1 Lineages of Ottoman Kalām

Kalām had evolved through several epochs by the time Ottoman scholars entered the arena. Early Islamic doctrinal debates were contested between a number of groups, some of the more influential consisting of: Mu‘tazili supporters of full human agency, divine justice, and responsibility who accepted rational argumentation; Hanbali traditionalists who prioritized revealed knowledge (naql)—particularly prophetic hadith reports—over all other forms of proofs; and Murji’i partisans, who believed individuals would face God’s judgment only in the afterlife.

In the course of these debates, which sometimes turned violent, supporters of such broad sets of positions sharpened their own stance in response to their opponents’ critiques, borrowed arguments from each other, and ultimately reached a sort of consensus on certain points. Over time, as doctrinal debates continued to evolve, the original group coherence broke down, to be replaced by new groupings. Scholars, rarely obliged to follow consistent belief guidelines, frequently supported positions lifted from multiple groupings. As a result, the borders between primary belief orientations were frequently blurry, as well as constantly shifting. For example, while many Sunni scholars and theologians sympathized with various Mu‘tazili views, the grouping eventually became largely identified with Twelver Shi‘i philosophy, while the Murji’i strand later became identified with latitudinarian Sufism. Similarly, in the early centuries traditionalists persuasively portrayed both falsafa (philosophic rationalism) and kalām as doubt inducing and dangerous activities.⁹

As A.I. Sabra argued, falsafa and kalām evolved in opposition to each other, with each seeing itself as the supreme science, independent of all others. Advocates for this Islamicate form of philosophic rationalism, the most notable of which included al-Kindī (d. 259/873), al-Fārābī (d. 339/950), Ibn Sīnā/Avicenna (d. 428/1038), and Ibn Rushd/Averroes (d. 595/1198), saw themselves as searching for truth for its own sake, as contemporary representatives of ancient sciences exemplified by demonstrative proofs, doctrinal neutrality, and genuinely rational methodology.¹⁰ In response to falsafa critiques of kalām as a pseudoscience offering little more than apologetics in defense of Islamic belief, and recognizing the power of such critiques, prominent mutakallimūn came to integrate philosophic method into their doctrinal arguments, while at the same time extending the reach of kalām discourse into fields well beyond what modern scholars might recognize as “theology.”¹¹

Several Ash‘ari scholars fleshed out kalām’s response to the falsafa critique in the fifth/eleventh to eighth/fourteenth centuries. Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013) first supported al-Ashʿarī’s statements by pioneering a system of intellectual premises built on an atomistic theory of the world. In response to Aristotelian critiques of al-Bāqillānī’s atomistic premises set out by the falāsifa (philosophers), especially by Avicenna, Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085) introduced reason (ʿaql) to kalām discourse.¹² Following al-Juwaynī’s contribution, al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) argued against the purely rationalist positions of the falāsifa as a whole, on the grounds that their methods were inadequate to prove several of their doctrine’s main points. For this reason, he argued that the falāsifa as a group failed to demonstrate their claim of philosophic rationalism’s all-encompassing demonstrative consistency. As an alternative, al-Ghazālī, and those who followed him, proposed co-opting philosophic methodology and rigor to defend kalām positions.¹³ Within this school of thought, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) perfected al-Ghazālī’s challenge to the philosophers by combining and applying the methodology of rationalism (ʿaql) to confirm statements made by revealed knowledge (naql).

