusionment with his public presence played a role, perhaps intertwined with pressure from anti-Sufi forces and struggles with wayward followers. Still, a key incident served as the catalyst to introduce the final phase of S¸aʿbân’s life. Some time in the mid-tenth/sixteenth century, a disastrous fire wiped out much of the town of Kastamonu, and S¸aʿbân, after years of building his following, read into that event a divine message recalling him to the original task with which he had felt he was divinely charged: In the Atâbey Gazi quarter a fire broke out by the command of God. The wind lifted a piece of wood from one of the burning houses, and burned the city from one end to another up to the Honsâlâr mosque.83 Its pulpit and roof being [made of] wood, it caught fire more easily on a summer day, and it couldn’t be stopped. When half the city, along with the blessed cells of the mosque, were burnt, [S¸aʿbân’s] pleasure was secreted in sorrow, and saying, “the command and judgment belongs to God,” he said to his faithful lovers who wanted to rebuild the cells, by [means of] allusion and a sign, “let them not be rebuilt; there is a command of God in the fire. Let a home be bought for me in the area of the Seyyid Sünnetî mosque in Hisârardı. Because I am that guardian of the secret of Seyyid Sünnetî . . . The will of God is that we go to that place.” In short, they could not dispute his words, and the houses were bought through the action of Eyüb Halife, father of Samed Halife, which are now the lodge of the recourse of the worlds and the tomb full of light, and as soon as he went to the other world, he died [in the Sünnetî mosque].84

The description of this tragic event in Kastamonu’s history suggests that changes had taken place since S¸aʿbân’s arrival. During the reign of Sultan Süleyman, the town itself had expanded, both in population and area; the old Seyyid Sünnetî mosque no longer lay outside its borders.85 In addition, S¸aʿbân had acquired followers with the financial means to purchase property in the area of the mosque to relocate the head of the evolving sub-branch of the order.86 The fire undoubtedly changed the dynamics of settlement and population in the city, as newly homeless citizens were forced to relocate, at least temporarily, to parts of the city that had avoided destruction. All this allowed S¸aʿbân to establish a space for his following, as opposed to the now damaged Honsâlâr mosque which he had shared with others up to that point. The stage was set for the final establishment of the focal point around which the future followers of the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order would congregate after his death. While S¸aʿbân had made significant progress in Kastamonu through his years of struggle in establishing a sub-branch of the order, the order’s future was not necessarily assured. While the years leading up to S¸aʿbân’s death continued to

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contribute to the strength of his legacy, what is striking is the modest nature of his activities at the end of his life. Fuʾâdî does not shy away from relating the miraculous acts of grace that his protagonist manifested during the final years of his life. However, he does carefully regulate their presentation. Most lack the grandiosity of earlier hagiographical forms, and many of them reflect the modest walks of life represented in Kastamonu during the latter half of the tenth/ sixteenth century. S¸aʿbân and Fuʾâdî both shared an aversion to playing up the miraculous aspects of sainthood as being a distraction from the real issues on which believers should focus their attention. In the most spectacular manifestation of divine grace that Fuʾâdî recorded, he used the anecdote not just to demonstrate S¸aʿbân’s powers, but to voice concerns about the danger inherent in them: One day a young merchant came with sheep and linen cloth, and wanted to meet [with S¸aʿbân]. When the youth was asked about his circumstances, he said, “when [I was] traveling by sea, by command of God a storm blew up. While making vows to God, I also requested help from the noble one, and said, ‘my true one, S¸aʿbân Dede, if you are a real saint, with the aid of God reach out to us!’ With the power of God most High, a hand appeared, gave a smack to our boat, and turned it to one side, and from the front it grabbed the side and straightened that boat out like an arrow, and when we arrived at the place which was desired, the hand disappeared. This is the reason for our being saved from calamity. And many people on the boat saw this and vowed an offering.” When he revealed the secret which had appeared from the power of the Pole [of the Age], the dervishes who were present took him outside in confidence and said, “young man, don’t ever say this again; there’s no acceptance for it.” Then the dervish doorkeeper had him meet the noble one in the inner cells, and as soon as he kissed his hand, he warned him with a blessed prayer, saying, “[young] lamb, why are you revealing our secret? Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘did you see the camel, I didn’t even see the camel foal?’” 87 After that, no one ever received a response from his mouth about this again.88

Given the tone in which the young merchant beseeched S¸aʿbân Efendi, we might wonder why he wasn’t also criticized for lacking the proper amount of faith, or “testing his saint” in the same way as Ahmed Sâʿatçi Efendi had. However, the focus of S¸aʿbân’s complaint rested on the youth’s public proclamations of miraculous assistance. This was not a novel complaint for a notable Sufi leader to make, but by the second half of the tenth/sixteenth century, it was an increasingly critical point. Given the existence and potential prominence of anti-Sufi and anti-Halveti forces in the region, Halveti leaders

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like S¸aʿbân had to walk a fine line on the issue of miraculous powers. Rather than display them openly like Sufi leaders in earlier times, they demanded confidentiality.89 This guaranteed that a certain tension would exist between hagiographer and subject, as Fuʾâdî knew that he could not produce an effective hagiography without highlighting at least some of the acts of grace that S¸aʿbân had manifested. Nevertheless, he treated this episode with a considerable amount of caution, and appends his own commentary about the encounter: If [seekers] know that he is a real saint and that his acts of grace are true, they know that it will be lost if they reveal it. Because of this, they are wary of revealing secrets. But as soon as there is a liar and deceiver who has no source for his act of grace, he wants to sell acts of grace and spread the secret in every place for the acquisition of money and the other aims of the corrupt. May the secret of the true saints be pure!90

This remark reveals another challenge that had begun to face members of the Halveti order in their day to day activities. The censuring of anti-Halveti factions was troublesome enough, but the flip side of the coin was that fraudulent or doctrinally questionable claimants to mystical leadership were even worse. They corrupted the edifice on which Islamic sainthood had been constructed by misappropriating the qualities of saints and misrepresenting the point of sainthood. Fuʾâdî clarified this threat further by relating an anecdote about ʿOsmân Efendi, S¸aʿbân Efendi’s eventual successor to the order’s leadership. After S¸aʿbân had sent him to Tokat to spread the order’s teachings there, ʿOsmân returned one day for a visit, so he approached the door of S¸aʿbân’s cell. But then he stopped short, turned around, and left. Some bystanders saw that he didn’t enter, and asked him why he didn’t knock. He told them, “the jinn have come to the master; they are discussing a dream-vision and talking about other intellectual issues. I was too polite to enter.” Fuʾâdî then added the following: Some of the 360 successors of [S¸aʿbân], when their perfection occurred by being given power over the jinn by God according to their natural disposition, he made the successorship prayer for them to be given spiritual dispensation over the [other] jinn. But all [of them] are able to control and subjugate the jinn with the power of the names of God, acts of grace, and sainthood, and not by doing fortune-telling, soothsaying, and other things like this. They used to block the mischief and bad deeds of the jinn that occurred to the race of men . . . But those among the other shaykhs, who do not act with the power of esoteric knowledge

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and the specific points of the names of God, or with the specific points of the Qurʾan, if they engage in fortune-telling and soothsaying, or draw lots, or gather the jinn [through a seance] (cin derüp), or look into water, or make jinn speak, or place a vefk-charm without perfecting [it], or are not among the people [who know] vefk,91 or [if they] act through astrology or sand oracles, they are corrupt, rotten, and trouble-making liars! Let their statements never be believed and their actions never followed. Perfection will not be granted to those manifesting this state in any dervish or successors acting like this; they are among those who lack maturity or are incomplete [in their training].92

Fuʾâdî thus indirectly reveals that forms of “pseudo-Sufism” and magical practices competed with the cult of saints among the general population. He needed to deny the legitimacy of this competitor vis-à-vis more religiously sanctioned ways of dealing with the serious concerns of everyday life among the population. In narratives like these, we realize that Fuʾâdî needs to invoke S¸aʿbân’s acts of grace to retain a following; otherwise, some followers might resort to those who promised them more immediate and doctrinally suspect solutions for their problems. Fuʾâdî also implied that some of the renegades from S¸aʿbân’s order chose to take up such practices as a way of boosting their own standing, or as a short cut to fame and increased prosperity in preference to the ideals embodied by the order. In the Menâkıb, we see an author who has to walk a tightrope between questionable forms of popular practice and folk magic, and an ever watchful scholarly class that looked to seize on any evidence of questionable doctrine as a way of banishing the order from the religious life of the community. Given his awareness of this tension, Fuʾâdî offers corroborating accounts of the “invisible hand” of S¸aʿbân Efendi as a standard miraculous occurrence in other contexts. He related another account from one of his neighbors, a pious woman by the name of S¸ehrî Hoca and the wife of Fuʾâdî’s contemporary and fellow dervish, İbrâhîm Dede. One day, noting that S¸aʿbân had somehow injured his hand, [she] prepared a salve, saying, “a wound appeared on the inside of the hand of S¸aʿbân Efendi.” As soon as it was asked, “what kind of wound?” she said, “God knows.” After a time a person came, like the aforementioned youth, and revealed the secret. While [he was] traveling by sea, an unbelievers’ boat came, and while fighting [with the crew of his craft], he requested an act of grace from the shaykh in return for a vow to God. As soon as he said, “my true one S¸aʿbân Dede, reach out to us with the help of God,” a hand appeared opposite him, and the shot from the [unbelievers’] cannon hit that hand with a puff of smoke. He said, “I knew

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that hand was the blessed hand of S¸aʿbân Dede, and by the command of God, he blocked the shot of the cannon from this poor one.”

Linking this variation to the first narrative involving the youth, the historian witnesses the spread of a trope across the community, taking on embellished forms and alternative characterizations as it passed from person to person through oral transmission. Fuʾâdî cheerfully exploited the multiple manifestations of S¸aʿbân’s supernatural protection of those who called on him for extraordinary aid. He even added a third narrative in which a builder from the quarter in which S¸aʿbân lived, Muhyiddîn Esendîloğlu, overheard a man who came to thank S¸aʿbân for helping him: He said, “my lord, may God most high be pleased with you. I was lifting a millstone with my companion in the quarry at İlgaz mountain, and while [I was] standing it up on its side and crafting it into a millstone, it toppled over and went into a stream bed from which it could not be lifted out. When it happened, I requested help from God most high and help and succor from you, saying, ‘My true one, S¸aʿbân Dede, if you’re a real saint, grab it!’ By the command of God, a hand appeared and with a slap the stone was lying on its side. I knew right away that hand was yours. You were kind and appeared [to resolve] our trouble.” The noble one was completely embarrassed and said, “hey man, what are you saying? What word have I of this? Power and the hand of ability are God’s. This state that you speak of is not ours,” and he rejected [the man’s] words vehemently in order to preserve his state and secret. He sent him away from the gathering and when [the man] went out, this poor one [Muhyiddîn] said to him, “hey stupid man, haven’t you seen anything at all [in life]? Is this type of thing said to these people?”93

Like the other stock characters, the hapless quarryman was called back later for a private audience, granted forgiveness, and told to keep quiet in the future. Nevertheless, all the anecdotes revolve around the elements of S¸aʿbân’s intercession, followed by a public disavowal of responsibility for the miraculous solution to the various problems, ultimately concluding in a quiet resolution that allowed for the private admission of the act of grace. This most spectacular and supernaturally-based act of grace with which S¸aʿbân had become associated had to be handled with considerable care; thus, Fuʾâdî’s compilation of multiple corroborating narratives. Other acts of grace that S¸aʿbân performed were much more down to earth. One anecdote that Fuʾâdî himself recalled from his own childhood coupled nicely with the account of Sehrî Hoca to give us useful insights into how S¸aʿbân’s female followers related to the shaykh:

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My now deceased mother’s sister was sick, and her head hurt greatly. For a long time, prayers were [both] read [aloud] and written out, and doctors also tried to remedy it, but a cure was never found. One day my mother consulted with my father, and they came to the lord [S¸aʿbân] with pure belief, saying, “whenever the Pole of Poles, whose prayers are accepted, S¸aʿbân Efendi, does not pray, it won’t get better.” They met in his cell, with eight women among the supplicants, and several of the women requested only a prayer without explaining or disclosing their wishes, and [S¸aʿbân] recited only the Fatiha.94 When it came the turn of my now deceased mother, the noble one didn’t just recite the Fatiha; he also lifted up his headgear with his right hand and rubbed his blessed forehead once with his blessed hand. He recited the Fatiha [together] with this sign. Before my now deceased mother could return to the house, her sister’s headache had completely gone, and it was confirmed and known that she was completely cured.95

The ability to cure sickness and avert chronic illness was a classic sign of sainthood among the Halveti to which Fuʾâdî could bear personal witness. Yet one cannot help but note the absence of male figures at this gathering, with the possible exception of Fuʾâdî’s father and a young Fuʾâdî.96 It may be that while the well-to-do men in these households were away on business or traveling, their wives relied on Sufi leaders like S¸aʿbân as a means of protection for both their husbands and themselves. Unfortunately, the anecdote is insufficiently detailed to allow us more than speculation on these issues. Still, despite heavy imbalances in the narrator’s gender breakdown in favor of males, narratives like these do indicate that at least part of his base of support consisted of women. It is perhaps not surprising that as the events in the narrative begin to draw closer to the period of Fuʾâdî’s own childhood, he drew on women’s narratives to establish S¸aʿbân’s legacy, not least through his own female relatives. This is not to say that poorer members of the community did not recognize the value of S¸aʿbân’s growing following in their community in seeking help for their own troubles. While our herdsman from an earlier time in S¸aʿbân’s career may have found him a bit strange or off-putting, subsequent characters looked to him for salvation from various personal crises which afflicted them. Fuʾâdî chose a remarkably insightful anecdote that indicates how saintly power could work for his audience, and related: It is related that one day a trustworthy and impoverished farm laborer, without compare in pure belief among the upstanding lovers of the noble one, came into the noble presence. He said: “My lord, I had a donkey. By God’s command it died. I am a man with a wife and children. I have to come on foot, and I am without

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remedy. Please pray a blessed prayer for me, that God does not force me to ask help from despicable people, and He will grant livestock (davâr) with your prayer and kindness, and let Him save [us] from hopelessness.” Knowing about his pure belief, [S¸aʿbân] raised his hand and prayed, and said, “be patient, brother, let God give.” The following day a sipahi97 brought a yellow mule as an offering. After the shaykh prayed for its acceptance [by God as an offering], he said, “let the person whose donkey died and who requested a prayer come.” When that poor person came, he submitted the mule to the poor one and said by means of advice and admonishment, “take now, poor one; God most high gave a mule in place of the donkey from the treasury of the unseen on account of your belief in charity, and your pure belief in the kindness and breath of the saints and good men. By seeking help from this station, you found this once again at the door of God. You won’t be forced to seek help from undesirables. Be grateful for the blessing, and be a true servant to God most high.” That sipahi, who was present there, was astonished, and exclaimed, “glory be to God!” When asked about his astonishment, he said, “my mule was born in a group of animals; I vowed one to the noble one as the share [belonging to] God, but I didn’t hurry in bringing it. I was going to see to some of my affairs in the city tomorrow and bring it then, but a greater urgency overcame my heart and I brought it today. It had an ultimate cause!”98

In this case, S¸aʿbân played the role of intermediary between the overseer of a military landholding and a poor farmer in danger of losing his livelihood, redirecting the charity offered by the wealthier members of society to those in need. While the wealthier and more powerful members of society sometimes provided for those less fortunate out of personal piety, they probably did not have the time or inclination to seek out all individual problems. Moreover, rules of social etiquette probably limited the amount of meaningful interaction people could have with those who were not of their own rank in the social hierarchy, especially if they lacked connections to a wider patronage network. S¸aʿbân, having devoted his life to the ideal of charitable giving and the practice of not valuing material goods, could act as a pre-modern charity for the public, rewarding those who followed the basic principles of the order as a lender of last resort. While Fuʾâdî liked to claim that his mentor was so generous that he was “never able to rub two akçe coins together,” these narratives suggest that tithes came into the order in equal measure to expenditures.99 Poor farmers were not the only ones who could benefit from the order’s largesse. Another contemporary of Fuʾâdî’s, a maker of bellows for the metal forges in Kastamonu named Körükçü Kelle Mustafa, used to recite the same story over and over in any gathering in which the subject of debt and owing money came up:

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I owed a debt of 1,200 akçe [silver coins] to someone. When it was too stressful and difficult, I sought money [given] as a good deed with a thousand thanks from my wealthy friends, and sought [a loan] with interest from others.100 When it was not possible to get [money] from anyone, in the end I turned to God, and as soon as I said, “O Lord of the Worlds, if there is a cure for me it is surely from you; out of reverence for your prophets and saints, your help is necessary for me,” the Pole of the World, S¸aʿbân Efendi, came into my mind by God’s inspiration. Thus, I came to his noble presence to take his prayer, and when I announced my situation, he lifted up the carpet he was sitting on and said, “there’s a little money there; take it.” I stretched out a hand and took it. But I was embarrassed to take all of it. Knowing that I did not take it all, [despite] the darkness of the cell, he said, “take it all. God most high sent it for you; it’s all yours.” The poor one [Mustafa] took all of it and put it into a kerchief. He raised up his hand and prayed. Afterwards I counted it, and it was the exact same amount of akçe as my debt. Praise be to God I was saved from debt! I have never had debt since with his auspicious prayer and blessings!101

Both anecdotes underscore the beginning of a critical transition point in Ottoman history. A growing struggle with increasing inflation marked the close of Sultan Süleyman’s reign, and Halveti notables like S¸aʿbân could gain a certain degree of goodwill by acting as an emergency lender for otherwise productive citizens who had fallen into arrears. In return, they received the support of followers like Mustafa, who voluntarily acted as free publicity proclaiming their good deeds and renown. Of course, if one had asked S¸aʿbân about the reasoning behind his giving, he would merely have explained that this was an integral part of the Halveti path and that he sought no earthly reward. Nevertheless, whatever S¸aʿbân’s own rationale, these types of acts clearly did bring worldly benefits in the form of support, popular acclaim, and defenders of the Halveti order’s leaders and devotees. Or as Fuʾâdî put it in a poetic couplet cited in his description of S¸aʿbân’s extraordinary generosity: “If the shaykh is enamored of money, the hope of the disciple is that salary * The king of the dinar is not always the king of insight (dîdâr).”102 This was not the only form of networking in which S¸aʿbâniye leaders could engage. Their principles of hospitality in housing travelers, as exemplified in the events that marked S¸aʿbân’s own initiation into the Halveti path, made them excellent sources of knowledge about the wider world. Fuʾâdî noted a number of anecdotes in which various Kastamonu denizens traveled abroad either on the pilgrimage to Mecca or to other parts of Anatolia, and encountered people who asked them about S¸aʿbân. Even after his death, his followers could exploit these connections in faraway places. A trio of Kastamonu pilgrims, one of whom was

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S¸aʿbân’s successor, traveled to Egypt many years after his death on pilgrimage. When they stopped to visit one of the tombs of the local saints in Cairo, they were suddenly accosted by a mystic they encountered there: Within the noble tomb we saw a person from the evlâd-i ʿArab103 who was wearing white clothes and was in the world of mystical contemplation. As soon as all of us came in the door of the tomb, he lifted up his head and saw us, and shouted once with longing. He came before us eagerly, saying, “noble ones who come from the true saint S¸aʿbân Efendi in Rûm, come hither!” When he asked, “has any one among you seen the blessed beauty of that lord?,” Hâfız ʿAlî Efendi, having seen [S¸aʿbân] in the time of his youth, informed him of his characteristics. He kissed [ʿAlî’s] eyes with sincerity, and honored and ennobled all of us greatly.104

Another informant and successor to Benli Sultan told Fuʾâdî about another occurrence in the distant past, when an unnamed shaykh in Khorasan (a region of north-eastern Iran) had a vision of S¸aʿbân Efendi in Anatolia while in an ecstatic state. He sent two of his dervishes to Kastamonu to investigate, telling them, “go and visit and gaze into the mirror of beauty, and see what form appears [there].” When they arrived in Kastamonu and requested a meeting with S¸aʿbân Efendi, he never emerged. He merely handed a mirror to one of his own dervishes and commanded him to give it the two visitors, and said that they would understand. The two dervishes departed as quickly as they had come, immediately recognizing the allusion to their master’s words. Fuʾâdî concluded by again denouncing the censurers of S¸aʿbân Efendi and the Halveti, for while knowledgeable mystics were able to understand the signs of sainthood in a glance, these signs were obscured for detractors due to their own vanity and delusions of grandeur.105 The narrative itself is full of tropes, as the Khorasanî mystics, hidden away in a distant realm at the farthest reaches of the Safavid polity, were often introduced as justification for purported far-flung worldly travels of Ottoman Sufi shaykhs.106 In addition, the use of a mirror as a symbol of the acquisition of mystical and philosophical knowledge is widespread in Islamic literature. Whatever the historical veracity, however, Fuʾâdî used these anecdotes to introduce the thinking of Ibn al-ʿArabî about the hierarchy of saints that make up the hidden sub-structure of both the seen and unseen worlds. The follower (or potential follower) of the Halveti shaykhs could take advantage of this far-flung network of God’s friends: The pillars (evtâd) which are among the men of the unseen (ricâl-i gayb) are four [in number]. They also call them “the four men,” and the budalâʾ, who are seven [in number], and the nücebâʾ, who are 40 [in number], and the nukabâʾ, who are

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three [in number].107 And all the rest of the men of God are turned toward and followers of the support of the world, who is the Pole with the status of being the greatest Pole. The aforementioned men of God also know the greatest Pole of Poles who goes to heaven and the world of eternity. They seek help from their holy spirits and their exalted secrets.108

All this grants modern readers insight on how provincial Halveti shaykhs might explain the complex theology of Ibn al-ʿArabî’s cosmology and theories of sainthood in a context that their countrymen could understand. The movement of the saints in the unseen world also raised the controversial topic of tayy-i mekân, a way in which saintly figures could transcend time and space to appear in faraway places, while appearing to still be present in their homelands. The “unseen hand” of S¸aʿbân Efendi was one form of this manifestation, but Fuʾâdî had another problem to tackle: the generally known fact that S¸aʿbân Efendi never completed the ritual pilgrimage to the Holy Cities enjoined upon all Muslims once in a lifetime. In discussing the final years of S¸aʿbân’s life, Fuʾâdî used a specific manifestation of sainthood in an anecdote that tackled both problems at the same time. An unnamed person from one of the villages near Kastamonu, having made the pilgrimage to Mecca, fell ill and was unable to travel when it came time for his caravan to depart. Trapped and impoverished in Mecca, he longed to return home, but there was nothing he could do. At last a stranger took pity on him and told him to look for an old Halveti shaykh who prayed the morning prayer with the Hanefî imâm every day, and to grab onto the hem of his clothing before he could finish the prayer and refuse to let go, no matter how hard the shaykh pressed him to relent. When the man went there, he recognized S¸aʿbân, grabbed onto him and implored him for his help. After a great deal of resistance and embarrassment, S¸aʿbân finally relented on the condition that he tell no one of his secrets, and told him to close his eyes. When he opened them, the hapless villager found himself standing before his home in his own village.109 This narrative served a dual purpose. First, it confirmed S¸aʿbân’s ability to master the unseen world and use its powers to transcend time and place, akin to the earlier Halveti figures documented in Hulvî’s work. The other element is the implication that he had no trouble fulfilling his ritual obligations regarding the Pilgrimage – during the final years of his life, while he seemed to be in seclusion in his cell, he was in fact praying every day in the grand mosque in Mecca! *** These narratives provide us with our core picture of the life and times of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli and his relationship to greater Kastamonu. More importantly,

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however, they also reflect on how later devotees of the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order received, and interacted with the memory of a prominent saintly figure. The line between the historical S¸aʿbân and the perception of him among both his followers and his hagiographer becomes blurred in the hagiography. This invariably complicates any critical assessment of how ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s work can be used as a source for Ottoman provincial life and the mysticism of S¸aʿbân’s era. Still, the narratives and their tensions do betray echoes of the foundational history of the order’s founder. S¸aʿbân emerges as the product of a provincial Halveti and Sufi tradition that operated in remoter regions of the Empire, often attracting travelers and passers-by on the roads between provincial centers. This reflected the S¸aʿbâniye’s origins in a generation of Sufi leaders seeking to distance themselves from the tensions evolving out of the Ottoman–Safavid conflict that challenged the immediate descendants of Cemâl el-Halvetî, or a desire to stay clear of urban centers where powerful detractors could target more vulnerable figures in the order’s hierarchy. S¸aʿbân’s career respresents a return to urban centers from the remote locales of a Hayreddîn Tokâdî or Benli Sultan, but not entirely. He still reflected the discomfort with a high public profile inherited from his teachers, and avoided conflict with hostile figures wherever possible. His positions on a mystic maintaining a public presence seemed distinctly out of step with the later generation of mystical aspirants, increasingly concerned with defending their order from detractors. In turn, this tension could lead to awkward moments, reflected in ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s textual interjections to reconcile the discrepancies between past and present. Moreover, a picture of S¸aʿbân’s circle of friends and followers also emerges from the accounts that offers, behind the miraculous overlay, insights on how this sub-branch of the Halveti order developed. S¸aʿbân’s extraordinary longevity as a presence in Kastamonu also contributed to his success, as his life in the city spanned at least four decades and he outlived many of his contemporaries. But their leader’s life was not indefinite, and like all Halveti groups, the followers of the S¸aʿbâniye recognized the need to confront a new stage in their history as their founding father’s health began to deteriorate. Still, most of his followers were stunned when S¸aʿbân-ı Veli died suddenly on 18 Ziʾl-kaʿde 976/4 May 1569. His followers had to act to preserve the order’s legacy, and it is to that part of the story that we must now turn.

Notes 1 This mosque lay just east of the Sünnetî mosque, and was built at some time in the first half of the ninth/fifteenth century. It had come to be referred to as the Hüsâm Halife

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought mosque by Fuʾâdî’s time, but was demolished during the 1950s along with the tomb of Cemâleddîn Ağa, the mosque’s namesake. The reference allows us to track exactly where the settlement zone of Kastamonu came to an end in the early years of Sultan Süleyman’s reign; see KKE, pp. 71–2 and 75. MSV, pp. 42–3. MSV, p. 46. H. J. Kissling argued that this was Fuʾâdî’s brother, one of two who could be identified by name; see Kissling, “Šaʿbânijje,” p. 100. Both anecdote and Fuʾâdî’s commentary appear in MSV, p. 43. MSV, p. 44. MSV, pp. 44–6. Almost a decade after completing his hagiography, Fuʾâdî devoted a section of his Türbenâme to Mahvî Efendi. We learn that he was one of S¸aʿbân’s followers who had achieved a perfected state and regularly recited poetry lauding both his master and the mystical path. His poetry was apparently misunderstood and criticized by some in Kastamonu, and Fuʾâdî chided them for failing to listen to his poems with the ear of the heart, instead of just interpreting them literally; see MSV, pp. 138–40, where Fuʾâdî invokes the same poetry a second time in a different context. Benli Sultan’s complex and tomb still exist today in a remote mountain village south of Kastamonu, and consists of a prayer room, a kitchen, and a room for guests. A separate structure for Benli Sultan’s tomb was added later. Graffiti inscribed on the doorway to the complex, and the remnants of a cemetery indicate that the complex remained active into the thirteenth/nineteenth century. MSV, p. 81. MSV, p. 47. MSV, p. 48. For more on the Honsâlâr mosque, built sometime in the first half of the ninth/fifteenth century on the north-western part of Kastamonu, see KKE, p. 71. Al-Qurʾân, 5:54; the full verse runs as follows: “O you who believe, whomever among you rejects his religion, God will bring forward a people whom he loves and who loves him, gentle with believers, harsh upon the unbelievers, striving in the way of God, and they do not fear the blame of the slanderer. That is the favor of God, he bestows it on whom he wills. God is infinite, all-knowing.” MSV, pp. 49–50. MSV, pp. 60–1. MSV, p. 61. In the development of the biographical elements about the Prophet Muhammad, most stories that indicated a lack of self-confidence, or attempts to shirk the revelatory duty that had been conferred upon him came to be marginalized in Muslim historical tradition; see URB, pp. 113–15. S¸aʿbân’s lack of self-confidence might also have troubled followers looking to legitimize him. Sinâneddîn b. Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb’s hagiography betrayed a deep tension between himself and his father over the issue of participating in Ottoman public life. When Sultan Süleymân’s retinue nominated Sinâneddîn’s father to offer a public prayer for rain during a drought, he fled the scene, causing great scandal and embarrassment. Part of the reason for Sinâneddîn’s writing the hagiography may have been to explain his father’s actions; see THV, fols 36a–7b, and JC-GTH, p. 915. MSV, pp. 61–2. MSV, 104–5. Modern readers might dismiss Fuʾâdî as disorganized or repetitive in his

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composition, given that he repeats these anecdotes verbatim later in the work. However, this ignores that the hagiography was likely not received by its intended audience in a single sitting from beginning to end, but was instead received as isolated vignettes as it was read out to people visiting the tomb complex. Repetition indicated the degree to which Fuʾâdî wanted certain ideas or concepts to be established in the minds of his audience in conjunction with narratives about S¸aʿbân’s activities. See, for example, the story of Shaykh Dâvûd, a successor of a successor of Cemâl elHalvetî, who supposedly made a remark misinterpreted by his followers as indicating that he claimed to be the messianic figure known as the Mahdî. This led to his execution; see THV, fols 16b–17a. Mystics also encountered problems during the reign of Süleymân if they were viewed as becoming too involved in internal politics, as hinted at in an anecdote about the Halveti leader, Shaykh Gazanfer (d. 974/1567), told by his follower, Seyyid Seyfullah. It took place in a setting where the two were imprisoned on suspicion of taking the side of Sultan Süleymân’s son Bayezid during the succession crisis at the end of the 1550s; see CAMA, fol. 10b. Doctrinally suspect viewpoints may also have played a role in the imprisonment of the two; see RÖ-OT, p. 306. For a good summary of the importance of preacher positions in İstanbul during the eleventh/seventeenth century, especially in the dynamics of the Halvetî–Kâdızâdeli conflict, see MCZ-KZ, pp. 265–9; and MCZ-PP, pp. 129–81. The anecdotes indicate the growing importance of preaching for Halveti Sufis in the years running up to the rise of Kâdızâde Mehmed (d. 1044/1635). A patched woolen cloak that marked an individual as being a fully sanctioned member of the Halveti order, often granted by a shaykh to his disciple after the completion of his mystical training. Alexander Knysh, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), pp. 173 and 177, for more on the introduction and development of these ritual symbols in order-based Sufism after the sixth/twelfth century. S¸aʿbân’s point was that if ʿAlî Dede had left any of his symbolic religious items behind, it would indicate that he intended to return. MSV, pp. 50–1. The prayer rug of a Halveti leader, or seccâde, was symbolic of his presence and authority within the lodge. The term was used as a synonym for the Arabic tarîqa (denoting a Sufi order), implying that wherever the prayer rug lay, that was the seat of a leader’s particular power base within a Sufi order; see Alexander Knysh, “Sadjdjâdah,” EI2, vol . 8, pp. 742–3. MSV, p. 51. MSV, pp. 51–2. The disputes over the succession of Merkez Efendi to the leadership of the Sünbüliye after Sünbül Efendi failed to give clear guidance on who was to succeed him were recorded in both THV, fols 29a–30a and LH, fols 224b–5b (463–4). Both accounts indicate how such situations could arise. MSV, p. 74. Fuʾâdî made a point of stressing the pivotal role ʿÖmer el-Halvetî played in founding a new silsile that established the practice that would eventually give the order its name; see MSV, pp. 30–1. MSV, p. 51. The term kutb, or “pole,” refers in its simplest form to refer to the highest ranking saint in the hierarchy of saints active in any given temporal context. The most straightforward

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought discussion of the hierarchy of saints that came to be elaborated by al-Hakîm al-Tirmidhî (d. 259/873) and Ibn al-ʿArabî (d. 637/1240), and the issues that it raised in mystical theology can be found in MDI, pp. 199–203 and esp. p. 200, where the importance of being able to recognize the pole is stressed by Mevlânâ Celâlüddîn Rûmî in an even more blunt way than in Fuʾâdî’s exposition. The hierarchy in Ibn al-ʿArabî’s thought is concisely summarized also in SOTS, pp. 89–98; one should also note pp. 99–100, n. 18, where Chodkiewicz advances the contention that the tarikat-based Sufism of subsequent generations “lacked precision” in applying Ibn al-ʿArabî’s theory. Implicit in this criticism is the idea that later Sufi orders and their leaders interpreted his thinking in an oversimplified way, and that Ibn al-ʿArabî himself would have taken a dim view of Fuʾâdî’s claim; see also the remarks in SPK, pp. 369–75. MSV, pp. 52–3. MSV pp. 53–4. The work of Cornell Fleischer on the life and career of Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî (d. 1009/1601) does an outstanding job of situating his writings in the context of a transformation whereby the old established Ottoman elite families were being challenged and displaced by new actors on the political scene. Later in his life, Mustafa ʿAlî became especially concerned about proper behavior, qualifications for a given position, and the importance of competence as the primary determinant for prominent positions in society; see CF-MA, pp. 184–6 and 204–11 and the comments in MCZ-PP, pp. 102–5. J. S. Trimingham argued that Sufi literature and handbooks produced during the sixth/ twelfth century constituted the key turning point in establishing this tenet; see JST, p. 29. MSV, pp. 54–5. MSV, p. 55. MSV, pp. 58–9. This anecdote was not without controversy, however, as other accounts related that S¸aʿbân himself communicated to someone in a dream that he approved only 300 successors, and the Prophet, or even God himself, took over the other sixty. Fuʾâdî gets around these alternate assertions by arguing this was an equally legitimate interpretation based on potential activity in the realm of the imaginary world (ʿâlem-i misâl). Either way, the number 360 has symbolic value in the mystical canon; it corresponds to popular theories about the number of figures present at the apex of the hierarchy of saints; see MDI, p. 202. See, for example, MSV, p. 62, where the work appends a list of followers like “Mehmed Efendi known by the name Memdi Halife, and Mehmed Efendi known by the name Kızılzade, and Hasan Çelebi whose pen name was Mahvî, and Sufi Muhyiddîn Efendi who had previously been the müfti of Kastamonu, and ʿAbdî Efendi known both as Molla Nâyî and İbrikçizade, perfected and skillful in all variety of sciences, and . . . a gentleman with the surname Hacizade.” Of these, only Mahvî and his poetry were discussed in any detail. Fuʾâdî recounts of Küreli Mehmed: “When someone asked the renowned Ottoman legal scholar Ebûsuʿûd, ‘did it [ever] happen that a sort of embarrassment fell over him or that his heart trembled when transmitting the noble commentary [on the Qurʾân] in so many medreses and gatherings?’ he said, ‘one day many virtuous gentlemen from among the jurists were present at one or two gatherings, and no place came into my heart for any of them at all. But I saw Mehmed Çelebi from Nuhâs Küre, and at that time, it occurred [that my heart] trembled a little bit. But it didn’t happen again,’” MSV, p. 63. The town

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of Küre still exists today on the road from Kastamonu to İnebolu, but its importance as a mining center declined during the years following the establishment of the Turkish Republic; see KKE, p. 47. MSV, pp. 63–4. Küreli Mehmed’s anecdote reflects a standard trope for the experience of many Halveti notables that has them join the order after the spiritual power of a Halveti guide solves their problems. S¸aʿbân Efendi had a similar experience. HSN, p. 426. However, the Ottoman biographer Tas¸köprüzâde (d. 968/1561), from whom this information was drawn, offers us little beyond these observations; his awareness of Benli Efendi derives solely through his personal meeting with Muharrem Efendi in İstanbul’s scholarly circles. The completion date has been established by an analysis of materials appearing within the work; see remarks of Dr Abdülkadir Özcan in the introduction to HSN, pp. xi–xii. Çivîzâde, also known as Molla Muhyiddîn S¸eyh Mehmed b. İlyâs (d. 954/1547), held the position of Grand Müfti of İstanbul from 945/1539 to 948/1542 after a distinguished career in the Ottoman capital and other places. Molla Fahruddîn İsrâfîlzâde (d. 943/1537) was another prominent scholar in the capital and sometime rival of Çivîzâde; see HSN, pp. 446–8 and 475–6. Saʿdî Çelebi, or Molla Saʿdullah b. ʿÎsâ b. Emîr Hân (d. 946/1539), served as the Grand Müfti who preceded Çivîzâde, and acted as the successor to the great Ottoman intellectual and writer Kemâlpas¸azâde (d. 940/1534) in the position for five years; see HSN, pp. 443–5. NVA, p. 355. ʿUmar b. ʿAlî b. al-Fârid was an Egyptian saint whose mystical poetry often bordered on the scandalous, but who was highly regarded in many Sufi and intellectual circles; see Julian Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989), pp. 81–2. A discussion of the controversial issues surrounding Çivîzâde that eventually led to his dismissal can be found in RCR, pp. 250–2. RCR, p. 246, and see also THV, fols 22b–4a. For the confusing situation surrounding the struggle for the post, including İsrâfîlzâde’s inquisition and writings, see RCR, p. 248 and HSN, p. 476. Saʿdî Çelebi’s career as chief müfti was less eventful than those of his contemporaries; see RCR, pp. 240–4. Repp’s views seem to be justified by the fairly uneventful biography of Saʿdî that appears in HSN, pp. 443–5. However, others point out that Saʿdi Çelebi was not necessarily pro-Sufi, and rejected Ibn al-ʿArabi’s teachings; see Tim Winter, “Ibn Kemâl (d. 940/1534) on Ibn ʿArabî’s Hagiology,” ed. Ayman Shihadeh, Sufism and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 145. This would not be an unusual position for a learned Ottoman to take even in the more turbulent period of the eleventh/seventeenth century, as Derin Terzioğlu noted in her dissertation on Niyâzî-i Misrî (d. 1106/1694). In it, she problematized the idea of a bipolar relationship between ʿulamâʾ and Sufis, and the debates over what constituted “orthodox” Islam among Ottoman Muslims, see DTZ, pp. 190–276. Devin DeWeese argued that Jâmî’s Nefahâtüʾl-Üns was intended to support the idea of silsile-based Sufism rather than any particular order; see Devin DeWeese, “An “Uvaysî” Sufi in Timurid Mawarannahr: Notes on Hagiography and the Taxonomy of Sanctity in the Religious History of Central Asia (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1993), pp. 11–12. This view was seconded by Jürgen

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought Paul; see JP-DO, p. 14. See also the remarks of the editors of the most recent preparation of Jâmî’s hagiographical work in its Turkish translation in LCH, pp. 30–1; they note that his connections with the Naks¸bendi order were rivaled by his interest in other forms of Sufism as exemplified by Ibn al-ʿArabî and the Persian poetry of Mevlânâ Celâleddîn Rûmî, among others. Unlike other issues, both ʿAtâʾî and by Fuʾâdî concur on this point; see NVA, p. 355 and MSV, pp. 93–5. The Arabic/Turkish term ümmî has different shades of meaning based on context. The simplest is “illiterate,” but the term can also have the more subtle meaning of being insufficiently educated or trained to function in a given position. Some draw a distinction between ümmî and câhil, in that the former indicates a lack of intellectual knowledge, while the latter indicates a lack of moral or ethical knowledge. Many Sufi shaykhs actually claimed the label ümmî as a source of pride; it implied that their mystical knowledge and advancement on the path had been granted by God through His inspiration (ilhâm), rather than being a product of educational prowess. For example, a contemporary of S¸aʿbân’s, Ümmî Sinân (d. 975/1568), took the name merely because it was one of the nicknames of the Prophet Muhammad; RÖ-OT, pp. 92–3. See also the remarks of Éric Geoffroy, “Ummi,” EI2, vol. 10, pp. 863–4 and also Le Soufisme en Égypte et Syrie sous les derniers Mamelouks et les premiers Ottomans: Orientations spirituelles et enjeux culturels (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1995), pp. 299–307. Uri Rubin suggests a link with Jewish religious tradition and thought; see URB, pp. 22–30. Fuʾâdî’s description of Habîb-i ʿAcemî as “pole of the Arabs” has an ironic tone to it, seeing as his connection to the title of being ümmî derived from his inability to recite the Qurʾân properly in Arabic due to his Persian origins; see LH, fols 82a–b and 86a (156–7 and 161–2). MSV, p. 59. Araç is a small town lying some distance to the west of Kastamonu on the road to Safranbolu. A small fortress still survives there to guard the historic road through this area. MSV, pp. 59–60. MSV, pp. 55–6. MSV, p. 57. Al-Ghazâlî has been framed as inclining toward a rationalized form of mysticism, whereby having proper knowledge of religious ritual and practice is a key component of the process of attaining love of God and closeness to Him. See the provisional assessments of his legacy in Knysh, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History, pp. 148–9; Binyamin Abrahamov, Divine Love in Islamic Mysticism: The Teachings of al-Ghazâlî and alDabbâgh (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), pp. 61–8; and ʿAbd al-Fattâh Muhammad Sayyid Ahmad, al-Tasawwuf bayna al-Ghazâlî wa Ibn Taymiyyah (al-Mansûrah: Dâr al-Wafâʾ, 2000), p. 345. Fragment from al-Qurʾân, 27:24 (an-Naml); the full verse is part of a broader Qurʾânic narrative dealing with the actions of King Solomon vis-à-vis the Queen of Sheba. Fragment from al-Qurʾân, 36:8 (Yâ Sîn). Al-Qurʾân, 76:5 (ad-Dahr). MSV, pp. 64–5. MSV, pp. 66–7. The ceremony of the devrân, the practice of forming a circle, and performing ritual

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motion accompanied by musical instruments as part of the recitation of the Halveti zikr, was a lightning rod for criticisms directed against the order. MSV, pp. 67–8. Fuʾâdî would reiterate this point in his discussion of the vice of kibir, or pride; see OFRMN, fols 179b–80a. The importance of honor in Ottoman society is well documented in Leslie Peirce’s study of how the Islamic court was used in the province of Aintab during the tenth/sixteenth century. She found that many of the individuals who came to court did so not in the expectation of winning their cases, but as a means of utilizing a public forum to maintain or defend their honor before the community; see Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), esp. pp. 179 and 385–6. The entire text of Fuʾâdî’s discussion, as outlined here, appears in a special section in the work entitled “The Anecdote of Hazret-i ʿAlî," in MSV, pp. 65–6. Fuʾâdî was a master of this didactic strategy, in which he would ply his audience with a tradition about the Prophet and/or one of the first four caliphs, then elaborate upon that tradition to comment on the proper course of action to take in response to a contemporary problem. Repp defined a danis¸mend as a student involved in the higher education system of the day, i.e. the Sahn medrese system or anything higher than an educational institution paying its teachers a 20-akçe stipend. This implies that Ahmed Sâʿatçi Efendi was a student of some significance; however, the term is notoriously slippery in its usage; see RCR, p. 37 and n. 23. MSV, pp. 72–3. These four stages were commonly thought by the Halvetis and others to represent a basic schema of how the seeker on the path grew closer to God, starting with the exoteric aspects of the Sacred Law (s¸eriʿat), then mastering the rules of the Sufi order’s path (tarikat), and thereafter moving into the acquisition of esoteric knowledge granted by God (maʿrifet), which finally results in a sense of certainty of one’s relationship with Him through a spiritual vision (hakikat). A modified table expressing the various stages of the Sufi path along these lines can be found in JST, pp. 152–3. MSV, p. 73. The first chapter of Muhyi-yi Güls¸enî’s hagiography explicitly seeks to link İbrâhîm’s career with that of Mevlânâ Celâluddîn Rûmî by demonstrating how certain poetic couplets from Rûmî’s Mesnevî predicted the subsequent appearance of İbrâhîm; see MİG, pp. 8–12. MSV, p. 79; the Mesnevî is the greatest poetic work of Celâluddîn Rûmî, widely viewed as the founder of the Mevlevî order. MSV, p. 78. AG-MM, p. 319; Gölpınarlı also notes close connections between the Mevlevîs in İstanbul and a twelfth/eighteenth-century descendant of the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the order, Nasûhî Efendi. AG-MM, p. 334. Gölpınarlı explains that the Mevlevî institutions were divided into âsitânes and zâviyes, with the shaykhs of the former taking precedence over those of the latter. Unfortunately, we do not have much information on the Kastamonu branch of the Mevlevî order for this time. Res¸at Öngören includes only a couple of Mevlevî shaykhs for the tenth/sixteenth century, none of them from Kastamonu; see RÖ-OT, pp. 205–18. Necdet Yılmaz’s more detailed list of Mevlevî shaykhs in the

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought seventeenth century is equally silent about Kastamonu-based Mevlevî activities save for one tantalizing exception, that of Kârî Ahmed Dede (d. 1090/1679). Interestingly, Kârî Ahmed Dede was the son of an unnamed Halveti shaykh in Kastamonu, so we cannot rule out the possibility, however distant, that he was related to Fuʾâdî or one of his successors. He went on to become head of the Mevlevîhâne in İstanbul’s Yenikapı district, and was linked with other Halveti shaykhs during his career there; see NYIL, pp. 280–1. Such fractiousness was not uncommon in the history of various leaders of the Halveti order, as noted by Nathalie Clayer in the context of a broader discussion of whether or not the Halveti can even be theoretically approached as a unified whole; see NC, p. 28. From this we know that the fire’s range and destructiveness were substantial, as the Atâbey Gazi quarter lay in the oldest part of the city just east of the fortress in the center of town, and the fire moved northward through the settled part of the city up to the Honsâlâr mosque on the north-western edge of town; see map in KKE, p. 220. MSV, pp. 68–9. Eyüpgiller provides a diagram illustrating the growth of the city from Byzantine times up to the present that illustrates this point, although he does not specify exactly when the growth in various parts of the city occurred during the early Ottoman period of Kastamonu’s history (defined as 1461 through the eleventh/seventeenth century); see KKE, p. 56. We know from the imperial edicts of the mühimme defterleri that shortly after Fuʾâdî’s birth in 967/1560, the small mosque that Seyyid Sünnetî had built was expanded into a larger mosque that could accommodate the Friday prayer, which confirms that the narrative was historically accurate; see KKE, p. 107 and n. 422. This is shorthand for a Turkish proverbial saying, deve gördün mü? köçeğin dahi görmedim, roughly meaning, “let’s keep it between us”; see Robert Dankhoff and Semih Tezcan, “Seyahat-name’den Bir Atasözü,” Türk Dilleri Aras¸tırmaları 8 (1998): 15–28. MSV, pp. 69–70. Elements of this view appear as early as the seventh/thirteenth century, if not earlier. In a discussion of how Ibn al-ʿArabî viewed his predecessor, ʿAbd al-Qâdir al-Jîlânî (d. 561/1166), William Chittick notes that Ibn al-ʿArabî did not have any problems with ʿAbd al-Qâdir’s production of miracles and wondrous occurrences. But he still implicitly criticized him by comparing him with his contemporary Abû’s-Suʿûd Ahmad b. Muhammad b. al-Shibl. Ibn al-ʿArabî argued that since Abû’s-Suʿûd was more circumspect in his demeanor and did not take on a public role to the extent that his master did, he superseded him in his advancement on the mystical path; see William C. Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-ʿArabî’s Cosmology (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 376–86. MSV, p. 70. The term vefk refers to a small amulet marked off in the form of a grid, with each square having some sort of name, word, or number inscribed in it, as seen in the story of Shaykh Vefâʾ and his protégé in the struggle over the succession in Chapter 2. Perhaps aware of the importance of the practice in earlier Halveti lore, Fuʾâdî does not deny the legitimacy of this magical practice outright. MSV, pp. 89–90. Both this and the aforementioned narrative appear in MSV, pp. 70–2. The opening seven verses in the first chapter of the Qurʾân, 1:1–7. Many Halveti

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shaykhs and other pious figures in Muslim societies recited this to bless those seeking their assistance. MSV, p. 80. Given the structure of the language, it is not out of the question that he was merely involved in the decision to seek S¸aʿbân’s help, and did not actually attend the ladies’ session with S¸aʿbân. This raises the interesting possibility that the community did not look askance at S¸aʿbân meeting privately with groups of female devotees. For a summary of the historical development of the sipahi, cavalrymen who were involved in the administration of the sub-units of Ottoman provinces to the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, see CI, pp. 193–206. MSV, p. 84. MSV, p. 82. Meaning he sought both loans from friends and interest-bearing loans from moneychangers. MSV, p. 85. MSV, p. 83; read maʿâs¸ for the erroneous mabâs¸ in the printed text. This term is not necessarily used to refer to an individual of Arab descent, but has multiple meanings in the early modern Ottoman context. In this case, it is most likely used to distinguish a local resident from the visitors from Rûm; see Jane Hathaway, “The Evlâd-i ʿArab (‘Sons of the Arabs’) in Ottoman Egypt: A Rereading,” in Colin Imber and Keiko Kiyotak (eds), Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: State, Province and the West, vol. 1, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 203–16. MSV, pp. 77–8. The anecdote and Fuʾâdî’s discussion occur in MSV, pp. 76–7, and again in the Türbenâme section of the work; MSV(T), pp. 180–2. For the influence Khurasan and Transoxiana in the development of Sufi literature and culture among the Turks, see Ahmet Yas¸ar Ocak, Kültür Tarihi Kaynağı Olarak Menâkıbnâmeler: Metodolojik Bir Yaklas¸ım (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1992), p. 13. It is notable that Fuʾâdî’s conception of the various ranks of sainthood found in the hierarchy of the unseen world does not follow that of Ibn al-ʿArabî himself. Ibn alʿArabî labels the nukabâʾ as being twelve in number, following al-Qurʾân, 5:12; and the nücebâʾ as being eight in number, in addition to reversing their order in the hierarchy. By Fuʾâdî’s time, it seems that aspects of this categorization had undergone some degree of modification across different branches of the order, thereby calling into question the extent to which we can assume any common conception of the complexity of Ibn alʿArabî’s teachings; see the description of Ibn al-ʿArabî’s cosmology in SOTS, esp. pp. 96–8 and 103–4. In fact, Fuʾâdî’s description does not even correspond fully with the account in MİO, pp. 46–8, where Oğuz claims the nukabâʾ are twelve in number, not three. MSV, p. 79. The full text of this narrative appears in MSV, pp. 74–6.

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5 An Uneven Legacy: the Succession . to ¸aʿbânS ı Veli to the End of the Tenth/Sixteenth Century

For the population of the Ottoman Empire, the death of the long lived Sultan Süleymân, the only ruler most had known, ushered in a period of growing instability. The impending arrival of the Muslim millennium in 1000/1591, and the political and economic tensions unleashed by the Ottoman Empire’s growing pains only added to the social and religious tensions of the age. For the nascent following of the S¸aʿbâniye order in Kastamonu, the uncertainty was doubly pronounced given the illness and death of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli shortly after Süleymân. Despite these challenges, the core membership of the order rallied around its leaders and principles, and a disparate group of several successors to S¸aʿbân’s legacy emerged who succeeded in maintaining his legacy. These figures had more direct connections with S¸aʿbân’s hagiographer, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, and their relationships with him developed on a much more personal level than Fuʾâdî could claim with regard to S¸aʿbân himself. Still, a careful reading of Fuʾâdî’s narrative of the post-S¸aʿbân era suggests that by the time he acceded to the leadership of the S¸aʿbâniye in 1012/1604, the order’s development still remained uneven in character, and the legacy of its founder was under threat as it receded into an increasingly distant past. . ¸aʿbânS ı Veli’s Death and Funeral Stabilizes the Order

One of the pivotal events in hagiography is the death of its subject, and Fuʾâdî’s account is no exception. Eleven pages in the printed text are given over to the discussion of S¸aʿbân’s passing; as a whole, they make up nearly a sixth of the chapter devoted to the saint’s life. This comes as no surprise, for given the troubles that the order had faced during S¸aʿbân’s lifetime, the transition to new

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leadership would be a critical test of his followers’ unity and commitment. S¸aʿbân, unlike some Halveti dignitaries, did try to prepare his followers for the inevitable: When . . . S¸aʿbân Efendi was about to arrive at the heavenly world . . . the lovers and dervishes came into his presence. He advised and admonished everyone according to his level and state. With life-giving words, he gave enlightenment and elevation to everyone’s soul, and happiness and light to everyone’s heart. When [his followers] said, “my lord, as soon as you go to the afterworld . . . what will happen to the state of the path, principles, lovers and dervishes?” he said, “don’t be pained; refer all your states to God . . . Our end is more auspicious than our beginning.”1

However, the matter of succession proved to be a more complicated matter for reasons not entirely of S¸aʿbân’s own making. Fuʾâdî indicated that S¸aʿbân was quite clear about the short-term process of transition, and that he sought to guarantee stability by naming two immediate successors: One day, when it was asked of that mine of acts of grace and ruler of saints, S¸aʿbân Efendi, “who [will take] the prayer-rug after you?” he announced the appointment with God’s inspiration, saying, “ʿOsmân comes, and after him Hayreddîn comes.” When it was asked, “who comes after them?” he made no appointment, [but] said “the prayer-rug will find its owner.”2

This account might be challenged as an ex post facto justification that Fuʾâdî created to legitimize the order’s leadership after S¸aʿbân’s death. The problems S¸aʿbân faced in building the order, however, suggest genuine reasons for concern about avoiding succession struggles. He probably reasoned that annointing a path of succession would guarantee the necessary time to consolidate the order to a point where it could chart its own future. On the other hand, he did not seek to micro-manage the future either. Whether this was a concession to God’s will, a lack of a third potential successor, or an unwillingness to create too many powerful figures among the order’s elect membership is unclear. Whatever the case, he left the order’s ultimate trajectory open-ended, to be claimed by whoever was judged most qualified to do so. This came to have consequences earlier than S¸aʿbân and his followers expected. Fuʾâdî’s description of the initial period after S¸aʿbân’s death evokes chaos, natural disorder, and a deep sense of depression. When S¸aʿbân’s followers heard of the passing of the great shaykh, they “wept and wailed with the burning of separation, and with âh and yâh sighs, their dark anguish rose to the heavens.”