Once falsafa methodology and rhetoric had been thus co-opted into kalām discourse, most scholars followed their lead, aside from falsafa rationalists and traditionalists, who eventually grew somewhat marginalized within mainstream Islamicate intellectual circles. In addition to marginalizing unsympathetic philosophers and traditionalists, this “Avicennan turn” in response to Ibn Sīnā’s critique also transformed kalām under the aegis of an all-encompassing disciplinary approach, which came to be known as ḥikma (wisdom).¹⁴ Over the subsequent centuries, kalām evolved into a rigorous philosophic school of its own, which might be more accurately classified as a “religious philosophy” or a “philosophical theology.”¹⁵ By the ninth/fifteenth century, an admixture of rationalist philosophical methodology and rhetoric had been progressively incorporated into the discipline, such that the postclassical (al-mutaʾakhkhirūn) form of kalām came to prioritize logic, design, and strength of argumentation over madhhab affiliation.¹⁶

Living in an era defined by the dual threats of the Isma‘ili daʿwa and the doubt inducing faylasūf, al-Ghazālī also strove to ensure legal effect for one’s doctrinal thinking. As Frank Griffel has pointed out, al-Ghazālī denied the right of repentance (istitāba) to those found guilty of secret apostasy (zindīqs) due to their demonstrated internal beliefs, regardless of their external statements of faith. He also paved the way for state representatives to adjudicate the status of one’s belief based on one’s external actions, primarily by blurring the legal distinction between a Muslim guilty of internal unbelief (kufr) and a believer actively professing apostasy (irtidād).¹⁷ Over time, legists and other scholars elaborated on actions that signified such internal belief to the satisfaction of governing authorities. One of the earlier and more celebrated victims of this position was Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191), author of the controversial tract Hayākil al-nūr (Temples of light). Due to the bāṭınī (Neoplatonic, gnostic, esoteric) nature of his ishrāqī (illuminationist) writings, which went on to influence generations of philosophical Sufis, his views were considered enough of a provocation by the Ayyubid authorities of his day to justify execution.¹⁸

Coinciding with an era of great intellectual, philosophical, and political experimentation in the wake of the Mongol Irruption, in the decades and centuries after Suhrawardī’s execution, several philosophically inclined scholars strove to rehabilitate Suhrawardī’s ishrāqī thought and reconcile it with legal strictures on bāṭınī thought. This scholarly philosophical trend has often been referred to by modern scholars as the “Shirazi school”—which actually appears to be two related, but somewhat distinct, intellectual clusters. Characteristic of the era, the boundaries of this “Shirazi school” were not particularly well defined, nor were its scholars’ doctrinal identities uniformly clear. One group was made up of predominantly Ash‘ari scholars who integrated Ibn ʿArabī’s (d. 638/1240) metaphysics, Suhrawardī’s illuminationism, and Avicennan ideas with post-Ghāzālī kalām. Prominent scholars in this group included ʿAḍud al-Dīn al-Ījī (d. 756/1355), Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 793/1390), and al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 817/1413)—each of whom came to play a major role in the Ottoman kalām curriculum.¹⁹ A parallel Shirazi cluster was characterized by scholars who either ignored or were not remembered for engaging with kalām but were similarly engaged with the philosophical, metaphysical, and mystical debates of the first group. Characterized as more mystically inclined, and usually discussed together with the evolution of Twelver Shi‘i philosophy, such scholars included Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 673/1274), Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 710/1311), and Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtaqī (d. 903/1497).²⁰ Both groups commented on the legacies of Avicenna/Ibn Sīnā, Suhrawardī, and Ibn ʿArabī. At least two scholars were solidly entrenched in both groups, providing the tie between the two as both scholarly commonalities and chronological bookends, with Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s (d. 672/1274) Tajrīd informing philosophical discussions from the inception and Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī’s (d. 908/1502) Shawākil al-ḥūr providing one of the last texts in common use in both Ottoman and Safavid circles.²¹

Dawānī, the last figure of mutual influence in these twinned Shirazi schools, mentored several students who went on to successful careers as policymakers and scholars in the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Empires. Their common teacher may partially explain not only why his works were studied throughout these empires but why what has become categorized in modern scholarly literature as distinct Ottoman kalām and Twelver Shi‘i philosophy schools shared several common scholars who wrote prior to the turn of the tenth/sixteenth century.²² In the wake of the Safavid revolution, with new issues to confront in a radically changed political landscape, these related schools started to go their separate ways as distinct fields.²³