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Another witness reported that “the sons of man were not the only ones on the face of the earth to cry; the angels, the firmament, and the sun and moon in the heavens also cried. Lightning flashed and thunder roared and all the clouds wept.” Even after S¸aʿbân’s burial, it rained for most of the following forty days, mirroring the prescribed period that Muslims mourned the dead.3 Whatever S¸aʿbân’s attempts at preparing his following, his sudden final illness and death nevertheless took his followers by surprise. Many in the region were described as racing to Kastamonu to attend the funeral which, under Islamic norms, was supposed to be held within twenty-four hours of death. His appointed successor, ʿOsmân Efendi, could not reach Kastamonu in time for the funeral, having been sent eastward to Tokat. Some evidence suggests that the funeral was even delayed until Friday afternoon to accommodate all the comings and goings that the occasion warranted.4 More disturbingly, when S¸aʿbân’s followers did come together to prepare the funeral of the great saint, a more potent controversy with troubling political implications broke out: The lovers and dervishes saw that nothing would be accomplished by crying. When they said, “the judgment is God’s, and verily we belong to God,” and set out to wash and wrap the corpse, generous and wealthy people among his lovers brought fine shrouds. While everyone was [arguing and] saying, “let him be wrapped in the shroud that I brought!” Abdussamad Halife brought a shroud that had been dipped in the waters of Zemzem5 and said, “this shroud belongs to the noble one himself. I brought it as a gift when I came from the noble pilgrimage. At that time, he didn’t take it himself; he said, ‘in our path, there is no saying, “take this, hide it away, and let me be wrapped in it when I die.” In the end, God is the guarantor for the coffin, and we accepted your gift. Let it stay with you; if destiny wish it, you shall bring it and wrap [me in it].’ The right is mine.” They suspected a trick, but after they confirmed and corroborated this state of affairs with the report of trustworthy witnesses, they broke off [their insistence].6

When we consider the personalities involved, this decision had considerable implications for the future of the order. Abdussamed Halife was the son of Eyüb Halife, one of S¸aʿbân’s first followers and the person primarily responsible for establishing the S¸aʿbâniye lodge near the site of Seyyid Sünnetî’s old mosque. Thus, the debate can be interpreted as a conflict over who would lay claim to the great saint’s sanctity. Would it be his oldest followers, who were not necessarily the greatest sources of temporal power in the community, or would it be more recent followers who were much wealthier and capable of laying their own claims to sanctified positions through their own resources? This broader debate lying behind the issue of S¸aʿbân’s shroud was resolved in

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favor of the older core of the order’s membership and their descendants, who had spent most of their lives in service to S¸aʿbân and his order. In coming to this decision, Fuʾâdî presents the order as having successfully upheld its basic principle, which was to value service to S¸aʿbân’s sub-branch of the Halveti order over access to worldly sources of power and privilege. He may have been tacitly trying to reinforce this point to the audience of his own time, and in so doing, illustrate how the order had successfully passed its first test after the death of its founder. Although critical, this event was not the pivotal turning point in expanding the reach of the S¸aʿbâniye. The death of the order’s founder, as in other situations pertaining to public figures in a given society, provoked a powerful surge of interest among the local population in Kastamonu. Furthermore, it was not only the local population who took notice of the event; it would be an outside visitor who played the decisive role in expanding S¸aʿbân’s legacy. It is here that S¸aʿbân’s network of friends, built over many decades, appeared to consolidate his sanctity. We have already encountered Muharrem Efendi, a one-time follower of Benli Sultan who had pursued a successful religious career in İstanbul. At the time of S¸aʿbân’s death, he had become a preacher at the Süleymaniye mosque complex in İstanbul. Yet, coincidentally, he had returned to Kastamonu on some business, and was about return to the Ottoman capital when the news came. In his own words, he recounted to the assembled multitude that he had delayed his departure at the request of his old friend: [Muharrem Efendi] said, “Muslims! When I wanted to go to İstanbul, and came to seek [S¸aʿbân’s] permission, he said, ‘Muharrem, brother, wait a few days, pray my [funeral] prayer, and go after that.’ The poor one [Muharrem] said [to himself], ‘he is not sick [to the extent that] he should die; however, he is sitting in the cell with the weakness of old age,’ and I deemed his noble request a possibility. Before twenty days had passed, this situation occurred, and what that mine of grace [and] the Lord’s wishes were, [they] are now known and established.” When he bade farewell to the people . . . emotion came over him with these words of farewell . . . [and] they moaned and cried together like the sheep and the lamb.7

The dramatic setting of the funeral’s imagery conceals the fact that Fuʾâdî may have taken liberties in presenting Muharrem Efendi as a fully-fledged disciple of S¸aʿbân. It seems more likely that they were friends and contemporaries, and Muharrem’s exalted position may even have been the more respected of the two in the eyes of Kastamonu residents. Still, S¸aʿbân’s followers were fortunate to have Muharrem Efendi present to

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lead his funeral prayer. Unlike the issue of the burial shroud, because Muharrem was respected by the local population as a prominent figure who was well established in İstanbul’s religious and political circles, pride of place in performing the funeral prayers was gladly granted to him. His talents in public oratory did not disappoint those who ceded the task to him. His prominent status in the broader context of the Ottoman state proved capable of drawing a substantial crowd. Many, if not most, of the local population in attendence was therefore not formally attached to the order, and many of them may not even have been aware of its existence until that moment. Muharrem Efendi, whose aforementioned background predisposed him to support the Muslim cult of saints, took the opportunity afforded by the death of his friend and contemporary to whip the large crowd into a furor over the neglect they had shown to the greatness in their midst. As Fuʾâdî recounts: The aforementioned Muharrem Efendi preached and gave advice to the people, and spoke of the virtuous ones of the order and the anecdotes of the saints on the occasion. He said about the master [S¸aʿbân]: “Muslims! S¸aʿbân Efendi was one of the masters who have manifested sainthood and grace from the time of the Prophet until this moment, and who are mentioned in the Tezkiretüʾl-Evliyâ8 and other [such works], and whose states and perfection are spoken of [there]. He was a master who would bend over the neck of his horse, and would seek in such-and-such a province thinking, ‘a good saint and a perfected guide is there,’ and he would find [him] and be satisfied and gain a share of his guidance on the path of God.” He expressed regret about [the loss of] all of the seekers, saying, “but what shall we do? We didn’t know his power. What a pity that we have lost a perfected guide like this!” He praised and lauded those who had lived long enough to [meet] the master, and those who were satisfied with the knowledge of God from him.9

For Fuʾâdî, Muharrem Efendi’s funeral eulogy was a wonderful didactic tool that not only buttressed the legitimacy of S¸aʿbân himself, but also educated future audiences about how to respond to the death of a great saint. In including Muharrem Efendi’s sermon, Fuʾâdî knew that the process Muharrem initiated during this extraordinary event would interweave S¸aʿbân’s funeral into the historical fabric of both Kastamonu and its Islamic tradition. Taking his cue from a story about the funeral of the great proponent of ecstatic mysticism, Bayâzid al-Bistâmî, Muharrem Efendi exhorted his audience to participate not just as passive observers, but to take an active role in the funerary rites of the great saint:

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Muharrem Efendi brought forth the noble corpse of S¸aʿbân Efendi, and explained the virtue and laudability of praying his [funeral] prayer. He related some of the anecdotes of the saints pertaining to this situation . . . [and] he said: “On the night that Bayezid Bistâmî passed into the afterlife, [his successor] Ebu Mûsâ saw in a trustworthy dream-vision that he took the Exalted Throne onto his head. In fact, when Ebu Mûsâ woke up, and was bewildered by the secret of the vision and its interpretation, there came into his mind with the inspiration of God: ‘Go to Bayezid, and let him make an interpretation of the vision.’ Ebu Mûsâ came to Bistâm, but he saw Bayezid had passed into the afterlife. When Ebu Mûsâ saw the funeral procession of the noble one, he was not able to grab onto the bier on account of the crowds and great multitude of people. In the end he went under the coffin, and took it on his head. Ebu Mûsâ said, ‘the moment that I took the coffin of Bayezid onto my head, the noble one called to me from inside the coffin, saying, “O Ebu Mûsâ, the throne that you saw in that dream is mine, you are now carrying me on your head.”’ Now, let it be known that the virtue of carrying the [Sufi] masters in this way is as great as carrying the Exalted Throne [itself]!”10

Muharrem Efendi’s use of this anecdote gives us a rare glimpse into how classic hagiographies that had become embedded into Ottoman Muslim tradition and religious life even before its heyday were used to exhort Ottoman publics to action. By citing a well-known source like the Tezkiretüʾl-Evliyâ that illustrated how exemplars of the past had participated in a great Sufi saint’s funeral, he guaranteed a groundswell of enthusiasm and a frenzy of public participation in the present.11 The state of excitement that this generated among his audience when they emulated the experience of Ebu Mûsâ made the event in which they participated become a great and memorable episode in their own lives. To leave no doubt about the benefits his audience was to receive, Muharrem Efendi, drawing on his experiences with the Bayrâmî shaykhs, went on to recite the story of an ordinary farmer who had an extraordinary experience after attending the funeral of Haci Bayrâm:12 The day that Haci Bayrâm Sultan went to the afterlife, a farmer came to the city of Ankara to get a plowshare repaired. He saw there was no one in the shops; instead, they had gone to the funeral prayer of Haci Bayrâm . . . He hung the plowshare around his waist and went to the funeral prayer also. Afterwards, the ironworkers put the plowshare into the forge, and while they worked hard, they couldn’t get it hot, and they stood surprised and bewildered. They informed the chief judge and the müfti. They also were stupefied . . . In the end, when they informed a noble [Sufi] . . . who was a person having secret knowledge from the successors of Haci Bayrâm, he asked with the inspiration of God, “where did

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you take the plowshare?” As soon as that person gave word that he was present at Haci Bayrâm’s funeral prayer and that the plowshare was with him, that noble one among the people of states solved the problem. He explained in pure belief, saying, “it is a sign that he who prayed the funeral prayer of Haci Bayrâm Sultan will not burn in the fiery wood of hell, due to the sanctity of that master.” At that point, Muharrem Efendi exhorted [the audience] to the funeral prayer of S¸aʿbân Efendi, saying, “in reality, Muslims, it is like that!”13

This building sequence of powerful anecdotes from hagiographical literature then sparked a response for which perhaps even Muharrem Efendi was not prepared. A near riot erupted as the devotees of the order were in the process of taking S¸aʿbân’s body to the slab at which his funeral prayer would be prayed at the conclusion of the eulogy. ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, then only nine years of age, went on to relive the events that were burned forever into his memory,14 and demonstrate how the crowd had incorporated the elements of Muharrem Efendi’s speech into a very public form of participation in S¸aʿbân’s funeral: All the people of the land even brought their little children, and while there was so much desire and inclination to perform the noble one’s funeral prayer, their desire was increased [even more] by Muharrem Efendi’s words, and there was a great crowd and throng as in the funeral prayers of Haci Bayrâm Sultan and Bayezid Bistâmî. My now deceased father made [me] come to [S¸aʿbân’s] funeral prayer when I was a child, [and I saw] when the inner circle of dervishes draped the black covering, like [that of] the Kaʿba of God [in Mecca], atop the white coffin in which the beautiful body was placed, and when they placed the black turban atop his head which was proof that he was the most noble Pole and the most exalted of Muslims. [I saw] when they came out to pray his funeral prayer, with the black turban that appears atop the coffin, and with the tevhîd-calls that the reciting dervishes made with vigor and loud voice. I saw in front of me that when [S¸aʿbân] . . . who was hidden from the eye of the people by being in seclusion for so much time, appeared from the door . . . by vigor, experience [of God], fever and rapture appearing among the people, one person would shout out with sincerity while another would weep in anguish. Such a cry of commotion and a call of yâ hû arose and came forth that it could not be written with the pen or described with speech . . . They grabbed on to the wooden poles attached to the coffin like the handholds of the Kaʿba, and some could not even hold on to one due to the crowd and multitude. But by the appearing of angelic power . . . they entered under the coffin of the noble one and carried it upon their heads, like the angels that carried the exalted throne, and like Ebu Mûsâ who carried the exalted throne in his dream and the following [day] carried the funeral bier of

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Bayezid upon his head. Those who could not do that rubbed their hands or their handkerchiefs on his coffin, his black covering or his black turban, with the intent of rubbing [their] forehead as at the Beytüʾl-Harâm or the Black Stone,15 and afterwards they rubbed their faces [with their hands]. In short, there was such a crowd and throng that the funeral bier could not go forward; it got stuck in place, and sometimes it went backward, and it was not guided with the haste which is canonically laudable in making the funeral prayer.16 Since postponement was necessary, permission was given to the men of the head emîr, who were present at the funeral, to push away and forbid the people by prudent means and polite behavior, and they also acted wisely in a customary form. When they forbade and pushed away the people by a good method, the enlightened coffin was placed on the funeral slab, and they began the prayer to enjoin mercy and salvation.17

The commotion that ensued was evidently not limited to the funeral procession. Fuʾâdî’s account of S¸aʿbân’s funeral provides insight into how the concept of relics and sacred substances functioned in rural Kastamonu. For example, while Muharrem Efendi and one of S¸aʿbân Efendi’s followers were washing the saint’s body, other people struggled to collect the water that was used in the washing and put it into various kinds of receptacles, or wet their handkerchiefs. Even those who weren’t able to collect water gathered up the mud which was created by the spillage, thinking that it would prove valuable in the curing of illness. Others even tore to pieces the rush matting that S¸aʿbân had sat upon while in his room in the lodge and divided it up among themselves, as if it were booty taken in a conquest.18 The destruction was not just limited to rush matting. S¸aʿbân’s followers even struggled to place his coffin in the grave: Before the noble coffin made it to the side of the sepulcher, and the carrying-rods were taken from the noble coffin, the people broke apart the rods to take a piece with blessings, saying, “it is from a true saint,” and they distributed it as if [it were] a living wage . . . They also gravitated to the noble coffin . . . and they clutched the pieces of the noble coffin to their chests for the cure of the wounds of their hearts, as if [it were] a part of [their] share of God. They hid it away like their souls, and . . . it was a cure for problems and a remedy for however many illnesses through the wisdom of God and the acts of grace of the saints. They fumigated rooms with it [to cure] fevers and other illnesses. In addition to cures being found by the command of God, it is known that by an act of grace, yogurt was made by mixing a piece of the coffin into water, [even] without adding any fermented milk (damûzluk).19

Fuʾâdî’s accounts shows us that the Muslim cult of sainthood could also draw on the power of relics, for the people valued objects associated with the blessed

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aura (bereket) of the saint. The relics had important functional uses that made them objects of physical as well as sentimental value. Seen in this light, the hagiography’s earlier warnings about hiding one’s miraculous acts of grace from the general public due to the economic incentives they could generate were clearly not idle ones. However, what sets these relics apart from their Christian counterparts is that they were not spread around to act as attractions for other shrines in the region, nor were they prominently displayed. They were instead considered objects of value for personal use, saved for assistance in extraordinarily difficult situations. Such assistance consisted primarily of the prevention of illness or the provision of food; this illustrates the major concerns of a pre-modern rural population in much the same way as pre-modern European folktales do.20 Another motif common to Islamic saints was the divine illumination of their tombs. Underscoring the point that failure to participate in a saint’s funeral meant squandering an important opportunity, Fuʾâdî related the story of a farmer who had come to Kastamonu to pray the Friday prayers on the day of the funeral. He heard about the event, but had other business to attend to in town after the Friday prayer. But later, while walking home through the hills above town, he noticed that a rainbow appeared that stretched down from the sky toward the district of Hisârardı where S¸aʿbân’s grave was being prepared, despite the fact that there had been no rain.21 When he mentioned this to Haci Mehmed, the anecdote’s teller, Mehmed rebuked him, saying, “oh stupid man! Why didn’t you go to the funeral prayer of a master like him? That wasn’t a rainbow that appeared. It was a light from God [shining] upon the noble one!”22 Fuʾâdî extends the illumination metaphor further by stressing that the funeral was attended by the jinn, angels, and spirits of the unseen hierarchy of saints, who continued to illuminate the tomb at night even after the excitement subsided. The excitement of the funeral suggests that the influence of S¸aʿbân Efendi grew more powerful after his death than while he was alive. But this did not mean that the order had transcended all its problems. A lingering sense of insecurity pervades Fuʾâdî’s narrative, and this is nowhere more evident than in his closing remarks about the events that had transpired: How many [people] saw, knew and became aware of the anecdotes and states which were written up to this point from the first chapter [of this work] . . . So many upright and good-hearted people were like that [person] who sees by believing in and affirming those who know and see, [and] do not censure. But how many others also could never see or know, and did not understand the secret, wisdom, or aspect of those who saw and knew, [but] remained under a veil and in the valley of ignorance due to [their] censure. Because this point is a divinely given virtue. Not everyone is guided to it. “Say: Verily bounty is in the hands

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of God; he gives it to whomever He wishes, and He is the possessor of great bounty!”23 The person who will not submit in every respect to a guide on the path of God, he shall remain rejected and uneducated; he doesn’t know the state and power of the true saints. Because he who comes to the saint comes to God. It is also said that some of the seekers are touched by God, while others are touched by those who are touched [by God]. Both of these are true statements. But if he is of the people of aptitude, and if he exchanges the useless attributes of his carnal soul, through struggle and ability, for good attributes, the veils and afflictions will leave his soul, and his heart will be a mirror full of purity and clarity. He will be among the people of witnessing and awareness, and he will know the states and secrets of the saints who are the perfection of the actions and attributes of God Most High, and the people of the manifesting of the divine essence, and he’ll be saved from censure.24

Even in a closing statement intended to be the triumphant conclusion of S¸aʿbân’s life and career, the muttering of unconvinced and hostile anti-Sufi factions in Ottoman society linger just out of earshot, like the sinister whisperings of unseen spirits. The period following S¸aʿbân’s death would see new challenges for his sub-branch of the Halveti order, and they would develop within a matter of months. . Stabilizing the Sub-branch: Successors ʿOsmân Efendi and . Hayreddîn Efendi to 987/1579

The first crisis of the post-S¸aʿbân era struck immediately. S¸aʿbân’s hand-picked successor, ʿOsmân Efendi (d. 978/1569), arrived as quickly as he could from his own lodge in Tokat to take S¸aʿbân’s place. Unfortunately for the still grieving followers of the saint, he was unable to steady the order in the aftermath of the funeral. His hurried journey to Kastamonu was followed almost immediately by an ill-advised attempt at initiating ascetic exercises that Fuʾâdî claimed were rooted in his grief over his spiritual guide’s death. This asceticism took the form of a forty-day spiritual retreat (erbaʿîn) in S¸aʿbân’s tomb, and ʿOsmân, perhaps still weary from his trek, was not up to the task. According to dates in the hagiography, he died less than two months after S¸aʿbân.25 This posed problems for S¸aʿbân’s legitimacy – what saint would anoint a successor who was doomed to follow him to the grave so quickly? Fuʾâdî tackled this delicate subject by drawing an analogy between ʿOsmân Efendi’s career as a successor to that of the first caliph after the Prophet Muhammad, Abu Bakr (d. 12/634). Since Abu Bakr was accepted as being the most virtuous of the community after Muhammad in the earliest days of Islamic history, he

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was clearly the best choice to act as successor, despite the fact that his tenure as caliph was short in comparison with those who followed him. Fuʾâdî applies the same logic to the relationship between ʿOsmân Efendi and S¸aʿbân, and pointed out that ʿOsmân was buried on the north side of S¸aʿbân’s tomb, another deliberate parallel to the physical relationship between the graves of the Prophet and Abu Bakr.26 Yet ʿOsmân’s untimely demise was not the only problem that swirled around his relationship with the order’s following. Fuʾâdî’s anecdotes about the shortlived successor imply a measure of pre-existing uneasiness about him. For example, his earlier life required some tactful explanation: Having a lively and loving disposition, and being a youth full of generosity and munificence, he was addicted to eating, drinking, [playing] stringed instruments and conversation with upright friends. But he used to abstain from immorality, vice and association with evil people [despite this]. While in this state, he ran into the master [S¸aʿbân] at some place, and when he rubbed his face in the dust of his dignity by kissing his knee and requested his help and prayers . . . the zeal of the carnal passions was replaced with spiritual zeal, and metaphorical (mecâzî) love with true (hakîkî) love. He met together with the master again by chance, and renounced talk of concerns save God, repented from his heart and soul and pledged allegiance [to the shaykh]. Being on the journey to God, he broke his stringed instrument into pieces and became one who spoke of naught but the word of the heart.27

As in the case of the relationship between the Sünbüliye hagiographer Sinâneddîn and his father Yaʿkûb, we once again encounter a saint who began his career as a person who may have been considered something of a reprobate.28 While repenting of problems in one’s past was no obstacle to achieving later perfection in Sufi circles, one can read into Fuʾâdî’s narrative a careful limitation of potentially sinful aspects of his past. It seeks to present ʿOsmân Efendi as not being the worst type of sinner, for his companions were not bad people and he needed only to overcome some bad habits. This conjunction of issues indicates that a justification needed to be offered for perceived weaknesses in ʿOsmân’s legitimacy that were not reflected in S¸aʿbân’s piety and longevity. Furthermore, they offer indirect clues about ʿOsmân’s background in that he emerged out of a prosperous enough background that allowed him time to eat, drink, and carouse with friends. While the hagiography is otherwise silent on the issue of ʿOsmân’s history, grounds for speculation exist that his family may have been among the better off in Kastamonu. Still, had these been the only problems that the community faced in assessing

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ʿOsmân Efendi’s brief tenure and legacy, they probably could have been overlooked. Yet the narrative also implies that ʿOsmân was not always circumspect in his public discourse and disposition, and this was a cause for concern. At one point, even S¸aʿbân had to step in to defend his successor against the murmurings of other Halveti dervishes under his guidance: When [ʿOsmân] came from Tokat to Kastamonu to pay a visit to the master [S¸aʿbân], while making conversation in the place where the dervishes were having a feast to honor the guest, since ʿOsmân Efendi’s character was open and his spiritual power advanced, he showed the waves of ecstasy that were in the ocean of his heart . . . and the pearls of spiritual knowledge that were on the shore and mother-of-pearl of his soul . . . [W]hen he spoke so many words full of secrets, some of the people of the gathering with spiritual power could handle it, [but] some of them not having the ecstatic state could not bear it, and when they informed the master [S¸aʿbân] that he was revealing secrets, that mine of wisdom and treasury of knowledge listened to them and understood their wishes, and after thinking a while, said, “my lambs, be silent about ʿOsmân and leave him to his ecstatic state.” By means of an allusion to explain the perfection of his proximity and nearness to God Most High, and the perfection of his state and knowledge in the divine secrets, he commanded: “Dervishes! ʿOsmân is a descendant of the cushion (minder oğlânı).29 Wherever he should sit, in whatever manner he should sit, whatever he should say and whatever form he should say it in is accepted in the presence of God Most High.”30

In contrast to the cautious outlook espoused by S¸aʿbân, ʿOsmân was viewed as somewhat indiscreet in his public utterances; he may have tended toward the ecstatic range of the mystical spectrum in a way akin to the famed mystic Mansûr al-Hallâj (d. 309/922). His conduct and remarks clearly worried some of S¸aʿbân’s followers and underscore the point that S¸aʿbân’s choice of successor was questioned even before his death. The order’s concern was not unjustified, for the tenth/sixteenth century had seen a number of cases in which indiscreet or misunderstood words had triggered an inquisition and execution at the hands of the political authorities. Furthermore, while Fuʾâdî is silent on the issue, this activity may have played a role in attempts by others to put themselves forward as alternate choices for the succession and chain of authority. Given the brevity of ʿOsmân’s tenure at the head of the order, the controversy may not have destabilized its following much. Still, there are indications in the narrative that ʿOsmân himself was not comfortable with his leadership role. While Fuʾâdî explains ʿOsmân’s activities through reference to his divinely granted foresight that his life was coming to an end, his actions may also have

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reflected a certain discomfort or intimidation at taking S¸aʿbân’s place. When he first arrived in Kastamonu, rather than move into the lodge adjacent to the complex or take up residence in S¸aʿbân’s cell, he instead settled at the foot of S¸aʿbân’s tomb and spent the night there. When the dervishes came the following morning to take him to be seated on S¸aʿbân’s prayer rug, he refused the honor: [ʿOsmân] let forth a sigh and said, “brothers, this inconsolable one didn’t come here to give guidance. I came to do the 40-day retreat (erbaʿîn). I’ll pass on to the afterlife by moving from the corporeal to the spiritual realm on the fortieth day, because I have no strength for enduring his separation [from me].” When they said, “God Most High deliver you from grief; the suffering of the master’s departure is enough for us!,” he replied, “the judgment is God’s. This evening, the prophet Hızır came, and he dug my tomb on the north side of the noble one’s.”31

The dialogue may mask a mutual awkwardness inherent in ʿOsmân Efendi’s sudden return from a distant place, or even a lack of comfort with S¸aʿbân’s local following. Despite Fu’âdî’s best efforts, a sense of discomfort swirls around ʿOsmân Efendi, and his rapid demise meant that the already troubled order quickly had to look to the second successor chosen by S¸aʿbân. Hayreddîn Efendi (d. 987/1579), in contrast to ʿOsmân, provided more stability and longevity. Although S¸aʿbân had also sent him away to Amasya to expand the order there, he seems to have maintained stronger links with the community in Kastamonu than ʿOsmân. He originally worked as a shopkeeper in the marketplace and was a respected member of the local community, though not among its most powerful elite. Narratives about him suggest that his relationship with the Kastamonu community was not as awkward. However, Fuʾâdî’s informant on the matter, Haci İlyâs Efendi, was not an unbiased source. He was Hayreddîn’s son, whom we encountered through his recollections about going to the Honsâlâr mosque to hear S¸aʿbân preaching. His friendship with Fuʾâdî and eyewitness accounts of events allowed Fuʾâdî to humanize Hayreddîn in a way that would have been difficult with the more mysterious ʿOsmân. Haci İlyâs is nevertheless an enlightening source for the burdens of Sufi leadership on individual families. Describing his father’s early service to S¸aʿbân, he spoke of the difficulties this created as Hayreddîn became more deeply involved in the order. He eventually withdrew from the day to day running of his business and left the shop in the hands of his workers. Eventually, he turned the business over to İlyâs when S¸aʿbân commissioned him to spread the order in Amasya, and as İlyâs recounted, he proved ill-prepared for the task:

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One day the noble [S¸aʿbân] . . . sent [my father Hayreddîn] to Amasya with the successorship. He didn’t take anyone from his family or children [with him], but he gave to this poor one [İlyâs] a purse into which he placed the capital [from the business], and he said, “don’t ever empty this purse, and place whatever you earn into it as soon as you earn it. Take from it, and spend for the specific things that are necessary for the shop and the house, and take it all out at once and don’t estimate or count it; place a little or a lot of silver coins into it [without regard to amount]; it will never run out. But be warned; you should not reveal this to strangers! If a stranger hears, this state and blessing will depart from the purse.” The state that he spoke of . . . was confirmed and accurate [regarding] the purse. I used to estimate that if I were to put in one silver coin, it would generate ten silver coins, and if I were to put ten silver coins, it would generate a hundred; it never ran out. The poor one [İlyâs] used to be conceited due to this act of grace; I didn’t used to balance expenditure with income. One day, an elderly dervish by the name of Emrullah Dede who was among my father’s friends spoke persistently for the purpose of advice and admonishment: “Did your father tell you [to behave] like this? Why are you going around in idleness?” This poor one, neglectfully thinking that Emrullah Dede was among the elder dervishes and not a stranger, explained the secret of the purse to him and gave word of its nature. As soon as I said “God willing, the purse doesn’t empty out through the secret of the saints and the act of grace of the pure ones,” he scolded me, saying, “oh spendthrift, oh incorrigible one, why are you revealing the secret of the saints? Did it fall to you to betray the trust of the saints in this way?” After that, I couldn’t find the state that [existed] before in the purse.32

Once again, this narrative reinforces a primary didactic message in prohibiting public speech about miraculous events, especially if they could be tied to economic gain. Fuʾâdî emphasizes this point by appending another advisory note, arguing that it is for this reason that the saints do not reveal their powers to everyone. If someone who doesn’t understand the problems inherent in wielding this power reveals it, he will cause the Sufi leader a great deal of difficulty.33 But another issue can also be read into the narrative: a potential tension between Hayreddîn and his son. Instead of looking after the family business in a frugal and careful way, İlyâs squandered the family fortune with poor decision-making, as many young people in any given context would be prone to do. A second anecdote from İlyâs then follows, describing a mysterious encounter he had two days before ʿOsmân Efendi’s death while passing through the courtyard of the Ağa İmaret mosque in Kastamonu.34 A dervish approached him and began to speak to him as if he were an old friend, asking him how his father was doing in Amasya. When İlyâs said that he had just had news of him and he

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was well, the stranger informed him that he had good tidings, for ʿOsmân Efendi would die in two days and his father would be returning to take his place shortly. As he turned and hurriedly departed by the courtyard door, a confused İlyâs ran after him, only to find that he had disappeared. When his father returned, İlyâs asked him about this. His father informed him, “he is one of the forty who are perpetually arranging and improving the states and affairs of the sons of mankind by God’s command.” Hayreddîn had asked him to convey news of the impending changes to his son to gladden his heart.35 The joy that this news brought once more awkwardly ties into the untimely death of S¸aʿbân’s first successor. But it also demonstrates the hardship that core followers of a Halveti shaykh could experience once charged with spreading the order abroad. It required the devotee to uproot himself from his accustomed place, and represented the ultimate test of loyalty to the leadership of the order and its principle of rejecting all worldly ties. İlyâs’s misuse of the family finances represented but one manifestation of the disruptions that Hayreddîn’s promotion imposed upon his family. However, Hayreddîn’s acceptance of the challenge, and the sacrifices he made was a mark of legitimacy for his succession to leadership of the order. Unfortunately, Fuʾâdî gives us little else by which to assess Hayreddîn’s career after he took over leadership of the order in Kastamonu. Since Fuʾâdî did not really join the Halveti order until some years after Hayreddîn’s death, he did not have a great deal of personal experience with either of S¸aʿbân’s first two successors. Nevertheless, his thin coverage seems odd, given that he knew Hayreddîn’s son; editorially, he must have preferred to move on to other things. Whatever the case, his brief description suggests that Hayreddîn’s leadership was solid enough: In addition to sending perfected and excellent followers to all parts of the world, his blessed breath was the cause of cures through the power of God. People concerned about necessities, who were afflicted by every illness, sickness, or other calamity, used to depart from the noble presence satisfied, and others used to reach satisfaction after some time [had passed].36

Hayreddîn upheld S¸aʿbân’s legacy of training additional successors and stabilized the order. He had strong connections with the business and mercantile communities in Kastamonu from his former career, and these people clearly flocked to him for help and maintained the local constituency. His son’s presence in the vicinity of a mosque near the metalworkers’ shops may indicate that this was his former trade. Fuʾâdî’s limited discussion leaves the historian thinking that we know more

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about Haci İlyâs than we do about Hayreddîn himself. The silence is all the more frustrating because we know that the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order, under the aegis of the notorious S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ, had begun a rise to the inner circles of power in the Ottoman capital through S¸ücâʿ’s attachment to the royal court; first, through his introduction to the Ottoman prince Murad III in Manisa, and then, subsequently, in the Ottoman capital after Murad’s accession to the throne.37 Informants for the hagiography, arguably the best-placed sources to speculate on the relationship between Hayreddîn and these events (or the lack thereof), offer us nothing by which we can assess these developments. . ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s Teachers: Abdülbâkî Efendi and . Muhyiddîn Efendi (1579–1604)

The vagueness that marks S¸aʿbân’s chosen successors gives way to a more colorful narrative by the time Hayreddîn Efendi’s ten-year tenure as head of the order came to an end. Hayreddîn’s death marked a turning point, as Abdülbâkî Efendi (d. 997/1589) would become the first leadership figure who did not receive direct confirmation from S¸aʿbân himself, instead being chosen by the order’s membership so that “the prayer-rug could find its master.” Moreover, Abdülbâkî would be the figure who would initiate the future hagiographer of the S¸aʿbâniye, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, into the order. Yet what is most striking about Abdülbâkî is that he was not always resident in Kastamonu during his leadership of the order. When Fuʾâdî decided to pursue the path of Sufism in his mid-twenties, following the memories of his youth, he went to seek out the successor to S¸aʿbân only to find that he had made an extended trip to his home town of İskilip. Fuʾâdî was told he would have to wait some time until his return.38 This information is intriguing, as İskilip was no longer an insignificant provincial center by the 990s/1580s. In fact, it had made a rapid ascent, having recently received a number of evkaf founded by the legendary Ottoman s¸eyhülislâm, Ebûsuʿûd.39 While Ebûsuʿûd also endowed a number of properties in İstanbul and spent most of his life and career there, he retained a strong connection with his home town, where his father had been a prominent Bayrâmî shaykh.40 In addition, the town was not lacking in Sufi foundations and sites; when Evliyâ Çelebi visited the town in the seventeenth century, it was home to a surprising number of pilgrimage places and saints’ tombs, and he lists at least five of them by name.41 This activity hints that Abdülbâkî saw value in directing at least part of his efforts toward his burgeoning home town. With regard to Abdülbâkî’s early life, Fuʾâdî recounted that he had to live in the shadow of his father, ʿAlî, who had acquired a good deal of fame locally

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for reasons that had nothing to do with Sufism. Both Abdülbâkî’s son and some of the older folk of İskilip recalled the event for Fuʾâdî many years later when he asked them why Abdülbâkî’s father was nicknamed “Persian” (ʿAcem) ʿAlî: [T]hey related that a famed and mighty wrestler came from the lands of Persia to Anatolia, and when he came to the sancak of Çorum, whichever champion he was to wrestle with, he defeated [him]. When he was about to depart for İstanbul, he also wrestled with the champion ʿAlî. [ʿAlî] fearlessly defeated the Persian [wrestler], and became famous by that name.42

Interestingly, Fuʾâdî corroborated this story by citing additional informants in the form of several unnamed successors of Necmeddîn Hasan Efendi (d. 1019/1611), a long-time head of the Sünbüliye order in İstanbul. This indicates that by the first decade of the eleventh/seventeenth century, when Fuʾâdî wrote his work, the two branches of the order may have established better relations than narratives from S¸aʿbân’s time indicated.43 We do not know how these followers of the İstanbul-based branch of the order had heard about this event; maybe they originally hailed from İskilip and only later joined Necmeddîn Hasan’s branch of the order. Subsequently, they might have been sent to the region, where they encountered Fuʾâdî as well. Beyond these connections, however, the story is interesting in and of itself simply because it reflects upon one of the pastimes of the Anatolian countryside in the form of wrestling contests staged between local competitors and traveling professionals. Given the tenth/sixteenth-century time period, one might also speculate that the wrestler in question might have been part of a Safavid campaign to demonstrate the physical superiority of their warriors over their Ottoman counterparts, aiming to sway the opinions of Ottoman subjects whose allegiance to the state were not strong. ʿAcem ʿAlî’s defeat of this champion might have carried overtones of Sunnî Ottoman heroics against a Persian invader. Alternatively, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the name carried overtones of foreign origin that had to be explained away in the antiSafavid Ottoman context. Fuʾâdî turned this anecdotal background to a different kind of use. Removing the spotlight from the heroics of Abdülbâkî’s father, he chose instead to illustrate how the popular sport of wrestling competitions enjoyed by Ottoman communities could serve as a metaphor for important ideas pertaining to the Halveti path: According to the understanding [of the Arabic proverb], “the son is the secret of the father,” . . . his son [Abdülbâkî] did not exert himself in wrestling in the objective [sense]; he wrestled instead with the powers of the carnal soul which

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drew strength from negative attributes which were in the subjective world, meaning he blocked his soul from obtaining [carnal] needs [from] the base characteristics of the world. By being victorious over the carnal soul through this struggle, he learned the rational sciences (funûn-ı ʿakliye) and perfected [his knowledge of] the transmitted scholarship (ʿulûm-ı nakliye) in the world of utter poverty. He was a traveler on the path of exoteric [knowledge], and he studied the best lessons from the most excellent masters, and became famous through perfected knowledge . . . His carnal passions, which were placed in his human existence in opposition to the soul by command of God, attacked his human soul through the power of exoteric knowledge, which gives worldliness and conceit to a person through the interference of the needs of the carnal soul, and [they] came out to the lands of humanity from the lands of nature like the wrestler came from the lands of Persia. When he did not accept or consent to the annihilation of existence and the leaving of the world, which is the reason for eternal permanence and eternal life, and wanted to grapple with the wrestler of the carnal passions . . . the wrestling match announcer (câzgîr) of rational goals entered the playing field and made the two of them wrestle . . .44

Here, Fuʾâdî builds for his audience an analogy for the struggle that Abdülbâkî Efendi had with the idea of giving up worldly power and position, drawn from mastery of the exoteric religious sciences. By using the metaphor of the wrestling match, Fuʾâdî created an easily understood image of the struggle that must take place in every Sufi aspirant between his/her divinely inspired spirit and the passions of his/her carnal soul. The metaphor also served a purpose in placing Abdülbâkî’s achievement in the same league as that of his father, which must have been significant given that tales of it still circulated decades after it happened. In any case, Abdülbâkî’s solid educational background, like S¸aʿbân’s, is stressed here as the foundation for his career as a mystic. He reportedly even lost the sight in one eye during his youth on account of his extensive reading, which led some of his contemporaries to quip that if this hadn’t happened, his knowledge would have been overwhelming in scope.45 Abdülbâkî’s new path, however, left him with a tough choice on how to proceed. On the one hand, he considered traveling to distant Sofya to study with Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi (d. 960/1553), one of the most prominent Halveti shaykhs of Süleymân’s reign.46 However, he also received word of S¸aʿbân Efendi in Kastamonu. Swayed either by his hereditary roots in that area of north-central Anatolia or convenience, he decided to visit S¸aʿbân first in order to finalize his decision. While speaking with him, he discerned S¸aʿbân’s superiority through clues in his words. When S¸aʿbân asked him his name, and he responded, “Abdülbâkî,” S¸aʿbân encouraged him to take up the path of Sufism if he truly

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wanted to be a servant of God.47 More importantly, S¸aʿbân also remarked to him, “young man, as soon as you are knowledgeable and learned in the two forms of knowledge, exoteric and esoteric, you’ll have two wings, and in knowledge of God you’ll go out and fly up to the highest stations and the exalted throne, and mix the honey (bal) with oil.”48 Abdülbâkî interpreted this play on the word bal as indicating S¸aʿbân’s awareness of his indecision on pledging allegiance to Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi, and promptly hailed S¸aʿbân as his chosen guide. Abdülbâkî’s choice was not without significance in the cultural context of the era. Given the description of Abdülbâkî’s early career as a scholar well versed in exoteric knowledge, he would have seemed a more natural fit with Sofyalı Bâlî. Sofyalı Bâlî was an activist involved in the notable religious controversies of his day; for example, he wrote an influential letter to Sultan Süleymân defending the practice of pious foundations endowed with cash against the attacks against it by the s¸eyhülislâm Çivîzâde. Moreover, Nathalie Clayer has also defined him as an active crusader against religious groups that he viewed as having strayed into heretical practices.49 His followers continued to be more influential in the capital at this time than those of a provincial shaykh like S¸aʿbân, as evidenced by the case of one of his prominent successors, Muslihuddin Nûreddînzâde (d. 982/1574).50 By rejecting Sofyalı Bâlî in favor of S¸aʿbân, Abdülbâkî had chosen Fuʾâdî’s protagonist, who represented a simpler life that was not as involved with politics and worldly issues over an individual who might otherwise have been viewed as a far more talented and influential person. In keeping with general practice, S¸aʿbân trained his follower and then dispatched him to another town in the region to build the order there. Perhaps recognizing his potential connections in the region around İskilip, S¸aʿbân sent Abdülbâkî to the town of Çorum, a significant town to the east of that region. The hagiography’s implication of an early attachment to S¸aʿbân as his spiritual master suggests that he spent many years in the region while retaining connections with his home town of İskilip nearby. When Hayreddîn Efendi died, the notables of the order gathered, and recognizing Abdülbâkî’s long years of experience and extensive grounding in both the exoteric and esoteric paths of knowledge, they elected him as the head of the order.51 The networks he had built in towns further to the east could play a role in consolidating the order further at a critical juncture. Interestingly, we can see another pattern in that all three of S¸aʿbân’s successors followed a pattern of returning from eastern towns where they had been sent. Abdülbâkî endeared himself to the population and following of the order fairly quickly. One of his practices was to spend Thursday evenings teaching aspects of the Qurʾan and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad to the community, in addition to giving the Friday sermon in the mosque. With his

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credentials in both exoteric and esoteric branches of knowledge, his sessions attracted not only the local folk but many of the most prominent scholars of the immediate vicinity. Fuʾâdî recounted how his public speaking skills had the ability to stir his audiences emotionally: When he made speeches from [the place where he sat], and when the dervishes afflicted with infinite troubles listened with the ear of the heart and soul to the exposition full of ecstasy and the heart ravishing explanation full of purity, they became amazed and bewildered. They fell from a state of sobriety into a state of annihilation, and some grew weary from the ascendancy of love with the manifestation of the state of ecstasy, and some others shouted out with ardor. When it came to the cries of hây and hû and the circle of the zikr of God formed with the ascendancy of the thought of God, sometimes it used to occur that the noble [Abdülbâkî], by being found in the second stage (fark-ı sânî) and the [state of] the stage after union (fark-ı baʿdüʾl-cemʿ),52 used to throw himself involuntarily into the circle of the zikr, and used to occupy himself with the vocal zikr which was the cause of divine openings for the dervishes through the state of rapture. Through this eagerness and witnessing, many people became part of the order and achieved satisfaction, and he sent followers to all parts.53

From this account, one senses that Abdülbâkî’s stature and willingness to engage in a more public role by reaching out to all levels of the local population as head of the order helped to increase the order’s strength and visibility in the region. Yet Abdülbâkî’s partial absence from the Kastamonu scene leaves a continued narrative absence with regard to critical changes taking place in S¸aʿbâniye circles elsewhere. Abdülbâkî’s accession coincided with the height of the power and influence of his counterpart S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ at the court of Sultan Murad III. We know this from the resources that S¸ücâʿ was directing into the S¸aʿbâniye site in Kastamonu; however, no relationship between the two emerges in the account.54 Whatever S¸ücâʿ’s role in the activities of the order, Abdülbâkî followed S¸aʿbân’s example by using exoteric knowledge discussions to draw a public following, and then recruiting from his audiences to build the order. The order that Fuʾâdî would inherit fifteen years later may well have been a product of Abdülbâkî’s decade of leadership. Fuʾâdî alludes to the growth of the order by stating that the number of members had grown so large that he could not include this information even in the longer version of his hagiographical work, much less the abridgement. Instead, he directed those who were interested in tracking the development of the order’s membership to a specific informant who was still living at the time he wrote the work, Elmâcızâde Muhyiddîn Efendi.55

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Despite his clear admiration for Abdülbâkî, Fuʾâdî was unable to complete his Sufi training with him before his death. We might speculate that this had something to do with Abdülbâkî’s absence from Kastamonu; we know that he died in İskilip and was buried there, rather than with S¸aʿbân Efendi and his first two successors.56 Yet Fuʾâdî’s strong feelings for him are clear, as he was reluctant to discuss anecdotes about his former teacher, especially acts of grace associated with him. Abdülbâkî not only shared S¸aʿbân’s aversion to public proclamation of his acts of grace or direction of divine intervention to his followers; he went one step further and insisted that they should not be discussed even among private circles of his followers, even after his death.57 As a result, Fuʾâdî pointedly abstains from any further description of the events of his master’s career, perhaps out of genuine concern on his part to avoid raising these discussions in an environment where contemporaries were still present. He directs his audience’s attention instead to the fourth and final successor, Muhyiddîn Efendi. With the death of Abdülbâkî, Fuʾâdî apparently did not shift his allegiance to any new potential successor, and other followers of the order may not have done so either. By his own admission, for several years after Abdülbâkî’s death, Fuʾâdî left the Sufi path and engaged in other pursuits, which indicated some disruptions over who would fill Abdülbâkî’s shoes. This may have had something to do with Muhyiddîn’s more humble origins, as he originated neither from the Kastamonu region nor from a scholarly background as Abdülbâkî had. He had not even entered the Sufi path through the direct agency of S¸aʿbân himself, but through one of his minor followers, Mahmûd Efendi, who was giving guidance in the town of Küre-i Hadîd (literally, “Iron Forge”), a village in the area of modern day Araç, west of Kastamonu whose name suggests a mining-based economy.58 While we have seen that the towns and villages around Kastamonu were not incapable of generating competent religious scholars, some in the order may have been put off by the lack of a higher profile successor. However, careful research shows that Mahmûd Efendi did make a contribution to the S¸aʿbâniye canon that would prove influential among later generations. This was a short epistle entitled Risâle-i Tâciye (“Treatise on Headgear”), which came to occupy a place in the hearts of the S¸aʿbâniye and was included among a compilation of Fuʾâdî’s later writings, despite the fact that he was not the author! Mahmûd Efendi explained the circumstances of his letter’s composition in Arabic before switching over into Turkish:59 When some of the brothers requested knowledge of the canonically appropriate dervish headgear (qalansuwah), for the purpose of opposing [some] disruptive men (al-rijâl al-maftûnah), the poor one Mahmûd b. Nafs b. Kamâl b. Maʿsûd [. . . wanted . . .]60 to compile what he understood from the Book, the practice of

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the Prophet, the consensus of the community, and whatever [else] discusses [the issue of headgear] from the religious sciences, so that it will be a benefit for the surety of the believers, a gentle [reminder] for the doubts of the waverers, and a defense against the censuring of the censurers.61

Despite some difficulties in interpretation, we learn that the text was put together sometime around the mid-point of the tenth/sixteenth century as a means of deflecting anti-Sufi criticism of practices surrounding the wearing of dervish headgear. This follows a pattern, as it is not the only known Halveti tract from this period about the topic; Seyyid Seyfullah Kâzım b. Nizâmeddîn (d. 1009/1601) also penned a short tract on the matter in İstanbul in roughly the same period.62 This suggests that headgear issues became an important topic about which many shaykhs of the period felt obliged to comment. In the case of Seyfullah, he phrases his tract in the form of answers to commonly asked questions about the nature of the headgear his dervishes were wearing, such as whether it was a strict requirement for them, or just a canonically laudable act. But the defensive tone of his short missive is also apparent, in that the questioners claim that the headgear being worn could not be justifed by past practice, as it had fourteen seams instead of twelve.63 In the aftermath of the Safavid wars, dervishes arriving from, or having connections to, founders who had lived in the eastern regions of the Islamic world were probably subject to suspicious inquiries about the nature of their beliefs, especially if their dress set them apart from the general population.64 Seyyid Seyfullah’s multiple interpretations of the numerical value of the fourteen seams (terk) and fourteen caps (kisve) of his branch of the order’s headgear linked it firmly to orthodox mainstays, such as the twentyeight words of the opening chapter of the Qurʾan, the number of the virtues and vices to be conquered as part of their path, and the number of actions required to complete the ritual washing (abdest).65 What this indicates in terms of Mahmûd Efendi’s version of this project is that even at the village level, some anti-Halveti activity was present. Mahmûd Efendi saw wisdom in proffering a simple text that his less advanced following could use to deflect the attacks of their detractors. Incidentally, Fuʾâdî’s prolific output in later years about S¸aʿbâniye rules and practices suggests that Mahmûd’s example may have inspired him to expand upon that legacy (see Part III, below). In fact, one of Fuʾâdî’s later works paid tribute to Mahmûd Efendi by commencing with a discussion of the importance of Sufi clothing and dress in its first chapter.66 As for Mahmûd Efendi, his tract serves the historian well by reproducing for his readers the attacks to which he felt compelled to respond. The censurers complained that the Prophet Muhammad had never worn this type of headgear, charged that the Halvetis had invented it of their own accord, and that it was

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therefore an innovation (hâdes). Basing his response on a Prophetic tradition that “whosoever resembles a group, he is among them,” Mahmûd Efendi retorted that nobody had ever interfered with the great shaykhs of the past on this matter, and if his opponents had any justification from the books of the law against wearing headgear, they should produce it. Moreover, Mahmûd instructed his followers that their response to this attack should be that going against the Qurʾan, traditions of the Prophet, and consensus of the community is the real innovation. Tracing his opponents’ logic, he indicated that they might have been drawing on a tradition from the chapter on clothes in a work entitled the Masâbîh, which stated that the Prophet and his companions wore only headgear that was “not raised (ghayr murtafiʿ).” But since the Prophet also said “[there is] no hardship in our religion (lâ jurh fî dîninâ),” there should not be any fighting over this issue. He goes on to state that during the time of the Prophet Muhammad, there were four types of headgear: the “dâl” hat (shaped like the Arabic letter dâl), which resembled the Halveti cap of Mahmûd’s day; the knitted cap (örme); a terk similar to what the Bektas¸i dervishes wore; and an on iki terk (twelve-seamed headgear) similar to what the Zeyniye dervishes wore.67 Since both Muhammad and the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs all wore these types of headgear, there could be no prohibition against them without violating the consensus of the community or declaring founding figures in the religious tradition to have violated Islamic doctrine! Mahmûd’s argument may not have been convincing for skeptics; his source for the practice of the early Islamic community consisted only in the introductory phrase “it is related that (rivâyet olunur ki).”68 But the overall tone of the tract suggests that, in contrast to Seyyid Seyfullah, Mahmûd Efendi’s goal was not to win over his enemies. In fact, at one point he suggests that the attacks of the censurers could be a good thing: Let it be known to [you] faithful ones . . . that you will never have any hardship on account of their throwing these sorts of . . . curses at [you]. Perhaps the levels of its blessing and benefit are many, since [you] should be forbearing and patient . . . Let [you] leave off fighting and confronting these kind of censurers. Because it is known to everyone that a person doesn’t throw stones at a tree without fruit [on it]. It is also no secret to a rational person that most of the immature youths who throw stones [do so to] trees that are full of fruit!69

Over half of the tract is given over to explaining to the dervishes themselves the various forms of symbolism embedded in the characteristics of the Halveti dervish headgear and its various forms. Drawing on the basic principle that “all of Sufism is etiquette,” Mahmûd Efendi’s letter reads more like a pep talk

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designed to encourage the dervishes to take pride in wearing their headgear and to embrace the symbolism in it. For example, the novice dons a white turban, then works his way up to the black of a perfected master; for the color black symbolizes the successful break from worldly goods and the annihilation of the self.70 In addition, the four named parts of the headgear correspond both to the first four Rightly-Guided Caliphs and the four fundamental components of the Sufi path embodied in the concepts of s¸eriʿat, tarıkat, maʿrifet and hakîkat.71 While Mahmûd Efendi’s contribution to Halveti literature may have acted as a resume builder for his follower, Muhyiddîn Efendi, it also did not propel him to a high ranking place in the order outside his regional milieu of Araç. Furthermore, Fuʾâdî’s description of Muhyiddîn Efendi’s early career does not necessarily indicate an auspicious beginning that would lead him to become a high profile leader in the order. His master Mahmûd Efendi suddenly died shortly before the completion of Muhyiddîn’s training in Küre-i Hadîd, leaving the troubled dervish little choice but to come to Kastamonu to ask for guidance from S¸aʿbân himself. When he threw himself on S¸aʿbân’s mercy, saying that he had lost his shaykh and that he was nothing but a stranger, S¸aʿbân replied, “the judgment belongs to God. Be well; if you are a true seeker and lover [of God], he who wants shall find God. You aren’t a stranger in this lodge. You be a reminder of Mahmûd Efendi for me. We’ll serve [you] in the degree that we can.”72 Muhyiddîn thus joined the order in S¸aʿbân’s later years, after he and his supporters had established a lodge for him to live in at the future site of his tomb. This was in contrast to S¸aʿbân’s previous three successors, who had all entered his service while he was still preaching at the Honsâlâr mosque. In addition to his late arrival, being a poor man from the rural area west of Kastamonu, Muhyiddîn Efendi lacked the means to take up residence in the area of S¸aʿbân’s lodge in the Hisârardı quarter of the city. In fact, he seems to have had trouble securing any residence at all, which is noted in one of the narratives about him: Since there was no heat in the lodge, and since he suffered greatly on winter days, he used to live in poverty in a warm room attached to the bathhouse next to the Honsâlâr mosque, and used to come to the lodge from one end of the city to the other. In addition to never missing a single one of the pillars [of Islam], he was charged with the duty of beginning the supererogatory night prayers (teheccüd tevhîdi) with one of the gatekeeper dervishes. It is related that on account of his complete zeal and effort, he never neglected his duties, thinking, “let there be no deficiency in my education by [my] being derelict in my duty,” and sleep never came to his eyes, and he was always present at his service in the mosque at the time of supererogatory night prayers. He never used to pass up his duties

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[by remaining] at a great distance on snowy, icy or muddy days in particular. The noble [S¸aʿbân] used to observe him secretly, enjoy [his efforts] and make prayers. What a delight it is that a trustworthy seeker should serve the order faithfully, and will become suitable and deserving of the prayers of blessing and exalted favors of the noble ones who are the representatives on the prayer-rug of a master like him!73

Thus, Muhyiddîn spent his initial years of service to S¸aʿbân Efendi as a borderline homeless person, living on the grounds of the lodge itself when the weather permitted and, perhaps by utilizing the connections of his master, staying temporarily in the Honsâlâr bathhouse when winter threatened deadly exposure to the elements. Nevertheless, the branch of the Halveti order that S¸aʿbân established recognized meritorious service as an important part of progress in the acquisition of the path, and Muhyiddîn’s dedication was impossible to ignore. His contemporaries would discover that whatever Muhyiddîn lacked in terms of esteemed origins, he made up for it in raw devotion. Fuʾâdî’s final exclamation emphatically celebrates upward mobility on the Sufi path and within the order based on struggle displayed by its adherents. It also demonstrates his recognition that this anecdote could serve as an important teaching tool for his audience about dedication to carrying out one’s assigned tasks within the order. His advisory note states: It is true that the great shaykhs help, and offer prayers for their dervishes and others, but they must make themselves deserving of their prayers and assistance. If it were only through the help of the prophets and shaykhs [alone], the prophets would have left no unbeliever or hypocrite in the world, but made them all Muslims, and the shaykhs would have left no corrupt person or censurer in the world, but would have made them pious and believing [people] through guidance!74

In other words, saints are not placed on earth strictly for the purpose of saving mankind from troubles and pains; one must also work to earn intercession. In addition to stressing the need for the followers of the order to hold up their end of the bargain vis-à-vis the shaykh, Fuʾâdî also kills two birds with one stone by offering additional explanations for the existence of critics who censured the cult of saints. Comparing them with those who are not deserving of the prayers of the great men, they are an inferior category of people who do not uphold their religious obligations. It is difficult to interpret how S¸aʿbân wanted to utilize his new recruit. After

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Muhyiddîn completed his training, S¸aʿbân resolved to send him not to the traditional successor stomping grounds of the towns and villages in the area of Kastamonu and north-central Anatolia, but to the more distant city of Damascus. This may demonstrate a broader ambition to which S¸aʿbân was aspiring by the end of his career, when he had already established a stable base of followers within the immediate vicinity of the Anatolian part of the empire. Furthermore, Muhyiddîn’s extraordinary devotion in the face of adversity may have made him a more attractive candidate to undertake what would have been a difficult task at best. Still, S¸aʿbân was sending his follower a great distance away from the order’s home base, rather than keeping him close to the seat of the order’s operations, and this might also reflect Muhyiddîn’s actual rank within the order. He may have been viewed as an expendable member who could be sent on a relatively dangerous and difficult mission whose chances for success were at best uncertain. Within the narrative, other elements appear which imply that Muhyiddîn’s mission did not have any real success, and that even his eventual succession to the order was an ill-defined process: [Muhyiddîn] served the lord S¸aʿbân Efendi for a long time, and he sent [him] to Damascus on the completion of his training. He stayed there for a time and made the pilgrimage. Afterwards, it became clear and known to him by command of God that it would fall to him to give guidance in Anatolia, and that he would be the representative on S¸aʿbân Efendi’s prayer-rug . . . Because of this, he again came to Anatolia and increased his devotions in a stone cave located in his own homeland in the environs of Kastamonu for the purpose of greater advancement, just as the Messenger of God did in the cave on the mountain of Hirâ.75 While performing the pillars [of Islam], the successorship on the prayer-rug of S¸aʿbân Efendi was vouchsafed to him by the command of God, according to what is explained in our more detailed hagiography, and began to give guidance.76

Fuʾâdî’s unwillingness to confide the details of his immediate predecessor and teacher’s accession to the leadership of the order in his abridged hagiography,77 and his use of the passive voice in saying that Muhyiddîn was vouchsafed (müyesser oldu) the position, suggest that the succession to Abdülbâkî Efendi may have raised questions about Muhyiddîn’s suitability. It is also not specified how long Muhyiddîn actually stayed in Damascus, or in his cave, which was located outside his master Mahmûd Efendi’s base of Küre-i Hadîd. The lack of detail may just imply a lack of knowledge on Fuʾâdî’s part, but this seems hard to believe since he became Muhyiddîn’s own successor! The lack of detail may be an attempt to mask or downplay an initial failure to establish a stable succession

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at Abdülbâkî’s death (perhaps because he was not resident in Kastamonu much of the time). It probably took time for Muhyiddîn to win over the order’s membership after emerging from his cave. Regardless of the reason, it was probably striking even to contemporaries that the leadership of the order had passed from a noted scholar like Abdülbâkî to a provincial hermit like Muhyiddîn. While the argument might be raised that Muhyiddîn was not out of line and just following a variant of the Halveti model established by figures like Hayreddîn Tokâdî or Benli Sultan on İlgâz mountain, these figures had at least established a fixed residence there for their activities. As far as we can tell, Muhyiddîn just took up residence in a cave and there is no record of his giving guidance to anyone! These irregularities may explain why Fuʾâdî did not consider himself active within the order for several years after Abdülbâkî’s death; he and others like him may have been skeptical about the situation. Aside from his work ethic, however, another key to Muhyiddîn’s succession may be implied by recalling the narrative from Haci İlyâs’ visit to the mosque in the district of the metalworkers’ shops. Both Hayreddîn and Muhyiddîn are linked circumstantially with mining and metalworking activities in the Kastamonu region. A potential constituency within the S¸aʿbâniye included people involved in this trade, and a shaykh from the town of “Iron Forge” might have had some affinity with them, whatever the reservations that may have existed among the more scholarly followers of a leader like Abdülbâkî. Much of this remains in the realm of speculation, but what is clear is that Muhyiddîn slowly won back the followers of Abdülbâkî through his acts of grace, kindness, and charity. Interestingly, although Fuʾâdî hovers in the background to remind his audience that these manifestations of spiritual power should be kept secret “since all true friends of God behave in this way,”78 he is not as reluctant to discuss Muhyiddîn’s spiritual abilities as he is in the case of the more cautious Abdülbâkî. This suggests a difference in outlook between the two figures, for Fuʾâdî describes two events that discuss Muhyiddîn’s ability to sense the impending death of a fellow S¸aʿbân-trained successor. The first narrative describes a journey that Muhyiddîn and some of his followers were making to the area of Çağa (Yeniçağa), a small town lying to the west of Gerede on the road to Bolu (also linked to S¸aʿbân’s early life). Due to the heat of the summer, many of the dervishes wanted to stop and rest a day’s travel from Çağa, but Muhyiddîn ordered them to get up and continue the journey. While some of the dervishes dutifully struggled on at the side of their master, others refused and stayed where they were in the hope that they could catch up later. It was not until the traveling party reached Çağa that the reason for haste became clear; another of S¸aʿbân’s successors who had settled there, Hayreddîn Efendi, was about to die:

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When the noble one named Hayreddîn was about to depart to the afterlife, that mine of grace said to those who asked, “who will pray your funeral prayer?” [He replied]: “Complete the washing and wrapping [of my corpse], and then delay [the burial]; the noble one who will pray my funeral prayer will come.” They did [everything] in that way, and while [they were] waiting and saying, “I wonder who’ll come,” the shaykh [Muhyiddîn] came hurrying to the settlement. Its inhabitants received him, and they prayed the noble one’s funeral prayer in purity. Those who did not follow the noble [Muhyiddîn] and remained behind on the road were blocked from the noble [Hayreddîn’s] funeral prayer and its merit and regretted [it], like the dervishes who are not obedient to the shaykh, fall behind on the road of the path of God, and remain blocked from achieving their wish and regretful. But last regrets have no benefit!79

Fuʾâdî’s inclusion of this anecdote once again underscores how his selection of material acted to teach and reinforce proper Sufi behavior for his audience. It meshes nicely with the events of S¸aʿbân’s funeral in emphasizing the twin requirements of obeying the leadership of one’s shaykh and taking part in the funeral prayers of the great Halveti leaders who had reached the final stages of the path. One might also read into it some of Muhyiddîn’s difficulties in establishing himself as the head of the order in its early years. We know from the language that Fuʾâdî employs that he was not present on this journey, because he reports these events by way of the dubitative Turkish verb suffix -mis¸. Nevertheless, the division of his following into those who passed the test and those who did not may have paralleled the division of the order’s followers into a group who followed Muhyiddîn and those who dropped out or moved on to other shaykh. This was not the only funeral that Muhyiddîn Efendi rushed to preside over. He also had to take extraordinary steps to appear in Bolu for the funeral of his own brother and fellow S¸aʿbân-trained successor, Mustafa Dede.80 Apparently, he had a garden or orchard (bağ) in Bolu that was his livelihood, and one day he fell ill there. Just before he died, he told his immediate family members not to wash his corpse because his brother was coming. He also made an even odder request to the effect that “. . . my corpse not be taken out from the gate of the orchard; knock a hole in the wall of the orchard in such-and-such a place and you should carry [it] out from there. Because that which comes out from the orchard gate has to pass by the side of the unbelievers’ church and graveyard; be very careful!” After his death, though, the local religious dignitaries (ulemâ ve sulehâ) refused to honor Mustafa’s will, because they knew it would take too long to bring Muhyiddîn Efendi from Kastamonu and it would violate religious law to leave the corpse unwashed and unburied for so long. Still, when they tried to begin washing the corpse, their strength miraculously left them and no

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one could finish the job. Next thing they knew, they found Muhyiddîn arriving through a hole in the wall of the orchard with several of his dervishes in the exact place that Mustafa had specified, having rushed from Kastamonu to get there. The funeral was then conducted according to Mustafa’s wishes, avoiding the Christian church and graveyard in the process.81 As in the stories of S¸aʿbân’s divine hand of protection, what we may be seeing are multiple oral variations on a similar anecdotal theme or trope; it is worth noting, for instance, that Cemâl el-Halvetî performed the same unexpected service, predicted in advance by its recipient, Pîr Fethullah, a fellow dervish whose origins lay in the Kastamonu region.82 However, another possible conclusion we can draw from these stories is that Muhyiddîn saw it as important to travel around the area of Kastamonu to reunify or strengthen the coordination of S¸aʿbân’s followers. His predecessor Abdülbâkî’s absences from Kastamonu, and the growth of the order during those years may also have led to a need for frequent trips across the region. Noting the spectacular growth of the order during his lifetime in the conclusion to the section describing Muhyiddîn Efendi, Fuʾâdî stressed that despite the various acts of grace that accompanied the careers of the first four successors to S¸aʿbân, their greatest legacy was simply that they were able to guide and spread the principles of the order to such a great number of people.83 Another piece of evidence corroborating this possibility and demonstrating the extent to which the S¸aʿbâniye had achieved regional influence in northcentral Anatolia was Fuʾâdî’s own personal experience. After pledging his allegiance to Muhyiddîn, Fuʾâdî fell into debt and needed to borrow money: During the time of this poor one’s seeking and submission to [Muhyiddîn], an amount of gold coins came from the father of Sultan Ahmed Han, Sultan Mehmed Han [to Muhyiddîn] . . . [and] I had [previously] taken several gold coins [from that sum] as a loan. One day, in order to comfort the noble heart and show respect to his esteemed welfare, I intended to say, “don’t let the issue of [my] debt to you come to mind; it is possible that a necessary and willing postponement [will] occur; let it be known by the esteemed one.” Before the poor one even spoke, [Muhyiddîn] was instantly aware through the inspiration of God, and he immediately looked the poor one’s way without reason and replied with a manifestation of nobility and charismatic grace, “your wish is to postpone on the matter of that debt, but what kindness is there in postponing [it]? Never think of it again; let all of it be a gift to you.”84

Like Kelle Mustafa before him, we see another demonstration of how shaykhs could secure the loyalty of their followers by acting as charitable lenders.

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However, the more interesting revelation here is that it directly confirmed that the order and its followers continued to receive patronage from the Ottoman court. Sultan Murad III had already contributed to the financial well being of the order under the influence of S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ, more surprising is that these contributions to the order did not cease with his son Mehmed III. The growing influence of the order in the region, whatever its troubles, made it a prime target for the patronage of the Ottoman sultan and his court, which in turn could help secure the loyalty of the Anatolian population. Thus, when Fuʾâdî inherited the leadership of the S¸aʿbâniye at the beginning of the eleventh/seventeenth century, he inherited not just a spiritual role in the region, but a political one with ties to the highest levels of government. Yet the hagiography is silent on another key point. Muhyiddîn’s travels might have become increasingly difficult in the context of the last years of the tenth/sixteenth century, when revolts and disturbances rocked both urban and rural parts of Anatolia as a consequence of Ottoman military over-extension and growing economic crisis caused by shifts in the global economy and climate change. We know that the Celâlî revolts and other disturbances destabilized the functioning of the empire almost to breaking point after Mehmed III’s accession to the throne.85 Muhyiddîn’s activities may well have been constrained in the final decade of his life, as the population retreated to safe havens for protection from the chaos that engulfing much of the Empire. *** After Muhyiddîn’s biography, the lives of S¸aʿbân Efendi and his successors draw to a close with a final advisory note from Fuʾâdî, who informed his audience that the purpose of all these stories was enlighten the truly intelligent and perfected people, who could seek to emulate them in their own struggles on the path. By recognizing the characteristics and attributes that marked the great shaykhs, they themselves could one day take their places among their number.86 Fuʾâdî’s parting words remind us once more that he was not a passive recipient or transmitter of the order’s history, but an active participant in shaping and transforming how that history was to be received and used by future generations of S¸aʿbâniye devotees. Despite his multiple agendas, however, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî has performed a great service for the historian by illustrating, however inadvertently at times, the origins, growth, and transformation of a major sub-branch of the Halveti order during its formative era over the course of the tenth/sixteenth century. The events discussed in Part II of this work teach us a great deal about how S¸aʿbân and his successors came to found, develop, and transform this new sub-branch of the

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Halveti order to the point where it became a political, as well as spiritual force in the Anatolian landscape. At the close of the tenth/sixteenth century, Fuʾâdî and other prominent S¸aʿbâniye followers sensed a need to reflect on the history of their order and make some attempt to codify it in writing, especially the life of its founder, S¸aʿbân-ı Veli. Yet their retrospective, by default, could not avoid interacting with contemporary concerns. Fuʾâdî’s narration of this history is not limited to providing important insights on the way he and his compatriots interacted with that legacy; in short, not everything he touched upon represented an attempt to rewrite the past solely to address the concerns of the present. If read carefully, his writings can help illustrate the types of critical issues that provincial Halveti shaykhs like S¸aʿbân and his successors faced in building sub-branches of the order in the wake of their predecessors’ migration into Ottoman territories. For one, Halveti shaykhs like S¸aʿbân Efendi did not enter a spiritual leadership vacuum when they came to establish a new branch of their order in new places. Legacies left by earlier figures like Seyyid Sünnetî Efendi, along with a profusion of saints’ tombs from previous centuries were not always easy to displace. In addition, shaykhs of other orders, or even competing shaykhs from divergent regional branches of the Halveti order itself might vie for the allegiance of Ottoman subjects in any given region. S¸aʿbân’s life was not a chain of invariable triumphs; rather, it was often marked by setbacks and failure. For this reason, the hagiography’s chronology is not always easy to discern, and the establishment of his following was a long, drawn-out process that was measured in decades. Contrary to the impression given in some hagiographical works, only rarely could Halveti shaykhs come into a community and immediately begin recruiting the population into the order, and the impression we get from the early careers of S¸aʿbân and the other successors of Hayreddîn Tokâdî was that they had to build a community from the ground up, with a heavy emphasis on the most basic aspects of Islamic law and practice at first. Only after they had won the trust of the local members of the community in which they resided were they able to pursue the broader goals with which they were charged. In addition, Fuʾâdî’s account confronts a point that is easy to overlook in studying the history of Sufism. The path to becoming a true Halveti shaykh did not end with the investiture of a cloak by a shaykh to a follower deemed to have reached the proper state of spiritual advancement to make him capable of giving his own guidance. Rather, the process of perfecting the Sufi path often continued in the years thereafter. One’s shaykh might pass away, or the shaykh-to-be might find that elements of his master’s practice did not suit the new situations he encountered. As S¸aʿbân struggled to build his own foundation, he also had to

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learn a new set of lessons that went beyond those of his training under Hayreddîn Tokâdî. S¸aʿbân’s life story also suggests the struggle that Halveti shaykhs had to wage in the face of a pervasive mistrust of mystical movements in Ottoman society over the course of the tenth/sixteenth century. Even S¸aʿbân himself expressed misgivings about the Halveti order before he was initiated into its ranks, and hostile scholars like Evliyâ S¸ücâʿ were always lurking in the background to attack anything they viewed as a deviation from proper religious norms. S¸aʿbân’s cautious oversight of his following, and his desire to avoid obtaining an overly high profile in his community indicate the degree to which the Halveti shaykhs of the first half of the tenth/sixteenth century feared becoming a target for the political persecution of over-zealous contemporaries. Moreover, S¸aʿbân had problems with rebellions and disobedience among some of his own followers and successors who, as the anti-Sufi persecutions of the first decades of the tenth/sixteenth century receded, began to clash with their teacher over the need for more prominent leadership roles in the community. S¸aʿbân ultimately overcame these challenges by means of his connections with key members of the learned hierarchy, both inside and outside of the order’s ranks. In fact, what may have inspired the creation of this new branch of the Halveti order tied to S¸aʿbân’s legacy may not have been an impetus from S¸aʿbân himself, but instead the popular feeling that grew out of the funeral oratory given by his friend Muharrem Efendi and the shared experience it provided for the community. But S¸aʿbân had laid the groundwork for these developments in his own right. He demonstrated a willingness to act as a bridge between the wealthier and poorer members of the community, in addition to assisting both in difficult times. His support was especially strong among the shopkeeper and mercantile class in Kastamonu, who relied on his spiritual protection in their travels and business dealings in the wider region. Some of his successors and contemporaries reference these connections in their narratives. The order expanded as S¸aʿbân’s followers found their support and recognition growing in increasingly distant regions, perhaps through those who benefited from the saint’s generosity or guidance themselves when they moved to different locations in the Ottoman realm. Finally, historians of gender should be intrigued that although the narrative revolves heavily around the testimony and experiences of S¸aʿbân’s male followers, it also provides evidence that his female followers played a role in contributing to his legacy. That legacy also relied on a number of talented successors who were able to build on the work that S¸aʿbân initiated, though they had to transcend some tensions of their own. In particular, the short-lived tenure of ʿOsmân Efendi was a rocky start to the post-S¸aʿbân era. Nevertheless, his successors Hayreddîn

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Efendi, Abdülbâkî Efendi, and Muhyiddîn Efendi could rely on a durable network that had spread over much of northern Anatolia to maintain and extend the order’s influence during a period of Ottoman history otherwise characterized by increasing socio-economic and political strains. S¸aʿbân’s successors are most notable for their diversity: an important religious scholar like Abdülbâkî was succeeded by Muhyiddîn, an impoverished village shaykh living in a mountain cave, while a reformed religious ecstatic like ʿOsmân Efendi was replaced by a former shopkeeper, Hayreddîn Efendi. If anything, what the history of the order illustrates is that devotion to the order, its membership, and its principles was the deciding factor in who would take up leadership positions within it. From these stories, we gain insights on how Sufi orders like the S¸aʿbâniye evolved and functioned as an element in the Ottoman civil society that had emerged by the time that Fuʾâdî and his contemporaries came to reflect on the legacy they had inherited in the Menâkıb. This is not to say that Fu’âdî’s hagiography is invariably a reliable source for assessing the formative period of S¸aʿbâniye history and its intersection with the wider Ottoman context. It is especially striking that the hagiography occupies itself with colorful but obscure local figures at the expense of what might have been the order’s most high profile connections. Most notably, it tells us nothing of the influence and contributions of Murad III’s court and the followers of S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ in İstanbul, which otherwise receive a great deal of attention in other contemporary sources. In the end, as we have seen repeatedly, we cannot bring the story of the S¸aʿbâniye full circle until we fully confront the omnipresent narrative voice of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî. He took a prominent role in commenting upon the events that he compiled from the oral traditions of his elders and contemporaries. He also made no claim to being a neutral transmitter of the great saint’s life; after all, by the time he produced his work, he was a shaykh himself. His inclusion of “advisory notes” at every turn warns the historian seeking to understand S¸aʿbân’s life and times on its own terms that the creation of the work marks an important turning point in the history of the S¸aʿbâniye: its legacy was in the process of written codification. Thus, it is to the life of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, and his critical place in the chain of S¸aʿbâniye shaykhs, that we must now turn in order to better situate his work as a product of its own time and circumstances.

Notes 1 MSV, pp. 90–1. 2 MSV, p. 101; it is the introductory statement for the anecdotes in the fifth and final chapter of MSV which describes S¸aʿbân’s successors. 3 The two separate anecdotes occur in MSV, pp. 91–2.

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4 Fuʾâdî refers to the scrambling that took place among the saint’s followers in the immediate vicinity of Kastamonu; see MSV, p. 93. Apparently, S¸aʿbân died on a Wednesday, meaning that his funeral was delayed by a day. Abdulkerim Abdülkadiroğlu questions whether the burial might have been delayed purposely to take advantage of the more auspicious Muslim holy day of Friday, but admits he lacks evidence to confirm or deny this; see AKAK, p. 44. 5 A reference to a well in the area of the sacred mosque at Mecca whose water supposedly has curative and sacred powers. 6 MSV, p. 92. 7 MSV, p. 94. 8 The Tezkiretüʾl-Evliyâ is a hagiography written by Ferîdüddîn ʿAttâr (d. 618/1221) that contains anecdotes about twenty-one figures from early Islamic history dating from the second/eighth to the fourth/tenth century. Not all are primarily remembered as Sufis, but are perhaps co-opted as such. For example, there are sections about Abu Hanîfa (d. 150/767) and Ahmad b. Hanbal (d. 240/855), founders of the Hanefî and Hanbalî schools of Islamic law; see the remarks of Orhan Yavuz in FA, p. 38. 9 MSV, pp. 93–4. 10 MSV, pp. 94–5. 11 The anecdote to which Muharrem Efendi referred appears in abbreviated form in FA, p. 207. 12 Muharrem Efendi’s connections with the Bayrâmî order before he came to İstanbul to take up his position at the Süleymaniye are discussed in NVA, p. 355. 13 MSV, pp. 95–6. 14 Fuʾâdî remarked that, “even [I who] at that time was a young boy, when I mention or think of that state in the present, that state [of being] and intoxication come into my heart as if that place [and time] were here now”; see MSV, p. 98. 15 Namely, the Kaʿba in Mecca and the Black Stone situated at one of its corners. 16 It is implied that the funeral proceedings all took place in the mosque of Seyyid Sünnetî and the Halveti lodge close to it. However, this cannot explain the need for a procession; the crowds flocking to the funeral proceedings and Muharrem Efendi’s speech may have had to be accommodated in one of the larger mosques in the city center, or the ceremonial prayer field (namâzgâh) lying just south of the center of the old town of Kastamonu. For more information on the namâzgâh, which is now the site of the Gazi İlköğretim school, see KKE, p. 115 with maps on pp. 231 and 396. 17 MSV, pp. 96–7. 18 MSV, pp. 92–3. 19 MSV, pp. 98–9. The specific mention of yogurt, a white food that conveys images of purity and virtue in Ottoman culture, may be symbolically significant as well; see, for instance, the remarks of Jane Hathaway, A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 108–9. 20 See Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 25–34. 21 Fuʾâdî neglected to explain the seeming contradiction with the earlier anecdote that S¸aʿbân’s death had sparked the onset of much rain, thunder and lightning! Compare MSV, pp. 91–2. 22 MSV, pp. 99–100.

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23 Drawn from al-Qurʾân, 57:29. 24 MSV, pp. 100–1; Fuʾâdî titles this final section, “an advisory note, by way of a conclusion (lâyiha ʿalâʾl-vechüʾl-hâtime).” 25 According to the dates inscribed upon their tombs, S¸aʿbân died on May 4 (18 Ziʾl-kaʿde), and ʿOsmân Efendi died almost exactly forty days later on June 14 (28 Ziʾl-hicce) of the year 1569. This does not tally properly with accounts in MSV, however, as the account states that ʿOsmân did not arrive until after S¸aʿbân had been buried on May 6. According to the text, when he did arrive, he performed the forty-day retreat, only to die on the fortieth day as he was completing the ritual practice of the erbaʿîn, thus the May 4 to June 14 period cannot be possible. Either Fuʾâdî failed to reconcile his accounts properly, or the tomb dates represent over-simplified calculations made by their carvers, who estimated the dates without picking up on the nuances of ʿOsmân Efendi’s delayed arrival; compare descriptions of the tomb markers in ZD inserted between pp. 18–19 with the text of MSV, pp. 103–4. Another explanation may lie in hagiographical license, which may have sought to relate ʿOsmân Efendi’s death to the example of the Prophet Muhammad and his daughter Fatima, who also died at the end of a prescribed forty-day mourning period. 26 MSV, pp. 103–4. 27 MSV, pp. 101–2. 28 This is the implication of the narrative given about the delayed submission of Sinâneddîn to his father’s guidance in LH, fol. 233a–b (483–4). 29 This term refers to someone who is in a position of power and authority by right of birth. 30 MSV, pp. 102–3. 31 MSV, p. 104; one should also not forget that Hızır also played a role in forging the link of succession between Seyyid Sünnetî and S¸aʿbân Efendi. 32 MSV, p. 106. 33 MSV, p. 107. 34 The mosque to which İlyâs refers is clearly the Yakup Ağa mosque and soup kitchen complex, which was built during Selim I’s reign and developed further during the latter half of the 1540s. A prime source of the revenue for the upkeep of the mosque and soup kitchen came from the stores of the iron-workers from the area of Hisârardı, implying that S¸aʿbân’s following had connections to this area; see KKE, pp. 104–5 and 125. 35 MSV, pp. 107–8. It is not fully clear to me how the “forty” described here fits into Ibn al-ʿArabî’s teaching, although they resemble the category of mudabbirûn described in SOTS, pp. 112–14, who had similar properties to the individual described. Oğuz, on the other hand, would have defined the individual as one of the nukabâʾ; see MİO, p. 47. 36 MSV, p. 108. 37 For example, we know from the date included with a chronogram placed over the front entrance to the renovated Seyyid Sünnetî mosque near the S¸aʿbâniye lodge complex that S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ initiated the first renovation of the mosque sometime between 1574 and 1580; one source claims 1576, see the reproduction of the inscription in ZD inserted between pp. 18–19. Another scholar concurs with this reading, but suggests that ebced in the inscription add up to 1574; see AKAK, p. 113. Another source claims the date on the inscription to be 1580; see KKE, p. 107. 38 MSV, p. 114; Fu’âdî used the term sıla, implying an extended visit to one’s friends and family in one’s place of birth. 39 For a study of the evkaf that Ebûsuʿûd endowed, see Ali Kılcı, “İskilipteki Vakıflar ve

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Ebusuud Efendi,” in Mevlüt Uyanık (ed.), Türk Kültüründe İz Bırakan İskilipli Âlimler (Ankara: Türk Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1998), pp. 77–107, esp. the chart listing the endowments on p. 103. On Ebûsuʿûd’s birthplace and his expressed hometown identity, see Hamdi Döndüren, “Bir Fakih Olarak Ebusuud,” in Mevlüt Uyanık (ed.), Türk Kültüründe İz Bırakan İskilipli Âlimler (Ankara: Türk Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1998), p. 258; on Ebûsuʿûd’s father, S¸eyh Yavs¸î of İskilip, see Mustafa As¸kar, “S¸eyh Muhyiddin Muhammed b. Mustafa el-İskilibi (S¸eyh Yavs¸i): Hayatı, Eserleri ve Varidat S¸erhi Adlı Eseri Üzerine,” Türk Kültüründe İz Bırakan İskilipli Âlimler, pp. 193–214. See the notations on the TAVO map of Jens Peter Laut, “Kleinasien im 17. Jahrhundert nach Evliya Çelebi (Westteil und Ostteil),” Tubinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1992), map #B IX 6, and the corresponding description found in Korkut M. Buğday (ed.), Evliyâ Çelebis Anatolienreise aus dem dritten Band des Seyâhatnâme: Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 282–6. MSV, pp. 108–9. MSV, p. 108; although it is not certain whether S¸aʿbân’s demand for a full submission from a dervish of Sünbül Efendi actually reflects what could be termed “bad relations,” Sünbül Efendi’s followers and successors may not have appreciated S¸aʿbân’s implicit claim to superiority. As for Fuʾâdî, he had at least indirect knowledge of Necmeddîn Hasan, describing him as being “a scholar and a knower of the exoteric and esoteric meanings and secrets of the four books.” This corresponds with other hagiographical descriptions of Necmeddîn as being well versed in the four sacred texts: the Qurʾan, the Torah, the Gospels (İncîl), and the Psalms (Zebûr); see LH, fol. 235b (491). MSV, pp. 109–10. MSV, p. 109; the story also appears during Fuʾâdî’s description of some of S¸aʿbân’s more prominent followers on p. 63. Some confusion might be caused by the existence of two figures named Bâlî Efendi among the Halveti shaykhs of the time, one of them being Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi and the other Sarhos¸ Bâlî Efendi (d. 980/1573). Based on the chronology of Abdülbâkî’s life, the latter might seem a more natural fit. However, the element of tension in the narrative points more strongly to Sofyalı Bâlî. For more on the two shaykhs, see RÖ-OT, pp. 45–8; both traced their silsiles back to Kasım Çelebi (d. 924/1518), another successor to Cemâl el-Halvetî. If correct, this information also allows to us to effectively estimate the comparatively early date (before 1553) when Abdülbâkî came and pledged allegiance to S¸aʿbân, meaning that when he acceded to leadership of the order, he had been part of it for two and a half decades. Abdülbâkî literally means in Arabic, “servant of the Everlasting,” with the “Everlasting” being one of the ninety-nine names of God. MSV, p. 111. For a brief overview of Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi’s activities and career, see NC, pp. 70–81, who views him as one of the pivotal Balkan Halveti figures of the tenth/sixteenth century. NC, pp. 81–90; Muslihuddin reportedly established connections with the grand vizier Sokullu Mehmed Pas¸a and his wife, who built a lodge for him and his followers in the capital. He also had good relations with the s¸eyhülislâm Ebûsuʿûd, and was criticized by some for these relationships; see CF-MA, pp. 57–58. Ocak notes that Muslihuddin also continued the hard line of his master on questions of heresy, and that he condemned the

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought Vâridat of S¸eyh Bedreddîn, a ninth/fifteenth-century shaykh executed for heresy. This placed him in opposition to many prominent scholars; see ZVM, p. 188. MSV, pp. 111–12. These technical terms refer to being in the sixth and seventh stages of the Halveti path, which are also referred to as cemʿüʾl-cemʿ and ehadiyyetüʾl-cemʿ in some sources. The term fark-ı sânî refers to the process whereby the soul of a Sufi returns from the world of the unseen to the corporeal world to benefit others; see JST, p. 157 and MİO, p. 26. MSV, pp. 112–13. It can be inferred that S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ and Abdülbâkî Efendi were at least aware of each other, even if they were not personally acquainted. This is because we have evidence for the vakıf that was established by S¸ücâʿ for the upkeep of the mosque that he would have renamed in his honor. In it, he stipulates the income that is to be given to Abdülbâkî Efendi as head of the order there, which seems to be a daily salary of five akçe and two dirhems; see the copy of the foundation deed in MBEH, p. 156. MSV, p. 113; frustratingly, we have no further information on Elmâcızâde Muhyiddîn, so a more specific tracking of the growth of the order is impossible. AKAK, p. 59. MSV, p. 117. Küre-i Hadîd was attached to the kazâ of Araç, and was home to an ancient mosque that was built some time during the first half of the eighth/fourteenth century by İsmâʿîl Bey İsfendiyâr; see MBEH, p. 65. Since the treatise’s contents are written in Turkish, and include translations of Arabic sources like hadith, I assume that Turkish was the original language of transmission. However, it is not impossible that later copyists took the step of translating it from an all Arabic treatise. The manuscript has several corruptions that make interpreting this part of the sentence difficult and makes the subject of the sentence unclear. It is not certain whether or not the introduction represents the voice of Muhyiddîn Efendi, some other transmitter, or Mahmûd Efendi himself. RTAJ, fol. 16b. Seyyid Seyfullah was himself the descendant of a Sufi shaykh, Seyyid Nizâmeddîn b. S¸ihâbuddîn (d. 957/1550), who fled from Baghdad before the Safavid advance and came to İstanbul in the time of Sultan Selim I. The first chapter of one of his works included several short hagiographical entries on a number of the prominent Halveti shaykhs of İstanbul, suggesting that he eventually became affiliated with them in some way even if he was not a fully-fledged member of the order; see CAMA, fols 2b–16b. Seyyid Seyfullah Kâzım b. Nizâmuddîn b. Seyyid S¸ihâbuddîn Bağdâdî (d. 1009/1601), Risâle-i Tâcnâme, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1619/3, fols 200b–1a. It should be noted here that twelve seams could suggest an allusion to the twelve imams of Shiʿite provenance; an Ottoman Sunnî order like Seyfullah’s may have found it wise to avoid the allusion. For a good example of this phenomenon, see the court case of a female teacher, Haciye Sabah, as noted by Leslie Peirce in her study of Aintab’s court records. Haciye Sabah was accused by members of her community of having Safavid sympathies, perhaps because of her origins, even though most of her activities seemed more representative of typical Sufi activities; see Peirce, Morality Tales, pp. 253–75. Seyyid Seyfullah Kâzım, Risâle-i Tâcnâme, fols 201a–4a; though we should note a

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critical difference between these two branches of the order, as Seyyid Seyfullah’s branch wore a cap with fourteen seams rather than the dâl cap (headgear shaped like the Arabic letter dâl) favored by Mahmûd Efendi and the S¸aʿbâniye, underscoring the divergences between different Halveti sub-branches. Thus, the symbolism in Seyfullah’s tract differed somewhat from Mahmûd’s despite sharing some components. Some of Seyfullah’s detractors, in fact, cited the lack of a dâl cap as a cause for criticism, see fol. 201a. See OF-RV; the introduction runs from fols 22a–36a, and Fuʾâdî cites Mahmûd’s letter as part of his argument on fol. 28a–b. For more on the history and practices of the Zeyniye order, see RÖ-Z. RTAJ, fol. 17a–b. RTAJ, fol. 20b. RTAJ, fol. 19b. RTAJ, fols 17b–18a. MSV, pp. 117–18; in the extended silsile of the S¸aʿbâniye branch given by Muhammed Oğuz, the connection between Mahmûd Efendi and Muhyiddîn Efendi does not appear; see MİO, p. 202. MSV, pp. 118–19. MSV, p. 119. The most widely accepted stories surrounding the first revelation to the Prophet Muhammad state that he frequently meditated in a cave on the mountain of Hirâ’ outside Mecca, where he eventually received the first revelation from Gabriel; for interpretations of this event see Maxime Rodinson, Muhammad, trans. Anne Carter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971), pp. 69–75; W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 14–22; and the analysis in URB, pp. 103–8. MSV, p. 119. We do not know if the more extensive and lost text has additional details; in any case, it is implied in the abridgment that the longer Arabic text of the hagiography was kept in the lodge in a single copy under the watch of the order’s leadership. Its contents were revealed only to those who were given permission, or that the text would be transmitted in oral translation into Turkish for those seeking its contents. MSV, p. 121. MSV, pp. 121–2. The text refers to the name of the town where Mustafa Dede was living as “Borlû” or “Bûrlû,” but most assume that Bolu is the town that is meant; see AKAK, pp. 61–2. MSV, pp. 122–3. LH, fol. 205a–b (420–1). MSV, p. 124. MSV, p. 123. For a summary of the rebellions and disruptions of the Anatolian heartland between 1595 and 1610, see CI, pp. 72–6. MSV, pp. 124–5.

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PART III

. . . DEFENDING THE CULT OF SAINTS IN ELEVENTH/ SEVENTEENTHCENTURY KASTAMONU: TRANSFORMING THE . ¸AʿBÂNI S YE ORDER UNDER ʿÖMER EL- FUʾÂDÎ

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The descriptions of the Halveti saint S¸aʿbân-ı Veli and his successors have demonstrated how sub-branches of the order replicated and spread in provincial settings like Kastamonu. Yet the previous chapters have also illustrated how our knowledge of this process came to be mediated by the work of later biographers or hagiographers. In the case of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, this extended beyond preserving edifying anecdotes about his predecessors to encompass a broader agenda. The final section of this book is devoted to increasing our understanding of the extraordinary nature of this individual, who evolved into an unsung hero of the S¸aʿbâniye sub-branch. The following chapters argue that the critical turning point in the history of the S¸aʿbâniye order did not occur with the activities of its founder, S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, in the mid-tenth/sixteenth century, the consolidation activities of his successors, or even the order’s later ascent to greater power and social visibility in the eleventh/seventeenth century in İstanbul. Instead, the comparatively obscure fifth successor to S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), who began his life’s work a generation after S¸aʿbân’s death, emerged as the pivotal figure. By virtue of his codification of an account through which the foundations of the order would come to be interpreted, no historian should ignore Fuʾâdî’s imprint upon the transmission of this legacy. Yet oddly enough, most who have addressed the order have focused their attention primarily on S¸aʿbân, with only a cursory nod to Fuʾâdî’s contributions. What truly established the S¸aʿbâniye as a formidable force in the social, intellectual, and political context of the turbulent eleventh/seventeenth century was Fuʾâdî’s feverish activity, of which the Menâkıb-ı S¸aʿbân-ı Veli is but a single part. This section will expand our source base to encompass not only additional materials found in the Menâkıb, but also a supplemental tract added

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to the Menâkıb a decade later called the Türbenâme (“Tract on the Tomb”).1 Furthermore, Fuʾâdî’s legacy extended far beyond these foundational works. He was a prolific writer who wrote a number of tracts of various lengths dealing with aspects of the Halveti path and Sufism. These works served to both educate the followers of the S¸aʿbâniye and clearly define the philosophical and religious underpinnings of the order’s traditions. Despite his provincial background, he was remarkably successful in defending his order from growing threats to the legitimacy of the Ottoman Halveti. Fu’âdî would be the first leader of the order who had not been trained directly by S¸aʿbân himself. To better understand the important role that he played in transforming the S¸aʿbâniye in order to successfully confront new challenges that paralleled events in the wider Ottoman Empire, we must examine both the process of his initiation into S¸aʿbâniye and his thirty-two-year career as S¸aʿbân’s successor. In Chapter 6, we examine autobiographical elements in Fuʾâdî’s work that discuss his early life and the process by which he came to undertake the writing of the Menâkıb-ı S¸aʿbân-ı Veli. Chapter 7 extends this narrative further by showing how the construction of the tomb complex for S¸aʿbân-ı Veli further consolidated Fuʾâdî’s initial successes in stabilizing the order and winning legitimacy for himself and its following. In addition to serving as a sacred space for S¸aʿbân’s future blessings, it also founded a library of didactic literature that included Fuʾâdî’s works and established him as one of the premiere provincial Sufi leaders of his era. The section concludes with an assessment of Fuʾâdî’s broader legacy in the political, social, and religious milieu of his era in Chapter 8. This includes a discussion of Fuʾâdî’s struggles with the political current that would later come to be described as the Kâdızâdeli movement (suggesting, in the process, that “Kâdızâdeli” may be a problematic term for describing eleventh/seventeenth-century Ottoman puritanical politico-religious movements). It also offers reflections on how Fuʾâdî’s presentation of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli as a highranking Ottoman saint demanded that his contemporaries re-evaluate the very concept of sainthood itself, and why he proved to be so successful in overcoming mounting obstacles that blocked the development of other sub-branches of the Halveti order later in the century. Note 1 This text makes up the final third of the thirteenth/nineteenth-century printed text of the hagiography, thus its title; see MSV, pp. 130–88. To distinguish the two parts of the printed text from each other, I continue the convention of referring to the Menâkıb section of the work as MSV, while distinguishing the elements in the subsequently added treatise in the final third of the work as MSV (T).

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6 ʿÖmer el- Fuʾâdî as Sufi Aspirant and . Hagiographer: the Road to ¸aʿbâni S ye Succession

ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî would likely have been a transitional figure in the history of the S¸aʿbâniye whether he accepted the role or not. His accession to the successorship represented the de facto end of an era, for he held the distinction of being the first head of the S¸aʿbâniye too young to have been trained in the Sufi path by S¸aʿbân himself. This did not mean that he was entirely cut off from the founder, having known him as a child. He would, however, have been aware that S¸aʿbân had predeceased the vast majority of Kastamonu’s population by the time he came to power. Fu’âdî was born some time in the year 967/1560 by his own account. He met S¸aʿbân Efendi through the agency of his mother and father when he was a youth, and witnessed the events of S¸aʿbân’s funeral in the spring of 978/1569 at the age of nine. Still, his youth meant that he never had the chance to build a meaningful personal relationship with this towering figure, who by the beginning of the eleventh/seventeenth century had become increasingly remote from living memory. Fuʾâdî, despite some initial awkwardness, would eventually rise to the challenges raised by growing chronological distance and revive S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s memory for future generations. ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s Early Life and Involvement with the . ¸aʿbâni S ye to 1012/1604

Our knowledge about ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî comes almost entirely from his own hand. Occasional references to him turn up in other sources, but these are often brief or lacking in familiarity with the basic circumstances of his life and times.1 Some scholars have suggested that Fuʾâdî’s father, a man named Himmet Dede,

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was one of S¸aʿbân’s followers who lived close to where the present day Mûsâ Fâkih mosque is located in Kastamonu, just to the east of the present S¸aʿbân-ı Veli complex in the Hisârardı district.2 Yet the only thing that can be confirmed is that the S¸aʿbâniye order played some role in shaping his childhood; outside of that, we gain no insight on how his family members responded to the passing of the great saint or even how long they survived S¸aʿbân himself. Based on his writings, we can assume that he studied in the local medreses and learned Arabic and Persian; initially, he sought to acquire a salaried position as a part of the local scholarly hierarchy in Kastamonu.3 His self-description, however, demonstrates the standard Sufi model of experiencing spiritual crisis over the value of his attempts to master exoteric religious knowledge. Ultimately, he withdrew from both the company of his peers and the pursuit of his worldly goals. His autobiographical account is included in the section of the Menâkıb devoted to his first spiritual guide, Abdülbâkî, and sheds light on how he came to the Sufi path: This poor one, being among the people of Kastamonu, became a seeker of exoteric knowledge, and acquired an education in the rational and transmitted sciences with the desire for high-ranking positions which were given from the royal threshold, frequent in dismissal and notorious for [sudden] turnover. I had no urge or inclination toward esoteric and divinely inspired knowledge which was obtained and perfected from the world of the heart and the station of the soul. With the will and guidance of God, by purity and relaxation coming to a neglectful heart, and cleansing and a new beginning coming to a soul capable of spiritual enlightenment through the power of exoteric knowledge, a divine attraction manifested itself. According to the meaning of [the Arabic proverb] “a rapture among the raptures of the Merciful is equal to the work of [both] men and jinn,” I was overpowered by renunciation and annihilation and rejecting multiplicity through withdrawal and solitude. For a long time I remained in my own state, and like Küreli Mehmed Çelebi and Abdülbâkî Efendi [who were] mentioned in the anecdotes of S¸aʿbân Efendi, I examined closely the books of both the religious law and the [Sufi] path. My doubts and problems pertaining to the divine manifestations and the divinely inspired knowledge were not resolved through a book or a tract. In the end, I came to know definitively by every method that I would not solve my problem or be satisfied until I undertook service to a perfected guide and a knowledgeable shaykh. When I had to seek out a guide, I wanted to follow Abdülbâkî Efendi, thinking that he who is a shaykh on the prayer-rug of S¸aʿbân Efendi must certainly be a perfected guide!4

Fuʾâdî’s account follows a standard script that could have been plucked from any number of founding figures in the Halveti order, but a few elements do offer

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clues about him as an individual. First, the knowledge that Kastamonu had produced successful scholarly figures was one reason he set out on that career path. But he also recognized one of the crises that came to beset the Ottoman Empire after the tenth/sixteenth century, namely, the patterns of unstable series of rapid appointments and dismissals from governmental positions, revolving around the whim of politics at the royal court, that increasingly marked scholarly careers. Even prominent figures like Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî were unsuccessful in navigating the shaky state of the Ottoman system’s traditional career paths at this time. Interestingly, Mustafa ʿAlî’s work also reflects periodic turns to Sufism and worldly renunciation as a response to his failures to obtain prestigious posts.5 Nevertheless, other elements in the text demonstrate that Fuʾâdî was not entirely unsuccessful in his endeavors. He remarks elsewhere that he secured fairly stable employment at a comparatively young age (perhaps as early as 983/1575, if we accept his own recollection) as an assistant to the müfti of Kastamonu. Thus, his studies in the exoteric aspects of knowledge and Islamic jurisprudence must have paid off to some extent.6 In addition, as a result of his pledging his allegiance to Abdülbâkî Efendi several years before his death, Fuʾâdî also served as the preacher of the Friday sermon at the mosque of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli. While the S¸aʿbâniye were never fully absent from Fuʾâdî’s consciousness during his youth, those links did not conflict with scholarly achievements at the provincial level. We know that Fuʾâdî first entered the order as a dedicated Sufi aspirant sometime in 994/1586, based on an assertion he made that he made his pledge of allegiance to Abdülbâkî Efendi as his guide at the age of twenty-seven.7 Yet when he first decided to consult with Abdülbâkî Efendi, Fuʾâdî was disappointed to find that his chosen mentor-to-be was staying in İskilip rather than Kastamonu. Impatient to commence his progress on the Sufi path, he decided to consult some of S¸aʿbân’s other successors in the area, only to be rebuffed: My fervor’s being much increased, I couldn’t be patient and I made an explanation of the state [of affairs] to Hacı Dede, who was well known among the successors of S¸aʿbân Efendi. He said, “this problem is not that which is known or solved in a speedy manner, which are marks of rapture. It takes time and gradual advancement. If you set out on the path by renouncing all but God, a solution will occur through struggle and step-by-step progress.” But I was not able to delay on account of my restlessness, and he shrugged helplessly, saying, “he who will seek guidance in a hurry, we cannot guide [him] quickly.” After that, I explained the state to Himmet Efendi, famed for perfection and exalted favor among the successors of Nûreddînzâde.8 He also responded in exactly the same way. He said, “don’t suffer and be uncomfortable; these problems are signs of

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ecstasy and a cause of the appearance of the manifestations [of God], and its end will be blessing and perfection of mystical knowledge.” I came to Mahmûd Efendi, in the hearth of Benli Sultan on İlgâz mountain, [Benli’s] son and representative, and he also sent the inconsolable [Fuʾâdî] away to his station of hopelessness.9

This information is critical in describing how Fuʾâdî had a range of potential Halveti devotees to choose from – it was not Abdülbâkî, but other successors of S¸aʿbân who were operating in Kastamonu. This could be explained either by reliance on the rule that Kastamonu had grown large enough to justify a second successor’s presence (assuming continued obedience to the rule S¸aʿbân had previously imposed), or simply because Abdülbâkî himself was not frequently in residence at the lodge because he had based himself in İskilip. Moreover, other successors from more powerful, İstanbul-based sub-branches of the Halveti order had moved into the area in the form of the descendants of Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi via his successor Nûreddînzâde Muslihuddîn – noting that Sofyalı Bâlî had once attracted the interest of Abdülbâkî Efendi himself. In addition, we also learn that the longstanding menzilhâne of Benli Sultan on İlgâz mountain was still functioning under the direction of his son, Mahmûd Efendi. The young Fuʾâdî had options in pursuing his Sufi inclinations, and despite his inability to build close relationships with these figures, interaction with them may have contributed something to his later writings. Fuʾâdî carefully avoids any discussion of Abdülbâkî’s acts of grace out of respect for his command, as we have seen. What Fuʾâdî does do, in part to side-step this prohibition, is to use his own assimilation into the S¸aʿbâniye as a means of indirectly illustrating his first master’s spiritual powers. Fuʾâdî must have waited some time for Abdülbâkî to return to Kastamonu, for he claims that he was wrapped up in his own problems and did not immediately come to see Abdülbâkî even when he had arrived. Eventually, he did come to the mosque for Friday prayer and he was able to listen to Abdülbâkî’s address to the congregation. Abdülbâkî’s sermon immediately resolved several of Fuʾâdî’s most vexing intellectual problems, so he approached the master afterwards and expressed his desire to serve. In so doing, the narrative contrasts the hesitation and reticence displayed by the other shaykhs with whom Fuʾâdî had consulted with the immediate acceptance he received from Abdülbâkî, culminating in the following observations: “If I had not come to a perfected guide . . . like him, I would have been diverted by divine rapture, remained in the form of madness and in the station of ecstatic unity (makâm-ı cemʿ), and been blocked from coming to the second distinction (fark-ı sânî) and the unity of the unity (cemʿüʾl-cemʿ) which is the station of guidance.”10 In sum, the obvious point that Fuʾâdî had risen to

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the head of the order, and become a perfected guide in his own right was one of the acts of grace that his master bestowed. Fuʾâdî could employ this to proffer his own experience as a proof of his master’s sainthood, if not buttress his own legitimacy in the process. Fuʾâdî’s experiences, however, underscore the degree to which the S¸aʿbâniye infrastructure remained unstable in the post-S¸aʿbân era, as his success in transforming his spiritual life was only temporary. Fuʾâdî was silent on whether he was required to follow Abdülbâkî to places outside Kastamonu, or if Abdülbâkî’s return to Kastamonu was part of a lengthy stay. Regardless, Abdülbâkî would die three years after he had accepted Fuʾâdî as his follower, before Fuʾâdî was able to complete the seven stages of the Halveti path. He thus lacked the ability to chart his own course as a successor. Since the succession to Muhyiddîn was not immediate in character, Fuʾâdî did not continue his efforts and even temporarily abandoned the Sufi path altogether, apparently returning to his previous duties. He reflected that the issues that led him back to the order were tied to a broadbased fear among many Ottoman subjects over a lack of stability which characterized the late tenth/sixteenth-century environment: [I] was a follower of Abdülbâkî Efendi, and I struggled more than three years in the world of isolation and solitude. I reached the divine solitude (vahdet-i hakîkiye) through the power of the station of unity (makâm-ı cemʿ) in spiritual unveiling. While [I was] withdrawn and in isolation, the signs and manifestations of the unity of the unity (cemʿüʾl-cemʿ) appeared. [Then] I fell into the world of apparent plurality (kesret-i sûriye) through witnessing of the state of solitude in the multitude11 and the second distinction (fark-ı sânî).12 I was in the scribal service through knowledge of jurisprudence at the müfti’s office for 17 years in Kastamonu, and in the office of preacher in the S¸aʿbân Efendi mosque. After that I learned of the perfection and states of Muhyiddîn Efendi. On account of the appearance of increased disorder and weakness when it reached the year 1000 in our time, and its being most important and best to be in the world of solitude in a period of weakness like this, by the manifest and hidden appearing in the mirror of the heart, the state of annihilation became ascendant again in the world of the heart and soul, and the years of divine ecstasy again came suddenly to the ocean of the heart. It brought into motion the waves of divine love which were in my depths and the boats of the spiritual states and divine manifestations, and embracing it, I fell voluntarily once more into the channel of hope of travelling the path and progression in spiritual knowledge.13

Like many other Ottoman Muslims, Fuʾâdî was deeply affected by the fears surrounding the advent of the Muslim millennium toward the end of Sultan Murad

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III’s reign. This, coupled with the general instability of state positions, proved to be the catalyst that drew him back onto the Sufi path. The Ottoman war with the Safavids that ended in 999/1590 had led to disruption and financial strain on the empire, causing an upsurge in brigandage and other problems. The internal political situation worsened over the course of the decade, with multiple revolts threatening the sultan’s control.14 The stress of trying to function in an increasingly unstable environment may have led Fuʾâdî to seek out the support that the Halveti order could provide. Also, at some point Muhyiddîn would have secured sufficient support for his succession, and the conjunction of factors would solidify Fuʾâdî’s commitment to the S¸aʿbâniye once more. His new guide, Muhyiddîn Efendi, soon took a liking to Fuʾâdî and predicted, on the second day of a traditional forty-day spiritual retreat, that Fuʾâdî would gain mastery over the sixth stage from a dream vision. This advance would release him from his previous frustration. With Muhyiddîn’s continued guidance, Fuʾâdî then gained access to the seventh and final stage, giving him the right to guide others.15 Yet Fuʾâdî’s career differed significantly in a key respect from those of his predecessors. While all the other direct successors to S¸aʿbân had all been sent out to guide in other places, there is no indication that Fuʾâdî ever left Kastamonu during the period between the completion of his training on the path and his accession to the leadership of the order in 1012/1604. Instead, we must assume that he continued his duties as a scribe for Kastamonu’s müfti and preaching at the S¸aʿbân-ı Veli mosque on Fridays. The reason for this may have been grimly practical: from 1004/1596 to 1018/1610 Anatolia was racked by the Celâlî revolts, first under the renegade, Kara Yazıcı, and later others. Much of the countryside was plundered, and roads were frequently unsafe to travel as marauding bands roamed the area of Kastamonu and other towns.16 Muhyiddîn may have lacked the ability to send Fuʾâdî too far afield to spread the order by the time he reached maturity. He may have also valued his activities and connections with Kastamonu’s scholarly institutions too much to lose him. The chaos of the period probably forced Muhyiddîn to conserve resources and focus on maintaining the order’s following as best he could. Fuʾâdî corroborates this interpretation by noting that some of his aims for the development of the order went unfulfilled during his lifetime. This led Fuʾâdî to make vows to fulfill his shaykh’s vision. This is exemplified in a conversation with his teacher one day, while he was in the process of completing his Sufi training. In a section he labels “a story” (hikâyet), Muhyiddîn confided in him: When [Muhyiddîn] said: “I have three wishes in the world. If God most High were to satisfy those wishes, I would die, and if I were to pass on [to the

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afterlife], death would be a favor to my soul,” the poor one [Fuʾâdî] requested an explanation. He said, “the first is that the pulpit in the noble mosque is [too] long. It constrains the circle of the remembrance of God, and it is an obstacle to the zeal of those performing the zikr. [The second is that] two pillars in the mosque also block and cause difficulty in this manner. [The first two wishes] are to make the administrator [of the mosque] shorten the pulpit and to take out the pillars.” He was silent and did not explain his third wish. When I asked him for an explanation about his third wish, he said, “since it is confidential (mahremleri olmağla),17 if it [can be kept as] a secret informal revelation, and if my dream becomes reality independently by the grace of God, then if it were to appear in my time that an exalted tomb is built over the lord S¸aʿbân Efendi, and if I were to cover the enlightened sepulcher with a wool [covering], and if I were to wrap his black turban [on it], then I would have achieved my final wish.” Several years later, his blessed soul passed on to the place of the mercy of God, and his body was moved to the area of the sepulcher of the lord [S¸aʿbân]. The poor one was guided to the service of the order in its lodge and the guidance of mystical knowledge on its prayer-rug by the command of God, and while participating in the circle of the remembrance of God, the three wishes of the noble one came to my mind.18

Fuʾâdî reveals several important things here. First, Muhyiddîn Efendi was not in charge of the mosque during the years of his guidance. Muhyiddîn’s reference to a need for permission from an administrator implies that the mosque at the S¸aʿbân-ı Veli complex came under the control of S¸aʿbâniye leaders only after Fuʾâdî’s accession to power. This was despite the fact that S¸aʿbân and his followers had worked to convert it into a congregational mosque from the simple mescid, or mosque built for daily prayer, founded by Seyyid Sünnetî. It is not clear what the circumstances of the mosque were; perhaps S¸aʿbân and his followers never gained official control over the structure. Thus, the fact that the mosque was poorly designed to accommodate traditional Halveti practices suggested that S¸aʿbân’s impact was still limited, and the lack of space may reflect later participatory growth in the S¸aʿbâniye ceremonies. However, another likely explanation exists, and may rest with the mosque’s renovation and its reclassification as vakıf, negotiated with imperial intervention during the reign of Sultan Murad III at the instigation of S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ. As a result of this, its subsequent administrative personnel would likely have been appointed by the whim of high officials as part of the Ottoman patronage structure.19 Muhyiddîn’s failure to gain any position in its administration may have reflected problems with the circumstances of his succession, or were perhaps even inherited from Abdülbâkî’s absence. When Fuʾâdî consolidated his