During the same epoch, as the Ash‘ari kalām school adopted philosophical methodology and reigned supreme throughout most of the central Islamic lands, the rival Maturidi kalām school gradually spread from Transoxania into Iran and Anatolia along with Turkic nomadic populations making their way westward. In the course of this spread westward, Maturidi scholars sharpened their arguments against Ash‘ari criticism while adopting certain Ash‘ari positions, so much so that ultimately the two schools grew quite intertwined. By the eighth/fourteenth century, scholars such as Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771/1370), Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 793/1390), and al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 817/1413), among others, argued that both Ash‘ari and Maturidi belief systems should be recognized as legitimately falling within the broader grouping of ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa (lit. “People of the Sunna and Community,” i.e., Sunnis)—each threatened not so much by each other as by anthropomorphist trends (mujassima), which is how Hanbali and Karrami traditionalist arguments were often labeled.²⁴

The culmination of these intertwined intellectual trends meant that what became Ottoman kalām was heavily influenced by positions and debates articulated by the following group of middle-period scholars: Najm al-Dīn ʿUmar al-Nasafī (d. 536/1142), Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (d. 631/1233), Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286), Shams al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī (d. 749/1348), ʿAḍud al-Dīn al-Ījī (d. 756/1355), Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 793/1390), al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 817/1413), Khayālī Aḥmad Efendi (d. 874/1470), and Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī (d. 908/1502).²⁵ With the exception of al-Nasafī, al-Taftāzānī, and Khayālī, these scholars were all Ash‘ari affiliates.²⁶ In addition, while al-Nasafī is considered a staunch Maturidi advocate, most Ottoman madrasa students read his ʿAqāʾid through al-Taftāzānī’s and Khayālī’s commentaries on it.²⁷ Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī played something of a mediating role between al-Nasafī’s positions and those of his Ash‘ari colleagues, has been said to have merged Ash‘ari and Maturidi positions in his Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid, and cannot be reliably assigned to either school.²⁸ Meanwhile, Khayālī Aḥmad Efendi, the only Ottoman scholar Mustafa Said Yazıcıoğlu found listed in a tenth/sixteenth-century manuscript describing the Ottoman kalām curriculum, appears to have spent much of his career adjudicating famous theological debates between the aforementioned scholars, as he is credited with either commentaries or glosses on the treatises included in the Ottoman curriculum by al-Nasafī, al-Ījī, al-Taftāzānī, al-Jurjānī, and al-Dawānī.²⁹ In light of his own body of work, his position, and his lifespan, it seems likely that Khayālī may have played a major role in defining the first standardized Ottoman madrasa curriculum on kalām. A product of his era, Khayālī was later criticized by the Ottoman scholar ʿUthmān Kilīsī al-ʿUryānī (d. 1167/1754) for insufficiently emphasizing the differences between Ash‘ari and Maturidi positions—which may have simply reflected the reality that Ottoman articulations of Maturidi kalām had grown far more detailed and distinct from its Ash‘ari cousin by the twelfth/eighteenth century.³⁰ On the whole, considering how prominent, even dominant, Ash‘ari scholars were within the madrasa theology curriculum, just how Maturidi was Ottoman kalām in the late ninth/fifteenth century?