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leadership, one of his goals must have been to attain more substantial influence over its physical infrastructure. There are other clues as to why Muhyiddîn might have had trouble carrying out his wish to build a tomb, or even express it publicly. Early in the reign of Sultan Mehmed III (1595–1603), the s¸eyhülislâm Saʿdeddîn (d. 1008/1599) was asked to issue a legal judgment (fetvâ) defending the practice of visitation at the tombs of Muslim saints. Saʿdeddîn had strong connections with Sultan Murad III, having become attached to his retinue even before Murad’s accession to the throne in 982/1574. Therefore, he was well disposed toward most Sufi practices.20 In both the Menâkıb-ı S¸aʿbân and the Türbenâme, Fuʾâdî references this fetvâ as a defense against the anti-Sufi factions that harassed the S¸aʿbâniye over the course of his career. When introducing the legal opinion, he described the kind of trouble the order was facing with regard to constructing S¸aʿbân’s tomb: Some of the people of vanity and conceit – [those] slow of understanding, ignorant ones posing as wise people, and uneducated people who follow the urging of Satan and the demands of the carnal soul from among the exoteric scholars and others – censure the visiting of the enlightened sepulchers for assistance and the assistance of the esteemed saints and noble shaykhs of the Sunnî tradition who manifest sainthood and acts of grace from their good souls, on account of [their] not knowing anything. They say, “they are created beings like us also, and they were people of faith and trustworthy people. But it is not decreed in our sect that they die as believers [automatically]. They will also say, ‘my soul, my soul’ on the day of judgment like us; there is no benefit for anyone from them in this world. And it is not suitable to visit to seek help from their tombs. It is necessary to seek help and assistance from God Most High himself alone. It is polytheism to seek help from any other,” and they say many other things like this.21

S¸aʿbân had encountered these problems too, but by Fuʾâdî’s time the greatest threat to the order’s legitimacy came not from groups composed of upstart or wayward S¸aʿbâniye dervishes or ornery individual scholars like Evliyâ S¸ücâʿ. Instead, Fuʾâdî implies the appearance of organized groups that challenged the doctrinal bases of Sufi practice itself. These groups were forerunners to what later came to be called the Kâdızâdeli movement, a faction that would come to dominate Ottoman religio-political conflicts during the eleventh/seventeenth century.22 Despite Fuʾâdî’s hostility, we discern that the challengers of tomb visitation legitimacy based their arguments on a concept positing radical equality among all Muslims in their relationship to God. This allowed no one to act as an intermediary or intercessor with the divinity for their co-religionists. This idea, which

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is not without scriptural justification in the Qurʾan,23 threatened one of the foundations of Ottoman Sufism. Fuʾâdî and others knew that any failure to respond to this assault on the practices of his order would mean trouble in an increasingly hostile environment. By issuing his opinion, Saʿdeddîn gave Ottoman Sufi leaders a precedent that allowed them to invoke state authority and tradition against their opponents; a weapon that would be revived in later generations to oppose anti-Sufi attacks.24 With praise for both Sultan Murad III and Mehmed III as prominent supporters of mysticism, Fuʾâdî incorporated the full text of the legal opinion in Turkish. In response to the question, “if Zeyd, who is among the scholarly class (ʿulema), were to say ‘there is no benefit at all to a person who visits . . . the tombs of the saints and scholars and upright ones,’ what is legally required for the aforementioned Zeyd?” Saʿdeddîn’s response followed: When considering the works, reports, and famous stories that the holy enlightened spirits . . . of the great saints are not cut off from connection [with existence], and when the suitability of visiting tombs full of lights is a chosen doctrine (mezheb-i muhtâr), it is necessary to choose it. The people of aptitude manifest foolish evil acts, ignorance and error in censuring the witnessing of works and realizations of the good men that have occurred in the tombs of the saints. It is also well known that a shaykh of the people of faults, among the most extreme fanatics of the Hanbalî [school], was a censurer of visitors of tombs. He even ventured to censure the tombs of the prophets! Since he wrote a book on that topic, and went wildly astray from the path of God, the scholars of his age treated him with contempt and vilified him with attacks, accusations of ignorance, and an extended imprisonment. It is well known that judgments of scholarly gatherings on religious problems occurred [when he] opposed the clarity of correct opinions. They accused people of error, and legal opinions were issued saying, “if he doesn’t repent, let him be executed.” When the religious scholars were in unity, he repented and was saved by a confession of his ignorance. The letters and copies of the legal decisions of the scholars of that age are not recorded. And the saying, “when you are perplexed, seek guidance from the people of the tombs,” is famous and accepted among the people of perception.25

Saʿdeddîn’s decision stressed two important points. The first is that the visitation of tombs is a lawful, if not prescribed, option for believers. However, the s¸eyhülislâm offers no scriptural justification for this, instead referring to customary practice based on the experiences and reports of the Muslim community over the course of its history. For this reason, his opinion would not have been convincing to anti-Sufi factions, who often emphasized a strict grounding

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in scriptural texts like the Qurʾan. This makes the second point even more interesting – the decision contains an obvious condemnation of the life and works of the noted medieval scholar, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), who continues to be a controversial figure in both Muslim and non-Muslim scholarship. Saʿdeddîn linked the legacy of Ibn Taymiyya to the anti-Sufi polemic in Ottoman circles and, showing a remarkable understanding of the historical context, invokes Ibn Taymiyya’s adversarial relationship with the Mamluk state as proof that he was an extremist. Saʿdeddîn stressed that he was imprisoned to force a recantation of his beliefs, suggesting that a forceful response to inflammatory anti-Sufi activities was warranted.26 While the courts of Murad III and his son Mehmed proved supportive of Sufi orders like the Halveti, the sense of crisis that confronted the Ottoman Empire at the end of the tenth/sixteenth century led others to revive debates about reforming institutions inherited from the past. Muhyiddîn proved either reticent or unable to fulfill his agenda; given the turbulent times in which he operated, perhaps it could not have been otherwise. . Expanding the ¸aʿbâni S ye Legacy: Fuʾâdî and the Writing . of the Menâkibnâme-i ¸aʿbânS ı Veli

Upon Muhyiddîn’s death, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî rose to the leadership of the order some time in 1012/1604.27 Imbued with Muhyiddîn’s vision, and better placed to recognize the legal value of Saʿdeddîn’s fetvâ, he was ready to pursue a more activist path. Yet his ambition would also mark a turning point in the wider history of the Halveti order. He came to differ from his S¸aʿbâniye predecessors in a key respect: he was a prolific writer whose works survived into contemporary times. This was a remarkable achievement for an otherwise modest provincial scholar; this alone makes him a figure worthy of attention. He stands in contrast to the multitude of big city denizens who normally make up the ranks of authors in manuscript library card catalogs. Moreover, he mirrored S¸aʿbân’s long life and served as head of the S¸aʿbâniye order in Kastamonu for nearly thirty-three years until his death in 1045/1636 at the age of seventy-six.28 The first three years of Fuʾâdî’s leadership of the order is obscure, though we can assume that the continuation of the Celâlî revolts until the decisive defeat of their most powerful leaders during 1015/1607–1017/1608 probably limited his options. In addition, like his predecessors, he would have to build relationships with the order’s followers, many of whom would have begun their service with Muhyiddîn. Fuʾâdî recognized early on that the biggest problem he had was a lack of direct experience with S¸aʿbân himself, who had died more than thirtyfive years before. The number of people with direct experience of S¸aʿbân’s

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teachings was rapidly diminishing, and Fuʾâdî realized that he had to act to preserve the order’s legacy. With his background in the Kastamonu müfti’s scribal service and his connections with S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s mosque, Fuʾâdî seemed more than qualified to write a hagiography that could preserve the order’s history. The remarks of his contemporaries spurred him to undertake the task, as he related in the introduction to the Menâkıb: Many noble men of God, among the people of spiritual knowledge, among the Sunnî sect, wrote the anecdotes of the saints on account of belief in the acts of grace of the saints being necessary and required, just as [belief] in the miracles of the Prophets. The anecdotes of every master and his followers, being a written tract or a sought after writing, were read out in their lodges and in other noble gatherings, and the states full of perfection and sincerity and heart ravishing acts of grace were known to everyone . . . On account of the exalted anecdotes and acts of grace of the esteemed S¸aʿbân Efendi, and the noble ones who were among his successors, not being written in a tract, and on account of some of the trustworthy brethren sincerely requesting that a hagiography be written for these [people] as [they had been for] the other esteemed saints and noble shaykhs, it came to my mind to set out to write a hagiography on some sheets of paper in the year 1017 (1608). When the commencement was inspired [in me], it seemed [that I would] abandon it, thinking, “be it little or much, this type of writing and official recording prohibits work and unity in the corner of solitude, and is a cause of many thoughts and multiplicity.” While [I was] on the brink of postponing [it] and turning away, the noble ones and gentlemen among the scholars and the masters of knowledge, especially the most noble of our brethren and greatest of his contemporaries, S¸eyhî Efendi,29 who is now the müfti in charge of Kastamonu, . . . said: “Although we read out and hear the hagiographies of so many noble ones among the masters of grace in other lands and the things pertaining to them in [S¸aʿbân’s] lodge and other gatherings, even though the true saint S¸aʿbân Efendi buried in Kastamonu was among the masters of sainthood and holders of grace, up to now his noble anecdotes and pleasant acts of grace have not been written in a tract or officially taken down in writing. We used to say in those places, ‘if a man of God . . . were to write [this] down, it would be most worthy and appropriate.’ Now we find you have set out this far, and it is not suitable at all that you should abandon the writing of the hagiography!”30

The sainthood of S¸aʿbân Efendi may have been an accepted part of Kastamonu’s traditions, but Fuʾâdî’s contemporaries recognized the absence of a written text as a weakness. Fuʾâdî’s expression of hesitation was probably apologetic; he knew that hagiographical works played a vital role in legitimizing a given

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Muslim saint to a wider audience. If the S¸aʿbâniye were going to compete in the marketplace of regional holy figures, it would have to justify and codify its case. Yet the modest origins of the project belie the ultimate ambitions embedded in its creation. Fuʾâdî did not envision the work as a project aimed strictly at a local audience, as he proceeded to offer praises to Sultan Ahmed I, lauding him in poetic verse for restoring order.31 The work aimed to strengthen the connection of the S¸aʿbâniye to the Ottoman court once more, re-establishing the temporarily disrupted ties established during the reigns of Murad III and Mehmed III. However, Fuʾâdî became aware of a more pressing problem, rooted not in the highest levels of government, but in the concerns of his rank and file followers. He said of them: I considered it to be a manifest service to the order and principles of the esteemed master [to write a hagiography], and intended it to be a keepsake for the pure brethren. I gathered together a detailed hagiography so that when the seekers among the people of purity and the lovers among the people of faithfulness read, listened, and understood with heart and soul the anecdotes of the bounty of the state of the noble ones who were the master [S¸aʿbân’s] successors, and were glad and full of purity, they would recall this incurable one also, with a prayer of blessing. But it was long and detailed, and not everyone could understand [it] in its formulation and diction . . . [so] in order that everyone would easily understand, I wrote an abridged and selected hagiography with simple Turkish expressions . . .32

Most likely, since the original text was written in Arabic, it could not meet the needs of many of Fuʾâdî’s contemporaries. As far as we can tell, Fuʾâdî completed both the primary and the abridged text in 1017/1608, but it was the abridgment that would begin spreading rapidly thereafter. Fuʾâdî’s goals for the work were not limited to seeking the approval of his contemporaries, however. The hagiography interpreted (or re-interpreted) key points in the narrative to channel the audience’s reception of it, and also sought to deflect the criticisms of increasingly widespread anti-Sufi activity. Yet the structure of his work is primarily troubled by a concern so important that he commenced his writing not with the anecdotes of the virtuous saints who were his subjects, nor even with the traditional explanation of the Halveti order’s chain of authority and founding figures. Instead, he began the work with a chapter whose title speaks volumes about the uneasiness that marked Fuʾâdî’s environment: “Who Is a Real Saint, and Are Extraordinary Acts of Grace and Intuition Necessary for All of the True Saints, or Is it Enough to be Found in Some of Them?” The import of all subsequent narratives in the work rests on

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this framework. For this reason, rather than simply mining the work for historical material, it deserves a close examination in its own right. Citing the great Sufi scholar, ʿAbdurrezzâk al-Kâşânî (d. 730/1330)33, Fuʾâdî commenced his discussion by informing his audience that not every pious individual can be esteemed a true saint. Instead, there are three specific conditions that must be fulfilled. The first is that a true saint does everything for God; he does not engage in upholding Islamic norms or the principles of the order because he expects some kind of benefit to accrue to himself. Rather, he avoids all activity which would draw him away from God. The second crucial characteristic is that the true saint does not seek refuge in anything or anyone other than God – the true saint accepts any calamity, pain or suffering without complaint – nor seek support from others to mitigate it. Finally, the true saint remains aloof from worldly affairs and never mixes worldliness with his actions or mystical states. Absent any one of these three fundamental characteristics, no one can be considered a true saint.34 Given our reading in the narratives of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli and his successors, the criteria Fuʾâdî established for his selection of materials for the hagiography begins to emerge. The discussion zeroes in on saintly powers; if a questioner asked why knowing these three criteria was important, Fuʾâdî had a ready response: Because an action that is extraordinary appears and manifests [itself] also from a sorcerer, or the people of istidrâc,35 or someone other than a saint. It is on account of this that there is no difference in the apparent sense between an act of grace and magic. The two of them are both actions contrary to customary [occurrence]. But when [the difference] is perceived, it is perceived from the sign and the state of the person who manifests [it]. Meaning, if an action or state contrary to customary [occurrence] were to appear from the prophets, it would be a miracle. If the essence of the descriptions which were mentioned appears from a saint in whom are found these three signs, then it is [the power of] sainthood and an act of grace. But if the essence of the descriptions were to appear from people in whom are not found the three signs, or who are people of carnal passions and innovation, or who are not among the Sunnî sect, it is not sainthood or an act of grace. Rather, it is magic, or it appears through the power of cleverness, shrewdness or a desire to make a living (ʿakl-ı maʿâs¸) . . . May God most High protect the community of Muhammad from rabble-rousers, tricksters, frauds and the evil of the evildoers!36

The abstract points Kâşânî raised thus have a practical application for the audience: Fuʾâdî was enjoining them to appreciate the difference between magic

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and religion. The only appropriate recourse for an Ottoman subject in times of trouble was to turn to God through the medium of his true saints, rather than going to purveyors of magical spells, incantations or other competitors in the market of supernatural power. Interestingly, Sufi shaykhs appear here as checks against superstition and backwardness – mirroring the sort of accusations leveled against Sufism itself in modern times. Fuʾâdî wanted to guide the people away from competitors he deemed to be irreligious.37 Extraordinary acts of grace by saints like S¸aʿbân-ı Veli notwithstanding, Fuʾâdî goes on to clarify that aspirants on the Sufi path should not focus primarily on the miraculous when assessing pious figures’ legacies in their society. Continuing to channel Kâşânî’s writings, Fuʾâdî argued that many saints never manifested any acts of grace at all: When establishing the existence of a friend of God, it is necessary not to slander or disparage [him], saying, “if an extraordinary act of grace were never found in him, he has no act of grace, and those who have no act of grace are not among the people of God.” It is necessary not to abandon him. But the state of the prophets is not analogous to this! A miracle is necessary for all of them according to their place, time, state and character, and according to the states and actions of the people of that time. It is a proof and power for the trustworthiness in their call to prophecy, meaning to their being real prophets. But if it is found in only some of the saints, it is sufficient . . . [S]ince there is no end to the stages of the knowledge of God and the advancement of a state, if an act of grace which is a visible revelation of mysteries appears, as opposed to a spiritual revelation of mysteries in a perfected knower who is able and capable of obtaining perfection, it is certain that the visible revelation of mysteries blocks the spiritual revelation of mysteries which is obtained in the world of the mind, passions, heart, and soul, and prevents advancement.38

Miraculous occurrences should not act as the yardstick by which the audience should judge either the saints or their own progress on the Sufi path. Contrary to prophets, Fuʾâdî even intimates that the manifestation of miraculous occurrences can act as a curse rather than a blessing, distracting the seeker from further advancement toward greater knowledge of God. Thus, Fu’âdî’s introduction challenged its audience to take a more rigorous approach to religious devotion, rather than looking for miracle workers to solve their problems. To back up this point, he cited a point from the twelfth chapter of the Muhimmât al-wâsilîn of Ebû Sabit ad-Daylamî (d. 589/1193)39 whereby the two things that adepts on the mystical path must most beware of are charismatic acts of grace (kerâmet) and extraordinary powers of discernment (firâset). Fuʾâdî

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defined kerâmet as a form of what he calls “apparent unveiling” (kesf-i sûrî): acts or states which most people are unable to accomplish and which contravene the customary mode of existence. Firâset, on the other hand, does not entail “visible revelation of mysteries”; it does, however, constitute the ability to know every potential state, whether hidden or apparent, through the purifying rituals and ascetic practices of the Sufi path. It is thus a form of perception achieved through hard work that sometimes resembles kerâmet. When either kerâmet or firâset took on a visible form in the worldly realm, it was a potential danger, for they distracted the seeker on the Halveti path from his goal of reaching the seventh and final stage of the process. In fact, manifestations of visible revelation of mysteries such as these were almost guaranteed to keep the seeker at a lower stage of the process. Therefore, inner or spiritual revelation of mysteries is the goal of the seeker, for only rarely can both apparent and spiritual revelation of mysteries be combined by a given individual; one assumes that Fuʾâdî would present his protagonist S¸aʿbân as a prime example.40 This discussion culminated in a warning to his audience against certain types of skeptics: namely, people who flirted with the Sufi path, but did not give it their full effort, complaining otherwise about the inferiority of contemporary shaykhs rather than admitting their own failings. Recreating the chatter of these skeptics, he showed his audience what to avoid: Some people . . . don’t engage partially or fully in the struggle in the path of God, and they go around to strangers according to the needs of the passions of the carnal soul and satanic urging. They never submit to the noble one whom they know, and they censure the existence of the perfected guide and the noble ones among the people of rapture whose prayers are accepted, saying, “none of the noble ones of the people of rapture and those whose prayers are accepted remains . . . If a real saint were to appear, I would join up and serve [him] with all my soul.” Some [others], with imagined reverence, also think badly [of the noble ones] without apprehending the true state, and become followers of Satan; they look down their noses at [the saint] and say, “if he were a real saint and a real noble one with acts of grace, he wouldn’t leave us to our own state; he would enter our dreams or impose rapture [upon us], or he would appear to us and make us dervishes without our needing to choose it; he would guide [us].” But this is not the speech of an intelligent person, nor the words of a righteous person! It appears from the trickery of the carnal soul and the urging of Satan. It is absurd talk! But not every person understands the error and weakness of this talk.41

Here we have another problem that confronted Ottoman Sufism: people who claimed that the mystics of the present (and future) represented only a slow drift

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away from superior perfection in the past.42 Taking umbrage at the insult to more recent saints, Fuʾâdî argues that it is not the saint’s job to go around saving people from their own vices; the initiative rests, as always, with the individual. In making this argument, he reconfigured the point of hagiography that presented saints as able to bring about changes in people’s situation suddenly through spiritual charisma. Saints do such things not just because they can, but because they are given a reason to do so by their followers. Otherwise, why would the prophets and saints of the past have left any unbelievers or censurers of their work in the world?43 The argument had a practical aspect also, given the recent historical context of Fuʾâdî’s era. He and his contemporaries needed to stress these points in the wake of the Celâlî revolts, which had paralyzed and destroyed much of the Anatolian countryside. In the wake of the chaos that accompanied these renegade forces, which displaced so many, some may have lost their faith not only in Ottoman government institutions, but also in recourse to social institutions like Sufi orders, for their entreaties did not deliver them from the depredations they had recently witnessed.44 After criticizing the common wisdom about the relationship between saints and their deliverance of miracles for their communities, Fuʾâdî concluded by arguing that the majority of saints never publicly manifest any miraculous acts. Here, he finally invokes S¸aʿbân-ı Veli as an example: A person in a gathering asked S¸aʿbân Efendi about something pertaining to the problems of the exoteric law. The noble one replied by saying, “it is not necessary for us to respond to this problem. It is necessary [to submit it] to the müfti, who is the shaykh of the exoteric law. The great shaykhs replied to those who asked about this point by saying, ‘go to the müfti.’” Another person in the gathering thought badly of the noble one and made a recollection, saying, “how can a knowledgeable shaykh who does not give a response to a problem of the exoteric law be a perfected shaykh and a true saint? Specifically, it is necessary to put a bridle, from beyond, on the day of judgment on the mouth of a scholar who doesn’t give an answer to a legal question and is stingy [in responding].” That mine of charismatic grace, in order to make that person understand what is correct and to guide him, said with the inspiration of God: “One does not place a bridle on our mouth on judgment day from afar because of our not giving a response to a problem in exoteric law whose response is incumbent on the müfti. That meaning which was recalled [above], accords with the supposition that [(a)] no scholar is ever found who will respond to that problem, [(b)] that its response is specific to a scholar, [(c)] that he also does not give a response out of laziness, and [(d)] he continues to hinder [the inquiry by saying] that the problem is not known [even

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if it isn’t]. If a question were asked about the knowledge or problems [pertaining to] the order, spiritual knowledge, or the spiritual vision [of God] . . . then the response to this knowledge . . . is incumbent on the [Sufi] shaykhs, who make this secret clear and make manifest this state in order to guide that person.”45

Of course, the offending individual was forced to apologize to the shaykh after receiving this rebuke. The point of the anecdote was that S¸aʿbân refused to address the question strictly for the purpose of showing off his knowledge; instead, he referred the question to whoever was most competent to address it. Still, Fuʾâdî’s focus on this anecdote cannot help but draw interest. He was, after all, part of the legal structure of the müftülük himself, and a sub-text of this narrative may be to underscore that mystical leaders did not threaten the realm of exoteric knowledge represented by jurisprudents and legal scholars. Each religious figure in Muslim society would focus on their own sphere of influence; the public should not tax a shaykh’s patience by expecting him to fulfill every possible role when more proper alternatives existed. Fuʾâdî then hammered home that this is the reason why beginners on the Sufi path must not be exposed to miraculous occurrences by Sufi masters. Instead of engaging in the struggle required to attain the developmental stations in their proper order, their focus shifted to miracle working and how to channel these powers to their own benefit. The example of Sultan Murad III, attempting to combine the role of Ottoman ruler with that of mystical aspirant in his relations with the S¸aʿbâniye mystic S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ, come to mind here.46 Fuʾâdî argued that even if the seeker were to witness acts of grace early in his training, it would be dangerous to speak of it. Enjoying the worldly benefits of such acts might develop, and attract unwanted attention to the secrets of the saints. Here, Fuʾâdî’s framing of S¸aʿbân’s “spiritual hand” and warnings to his followers about not discussing it become intimately linked to his arguments about the nature and purpose of sainthood in Islamic tradition. After all, Fuʾâdî quipped, this is why the names of saints are followed by the formula, “may God make his secret holy,” rather than “may God have mercy on him.” This diversion of the attention of his audience from the miraculous sought to protect them from falling victim to alternative supernatural practitioners offering solutions for worldly troubles, be they false saints or the workers of oracles and magic.47 Yet Fuʾâdî offers us clues about his audience by humanizing his discussion of issues raised by technical terms like “visible” versus “spiritual revelation of mysteries” (kesf-i sûrî vs. kesf-i maʿnevî). In another advisory note, he discussed the “example of the wandering dervish” (abdâl). It acted as a response to a question Fuʾâdî had heard about these issues: “What does the state . . . of a dervish look like who is blocked from spiritual unveiling and knowledge of God

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by the manifestation of this type of apparent unveiling?” The target of his subsequent rhetorical tirade is aimed at wandering dervishes like the Kalenders, wellknown antinomian figures who were frequently criticized by Muslim thinkers as potentially deviant elements in Anatolian society, especially as their numbers had multiplied following the Mongol invasions.48 Fuʾâdî responded that these figures roaming the countryside were the best way to answer this question; for if one asked wandering dervishes about manifestations of the divine, or the stages and stations on the path to true spiritual knowledge of God, they would become bewildered or speechless. But even worse, by Fuʾâdî’s time, some of these figures had later settled into positions as false shaykhs, as he bitterly recounts: [Such a dervish] fills up his gathering with storytelling of a pleasant and joking type like a raven of the people of leisure and a crow full of cackling. He begins to say things without substance that guide [one] to secrets of the causes of false ideas and transitory illusions that fill up the water bottle of the heart. He listens to words without substance from the joke-tellers, lazy people, and idle ones. After finding [them] idle and without shame like himself, he says: “I journeyed in the world of travel to great cities, towns, and fortresses such as so-and-so, and in those cities and fortress I saw such beautiful rarities and wonders of creation! I traveled in such-and-such mountains and deserts, and in those mountains and deserts I saw such great and venerable rocks, trees, and types of vegetation and blossoms, and such huge winged and pleasant voiced birds, and how many wondrous animals and strange things like this! I went around in such-and-such kingdom, and I visited in every province and every land such-and-such Sufi lodges and tombs of the shaykhs and people of God! I met with such-and such noble ones who were masters of grace and were among the people of sainthood, and was honored and filled with purity through conversing [with them], and was distinguished through their prayers of blessing and exalted favors!” He informs through such idle talk and chitchat! But he is accordingly without information about the state and reality of the things he traveled [to see], and the state and knowledge of those noble ones whom he visited. He passes the day with worthless claims and futile words, and doesn’t even know his own weakness and shame. He remains merely in the exoteric [world] and the apparent form of journeying, and by being uninformed in his journey, and not being a knower of the people of witnessing or the [mystical] state, he remains in the valley of ignorance and behind the veil of multiplicity. While not even knowing his own state and value, he sponges off the people of God even as he says he is one of the knowers!49

The vehemence of Fuʾâdî’s denunciation is striking. The society of his time must have been rife with people who were playing at being a Sufi guide based solely

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on their worldly experiences and connections. Having never properly embarked on the Sufi path, their actions mocked the real struggle that was required. Fuʾâdî concluded his first chapter by reiterating that the true saints in Ottoman society establish themselves secretly among the general population (as did S¸aʿbân), and novices seeking out the Sufi path were frequently guilty of looking to the wrong criteria in choosing their teachers. The dangers of seeking out a proper guide in this early stage of the Sufi path could be resolved only by reference to the characteristics that define any true saint.50 Only in the second chapter of his work does Fuʾâdî introduce the foundations of the Halveti order, underscoring the centrality of the philosophical questions surrounding true sainthood at the core of his work. The second chapter noted the chain of authorities that produced the Halveti order, including its foundation myths as supposedly taught to the caliph ʿAlî by the Prophet Muhammad. Yet this part of the work is brief and does not elaborate upon most of the figures in the silsile. He does make special mention of how ʿÖmer el-Halvetî’s practices gave the order its name, and a brief history of how Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî and his followers worked to spread the order in Anatolia, thus solidifying key historical moment that consolidated the Halveti order.51 Also, figures such as Cemâl elHalvetî and Seyyid Sünnetî appear in the context of a group of forty followers of Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî who were given permission to transmit the Halveti order and Yahyâ’s teachings into Anatolia. From this core group, Fuʾâdî argues, S¸aʿbân’s predecessors and teachers on the path emerged.52 Taken as a whole, the first two chapters of the hagiography set out to define and interpret the historical accounts of S¸aʿbân’s life and career both philosophically and historically. We can now interpret the material discussed above in Part II as useful corroborating material for this schema. Thus, we now have a grasp of both the historical narrative about S¸aʿbân and his order and the concerns that shaped Fuʾâdî’s selection and presentation of that material. Yet how did his intended audience receive the work? An examination of archives and libraries suggests it was successful, for many copies of the manuscript have survived, even leaving aside the thirteenth/ nineteenth-century printed text that represents Kastamonu’s first printed book.53 More evidence of the abridged hagiography’s popularity also lies in the unfortunate disappearance of Fuʾâdî’s original and more extensive Arabic-language hagiography. Additional anecdotal evidence for the work’s success in winning an audience comes from Fuʾâdî’s later writings, where he expresses surprise that only a decade after writing his work, he found copies of it were circulating in the hands of scholarly contemporaries.54 The signature work of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s career, by all measures, rapidly spread throughout the Ottoman domains wherever the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the order

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established itself, and laid the groundwork for a more ambitious agenda in the future. *** Contemporary historians, when first skimming this type of source for insights on the past, might find Fuʾâdî’s objects of interest and periodically repetitive presentation style dull and uninteresting in comparison with others. Moreover, in sensing traditional literary conventions drawn from a mystical tradition stretching back to the formative period of Islamic history, they might dismiss the hagiography as a second-rate, largely derivative work that does not deserve our attention. Even the historian in search of factual clues about provincial Ottoman life, when made aware of Fuʾâdî’s underlying motivations and structuring of his material, might be inclined to doubt its relevance or accuracy for the questions they seek to answer. Though not entirely unmerited, this chapter has largely refuted these surface impressions in favor of a more holistic interpretation of the author and contemporary subjects of the work. However hackneyed the Menâkıb’s conventions might appear to us today, the work succeeded in codifying a narrative and philosophical understanding of sainthood that would guide the order well throughout its history. The work captured the imagination of Ottoman subjects well beyond Kastamonu in a process that has continued into the present, where the stories have been republished anew in modern Turkish. Moreover, if historians focus their attention solely on the subjects of the Menâkıb, they risk missing a critical element in the story of the S¸aʿbâniye order. ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s hagiographical reflections were not the culminating achievement of his career, they were only the beginning of it. Capitalizing on the success he had in rallying the order’s devotees around their new recruitment tool, Fuʾâdî would devote the rest of his life to institutionalizing and inscribing the order on the landscape of his hometown. The momentum that he generated would continue well beyond his own passing three decades in the future, and bring the S¸aʿbâniye to a prominence that Fuʾâdî could only have visualized in a dream when he took up his pen in 1015/1607. Notes 1 For example, a garbled rendition of the S¸aʿbâniye silsile found in a poorly copied version of one of Sünbül Efendi’s treatises records that ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî was taught by S¸aʿbân himself, omitting all four of the successors; see Sünbül Sinân Efendi (d. 936/1529), Risâlatuʾt-tahqîqiyya, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Kasidecizade 340, fol. 30b.

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2 This idea appears in both AKAK, p. 61 and ZD, p. 18; neither gives any source, however. On the Mûsâ Fâkih mosque, built at the end of the eleventh/seventeenth century long after Fuʾâdî’s death, see KKE, p. 109. 3 See NYIL, p. 94; Fuʾâdî’s works include at least two surviving manuscripts written in Arabic: the Maqâlat at-tawthîqiyya (discussed subsequently) and the Risalat alhayâtiyya, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Hacı Mahmud Efendi 2287/11. In addition, a stated motivation he gives in the prelude to some of his writings was to translate Arabicand Persian-language materials into Turkish to broaden their audience. 4 MSV, pp. 113–14. 5 Mustafa ʿAlî’s disillusionment in the run up to the Islamic millennium should be compared with the sentiments expressed here, though Mustafa ʿAlî’s relationship with Sufism proved more ambivalent; see CF-MA, pp. 133–7. 6 Fuʾâdî pledged allegiance to Muhyiddîn Efendi around the Muslim millennium (1591 or 1592); at that point, he had been working for seventeen years with the müftis of the town; see MSV, p. 120; also ZD, p. 18, which describes Fuʾâdî as having held a “secretarial position” (müsevvit) in the müfti’s office. 7 See the remarks Fuʾâdî makes in OF-RV, fol. 42b. 8 Referring to one of the successors of the İstanbul-based Halveti shaykh Nûreddînzâde Muslihuddîn (d. 982/1574). 9 MSV, pp. 114–15. 10 Fuʾâdî’s discussion of his submission to Abdülbâkî is a lengthy, complex passage that includes a number of embedded Persian poetic couplets from Hâfiz; see MSV, pp. 115–17. 11 This bears strong resemblance to the Naks¸ibendi doctrine of khalwat dar anjuman, whereby a Sufi must maintain his links with everyday society while nevertheless maintaining internal detachment from it. For the development of this concept among the Naks¸bendi of Central Asia and Iran and their growing rejection of the type of forty-day retreats espoused by the Halveti order; see JP-DO, pp. 30–4. 12 Meaning that Fuʾâdî was close to reaching the sixth stage of the Halveti path but failed to finish because he was once again drawn back into worldly pursuits; to track the stages to which he refers, see MİO, p. 26. 13 MSV, p. 120. 14 CI, pp. 66–7. 15 MSV, pp. 123–4. 16 For a brief summary of the Celâlî revolts, see CI, pp. 72–6; for a full accounting, see Mustafa Akdağ, Celalî Isyanları (1550–1603) (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Basımevi, 1963). 17 This expression could also mean, “since it is forbidden.” 18 MSV (T), 147–48; note that Fuʾâdî only related this narrative in the work that he appended to MSV after the tomb had been completed. 19 For more on the appearance of various renovations and alterations to the mosque in 1560 and 1581, see KKE, p. 107; see also MBEH, pp. 152–8 for a copy of the vakıf deed of 989/1581. 20 For Saʿdeddîn’s biography, an outline of his career and his rise to the position of s¸eyhülislâm, see NVA, pp. 429–31. 21 MSV, pp. 86–7. 22 Regarding the movement tied to Kâdızâde Mehmed (d. 1044/1635) and his followers,

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought Madeline Zilfi saw their uniqueness as lying both in their willingness to take a strongly activist approach toward suppressing societal practices that they viewed as innovations, and their success in doing so. Unfortunately, the Ottomans’ own use of the term “Kâdızâdeli” is problematic, as it implied that the movement started with Kâdızâde Mehmed himself. Zilfi herself rejected this idea, and located the origins of the trend in part on the writings of the tenth/sixteenth-century scholar Birgili Mehmed Efendi (d. 978/1571); see MCZ-KZ, pp. 252–3 and MCZ-PP, pp. 143–6. The Ottoman historian Naʿîmâ, though he also used the term “Kâdızâdeli,” did not consider them a new phenomenon in Islamic history, suggesting that they were merely the latest incarnation of a long cycle in a conflict between exoteric scholars and Sufi leaders going back to early times; see Naʿîmâ, v. 6, p. 218. Defining earlier manifestations of these tensions that preceded Kâdızâde Mehmed’s career is thus awkward. For convenience’s sake, I shall employ the term “proto-Kâdızâdeli” as a way of describing those who manifested these characteristics before Kâdızâde Mehmed and his followers laid claim to it. For a modern scriptural interpretation that denies the viability of any type of intercession, see Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qurʾân, 2nd edn (Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1994), pp. 31–2. However, as the Ottoman part of this debate unfolds, the reader should note how Rahman cites the well-known Hanbalî scholar Ibn Taymiyya as one of his sources! It is no coincidence that one of the figures who convinced the s¸eyhülislâm Bahâʾî Efendi (d. 1064/1654) to countermand his own opinions condemning the practices of the Sufis in the early 1650s was Saʿdeddîn’s son, Hoca Saʿdeddînzâde Ebûʾs-Saʿîd; see MCZ-PP, pp. 142–3. It should also be noted that the Kâdızâdelis used the same tactic of employing selected legal opinions dating from earlier periods to make a case for stringent prohibitions against Sufi opponents. MSV, pp. 88–9 and 162–3. The best study to date of Ibn Taymiyya’s anti-tomb visitation activities is that of Muhammad Umar Memon, Ibn Taimiya’s Struggle Against Popular Religion (The Hague: Mouton, 1976); see also Henrik Niels Olesen, Culte des saints et pelerinages chez Ibn Taymiyya (661/1263–728/1328) (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1991). For the revival of Ibn Taymiyya as a flashpoint for modern Muslim radicalism, see SIV, pp. 94–107. Fuʾâdî confirmed the year of his accession in another tract; ʿÖmer el-Fuʾadi, Risâle-i Silsilenâme, Süleymaniye Ktp, İstanbul, MS Haci Mahmud Efendi 2287/13, fols 258b–9a. NYIL, pp. 94–8. Yılmaz notes at least twenty-eight other works penned by Fuʾâdî aside from MSV and its appended Türbenâme, though some may be extracted from the longer hagiography on which these two were based. Copies of some works have not yet been found; others may overlap in their subject material, which does not detract from the impressiveness of the corpus. Nothing further is known about this individual, but his remarks suggest that Fuʾâdî was not the only person attached to the müftülük who had ties to S¸aʿbân-ı Veli. MSV, pp. 3–4. This would not have been idle praise at the time Fuʾâdî wrote his work – August of 1017/1608 marked the battle of Göksün Plateau, which saw the defeat of the Celâlî leader Kalenderoğlu at the hands of Kuyucu Murad Pas¸a (d. 1019/1610), which followed the previous year’s victory over Canbuladoğlu ʿAlî Pas¸a. The timing of Fuʾâdî’s work being sent off to İstanbul was no coincidence; see GAR, pp. 187–97.

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32 MSV, pp. 5–6. 33 For more on Kâşânî, including the Istilahat as-sufiyya from which Fuʾâdî quotes, see D. B. Macdonald, “ʿAbd al-Razzâk Kamâl al-Dîn b. Abûʾl-Ghanâʾim al-Kâshânî,” EI2, vol. 1, p. 377; he was also an important commentator on Ibn al-ʿArabî’s Fusûs al-hikam; see Chodkiewicz, Michel, An Ocean Without Shore: Ibn ʿArabî, The Book, and the Law, trans. David Streight (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 47–8, n. 2. 34 MSV, pp. 9–10. 35 The term ehl-i istidrâc refers to people who lead others to perdition by deceptively appearing to be successful in their activities the short run. One might loosely describe them as people who made a living from tapping supernatural forces outside the bounds of religiously accepted norms. Fuʾâdî claimed this practice was defined as hâlet-i kâzibe, or a “state of being a liar.” 36 MSV, p. 10. 37 Fuʾâdî, like other early modern contempoaries across cultures, does not advance an entirely new argument here on the validity of magical practices. His argument for distinguishing clearly between magic and religion for a lay audience is very much in tune with a general transition that had been happening in other global contexts; see, for example, the process in England described by Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner, 1971). 38 MSV, pp. 11–12. 39 See KC-KZ, v. 2, p. 1916. Fuʾâdî also cited the work of Abûʾl-Faraj ʿAbd ar-Rahman b. ʿAlî b. al-Jawzî (d. 597/1200), Irshâd al-murîdîn fî hikâyât as-sâlihîn and Irshâd at-tâlibîn, which was perhaps a commentary on the ʿAwârif of al-Suhrawardî by Ibn Ahmed al-Bursevî; see KC-KZ, vol. 1, pp. 65 and 67. The predominance of early seventh/ thirteenth-century works is strongly suggestive of the intellectual foundations of mysticism in Ottoman provincial circles during this time. 40 The discussion appears in MSV, pp. 16–17. 41 MSV, p. 13. 42 It is instructive to consider the comments of Fazlur Rahman in the conclusion to his work on the history and development of Islam. He argues that the tendency to enshrine the actions and sayings of the founders of the faith as law, rather than treating them as an inspiring (and therefore more flexible) model, creates a situation whereby historicallybased responses to problems become enshrined as religious dogma. However, he also condemns the roots of both Sufism and Shiʿism as responsible for enshrining this historical mentality of decline in the religious vitality of society in the medieval Islamic worldview; see Rahman, Islam, pp. 235–54 and esp. pp. 244–6. The views Fuʾâdî expresses here argue for a reassessment of such polemical viewpoints on Sufism’s “decline” in the history of Islam, and modify them to better reflect the nuances present within Sufism itself. 43 MSV, p. 14. 44 See William Griswold’s work on the impact of the Celâlî revolts on Anatolia in the conclusion of his monograph; GAR, pp. 212–14 and 220–1. 45 MSV, pp. 15–16. 46 See in the surviving correspondence between the sultan and his shaykh in SM-KM; Murad repeatedly requests the shaykh’s help in realizing worldly goals or corroborating the trustworthiness of an individual at court. 47 MSV, pp. 20–1.

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48 For more on the diversity of the wandering dervish groups that roamed Anatolia from the seventh/thirteenth century onward, see Ahmet T. Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Later Middle Ages (1200–1550) (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1994) and Ahmet Yas¸ar Ocak, Osmanlı İmparatorluğuʾnda Marjinal Sûfîlik: Kalenderîler (XIV–XVII Yüzyıllar) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1992). 49 MSV, pp. 18–19. 50 MSV, pp. 22–3. 51 The second chapter breaks down as follows: the origin myth of the Halveti order (pp. 24–9); the silsile up to S¸aʿbân Efendi and his four major successors (pp. 29–30); an anecdote about ʿÖmer el-Halvetî on how the order took its name (pp. 30–1); and anecdotes about Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî’s life and legacy (pp. 31–4). 52 MSV, pp. 32–3. 53 Abdulkadiroğlu identified thirteen copies of the manuscript in his bibliography, and this was hardly a comprehensive list; see AKAK, pp. 119–20. 54 See Fu’âdî’s remarks about the hagiography in the Türbenâme, written sometime after 1027/1618 in MSV(T), p. 143.

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7 . Inscribing the ¸aʿbâni S ye Order onto Kastamonu’s Landscape

The success of the Menâkıb among its audience in the Kastamonu region helped to consolidate the order at a time when a new generation of followers, increasingly distanced from its subject, were coming to the fore. In many cases, the work’s appearance would represent the final point at which the historian could continue tracking the evolution of an order’s narratives and doctrines under their hagiographer’s direction. Yet what makes the S¸aʿbâniye especially fruitful for historical inquiry is that we can continue tracking their evolution through the subsequent activities of its membership and the continued output of their leader, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî. Growing acclaim for the Menâkıb soon translated into attempts to transform the burial place of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli into a fully-fledged Sufi institution. This infrastructure building further swelled the order’s following, which required more educational initiatives to better prepare them for growing challenges emerging during a religiously and politically turbulent eleventh/ seventeenth century. . Constructing a Tomb for ¸aʿbânS ı Veli amid Growing Political Instability

The spread of Fu’âdî’s hagiography had an immediate impact that resonated far beyond the S¸aʿbâniye. We have already seen its dedication to Sultan Ahmed I, and its arrival at court may well have sparked the enthusiasm of a Kastamonu native who had risen to a position of power there. This dignitary, ʿÖmer Kethüdâ (d. 1020/1611), had risen to become a steward to a powerful Ottoman grand vizier, Kuyucu Murad Pas¸a (d. 1020/1611). It is unclear whether or not ʿÖmer Kethüdâ’s activities on behalf of the S¸aʿbâniye were approved by the

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grand vizier himself. It is possible, since according to Fuʾâdî, Murad Pas¸a had ties to the Mevlevî Sufi order and a love of Celâleddîn Rûmî’s works, with his devotion repaid in the form of multiple victories during his suppression of the Celâlî revolts.1 Murad Pas¸a may thus have recognized the utility of supporting a Kastamonu-based Halveti sub-branch that had good relations with local Mevlevîs in supporting his campaigns against the rebels. Whatever the case, it is most probable that ʿÖmer Kethüdâ acted of his own accord as a form of pious patronage for his home region. ʿÖmer Kethüdâ’s father, Himmet Dede, had become a follower of S¸aʿbân Efendi around the time of Fu’âdî’s birth, so he had long-standing family-based ties to the S¸aʿbâniye.2 Nevertheless, Fuʾâdî’s account offers a sense of genuine surprise at receiving such a sudden offer of assistance in building a tomb for S¸aʿbân: When this caller of the race of mankind [Fuʾâdî]3 was the servant of the poor ones of the order on the prayer-rug of the recourse of the worlds, a letter desirous in motive came [from ʿÖmer Kethüdâ] in the manner of consultation and asking for permission, saying: “Let an exalted and decorated tomb be built with a flourishing structure over the sepulcher full of light, to ennoble the holy soul and exalt and glorify the noble honor of the esteemed master [S¸aʿbân]. I have just now vowed 3,000 gurûs¸. Let it be constructed from the revenue of my fiefs and other lawful [sources of income]. Let it be a beautiful and tall tomb, so that the noble name of the esteemed master will be recalled and praised among Arabs and Persians4 alike as worthy of praise and glorification. If my vow is not sufficient, however much money is expended until its completion, let my vow also [increase to] be that much.”5

Fuʾâdî then recalled the aforementioned wishes of the now departed Muhyiddîn Efendi, and interpreted this as a sign from his predecessor. He accepted ʿÖmer’s offer to tithe the requisite amount to begin building S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s tomb. Within a short time, the money that ʿÖmer gave proved sufficient to partially construct the structure. The foundation was laid, and the walls reached up to the point where the windows for the tomb would be placed. Since ʿÖmer Kethüdâ was on campaign most of the time following his donation, it is clear that Fuʾâdî acted as the de facto overseer of the actual work; thus, finishing his hagiography did not leave him idle for long. Unfortunately, the legitimacy of the half-finished project was called into question when catastrophe struck in the year 1020/1611. Kuyucu Murad Pas¸a, already in his eighties when he was appointed to the grand vizierate in 1015/1607, died of old age while on campaign against the Safavids in Diyarbekir. His equally unfortunate steward, ʿÖmer Kethüdâ, soon followed him as a result of the dynamics accompanying

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the change of power. Murad Pas¸a’s death led to a transfer of power to Nasûh Pas¸a (d. 1023/1614), a military commander who had been serving on the eastern front for the several years. In need of money to pay his troops in the aftermath of Kuyucu Murad Pas¸a’s campaigns, he imprisoned ʿÖmer Kethüdâ, along with a number of other associates of the former grand vizier, for the purpose of acquiring their wealth. Soon after his imprisonment, ʿÖmer Kethüdâ died; his death was generally blamed on Nasûh Pas¸a even though he may not have intended it.6 According to Fuʾâdî, all the unfortunate steward’s wealth was immediately impounded by the state; even his heirs were not able to move quickly enough to lay claim to any of it. Thus, the tomb was left half finished, and as time passed, even began to fall into ruin.7 The first instinct of some of the supporters of the order was to press a claim to some of the deceased Kethüdâ’s wealth to complete the tomb. It is instructive, however, that when they proffered the plan of acting as witnesses on behalf of Fuʾâdî’s proper claim to the resources, his response was rather pointed: No! In our path there is no asking, laying claims, or requesting favors from anyone. From S¸aʿbân Efendi in particular there was never any demand or claim in worldly matters by requesting or asking from anyone else throughout his entire life. He never chose [to accept] the services of a pious foundation. In his human needs and livelihood he entrusted himself to God, saying, “the sustenance is God’s affair.” This poor one [Fuʾâdî] seated on his prayer-rug follows his example, albeit with weakness and defects. Previously, we didn’t ask ʿÖmer Kethüdâ for the building of the tomb. He began this job himself, with the permission of God. This time also we commend it to God most High, with assistance from the spiritual power of [S¸aʿbân Efendi].8

Despite Fuʾâdî’s use of S¸aʿbân’s example as a worthy precedent, we should not lose sight of his evolving political skills. His refusal to consider a challenge reflected his concern about the new grand vizier, a known enemy of the order’s former benefactors. By not pursuing the issue, Fuʾâdî kept a low profile to avoid making the order and its followers a potential political target. This was a wise choice under the circumstances; a political battle with a powerful grand vizier could have crippled their recent gains. Yet political concerns may not have been the only considerations driving Fuʾâdî’s response. He also wanted to avoid what he viewed as a mistake by a prominent and controversial predecessor, in the form of S¸aʿbân’s successor S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ during the reign of Murad III. Traces of this tension can be read into the confusion that surrounds one of the inscriptions on the S¸aʿbân-ı Veli congregational mosque (see Figure 6). Specifically, an inscription was placed above the

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Figure 6 The inscription over the Şaʿbân-i Veli mosque

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main entrance to commemorate renovations made during the first decade of the reign of Sultan Murad III. We know that before his death S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ, had been funneling resources into this renovation project out of devotion to S¸aʿbân. The first two lines of the inscription confirm this, reading: “S¸ücaʿ Efendi, spiritual guide to Sultan Murad * Renovated the building and made it into a mosque full of light.” What does not fit, however, is the second half of the inscription. Those two lines provide a jarring discrepancy from the first two: “Dervish ʿÖmer Fuʾâdî recited a chronogram (târîh) for the renovation * The mosque of S¸aʿban Dede became more prosperous.”9 The inscription is problematic not least due to the apparent inability of scholars to agree on a date for it. Ziya Demircioğlu and Abdulkerim Abdulkadiroğlu read the date of the inscription’s placement as 984/1576, although the latter expressed reservations about the numerical value embedded within the letters of the inscription.10 Others claim that the inscription should be dated 988/1580, based on correspondence within specific bureaucratic records and the vakıf deed for the complex dated Ramazan 990/August 1581.11 These issues might be reconciled by various means, but all these discussions overlook the fact that none of these dates correspond with the period in which ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî was active within the S¸aʿbâniye order! The earliest possible date of his involvement with the order as a newly recruited devotee was 994/1586, at least four to five years after the latest proffered date for the inscription. Only two possibilities exist: either the second half of the inscription, or the entire text of the inscription itself was added at a later period that we cannot definitively date. Fuʾâdî must have altered or replaced the original plaque while overseeing the other construction projects that took place during the first decade of his tenure as head of the S¸aʿbâniye. In so doing, Fuʾâdî apparently renamed the mosque after S¸aʿbân in this new inscription, whereas previously, the renovated structure had been named after S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ.12 To put it bluntly, this inscription provides suggestive evidence of a potential slight to the deceased S¸ücâʿ’s legacy by renaming the mosque after S¸aʿbân and acknowledging S¸ücâʿ only as a renovator. Given the sentiments that Fuʾâdî expressed about being too closely involved in state affairs over revenue, we see a de facto expression of his distancing the S¸aʿbâniye from the earlier political power acheived by S¸ücâʿ, who had regularly extracted favors for himself and his followers from Sultan Murad.13 Unfortunately, Fuʾâdî’s feelings toward the order’s former benefactor requires a certain degree of speculation, since he refers to S¸ücâʿ only in passing. He offers no further details that allow us to assess S¸ücâʿ’s relations with other figures in the order during his political ascendancy. Yet given the circumstantial evidence, this may explain Fu’âdî’s curious silence about the matter in his works. The political dangers and Fuʾâdî’s reservations about an aggressive approach

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to them led to an immediate halt in the tomb building project. This sign of illfortune, however, soon gave rise to other troubles. Noting the problems that the tomb project had encountered, unspecified voices began to make accusations against Fuʾâdî himself, saying that he gave permission for the building of the tomb in contravention of S¸aʿbân’s will. Some even mocked him by saying that ʿÖmer Kethüdâ’s death was caused by S¸aʿbân from beyond the grave on account of his anger at the building of an unapproved tomb.14 That time also saw the rise of groups to whom Fuʾâdî refers as “censurers, fanatics, and ignorant people.” At first, he ignored their carping about the project and those who were backing it, but the arguments began to gain strength among the local people, and they became increasingly persistent about abandoning the tomb project altogether. They even began to have an impact on S¸aʿbân’s admirers, forcing Fuʾâdî onto the defensive against his own followers. Finally realizing the gravity of the situation, he addressed his followers publicly one day while commenting on a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad: Muslims! Just as everyone has the three levels of the carnal soul, the soul, and the heart in the knowledge of Sufism; the levels of intellect are also three: thought of the present state (ʿakl-ı maʿâs¸), thought of the future (ʿakl-ı maʿâd), and thought of the totality (ʿakl-ı küll). Whatever level someone is on, it is the business of the upright and sound intellect to distinguish and discriminate between the true and the false, the trustworthy one and the liar, and the intelligent and the unintelligent. If something is said, the person who hears . . . must think and comprehend, and accept it according to that [process of discrimination], and speak out amongst the people. Every person, if he does not respect this point and speak out [anyway], the majority will regret it, and it is possible that they will also win shame and public disgrace! Among you, it is not on account of this issue or any state or wisdom that you give credence to the speech full of slander of the dissolute and uneducated who say, “S¸aʿbân Efendi didn’t want the tomb; he cut down and killed ʿÖmer Kethüdâ from beyond” . . . You dare to slander and falsely accuse the master, the Pole of the World! The situation is this: The deceased ʿÖmer Kethüdâ’s noble wish in building the tomb . . . was to respect and honor . . . the assistance [he received] from the holy soul of the master. It was not to denigrate and insult [ʿÖmer] that the attribute of divine wrath appeared from his spiritual presence and destroyed the deceased. If it were true that the master did not accept the building of the tomb and that the building of the tomb was begun out of inattentiveness, then this sign, with the power of his charismatic grace and insight into the attribute of divine wrath, would have appeared to the poor one [Fuʾâdî] . . . with a reproachful lecture, saying, “hey inattentive one . . . lacking in state and perfection! Why did you permit the building without knowing that we didn’t accept it?”15

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Fuʾâdî appealed to his followers to trust his judgment as leader of the order; as he put it, the spiritual presence of S¸aʿbân Efendi had gotten the order through many difficulties in the past and would do so again. Rather than risk falling out of divine favor by relying on misguided thinking based on improper proofs, the order had to show courage in the face of adversity. This rebuke allowed Fuʾâdî to regain control of the situation and deflect the misgivings of some of his wavering followers, but others still expressed doubts. The more activist opponents of the tomb project were even more forceful, and confronted Fuʾâdî and his followers with the following complaints: Building tombs over the graves of the people of God and the shaykhs, and burning candles and lamps in the tombs is not appropriate. Wasteful expenditure is unlawful, and it is not appropriate to build it with the money of the Sultan, the viziers, or the administrators [either].16

This criticism is indicative of the rhetoric employed by proto-Kâdızâdeli forces, and anticipated the more forceful attacks to be launched against the Halveti several decades later. Fuʾâdî had already found these criticisms sufficiently threatening that he included a legal opinion from the prominent s¸eyhülislâm Saʿdeddîn Efendi denouncing those who tried to declare tomb visitation illegal.17 He also buttressed this by advancing his own argument that tomb visitation was a custom that had appeared long ago in Islamic history, and that as a long-standing custom of the Muslim community, it fell under the jurisdiction of the Prophetic tradition, “my community will never agree on an error.” If God did not accept the custom, it would not have manifested itself as a widespread practice among Muslims.18 Responding to the arguments of his critics about candles and lamps in tombs being a waste of useful resources, Fuʾâdî fell back on the tradition of seeking help from the people of the tombs when perplexed. If the tradition confirmed this as a beneficial activity, expending resources must not be a wasteful expenditure. When his opponents attempted to quote a legal opinion from the Hanefî scholar Kâdıhân (d. 592/1196) that excessive lighting in a mosque did, in fact, constitute a wasteful expenditure,19 Fuʾâdî countered by asking if this also made lighting the tombs of the Prophet and his companions in Medina and other places uncanonical, since this was a custom that had been practiced by so many prominent Muslim forebears and made a positive impression on non-Muslim populations as well. He then quotes both Kâdı Beyzâvî and Ebûsüʿüd Efendi commenting on a Qurʾanic verse, in which they affirmed that any act which beautifies a mosque or other religious structure is laudable.20 Yet the most damaging accusation leveled by Fuʾâdî’s detractors was that