A generation later, in the wake of the Safavid challenge, it appears that self-identifying as following the Maturidi school came to carry greater importance within high Ottoman ulama circles. As if to signal this point, the powerful chief mufti (şeyhü’l-islām) Ibn Kemāl/ Kemālpaşazāde (d. 940/1534) devoted an entire treatise to clarifying doctrinal differences between the Maturidi and Ash‘ari schools,³¹ which was one of a long line of Ottoman ulama treatises engaging with Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī’s doctrinal poem describing Ash‘ari positions, al-Nūniyya.³² As the early Ottoman theologian Hıżır Beg (d. 863/1459) completed an Arabic versed exposition of doctrinal belief entitled Qaṣīdat al-nūniyya, and his student, the aforementioned Khayālī Aḥmad Efendi, completed a Turkish commentary on that work, entitled Sharḥ qaṣīdat al-nūniyya, Kemālpaşazāde’s treatise was likely informed by all three of the aforementioned works and meant to definitively settle such debates within an Ottoman context.³³ It also appears likely that Kemālpaşazāde intended his contribution to better delineate divergences between Ash‘ari and Maturidi belief systems in order to more effectively promote the latter as reflecting Ottoman imperial identity. The conversation between these four texts delineating doctrinal belief suggests that one of the legacies of Ottoman Sunnism was to rescue Maturidi distinctiveness from its earlier blurring with Ash‘ari beliefs under what Mehmet Kalaycı has characterized as the “Rāzī framework” dominating ninth/fifteenth-century Ottoman letters.³⁴ A century after Kemālpaşazāde’s contribution, the Indian Naqshbandi Shaykh Aḥmad al-Sirhindī (d. 1034/1624) seemingly confirmed Maturidi success by arguing that even though both doctrines are properly Sunni, one comes to prefer Maturidi over Ash‘ari positions after contemplating their arguments more deeply. Although he credited al-Ashʿarī with introducing ʿaql proofs to discussions of belief, al-Sirhindī conceded that the difficulty of such contemplations had emboldened religion’s enemies and driven them on the path to Salafism. However, in his own day, those interested in the light of God’s prophecy followed the ahl al-ḥaqq (people of verity)—which he associated with the Maturidi doctrine.³⁵

Yet another middle-period trend that shaped Ottoman Sunnism was a drive for certainty in both religious belief and the legal consequences of such belief. Several fifth/eleventh- to eighth/fourteenth-century scholars, including Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī, and Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī, who also came to play a prominent role in the Ottoman kalām curriculum, strove to have the study of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and its sources (uṣūl al-fiqh) be treated as science according to the standards of Aristotelian theory. Loosely related to al-Ghazālī’s and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s integration of falsafa methodology into kalām discourse, these scholars treated the reconfigured kalām as an external corroboration of the four accepted sources of Islamic jurisprudence. Demonstrating just how far theological disputation had progressed, from a shunned source of doubt to a philosophically rigorous source of certainty, kalām proofs for the existence of God and accuracy of Quranic revelation, the first and primary source of fiqh, were taken to subsequently ensure the accuracy of the remaining three fiqh sources (hadith, consensus, and analogy). In effect, by striving for certainty in legal theory via demonstrative proofs as opposed to what they presented as the earlier reliance on taqlīd (imitation), such scholars tried to render legal practice more “scientific,” and thus more persuasive. Treating uṣūl al-fiqh sources as scientific proofs from which legal assessments (aḥkām) can then be drawn, such scholars, particularly Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa (d. 747/1346), laid the groundwork for later legists to claim religious certainty in their interpretations of beliefs and subsequent legal certainty in specified punishments for countering those beliefs.³⁶ By the late ninth/fifteenth century, Ottoman scholars further explored and extended the implications of this trend by arguing that jurists’ opinions qualified as fulfilling the requirements of legal certainty. Not surprisingly, the culmination of this trend rendered religious belief increasingly prominent and legally relevant, additionally threatening public figures who refused to conform, as well as communities whose actions were considered to display external signs of internal unbelief (kufr).³⁷

As Ottoman Sunnism was just taking shape, kalām had evolved well beyond the founders’ (mutaqaddimūn) emphasis on revealed knowledge of the earlier centuries, which tended to emphasize fairly straightforward interpretations of scriptural proofs, according to madhhab affiliation. Following al-Ghazālī’s and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s reformulation of the discipline, and the contributions of several subsequent scholars, kalām had evolved into a complex, comprehensive, and philosophically informed discourse, which provided doctrinal certainty and external legal corroboration for the opinions of state-affiliated ulama. Of course, an alternative view advocated for keeping philosophical methodology and discourse out of kalām and concentrating purely on broader religious doctrine (uṣūl al-dīn) verified via naql revealed proofs. Supporters of this view included the Hanbali scholars Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) and his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350), as well as the Mamluk scholar Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūtī (d. 911/1505).³⁸ While this alternative view might appear to represent a narrow-minded reliance on revelation, it might also be seen as resisting the ongoing expansion of theological discourse into matters and disputes that went well beyond the “original intent” of prophetic revelation.

Generally speaking, by the end of the ninth/fifteenth century, both the Maturidi and Ash‘ari schools had mutually recognized each other’s legitimacy as Sunni positions, the Shirazi school(s) had successfully rehabilitated mystically inclined rational philosophy, scholars continued to search for certainty in religious belief, and some scholars articulated arguments rendering kalām legally relevant. The integration of philosophical discourse into theology, coupled with the search for certainty and the recharacterization of ahl al-sunna as accepting both Maturidi and Ash‘ari positions while rejecting others, eventually led to the political use of kalām as a form of state legitimation, with deadly consequences for some. As first Mollā Luṭfī (d. 900/1494) and later Mollā Ḳābıż (d. 933/1527) were to discover, once state-backed scholar-bureaucrats had moved beyond certainty in religious belief to rendering such correct belief legally actionable, kalām became a dangerous discourse for those publicly insisting on views considered beyond the pale.³⁹

As the imperial madrasa infrastructure and curriculum reached its full articulation by the middle of the tenth/sixteenth century, a recognizable Ottoman kalām branch had emerged. While this branch is usually described as simply “Maturidi,” it might be more accurate to follow M. Sait Özervarlı’s lead in characterizing this as a “new synthesis.”⁴⁰ This new synthesis emerged together with Ottoman Sunnism, maintained continuous scholarly dialogue with classic works of the Ash‘ari school while largely defending Maturidi positions, absorbed the methodology and rhetoric of what is usually described as the “Shirazi school” of ḥikma-driven philosophy into theological dialogue, and had grown both legally relevant and politically powerful—at least in those areas under Ottoman sovereignty.

2 An Engaged Participant

One emblematic participant in the small circle of imperial elites who engaged in a broad range of political and scholarly discourse, including kalām disputation and uṣūl al-dīn commentary, and thus helped define Ottoman Sunnism, was Şehzāde Ḳorḳud (d. 919/1513). In the popular literature on Ottoman history, he is more commonly recalled (when remembered at all) as a complaining, compromised, and weak prince who proved completely unable to compete against his courageous and decisive younger half-brother, Sultan Selīm I (r. 918–926/1512–1520). In reality, Ḳorḳud’s political biography was far more complex than the image promoted by subsequent court historians, and his gradual erasure from the pantheon of Ottoman letters is itself worthy of study.⁴¹

In preparation for a long-anticipated struggle to succeed his father Bāyezīd II (r. 886–918/1481–1512), throughout the first decade of the tenth/sixteenth century Ḳorḳud strove to portray himself as a well-rounded candidate who was intellectually and ethically prepared to assume the role of an ideal Ottoman and Islamic ruler. He was not alone in such endeavors. As Christopher Markiewicz has demonstrated, Idrīs-i Bidlīsī (d. 926/1520), during the same decade, strove to portray first Şehzāde Aḥmed (d. 919/1513), then Şehzāde Şehinşāh (d. 917/1511), and finally Selīm each as respective heirs apparent to the “viceregency of God” (khilāfa-yi raḥmānī).⁴² While each of these four surviving sons of Bāyezīd II could by 917/1511 count on various personal strengths and centers of support, only Ḳorḳud is credited with authoring treatises that laid out opinions on matters of faith, legitimacy, and correct governmental practice.