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the sacrifices and lighting of candles and lamps in tombs made their practitioners unbelievers because they sought help from someone or something other than God – it resembled bowing to idols condemned in the Qurʾan. Fuʾâdî tried to dismiss this argument as absurd; after all, Muslims visiting tombs could not in any sense believe that they were worshiping the saints or their tombs in place of God.21 Still, the proto-Kâdızâdelis may have hit dangerously close to home in their accusations. Fuʾâdî noted in another part of his hagiography that Muslims were not the only ones who were venerating the tomb of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli: But after his death, the seeking help and profiting spiritually from his spiritual influence was not cut off . . . Non-Muslims from the protected religions other than Islam come with candles and sacrifices, and they bring the sick and other people struck by calamity, and they visit and request things. Even this poor one [Fuʾâdî] was himself aware [of this], by being the servant of the poor ones and the guide of the seekers on the path on his prayer-rug of the dwelling of the worlds. When they prayed, I prayed for their faith and their submission [to Islam]. At present, they still have not stopped coming and going, and when the poor one asks them about their coming with candle and sacrifices to visit, they reply, “we request favor and help in our important affairs and in our times of confusion with pain and suffering, and we vow candles and sacrifices. We are satisfied through his sacredness, and our pain and suffering are taken away.”22

The blurring of confessional lines taking place at the tomb, a phenomenon rooted in the centuries long Islamicization of Anatolia, had become a potential lightning rod for critics of the S¸aʿbâniye.23 Thus, Fuʾâdî’s arguments had the potential of appearing weak. In the case of lamps being used in tombs, he had fallen back mostly on arguments that dealt with mosques, often of an exalted character, and applied them to S¸aʿbân’s tomb through analogy, an argument that would not have convinced any scholar bent on criticizing the project. The sober minded Ottoman polymath, Katip Çelebi, expressed a degree of cynicism about the visitation of tombs even as he took his usual moderate position by also condemning the Kâdızâdeli leaders for stirring up disorder over it. He noted that a whole industry had grown up around selling the lamps and supplies that went into the tomb complex visitation and pilgrimage industry; thus, it was hopeless to try and stop the foolishness.24 But it is still telling that Katip Çelebi described tomb visitation practices as “foolishness!” Fuʾâdî’s enemies had one final argument, which was that any benefit that a person gained in the afterlife would be a result of one’s own actions. A person could not gain any benefit from anyone else when it came time to be judged. In other words, the practice of tomb visitation to seek assistance or intercession

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would accomplish nothing at best, even if it were not uncanonical. Attributing this to the influence of the Hanbalî legal school, and even going so far as to declare the Hanbalîs a false mezheb, Fuʾâdî suddenly went on the offensive against his critics.25 Drawing from the Arabic language work of a Shâfiʿî jurist, Najm al-Dîn Muhammad al-Ghaytî (d. 984/1576), entitled Well-Directed Answers to Numerous Questions (al-ajwabat al-sadîdah ʿalâ al-asʾilat al-ʿadîdah),26 he enumerated in full a whole list of Prophetic traditions about the state of the dead. The traditions addressed questions such as whether or not the dead can hear and respond to the calls and greetings of the living, whether or not they take delight in such visits, and what days are best to visit the tombs. Unusually, Fuʾâdî did not bother to translate these materials for his audience, indicating that this part of the work was only for scholars who knew Arabic.27 Of course, Najm al-Dîn’s compilation included only traditions describing the Prophet Muhammad and his companions’ favorable attitude toward the visitation and greeting of the dead.28 However, the lack of translation demonstrates that the Türbenâme section of the work that came to be appended to the hagiography of S¸aʿbân Efendi served different and more urgent purposes. Thus, piecing together the historical context of the Risâle-i Türbenâme now becomes a more urgent matter. Most subsequent copyists and compilers of the two manuscripts, including those who saw to their first printing in Kastamonu in 1294/1877, appended this second tract to the end of the hagiography. Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the fact that the two works do not form an organic whole, nor were they intended to. The work emerged in the midst of an unstable period in Ottoman history following the death of Sultan Ahmed I at a young age. This led to an intense period of political jockeying that surrounded the rapid enthronement and deposition of Sultan Mustafa over the course of several months at the end of 1026/1617, culminating in the controversial reign of Sultan ʿOsman II thereafter. The Risâle-i Türbenâme itself was completed some time in 1028/1619 at the conclusion of the tomb’s construction and final ornamentation, and even a cursory reading indicates that its tone and content are considerably more defensive than the celebration of the S¸aʿbâniye in the earlier hagiography. Over a quarter of the tract is devoted to addressing and refuting the criticisms of tomb building and visitation. The work also heaps praise upon those who were involved in the tomb project as a way of rehabilitating their names in the face of such criticism. At the beginning of ʿOsmân II’s reign, Fuʾâdî apparently had reason to feel nervous about the enthronement of a new ruler who may not have been as sympathetic to the cause of Sufism and the Halveti as some of his predecessors had.29 By addressing Sultan ʿOsmân II directly in the introduction to the new treatise, Fuʾâdî sought to bring his attention to arguments that could refute critics who were growing more influential in circles of power. The

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inclusion of a large numbers of Prophetic Traditions from a respected Shâfiʿî scholar, however, is something of a puzzle in that the Ottoman political elites were staunch backers of the Hanafî school. Was Fuʾâdî really arguing for a shift toward Shâfiʿî jurisprudence in matters involving Sufism? Given his background in the Islamic court system, it is hard to believe that Fuʾâdî would be unaware of the significance of his actions. Keeping all this in mind, how did Fuʾâdî and his contemporaries succeed in overcoming the opposition? The spirited defense of the role of tomb visitation in Islamic tradition indicated that the potential failure of the project was possible, given the loss of its financial backing and the concerted arguments advanced by the proto-Kâdızâdelis. This put Fuʾâdî in a bind, for if the tomb construction remained in limbo, this would be interpreted by the community as a sign from God (if not S¸aʿbân himself!) that the practices and institutions associated with the Ottoman Muslim cult of saints were unacceptable. Ironically, Fuʾâdî had also painted himself into an ideological corner by forbidding any attempt at seeking support from prominent figures in Ottoman society, financial or otherwise. For two uncomfortable years, the tomb project was halted, leaving Fuʾâdî with little option but to pray for some means by which it could be completed.30 Yet despite Fuʾâdî’s reticence in developing close ties with Ottoman political circles in the capital, that would be exactly where the solution to the dilemma would emerge. One day, Mehmed Ağa, a future head of the palace guard (kapıcıbâs¸ı) under ʿOsmân II, arrived in Kastamonu in conjunction with his duties as overseer of the nearby mines in Küre-i Nühâs (maʿden kethüdâsı). Accompanying him was Akkâş Hibetullah Efendi, a local figure and judge who had just been appointed to serve in Küre-i Nühâs also. They approached Fuʾâdî, asking what they could do to move the stalled project forward. By his own account, Fuʾâdî was not forthcoming with any ideas, claiming that he commended his affairs to God. So the pair of dignitaries once again offered to act as intermediaries to free up the money pledged by ʿÖmer Kethüdâ; not surprisingly, Fuʾâdî balked. Mehmed Ağa and Hibetullah Efendi, however, were not as easily deterred by his resistance. They conceded that while Fuʾâdî’s assessment of S¸aʿbân’s legacy had merit, “freely willed acts are a cause of the manifestation of the eternal will [of God].” Therefore, he should let them seek the money on their own initiative from other sources if he would not consent to recouping the previously pledged funds. But Fuʾâdî still refused to go along, underscoring the depth of his concerns about overly political ties even if he were not directly involved in seeking them. The two dignitaries were then struck by a flash of inspiration. What if the completion of the work on the tomb were to be financed by vowed tithes and payments for supplies like candles by the local people who regularly sought

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S¸aʿbân’s assistance? Fuʾâdî hesitated, then grudgingly agreed that there was nothing to stop them contributing funds of their own accord; they would merely be doing the same thing that ʿÖmer Kethüdâ had done. This would not contravene Fuʾâdî’s prohibition on active attempts to seek investment. The two dignitaries pounced, and promptly tithed a sum of gold coin themselves. Others who had gathered to observe the meeting also contributed small sums, although the amount collected was insufficent to cover the expense of completing the tomb.31 Yet the modest actions of these local dignitaries unleashed an avalanche of further support. Part of this may have been tied to a decision that Fuʾâdî made with regard to a final request from his two benefactors: When they requested the announcement and public exposure of this beginning to the people, I [Fuʾâdî] said, “a record should not be made in writing and remembrance of the names of those who vow and the givers of blessings; let everyone bring either a little or a lot through his [or her] own will, acceptance, desire and sincerity and submit it, and afterward let a record be made of income and expenditures.” The wealthy and notables among the timâr-holders, having taken part in the campaign against Persia in the year that ʿÖmer Kethüdâ was martyred, fixed and confirmed their promises and vows, saying, “if the tomb remains incomplete and we are not on campaign in the coming year, and if you are present in our lands in the days of the government of the Sultan (eyyâm-ı devlet-i pâdis¸âhî)32 [during which] our vows take place, each of us shall give from our personal wealth to the extent we are able, and the tomb shall be built.” All of the sipahi grandees and the other noble people and notables from the people of the province agreed, and each of them brought their vows with sincerity without being requested or implored [to do so]. They made this poor one trustee for all of it . . .33

By not tying the project to any one personality within the power structure, Fuʾâdî recognized a means by which he could avoid tying the project too closely to any one power base. The open contribution scheme allowed anyone to take part in the spiritual rewards of contributing, but without leaving a dangerous paper trail to a controversial flashpoint in the evolving religio-political context.34 However, Fuʾâdî stressed also that the support of the powerful and wealthy was not the only factor at work. In exultant language, the Türbenâme describes how S¸aʿbân Efendi’s other spiritual descendants in the area quickly rose up to contribute in other ways, sending parties of their followers in groups of ten, fifteen, or twenty at a time to the lodge to offer unpaid labor for the tomb’s construction. Even the poorer members of the community joined them in giving whatever service they could. A teacher at a local school, Elmâcızâde Muhyiddîn Efendi, sent his children and his students to work on the project, arguing it would

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be a form of “spiritual education.” Not to be outdone, the women of the community, young and old alike, joined together to produce linen cloth that could be sold on the open market, and donated their revenues to the tomb. Whatever could not be sold was given to clothe the poorest workers laboring on site.35 Throughout the community, a unified sense of purpose made the long delayed completion of the tomb an idea whose time had come. On another level, the sudden resurgence in effort may have coincided with the growing political weakness and eventual execution of the hated grand vizier, Nasûh Pas¸a, in 1023/1614. As the local supporters of the S¸aʿbâniye realized that the political problems that had originally derailed the building of the tomb were on the wane, they followed the lead of their İstanbul-based allies and moved to make the project their own. The tomb’s completion marked the triumphant conclusion of the narrative. A plaque was placed over the northern entrance to the tomb crediting ʿÖmer Kethüdâ for initiating the project, and praising the community for finishing it: “The Kethüdâ Bey whom they called ʿÖmer * Began the tomb with sincerity * Because he departed to the realm of mercy * The people of generosity gathered together and constructed it * For its commencement date, Dervish ʿÖmer [el-Fuʾâdî] recited a chronogram * The sepulcher of S¸aʿbân, Sultan of eternal union.”36 When the last stone was about to be put in place in the dome, a massive Halveti zikr ceremony took place that sent Fuʾâdî into such a powerful mystical state that he was unable either to speak or to move, but was frozen in place gazing upwards at the last gap. As the new structure shook from the ruckus, the head architect worried that the new building was structurally unsound. However, his doubts were assuaged by Fuʾâdî’s brother, Hacı Mehmed Dede, who suggested that the tomb was performing the ritual along with the congregation! Thereafter, the keystone was joyfully lowered into place. News of the completion of the project and attendant celebration spread throughout the region, increased the fame of the tomb and most critically, struck directly at the credibility of the tomb’s detractors.37 Still, the completion of the structure did not solve all its problems. In fact, the stone construction of the edifice was not structurally sound, perhaps as a result of its erratic history. The roof of the tomb leaked in inclement weather, and the decorative elements added by the tomb’s builders were damaged. Luckily, additional benefactors appeared to address these issues. Ironically, given his previous stance, Fuʾâdî did not shy away from describing the order’s benefactors once success had been achieved, and we learn a great deal about the political backing for the S¸aʿbâniye. The first person to help out was Kastamonulu Kâtib Mehmed Efendi, a local figure who had made good by securing a position in the imperial chancery (divân-ı hümâyûn) in İstanbul. This official, also known by the name S¸ekerzâde,

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had been one of Fuʾâdî’s teachers and benefactors in his younger days; he had also served under the ill-fated ʿÖmer Kethüdâ.38 His funds added a symmetrical overhang (turre) to the edge of the tomb to better protect the structure from the weather. In addition, he donated a green wool covering for S¸aʿbân’s tomb. Fuʾâdî actually took more pleasure in the latter gift, because it allowed him finally to wrap S¸aʿbân Efendi’s sacred black turban at the head of his sepulcher, fulfilling the third and final wish of his spiritual guide, Muhyiddîn Efendi.39 As for the leaky dome, help came in the form of a donation from the grand vizier Halîl Pas¸a (d. 1040/1631) at the beginning of his campaign against Safavid Persia in 1026/1618. He had the dome strengthened by sealing it with a lead capping in the hope that S¸aʿbân Efendi would assist him in his campaign. Fuʾâdî had to engage in some spin on this point, for most accounts viewed Halîl Pas¸a’s campaign as unsuccessful; he also lost his position thereafter.40 In contrast, Fuʾâdî portrayed the tomb’s benefactor as having concluded a successful campaign that had conquered both the fortress at Ardabil and the city of Tabriz, with the result approved by ʿOsmân II in the form of a peace treaty. A critic, however, might have pointed out that the peace treaty’s terms made only slight adjustments in the Ottoman–Safavid borderland, and that these changes in fact favored the Safavid ruler S¸âh ʿAbbâs. A defensive tone therefore marked Fuʾâdî’s presentation of this particular benefactor.41 Following the completion of the lead cap on the dome, a gilded top was engraved and placed at the top of the dome by a local artisan by the name of S¸âh Mehmed Efendi, who was also a judge active in Kastamonu at the time.42 The final touch came courtesy of Kûrs¸ûncuzâde Mustafa Pas¸a, an Albanian who served as governor of Bosnia several times over the course of his career. First appointed to the post under Sultan Ahmed I, from 1016/1608 to 1017/1609, he was appointed a second time during Sultan Osman II’s reign from 1029/1620 to 1030/1621, but was subsequently dismissed and exiled from the European provinces in conjunction with the rise of ʿAlî Pas¸a to the position of grand vizier and the onset of ʿOsmân II’s ineffective campaign against Poland.43 Thanks to Fuʾâdî, we learn that he also served as governor of Kastamonu for at least two years before his appointment in 1620 to Bosnia. When he noticed the tomb’s imperfections, he stepped in with a generous donation of his own to fix them. He added another entrance to the tomb, along with a private harem to accommodate female visitors. Finally, a mirror was placed at a strategic point near the keystone of the arch of the tomb so that visitors would see their own reflections and take away a reminder about the key mystical principle of knowing oneself.44 This last addition led Fuʾâdî to compose a poem placed over the eastern entrance to the tomb: “Kûrs¸ûncuzâde, vizier full of nobility * Built a gate and harem for the tomb * A mirror from the secret of the soul was placed at the door * So that

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the knower shall see the honored soul * Fuʾâdî saw the chronogram in the mirror * The mirror of nobility was opened for the builder * 1028 (1618).”45 When Fuʾâdî wrote the Risâle-i Türbenâme a few years later in 1029/1620, mentioning the assistance of Kûrs¸ûncuzâde Mustafa Pas¸a as the final benefactor in the completion of the tomb complex tracked smoothly with the vicissitudes of power struggles in the Ottoman capital. The aforementioned Halîl Pas¸a’s dismissal would have been balanced by Mustafa Paşa as the recently promoted governor of Bosnia. The contemporary audience would recognize that each of the grandees in power at the time would have contributed something to the tomb. Fuʾâdî concludes the narrative by reiterating the aforementioned anecdote about S¸aʿbân’s recognition by the unnamed saint in Khorasan who sent his dervishes to take the mirror from him, linking this to the mirror that Mustafa Pas¸a had donated. By the time that Fuʾâdî completed the Türbenâme, we might think that he had reached the height of his influence. Over the course of his fifteen-year tenure at the head of the S¸aʿbâniye, he had seen the complex undergo substantial improvements that made it into one of the premier pilgrimage sites in the region. Overcoming earlier setbacks, powerful Ottoman grandees were now coming to pay their respects to the great saint and his followers, and making contributions for their benefit. The completion of the project also delivered a powerful blow to anti-Halveti antagonists in the community. Still, the work’s defensive tone marked a palpable sense of discomfort about the environment of the era. As a whole, it reads at times more like an apologia for the activities of the order than a celebration of S¸aʿbâniye success. Moreover, the Risâle-i Türbenâme would not be the only communication that Fuʾâdî would send to İstanbul. He appears to have shared the unease of many in the Ottoman Empire over the reign of ʿOsmân II, who still generates controversy among contemporary Ottoman historians. Fuʾâdî fired off another tract to ʿOsmân’s court shortly after the completion of the Türbenâme entitled Risâletüʾl-müsellesât (“The Treatise on Groups of Three”), as an advisory letter to the sultan. Building on a story about the Prophet and his companions in which each of them related in turn the three things they loved most, Fuʾâdî sought to demonstrate to ʿOsmân II what values the leader of the Muslim community should emulate. He concluded by warning the sultan to emulate the Prophet and his successors in wielding “both the manifest and the spiritual sword,” as opposed to just the former. In equally cryptic fashion, he alludes to events at the time by saying that “it is not a good thing to kill some of the men of the state; the edifice of God will collapse.” This seems to indicate that Fuʾâdî, along with many other religious and political notables of his time, did not like ʿOsmân II’s attempts to shake up the power structure of the empire.46 Given the aftermath of ʿOsmân II’s reign, which ended in a regicide and an uncomfortable historiographical debate

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among Ottomans over its implications, we can conclude that Fuʾâdî’s efforts to influence the political context in hopes of reconciling the competing factions did not prove any more successful than any other.47 Refining the Concepts of a Sufi Order: ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s Doctrinal Writings

The Risâletüʾl-Müsellesât is a good introduction to another important aspect of Fuʾâdî’s career that has not attracted much notice. His didactic works, aimed at introducing his audience to basic concepts and instructing them on various religious points, would prove to be an important contribution that further expanded S¸aʿbâniye institutions. What is most critical is that Fuʾâdî’s didactic works were aimed not only at his own following, but also at reaching a broader audience to educate them more fully about the best way to pursue the S¸aʿbâniye path. To interpret these works, we must start by recognizing that they sought to address different types of audiences based on their subject matter. While some works discussed the simplest aspects of the path and were aimed at novice devotees, others dealt with intricate issues in Sufi hermeneutics, and identify their audiences as capable of grappling with complex discussions about Islamic theology and philosophy. However, the texts all had one thing in common: they aimed to encourage and educate their Turkish-speaking audience to seek a deeper understanding of the principles of the Halveti path which, in turn, drew upon the legacy of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli and his successors. Unfortunately, there is one problem that confronts present-day scholars: it is difficult to date these writings with any certainty. Even given a close reading, the manuscript copies that survive are often cryptic about dates of production; sometimes they leave no identifiable dates at all. Yet the course of Fuʾâdî’s career suggests that he focused much of his energy on establishing S¸aʿbân’s hagiography and tomb complex first, solidifying an institutional center for the activities of the S¸aʿbâniye. So it is perhaps instructive that the earliest dateable letter, the Arabic language Maqâlat al-tawthîqiyya wa risâlat al-tawhîdiyya (“Statement of Certainty and Treatise on Proclaiming God’s Unity”), was completed roughly at the time that the tomb was nearing completion in 1026/1618.48 Its text deals primarily with esoteric aspects of advanced Sufism which, along with its language of transmission, suggests that it was not intended for consumption by less advanced members on the path. Taking as his starting point the proclamation of God’s unity embodied in the statement of witnessing, lâ ilaha illâ Allah (“there is no god but God”), Fuʾâdî demonstrated how each of the letters in this statement, which includes five alifs (), five lâms (), and two hâ’s (), referred to particular meanings for various

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stages of the path. Perhaps tellingly, he addresses the audience directly, stating, “O my brother, seeker of the highest stages of the path, know that I was among the people of exoteric knowledge [once] . . . Hear from me an esoteric interpretation (taʾwîl) [for these letters].” He goes on to explain that the twelve letters of the tawhîd formula break down in such a way that the five alifs represent the five pillars of Islam, while the lâms represent the five graces (altâf) of God granted to the believer through the mastery of the exoteric aspects of the path, and the two hâʾs represent the guidance of belief (al-hidâyah al-iʿtiqâdiyya) and guidance of action (al-hidâyah al-ʿamaliyya).49 In these types of writing, some might read the lingering influence of the messianic Hurûfî movement on the Anatolian Sunnî and Sufi landscape centuries after its collapse.50 Fuʾâdî then launches into a discussion of how he joined the order and began pursuing a different stage of the process at a more esoteric level. As a seeker proceeds on the path, an additional interpretation for the meanings of the Arabic letters of the tawhîd takes its place alongside the first one. In this interpretation, the five alifs represent the first five stages of the Halveti path of the atvâr-ı sabʿa (the seven levels), in the form of attaining the various stages (maqâm). These include conquering the carnal soul (nafs) and its negative attributes (sifât-ı dhamîma); the stage of the heart (qalb), in which additional vices are conquered; the two stages of the soul (rûh) and secret (sirr), in which praiseworthy attributes are mastered; and, when these are complete, the stage of the hidden secret (sirr al-khafî), which brings the seeker to the brink of the most advanced levels of the mystical path. In turn, the five lâms represent the five graces of God that accompany each level of success that the seeker attains in passing through the stages by achieving the necessary goals. Finally, the two hâʾs represent what Fuʾâdî calls “the two essences” (huwiyyatayn): the fixed (mutlaqa) essence, and the pervading (sâriyya) essence. These two advanced stages are revealed to the seekers only after they complete the aforementioned first five stages on the path.51 The remainder of the treatise is given over to explaining how to approach these advanced stages, with Fuʾâdî drawing heavily on the early Ottoman scholar ʿAbdurrezzâk al-Kâşânî’s Istilâhât as-sûfiyya as a primary source for explaining the concepts that the dervishes must learn. However, he also shows his intellectual breadth by quoting from the works of authors like Akşemseddîn Hamidî Çelebî (s¸eyhülislâm under Sultan Mehmed II), Cemâl el-Halvetî, and the poetry of Mevlânâ Celâleddîn Rûmî and ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî among others. He concludes the treatise with a warning not to reveal this information to anyone who is not also in an advanced stage of mystical progression, as those who are not may be prone to censure insofar as they understand anything at all. Since those at the exoteric level of understanding remain at a stage of ignorance on the mystical

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path, they must not immediately be privy to discussion on these matters. But tellingly, he also warns the potential censurer who does consult the tract that they do not understand the issues involved, and should refrain from causing trouble.52 Thus, the tone of this warning indicates that the treatise was intended for at least a limited circulation among a wider audience to assist them in their own mystical endeavors (and therefore prone to falling into the wrong hands). Its comparative success among the limited circle for which its circulation was intended (a Naks¸bendî dervish over three centuries later recopied it, among others) suggests that Fuʾâdî had sensed a critical gap that needed to be filled after the disruptions that accompanied the turn of the tenth/sixteenth century. Yet in contrast to the material of the Risâlat al-tawthîqiyya, Fu’âdî’s other works tend towards assisting beginners rather than aiming at the upper levels of mystical contemplation. One reason for this grew out of his hagiography’s admonition that the path cannot be undertaken successfully without the guidance of a shaykh. If pressed, Fu’âdî would undoubtedly argue for letting a shaykh rather than written text do the guiding, especially once the advanced levels of the mystical progression had been reached. Yet the extent of his surviving written work points to a more substantial project intertwined with the hagiography and the tomb complex: to educate the public about the order and its principles as a way of sparking their interest in, and support of, their local sub-branch of the Halveti order. For this reason, he followed Risâlat al-tawthîqiyya with a much more extensive project, Risâle-i muslihuʾn-nefs (“The Tract on Reform of the Carnal Soul”). It begins with a story about how God brought man into the world of existence, stating that when he did, he created him with two parts: the soul (rûh) and the carnal passions (nefs). When he brought them both into existence within man, God asked the soul who He was, and the soul promptly replied: “You are my Lord; there is no God but You.” As a result, God accepted the soul immediately and sent it down to earth to take residence in man. However, when He addressed the carnal passions with his question, the carnal soul was insolent and refused to respond. To cleanse the nefs of its evil urges, God sent it to roast in hellfire for 700 years, and then brought it back and repeated his question. The nefs persisted in its defiance, so God returned it to the fire for another 700 years. Broken at last, the nefs finally gave the appropriate response and was allowed to take up its place in mankind, having undertaken the necessary discipline to break it of its negative qualities. The moral of the story was that the soul and carnal passions coexist within every person; thus, the duty of every seeker is to root out the negative attributes of the latter in favor of the good qualities of the former. Nevertheless, not all the information should be revealed to a potential audience of novices at this point. Fuʾâdî warned that if someone were to ask why God

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created these negative attributes in people, they should follow the example of the Prophet, who responded to a woman who asked him the same question with the evasive answer, “it was indicated to me [thus],” since this is a question whose answer was reserved for those at advanced stages of the path. This tactic served the dual purpose of catching the audience’s attention and developing their interest by sparking their curiosity about one of the basic questions of existence; that is, what is the root cause of evil in the world? In the end, the work encouraged a desire to initiate the mystical process to learn more about these issues.53 In discussing the first two stages of the Halveti path of the “seven levels” (atvâr-ı sabʿa), Fuʾâdî outlined the various vices that aspiring dervishes must avoid in order to proceed to higher levels of mystical understanding. It is striking, however, that unlike in the Risâlat al-tawthîqiyya, he does not explain these in a technical way. As he remarks in his introduction to the work, which discusses his reasons for writing the text, in addition to providing the “hook” narrative described in the previous paragraph, he felt there was a need for a new contribution on these issues: On account of its being necessary to give great struggle and attention on the point of the carnal soul, while this poor one . . . Dervish ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî . . . was the servant of the dervishes on the prayer-rug of the recourse of all the people of Shaykh S¸aʿbân Efendi . . . I explained and taught orally to the trustworthy seekers in the place of guidance the stages of the soul and the attributes of the soul, both praiseworthy and blameworthy. In order to make it easy to remember and know, I organized the steps and names of each of them one by one into poetic segments, with the sign and favor of the soul full of inspirations of the noble lord [S¸aʿbân], with divine blessing. I had [also] explained and recalled the seven praiseworthy or blameworthy attributes in those poetic segments.54

This poetic composition was a rhyming couplet that was easily memorized by his audience to transmit to others.55 But by itself it proved insufficient, as it gave rise to other questions about the specifics of the information transmitted. So Fuʾâdî reacted to the challenge posed by his audience: he wrote this new treatise aimed at giving them the necessary specifics to understand the finer points of the S¸aʿbâniye path. Deferring to his audience’s needs, he used a simple Turkish that eschewed overly eloquent constructions. This step did not mean that Fuʾâdî was fully comfortable with the concept of providing aspiring novices with a do-it-yourself manual, however. He issued a strong warning, spread over several pages, aimed at dissuading the undertaking of the path without the guidance of a proper shaykh. He makes an effective analogy, likening the person who learns about Sufism only from books to

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someone who learns the Arabic language only from the books of grammarians. While they might be able to understand parts of speech and the construction of the language, when placed in an environment with people who have been trained properly by a teacher, he will mangle the language in speaking, making “clucking sounds” like a chicken that are unintelligible to actual speakers.56 In the process, their ignorance would be exposed. Fuʾâdî also referenced his own training with Abdülbâkî Efendi and Muhyiddîn Efendi, where he experienced mystical states at the more advanced levels that could not be expressed in spoken language, much less a written one.57 Fuʾâdî had to stress this, for otherwise the very act of writing and using texts could slide into the same ideological trap into which his opponents among the Kâdızâdelis58 had fallen. Reading books that discuss the problems of Sufism was not enough to guarantee the readers the solutions that they sought, and Fuʾâdî pointed out that the Prophet himself had said, “[first] the companion, then the road” (al-rafîq thumma at-tarîq), along with “he who has no shaykh has no religion” (man lâ shaykh lihi lâ dîn lihi) and “the shaykh is to his people as the prophet is to his community” (al-shaykh fî qawmihi kaʾl-nabî fî ummatihi).59 Conveniently, these Prophetic traditions argued for caution about the logic employed by those attempting to eliminate the influence of Muslim saints: But some unaware people say, “a guide and shaykh from among the race of mankind is not necessary; everyone’s [true] shaykh is the Qurʾan. It is sufficient merely to follow the noble Qurʾan and act in accordance with the noble law to arrive at the truth.” There is truth [in] that position, but it is the lowest position of the beginners among the pious ones. It is not appropriate for the intelligent believer that he should remain at the lowest level. The highest level is knowing God in actions, characteristics, names and essence in complete witnessing . . . This position is not obtained solely by exoteric knowledge and the study of books! The truth is that the noble Qurʾan is the guide of the community and the shaykh of the Sunnis – But it is not the nature of everyone to obtain exalted states and divine perfections solely by following the Qurʾan without a perfected guide who is from the race of mankind . . .60

In making this statement, Fuʾâdî appeared to be on slippery ground. Modern scholars might find themselves more in sympathy with his opponents, who appear to be opening up religious action and righteousness to anyone who can understand the Qurʾanic injunctions. However, Fuʾâdî also employed a medical metaphor from Najm al-Dîn al-Râzî’s (d. 654/1256–57) Mirsâd al-ʿibâd (“The Path of God’s Bondsmen”)61 to illustrate why everyone needed a proper guide to understand religious issues. After all, no one would entrust his life to a doctor

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who had trained only with books on remedies without having studied first with someone more experienced who had taught unspoken elements of the profession that books could not. Indeed, modern medical training is based on exactly this principle in the form of residencies and internships! By linking the study of complex religious and mystical issues with this model, Fuʾâdî seized the opportunity to attack an ideological foundation of the growing Kâdızâdeli by arguing that without proper training people should not take it upon themselves to dictate social policy through their own personal interpretations of religion. Of course, Fuʾâdî does not follow an innovative ideology in privileging face to face oral transmission of the values and practices of the order over the written word, or in restricting control over religious interpretation to elites in society. This dates back to the origins of Prophetic Tradition itself (if not earlier). Yet this extensive discourse raises a thorny question for the audience of Fuʾâdî’s time: why, then, produce a written work at all? Fu’âdî answered by saying that while the great masters of mysticism did not need to look at books in order to benefit from them in giving their guidance, they did read them “to correlate their own mystical states with the mystical states of other perfected ones, to speak and converse with their spiritual presence in the world of meaning and the unseen, and to be spiritually and secretly purified.”62 What Fuʾâdî may have left unspoken was that this could be interpreted as his wanting to leave a legacy whereby future generations of the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the order could access his spiritual presence and guidance. Another reason for writing the work is, however, more clearly stated: While the esteemed shaykhs and noble scholars have pleasant and excellent books and tracts pertaining to the soul and the characteristics of the soul . . . they did not show consideration to the stages of the seven levels (atvâr-ı sabʿa), and they arranged and explained with another pleasant [type of] organization and with another means of consideration that was unrestricted or haphazard (ʿalâʾl-itlâq wa kayfa mâ ittifaqa).63 The noble one who expressed the level of the stages did not mention each level according to this format, or at the point that he mentioned the levels, he did not mention the seven attributes along with the names of the characteristics of the soul according to the organization mentioned in these poetic couplets . . . and they chose to summarize or abridge considerably. Although abridgment is desirable, in expressing the praiseworthy and blameworthy characteristics of each stage of each level of the soul . . . [and] in distinguishing with close examination every position and every level, and in being detailed and by inclusion of an explanation, making it easy and beneficial for the seeker and traveler on the path is intended . . . The guidance and process of guiding in the honorable silsile . . . of S¸aʿbân Efendi and his pleasant principles up until

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now is according to this path, and this letter of ours was brought forth to gather together and explain [it] according to this means by being a friendly exposition (hasb-ı hâl) of these points and meanings.64

In other words, Fuʾâdî needed a work that was more accessible to the audience of early eleventh/seventeenth-century Ottomans. Earlier works had been produced in a language or manner of expression that was not accessible to most Turkishspeaking people, or were arranged in a way that did not fit the Halveti teachings that had been passed down through S¸aʿbân and his successors. In aiming for a middle path between arbitrarily abridged discussions and excessively detailed works that would be inaccessible to all but the most advanced scholars, Fu’âdî likened his work to a travel guide carried by people such as merchants that detailed the way-stations on the roads they took. Fuʾâdî demonstrated how to tie this new presentation of the seven stages of the soul to the principles of the Halveti order: through the establishment of basic, everyday practices that novices could follow to prepare themselves for mystical training. For instance, Fuʾâdî advocated five practices in a conscious echo of the five ritual pillars of Islam. First, the novice should not eat too much, for filling up would disrupt the elemental composition of the body in favor of fire, raising the human and carnal passions to the point where they interfered with the “fire of divine love.” Fuʾâdî complained here that too many novice dervishes failed at even this most basic of practices. Yet interestingly, the emphasis here is on moderation; Fuʾâdî did not want the potential seeker to go too far in the opposite direction either. Shunning the extreme asceticism known to earlier generations of Halveti saints like Cemâl el-Halvetî or İbrâhîm-i Güls¸enî, he argued that the best condition lies in the dervish being neither overly sated nor completely hungry. Related to this discussion was the third of the five requirements, which was to limit one’s amount of sleep – a problem if one had overeaten! In an order that placed a high priority on the interpretation of dreams, too much sleep would lead to neglect and an inability to remember details critical for interpretation. Fuʾâdî’s second and fourth requirements were also related; namely, to avoid speaking and mixing with others as much as possible, and to seek solitude. Social activity would require doing many of the things proscribed by these recommendations. Furthermore, for the historian, this discussion indicates the degree to which Fuʾâdî’s audience had active social lives that the requirements of the Halveti path consciously challenged. As for the fifth requirement, it was to be engaged in remembrance of God at all times, preferably through the vocal zikr of the name of God with which a dervish had been charged by his shaykh. Yet even here Fuʾâdî enjoined moderation: he warns against going to extremes with vocal zikr

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and counsels restraint in its practice, perhaps as a response to criticisms leveled at some Sufi orders.65 After discussing this initiation process, Fuʾâdî examined the vices to be avoided in the first two stages of conquering the “commanding soul” (nefs-i emmâre) and “resisting soul” (nefs-i levvâme). The two groups differed from each other: the first set of vices represented passions of the carnal soul run amuck, while the second group were vices that appeared when the obvious attributes of the carnal soul had been subdued, but were still manifesting resistance in the inner consciousness of the seeker. Each of the two groups was further composed of seven specific vices, and in order to combat them, the seeker’s goal was to exchange these vices for their corresponding virtues on the later stages of the path. For example, the vice of pride (kibir) had to be combated with the virtues of humility (huzûʿ) and modesty (tevâzuʿ). However, things were not always quite so simple. Virtues could become vices, such as in the case of people who become too impressed with their own humility and modesty, and fell into other traps of pride and self-conceit.66 What probably caught the attention of the audience, however, was not the technical part of the discussion. Rather, building on his experience in hagiography writing, Fuʾâdî mixed stories with each of his key points as a way of illustrating them. These interspersed narratives ranged from explanations of Prophetic traditions to apocryphal narratives and even folktales. A good example is Fuʾâdî’s illustration of the best way to avoid falling into the trap of pride. He started by explaining the background context behind the hadith, “verily God most High loves kindness in all affairs” (inna Allah Taʿâlâ yahabbu al-rifq fîʾl-amr kullihi), and explained that according to a work he had consulted, Mes¸ârıkuʾl-envâr (“The Places of the Rising of the Lights”), the Prophet was once accosted by a Jewish scholar who wished to defeat him in theological debate.67 The Prophet’s wife, ʿÂʾishah, watched from behind a curtain as the Jewish scholar proceeded to behave insolently towards Muhammad, but Muhammad never wavered in his friendly demeanor. When the man had left, ʿÂʾishah, thinking that her husband had gotten the worst of the encounter by not standing up for himself, asked why he had behaved in this way. He responded by saying that since he had behaved properly and his detractor had not, he had in fact triumphed in the encounter. The audience would quickly have made the connection between the kibir (overweening pride) of the Jewish scholar to the anti-Sufi agitators of their own time. Perhaps more moving still is the following story that Fuʾâdî added: God most High, to teach and test Moses, said, “O Moses, find an insignificant and despicable thing from among the whole of creation and bring it to me, such that at the level of creation a more insignificant and despicable [thing] than it

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shall not exist. [So] Moses found a mangy dog . . . that [all of] creation despised. Thinking that there wasn’t a meaner and more despicable thing than this, he took it to the mountainside. As they were walking, God gave that dog a voice, and he said, “Moses! Where are you taking me and forcing me to go?” As soon as [Moses] said, “I’m taking you and forcing you to go to the mountainside to God Most High,” [the dog] said, “O interlocutor of God, how can you take and make me go into the presence of the Lord of the Worlds and the Exalted House in this state of meanness and lowness?” When Moses knew what had come [down] on his head, and reflected on his own soul with the rejecting of inattentiveness, and witnessed [his] state, he removed the leash that he had put around the neck of the dog and put it around his own neck. When he came to the mountain, he said, “O Lord, I went around all of creation and however insolent I might have been, in the end I couldn’t find anything lower and more despicable than myself . . .” God [then] preached to Moses . . ., “I knew that dog was [appearing to be] more abject than his soul, and had you brought him to me, I would have removed you from the record of prophecy!”68

Other stories illustrating vices include that of a “black Arab” in the city of Cairo, who is humiliated by a young boy when his greed (hırs) for sweets leads him to let the boy ride him around in the marketplace like a donkey. In the end, he found himself rewarded with oats and grass instead. This is followed by a story about a conversation between a dervish and Satan, in which Satan explains that the one thing more wicked than himself is a person whose envy (hased) is so great that he asks Satan to kill his wealthier neighbor’s donkey out of spite. He later discovered that his neighbor’s wife had been instructed to give half the profit the donkey brought to his own family. Another narrative relates how the prophet Moses, after killing a person in the land of Egypt, had to learn to conquer his anger (gazab) with the help of the prophet Shuʿayb. Afterwards, he was tested by a wayward sheep who frustrated Moses by not allowing his capture for several days. Only when Moses proved able to contain his anger and show forgiveness to the sheep was he then guided to the gift of prophecy by God.69 Such narratives illustrated, for a diverse audience reflecting various levels of knowledge, the traps of the carnal soul that every seeker on the path had to avoid. By placing the doctrine and practice of the Halveti into accessible narratives, we witness how Sufi leaders like Fuʾâdî sought to broaden Ottoman communities’ access to Sufi precepts. Concluding his discussion on the lowest levels of the carnal soul, Fuʾâdî once again raised the distinction between s¸eriʿat and tarikat (meaning, the exoteric scholar versus the Sufi) interpretations of actions. Once again, he addressed the issue by means of a story:

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A dervish of one of the noble [Sufi masters], while carrying [his master’s] staff out in front of his horse, and walking along, saw a single grape on the ground. When he picked it up and ate it, the noble [master] said to the dervish, “what did you just do?” As soon as the dervish said that he had picked up and eaten a single grape, thinking that it was an unimportant thing, he said to the dervish, “what a pity that you are a dervish . . . [supposedly] giving extreme importance to etiquette, and avoiding the needs of the blameworthy attributes . . . If you deem one grape unimportant, then it [might as well be] one thousand!” In reality, it is like this, because these sorts of things are acceptable in the s¸eriʿat, but not acceptable in the tarikat, because the noble one placed importance on guidance, and [failing to follow the rules of the order] is a breach of etiquette. Now, however much the trustworthy dervish abstains from types of disobedience to the s¸eriʿat, he needs to give that much time and importance to avoiding also those things which are breaches of etiquette in the tarikat . . .70

The point of the discussion is simple: when the dervishes took on the responsibilities of pursuing the mystical path, they had to attune themselves to the most minute aspects of their conduct and actions. They superimposed a new set of laws and restrictions over and above those imposed by Islamic tradition itself; these new laws were to be tied closely to the guidance of a perfected shaykh. Once the basic vices had been conquered, the dervish faced a second set of more subtle vices that also had to be conquered. The problem with the vices of these “carnal desires within the conscience” was that they were often difficult to recognize, which was why the guidance of a master became increasingly important during this stage. Many of the vices treated here, such as vanity (ʿucb), desire to subjugate (kahır), and blaming others (levm) could ironically result from success on the first stages of the path, as the dervish felt himself spiritually ascending above the mass of ordinary people. Without the careful oversight of a guide, these traps that rose from within the mind to disrupt the spiritual advancement of the seeker could cause them to fall back to the beginning of the path; these vices were ultimately derived from those at the lowest levels of advancement. It was probably not lost on Fu’âdî or his audience that this collection of vices often mirrored accusations made against their Kâdızâdeli opponents. Another prominent problem that Fuʾâdî and other Halveti guides recognized in trying to keep their dervishes in line was the blameworthy attribute of “revelry” (ʿis¸ret). While the Sufi path enjoined quiet and solitude as the preferred state of existence, many novices also relished the social activity that the Sufi community provided for communal meals and conversation. Since interaction was in and of itself capable of generating negative attributes and feelings, it was

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a serious struggle for both shaykh and dervish alike to get past this vice.71 Note also the hagiographical connection, for it was this very reason that led S¸aʿbân Efendi to express nervousness about his companions’ being drawn to the zikr recitations of the Halveti order with Hayreddîn Tokâdî so many years before. Once the seeker moved beyond the first two phases of the path, the goal of the process changed from avoiding negative attributes in favor of personification of positive ones. Here, however, Fuʾâdî cautions that too many novices seek to rush the process after their struggles with the negative elements inherent in the carnal soul. As a result, no one should be allowed to go forward from this point without consulting a qualified individual who could properly judge these states. Yet in so doing, Fuʾâdî also informs us more fully about the reasons for the composition of this work, along with the means by which his contemporaries were accessing Sufi ideas: O seeker, be you on whatever level or at whatever station, if you want to know whether or not you have struggled on your mystical journey, or if you have favor, or if you have moved on to become [one of] the people of the state, make a presentation to a perfected guide and noble one with complete submission, trustworthiness, and seriousness. If you cannot find [such a person], then look at his books and tracts full of perfection and the state, [which] stir up mystical knowledge and truth, and listen and understand with full comprehension their words pertaining to the state and perfection in their guidance . . . Look in their mirror by this means, until you see all of your states in the mirror of their attributes, and know your good qualities and faults as they are. If you have a fault, you should correct it, because how can seekers perfect a station, [if they] become conceited with lack of knowledge, thinking “I became [one of] the people of the states,” and remain deficient and ignorant? In the end, you’ll obtain this state and meaning in the attribute of detailing of knowledge which is explained, and you’ll benefit.72

In this admonition, Fuʾâdî confesses the important role that books and tracts had come to have in Ottoman Sufi contexts. This represented an admission that the perfected guide to disciple ratio had reached a level in which there weren’t enough guides to go around – this explains more fully his warnings about imposters looking to fill the gap. The goal of the tracts Fuʾâdî was producing was to provide a temporary stand-in for the perfected guide in situations in which one was not available, or if the seeker could not obtain the one on one training that marked the ideal mystical relationship. In other words, why should a seeker be limited in his or her pursuit of mystical knowledge simply because a mystical guide hadn’t emerged yet? Even without having a guide present, one could still make progress by tapping into the store of knowledge that the great guides’

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written works represented in the hope of completing the full process later when the individual could gain proper access to a shaykh. While an imperfect, or even potentially troubling situation, by Fuʾâdî’s time, he had sensed that having aspiring novices making imperfect progress on the path would be preferable to their making no progress at all. Perhaps his own erratic path through multiple guides earlier in career contributed to this outlook! As the seekers tried to acquire virtues and avoid the trap of vices they thought they had defeated during earlier stages of the path, backsliding became a constant worry and underscored the need for assistance beyond the reading of works alone. In particular, Fuʾâdî stressed this in his section on the virtue of enduring suffering (tahammül): When the people curse and get angry [at the seeker], by not knowing their own state, fault, and ignorance, they do not protect the zeal of God and the zeal of the path, [the seekers] are attracted to the powers of the carnal soul and the passion of the deceptive multiplicity . . . [T]o be one in the face of blame and praise, and to choose to be criticized is to choose poverty and the abandonment of the world with asceticism and piety, meaning that when [the dervish] abandons sumptuous clothes and the esteem of the people, dons the cloak and headgear, and enters the path and state of the impoverished dervishes, it is enduring the curses of the fanatics and censurers and the uneducated ones without knowledge of the state of the shaykhs and dervishes, and not taking offense at their words.73

Once again, one of the greatest threats to the progress of the seekers on the path is the growing power of anti-Sufi critics; all devotees of the order have to be aware of this danger to avoid being deterred from the path. Maintaining the order’s numbers and base of support was important to Halveti leaders like Fuʾâdî by the time he wrote this work. With the rising power of Kâdızâde Mehmed and others like him that threatened many Ottoman Sufi orders with accusations of innovation and corruption, rallying all levels of a Sufi order’s following to close ranks against the threat was of critical concern. It is perhaps instructive that another of Fuʾâdî’s shorter tracts, the Risâle-i gülâbiye (“Rose-Water Treatise”),74 was aimed specifically at dervishes entering the third and fourth stages of the Halveti path and seeking to master virtues. The text drew on a metaphor expressed in one of Mevlânâ Celâluddîn Rûmî’s couplets from the Mesnevî about the scent of roses and rosewater. Fuʾâdî taught that far too many dervishes failed to stay on the path and slipped back into worldly pursuits once experiencing some form of divinely granted ecstatic state in later stages, based on their frustration at being unable to repeat the experience.75 Perhaps recalling his own experience temporarily slipping off the path after the death of his

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first guide, Abdülbâkî Efendi, Fuʾâdî encourages his audience to keep seeking advancement, and concludes his presentation with an anecdote of how the first in the line of shaykhs in the Halveti silsile, Hasan al-Basrî, defeated the censure of his opponents at the court of the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzîz (d. 101/720) on the matter of predestination (qadar) by offering a persuasive reply and standing firm in the face of the criticism. As a result, the caliph ʿUmar reaffirmed his fervent support for him.76 Perhaps more poignant in this regard is the fact that Fuʾâdî substitutes the attribute of “anxiety” (gam) for “action” or “performance” (ʿamel) as one of the praiseworthy attributes to be attained during the fourth stage of the path, that of the “tranquil soul” (nefs-i mutmaʾinne). In contradistinction to the title of this latter stage, the attribute of “anxiety” seems to imply anything but tranquility.77 Perhaps realizing the intentionality of his substitution, Fuʾâdî was at pains to inform his audience that the anxiety to which he refers is not the type of anxiety connected with worldly occurrences and problems. It was an anxiety born of the possibility of slipping back into ignorance or neglect of the path, through either laziness or seduction back into the realm of worldly affairs. For the true seeker on the path, such a state would be without remedy and would accompany the seeker for the rest of his life.78 Attempting to confront this anxiety in a constructive manner was an important point for the wavering seeker, and it was perhaps no coincidence that the copyist of Fuʾâdî’s work chose to reinforce the point further. In the margin of the manuscript, he added a passage from another of Fuʾâdî’s works discussing how the stage of the “tranquil soul” was a dangerous time for dervishes; they were prone to fall into laziness and an attenuation of their struggles to advance.79 An indication of how successful Fuʾâdî’s didactic projects became is the existence of another tract entitled the Risâle-i sadefiye (“Mother-of-Pearl Treatise”). This brief work reiterated the basic points about the blameworthy attributes of the nefs-i emmâre, along with an enumeration of the seven stages of the Halveti path that he had discussed in the Risâle-i muslihuʾn-nefs. The first several folios were written entirely in verse, indicating that the treatise sought to provide a brief summary that could be easily memorized for public oral recitations. However, he includes several short anecdotes as well. One of these deals with Fuʾâdî’s own dream of having met the second caliph, ʿUmar b. al-Khattâb (d. 23/644), and listened to him deliver a sermon in a great mosque. Breaking with his usual pattern, Fuʾâdî described this mystical experience entirely in Arabic. In the dream, he realized who the preacher was only after asking the person sitting next to him. When he turned to look, he saw ʿUmar lecturing the audience to beware the tricks of the carnal soul, Satan’s calls to lead them astray and to struggle to replace their blameworthy characteristics

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with praiseworthy ones.80 Note that the caliph took the role of a mosque preacher (vâʿiz) in the dream, a sort of anachronism reflecting the growing importance of this position in the era’s religious politics for both Halvetis and Kâdızâdelis alike. Despite the fact that these works are not original, Fuʾâdî’s subsequent reworking of his own writings focused predominantly on redacting some of the ideas in the longer introduction to the Risâle-i muslihuʾn-nefs. This indicates that he saw value in providing abridged sections of this text to different types of audience. Both his dream and the stress on the problems inherent in the disciplining and care of the soul (especially the carnal soul) indicate that he felt his role as a Sufi leader was to disseminate the message to a wider audience. By the close of his second decade as head of the S¸aʿbâniye order in Kastamonu, Fuʾâdî had authored a considerable body of work aimed at educating his compatriots in their own language about both the history of the order and its basic principles. His growing success on this new front may have encouraged Fuʾâdî to take up another ambitious project. One of the foundations of the Halveti path was the Vird-i settâr, instituted by Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî as a ninth/fifteenth-century litany for the zikr of later generations of Halvetis. By Fuʾâdî’s time, however, many dervishes lacked familiarity with the Arabic-language meaning of the original. Moreover, they may even have failed to grasp why it was important for Halveti ritual and practice in a much changed social context. So at some point in 1038/1629, Fuʾâdî undertook a commentary on the Arabic text of the Vird-i settâr, breaking it up piece by piece and explaining each part in turn. He did not limit his exposition to this particular aspect of the Halveti path. Instead, subsumed it as the central section of a five-part treatise entitled Makâle-i ferdiye ve risâle-i virdiye (“The Catalogued Discourse and the Tract on the Recited Prayer”).81 Perhaps influenced by the earlier example of Muhyiddîn’s teacher, Mahmûd Efendi, Fuʾâdî began the work on a defensive note by seeking to establish historical and religious justifications for the clothing and headgear worn by Halveti dervishes. Interestingly, the most prominent source he consulted to establish the canonical respectability of the Sufi path was an Arabic tract, the Risâle-i nûriye of Sultan Mehmed II’s favored Bayrâmî shaykh, Aks¸emseddîn Mehmed Efendi (d. 863/1459?).82 The text of Aks¸emseddîn’s treatise, dealing with the canonical respectability of Sufi clothing, was translated into Turkish and interspersed with observations based on the teachings of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli. This formed the foundation for the defense of Sufi practices that initated the work.83 The problem of defending Sufi garb and practices associated with it predated the era in which Fuʾâdî lived, the only difference was that a new generation of censurers had to be confronted.

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Fuʾâdî saw the value of broadening the base of his order’s defensive ideology to incorporate respected earlier Ottoman religious figures beyond S¸aʿbâniyelinked figures like Mahmûd Efendi. Moreover, when discussing certain traditions of the Prophet Muhammad that justified Sufi practices, Fuʾâdî indicates some of the problems that Sufis encountered in their society by comparing them with the ahl al-suffa (“People of the Bench”) of early Islam.84 Using commentary provided by Ebûsuʿûd on the relevant Qurʾanic verses, he likens the events of the Prophet’s time to the contemporary situation, in which dervishes were being disrespected: The great chiefs and elegant members among the unbelievers of the Quraysh tribe, in order to sit with and get closer to the esteemed [Prophet Muhammad], came into his noble presence and said: “O Muhammad . . . you are a master of grace and states, gentle of action and condition. But when we come into your noble presence, we don’t find you alone, we find [you] with a disagreeable group, a company whose bodies are stinking with sweat and full of dirt, and whose clothes are stinking and impure with this dirt, and because of this their scent resembles the scent of a dervish house (tekke), and [they] are repulsive to us. If you leave this type of people, all of us will come and we shall sit and speak with you.”