Turning the “publish or perish” mantra somewhat on its head, the largely forgotten Ḳorḳud proved more prolific, engaged, and successful in different realms of belles-lettres than any other Ottoman royal, ever. He has also resisted neat classification as either amīr (commander) or ʿālim (scholar), as his other accomplishments in the fields of poetry, musical composition, calligraphy, and other fine arts might be considered consistent with either category. İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı treated Ḳorḳud as something of a weak prince who pursued a side interest in Arabic legal treatises—a view largely consistent with that promoted by Ottoman historians in the decades following Ḳorḳud’s death.⁴³ More recently, Ahmet Hamdi Furat considered Ḳorḳud a proper Shafi‘i faqīh who happened to be an Ottoman royal, as opposed to a fully competitive prince who nearly succeeded Bāyezīd II.⁴⁴ Why did a prince in the midst of a highly politicized and dangerous succession intrigue also engage in seemingly obtuse questions of theological discourse? As Lutz Berger has suggested, “theological knowledge was part and parcel of the academic credentials of scholars and therefore their social standing.”⁴⁵ Perhaps Ḳorḳud hoped to persuade potential supporters that he was the most worthy candidate to succeed his father Bāyezīd by engaging directly in such matters as a participating ʿālim, as opposed to merely patronizing such scholarly works as an amīr.

While Ḳorḳud’s oeuvre is impressive for a royal figure normally obliged to follow the career track of a military sovereign, there remains a question of authorship. His extant correspondence, poetry, calligraphy, and musical compositions raise no particular red flags concerning authorship, no more than with any other historical figure living five centuries ago. However, his Arabic treatises are another matter. He is credited with as many as seven discursive treatises and a collection of legal opinions, four of which remain extant within Süleymaniye Library’s Aya Sofya collection. Three of these extant texts exhibit a high level of scholarly Arabic, free from obvious mistakes and in line with the conventions of the time.⁴⁶ One of those texts analyzed here, Daʿwat al-nafs al-ṭāliḥa, survives in three manuscript copies. The draft version includes a prefatory statement attributing the text to Ḳorḳud while stating that an otherwise unknown scholar, ʿAbd al-Salām b. Muḥammad al-Anṣārī, dictated the text, on behalf of “the sultan of scholarship and scholar of his era,” Ḳorḳud.⁴⁷ The fourth extant text, Wasīlat al-aḥbāb, which the prince addressed directly to his father as an extended and private explanation of his sudden 915/1509 departure for Mamluk Egypt, is riddled with basic Arabic grammatical errors.⁴⁸ Comparison of all known copies of these texts attributed to Ḳorḳud suggests multiple possibilities in terms of authorship. Perhaps Ḳorḳud authored all texts attributed to him but had al-Anṣārī dictate (and edit) the draft version of al-Daʿwa on his behalf. Alternatively, perhaps al-Anṣārī was the ghost writer of al-Daʿwa, or perhaps it was a group effort by more than one scholar resident at Ḳorḳud’s court working under the prince’s direction. What is certain is that there is great discrepancy between the levels of Arabic competence displayed in Daʿwat al-nafs al-ṭāliḥa and in Wasīlat al-aḥbāb and that all of the works were claimed by, and credited to, Şehzāde Ḳorḳud.

Through these texts, Ḳorḳud presented his views forcefully, his argumentation reflecting the worldview, expertise, and literature of Ottoman ulama around the turn of the tenth/sixteenth century. While many of his views were emblematic of this stage in the formulation of Ottoman religious identity, they were not entirely consistent with what came to be adopted. Notably, Ḳorḳud preferred the Shafi‘i madhhab, even while the Ottoman madrasa system of his own day had already established a definitive Hanafi preference. Similarly, he condemned Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), whom Kemālpaşazāde (d. 940/1534) rehabilitated after Ḳorḳud’s death, following Sultan Selīm’s public visit to and restoration of Ibn ʿArabī’s tomb during the 922/1516 Syria campaign.⁴⁹