This placed Muhammad in a difficult situation, in that he was bound to try and convert as many people as possible to Islam. He considered the possibility of heeding the Quraysh’s wishes by trying to spend part of his time with the ahl al-suffa and part of it with the wealthy members of the Quraysh. Yet before he could decide, God intervened with a command that he should not heed the wishes of Quraysh: [God] said: “O Muhammad! Do not leave the People of the Bench! Be always steadfast with them, and stand firm, since they are resolved and continuous in weeping, prayer and worship both day and night, and at the times of prayer and all religious holidays.” On this point God most High expressed his zealous nature, and he commanded . . . with the intent of establishing and giving importance once more to not leaving them, “make your soul (nefs) so resolved and firm on the matter of not leaving them that you shall never be separated from them, ever!”85

By likening the state of the ahl al-suffa to the Halveti dervishes who abandoned high-class Ottoman society to live in an impoverished state, Fuʾâdî sought to shield the behavior of his followers from criticism for their devotion. It likewise

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forced his critics into the uncomfortable position of emulating the Meccan unbelievers who tried to get the Prophet to reject his most pious followers. After defending Sufi clothing and practice, the first chapter of Makâle-i ferdiye ve risâle-i virdiye deals with the interpretation of dreams. Fuʾâdî stressed here that the advancement of the seeker’s soul along the various stages of the path requires the assistance of a guide in interpreting the seeker’s dreams, which give clues to the direction individual paths should take. Quoting a work of Dâvud Mahmûd al-Kayseri (d. c. 750/1350), the Muttaliʿ, he explained how the dream world represented a meeting point between the spiritual and corporeal worlds.86 Only a trained guide could interpret the complex messages that emanate from this arena, but he usually did not give an objective interpretation of a given dream to its recipient. Instead, he gave a subjective interpretation that forced the seeker to self-reflection. Fuʾâdî revealed to his audience an autobiographical tidbit that even before he read these remarks of Dâvud Kayseri, he had experienced this himself when he first joined the order at the age of twenty-seven under Abdülbâkî Efendi.87 In addition, to illustrate for his audience just what he meant by “subjective interpretation,” he gave an example of what once transpired between his own guide Muhyiddîn and S¸aʿbân: Muhyiddîn Efendi related: “One day I told the esteemed master about a carnal dream [that I had]. He said, ‘how nice!’ To make a long story short, when he approved [of this], I said, ‘my lord, how can it be nice? It is carnal!’ He said, ‘its goodness is this: it is said that the negative attributes in the mirror of your heart and the purity of your body should be removed. If you had not seen that dream, regression and deficiency would not have appeared in you. Since it appeared, go and work [on solving it]!’” 88

The point of the narrative is that even a negative sign might result in positive outcomes; thus, a seeker should not assume he can understand the import of his visions, nor should he hide potentially embarrassing elements from his guide. Only after explaining these two fundamental pillars of Halveti practice does Fuʾâdî turn to the centerpiece of the work: his commentary on the Vird-i settâr. He stresses from the outset that the prayer is a critical part of the order, and that every part of it has meaning and relevance for each seeker in relation to his station on the path. Suggesting some of the problems he sought to address, Fuʾâdî insisted that devotees should never fall asleep or show neglect in their concentration while listening to it, even if they could not understand. Proper posture, style, and etiquette had to be followed when reading the prayer, and any mystical states that occurred during its reading had to be

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carefully monitored by the shaykh.89 Nevertheless, what is distinctive about the commentary is its studied emphasis on certain elements within the text of the Vird. Certain elements are glossed over quickly, with little more than a basic definition of Arabic terms, while other phrases generate several folios of discussion. While the length of the text and complexity of its exposition make a full accounting difficult, it is worth highlighting a few of Fuʾâdî’s more involved discussions to demonstrate which elements required special attention. It is perhaps telling that nearly a seventh of the commentary (pp. 50a–57a) consists of an explanation of the subtle points underlying just two verses in the Vird-i settâr. The first, “glory be to you [God], we cannot serve you properly, O one who is served,” is followed by several related ones, such as “glory be to you [God], we cannot know you properly, O one who is known.”90 The first verse apparently raised some key problems that Fuʾâdî worried could mislead seekers on the path. The crux of the issue was maintaining proper belief, despite the ecstatic states that the Sufi path could provoke in the seeker. Beginning with the time honored distinction between prophecy given to the prophets (nübüvvet-i tes¸rîʿiye) and that given to saints (nübüvvet-i taʿrîfiye), with the latter only achievable through strict obedience to the framework laid down by the former, Fuʾâdî claimed that the true Sufi saint will never deviate from Islamic religious law.91 The greatest danger was that in the final stages of the path, the manifestations of God’s unity to advanced seekers would place them in a dangerous position between the rapture of divine unity (telvîn) and the need to maintain control of one’s senses (temkîn). The successful seeker would recognize the need to chart a balanced course between the two; sliding too far into ecstacy would lead to rejection of religion (zendaka), while failing to achieve sufficient perception of the divine unity (cehâlet) would rob the Sufi of the necessary experience to allow them to guide others. The only way to avoid tipping the balance too far was to hew close to the s¸eriʿat and never deviate from the basic pillars of Islam, even while in a state of rapture.92 Note here S¸aʿbân’s own correction of wayward followers attested to in Fu’âdî’s hagiography, showing how his later work grew organically out of the former. But the verse raised other problems for Fuʾâdî’s audience, for if the human being could not serve God except in a deficient way, what would be the point of serving him at all? Would one’s deficient attempts at worship therefore be abrogated? These questions suggest that a hostile critique of the verse existed, suggesting that the very foundations of Islamic worship were being disparaged. From there, it was possible to argue that the Vird-i settâr posed a threat in leading the Halveti devotees into unbelief. On this point, Fuʾâdî drew on his former career as a jurist, and used the Fiqh al-akbâr of Abu Hanifa and its later

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commentaries to demonstrate that despite man’s deficiencies, he must still obey God to the extent that he is able.93 The suspicion that Fuʾâdî is once again focusing on the defense of his order’s basic foundations here is confirmed by the stress on the second part of the formula, dealing with not being able to know God properly. Fuʾâdî begins by citing Najm al-Dîn al-Râzî’s description of how God’s scope is too great for the intellect to comprehend, and even the greatest of Muslims were never able to maintain their senses in the face of God’s awesome transcendence.94 This is followed by a passage from Ibn al-ʿArabî’s Futûhât al-Makkiyya, in which he acknowledged that some scholars, especially among the philosophers, found the statement to be erroneous, foolish, or even a manifestation of unbelief. Therefore, Ibn al-ʿArabî criticized scholars such as al-Ghazâlî who tried to defend its validity.95 Yet troubling to some would be the fact that Abû Hanifa had apparently made the exact opposite claim – that “we know God properly” – in his Fiqh al-akbâr. Since this contradicted the basic sense of the phrasing in the Vird-i settâr, a danger arose in which the audience felt challenged to choose between two respected Muslim authorities. Fuʾâdî resolved the discrepancy, however, by explaining that the “knowledge” (maʿrifa) to which the two statements refer is not the same thing. The spiritual knowledge of God’s essence (ʿirfân-ı zât), which includes the description of God’s attributes and his ninety-nine names, is what Abû Hanifa referred to; these qualities are, of course, knowable. On the other hand, the true nature of God’s essence (künh-i zât) is an unknowable thing, and it is to this that the text of the Vird referred. Therefore, there is no real conflict between the statements of jurists and the mystical text of the Vird-i settâr. Wavering seekers could thereby avoid the potential for conflict between their adherence to the Hanafî school and the principles embedded in the Halveti litany.96 All these discussions hint that hostile forces outside Halveti circles were looking for ways to undermine the doctrinal foundations of the order. Fuʾâdî was responding to them with this work by crafting a coherent defense which would protect these texts from insinuations of unorthodoxy by the order’s enemies. Thus, the commentary on the Vird-i settâr was aimed at a more intellectual audience who wanted to be informed of the best ways to defend their practices in the theological arena of their times. The text is therefore not a minimalist commentary on the Halveti prayer litany; it also offered tools by which the order’s leadership could withstand the growing danger of Kâdızâdeli inspired attacks challenging their legitimacy. Further confirmation of this can be found in Fuʾâdî’s insertion of political commentary into his discussion of the Vird. One recurrent theme invoked in earlier works, such as the Menâkıb, was allusions to the lives, careers, and virtues of the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs and their immediate successors. Here, over

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a quarter of his commentary is given over to discussion of anecdotes about this subject, based on the mention of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and their attributes in the litany of the Vird. At one point, during his discussion of references to the first caliph Abû Bakr, Fuʾâdî addresses the virtue of compassion (s¸efkat) as a touchstone of faith (îmân) by digressing into a story about how Moses once asked God which group among his servants were most beloved to him. God responded by saying, “if a thorn were to sink into the foot of a faithful servant in the east, and if a faithful servant in the west were to apprehend his pain and suffering, and his heart grieve and be pained with compassion for this particular thing, the most beloved and dearest to me among all of my servants would be that servant.” This remark needed further grounding for the contemporary audience, and Fu’âdî interjected: Let this be known also: if a tyrant without faith and lacking in generosity were to oppress and torment unjustly a victim deserving of mercy and compassion, the oppression of that tyrant is because of his lack of religion and his faith, or it is on account of great weakness in his faith, since compassion [derives] from faith . . . But now we live in a time, in the year 1040/1630–31, when if they were to see this oppression face-to-face, unlike the thorn which hurt the foot of [the person] in the west, the person who would show great compassion and whose heart would ache for that victim would be rarely found. On account of this, very few helpers of the oppressed remain.97

Although carefully worded to avoid specific mention of any particular person or event, Fuʾâdî’s audience would readily have interpreted this comment as a complaint against the hostility growing against them from official circles, and an expression of political dissatisfaction with the prevailing situation. Moreover, this dissatisfaction lurking behind anecdotes of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs went beyond condemning the usual oppressions that had come to characterize much of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, Fuʾâdî stated at one point that the reason he chose to devote so much of his commentary on the Vird to the Rightly-Guided Caliphs was to rebut the accusations of those who censured the Halveti order: [T]he people who follow false ideas and vicious, unsolicited and unfounded opinions are hostile to the knowledge that they do not know and to the people of knowledge that they do not know. They do not beware of suspicion, slander and thinking badly [of someone], by which someone who is canonically lawful becomes an unbeliever, and that which is fixed in a sacred text become prohibited in the noble law.98 They do not see and they do not know their own shameful faults. Talking about what they do not know, and saying, “the origin of the

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Halveti Sufis is Persia (ʿAcem),” they dare to make attribution to the evil sect of the Shiʿa (rıfz) and other slander that is not in the essences or person of the pious ones, God forbid and forbid again, and they make other baseless attributions. In particular, they do not look at the prayers, recitations and worship that these [people] perform at all times, whether externally, internally, secretly or openly . . . The creator of the Vird recited and recalled the four esteemed caliphs and the honored companions in the noble prayer with praiseworthy and beautiful attributes suitable to their noble honor and appropriate to the Book and the Sunna, in order to incline to reference to righteousness and to prefer this state.99

By focusing on both the Vird litany and his own commitment to the description of all four of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, Fuʾâdî sought to deflect the problematic notion that the order’s origins in the Persian east would tie it to the Shiʿism of the Safavid Dynasty. Since a strong strain of anti-ʿAcemî criticism, present in Ottoman circles throughout the tenth/sixteenth century, still lingered into Fuʾâdî’s time, this strategy insulated the order and its followers from the accusations implied by those criticisms.100 It also alerted the audience that many of the order’s detractors had made their accusations without even looking at any of its founding principles, thereby rendering their opinions unjustified. Fuʾâdî concluded his work with two chapters dealing with two critical elements of the Halveti path: the practice of seclusion (halvet) and the remembrance of God through prayer (zikr). Both of these chapters perpetuate the defensive tone of the work; each devotes much space to arguments deflecting anti-Halveti attacks. In defending the practice of seclusion, Fuʾâdî divided the concept once more into its s¸eriʿat and tarikat forms. The former was defined by the Arabic term iʿtikâf (a form of retreat devoted to the assiduous worship of God), while the latter is subsumed under the term halvet, from which the order took its name. Fuʾâdî tied the withdrawal of the Prophet Muhammad for meditation in the cave at Mount Hirâʾ to the story of the ostensible founder of the Halveti order, Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî, who also withdrew from society to meditate in the hollow of a plane tree.101 Anti-Halveti polemicists, however, made a different analogy by claiming that Halveti dervishes were following a practice identical to that of Christian monks in a monastery, contravening the Prophet Muhammad’s injunction that there should be no monks in Islam. Fuʾâdî’s irritation at these claims is evident in his discussion; he claims that understanding the difference between the Sufi halvet and monasticism is as simple as opening a dictionary: It isn’t like that; [this] statement is a lie and a false slander full of weakness! The shaykhs say in the most exalted speech that there is monk-like behavior according to the dictionary and the s¸eriʿat in the retreats that the dervishes perform

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and in themselves. But it is not monk-like behavior according to the dictionary! Monk-like behavior is specific to monks; it is certain that this state doesn’t exist [among the] shaykhs and dervishes, like . . . fasting, and the wearing of sackcloth and abandonment of eating meat, and other conditions. But this [is the reason that] it is not monk-like behavior according to the s¸eriʿat: among the monks there is no religion, sacred law of Islam or action according to the order, and although they exert great struggle, it is not for God or for the sake of God (lillah wa fî Allah değildir) . . . God’s noble statement, “those who struggle for our sake, we shall guide them on our path,” is not absolute [in nature]. It is written with “for our sake,” and it means, “those who struggle with respect to us.” Now, according to this reading, as soon as there is no religion of Islam among them, and their actions are not for God or for the sake of God, their struggles don’t benefit them one bit. This is the original meaning of “monk-like behavior” that they speak of.102

To simplify, since the Halveti custom of seclusion is grounded in Islamic principles rather than those of Christianity, it is silly to link monks to Halveti Sufis based on a superficial similarity in some of their practices. Fuʾâdî concluded by condemning the simple-minded thinking that some scholars were applying through these types of analogy, which resulted in unjust criticisms of Muslims who were doing nothing wrong.103 The Halveti practice of recitation (zikr) was the fourth pillar upon which the practice of the order was based. Here, opponents of the Halveti fell back on centuries old arguments that the vocal zikr was not appropriate for worship, and no form of movement should take place in conjunction with it. As a rebuttal, Fuʾâdî offered the example of the most orthodox of mystics, Junayd alBaghdâdî, considered among the most sober minded religious thinkers in Islamic history. According to the relation of Jaʿfar b. Muhammad, Junayd defended the practice of movement during the zikr on Mt Sinai when a Christian monk asked him about it.104 Other complaints seem to revolve around whether the utterance of the zikr could be anything other than the statement of tevhîd, meaning “there is no god but God.” In response, Fuʾâdî cited the Qurʾanic verse, “O you who believe, remember God frequently.”105 The Arabic term for “frequent remembrance” (dhikran kathîran) in this verse implied multiple means of recollection, a point backed up by Najm al-Dîn al-Râzî in his Qurʾanic commentary, which Fuʾâdî cited in full. He did concede that the tevhîd recitation of “there is no god but God” was the most appropriate form, especially for beginners on the Sufi path – it allowed them to break away from the manifestations of multiplicity (kesret) that would otherwise distract them. However, this was not the only form that zikr could take, especially as mystics reached the later stages of

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the path.106 Fuʾâdî rested his case on the Halveti origin myth, in that the guidance that the Prophet Muhammad offered to his son-in-law ʿAlî meant that the practice of zikr followed by the order was derived from the most impeccable of authorities. Of course, such arguments were not enough for the ever present enemies of the order, whose subaltern voice lurks behind the didactic lessons Fuʾâdî offered. Periodically, their voices emerge from the text, such as when they cite a tradition about the companion of the Prophet, Ibn Maʿsûd. He supposedly saw people performing a zikr in the mosque, and his response was to accuse the practitioners of innovation and eject them. Since the tradition was considered sound, Fuʾâdî recognized the threat it could pose if applied by analogy to those who pursued Halveti zikr rituals in the mosques. Arguments against Sufi practice also drew on a second tradition in which the Prophet criticized his followers for calling out loudly to God in their prayers; he told them there was no need to do so as God was never far from them. To defuse the explosive potential of these otherwise legitimate narratives, Fuʾâdî produced counter-traditions. In one, the Prophet defended the practice of a vocal zikr as the closest thing on earth to the gardens of paradise; this provided legal cover, as the Prophet’s opinion obviously outranked that of Ibn Maʿsûd. Yet how was he to resolve the dilemma regarding the contradictory statements of the Prophet himself? In this case, Fuʾâdî’s strategy was to contextualize the tradition forbidding loud prayers. In his view, the Prophet was responding to a specific situation rather than laying down a general rule. The context for this remark occurred when the Muslims were on campaign, so the Prophet feared that the enemy would hear them and learn their position if they did not keep their voices down. Therefore, his injunction applied only to a specific military situation, rather than denying the legitimacy of the practice in general.107 *** By the time he completed his commentary on the Vird-i settâr some five years before his death, we can speculate that ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî could look with some degree of satisfaction on the progress that the S¸aʿbâniye had made in the twentyfive years since he had acceded to head of the order. Though Fuʾâdî may not have been recognized by either contemporaries or modern observers as one of the great figures of his era, it is hard to deny the sheer volume of his output and his tireless initiatives in confronting serious problems for the order. He had consolidated an official narrative of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s life, constructed a tomb complex and an ideological defense of its value, and compiled a number of works that sought to widen the public’s access to the teachings of the Halveti order. We can

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only assume, given the results, that all three of these projects were successful. Fuʾâdî’s career raises other questions that deserve further inquiry, however. He is an unusually well-documented figure; a surprising number of his works have survived to the present. Were there other versions of Fuʾâdî in other provincial areas of the Ottoman Empire who defended their saints and produced works to that effect? Fuʾâdî’s activities suggest the tip of a broader populist trend that was taking shape in the religious culture of Ottoman society from the eleventh/seventeenth century onward. First, Fuʾâdî’s attempt to increase popular access to the teachings of the Halveti order and Sufism in general, along with the ways in which he conceived his project, indicate an important shift in early modern Ottoman thought. We have seen that the Sufi writings of the ninth/fifteenth century, when Halveti shaykhs first began to emerge in significant numbers, tended to write in Arabic, thereby limiting their audience to those who had the proper background. To some extent, this reflected earlier Sufism’s basic structure of a closely-knit following surrounded by a much larger, casual group who lacked the will or the capacity to pursue the mystical path. Earlier shaykhs found it wise to limit esoteric knowledge to the inner circle, the most devoted members of the order, for the mystical path was extraordinarily difficult to pursue even for the most learned. Even Fuʾâdî himself wrote his hagiography in Arabic initially, with an eye toward these formalities. Yet he soon rejected this pattern – why? Did he recognize the impact of a later tenth/sixteenth-century movement toward Turkish-language hagiographical literature that had begun to appear in İstanbul? It is not out of the question, but another set of social dynamics may have been forcing the change. To wit, the urgency behind Fuʾâdî’s writings is never far from the surface, as we have demonstrated. He broke with ideal mystical prinicples inherited from earlier times because the social and political context of the early modern Ottoman Empire demanded it. The Sufi orders that had formed out of the medieval periods of Islamic history were coming under increased scrutiny by new generations of religious thinkers who sought to rationalize and circumscribe the diversity of practice that had marked the post-Mongol formation of the Ottoman enterprise. Contemporary historians of religion might dismiss Fuʾâdî’s works as derivative versions of earlier, more magisterial statements of the philosophy and practice of Islamic mysticism. This has a core of truth to it – no one, Fuʾâdî himself included, would find a direct comparison between his works and those of Ibn al-ʿArabî, Najm al-Dîn Râzî or Celâlüddîn Rûmî worthy of serious consideration. But to assign value to historical works along these lines misses important points. The goal of the S¸aʿbâniye leader was to broaden

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access to the order’s teachings and significantly expand its membership. It is a mustering of a mystical esprit de corps that could combat the growing antiSufi rhetoric of the time; a rhetoric that sought to mobilize the population in the mosques against Sufism’s Ottoman infrastructure and leadership through increasingly vitriolic sermons. Moreover, even though much of Fuʾâdî’s audience accessed this legacy via oral transmission, his works leave no doubt of their intention. They are stocked with narratives and exemplary stories that increase their entertainment value and accessibility to a general audience. What we see here, in short, is the blossoming of a type of literacy movement that aimed to educate the population so they could support their saints in an increasingly divided religious and political atmosphere marked by crisis and change. Nowhere would these battles be more stubbornly fought than over the Halveti practice of the semâʿ and devrân. In the concluding chapter, we will examine how this struggle formed the backdrop for the frenetic activity undertaken by Sufi leaders like ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî. Yet we must also grapple with one final question that hovers over Fuʾâdî’s career and legacy. Given the significance of his legacy to the S¸aʿbâniye, why didn’t it attract more attention from his contemporaries and later historians? Notes 1 MSV(T), p. 145. Griswold attributes the survival and recovery of the Ottoman state after 1015/1607 to this military genius who served under five different rulers; see GAR, pp. 132 and 211. 2 MSV(T), p. 146; it is interesting that Fuʾâdî’s father was also named Himmet Dede – was there a family tie? Since Fuʾâdî makes no mention of what would have been a very significant connection, we must assume that the two individuals are not the same. 3 The author here uses a title that expresses greater confidence in his position as head of the order, as he penned this particular narrative sometime after 1027/1618, after heading the order for nearly fifteen years. 4 Or alternatively, “among Easterners and Westerners alike.” 5 MSV(T), p. 146. 6 William Griswold suggested, in an e-mail to the author, that ʿÖmer Kethüdâ probably died of old age. Thus, the myth of the murder had more to do with Nasûh Pas¸a’s fearsome reputation for ruthlessly extorting revenues from those he persecuted; see also GAR, pp. 210–11. 7 MSV(T), pp. 149–50; we understand from this that Fuʾâdî also believed the rumors about Nasûh Pas¸a’s treachery toward his former master’s colleagues – a suspicion that extended to thinking that Nasûh Pas¸a had his predecessor, the hero Kuyucu Murad Pas¸a, poisoned so he could take his place; see GAR, p. 297, n. 3, and p. 298, n. 8. 8 MSV(T), p. 150. 9 See Figure 4 and ZD, insert between pp. 18 and 19.

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10 ZD; Abdulkadiroğlu believes the ebced calculation adds up to 982/1574; see AKAK, p. 113. While not out of the question, it relied on an unlikely possibility that the renovation began before Murad III acceded to the sultanate in the final month of that year. 11 See KKE, p. 107 and MBEH, p. 152. 12 This explains why the mosque is known by both names in various works; see, for example, AKAK, pp. 101–2 and KKE, p. 107. See also John J. Curry, “Defending the Cult of Saints in 17th-century Kastamonu: Ömer el-Fuʾadi’s Contribution to Religious Debate in Ottoman Society,” in Colin Imber and Keiko Kiyotaki (eds), Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: State, Province and the West (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 139–48. 13 In his correspondence with his shaykh, Murad III frequently makes reference to his present inability to fulfill S¸ücâʿ’s demands, and begs his indulgence in delaying the request; see SM-KM, fols 158a, 159a–b, 160b, and 165b–6a among others. 14 MSV(T), p. 151. 15 MSV(T), pp. 152–3. 16 MSV(T), p. 153. 17 MSV(T), pp. 162–3. 18 MSV(T), pp. 153–4; though Fuʾâdî’s argument does not reflect the fact that Muslim scholars have not always agreed on what the idea of “consensus” (icmâʿ) represents. See, for example, Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 29–31 and 60–8 on how prominent scholars defined or limited who could be included in the “consensus,” and Frederick Mathewson Denny, An Introduction to Islam, 2nd edn (New York: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 198–9. 19 The fetvâs of Kâdıhân were extremely influential among Ottoman jurists; some scholars claim that his more flexible, real-world approach to issues made him popular with subsequent generations. He was also cited by other hard-line jurists seeking to criticize various Sufi practices; for more on Kâdıhân and his legacy, see Th. W. Juynboll and Y. Linant, “Kâdi Khân, Fakhr al-Dîn al-Hasan b. Mansûr al-Farghanî,” EI2, vol. 4, p. 377. 20 MSV(T), pp. 155–6. 21 MSV(T), pp. 157–8. 22 MSV, p. 86. 23 Previous work has linked Christian shrines devoted to certain saints with the Muslim saint Khidr, beginning during the post-Manzikert era and reaching its height in the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries; see Ethel Sara Wolper, “Khidr, Elwan Çelebi and the Conversion of Sacred Sanctuaries in Anatolia,” Muslim World 90:3–4 (2000), 309–11. In a more recent work, Wolper argues that dervish and Christian communities during the Seljuk and Mongol periods were never exclusive, and often joined through shared mercantile and sacred spaces; see Cities and Saints: Sufism and the Transformation of Urban Space in Medieval Anatolia (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 74–81. 24 KC-BT, pp. 92–5. 25 After summarizing his opponents’ arguments, Fuʾâdî stated, “they cannot distinguish between the Sunnî mezheb and another false mezheb. They go to the mezheb of the heretics and Hanbalis with this opinion of censure and heresy”; see MSV(T), p. 158. In theory, he might be treading on dangerous ground by accusing one of the four accepted legal schools in Sunnî Islam of trafficking in irreligious beliefs. 26 Najm al-Dîn Muhammad al-Ghaytî al-Shâfiʿî was a prominent tenth/sixteenth-century

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought Egyptian jurist from Alexandria, and given the prominence of tombs in the religious life of Egypt, it is perhaps not surprising that Fuʾâdî chose to draw on this individual as his source. For more on him, see ʿUmar Ridâ Kahhâlah, Muʿjam al-muʾallifîn: Tarâjim musannifî al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya (Damascus: Matbaʿat al-Taraqqî, 1959), vol. 8, pp. 293–4. Kâtıp Çelebi was aware of several other works when he compiled his Kes¸füʾzzunûn in the eleventh/seventeenth century, but does not mention this one, suggesting that the work was not widely known; see KC-KZ, vol. 1, p. 336, and vol. 2, p. 1068. Fuʾâdî described the work as a compilation of thirty-nine questions followed by answers, and he cited materials from the work based on several of these. Underscoring this point, the modern Turkish translation and interpretation of the Türbenâme part of MSV, published by Muhammed Safi, omits this Arabic-language part of the work entirely and skips directly to the next section; compare Safi, p. 153 with MSV(T), pp. 158–61. Al-Ghaytî may have been struggling with similar problems involving attacks on tomb visitation in the Egyptian context; thus, Fuʾâdî recognized the utility of this source in addressing his own problem. Baki Tezcan suggests in his dissertation that ʿOsmân II was the first Ottoman sultan to have been educated by a preacher, ʿÖmer Efendi. While we cannot ascertain ʿÖmer’s political and religious leanings, there is evidence that links both ʿÖmer and ʿOsmân II to a favorable view of what would later emerge as the Kâdızâdeli movement. In fact, during the early years of his career, Kâdızâde Mehmed himself penned a tract on horses and presented it to ʿOsmân II as a way of currying favor. This activity would have been occurring at the same time Fuʾâdî was submitting the Risâle-i Türbenâme; see BKTZ, pp. 186–94. MSV(T), pp. 165–6. MSV(T), pp. 166–7. Probably referring to a timeframe in which the holders of fiefs were informed by the sultan of their obligations toward a campaign or the treasury, meaning that they would be able to determine remaining income available for discretionary purposes, such as Fuʾâdî’s project. MSV(T), p. 167. Interestingly, Fuʾâdî would partially renege on these conditions after the tomb was completed in 1026/1618. He recorded in a defter the names and amounts contributed to the building of the tomb over the course of its construction and had the scroll placed inside the tomb itself. This way, he argued, it could serve as a record on the day of judgment for those who had done good works. However, it was not presented as an open record that anyone could have examined; see MSV(T), pp. 185–6. MSV(T), p. 168. AKAK, p. 114; the ebced numerical value adds up to the number 1020 in the last line, which translates to the year 1611, the date when ʿÖmer Kethüdâ had initiated the project. MSV(T), pp. 170–2. I have not found any additional records documenting the existence of this individual. He was later promoted to the post of müteferrika, a military scribe for one of the Ottoman elite regiments; he held the post at the time Fuʾâdî wrote the Türbenâme. MSV(T), pp. 172–3.

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40 SCLO, vol. 2, p. 286; Baki Tezcan also notes the near disaster at Ardabil that almost cost the life of the Crimean Khan; see BKTZ, p. 196 and also CI, p. 77. 41 Fuʾâdî extols the virtues of his benefactor extensively in MSV(T), pp. 175–7, suggesting apologetic aimed at protecting the tomb complex and its denizens from another benefactor whose career did not end so successfully. 42 MSV(T), pp. 174–5. Fuʾâdî stressed the exalted lineage of this individual, who was among the children of Seyyid İbrâhîm Tennûrî (d. 887/1481?), primary successor to the Bayrâmiye shaykh Aks¸emseddîn whose tomb was located in Kayseri. His second successor, Muslihuddîn b. ʿAttâr el-İskilibî, established himself in İskilip, and given our knowledge of Abdülbâkî Efendi’s presence there, this suggests amicable relations between the two orders. Evliyâ Çelebi commented on these Bayrâmiye shaykhs in his descriptions of Kayseri and İskilip; see Buğday, Evliyâ Çelebis Anatolienreise, pp. 132 and 284. 43 For a brief and incomplete biography of Kûrs¸ûncuzâde Mustafa Pas¸a, see SCLO, vol. 4, pp. 388–9; he was also governor of Bosnia a third time from 1036/1627 to 1037/1628, and again in 1041/1632 or 1042/1633. He died in battle during Sultan Murad IV’s campaign against Baghdad in 1045/1636. Both Süreyyâ and Fu’âdî concur on his governship over Bosnia; see MSV(T), p. 178. For more on the importance of these events for ʿOsmân II’s reign, see BKTZ, pp. 196–203. 44 The account is rather vague about where repairs and additions were made; see MSV(T), pp. 177–80. However, the harem was most likely the small prayer room presently found on the north side of the tomb, and the second gate was probably added on the east side of the tomb where the inscription for Mustafa Pas¸a is located; see diagrams in ZD, insert between pp. 18 and 19. 45 AKAK, p. 114; the ebced in the last line actually adds up to 1027/1617, suggesting that the building might have been completed earlier. 46 ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, Risâletüʾl-müsellesât er-res¸âdî, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Haci Mahmud Efendi 2287, fols 282b–3a. Fuʾâdî does not explicitly state what he is referring to here, but the extortionate activities of the Sultan and his grand vizier, ʿAlî Pas¸a, against some of the grandees of the empire who might have been friendly to the S¸aʿbâniye might be inferred. Also, the general reticence of key scholars to condone ʿOsmân II’s attempt to have his brother killed may be at work; see BKTZ, pp. 99–100, 198, and 201. These possibilities might allow us to date this letter to 1029/1620 or 1030/1621. 47 For a historiographical analysis of ʿOsmân II’s reign and its implications for both early modern and contemporary historians, see BKTZ, pp. 1–27. 48 This treatise exists in multiple copies scattered among different manuscript libraries in İstanbul. The copy dating its completion to 1028/1618 can be found in OF-MT, fol. 16a, mistakenly labeled in the Süleymaniye’s card catalog as Maqâlat al-tawashshaqiyya. An identical second and better preserved copy that does not give the original date of composition was made by a Naks¸bendî dervish shortly before the establishment of the Turkish republic in 1338/1922 and can be found in the İstanbul Atatürk Kitaplığı, MS Osman Ergin 1514. 49 OF-MT, fol. 4a–b. 50 For more, see Shahzad Bashir, Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005). 51 OF-MT, fols 4b–6b.

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52 OF-MT, fols 21a–2a. 53 OF-RMN, fol. 174a–b. Note that there is a lacuna in the final sections of the manuscript, especially that which discusses the fifth stage of the Halveti path. Other manuscript copies of this unpublished work also seem to have this lacuna, suggesting an unfinished work. Nevertheless, enough of the work survives to reconstruct its general framework and format. 54 OF-RMN, fol. 174b. 55 For example, the first line runs as follows: Evvelâ nefs-i emmâre sifâtı heftdir * kibir ve hırs ve hased ve s¸ehvetdir * Dördü bu üçüncü dâhi diñle * buhl ve hıkd ve gazab ve hiddetdir, meaning roughly: “First of all the characteristics of the imperious carnal soul are seven: * they are self-importance, greed, envy and lust. * Listen to the four and also this group of three: * avarice, malice, and violent rage.” 56 This analogy has a long history in Islamic history; see, for example, its appearance in al-Masʿûdî (d. 344/956), The Meadows of Gold: The Abbasids, trans. Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone (London: Kegan Paul, 1989), pp. 339–40. 57 OF-RMN, fol. 175a–b. 58 Here, we switch to the term “Kâdızâdeli” rather than “proto-Kâdızâdeli,” since this work was completed around the year 1034/1625. By this time, the influence of Kâdızâde Mehmed and his followers had begun to impact upon the politics of the empire; see BKTZ, pp. 191–2. The Halveti–Kâdızâdeli debates would reach a crescendo at the end of the 1620s, continuing until Mehmed’s death; see MCZ-KZ, p. 256. 59 OF-RMN, fol. 178b. Fuʾâdî’s opponents might have argued that these statements originated in contexts somewhat different from the interpretation that Fuʾâdî advances. 60 OF-RMN, fol. 178b. 61 This work of Najm al-Dîn Abî Bakr b. ʿAbdullah b. Muhammad b. Shâhâdar al-Asad al-Râzî (d. 654/1256–7) had a long and distinguished presence in Turkish intellectual history, according to Kâtıp Çelebi. The first known text dated from the year 620/1223 in Sivas during the height of the Seljuk period, and it was later translated into Turkish from Persian during the reign of Murad II by Kâsim b. Mahmûd al-Karâhisârî; see KC-KZ, vol. 2, pp. 1655–6. Najm al-Dîn al-Râzî was among the notable Sufi intellectuals who fled the Mongol invasions to settle in Anatolia in the seventh/thirteenth century, and he had a major influence on the development of Islamic mysticism there; see Wolper, Cities and Saints, pp. 18 and 21. The work to which Fuʾâdî refers has been published as Najm al-Dîn Râzî, Mersâd al-ʿebâd men al-mabdâʾ elâʾl-maʿâd: The Path of God’s Bondsmen from Origin to Return, trans. Hamid Algar (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1982). Fuʾâdî made no secret of the importance of Najm al-Dîn’s works to the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the Halveti, and included several manuscripts of these works within the vakıf deed that established the complex so that Râzî’s works would be available in the library; see OF-RV, fol. 54a. 62 OF-RMN, fol. 176a. 63 Some examples of the works to which Fuʾâdî is referring might be that of his illustrious predecessor, Cemâl el-Halvetî, Risâlah fîʾl-atwâr waʾl-marâtib, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Hkm. 438/3), as Fuʾâdî was acquainted with a number of his other works. Another example of an earlier, tenth/sixteenth-century atvar-ı saʿba work is that of Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi (d. 960/1553), Atvâr-ı sabʿa, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1213. Earlier works addressing the concept might have been known to him. 64 OF-RMN, fol. 176a.

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65 OF-RMN, fols 177a–8a. 66 OF-RMN, fol. 179b. 67 This is probably the Mashâriq al-anwâr al-qudsiyya fî bayân al-ʿuhûd al-Muhammadiyya of Shaykh ʿAbduʾl-Wahhâb b. Ahmad al-Shaʿrânî, written about 958/1550. The title could also refer to another, earlier work by one Radiyuʾd-Dîn Hasan b. Muhammad (d. 650/1252–3), entitled Mashâriq al-anwâr al-nabawiyya min suhahuʾl-akhbâr alMustafawiyya. However, since the title of the latter work suggests jurisprudence rather than narratives about the Prophet, the former is far more likely; see KC-KZ, vol. 2, pp. 1687–90. 68 OF-RMN, fol. 180a. 69 OF-RMN, fols 180b, 181a, and 184b. 70 OF-RMN, fol. 185a. 71 OF-RMN, fol. 185b. 72 OF-RMN, fol. 189a–b. 73 OF-RMN, fol. 190b. 74 ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Risâle-i gülâbiye, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 614/17. 75 OF-RMN, fol. 92b. 76 OF-RMN, fols 95b–6a. In fact, Fuʾâdî may be confusing the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik (d. 86/705) with that of the more pious ʿUmar, who was acknowledged by later Muslims to be an exceptionally religious figure among the otherwise problematic Umayyads; see AK-IM, p. 12 and Hodgson, vol. 1, 248–9. However, it is also known that Hasan alBasrî served briefly as a judge under ʿUmar when the latter first ascended the throne in 98/717, and later perceptions about ʿUmar’s positions on various political and doctrinal controversies during his reign would have given this story a ring of truth to later audiences; see the analysis of Hasan’s life in W. Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Early Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980), pp. 77–81 and 99–104. See also Watt’s study of the free will controversy in early Islam in Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam (London: Luzac, 1948), esp. pp. 54–5 and 165. The acceptance of Hasan al-Basrî’s doctrines by the caliph ʿUmar is also appears in Josef van Ess, “ʿUmar II and His Epistle against the Qadarîya,” Abr-Nahrain 12 (1971–2), 24–5. 77 Compare the later S¸aʿbâniye work on the various stages compiled by Ünsî Hasan Efendi (d. 1136/1723), Mecmûʿât al-rasâʾil, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1508, fols 8a–13b, where the attribute of “anxiety” is not mentioned. 78 OF-RMN, fol. 194a–b; one could read the nature of the “anxiety” described here as related to the attribute of “action,” in that the seeker must always be struggling ceaselessly toward the goals of the path. Still, the choice of words has a less positive implication. 79 OF-RMN, fol. 194a, in margin; according to the late twelfth/eighteenth-century copyist, it was taken from the “vird-i s¸erîf commentary of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî,” which refers to S¸erh-i Vird-i settâr discussed subsequently. 80 ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636), Risâle-i sadefiye. Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 614/16, fols 188b–9a; the odd title of the work refers to a quote from the work al-Manârât (“The Lighthouses”) by Najm al-Dîn al-Râzî (d. 654/1256–7) with which Fuʾâdî opens the work; see also OF-RMN, fol. 177a. Fuʾâdî indicates that he sees the language in which the dream took place as significant, and did not translate

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought it for his audience. This indicated that it was not to be made readily available to those who did not know the language, a limitation on access perhaps demonstrating both the personal importance of this event in shaping Fuʾâdî’s mystical outlook and its sacred character. The text survived in at least three copies, the earliest being included in OF-RV, with the commentary on the Vird-i settâr running from fols 48b–94a; on fol. 48b it is recorded that the author commenced the work on 10 Ziʾlhicce 1038/31 July 1629. However, in another place, Fuʾâdî says that he was writing on a topic in 1040/1630–1, indicating that the text took some time to complete (p. 69b). Fuʾâdî subsequently reorganized this text, along with additional materials, to form the longer tract of the Makâle. See also Fuʾâdî, S¸erh-i Vird-i settâr, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 484/2, fols 79a–141a, which is a superior copy but dates from a later time and lacks the supporting apparatus of the other parts of the Makâle-i ferdiye found in the Süleymâniye text (in fact, it inserts the first fasıl of the Makâle after the commentary on the Vird). The same text, inserted in another compilation of Fuʾâdî’s works, can also be found in Süleymaniye Library MS Hacı Mahmud Efendi 2287, fols 173b–238b, but it omits certain sections found in MS Esʿad Efendi 1734/3. For more on Aks¸emseddîn and his career, see LCH, pp. 834–8 and HSN, pp. 240–6. The author of the latter mentions having seen the work to which Fuʾâdî refers, although he calls it the Risâle-i nûr (p. 246). OF-RV, fols 23b–7b. The ahl al-suffa, or “People of the Bench,” were a group of Muslims living near the Kaʿba in Mecca, and devoted their entire existence to prayer and devotion except when the Prophet called upon them to join one of his campaigns. Sufi biographers of medieval times like Sulamî, Hujwirî, and Abû Nuʿaym incorporated biography about the members of this group and established them as models for later Sufi adherents. Even Ibn Taymiyya cited them as laudable exemplars; see W. Montgomery Watt, “Ahl al-Suffah,” EI2, vol. 1, pp. 266–267. The full narrative appears in OF-RV, fols 33b–4b; the story is a variation on narratives of a similar nature that appear in the Arabic tradition. See, for example, the variations on this story that appear in a work by an Egyptian scholar: Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Rahman as-Sakhâwî (d. 901/1496), Ruhbân al-kaffa fî bayân nubdhatin min akhbâr Ahl al-Suffa (Riyadh: Dâr al-Salaf, 1995), pp. 125–30. Dâvud Mahmûd al-Kayseri was a follower and student of Kâşânî, and his work Muttaliʿ khusûs al-kalim min maʿânî Fusûs al-hikam (known in Ottoman circles as the Muqaddimat sharh al-Fusûs) was a guide to understanding some of the basic precepts that underlay Ibn al-ʿArabî’s cosmology; see KC-KZ, vol. 2, p. 1720. Dâvud was also an important figure in Ottoman history, as he was considered to be the scholar the Ottomans appointed to the first medrese that they built in İznik during the reign of Sultan Orhan; see Tas¸köprüzâde (d. 968/1561), Al-Shaqâʾiq al-nuʿmâniyya fî ʿulamâʾ al-dawlat alʿuthmâniyya wa yalîhi al-ʿaqd al-manzûm fî dhikri afâdil al-Rûm (Beirut: Dâr al-Kitâb al-ʿArabî, 1975), p. 8. OF-RV, fol. 42a–b. OF-RV, fol. 43b. OF-RV, fols 43b–4a. In Arabic, subhânaka mâ ʿabadnâka haqqa ʿibâdatika yâ maʿbûdu, subhânaka mâ ʿarafnâka haqqa maʿrifatika yâ maʿrûfu; an excellent copy of the original Arabic text

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of the Vird-i settâr, fully voweled, can be found in Ahmed Nezih Galitekin, Gölcük Örcün Köyü ve Baba Sultân Zâviyesi (Gölcük: Gölcük Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları No. 1, 2000), pp. 186–93, followed by its Turkish translation on pp. 194–7. OF-RV, fol. 50a. OF-RV, fols 50b–1b. OF-Rv, fols 52a–3a. OF-RV, fols 53b–4a; Fuʾâdî stressed that the work he cites, the Manâzil al-Sâʾirîn, is available in the S¸aʿbâniye library and should be consulted if the audience wants further information. OF-RV, fol. 54a–b. OF-RV, fols 55a–6b. OF-RV, fol. 69a–b. The expression Fuʾâdî uses here, s¸erʿ-i s¸erîfde hürmeti nass-ı kâtıʿla sâbıt olan, implied that people who are suspicious and always looking for heresy will end up twisting sacred law to do the exact opposite of what it really says. OF-RV, fol. 86b. Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî is an example of a political figure who actively criticized the “eastern” figures who worked their way into the government, especially during the reign of Murad III; see CF-MA, pp. 154–9. OF-RV, fols 95b–8a. OF-RV, fols 98b–9a; the passage is difficult to translate due to grammatical irregularities. OF-Rv, fol. 99a–b. On the importance of Junayd al-Baghdâdî to the history of Islamic mysticism and his doctrine of “sobriety,” see the remarks of AK-IM, pp. 52–6. Fuʾâdî refers to this anecdote on several occasions in OF-RV; see fols 34b–5b in addition to p. 100b. Al-Qurʾân, 33:41. OF-RV, fols 100b–1b. OF-RV, fols 103a–4b.

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8 The Political and Doctrinal Legacy of ʿÖmer el- Fuʾâdî

The final years of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s life were marked by religious and political tensions in the Ottoman Empire present since the time of its foundation, and his contemporaries came to note him as a central figure in the debates that caused those tensions. Therefore, to a great extent, any assessment of his life and legacy must be grounded in the context of his polemical response to the religio-political crisis revolving around Muslim mysticism. The crisis was best symbolized by the intractable debate over the legitimacy of the Halveti semâʿ, chanted litanies set to musical accompaniment, and devrân, the circular motions that went with it that sought to bring the seekers into a mystical state. The debate over these practices had ancient roots, but had usually not taken on the form of a lengthy and sustained campaign against them. But by Fuʾâdî’s time, the level of aggression and hostility over the issue had risen significantly. To a modern observer the debate appears quaint or eccentric. Some might liken it to the Byzantine debate over Iconoclasm, sometimes interpreted as an obscure doctrinal dispute that had little relevance to the Byzantine Empire’s very real problems in staving off Arab and Bulgarian invasion.1 Nevertheless, a closer examination of the underlying issues suggests that there was more to the semâʿ/devrân conflict than hair-splitting clashes between theologians and mystics. Instead, the very foundations of Ottoman religious law was at stake. This likewise extended into some very secular concerns, like the distribution of positions in the religious hierarchy in a time of scarcity, as Madeline Zilfi has aptly demonstrated. Fuʾâdî’s contribution to this dispute was not the most significant among his contemporaries; prominent scholars and Sufi leaders based in the capital were more likely targets for the Ottoman chroniclers of the period. However, when

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Fuʾâdî’s writings are intersected with other sources from this era, we gain insight into how his work on behalf of the S¸aʿbâniye posed an open challenge to the emerging Kâdızâdeli movement in the final decades of his life. Furthermore, Fuʾâdî’s success in rallying the order behind their achievements subsequently extended its reach into the Ottoman capital by the end of the century. Yet strangely, Fuʾâdî himself receded into the background as merely one individual in a long chain of S¸aʿbân’s successors after his death. His successors never fully acknowledged the monumental contributions he made to the S¸aʿbâniye. . ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s Role in Countering Criticisms of Halveti Semâʿ and Devrân

The issues raised about vocal forms of prayer in the final chapter of Makâle-i ferdiye may have taken on added urgency in the last decade of Fuʾâdî’s life. At the beginning of the 1040s/1630s, when Fuʾâdî was completing his lengthy defense of the order’s practices, debates between the followers of Kâdızâde Mehmed and ʿAbdülmecîd Sivâsî Efendi (d. 1049/1639) over Sufi practices had spilled over into the public sphere. The dispute played out before gatherings of elites and commoners alike.2 Fuʾâdî was aware of these developments, and produced several short tracts aimed specifically at defending the Halveti semâʿ and devrân. These practices were a central element in the public presence of the S¸aʿbâniye in Kastamonu, as well as other subbranches of the Halveti order. The ceremony was important for the recruitment of the order’s members and the maintenance of their support; after all, S¸aʿbân himself had been brought into the order through participation in these events. Unfortunately, most of Fuʾâdî’s shorter treatises defending the semâʿ and devrân cannot be accurately dated, which limits the historian’s ability to contextualize them. He may have written these tracts earlier in his career, or in conjunction with the other tracts on Halveti ritual and practice treated in the previous chapter. Nevertheless, one suspects that the growing power of Kâdızâde Mehmed and his followers by the final decade of Fuʾâdî’s life indicates a comparatively late date for this material. Fuʾâdî’s response was three separate treatises that expound the same general arguments, but vary the level of detail. The length of the shortest, entitled A Tract Pertaining to the Permissibility of the Sufi Devrân, could indicate it was the first of the three to be written. However, the opposite could be true: this may be an abridgment created from the lengthier versions. Fuʾâdî informs us only that he wrote it hurriedly as an abridgment of more extensive arguments found elsewhere, and that it should be promulgated only by competent individuals who

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could expound on the basic points discussed in the text.3 In it, Fuʾâdî described three particular groups at the root of the contemporary conflict: The first of these [groups] are those who lack capability in the detailed explanation of opinions and correct ascertainment of conditions, since they cannot follow a career in the knowledge of Sufism and are incapable of disciplining their carnal souls, purifying their hearts, or polishing their souls. [This is] because they are extremist scholars in exoteric knowledge and the reason of their existence is exoteric knowledge. Another [group] are those who are scholars, but have no perfection or virtue with the annihilated state in knowledge, and only see and read the opinions and legal decisions of other scholars, and [then] interfere and criticize [using] those [sources]. Another [group] has no knowledge themselves; they hear from the mouths of scholars and they don’t know their state and limit and faults out of ignorance, and they pass themselves off as pious and do not examine their error [born of] ignorance, and they interfere and criticize.4

This discussion reveals that the challenge facing the Halveti order now applied to all levels of society, and was no longer just an academic debate among Muslim elites. While earlier generations of Halveti leaders debated these issues in Arabic, limiting access to the well educated, Fuʾâdî’s generation sought a population with increased religious literacy. Both Fuʾâdî and his contemporaries recognized the urgency of providing instruction to a wider Ottoman public in their own language in order to defend Sufi practice. The complaint notes that Kâdızâdeli scholars were no longer content to challenge Halvetis at the level of high-ranking jurisprudence: they recruited rank and file Ottoman subjects “with no knowledge themselves” who had taken an interest in religious issues and supported an ill-advised activist movement. The only way to counter this challenge was to fight fire with fire by arming a counter-force with defenses for the practices of Halveti Sufism. This point is what Fuʾâdî’s career so richly illustrates for the Ottoman historian. Fuʾâdî’s critique implies a growing class of scholars with basic levels of competence in reading jurisprudence from various texts, but lacking the intellectual background or access to a adequate source base to interpret this material appropriately. Thus, they misused materials drawn from the Islamic intellectual inheritance by reading them out of context in order to censure the Halveti order. This problem troubled Fuʾâdî so much that he devoted two additional tracts of greater length to articulate a defense grounded fully in the traditions of the past. His project was in part aimed at popularizing earlier works of notable Halveti figures like Cemâl el-Halvetî5 and Sünbül Sinân Efendi,6 who had laid down a framework justifying the permissibility and laudability of Halveti practices.

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Fuʾâdî’s works also revived a renowned fetvâ that subsequently evolved into an apologetic treatise written by a long-serving s¸eyhülislâm, Zenbillî ʿAlî Efendi (d. 931/1525), who had served under Ottoman sultans from Bayezid II to Süleymân. This foundation illustrated both the long life of the controversy and the role of prominent Ottoman scholars in upholding Sufi legitimacy in earlier eras.7 Fuʾâdî’s work commented on the Arabic text of the fetvâ, making it accessible to a broader audience. Some of his commentary added to the debate by introducing a counter-tradition about Yahyâ b. Muʿadh, who defended his practice of vocal zikr against those who challenged its legitimacy, and subsequently won them over as followers.8 However, contemporary studies have overlooked the fact that a specific part of this project created a firestorm of controversy. Fuʾâdî’s criticism of the order’s detractors took aim at specific sources that they cited in demanding the prohibition of Halveti practices. The most prominent of these was an entry in a compilation of judicial opinions that played a significant role in the formation of Ottoman Hanafî jurisprudence: the Fatâwâ al-Bazzâziyya. It was compiled by the renowned Hanafî scholar, Hafız al-Dîn Muhammad b. Shihâb al-Kurdarî al-Bazzâzî (d. 827/1424).9 It is difficult to develop a clear picture of Bazzâzî’s activities during his lifetime – like our early Halveti shaykhs, he emerged from an era of Islamic history that suffers from both limited documentation and scholarly neglect. Nevertheless, it is worth summarizing what we do know about how he became part of early Ottoman intellectual life. Born in Kurdar, a town in the area of Ürgenç near the Syr Darya river in the eighth/fourteenth century, he was educated by his father Muhammad b. Shihâb, a local Hanafî scholar who compiled the fiqh of Jalâl al-Dîn b. Shams al-Khwarizmî al-Karalânî. The latter was, in turn, another noted jurist whose scholarly auspices can be traced back to the renowned Hanefî jurist Kâdîkhân.10 However, Bazzâzî was born in an inauspicious age, for when Timur first began his bloody conquests, Khwarizm and its capital Ürgenç were one of the first targets. After enduring multiple raids over the course of a decade, Ürgenç fell and was destroyed in 780/1379. It can be assumed that the young Bazzâzî was forced to flee the carnage.11 These traumatic experiences gave him a lifelong hatred of Timur, and at one point, he issued a fetva declaring Timur an infidel based on his continued adherence to the yasa of Chinggis Khan.12 Moreover, as Timur had patronized prominent Sufi shaykhs in Transoxiana and elsewhere, this may have been an additional source of friction for hostile fuqahâʾ like Bazzâzî.13 Bazzâzî found temporary refuge in the Golden Horde’s capital of Saray, which fell under the control of Timur’s eventual rival, Toktamış (d. c. 808/1405), where he interacted with other Muslim scholars. However, Toktamış’s eventual

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defeat and further Timurid advances led Bazzâzî to seek refuge even farther to the west in the Crimea, where he remained for two years teaching others before finally returning to Khwarizm, perhaps around 805/1403.14 Unfortunately, the skeletal narrative provided by fuqahâ’ biographies do not give a clear sense of Bazzâzî’s movements or chronology thereafter. We know only that he was dissatisfied enough to leave his homeland again at the end of his life to settle in the nascent Ottoman Empire. He arrived with the compilation of legal opinions for which he would become known already in hand, having completed it the same year as his return to Khwarizm.15 He had also written a biography describing the life and jurisprudence of Abû Hanifa, founder of the Hanefî school of law.16 Since his work spread into regions as diverse as India and Egypt, in addition to Anatolia and Central Asia, his impact on the history of Hanafî jurisprudence in the Middle Ages was significant.17 According to Tâs¸köprüzâde, when Bazzâzî established himself among the Ottomans, he met the prominent scholar Molla S¸emseddîn Mehmed al-Fenârî (d. 834/1431). Since Molla Fenârî was not resident in Bursa until 824/1421, one assumes that Bazzâzî did not meet him until the final years of his life.18 Their interaction may have been brief in any case – the only record we have of their encounter is that Bazzâzî demonstrated his superiority in the practical application of Islamic law (furûʿ), while Fenârî proved superior in his knowledge of its sources (usûl) and the other branches of knowledge.19 This squares fairly well with what we know about Bazzâzî’s works, which focus specifically on practical definitions and guidelines for proper behavior in various aspects of social and religious life. Ultimately, Bazzâzî may not have lived long enough to take up a prominent position in the Ottoman learned hierarchy, but his writings lived on as a reference for future generations. Moreover, the biographer al-Laknawî records at least four noted Hanafî scholars who were trained by him either directly or his students, some of whom had also migrated to the Ottoman realm.20 The sticking point between the Kâdızâdeli movement and Halveti leaders like Fu’âdî was a series of decisions that appear in a chapter of Bazzâzî’s jurisprudence about whether certain utterances constitute manifestations of Islamic belief, unbelief, or simply erroneous thinking. In a sub-section entitled “on what is said about the Qurʾan and recitations (adhkâr) and prayer,” Bazzâzî laid down two precedents that became central to subsequent debates. The first states that “[whoever] recites the Qurʾan with the striking of a tambourine and a rod commits unbelief because of taking it lightly (istikhfâf); the etiquette of the Qurʾan is not to recite [it] in these types of gatherings.” The second was, “the gathering which assembles for singing and dancing should not recite the Qurʾan, just as it should not be recited in selling (bayʿ) [things] or churches (kinâʾis) because [these] are points of conjunction with the devil . . .”21 Since

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both opinions could be interpreted as condemning Halveti practices despite their origins two centuries previously, they presented an opportunity for Kâdızâdelis to seek suppression of the Sufi orders.22 Bazzâzî did not stand alone. Another early fetva compilation existed from the first half of the ninth/fifteenth century from Kırk Emre el-Hamîdî, a jurist attached to the court of the Ottoman sultan, Murad II. Beyond this, we know even less about him than Bazzâzî, but it is clear that he took a similar position with regard to zikr ceremonies among the Sufis. Kırk Emre criticized their gatherings in a “chapter on reprehensible things” (kitâb al-karâha); in it he censured the raising of voices and the “sounds of saʿq and zaʿq,” by which he intended an approximation of the noises that participants made. He also reiterated the criticism of the use of tambourines in the context of religious recitations.23 Later Ottoman jurists supplemented these two legal precedents by noting that another Hanafî scholar, al-Pazdawî (d. 482/1089), had said in a work on the sources of law (usûl al-fiqh) that the Sufi devrân was “a repugnant act, and its forbidden [character] is confirmed by a clear proof-text.”24 Thus, elements of the debate were not new, but the question of how jurists of the past had handled the issue of music and ritual motions, both with regard to the activities of the Sufis and in general, had never definitively been settled. Fuʾâdî knew that various jurists in differing contexts had offered wildly divergent opinions on these issues,25 so he had recourse to a pre-existing tradition of his own to defend the semâʿ and devrân from his opponents. Therefore, the primary texts on which he would base his own defense and commentary deserve our attention: (1) the aforementioned Zenbillî ʿAlî fetva, which defended the Sufi zikr and devrân against accusations leveled in the fetvâ collections; and (2) the Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya, written by the founder of the Sünbüliye branch of the Halveti order, Sünbül Efendi.26 Both texts emerged from a turbulent political period during the reigns of Sultan Selim I and his son Süleyman, when Sufi movements came under general suspicion in the wake of the Safavid irruption across the Ottomans’ eastern frontiers. Interestingly, Fuʾâdî’s historical contextualization of Sünbül Efendi’s writings seems particularly problematic when compared with earlier sources about the Sünbüliye sub-branch. Fu’âdî contended that Sünbül’s Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya was written after he had defeated an anti-Sufi nemesis, Molla ʿArab Mehmed b. ʿÖmer (d. 938/1531), in open debate before Selim himself, who judged the Sünbüliye leader to be in the right.27 This is not out of the question, for Molla ʿArab had distinguished himself both by participating in Selim’s campaigns against the Safavids and criticizing Sufi rituals.28 However, the Risâlat altahqîqiyya also remained unfinished at the time of Sünbül’s death in 936/1529. This means that he either began the project at a much later date, or that he

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intended to improve on his aforementioned oral defense, but he (or his followers) never finished codifying its written equivalent. Complicating matters, in other sources we find that the anti-devrân leader against whom Sünbül successfully defended the order was Sarı Gürz Nûreddîn (d. 926/1520), another high-ranking jurisprudent linked to anti-dervish and antiSafavid activities during Selim’s reign.29 Fuʾâdî may have conflated the two figures of Sarı Gürz with Molla ʿArab; hardly impossible given that the two figures had strong potential to be allied to anti-Sufi contemporaries. The half finished manuscript of Sünbül’s work, which few scholars seem to have noted,30 combined with Sarı Gürz’s death shortly after Selim’s, suggests that Fuʾâdî understood the two texts of Zenbillî ʿAlî’s fetva and Sünbül Efendi’s Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya as part of a linked historiography tied to Sultan Selim’s hostility toward the Halveti order after his seizure of power.31 Molla ʿArab had an interesting career spanning over four decades, serving under Akkoyunlu, Mamluk, and Ottoman rulers. His scholarly pedigree traced back to the noted Hanafî scholar, Taftâzânî, who was his grandfather’s teacher when the two lived in Transoxiana. Later, his grandfather migrated to Antakya (Antioch), where Molla ʿArab was born. After activity in multiple regions of the weakening Akkoyunlu sultanate, including Diyarbekir, Hasankeyf, Tabrîz, and Aleppo, he went on the pilgrimage. Rather than return to his homeland, however, he chose to go to Egypt and enter the service of the Mamluk Sultan Qâytbây as both a jurist and preacher until the latter’s death in 901/1496. For undisclosed reasons, he then departed to Ottoman domains and settled in Bursa. Oddly, he not only wrote a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, but a tract on Sufism during the reign of Bayezid II. But in an echo of the earlier Arab–Byzantine frontier, he truly distinguished himself as a warrior-scholar attached to Ottoman military campaigns. During the storming of one fortress, he was reportedly the second or third soldier to break through the defenses. He later settled in the Ottoman capital, where he took up “enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong.”32 It was here where he most likely clashed with the noted Sufi leader, Cemâl el-Halvetî, in theory close to the end of the latter’s life in 905/1499.33 Fuʾâdî may not have been wrong in declaring Molla ʿArab as the primary villain against whom defenses of semâʿ and devrân were originally aimed. After all, he outlived even Sünbül Efendi. One should take a moment here to reflect on what this picture means for recent historiography attempting to categorize “Ottoman schools of thought.” One recent study argues that Ottoman scholarly hierarchies were characterized by (1) the great s¸eyhülislâms and other prominent religious scholars who were grounded in a Maturidî and Hanafî tradition originating in Central Asia and Iran (loosely dubbed the “Fahr-i Râzî school”), and (2) other, less prominent scholars

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whose thought was more influenced by scholarly traditions emanating from the Arabic-speaking heartlands of the Islamic world, and espoused viewpoints rooted in the early eighth/fourteenth-century teachings of Ibn Taymiyya. Given what we have seen in this context, such broad characterizations may require some fine-tuning.34 Of course, we have noted already that the aforementioned s¸eyhülislâm Saʿdeddîn had dismissed Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas while showing awareness of them, and Molla ʿArab’s career path certainly traveled through Arab lands. However, most of the scholarly debates on legal logistics seen here revolve around figures who are better grounded in the first category. The collections of legal decisions cited were drawn from authors who both chronologically preceded and followed Ibn Taymiyya. Thus, attempting to draw straightforward lines of transmission from Ibn Taymiyya’s thought directly to the doctrines of Kâdızâdeli upstarts are premature, whatever the similarities between the agenda of Ibn Taymiyya and the Kâdızâdelis.35 Fuʾâdî’s presentation of these issues took the form of taking Zenbillî ʿAlî’s fetva and liberally supplementing it with arguments proffered by Sünbül Efendi in his Risalat al-tahqîqiyya. Since both texts were written in Arabic, Fuʾâdî sought to broaden their accessibility by translating them. However, he was not content with translation alone: he also sought to amplify the original accusations that Zenbillî ʿAlî had leveled at the three earlier critics of the semâʿ and devrân ceremonies. Zenbillî ʿAlî’s basic critique was that “the author of the Bazzâziyya is not among the mujtahidîn [founding expounders of Islamic law], and the same goes for the author of the Pazdawiyya . . . and as for the author of the Jâmiʿ alFatâwâ, [Kırk Emre], he came in the time of Sultan Murad II to the city of Edirne and wrote his book there.”36 The s¸eyhülislâm was content to let the matter rest there. Moreover, Sünbül Efendi did not openly criticize Bazzâzî either. In his own defense, he even drew on Bazzâzî’s other fetvâs to support his arguments on various matters, implying that he did not challenge the jurist’s authority.37 Fuʾâdî, on the other hand, took a different approach. Drawing on one of the wellknown juridical works of the subsequent Ottoman s¸eyhülislâm, Kemâlpas¸azâde (d. 940/1534), he advanced the following argument: Know that the jurisprudents are [arranged] according to seven levels. The first [is] the level of the mujtahidîn on the noble law, such as the four masters,38 and on the authority of the path of their endeavor on the establishment of the foundations of the basic principles and the deduction of the cases of application from the four proofs of the Book, the traditions, the consensus of the Community, and analogy based upon those foundations, without any imitation [of others], and having no limitations either in the practical application [of the law] or the sources [of law]. The second is the level of the mujtahidîn within the school of law, such

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as Abû Yûsuf and Muhammad . . . and the other companions of Abû Hanifa . . . among those capable of the extraction of judgments according to the aforementioned principles in the manner of a follower of the principles whose supports Abû Hanifa imposed. Although they differ in some of the practical applications of the law, they are relying on the basic principles of the law, or distinguished ones from the opponents of the school of law . . . such as al-Shâfiʿî . . . and his counterparts opposed to Abû Hanifa. There is doubt in cases where imitators follow [their decisions] in the sources [of law]. The third is the level of the mujtahidîn in regard to the problems where no precedent is cited from the leader of the school of law, such as al-Mudâf and Abû Jaʿfar al-Tahâwî and Abûʾl-Hasan al-Karkhî and others. They do not go contrary to the shaykh in either the sources [of law] or the practical application, but they derive the cases on problems for which there is no provision . . . The fourth is the level of the masters of derivation (takhrîj) among the imitators (muqallidîn) such as al-Bazzâzî and his followers.39

Rounding out the final three categories are two lesser classes of “imitators” (muqallidîn) and the remainder, who lack proper skills to be of any value to the field of jurisprudence at all. Skillfully welding together Zenbillî ʿAlî and Sünbül Efendi’s arguments, Fuʾâdî demonstrated how the highest ranking jurists of Kemâlpas¸azâde’s hierarchy never criticized the Sufi semâʿ and devrân ceremonies. In fact, first tier figures like al-Shâfiʿî and Malik b. Anas even endorsed them. Therefore, anyone who declared that these Sufi ceremonies were unlawful, or condemned those who allowed them, was, by definition, censuring the founders of Islamic schools of law: an unacceptable position for all participants in the debate.40 By ratcheting up the more polite rhetoric of his predecessors, Fu’âdî had raised the stakes for his opponents. He sought to relegate Bazzâzî, upon whom the opinions of his opponents relied, to the level of a fourth-class intellectual; he could be trusted only insofar as he derived his work from more accepted jurists of other eras. These arguments clearly infuriated Fu’âdî’s Kâdızâdeli opponents, perhaps not least because Kemâlpas¸azâde had also issued a fetvâ against some Sufis who had performed the devrân in mosques during his own time!41 Their rage can be discerned in a series of later fetvâs, appended as an introduction to the oldest extant copy of the Fatâwâ al-Bazzâziyya. There, an otherwise anonymous “Kâdı Ahmed” issued a series of legal decisions on his own authority denouncing the claims of those who advanced Fuʾâdî’s ideas: What is commanded in response to this problem? If a prayer-leader (imâm) were to enter the zikr circle of the Sufis and do however much semâʿ and dancing (raks), and fall over while turning around repeatedly, and if a scholar (ʿâlim)

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were to say to him, “this act that you are doing is forbidden in the legal decisions of the Bazzâziyya and the Jâmiʿ al-Fatâwâ,” and if he were to respond, “I do not act [in accordance] with those books,” then is the leadership of a prayer leader like him suitable for the Muslims now? . . . The response (and God knows best): He is an unbeliever. His wife is divorced [from him].42

Such ruthless attacks, aimed not on ly at the offending person but at his family also, indicate the degree to which discounting the viewpoints of Bazzâzî and like-minded scholars threatened Kâdızâdeli proponents during the eleventh/ seventeenth century. Even more interestingly, subsequent fetvâs expressed the Kâdızâdelis’ increasing frustration with the responses to their opinions. In one, it is asked whether it is legitimate for a judge to remove an offending prayer leader from his position, but then restore him to it without forcing him to renew his profession of faith and reaffirm his marriage. In Kadı Ahmed’s view, the answer was negative, but like so many fetvâs, the question itself is more relevant. It illustrates the passive resistance Kâdızâdeli activists faced from more moderate scholars who may have looked askance at the extreme punishments advocated by a factional fringe. Kâdızâdeli frustration with this state of affairs builds in response to the following situation: “If a judge were not to act [in accordance] with the legal decision that conforms to the law and is agreeable to the decision of the giver of the fetvâ, what does that judge deserve?” The response was that he should be removed from his position and that his decisions should henceforth not be obeyed.43 All of these punishments pale in comparison, however, to the outrage that Fuʾâdî’s arguments generate: If some people among the Sufis were to say [that] Bazzâzî and the Jâmiʿ alFatâwâ and Havî and the Tühfet and Bağvî and Qurtabî and the Kas¸s¸âf are not accepted books,44 and they conflict with and oppose the scholars, then are these aforementioned books accepted books or not, and also, what is legally necessary for the person who speaks like this? . . . The response (and God knows best): They are accepted [books]. It is necessary to apply a severe chastisement (taʿzîr-i belîg)45 to those who take [them] lightly, and force them to renew [the profession of] their faith.

Later, Kadı Ahmed goes as far as to opine that if the Sufis continue to insist on defaming these works, they should be executed.46 Fuʾâdî and his supporters had clearly hit a nerve that had exacerbated the conflict. This was because the argument he advanced was not just about Sufi practices, but about reorienting the juristic heritage of the Ottomans. This course of action proved repugnant to

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his opponents; moreover, even more moderate thinkers might have been given pause. Nevertheless, the shrillness of the denunciations indicated that Fuʾâdî’s contributions to the intellectual defenses of the Halveti order were having an impact by the end of his career. The Mixed Reception of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s Legacy: a Problem of Sources?

Fuʾâdî’s responses to controversies over Sufi practice are not the only evidence we have for his effectiveness among his contemporaries. Shortly before his death, other contemporaries began to register a vague awareness of his prolific output. Although the biographical dictionary produced by Nevʿîzâde ʿAtâʾî makes only cursory references to S¸aʿbân and Fuʾâdî, his brief description obliquely references the stir Fuʾâdî had created: [S¸aʿbân] was a master of the power of guidance with the pearl of independent thought (ijtihâd), and he built a lodge in his home region. When the lodge became a place of gnosis, the Kaʿba of the lovers and the pilgrimage place of distant horizons, he departed the world of bodily forms and set out for the world of souls in the year 977 (1569). The aforementioned noble one was the chief of the shaykhs of the region of Rûm, the virtue-filled one of the wineshop of love and affection, the basis of skilled guidance, and the drinking place of the sweetness of virtue. The wisdom of his path was the vocal zikr and devrân, the manifestation of ecstasy (vecd), and invoked blessings of the love of God; he was a noble one who quickly attracted people. He used to accept neither gifts or positions, and made do with farming, cultivation, and whatever he could get by the sweat of his own brow (kesb-i yedleri). At present, his tomb is a pilgrimage place, and his successor, a knowledgeable one named ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, is watching over it: * Poetic couplet: The lovers who are inflamed by the wine of divine love cry out from being struck by the heart-inflaming arrow of love * No gathering or council is free from the reverberating clamor of * Poem: Fuʾâdî oh Fuʾâdî oh Fuʾâdî * Fuʾâdî wandering in every valley. 47

The report adds little to our knowledge about S¸aʿbân except that he engaged in farming and agriculture, a point that Fuʾâdî never directly addressed. But ʿAtâʾî does indicate the growing popularity of the contemporary S¸aʿbâniye leader and his following, implying through his choice of words that Fuʾâdî was fairly successful in spreading S¸aʿbân’s legacy. Furthermore, there is also an eleventh/ seventeenth-century copy of Sünbül Efendi’s Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya that extended

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the silsile of the Halveti order in the original into the time of Fuʾâdî’s immediate successor, Çorumlu İsmâʿîl Efendi.48 Nevertheless, it is curious that many non-S¸aʿbâniye works that include biographical information about Halveti notables in the Ottoman Empire ignore the S¸aʿbâniye sub-branch of the order altogether. Instead, they focus primarily on either the Egyptian-based Güls¸eniye or the İstanbul-based Sünbüliye and Sivâsiye sub-branches of the Halveti order.49 Given Fuʾâdî’s prolific output, and the growing respect accorded to S¸aʿbân’s legacy and tomb complex at the time these works were produced, the S¸aʿbâniye’s absence from the historical record is puzzling. Disinterest in provincials who were not from the religious establishments of the three big cities of İstanbul, Edirne, and Bursa might be responsible in part, but ʿAtâʾî did at least make a token mention of several shaykhs who claimed S¸aʿbâniye roots in his work, especially during the time of Murad III. Moreover, other Sufi hagiographers like Hulvî litter their work with provincial shaykhs from backwater villages like Cavdar, S¸eyhlû, and Siroz, to name but a few.50 Did S¸aʿbân’s spiritual descent, which did not pass through one of the more notable successors to Ottoman Halveti founders like Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî and Cemâl el-Halvetî, lead other Halveti authors from other sub-branches to dismiss the S¸aʿbâniye as lacking in importance? There is another possibility, which is that until the time of Fuʾâdî’s accession as head of the S¸aʿbâniye, their followers had developed a dubious reputation. The troubled legacy of the influential Halveti dervish S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ at Murad III’s court, which Fu’âdî quietly neglected in his own work, may have contributed to a skeptical perception of S¸aʿbâniye legitimacy. The relationship between Murad III and S¸ücâʿ was not viewed positively by many Ottomans; Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî even argued that this was one of the factors which led to the failure of Murad’s reign and subsequent weakness of the Ottoman state.51 Even Sinâneddin Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb, author of an original copy of the Tezkiretüʾl-Halvetiye presented to Murad III himself, contented himself solely with noting S¸aʿbân’s existence by pointing out that “the Shaykh S¸ücâʿ that came with the sultan [from Maʾnisa] is from the silsile of S¸a‘ban Efendi” through the silsile passing through Cemâl el-Halvetî and Hayreddîn Tokâdî. This seems out of place given the level of influence that S¸eyh S¸üca‘ had attained by 984/1577 when the work was submitted. Could this reflect the ambivalence of an established, İstanbul-based Sünbüliye hagiographer about a provincial upstart whose political successes and attachments to worldly power indicated a questionable character, or acted as a source of potential competition for Sinâneddîn’s own ambitions?52 Of course, historical interpretation based largely on omissions in the literature are problematic. However, one final point worth noting is that ʿÖmer elFuʾâdî had a son who became a poet of minor repute, though we know him only

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by his pen name, Kalbî Efendi.53 Shortly before his father’s death, he composed a starkly critical poem lambasting the people of İstanbul for their moral failures in the wake of a great fire that destroyed much of the city in 1043/1633.54 The poem is written in a simple, rhyming meter that would have been easy to memorize even among the least literate members of society; its broad accessibility reflects his father’s tactical savvy. Moreover, the strong Sufi influences Kalbî had acquired from his father also emerge in the poem: Come, let’s recall the Creator from the heart. Let us be happy with the remembrance of God. Kalbî is a man who is one with God. Anxiety and happiness are at every moment one to him. Devotion to [God] the Guider is required of us, Submission and acceptance no matter what comes. If you were to deserve the manifestation of divine wrath, Repent of all your insubordinations, And think of the goodness of divine perfection that is esteemed And recall and give thanks for however many of these favors. This time a lapse came over the people. The majority found renown with insubordination. The ignorant ones assumed the form of scholars. Be they judges or ministers of state, By finding plenty they became corrupt; Their eyes filled with the smoke of tobacco. O what shall the rest of the multitude of the people do But follow the example of the scholars?

Elements of the Halveti path, reflected in the idea of resigning oneself to anything that comes, are coupled with a warning to the public to repent of their sins. More interesting, however, is the increasingly politicized tone of the poem, criticizing scholars and grandees as having given in to their own baser instincts. Even more interestingly, Kalbî’s negative view of tobacco demonstrates that it was not just the Kâdızâdelis who disapproved of smoking, but many Sufis also.55 Kalbî does not limit his criticism to scholars and grandees, however: There is no obedience to the command of the sultan, Nor is there assistance for God’s side. They were the universal curse of corruption and immorality. They filled the city with turpitude and abasement. There is no victory for the enjoiners of right.

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The majority are for the corrupt, and also so many censurers. These ones took the face of darkness as sunlight, As if adultery and drinking of wine were permitted . . ., While the pious ones were preaching and admonishing And persevering in the forbidding of wrong. They recited so many [Qurʾânic] verses and traditions. They entreated, saying, “don’t do it!”

Kalbî’s critique evokes Fuʾâdî’s and his predecessors’ arguments that contemporary scholars who criticized their practices would have been censured themselves by superior thinkers of earlier generations. Thus, the poem concludes that the punishment for this activity was made clear to everyone by God himself by the fire. Kalbî goes as far as to state that salvation was obtained only by recourse to an unnamed Muslim saint: Pious reverence came to the heart of no one, Nor did [anyone] make recourse to God at any moment. The fire reached out with the anger of God. The inner part of İstanbul was a fearful hell. All of it had been ordered to burn. This calamity was distressing for them. When one of the secret men interceded – An unassailable prohibition when [the fire] had gotten this far. God Most High granted [his wish] and favored [him]. The fire departed with this intercession. Could any other person ever have done it? . . . Who among you has a remedy for the violence of God Since everyone’s face is blackened also?56

Since the job of fighting the twenty-three or so serious fires that broke out in İstanbul between 1600 and 1800 often fell to officials like the grand vizier and the ağa of the janissaries, the crack about the blackened faces of the elites struggling to contain the blaze implies a populist resonance among the people of İstanbul.57 Kalbî, following the lead of his father, sought to orient the population’s devotions away from more stringent ideas about reforming religion toward Sufi leaders instead. The fire, which in a pre-modern urban context could have devastating indirect consequences, such as famine and extreme privation through exposure to the elements, represented an opportunity for Kalbî to step in and convince his contemporaries that it marked a moment for reassessment and a new direction.58 By pointing out that the population had been saved from

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a worse fate by the very people whom their leaders had been oppressing, Kalbî also defended the cult of saints in the public arena. In his own way, he tried to perpetuate the example of his father’s illustrious career. Sometime in 1045/1636, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s life finally came to an end. He was buried on the northern side of the tomb that he had struggled for so many years to construct, between his own guide Muhyiddîn and S¸aʿbân himself. Unlike S¸aʿbân’s case, we do not have any historical record of the circumstances surrounding his death and burial. All we know is that Çorumlu İsmâʿîl Efendi (d. 1057/1647), by virtue of his natural talents, was considered the best replacement. While İsmâʿîl authored several tracts of his own, he did not have the impact that his mentor did; few mentions of him appear in the sources, though they suggest a sober-minded leader in the tradition of his predecessor.59 Moreover, given the extensive nature of Fuʾâdî’s output, one might suggest that İsmâʿîl did not feel an urgent need to be prolific when his following could rely on the foundation laid by his predecessor. On the other hand, İsmâʿîl was credited with training one of the most notable Halveti leaders of the following generation, Karabâs¸ ʿAlî Veli (d. 1097/1686), whose profile in the Ottoman capital would overshadow even the Kastamonubased successors.60 Karabâs¸ ʿAlî later settled in İstanbul and played an important role in the politico-religious disputes marking the climax of the Kâdızâdeli movement. While the titular head of the order was always based at the tomb in Kastamonu, the illustrious successors he trained spread throughout the empire and became a sub-branch of the Halveti in their own right. This demonstrates that Fu’âdî’s broadening of the popular base of the order had borne rich fruit by the end of the eleventh/seventeenth century, for thereafter the S¸aʿbâniye leaders went beyond their local origins to become increasingly influential at the heart of the empire’s religio-political circles. This, however, must remain a story for another time.61 After all, S¸aʿbân’s silsile came to extend all the way into the early years of the Turkish Republic. Only then did Atatürk’s socio-cultural reforms critically weaken the influence of Ottoman Sufi orders and transform the parameters of Turkish religious life.62 *** Part II of this work focused on the narrative portrait that ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî painted of the founder of his branch of the Halveti order, S¸aʿbân-ı Veli. In it, we see that Fuʾâdî generally sought to direct and interpret, rather than whitewash the oral material on which he based his hagiography of the order’s founders. But after making a survey of Fuʾâdî’s extensive literary output, it cannot be ignored that the construction of his hagiography was irrevocably bound to the events of his

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own life and times, and constituted a response to the troubled age in which he lived. The historical context for Fuʾâdî’s works was linked to periods of demographic crisis and the endangerment of much of urban life in the Anatolian countryside.63 His own recollections on joining the S¸aʿbâniye indicate an educated man in a provincial town who, despite establishing a modest career attached to institutions of Ottoman jurisprudence, felt frustrated about his long-term prospects. His family’s strong connections to S¸aʿbân ultimately led him to apply his efforts there instead. Yet contrary to the over-simplified picture of jurisprudent– Sufi tensions, he did not abandon his earlier field of work. Instead, he welded together the exoteric and esoteric aspects of Islamic religious life in his writings. Given the disruptions in Anatolian provincial life that marked his era, the iron disciplinary rigor for both exoteric and esoteric observance that he enjoined may have struck a chord among his contemporaries. More importantly, Fuʾâdî recognized that in order to confront an era of crisis and change, a broader segment of the population needed increased access to religious scholarship and ideas, even if that meant risking the possibility of “guidance without a shaykh.” While some would dismiss Fuʾâdî’s work as derivative and unoriginal compared with that of his contemporaries, I argue that he demonstrated a knack for revising the scholarly apparatus inherited from earlier periods of Islamic history to address new and pressing problems. He expanded accessibility to key works that were limited previously to only the best educated scholars who had backgrounds in Arabic or Persian. Given the transition between the medieval and early modern periods of world history, this step had consequences not unlike the impact that vernacular translations of the Bible had during a roughly contemporary period of crisis in European religious and intellectual culture.64 We know that the successors of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli built a library containing a number of important works that formed the backbone for the community’s educational resources. These were placed in a new structure adjacent to the tomb when its construction was completed.65 Fuʾâdî’s own writings, prolific as they were, also worked to augment this collection and act as a gateway for the novice seekers flooding the S¸aʿbâniye’s ranks.66 Fuʾâdî’s activities also intertwined with his history of the order’s founding and development. Since the hagiography proved to be, and may well have been intended as a catalyst to the permanent construction the tomb complex and its attendant institutions, its content argues away any attempt to present S¸aʿbân as other than a laudable, respected religious figure. To a great extent, Fuʾâdî’s choice of material to represent S¸aʿbân reflected that goal. We do not know the broader narratives contained in the more extensive, and now lost, Arabic version of his hagiographic work. But it is highly probable that the material presented S¸aʿbân and his successors as Fuʾâdî wanted them to be remembered in his own

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times. Some might even suggest that Fuʾâdî “invented a new S¸aʿbân” to act as a “founding father,” based on an individual otherwise noteworthy only for his piety, as a way of rallying his followers around a subsequently constructed subbranch of the Halveti order. Our survey suggests there is some truth to this. Yet Fuʾâdî also comes across as remarkably honest about his saint’s failings and problematic aspects; his audience needed to know these weaknesses and how to interpret them. In the end, the true significance of a figure like ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî may lie in his efforts to build an institutional framework for his sub-branch at the expense of the individual charisma of the eponymous founder. S¸aʿbân thus became a figure who achieved an exalted status not just as a random act of God’s beneficence, but by the success of his struggles to overcome his own weaknesses and failings. This was in conscious reflection of the struggle of the Sufi novice who would seek to emulate his example. The critical framework governing Fuʾâdî’s hagiography was not the narrative itself, but the criteria that allowed his audience to recognize the real saints among them. The success of the hagiography, the completion of the tomb complex, and the spectacular growth of the order that went with them demonstrated Fuʾâdî’s move toward a wide range of projects aimed at building a more institutionalized mysticism. This reached an audience well beyond the educated elites of his era. Still, the question of the extent to which Fuʾâdî sought to extend his educational message to all levels of society is difficult to gauge. After all, by his own stock admissions, Fuʾâdî did not intend for his works, especially the more polemical ones against the critics of Sufism, to be transmitted to just anyone. Nevertheless, the circumstances dictated that a certain degree of popular mobilization to defend the Muslim cult of saints was imperative. Anti-Sufi movements that coalesced into the later Kâdızâdelis employed public preaching to large audiences that built political support and put pressure on the ruling class and their supporters to proscribe Halveti ritual. Without their own base of support, Ottoman Halvetis ran the risk of becoming isolated and falling prey to the shifting fortunes of individual rulers or grandees. Fuʾâdî’s primary contribution to Ottoman intellectual life was not just to revive the defenses of the early Halveti community pioneered in the era of the Halveti founders Cemâl el-Halvetî and Sünbül Efendi, or the supportive decisions of key Ottoman scholarly notables like Saʿdeddîn Efendi and Zenbillî ʿAlî. He also implanted aggressive ideological counter-strikes against the scholarly foundations of his opponents’ arguments among the wider public. Perhaps purposely, these ideas disrupted the Ottoman framework of Islamic jurisprudence and religious institutions, and in the process radicalized the opponents of the order further. Still, the defensive and strident tone of much of his work foreshadowed greater threats that the order would face later in the century.

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Fuʾâdî proved to be a highly successful Halveti leader who played a key role in firmly establishing, if not outright founding, an institutionalized sub-branch of the order that would survive him into modernity. Yet by his own measure, he might well have felt that his greatest success was to obscure his own contribution in favor of elevating the subject of his hagiography, S¸aʿbân-ı Veli. Despite occasional recognition of Fuʾâdî by later generations of S¸aʿbâniye leaders like Karabâs¸ ʿAlî Veli,67 most followed Fuʾâdî’s own lead by looking back to the inspiring story and character of the founder of the order. This is a trend that continues in modern scholarship, and only comparatively recently have there been signs of a willingness to look beyond the saints themselves to inquire about the historiography of those who took up the task of preserving their memories.68 Yet before concluding, in casting one final glance in Fuʾâdî’s direction, I cannot help but feel that having completed his story (and by extension, my own), there is an element of irony present. Were he present, he might have found my attempt to demand a more prominent place in the history of Ottoman religious life for him embarrassing at best and misguided at worst. It is not just that my interpretation of his importance to the S¸aʿbâniye might detract from the legacy of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli that he had established. It would also establish for him the sort of exalted presence that could act as a gateway to the sin of vanity, and distract him from the greater goal of annihilating all worldly concerns in favor of unencumbered remembrance of God. Yet after years spent evaluating his legacy, I feel it is necessary to contravene his probable wish. The local Muslim community in Kastamonu, along with an increasing number of contemporary religious pilgrims who seek the blessings of the great saint S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, must also offer them to the formidable fifth successor who devoted his life to institutionalizing his legacy, eternally resting just beyond the wall of the room they visit to offer their prayers.

Notes 1 See, for example, George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1969), pp. 147–209 and 217–18; Ostrogorsky’s now dated views have been updated by Timothy E. Gregory, A History of Byzantium (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), pp. 185–213. Both view the ecclesiastical controversy as a distraction that, when removed, allowed for a resurgence of the Byzantine state. A more thorough treatment of this still poorly understood phenomenon in Byzantine history can be found in Anthony Bryer and Judith Herrin (eds), Iconoclasm (Birmingham: University of Birmingham Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1995). 2 A description of the conflict between Kâdızâde Mehmed and ʿAbdülmecîd Sivâsî can be found in Gündoğdu, pp. 85–117; see also MCZ-KZ, pp. 255–8 and a fuller discussion of the range of issues debated by the two adversaries in KC-BT.

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3 The three works that Fuʾâdî wrote exist in a defter preserved in the Atatürk Kitaplığı. The shortest is only a couple of folios long, and was placed between the two longer tracts; see ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1044/1636), Devrân-ı sûfiyeʾnin cevâzına müteʿallık risâle, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 781/2, fols 39a–41b. 4 el-Fuʾâdî, Devrân-ı sûfiyeʾnin cevâzına müteʿallık risâle, fol. 40a–b. 5 One of the three tracts that Fuʾâdî produced commented on Cemâl el-Halvetî’s writings on semâʿ and devrân in an Arabic-language work entitled Rawdât al-ʿulamâʾ wa jannât al-ʿurafâʾ. This earlier work remains to be discovered; but see ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1044/1636), Risâle fî hakk ed-devrân es-sûfiye, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 781/3, fols 42a–60b. 6 OF-DS, fol. 3a; Sünbül Sinân’s Arabic work defending Halveti practices has recently been published in facsimile with modern Turkish translation; see Yusuf Sünbül Sinân, Sünbül Efendi: Risâle-i Tahkîkiye, eds Müfti Yüksel and Ali Toker (İstanbul: Fulya Yayınları, 2001). 7 OF-DS, fols 2a–38b. Halveti defenders often cited the arguments advanced in this text in their writings; for a copy of it, see Zenbillî ʿAlî Cemâlî Efendi (d. 931/1525), Devrân-ı sûfiyenin cevâzına dâʾir risâle, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS M. Arif-M. Murad 221/2. Copies of his fetvâs appear in other compilations of Halveti works also; see, for example, those contained in Süleymaniye Library, MS Hkm. 438. For more on Zenbillî ʿAlî and his connections to notable Sufi figures of his time, see RCR, pp. 197–224. 8 ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, Devrân-ı sûfiyenin cevâzına dâʾir risâle, fols 40b–41a; the similarities of this story to that of Sünbül and his detractor Sarı Gürz are striking, except that Sarı Gürz was not drawn into the zikr circle. This divided him from his supporters, who had previously supported his challenge to Sünbül; compare with LH, fols 217b–18b (448–9). 9 The work survives in multiple copies in Ottoman libraries, testifying to its perceived importance. The oldest surviving copy is the Safed manuscript dating from the year 922/1516; see Hafız al-Dîn Muhammad b. Muhammad b. Shihâb al-Kurdarî al-Bazzâzî (d. 827/1424), Al-Fatâwâ al-Bazzâziyya, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Amcazade Hüseyin Pas¸a 245. It was also printed in the margin of the last three volumes of the Fatâwâ al-ʿAlâmgîriyya, a collection of Hanafî legal decisions that the Mughal ruler Awrangzeb (d. 1118/1707) had his scholars compile during his reign; see Mawlânâ al-Shaykh Nizâm et al., Al-Fatâwâ al-hindiyya wa taʿarafa bil-fatâwâ al-ʿAlâmgîriyya fî madhhab al-Imâm al-Aʿzam Abî Hanîfah (Beirut: Dâr al-Maʿrifah, 1973), vols 4–6, margins. 10 We are able to trace this genealogy from the thirteenth/nineteenth-century biographical work of the Indian Muslim scholar Muhammad ʿAbd al-Hayy al-Laknawî (d. 1303/1886), a compilation of earlier biographical sources. The educational genealogy extending from Kâdîkhân runs as follows: Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Sattâr b. Muhammad al-Kurdarî (d. 642/1244) SMuhammad b. Muhammad b. Nasr, Abûʾl-Fadl Hâfiz al-Dîn al-Kabîr Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Bukhârî (d. 693/1294) SHusâm al-Dîn al-Hasan alSighnaqî (d. 711 or 714/1311 or 1314) SJalâl al-Dîn b. Shams al-Khwarizmî al-Karalânî. The latter two scholars seem to be connected to the Central Asian nomadic fringes of the Islamic world; see LAK, pp. 100–1 and 106–7. 11 For more Timur’s campaigns, see Beatrice Forbes Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 60–2. 12 Ahmed Ibn Arabshah, Tamerlane or Timur the Great Amir, trans. J. H. Sanders, 2nd edn (Lahore: Progressive Books, 1976), p. 299. See also Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, Islam in

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Anatolia After the Turkish Invasion (Prolegomena), trans. and ed. Gary Leiser (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1993), p. 40 and n. 169. Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, pp. 16–18; see also Köprülü, Islam in Anatolia, p. 40 and n. 166. These details about Bazzâzî can be pieced together from al-Laknawî, p. 309. Bazzâzî’s success there is no surprise, as the process of Islamization had begun several generations before his arrival with the nominal conversion of Berke (d. 664/1266) and then Özbek Khan (d. 742/1341); see Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 67–158. We know of Bazzâzî’s departure date from a biographical entry about one of his students, Ahmad b. ʿAbdullah al-Qirîmî; see LAK, p. 49. LAK, p. 309. The biography of Abu Hanîfa has now been published as the second half of a compilation; see Hafız al-Dîn Muhammad b. Muhammad b. Shihâb al-Kurdarî alBazzâzî (d. 827/1424), Manâqib Abî Hanîfah (al-Cuzʾ al-Thânî) (Beirut: Dâr al-Kitâb al-ʿArabî, 1981). Bazzâzî’s work may have been intended to supplement an earlier biography written by al-Muwaqqaf b. Ahmad al-Makkî (d. 567/1172–3) published as the first half of the aforementioned compilation. Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Rahman as-Sakhâwî (d. 1496), Al-Dawʾ al-lâmiʿ li-ahl al-qarn al-tâsiʿ (Beirut: Dâr Maktabat al-Hayât, 1966), vol. 10, p. 37. Among the significant scholars whom Sakhâwî linked to Bazzâzî are Ibn ʿArabshâh, who studied with him for four years, and one Qâdî Saʿd al-Dîn b. al-Dayrî, who spoke highly of his knowledge. The Egyptian scholar al-Suyûtî also related an anecdote that when all the books that he had committed to memory were piled up on both sides of him, the stacks drew level with his ears; see HSN, p. 54, margin. For a synopsis of Molla Fenârî, see RCR, pp. 73–98. Tas¸köprüzâde, p. 21. See al-Laknawî, pp. 49, 143, 278–9 and 374–6; Mecdî also included a biographical entry on Ibn ʿArabshâh, who was captured by Timur but subsequently escaped and studied with Bazzâzî in the region of the Kipchak steppe; see HSN, pp. 73–4. Al-Fatâwâ al-Bazzâziyya in al-Fatâwâ al-hindiyya, vol. 6, p. 338 in margin. Bazzâzî was not the only source for potentially anti-Halveti decisions. Others included Ebûsuʿûd Efendi, Kemâlpas¸azâde, and others; they were quoted by the tenth/sixteenthcentury jurist, Mehmed Birgivî (d. 980/1573), an early inspirational figure for the Kadızâdeli movement. See the remarks in CHVS, pp. 187–213. Kırk Emre el-Hamîdî, Jâmiʿ al-fatâwâ, Süleymâniye Lib., İstanbul, MS İzmir 247, fols 156b–7a. OF-DS, fols 8b–9a; for the biography of Muhammad b. Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Karîm b. Mûsâ Abûʾl-Yasar al-Pazdawî, see LAK, pp. 309–10. This point is effectively and succinctly made in Süleyman Uludağ, İslam Açısından Musikî ve Semâʿ, 2nd edn (Bursa: Uludağ Yayınları, 1992), pp. 171–203. OF-DS, fols 2b–3a. OF-DS, fol. 3a. However, there were multiple Molla ʿArabs in the Ottoman biographical literature. One possibility is the short-lived head of the İstanbul müftülük during the reign of Sultan Bayezid II, Molla ʿAlâʾ al-Dîn ʿAlî al-ʿArabî (d. 901/1496). But biographical accounts about him suggest that he had good relations with ʿAlâʾ al-Dîn Halvetî; see RCR, pp. 174–87. He was also friendly with Cemâl el-Halvetî; see Tas¸köprüzâde, p. 162.

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The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought Thus, the most likely candidate remains Mehmed b. ʿÖmer b. Hamza, also known as “Vâʿiz Molla ʿArab” (d. 938/1531); RCR, pp. 247–9. HSN, p. 413. THV, fol. 23a and LH, fols 217b–19b (448–51). For more on Sarı Gürz, an enigmatic figure who was tied closely to Selim’s campaigns against the Safavids and their supporters in Anatolia; see Tas¸köprüzâde, p. 181; he may also have been involved in the mass killing of Safavid sympathizers during the 920/1514 campaign; see RCR, pp. 218–220. The most recent editors and translators of Sünbül Sinân’s Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya, Ali Toker and Müfti Yüksel, never note the unfinished state of the text; Yüksel and Toker, p. 20. In addition, later copyists appear to have tried to impose their own structure upon the work to get around the fact that the second chapter of the work simply trailed off, and a projected third chapter was never written at all; see, for example, Sünbül Sinân Efendi (d. 936/1529), Risalat al-tahqîqiyya, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Lâleli 3731/2, which rearranged the table of contents by breaking the unfinished second chapter into two parts to create a chapter two and three that have titles entirely different from the original manuscript. This linkage was also established by Hulvî; see LH, fols 217a–20b (447–52). The outlines of his life and career to this point can be discerned in Tas¸köprüzâde, pp. 247–8. “Enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong” (al-ʿamr bil-maʿrûf waʾl-nahy ʿan al-munkar) often serves as a code for individuals who sought to impose more stringent levels of “orthodoxy” upon their communities; see Michael Cook, Commanding the Right and Forbidding the Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), esp. pp. 316–30, for a brief discussion of the idea during Ottoman times. This raises a problem of chronology – some sources hold that Cemâl el-Halvetî died as early as 900/1494, but this does not square with the information given by Tâs¸köprüzâde on Mehmed b. ʿÖmer. Therefore, Cemâl el-Halvetî’s death must have occurred at a later date. For the conflicting accounts about Cemâl el-Halvetî’s date of death, see LH, fol. 435; RÖ-OT, pp. 42–5 and 52; and Küçükdağ, pp. 28 and 33. This historiographical construction of Ottoman scholars has been advanced in recent studies. However, there is no evidence that any of the scholars mentioned drew the work of Ibn Taymiyya; their scholarship mostly cited figures from Central Asia and the Crimea. However, see Ahmet Yas¸ar Ocak, “Ulema in the Ottoman Empire,” in Halil İnalcik and Renda Günsel (eds), Ottoman Civilization (Ankara: Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture, 2003), esp. pp. 260–5. Recent scholarship argues that the revival of Ibn Taymiyya’s work has taken place not among the Ottomans, but in modern times as radical Islamist movements have appropriated his teachings to fit their own perceptions about modern problems; see SIV, pp. 94–107. OF-DS, fol. 28b; Zenbillî ʿAlîʾs curt dismissal of Kırk Emre as being a product of Sultan Murad II’s court in Edirne may suggest that he deemed the intellectual production of that era as suspect for some unexplained reason. Yüksel and Toker, pp. 21, 32, 39, and 46. Meaning the four founders of the classical schools of Islamic law: Malik b. Anas, alShâfiʿî, Abu Hanîfa, and Ahmad b. Hanbal. OF-DS, fol. 7a–b; the work on which Fuʾâdî draws is probably Kemâlpas¸azâde’s Risâla fî tabaqat al-aʾimmat al-Hanafiyya wa risâla fî tabaqât al-mujtahidîn, although he also wrote a Tabaqât al-fuqahâʾ; see S¸amil Öçal, Kemal Pas¸azâdeʾnin Felsefî ve Kelâmî Görüs¸leri (Ankara: T. C. Kültür BakanlığıYayınları, 2000), pp. 36 and 46.

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40 OF-DS, fols 8a and 15a–b. 41 Öçal, p. 410; see also CHVS, p. 194. To downplay this decision, Hulvî claims in his hagiography that Kemâlpas¸azâde actually performed the semâʿ and devrân after being inspired to solve a particularly difficult intellectual problem. He also claimed that Sarı Gürz’s attempts to get a fetvâ ordering the execution of Sufis performing the ceremonies backfired on him when Sünbül convinced Kemâlpas¸azâde to destroy the copy of it tucked into his turban; see LH, fols 217b–20a (448–51). 42 This opinion and those cited subsequently appear in the Safed manuscript of the Fatâwâ in the Süleymaniye Library, MS Amcazade Hüseyin Pas¸a 245, fol. VIa. The citation follows the lead of an anonymous librarian, who recognized that the folios were not part the original work and gave them the roman numerals VI–X. 43 Bazzâziyya, fol. VIa–b. 44 These other works are briefly noted without further detail in Sünbül Efendi’s Risâlat al-Tahqîqiyya and Zenbillî ʿAlî’s fetvâ. The questioner probably sought leave no base uncovered in noting all the sources that Sufi leaders were rejecting. 45 This term might also be interpreted as “a severe flogging.” 46 Bazzâziyya, fol. VIb. 47 NVA, p. 199. It is difficult to interpret ʿAtâʾî’s poetic expression here, which may be an allusion to al-Qurʾân 26:224–5. Despite the positive tone of his report as a whole, since Fuʾâdî consistently referred to himself in the final couplet of many of his short poems, one might also wonder if the final line was a subtle dig at someone he thought was a bit overbearing in his literary self-promotion. For comments on ʿAtâʾî’s work that lean toward corroborating this interpretation, see BKTZ, p. 115. 48 Sünbül Sinân Efendi (d. 936/1529), Risalat al-tahqîqiyya, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Kasidecizade 340, fol. 30a–b; the inclusion of Fuʾâdî and his immediate successor links the text to a S¸aʿbâniye copyist working between 1045/1636 and 1054/1644. 49 Hulvî’s goal was to unify the Sünbüliye and Güls¸eniye branches by linking them in his hagiography, but completely ignored the S¸aʿbâniye in the process; see LH, esp. fols 296b–8a (627–30). More telling is the monumental eleventh/seventeenth-century compilation of Hacı ʿAlî, the Tühfetüʾl-mucâhidîn. It devoted an entire section to Halveti leaders from the order’s inception, tracking the same branches covered in Hulvî, and adding figures from the Sivâsiye sub-branch along with several unaffiliated Halvetis. His meticulous documentation only underscores the glaring omission of the S¸aʿbâniye; see HA-TFM, fols 517b–608a. More suspect still is a later biographical appendix compiled by ʿUs¸akîzâde (d. 1136/1724) includes Sufis from various sub-branches of the Halveti, but none from the S¸aʿbâniye despite the prominence of several S¸aʿbâniye shaykhs in İstanbul by his own time; see Hans Joachim Kissling (ed.), ʿUšâqîzâdes Lebensbeschreibungen: berühmter Gelehrter und Gottemänner des osmanischen Reiches im 17. Jahrhundert (Zeyl-i Šaqâʾiq) (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1965), esp. the editor’s comments on pp. vii–xiv. 50 See, for example, LH, fols 222b–3a and 230b (456–60 and 477). 51 KA, fols 497a–8a; see also the observations about Murad’s relationship with S¸eyh S¸ücâʿ in CF-MA, pp. 75 and 296 and the biographical entry on him in NVA, p. 365. There was some substance to Mustafa ʿAli’s complaints, as Murad III’s correspondence in the Kitâb-ı Manâmât reflects tension over S¸üca’s activities. 52 THV, fol. 17a; for more information on the importance of this work for the development of Halveti hagiographical literature, see JC-GTH, pp. 912–15.

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53 A reference to Kalbî Efendi appeared in an entry about ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî in Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir (d. 1926), Osmanlı Müellifleri, 3 vols (Ankara: Bizim Büro Basımevi, 2000), vol. 1, p. 119. Some of Fuʾâdî’s poetry was preserved in a divân compiled by Kalbî, but may not have survived; see the brief remarks in NYIL, p. 98. The poem does not directly confirm whether Kalbî was in İstanbul when he wrote it or if he dispatched it from Kastamonu. 54 According to some reports, which perhaps exaggerate the scope of the destruction, the fire destroyed nearly 20,000 homes and was centered in the areas of Galata and Pera; see Robert Mantran, Histoire d’Istanbul (Paris: Fayard, 1996), p. 262. 55 For the Kâdızâdelis’ attacks on tobacco and its association with the policies of Sultan Murad IV, see MCZ-KZ, pp. 256–7 and MCZ-PP, pp. 138–9. See also Kâtip Çelebi’s remarks in KZ-BT, pp. 50–9. Even foreign observers like the Frenchman Jean Thévenot had reservations about the dangers of tobacco during the dry season in İstanbul’s densely packed urban environment; see Mantran, Histoire d’Istanbul, pp. 261–2. 56 The full text of the poem was appended to the end of a compilation containing a number of his father’s works; see Kalbî Efendi, Bin Kırk Üç Senesinde İstanbulʾda Vâkiʿ Olan İhrâk İçün Hasb-ı Hâl, Halk-ı ʿAlem ve Cenâb-ı Hakkʾa Tazarruʿ ʿAfv-ı Benî Adam ve Târîhdir, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Hacı Mahmud Efendi 2287, fols 320b–1b. 57 Mantran, Histoire d’Istanbul, pp. 261–2. 58 Several decades later, the even more destructive impact of a fire in 1070/1660 provided Ottoman political actors with an opportunity to take the more drastic steps in displacing entire non-Muslim communities to restructure İstanbul’s urban space; see Marc David Baer, “The Great Fire of 1660 and the Islamization of Christian and Jewish Space in Istanbul,” IJMES 36:2 (May 2004), 159–81. 59 Kerim Kara argued that Çorumlu İsmâʿîl Efendi was a shaykh who avoided the more esoteric aspects of mysticism; see KK-KV, pp. 175–6. Ziya Demircioğlu claimed that he wrote several commentaries and treatises that were preserved in the S¸aʿbân-ı Veli tomb’s library; see ZD, p. 26. 60 Some sources incorrectly claim that Shaykh Mustafa Çelebi (d. 1070/1660), the seventh successor to S¸aʿbân, was Karabâs¸ ʿAlî Veli’s primary shaykh; see, for example, ZD, p. 28. Kerim Kara makes a convincing case for İsmâʿîl as the more logical choice, but notes some sources suggest that Karabâs¸ ʿAlî benefited also from connections with Mustafa after his shaykh’s death; see KK-KV, pp. 68–71 and 176. 61 Initially, I had hoped to include a fourth section on Karabâş ʿAlî and his successors in the present work, but had to eliminate it due to length considerations. I hope to return to it in a future study. 62 For a full silsile of the S¸aʿbâniye shaykhs up to the modern era, see Musa Seyfi Cihangir, S¸eyh S¸aʿbân-ı Velî Hazretleriʾnin Hayatı ve Manevi Silsilesi (Kastamonu: Bilgi Kastamonu Gazetesi, 1997), pp. 10–11. 63 The end of the tenth/sixteenth century initiated a demographic and resource crisis which fueled the Celâlî revolts and likely threatened Kastamonu’s population, thus challenging leaders like Fu’âdî who struggled to uphold Ottoman social institutions; see Oktay Özel, “Population Changes in Ottoman Anatolia during the 16th and 17th Centuries: The ‘Demographic Crisis’ Reconsidered,” IJMES 36:2 (May 2004), 183–205. 64 Recent scholarship on events leading up to the Reformation in European history has argued that broadening access to issues raised through vernacular versions of sacred texts led to increasing involvement of everyday people in controversies about religious affairs;

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66

67

68

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see, for example, Richard Duerden, “Equivalence or Power? Authority and Reformation Bible Translation,” in Orlaith O’Sullivan (ed.), The Bible as Book: The Reformation (London: The British Library & Oak Knoll Press, 2000), pp. 9–20, along with the introductory essay contributed by the editor. The library was attached to the tomb itself and may have been established as early as 1019/1611. It was still functioning as late as 1922 and included a number of rare manuscripts at the time it was catalogued, mostly dealing with religious subjects; see Fazıl Çiftçi, Kastamonu Camileri-Türbeleri ve Diğer Eserler (Ankara: Türk Diyanet Vakfı Yayın Matbaacılık, 2006), p. 34, and also AKAK, p. 110. One recent monograph confirms that paper-making continued in the Ottoman Empire well beyond 1500. Unfortunately, the focus has always been on why Muslims did not adopt the printing press until much later eras, rather than examining how the paper being produced was used; see Jonathan M. Bloom, Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 216–25. What we see here may answer the latter question. Karabâs ʿAlî cited Fuʾâdî’s work as an inspiration for his own Miyâr-ı Tarîk; however, this work came to be attributed to S¸aʿbân himself by its audience; see Mustafa Tatcı and Cemâl Kurnaz (eds), Tasavvufî Gelenekte Miyârlar ve Karabâs¸-ı Veliʾnin Miyârı (Ankara: Bizim Büro Basım Yayın Dağıtım, 2001), pp. 26–9 and 119. See, for example, AKAK, pp. 61–4 and 69–71; Fuʾâdî’s contributions to the order merit only a few short sections. More recent prosopographical catalogs have charted a foundation for the further study of these minor figures; see NYIL, for example.

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Conclusion . WHAT CAN THE ¸AʿBÂNi S YE TEACH US ABOUT TRANSITIONS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD OF WORLD HISTORY?

At this point, my hope is that the reader has come to appreciate the rich and complex historical legacy that Ottoman religious and mystical sources have left for us. They allow us to enrich the state-centric imperial narratives of the universal historians, on the one hand, while allowing us to put a human face on both Ottoman bureaucratic records and inscriptions locked in stone, on the other. Moreover, in-depth tracing of the trajectory of the S¸aʿbâniye and other branches of the Halveti over the course of their history offers researchers a cautionary note regarding facile generalizations about the positions or viewpoints that “the Halveti order” would have on any given issue in their society. Individual shaykhs and their orders were often quite different in their approaches, and frequently revised or reinvented their traditions to reflect changes in their society. So given this kaleidoscopic vision, what important conclusions can now be drawn about the history of the Halveti order as whole? Our examination of both extant and newly uncovered sources about the Halveti indicates that we can now identify some of the elements involved in the origin of the Halveti tradition with more clarity. This should not distract us from the basic problem that the historical record suffers from gaps that require further exploration, along with distortions that reflect the concerns of subsequent generations of Muslims who made that record. But be that as it may, several trends represented in the later medieval period of Islamic civilization do emerge as foundations for the later Halveti order. The early figures in the Halveti silsile, as articulated in works like Hulvî’s Lemezât, were spread across multiple Sufi groups in the Mongol and post-Mongol context of Islamic history. One element that emerges strongly out of that record was the medieval Suhrawardî family’s project of extending membership in Sufi orders to broader groups of people than

292

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earlier religio-mystical leaders had envisioned. This process suggests at least a partial analogy to developments in Christianity in Europe from the tenth and eleventh centuries onward that also sought to integrate the broad mass of the population more firmly into the religious institutions of the Church. Yet this basic framework of the classical age of Islamic civilization also came to be mixed with a more charismatic type of Sufism represented by personalities like Muhammad el-Halvetî, whose practices may have invoked a more ecstatic and sometimes antinomian brand of Sufism that did not always meet with the approval of more sober minded peers. Nevertheless, in a world overrun by Turco-Mongol nomads whose reference points were not grounded in the Islamic civilization of the classical age, this mixture of traditions provided a bridge by which followings could be built across both the remnants of established Muslim tradition and powerful newcomers who held the reigns of military power. Initially, the Halveti order that the Ottomans would inherit grew out of regional grouping of religious leaders and family groupings based in the area of Azerbaijan and its immediate hinterlands. Given the multiple disruptions that this region of the Islamic world underwent in the wake of the Ilkhanid Mongol state’s collapse, the order may well have acted as a source of stability and legitimacy. However, its regional character would broaden rapidly with the forced movements of populations from Asia Minor to the east during the Timurid depredations, and by the mid-ninth/fifteenth century a substantial part of the order’s following was grounded in Anatolian roots; a factor which would prove decisive when the rise of a hostile Shiʿite Safavid state would force many non-Anatolian Halveti notables into exile from their traditional homelands. Nevertheless, during this time a number of shaykhs, including Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî and his spiritual descendants, developed close links with political power that accelerated the spread and influence of their teachings. This shift did not come without a good deal of internal tension, however. A growing proliferation of potential successors led the order to fragment, sometimes acrimoniously, into multiple sub-branches that competed to establish themselves in the various cities and regions of the Near East. Within the space of a few generations, the order’s Azerbaijanî roots had spread hundreds of miles to the south and west; by the end of the eleventh/ seventeenth century, there were few places in the Sunnî world that did not have Halveti representation of some kind. Moreover, the Halveti were able to periodically intersect their activities with the growth of the Ottoman Empire, and under certain sultans, especially Bayezid II and Murad III, they received great esteem. However, this rise to political prominence could provoke a backlash. Sultan Selim I’s persecution of the order and its benefactors as a way of breaking with his father’s legacy was the first indication that not everyone in Ottoman society accepted the legitimacy of the new upstarts, even though they had recruited

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members from prominent scholarly families like the Cemâlîs. Moreover, as the Empire was forced to reorder its administrative structures and tactics in the period of crisis that began at the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, an increasingly puritanical backlash against a perceived lack of orthopraxy on the part of Sufi orders like the Halveti grew stronger, in part due to the competition for positions and influence in Ottoman society. Thus, interpreting the growth and development of Sufi orders like the Halveti in the Ottoman Empire requires a great deal of caution, for many of the sources that we use to narrate their history emerge out a period from the late tenth/ sixteenth to twelfth/eighteenth century where concerns about the legitimacy of Sufi orders like the Halveti had become increasingly prevalent. When we look closely at the case of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, founder of the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the order, we find that the sources situate his activities in the pattern of in-migration that marked the Halveti shaykhs into the Ottoman Empire during the preceding century. Like many of the Halveti shaykhs of the tenth/sixteenth century Ottoman context, he traced his spiritual lineage back to Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî through some of his most noted and authoritative descendants, such as Cemâl elHalvetî. However, unlike the more well-known Sünbüliye or Güls¸eniye branches of the order, S¸aʿbân’s teacher was a provincial and lesser known successor to Cemâl el-Halvetî who did not attract the attention of Ottoman elites. Therefore, it is noteworthy that S¸aʿbân’s hagiography also invoked other local sources of legitimacy to buttress his claims to spiritual authority. For example, previous lesser known Halveti representatives such as Seyyid Sünnetî Efendi, who had first made inroads into the area during the previous century, were incorporated into the order’s framework and teachings. Moreover, other notable figures from other Sufi groups in the Kastmonu region, such as Benli Sultan and ʿÎsâ Dede Bayrâmî, also find roles in the hagiography as legitimizing forces. The life of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli demonstrated that it was frequently local sources of spiritual power that weighed heaviest in establishing the legitimacy of a saint-to-be. Nevertheless, the style and methodology of Sufism that S¸aʿbân practiced in Kastamonu rejected a prominent public profile, and sought anonymity and withdrawal from the wider world. This did not necessarily reflect the teachings of his predecessors in the Halveti silsile, for figures like Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî and Cemâl el-Halvetî had not eschewed leadership roles. Moreover, at the time that the narratives that made up S¸aʿbân’s hagiography were being reified by his successors, S¸aʿbân’s rejection of the public sphere increasingly looked to be at odds with the requirements of the present. Even in S¸aʿbân’s own time, his hagiography indicates that he struggled with occasional dissenting movements among his own followers as his leadership role grew. Moreover, opponents of Sufism could point out that he never made the pilgrimage, or that he or his followers engaged

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in practices that resembled those of fortune-tellers, soothsayers or other “pseudoSufi” practitioners. Still, by the end of his life he had developed a local following who came to revere him for his piety, modesty, and ability to help them confront social problems such as illness or falling into extreme poverty. A few of those contemporaries went on to achieve positions of power in the Ottoman context that were greater than that which S¸aʿbân achieved, such as Muharrem Efendi and Küreli Mehmed Çelebi. Indeed, Muharrem Efendi would play a critical role in establishing S¸aʿbân as a figure of wider renown, and in cementing his sainthood for future generations of Kastamonu’s population by delivering a powerful and moving funeral oration that captured the imagination of younger members of the community like ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî. S¸aʿbân’s growing profile by the end of his life, however, still remained overwhelmingly local, and Muharrem Efendi’s funeral oratory indicated that even many of his fellow Kastamonu denizens were unaware of his presence. The process of building up his small local community into a regional and later supra-regional Muslim mystical movement was left to his successors. Managing the transition to a post-S¸aʿbân world proved to be rocky: S¸aʿbân’s first chosen successor, ʿOsmân Efendi, died shortly after he did, and within a decade his second, Hayreddîn Efendi, had also died. Thus, the successors of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli came to be defined primarily by their uniqueness rather than similarity – ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî’s first shaykh was a respected scholarly figure in the region, while his second came from a small village and was primarily noted for his poverty and living in cave outside the town before being elevated to lead the order. Still, this had a positive outcome on balance, in that what came to define a Halveti shaykh was his devotion to the order’s leaders and principles. In addition, another striking element emerges out of a study of this period of the order’s history as well, which was the degree to which highly localized figures, such as Muhyiddîn’s teacher Mahmûd Efendi of Araç, had begun to produce scholarly tracts aimed at defending the order and its practices to a wider audience. These elements would culminate in the career of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî, a figure whom I argue is the true founder and creator of what would come to be defined as the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order. Inheriting the order in the wake of a string of political and economic problems that bedeviled the Ottoman population in the last decades of the tenth/sixteenth century, he set out to renew and expand its foundation to deal with the growing challenges of the period. Facing opposition from anti-Sufi factions in his society who tried to prevent the building of a tomb complex over S¸aʿbân-ı Veli’s grave, he recognized the need to confront this opposition forcefully and publicly. The result of his initial flurry of activity that followed his accession to leadership in the order in 1013/1604 was the Menâkıb-ı S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, a work which reinvigorated the order and laid down

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a simple and accessible ideological template that could help guide its following in interpreting and emulating the life of their founding figure. ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî proved to have a great deal of talent in addressing the various social groups that made up Ottoman society, and tailored his works to enlist them in defending the order and its leaders, both from detractors and false teachers who made mysticism an easy target. Interestingly, some of Fuʾâdî’s activities suggest that he was especially nervous about a potential backlash over the life and activities of the controversial S¸aʿbâniye dervish Shaykh S¸ücâʿuddîn, whose closeness to political power had raised questions about relations between mystics and the Ottoman state. In the end, through a shrewd exploitation of local and grandee sentiment in the region, Fuʾâdî oversaw the building of a physical infrastructure on the outskirts of Kastamonu that could serve as a center for regional S¸aʿbâniye activities However, unlike many other Ottoman hagiographers, ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî did not conclude his activities with the writing of a hagiography and the building of S¸aʿbân’s tomb complex. He went on to write a number of commentaries and short tracts whose goal was to simplify and introduce the basic teachings and mechanics of the Halveti order to its devotees at various stages of the process. Therefore, he represents an outstanding example of a major shift that was occurring in Muslim mystical thought from the end of the tenth/sixteenth century. While we have seen that earlier leaders of the order did not shy away from building large followings, the most significant members of the group were marked by significant religious education or had some form of elite background. The contribution of mystics like Fuʾâdî was to open the gateway to mystical thought and sources to a much wider audience by writing it in the more accessible language of Turkish to allow for wider circulation. Even given low literacy levels at this time, it is clear that the works were meant to be read out to broader audiences to enlist them as activists in the order’s support network. Moreover, in the case of growing controversies over Halveti practices, Fuʾâdî’s work proved instrumental at building a defense for the clothing, litanies, and especially the devrân ceremony that marked the order. The rapid spread of the S¸aʿbâniye beyond its Kastamonu-based origins to İstanbul and the Balkans by the end of the century stands as testament to the success of Fuʾâdî and other successors like him. However, it can also be argued that in the process of developing an effective defense for the order and its practices, Fuʾâdî also raised the stakes in the conflict with its critics by attacking the legitimacy and legacy of otherwise respected Muslim scholars, such as al-Bazzâzî, who had found a place in Ottoman jurisprudential culture from its earliest times. It is my hope that these and other colorful aspects of the history of the S¸aʿbâniye branch of the Halveti order between the eighth/fourteenth and eleventh/seventeenth century will convince Ottomanists and scholars of the

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history of Islamic thought and institutions to pursue these and the many other unanswered questions raised by the extraordinarily rich history of Ottoman mysticism. Many of the other orders, and indeed many of the other sub-branches of the Halveti order await a detailed treatment. But the study of the transformation of Ottoman Muslim mystical thought may well also have ramifications beyond the field of Islamic studies. It is true that some scholars have wisely cautioned that the study of mystical traditions in a wider comparative framework can mislead the researcher into seeing connections that do not exist, or that coincide only due to extremely different trends in the intellectual framework of a given religious context.1 In addition, anthropological and comparative studies of religion have created scholarship tainted by hegemonic discursive forms that define religion according to its context in the thought of the Enlightenment period, denying the subject a voice in the construction of his/her own beliefs.2 While these warnings are well founded, and must be taken into account in any serious comparative study, it does not preclude a comparative examination of where transitions like the one discussed in this work fit on a more global stage. For example, future inquiries might ask whether the changes that marked the various branches of the Halveti order, along with its increasing difficulties with ideological and factional forces critical of its rituals and practices, might find echoes in the intellectual and religious history of Christian Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Halveti struggle with the Kâdızâdeli movement suggests at least a passing resemblance to then contemporary Catholicism’s lengthy conflict with the rise of Protestantism, with its ideological rejection of intermediaries between the believer and God as embodied in the concept of the priesthood.3 Another point might be that some anthropologists have argued for a cyclical nature in a given religious community’s understanding of its religious context. The rejection of external forms and modes of expression are a hallmark of periodic movements of religious renewal, and societies that develop strong systems of shared classifications, combined with strong societal pressures on the individual, react to changes in the cultural context by attempting to squeeze out “innovations” which do not fit into their system of established categories.4 The rise of the Halveti order and the challenges they faced in defending their mystical traditions vis-à-vis the inherited apparatus of classical Islamic thought and its more puritanical interpreters, can add to our understanding of the clashes caused by movements of religious purification. Given the growing prominence – some might say danger – of puritanical religious movements in modern times, further study of groups like the Halveti could shed light on the question of whether mystical belief systems have a critical role to play in the intellectual production

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of religious traditions around the world, in contrast to attempts to paint them as being little more than a doomed remnant of the intellectual heritage of the pre-modern world. An overview of the S¸aʿbâniye in the thirteenth/nineteenthcentury Ottoman context suggests that they may have been even stronger on the eve of modernity than they were in the period covered by this study. Moreover, in addition to a number of other Sufi orders, revivals of Halveti belief and practice have accompanied growing democracy and openness in Turkish public life.5 All of this suggests that the transformation of Muslim mystical thought that unfolded between the appearance of ʿÖmer el-Halvetî and the death of ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî remains very much an ongoing and unfinished process. The final chapters of that story, however, remain to be written by others. It is my fervent hope that the rich legacy left by the Halveti order that has emerged in this work can convince some of its readers to undertake those tasks in the future. Notes 1 Steven T. Katz (ed.), “The ‘Conservative’ Character of Mystical Experience,” Mysticism and Religious Traditions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 3–60. 2 This argument has been most articulately advanced by Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). 3 Francis Clark, Eucharistic Sacrifices and the Reformation, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1967). 4 See, for example, the work of Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1996). 5 Nathalie Clayer, “Shabâniyya,” EI2, vol. 9, p. 155.

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Appendix I . . . THE HALVETi Si LSi LE ACCORDING TO HULVÎ’S LEMEZÂT

Table 1

Halveti silsile from its eleventh to its twenty-second successors (c. 1150–1450)

Name of shaykh (no. in chain)

Geographical contexts S moves

Date of death

Kutbüddîn Ebherî (11)*

Ebher (Samarqand) S Merağa S Azerbaijan S Baghdâd S Damascus S Nishapur Fayyum (Egypt) S Damascus S Alexandria Ethiopia S Egypt S Damascus Kerman S Baghdâd S Merağa S Tabriz S Baghdâd

622/1225

628/1231

Evhadüddîn-i Kirmânî (12–1) S¸ahâbüddîn Maktûl (12–2)

Sincâs S Tabriz/Merağa SBaghdâd Kerman S Baghdâd Aleppo S Damascus

S¸emseddîn-i Tebrizî (12–3)

Tabriz S Konya

S¸ahâbüddîn-i Tebrizî (13)

Tabriz S Baghdad S Hajj S Tabriz

Mahmud Fakîh (11–1) Muhammad b. Mübareks¸âh-i Hızrî (11–2) Rükneddîn-i Kirmânî (11–3)*

Rükneddîn Sincâsî (12)

643/1245 660/1261 656/1258

615/1219 589/1193 (587/1191) 645/1247 702/1302

299

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Name of shaykh (no. in chain)

Geographical contexts S moves

Date of death

İbrâhîm-i Hemedanî el-Irakî (13–1)

Hemedan/Iraq S India S Konya S Damascus S Egypt S Tabriz S Kayseri S Tokat S Damascus Herat Aden S Mekka S Aden

709/1309

Shiraz S Egypt S Tabriz S Gilan Gilan (Kes¸tâsûf) Tabriz S Khurasan (Herat) Gilan

760/1358

Hüseyin-i Saʿdâd (13–2)* Muhammad el-Yemenî (13–3) Cemâleddîn-i Ezherî (14)* Muhammad el-Kesîre (14–1) Seyyid ʿAlî (14–2) Ebuʾl-Kâsım (14–3) İbrâhîm Zâhid Gîlânî (15)*

Safîyüddîn el-Erdebilî (15–1) Ahî Yûsuf (15–2) Pîr Hikmet S¸irvânî (15–3)* Muhammad el-Halvetî Khwarizmî (16) Muhammad el-Karsî (16–1)* Kütbüddîn Tebrizî (16–2)* Osmân-ı S¸irvânî (16–3) Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî (17)*

Seyfeddîn el-Halvetî (17–1)

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Gilan S Shiraz S Lahîcân S Ardabil S Gilan Ardabil S Gilan S Merağa S Ardabil S¸irvân S Niğde S Tabriz S Herat S¸amahî S Tabriz S Lahîcân S Gence

729/1328 759/1357(?)

780/1378 720/1320 762/1360 705/1305

760/1358 (735/1334) 708/1308 736/1335

Khwarizm S Herat (Gazergâh) Kars S Herat S Kars S¸irvân/Merağa S Egypt S S¸irvân S İznik S¸irvân S Tabriz S Khwarizm S pilgrimage

780/1378 (750/1351) 803/1401 818/1415

Gilan/Lahîcân S S¸irvân S Herat S Khoy S Egypt S Tabriz Tabriz S Baghdâd S Herat (Gazergâh)

800/1397 (750/1349)

830/1426

813/1410

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Appendix I Name of shaykh (no. in chain)

Geographical contexts S moves

Date of death

Ebu Yezîd-i Pûrânî (17–2) Zâhireddîn el-Halvetî (17–3)

Pûrân (in Azerbaijan) Transoxiana S Khwarizm S Merağa S Herat (Gazergâh)

862/1457 800/1397

Ahî Mîrem el-Halvetî (18)*

S¸irvân S Kırs¸ehir S Herat (Gazergâh) Mekka S Kırs¸ehir S Egypt S Kırs¸ehir Sinop S Herat S Sinop S¸irvân S Baghdâd S Herat S S¸irvân

812/1409

S¸amâhî S Herat S Merağa S¸amâhî S Tabriz S Merağa Lahîcân S S¸irvân S Egypt (hajj) Hersek S Merağa S Niğde

828/1425

Ebu Tâlib el-Mekkî (18–1) Pîr Tevekkül (18–2) Amr-ı Rabbanî (18–3)* İzzeddîn Türkmânî (19) ʿÖmer-i S¸irvânî (19–1) İbrâhîm el-Kubâdî (19–2) Baba Resûl-i Rûmî (19–3)* Sadrüddîn-i Hıyâvî (20) S¸eyh Pîrzâde (20–1)* İbrâhîm-i S¸irvânî (20–2) Pîr İlyâs el-Amasî (20–3) Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî (21) Pîr S¸ükrüllah Halife (21–1)

ʿAlâüddîn el-Rûmî (21–2) Habîb-i Karamânî (21–3) Muhammad el-Erzincânî (22)

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824/1421 837/1433 848/1444

831/1427 850/1446 840/1436

S¸irvân Tabriz S S¸irvân S¸irvân S Sivas S Tabuk (hajj) Amasya S S¸irvân S Amasya

860/1455 855/1451 867/1462

S¸irvân S S¸amâhî S Baku Sandıklı (Anadolu) S S¸irvân S Baghdâd S hajj S Baku Aydın S Baku S Edirne S Larende Niğde S Baku S Ankara S Karaman S Aydın

869/1465 868/1464

Erzincan S S¸irvân S Erzincan

837/1434

867/1463 902/1497 869/1465 (879/1474)

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Name of shaykh (no. in chain)

Geographical contexts S moves

Date of death

Pîr Ahmed Erzincânî (22–1)*

Erzincan S İstanbul S Erzincan Kastamonu S Tabriz S Khurasan S Tabriz S Erzincan Kayseri S Erzincan S Kayseri

870/1466 (>877/1473) 861/1456 (>879/1474)

Aksaray S Karaman S Tokat S Erzincan S Amasya S İstanbul

905/1499

Pîr Fethullah (22–2)

Tâcüddîn İbrâhîm el-Halvetî (22–3) Cemâl el-Halvetî (23)*

bold type: S: italic type: *: (date):

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860/1455

successor (primary shaykh) known movement from one place to another a location in Asia Minor known political involvement or conflict with Mongols, Timurids or Ottomans alternative, better-known date of death as opposed to that given by Hulvî

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Appendix II

. . . THE Si LSi LE OF THE ¸AʿBANi S YE ORDER

Table 2

The silsile of S¸aʿbân-ı Veli down to the middle of the eleventh/ seventeenth century

Cemâl el-Halvetî, “Çelebi Halîfe” (d. 905/1499) T Hayreddîn Tokâdî (d. 932/1525) T

S¸aʿbân-ı Veli (d. 976/1569) T ʿOsmân Efendi (d. 976/1569) T Hayreddîn Efendi (d. 987/1579) T ʿAbdülbâkî Efendi (d. 997/1589) T Muhyiddîn Efendi (d. 1012/1604) T

Seyyid Sünnetî Ef. (d. 863/1459) T d

Muzaffereddîn Efendi (d. ?/?)

d

Mahmûd Efendi (d. ?/?)

303

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304

The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought

ʿÖmer el-Fuʾâdî (d. 1045/1636) T Çorumlu İsmâʿîl Efendi (d. 1057/1647) T Mustafa Çelebi (d. 1070/1660)

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S

Karabâs¸ ʿAlî Veli (d. 1097/1686)

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Works Cited and Further Reading

See preliminary pages viii–xii for works whose titles are abbreviated in the text Abdîzade Hüseyin Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi I (Mukaddime), eds Ali Yılmaz and Mehmet Akkus¸ (Ankara: Amasya Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 1986). Abdürrezzak b. Abdülganî, Menâkıb-ı S¸eyh Vefâ, Tühfetüʾl-ahbâb, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Esad Efendi 3622/11–14. Abrahamov, Binyamin, Divine Love in Islamic Mysticism: The Teachings of al-Ghazâlî and al-Dabbâgh (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003). Abou-El-Haj, Rifaʾat Ali, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991). ʿAbd al-Wâsiʿ Nizâmî-ye Bâharzî, Maqâmât-e Jâmî, ed. Najîb Mâyil Harawî (Tehran: Nashr-e Nay, 1377/1999). Aflâkî, Shams al-Dîn Ahmad-e, The Feats of the Knowers of God (Manâqeb al-ʿarefîn), trans. John O’Kane (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002). Afsaruddin, Asma, “In Praise of the Caliphs: Re-creating History from the Manaqib Literature,” IJMES 31:3 (1999), 329–50. Ahmed Yektâ b. Mehmed ʿÂrif, Risâlah fî dawrân as-sufiyya li-Mawlâ al-merhûm Müfti ʿAlî Çelebi, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1406/1. Aigle, Denise and Vauchez, André, Saints orientaux: Hagiographies medievales comparées (Paris: De Boccard, 1995). Akdağ, Mustafa, Celalî İsyanları (1550–1603) (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Basımevi, 1963). Anonymous, Halvetiye tarikatı hakkında bir risâle, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 422. —, Menakıb-ı Hazret-i Seyyid Muhammad Ebüʾl-Vefa, Tâcuʾl-ʿarifîn, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Yazma Bağıs¸lar 226/1. —, Risâle-i silsile-i Halvetiye, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Yazma Bağıs¸lar 2538. —, Silsilenâme-i mes¸âyih-i tarîk-i Halveti min risâlet-i ʿAdli Efendi, Süleymaniye Lib., İstanbul, MS Hkm. 438/4.

305

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Duerden, Richard, “Equivalence or Power? Authority and Reformation Bible Translation,” in Orlaith O’Sullivan (ed.), The Bible as Book: The Reformation (London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2000), pp. 9–20. Duijzings, Ger, Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo (London: Hurst, 2000). Eaton, Robert Mitchell, Sufis of Bijapur 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978). Eickelman, Dale, Moroccan Islam: Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1976). —, The Middle East: An Anthropological Approach, 2nd edn (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1989). Ekrem, Mehmet Ali, Romen Kaynak ve Eserlerinde: Türk Tarihi Kronikler I (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1993). Elias, Jamal J., The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of ʿAlâʾ ad-dawla asSimnânî (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995). Elliot, Alison G., Roads to Paradise: Reading the Lives of the Early Saints (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987). Elsie, Robert, History of Albanian Literature, 2 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). —, A Dictionary of Albanian Religion, Mythology, and Folk Culture (London: Hurst, 2001). Emirzâde, Veliyüddîn Maras¸î, Vuzûʾ-ı bâtinî ve gusul hakkında risâle, Atatürk Kitaplığı, İstanbul, MS Osman Ergin 1740. Ergene, Boğaç A., Local Court, Provincial Society and Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Legal Practice and Dispute Resolution in Çankırı and Kastamonu (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003). Ernst, Carl W., “From Hagiography to Martyrology: Conflicting Testimonies to a Sufi Martyr of the Delhi Sultanate,” History of Religions 24 (1985), 308–27. Ewing, Katherine Pratt, Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and Islam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). —, “A Majzub and His Mother: The Place of Sainthood in a Family’s Emotional Memory,” in Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (eds), Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 160–83. Farmer, Sharon, Communities of St. Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). Faroqhi, Suraiya, “Population Rise and Fall in Anatolia,” Middle Eastern Studies 15 (1979), 322–45. —, “Sainthood as a Means of Self-Defense in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Anatolia,” in Grace Martin Smith and Carl W. Ernst (eds), Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam (İstanbul: Isis Press, 1993), pp. 193–208. —, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj Under the Ottomans, 1517–1683 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994). —, Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Feldman, Walter, “Mysticism, Didacticism and Authority in the Liturgical Poetry of the Halveti Dervishes of İstanbul,” Edebiyat 4:2 (1993), 243–65. Fernandes, Leonor, “Two Variations on the Same Theme: The Zâwiya of Hasan al-Rûmî, the Takiyya of Ibrâhîm al-Ğulšânî,” Annales Islamologiques 21 (1985), 95–111. Findley, Carter Vaughn, The Turks in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

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INDEX OF PERSONS

ʿAbd al-Rahman Jâmî (d. 898/1492), 27, 29, 33–5, 44, 47n, 71, 81n, 127, 151n, 238 Abdülbâkî Efendi (d. 997/1589), 171–6, 181–2, 184, 188, 191n, 192n, 200–3, 205, 219n, 241, 249, 252, 263n, 303 ʿAbdülmecîd S¸irvânî (d. 972/1565), 59 ʿAbdülmecîd Sivâsî Efendi (d. 1049/1639), 269, 285n Abu Bakr (first caliph, d. 12/634), 71, 106n, 165–6, 255 Abû Hamîd al-Ghazâlî (d. 505/1111), 27, 129, 152n, 254 Abu Hanifa (d. 150/767), 25, 53, 253–4, 272, 276 Abu’l Najib ʿAbd al-Qâhir al-Suhrawardî (d. 563/1168), 24, 26–7 Abu Saʿîd (İlkhanid ruler, d. 736/1335), 35–6 Abû Tâlib al-Makkî (d. 824/1421), 42 ʿAcem ʿAlî (wrestler), 172 Ahmad al-Ghazâlî (d. 520/1126), 27 Ahmed el-Hiyâlî (d. 980/1571), 64, 77 Ahmed-i Jâm (d. 535/1141), 31 Akhî Evrân (d. 854/1450), 41 Akhî Mîrem el-Halvetî (d. 812/1410), 18, 30, 40–4, 51, 301 Akhî Yûsuf (d. 708/1308), 42, 48n, 300 ʿAlâeddîn el-Halvetî (d. 867/1463), 60–1, 66, 70, 82n

ʿAli b. Abû Tâlib (d. 40/661), 18, 23–5, 29, 45n, 79, 101, 106n, 132–3, 153n, 217, 258 ʿAlî b. Buzghush (d. 678/1279), 44 ʿAlî Dede, 118, 149n Amîr Çoban (d. 728/1327), 35–6, 47n Amr-ı Rabbanî (d. 848/1444), 41, 301 Baba Resûl-i Rûmî (d. 840/1437), 52, 301 Bahâ’üddîn (father of Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî), 55–6 Bayâzid al-Bistami (d. 261/875), 25, 161–3 Bayezid I (Ottoman Sultan, d. 805/1403), 41, 52, 76 Bayezid II (Ottoman Sultan, d. 918/1512), 31, 68–72, 74, 76, 82n, 83n, 84n, 271, 274, 287n, 293 al-Bazzâzî, Hâfiz al-Dîn Muhammad b. Shihâb al-Kurdarî (d. 827/1424), 271–3, 275–7, 287n, 296 Benli Sultan (d. 972/1565), 112–13, 125, 127, 145, 147, 148n, 151n, 159, 182, 202, 294 Çandarlı İbrâhîm Pas¸a (d. 905/1499), 60 Çelebi Sultan Mehmed I (Ottoman ruler, d. 824/1421), 60, 84n Cem Sultan (d. 900/1495), 68–70

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Cemâl el-Halvetî (Çelebi Halife, d. 905/1499), 19, 30, 32, 65–73, 84n, 99, 101, 104, 105n, 147, 149n, 184, 191n, 217, 238, 243, 270, 274, 279, 284, 286n, 287n, 288n, 294, 302, 303 Cemâleddîn-i Ezherî (d. 760/1358), 33, 300 Chinggis Khan (d. 624/1227), 35, 47n, 271 Çivîzâde (Ottoman jurist, d. 954/1547), 125–6, 151n, 174 Clayer, Nathalie, 17, 85n, 154n, 174, 298n Çorumlu İsmâʿîl Efendi (d. 1057/1647), 279, 282, 290n, 304 Dâvud Mahmûd al-Kayseri (d. c. 750/1350), 252, 266n Dede ʿÖmer Rüs¸enî (d. 892/1487), 59–64 DeWeese, Devin, 31–3, 46n, 48n, 151n Ebusüʿûd Efendi (Ottoman jurist, d. 980/1573), 124, 150n, 171, 190n, 191n, 229, 251, 287n Erzerumî Hasan Dede, 124, 135 Evhadüddîn-i Kirmânî (d. 615/1219), 33, 299 Evliyâ S¸ücâʿ, 131–2, 187, 206 Eyüb Halife, 114, 137, 158 Gazanfer Dede (d. 974/1567), 74, 85n, 149n Gelibolulu Mustafa ʿAlî (d. 1009/1601), 65, 69, 123, 201, 279 Habib al-ʿAjamî/Habîb-i ʿAcemî (d. 130/748), 25, 128, 152n Hacı Halife Kastamonî (d. 895/1489), 66 Hacı İlyâs Efendi (son of Hayreddîn Efendi), 116–17, 168–71, 182, 190n Halîl Pas¸a (Grand Vizier, d. 1040/1631), 235–6 Hasan al-Basri (d. 110/728), 25–6, 45n, 249, 265n Hayreddîn Efendi (d. 987/1589), 117, 157, 168–71, 174, 182, 187–8, 295, 303 Hayreddîn Tokâdî (d. 932/1525), 99–102, 104, 106n, 108, 112, 116, 125, 147, 186–7, 247, 279, 303 Himmet Dede (father of ʿÖmer el-Fu’âdî), 199–200, 260n

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Hızır (Khidr, prophet), 60–1, 82n, 97, 105n, 123, 168 Hızır Bâlî, 60–2 Hulvi, Mahmûd Cemâleddîn (d. 1054/1654), 22–4, 26–9, 32–44, 45n, 46n, 47n, 48n, 52–4, 56–8, 60–1, 63–5, 67–8, 73, 78, 81n, 82n, 83n, 84n, 86n, 146, 279, 288n, 289n, 292, 299–302 Hüseyin-i Saʿdâd (d. c. 718/1318), 33, 300 Ibn al-ʿArabî, Muhyî al-Dîn (d. 637/1240), 33, 53, 74, 126, 145–6, 150n, 151n, 152n, 154n, 155n, 190n, 220n, 254, 259, 266n Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), 208, 220n, 266n, 275, 288n İbrâhîm Beg (Karamanoğlu ruler, d. 869/1464), 66, 84n İbrâhîm-i Güls¸eni (d. 940/1534), 19, 49n, 59–60, 62–5, 72, 77, 81n, 82n, 83n, 134, 153n, 243 İbrâhîm-i Hemedanî (Fakhr al-Dîn) el-Irakî (d. 688/1289), 33, 300 İbrâhîm-i Kubâdî (d. 850/1446), 53, 301 İbrâhîm Zâhid Gilânî (d. 705/1305), 29–31, 33–4, 36–7, 39–41, 44, 46n, 57, 300 ʿÎsâ Dede Bayrâmî, 111–13, 294 İsrâfîlzâde, Molla Fahruddîn (Ottoman jurist, d. 943/1537), 125, 151n İzzeddîn-i Türkmânî (d. 828/1425), 30, 52–5, 81n Junayd al-Baghdâdî (d. 297/910), 24–7, 257 Kâdızâde Mehmed (d. 1045/1635), 78, 149n, 219n, 248, 262n, 264n, 269, 285n Kalbî Efendi b. ʿÖmer el-Fu’âdî, 280–2, 290n Karabâs¸ ʿAlî Veli (d. 1097/1686), 89, 282, 285, 290n, 291n, 304 Kastamonulu Muharrem Efendi (d. 984/1576), 112, 125–7, 151n, 159–63, 187, 189n, 295 Kemâlpas¸azâde (Ottoman jurist, d. 940/1534), 151n, 275–6, 287n, 288n, 289n

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Index of Persons Khalîl Allah I (S¸irvâns¸âh ruler, d. 866/1462), 55, 59 Kırk Emre el-Hamîdî, 273, 275, 288n Koca Mustafa Pas¸a (Grand Vizier, d. 918/1512), 70–3 Konrapalı Muslihuddîn Efendi, 99, 101, 103–4, 109, 118 Küreli Mehmed Çelebi, 124–5, 130, 150n, 151n, 200, 295 Kütbüddîn Ebherî (d. 577/1181), 27, 33, 299 Kütbüddîn Tebrizî (d. 818/1415), 42, 48n, 300 Lâmiʿî Çelebi (d. 938/1532), 29–32, 84n Mahmûd Efendi of Araç, 176–9, 181, 192n, 193n, 250–1, 295, 303 Mamshâd al-Dinâwarî (d. 299/912), 25–6 Mansûr al-Hallâj (d. 309/922), 25, 167 Maʿruf al-Karkhî (d. 200/815), 25 Mehmed II (Ottoman ruler, d. 886/1481), 61–2, 66–70, 81n, 84n, 94, 238, 250 Mehmed III (Ottoman ruler, d. 1011/1603), 184–5, 206–8, 210 Mehmed Pas¸a (Grand Vizier of Mehmed II, d. 886/1481), 68–70 Molla ʿArab Mehmed b. ʿÖmer (d. 938/1531), 61, 70, 83n, 273–5, 287n Muhammad, the Prophet (d. 10/632), 9, 15–16, 18, 23–5, 41, 56–7, 78, 82n, 94–6, 98, 105n, 106n, 116, 128, 132–3, 148n, 150n, 152n, 153n, 160, 165–6, 174, 177–8, 190n, 193n, 217, 228–9, 231, 236, 240–1, 244, 251–2, 256, 258, 265n, 266n, 274 Muhammad al-Dinawari (d. 370/980?), 26 Muhammad el-Erzincânî (d. 879/1474), 59, 66–8, 301 Muhammad el-Halvetî (d. 751/1350), 30–7, 40–2, 44, 47n, 293, 300 Muhammad al-Jilvânî, 53–4 Muhammad Nazmî Efendi (d. 1112/1701), 58–9 Muhammad Rükkî (d. 903/1498), 58 Muhyiddîn Efendi (d. 1012/1604), 128, 176–85, 188, 192n, 193n, 203–6, 208,

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219n, 224, 235, 241, 250, 252, 282, 295, 303 Muhyi-yi Güls¸enî (d. 1014/1606), 62–4, 77–8, 82n, 83n, 86n, 90, 92n, 153n Murad II (Ottoman ruler, d. 855/1451), 273, 275, 288n Murad III (Ottoman ruler, d. 1003/1595), 19, 23, 76–8, 171, 175, 185, 188, 203, 205–8, 210, 215, 221n, 225, 227, 261n, 267n, 279, 289n, 293 Muslihuddîn Merkez Efendi (d. 959/1552), 74–6, 106n, 149n Muslihuddîn Nûreddînzâde (d. 982/1574), 174, 201–2, 219n Mustafa Dede, 119–20, 183 Najm al-Dîn Muhammad al-Ghaytî (d. 984/1576), 231, 262n Nakkâs¸ ʿAlî Pasa, 29 al-Nâsir li-Dîn Allah (caliph, d. 622/1225), 27–8 Nasûh Pas¸a (Grand Vizier, d. 1023/1614), 225, 234, 260n Nasûhî Efendi (d. 1130/1718), 89, 91n, 153n Necmeddîn Hasan Efendi (d. 1019/1611), 37, 172, 191n Nevʿîzâde ʿAtâ’î (d. 1045/1635), 99, 101, 103, 125–7, 152n, 278–9, 289n ʿÖmer el-Fu’âdî (d. 1044/1636), 89–91, 94–101, 103–4, 105n, 106n, 108–12, 114–18, 120–4, 127–36, 138–47, 148n, 149n, 150n, 152n, 153n, 154n, 155n, 156–7, 159–60, 162–77, 179–86, 188, 189n, 190n 191n, 197–218, 219n, 220n, 221n, 222n, 223–5, 227–60, 261n, 262n, 263n, 264n, 265n, 266n, 267n, 268–79, 281–5, 286n, 288n, 289n, 290n, 291n, 295–6, 298, 304 ʿÖmer-i S¸irvânî (d. 831/1428), 52–4, 301 ʿÖmer Kethüdâ (d. 1020/1611), 223–5, 228, 232–5, 260n, 262n ʿÖsmân Efendi (d. 976/1569), 139, 157–8, 165–70, 187–8, 190n, 295, 303 ʿÖsmân II (Ottoman ruler, d. 1031/1622), 231–2, 235–6, 262n, 263n

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324

The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought

Pîr Ahmed (d. after 878/1473), 67–8 Pîr Fethullah (d. after 879/1474), 68, 184, 301 Pîr İlyâs el-Amâsî (d. 837/1434), 43, 52, 54, 68 Pîr ʿÖmer el-Halvetî (d. 750/1349 or 800/1397), 18, 30, 33, 35–42, 44, 47n, 120, 149n, 217, 222n, 256, 298, 300 Pîr Sükrullah Halife (d. after 868/1465), 58, 82n Pîr Tevekkül (d. 837/1433), 42–3 Pirî Pas¸a (Grand Vizier of Selim I), 65 Pîrzâde Muhammad Takiyüddîn (d. after 860/1456), 54–6, 81n Qâdı Îsâ Sâvajî (d. 896/1491), 62–3 Qadi Wajih al-Din Umar al-Suhrawardi (d. 532/1137), 26 Rıhtım, Mehmet, 37–8, 48n, 82n Rükneddîn Alâüddevle Simnânî (d. 736/1336), 29–30 Rükneddîn Sincâsî (d. 628/1231), 33, 299 Rûmî, Mevlânâ Celâlüddîn (d. 672/1273), 33, 71, 126, 134–6, 150n, 152n, 153n, 224, 238, 248, 259 S¸aʿbân-ı Veli (d. 976/1569), 7–9, 80, 89–91, 92n, 93–4, 96–9, 101, 104, 108, 118, 124, 134, 136, 146–7, 156, 186, 197–8, 199–201, 204–5, 209, 211–12, 214, 220n, 223–6, 230, 237, 250, 258, 282–3, 285, 290n, 294–5, 303 Saʿdeddîn Efendi (Ottoman jurist, d. 1008/1599), 206–8, 219n, 220n, 229, 275, 284 Saʿdî Çelebi (Ottoman Grand Müfti, d. 946/1539), 125–7, 151n Saʿdî-i S¸irâzî (d. 691/1292), 44 Sadrüddîn-i Hıyavî (d. 860/1456), 53–7, 82n, 301 Safî al-Dîn Ardabilî (d. 735/1334), 31, 39–40, 66, 300 S¸âh Kubâd S¸irvânî (d. 950/1544), 59 S¸ahâbüddîn-i Tebrizî (d. 702/1302), 33, 299 Sarî al-Saqatî (d. 253/867), 25

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Sarı Gürz Nûreddîn (d. 926/1520), 126, 274, 286n, 288n, 289n Selîm I (Ottoman ruler, d. 926/1520), 65, 72–4, 118, 190n, 192n, 273–4, 288n, 293 Seyfeddîn el-Halvetî (d. 813/1410), 30, 33, 300 Seyyid Muzaffereddîn Efendi, 96, 303 Seyyid Seyfullah Kâzım b. Nizâmeddîn (d. 1009/1601), 149n, 177–8, 192n, 193n Seyyid Sünnetî Efendi (d. 863/1459), 94–7, 109, 111, 113–14, 120–1, 137, 154n, 158, 186, 189n, 190n, 205, 217, 294, 303 Shah İsmâʿîl I (Safavid ruler, d. 930/1524), 32, 73 Shaykh İbrâhîm (S¸irvâns¸âh ruler, d. 820/1417), 55 Shaykh Uways (Jalayrid ruler, d. 776/1374), 38, 48n Shaykh Vefâ’ (d. 896/1491), 69–70, 84n, 154n Sinâneddîn Yûsuf b. Yaʿkûb (d. 989/1581), 19, 23–4, 77–8, 86n, 117, 148n, 166, 190n, 279 Sofyalı Bâlî Efendi (d. 960/1553), 173–4, 202 S¸ücâʿuddîn Efendi (shaykh of Murad III, d. 997/1588), 19, 76–8, 86n, 171, 175, 185, 188, 190n, 192n, 205, 215, 225, 227, 261n, 279, 289n, 296 Süleymân I (Ottoman ruler, d. 974/1566), 64, 74, 76, 85n, 118, 125–6, 137, 144, 148n, 149n, 156, 173–4, 271, 273 Sultan Yaʿkûb (Akkoyunlu ruler, d. 896/1490), 62–3 Sünbül Efendi (d. 936/1529), 70–4, 85n, 128, 191n, 218n, 270, 273–6, 278, 284, 286n, 288n, 289n Tâhirzâde (shaykh of Cemâl el-Halvetî), 66, 84n Tas¸köpüzâde (d. 969/1561), 125–6, 151n, 272, 288n Temür-e Lang (Timurid ruler, d. 807/1405), 22, 29, 40–1, 50–2, 81n, 271, 286n, 287n

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Index of Persons Toktamıs¸ (Golden Horde ruler, d. 807/1405), 40, 271 ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzîz (caliph, d. 101/720), 249 ʿUmar b. al-Khattâb (caliph, d. 23/644), 249 ʿUmar b. Muhammad al-Suhrawardî, Shihâb al-Dîn Abû Hafs (d. 632/1234), 27, 44, 45n, 221n Uzun Hasan (Akkoyunlu ruler, d. 882/1478), 49n, 62, 67, 83n, 84n Yahyâ-yı S¸irvânî (d. 869/1465), 18, 19n, 37, 43, 55–66, 71, 74, 82n, 89, 94–7, 217, 222n, 250, 279, 293–4, 301

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325

Yaʿkûb el-Germiyânî (d. 979/1571), 19, 23, 74, 76–7, 117 Yâycı Hacı Mehmed Dede (brother of ʿÖmer el-Fu’âdî), 110, 234 Yûsuf Mahdûm (d. 890/1485), 58 Yûsuf Müskûrî (d. 890/1485), 37, 58 Zâhirüddîn Halvetî (d. 800/1398), 29–30, 301 Zayn al-Dîn al-Khâfî (d. 838/1435), 54 Zenbilli ʿAlî Efendi (d. 931/1525), 65, 271, 273, 274, 275, 276, 284 Zilfi, Madeline C., 4, 17, 79, 82n, 219n, 268

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INDEX OF PLACES

Africa, 3, 6–7, 63 Aleppo, 136, 274, 299 Amasya, 43, 52, 54, 68, 101, 168–9, 301–2 Anatolia (Asia Minor), 2, 7, 18, 22, 29, 41–4, 48n, 50–3, 60–2, 65–7, 69, 73–4, 79, 89, 93, 97, 101, 103–4, 110, 121, 144–5, 172–3, 181, 184–6, 188, 193n, 204, 214, 216–17, 221n, 230, 238, 264n, 272, 283, 288n, 293 Ankara, 52, 161, 301 Atâbey Gazi Mosque, 96, 105n, 111, 137, 154n Aydın, 60–1, 301 Azerbaijan, 2, 17, 37, 40, 44, 52–3, 55, 59–60, 76, 293, 299

Central Asia, 2, 31, 50, 219n, 272, 274, 286n, 288n

Baghdad, 18, 26–7, 41, 62, 192n, 263n, 299–301 Baku, 55–7, 61–2, 66, 94, 301 Balkans, 2, 10n, 17, 50, 80, 191, 296 Bolu, 99–101, 106n, 108, 110–11, 182–3, 193n Bursa, 29, 60–1, 75, 106n, 136, 272, 274, 279 Byzantine Empire/Byzantium, 2, 93–4, 105n, 154n, 268, 274, 285n

Herat, 29–30, 34–7, 40–2, 47n, 48n, 81n, 300–1 Hisârardı, 137, 164, 179, 190n, 200 Honsâlâr Mosque, 114–16, 119, 129, 137, 148n, 154n, 168, 179–80

Çağa, 110, 182 Cairo, 51, 64–5, 72, 77, 145, 245

Damascus, 51, 74, 181, 299–300 Edirne, 61, 83n, 275, 279, 288n Egypt, 1, 17, 38, 42, 51, 53, 57, 59, 63–5, 74, 76, 126, 136, 145, 245, 272, 274, 279, 299–301 Erzincan, 66–7, 301–2 Europe/Europeans, 7, 79, 164, 235, 283, 290n, 293, 297 Gazergâh, 35, 41, 300–1 Gilan, 34–5, 48n, 81n, 300

İlgâz Mountain, 112–13, 127, 141, 182, 202 India/Indian subcontinent, 6, 11n, 25, 31, 33, 52, 81n, 272, 286n, 300 İskilip, 171–2, 174, 176, 201–2, 263n İstanbul (Constantinople), 4, 45n, 50, 57, 59, 61, 64–5, 67, 69, 72, 74, 76–7, 81n, 85n, 86n, 93, 98–101, 103, 117,

326

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Index of Places 124–7, 133, 149n, 151n, 153n, 154n, 159–60, 171–2, 177, 188, 189n, 192n, 197, 202, 219n, 220n, 234, 236, 259, 263n, 279–82, 287n, 289n, 290n, 293n, 296, 302 İznik, 42, 266n, 300 Karaman, 61–2, 66, 69–70, 301–2 Kars, 42, 300 Kastamonu, 7, 9, 45n, 80, 89, 91, 92n, 93–4, 96–9, 104, 105n, 108–12, 114, 117–22, 124–5, 127–8, 131, 133–8, 143–7, 148n, 150n, 151n, 152n, 153, 154n, 156, 158–60, 163–71, 173, 175–6, 179, 181–4, 187, 189n, 195, 199–204, 208–9, 217–18, 223–4, 231–5, 250, 269, 282, 285, 290n, 294–6, 302 Khwârizm, 34, 271–2 Kırs¸ehir, 41–2, 48n, 301 Konya, 136, 299–300 Küre-i Hadîd, 176, 179, 181, 192n Küre-i Nühâs, 124, 150n, 232 Lahîcân, 35, 37, 300–1 Mecca/Medina, 24, 51, 77, 81n, 135, 144, 146, 162, 189n5, 193n, 229, 252, 266n Niğde, 42, 52, 300–1

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Ottoman(s)/Ottoman Empire, 1–2, 4, 6–8, 17–19, 22–4, 28–32, 33, 35, 39, 41–4, 50–2, 57–74, 76–80, 91, 93–4, 97, 101, 104, 108, 117–18, 120–6, 132–3, 144, 147, 156, 159–61, 165, 171–2, 185–8, 198, 201, 203–6, 208, 210, 212, 214–15, 217–18, 223, 230–2, 236–8, 243, 245–51, 255–6, 259–60, 268–75, 277, 279, 282–5, 292–8, 302 Persia/Iran, 2, 17, 31, 40, 50–1, 71, 76, 79, 81n, 127, 145, 172–3, 219n, 224, 233, 235, 256, 274 S¸amâhî, 37, 55–9, 300–1 Samarqand, 29, 299 Sinop, 42, 127, 301 S¸irvân (S¸irvânvâhs), 29, 38, 41, 52, 54–9, 61, 81n, 300–1 Syria, 63, 65 Tabriz, 27, 37–8, 41, 48n, 53, 62, 235, 274, 299–302 Tas¸köprü, 98 Tokat, 59, 66, 101, 135, 139, 158, 165, 167, 300 Transoxiana, 49n, 50, 155n, 271, 274, 301

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INDEX OF SUBJECTS

ʿAbbâsid caliphate, 27–8, 44 Akkoyunlu sultanate, 49n, 51, 53, 55, 58–9, 62–5, 67–8, 81n, 82n, 83n, 274 Aksarâyî family, 65–7 Arabic language, 2, 8, 15–16, 23, 37, 45n, 71, 89, 92n, 122, 132, 149n, 152n, 172, 176, 178, 191n, 192n, 193n, 193n, 200, 210, 217, 218n, 231, 237–8, 241, 249–50, 253, 256–7, 259, 262n, 266n, 270–1, 275, 283, 286n atvâr-ı sabʿa, 238, 240, 242, 264n Bayrâmiye order, 74, 111, 125, 127, 161, 171, 189n, 250, 263n, 294 Celâlî revolts, 79, 185, 204, 208, 214, 219n, 220n, 221n, 224, 290n Cemâliye order, 60, 65, 67, 72–4, 85n Christian/Christianity, 5, 70, 164, 184, 256–7, 261n, 290n, 293, 297 debts/lending, 143–4, 184–5 devrân, 8, 31, 53, 126, 131, 152n, 260, 268–9, 273–6, 278, 286n, 289n, 296 erbaʿîn (forty-day retreat), 8, 37, 53, 60, 66, 68, 110, 113, 165, 168, 190n, 204, 219n

fetvâ (legal opinion), 208, 261n, 271, 273–7, 286n, 289n Güls¸eniye order, 57, 59–60, 63–5, 72, 76–8, 83n, 86n, 279, 289n, 294 halife (successor or deputy), 7, 9, 15, 22, 33–4, 38–40, 44, 53–4, 56–64, 66, 68, 70–2, 74, 78, 82n, 83n, 86n, 90–1, 91n, 92n, 96–7, 99, 101–3, 105n, 108, 111–12, 116–21, 124–5, 128, 130, 135, 139–40, 145, 149n, 150n, 151n, 154n, 156–8, 161, 165–72, 174, 176, 179, 181–8, 188n, 190n, 191n, 197–8, 199, 201–5, 209–11, 218n, 219n, 222n, 225, 236–7, 243, 254, 263n, 269, 278–9, 282–3, 285, 289n, 290n, 293–6 Halvetiye order, 1–2, 4, 7–9, 10n, 12n, 15, 17–19, 21–44, 45n, 46n, 47n, 48n, 49n, 50–63, 65–80, 81n, 82n, 83n, 84n, 85n, 86n, 89, 91, 92n, 93–4, 96, 98–101, 103–4, 105n, 106n, 107n, 108, 110–11, 113, 116–18, 120, 122, 124–39, 142, 144–7, 149n, 151n, 153n, 154n, 157, 159, 165, 167, 170–3, 177–80, 182–3, 185–7, 189n, 191n, 192n, 193n, 197–8, 200, 202–5, 208, 210, 213, 217, 219n, 222n, 224, 229, 231, 234, 236–40, 243,

328

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Index of Subjects 245–60, 264n, 268–74, 278–80, 282, 284–5, 286n, 289n, 292–8, 299–302 Hanbalî school, 189n, 207, 220n, 231, 261n, 288n Hanafî school, 53, 146, 189n, 229, 232, 254, 271–4, 286n headgear (tâc, qalansuwa), 37, 176–9, 193n, 250 jinn, 106n, 139–40, 164, 200 Kâdızâdelis/Kâdızâdeli–Halveti conflict, 17, 59, 78–9, 82n, 86n, 149n, 198, 206, 219n, 220n, 229–30, 232, 241–2, 246, 250, 254, 262n, 264n, 269–70, 272–3, 275–7, 280, 282, 284, 285n, 287n, 290n, 297 Karakoyunlu, 53, 55, 83n Karamanids, 61–2, 66, 69–70, 84n kerâmet (acts of grace/miracles), 68, 111, 130, 138–41, 157, 160, 163–4, 169, 176, 182–4, 202–3, 206, 209–16, 228 kisve (dervish cap), 48n, 57, 135, 142, 177–8, 248 Kitâb adab al-murîdîn, 26 Kutb (Pole), 97, 121, 123, 128, 138, 142, 144, 146, 149n, 152n, 162, 228 lâyiha (advisory note), 90, 169, 180, 185, 188, 190n, 215, 236 Makâle-i ferdiye ve risâle-i virdiye, 250–8, 266n, 269 Mamluks, 38, 48n, 51–2, 63–5, 72, 83n, 208, 274 medrese, 60, 96, 105n, 126, 150n, 153n, 200 Menâkıb-i İbrâhîm-i Güls¸eni, 62–4, 134 Menâkıb-i S¸aʿbân-ı Veli, 89, 91, 92n, 96, 99, 109, 121, 134, 140, 188, 197–8, 198n, 200, 206, 209, 218, 223, 254, 295 menzil/menzilhâne, 100, 106n, 112, 125, 202 Mevleviye order, 33, 62, 134–6, 153n, 224 Mongols, 2, 7, 18, 22, 27–30, 32, 35, 40, 42, 44, 46n, 47n, 51, 216, 259, 261n, 264n, 292–3, 302

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329

mufti/müftülük, 96, 126, 150n, 151n, 161, 201, 203–4, 209, 214–15, 219n, 220n, 287n Naks¸bendi order, 6–7, 29–31, 127, 152n, 219n, 239, 263n Nafahât al-Uns, 27, 29, 33–4, 44 nefs (carnal soul/passions), 8, 96, 115, 123–4, 129–30, 133, 165–6, 172–3, 239, 244, 246, 249, 251–2, 264n, 270 Persian ethnicity/language, 16, 39, 71, 76, 81n, 106n, 127, 152n, 172, 200, 219n, 224, 256, 264n, 283 pilgrimage/hajj, 26, 38, 46n, 51–2, 58, 63, 71–2, 81n, 83n, 86n, 106n, 135–6, 144–6, 158, 171, 181, 230, 236, 274, 278, 294, 299–301 preacher (vâʿiz), 25, 61, 77, 116, 149, 159, 201, 203, 249–50, 262n, 274 al-Qurʾân, 2, 8, 15, 24, 114, 116, 125, 130, 140, 148n, 150n, 152n, 154n, 155n, 174, 178–9, 191n, 207–8, 229–30, 241, 251, 257, 272, 277, 281 relics, 163–4 Rightly-Guided Caliphs, 178–9, 254–6 Risâlat al-tahqîqiyya, 85n, 273–5, 278, 288n, 289n Risâlat al-tawthîqiyya wa risâlat al-tawhîdiyya, 218n, 237–40 Risâle-i muslihu’n-nefs, 239–50 Risâle-i Türbenâme, 92n, 148n, 198, 206, 220n, 231, 233, 236, 262n Risâletü’l-müsellesât, 236–7 S¸aʿbâniye order, 7, 18, 39, 51, 60, 72, 76–7, 80, 89, 92n, 103, 114, 117–22, 125, 128, 131, 134–7, 144, 147, 153n, 156, 158–9, 171, 175–7, 182, 184–6, 188, 190n, 193n, 197–206, 208, 210, 215, 217–18, 223–4, 227, 230–1, 234, 236–7, 240, 242, 245, 247, 250–1, 258–60, 263n, 264n, 265n, 267n, 269, 278–9, 282–3, 285, 289n, 290n, 292, 294, 296

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330

The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought

Safavids, 31–2, 39–40, 44, 45n, 51, 57–9, 63, 66, 72–3, 76, 79, 81n, 84n, 100, 118, 145, 147, 172, 177, 192n, 204, 224, 235, 256, 273–4, 288n, 293 Satan, 115, 129–30, 135, 206, 213, 245, 249 seccâde (prayer rug), 97, 118–19, 121, 149n, 157, 168, 171, 180–1, 200, 205, 224–5, 230, 240 Seljuk/Selçuk, 2, 57, 93–4, 104n, 105n, 261n, 264n semâʿ, 8, 31, 40, 53, 126, 260, 268–9, 273–6, 286n, 289n s¸eriʿat (shariʿa), 6, 103, 123, 128–9, 134, 153n, 179, 245–6, 253, 256–7 s¸eyhülislâm, 61, 65, 171, 174, 191n, 206–7, 219n, 220n, 229, 238, 271, 274–5 Shâfiʿî school, 231–2, 262n, 276, 288n Shiʿa/Shiʿism/Shiʿite, 25, 32, 40, 45n, 51, 58, 85n, 192n, 221n, 256 silsile, 9, 18, 21–37, 40, 42–4, 45n, 46n, 48n, 52, 55–6, 58–60, 68, 83n, 86n, 89, 97, 99, 105n, 121, 131, 149n, 151n, 191n, 193n, 217, 218n, 222n, 242, 249, 279, 282, 290n, 292, 294, 299–304 Sivâsiye order, 58–9, 76, 82n, 269, 279, 285n, 289n Suhrawardiyya order, 18, 24, 26–9, 32–3, 40–1, 43–4, 45n12, 292 Sünbüliye order, 57, 59–60, 65, 74, 76–7, 105n, 106n, 117, 136, 149n, 166, 172, 273, 279, 289n, 294 Sunni/Sunnism, 10n, 25, 51, 84n, 172, 192n, 206, 209, 211, 238, 241, 261n, 293

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tarikat, 103, 128, 130, 134, 150n, 153n, 179, 245–6, 256 tayy-ı zamân ve mekân (transcending of time and space), 42, 48n, 68, 146 telkîn, 23–4, 28 Tezkîretü’l-Evliyâ, 127, 160–1, 189n Tezkîretü’l-Halvetiye, 23, 77, 279 Timurids, 18, 22, 29–30, 40–4, 50–2, 55, 64, 272, 293, 302 tobacco, 78, 280, 290n Turkish ethnicity/language, 2, 10n, 18, 45n, 50, 71, 85n, 92n, 105n, 151n, 152n, 154n, 176, 183, 192n, 193n, 207, 210, 218, 219n, 237, 240, 243, 250, 259, 262n, 263n, 264n, 267n, 282, 286n, 296, 298 ʿulama’/ʿulema, 3, 60, 69, 151n, 183, 207 vakıf/evkâf (pious foundations), 10n, 36, 70, 84n, 126, 171, 174, 190n, 192n, 205, 219n, 225, 227, 264n vefk-talismans, 69, 140, 154n Vird-i settâr (Halveti litany), 8, 57, 100, 250, 252–6, 258, 265n, 266n women, 16, 31, 34, 42, 52, 55, 62, 67, 70, 72, 74–5, 84n, 98, 105n, 140–2, 155n, 187, 192n, 199, 235, 240 Zeyniye order, 54, 66, 69–70, 81n, 178, 193n, 234, zikr (dhikr), 24, 31, 34, 47n, 57, 99–100, 136, 153n, 175, 205, 234, 243, 247, 250, 256–8, 271, 273, 276, 278, 286n

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