Ḳorḳud’s intellectual journey is itself somewhat indicative of broader trends in ninth-to-tenth/fifteenth-to-sixteenth-century intellectual thought. Educated primarily by Anatolian-based scholars who were in turn heavily influenced by Timurid and Aqqoyunlu scholarly circles, Ḳorḳud also maintained a strong Egypt connection toward the end of his career. He requested theological advice from the famous Cairene scholar Abū Yaḥyā Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520),⁵⁰ and relied on the aforementioned Egyptian shaykh with the same family name, ʿAbd al-Salām b. Muhammad al-Anṣārī, to both dictate the rough draft of his magnum opus and negotiate his 1510 return from exile in Cairo.⁵¹ To better understand Ḳorḳud’s personal journey and subsequent contribution to an emergent Ottoman Sunnism, let us now examine his educational formation, intellectual circles, his oeuvre as a whole, and some of the arguments contained in two of his most prominent treatises.

3 A Palace Education

Ḳorḳud’s educational formation combined a fairly typical Anatolian education, dominated by post-Timurid Iranian and Central Asian influences, and a somewhat less typical current characterized by Egyptian Ash‘ari influences.⁵² His father Bāyezīd’s Amasya court retained teachers, calligraphers, artists, and scholars, several with strong connections to Iran or other eastern lands. These teachers included Mollā Ṣalāḥu’d-dīn (fl. 881/1476), Amasyalı Haṭīb Ḳāsım (d. ca. 926/1520), Mīrim Çelebi Maḥmūd (d. 930/1524), Muʿarrifzāde, and Amasyalı Shaykh Ḥamdullāh (d. ca. 926/1520).⁵³ Several of those known to have been resident at Bāyezīd’s Amasya court should have exerted influence on Ḳorḳud’s education. However, as little was recorded about Ḳorḳud’s childhood in Amasya per se, the only direct connection made between him and these teachers comes from a twelfth/eighteenth-century biographical notice stating that as a child he had studied with the Bukhara emigré and first significant Ottoman master calligrapher, Shaykh Ḥamdullāh of Amasya, who has been credited with designing a definitively Ottoman script.⁵⁴

There is evidence that one of Bāyezīd’s oldest and closest companions during his posting in Amasya and throughout his life, Amasyalı Müʾeyyedzāde ʿAbdu’r-raḥmān Çelebi (860–922/1456–1516),⁵⁵ played a mentoring role for Ḳorḳud. Müʾeyyedzāde was a talented scholar and litterateur who was forced to flee Anatolia in 883/1479 following an execution order from Sultan Meḥmed, ostensibly for supplying his son Bāyezīd with opium.⁵⁶ After a brief stop in Aleppo, Müʾeyyedzāde studied in Shiraz under the prominent Ash‘ari scholar and Shirazi school of philosophy paragon Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī while waiting for events to turn more propitious in Istanbul.⁵⁷ Soon after Bāyezīd rose to power, this young scholar and boon companion followed the new sultan to Istanbul. Although not exceptionally prolific on his own account, Müʾeyyedzāde was a star student of Dawānī, frequented the same circles as the foremost religious scholars of his own generation, and guided many of the empire’s religious policies from the 880s/1480s right up to his execution in 922/1516, both as Bāyezīd II’s close companion and later as first Anadolu and then Rumeli ḳāḍīʿasker (military judge). A powerful minister and scholarly practitioner, he boasted a personal library that was reportedly one of the largest ever seen in Istanbul, the inventory of which continues to provide a useful source for early modern Ottoman intellectual history.⁵⁸

Müʾeyyedzāde once responded to a personal request by sending Ḳorḳud a treatise addressing “complex issues of kalām,” accompanied by a versified Arabic introduction offering exaggerated praise of the prince. As no scholar named the treatise, it has not yet been identified and may no longer exist.⁵⁹ Although Ḳorḳud never referred to Müʾeyyedzāde directly, such personal ties, recalled in the teẕkire literature several decades after the fact, suggest that this powerful minister, scholar, and close friend of his father informed Ḳorḳud’s views and scholarly positions. Similarly, Müʾeyyedzāde’s active engagement in the field of kalām suggests an ongoing discussion within high imperial circles on matters of theological import and their role in society.

One teacher, whose court career is at least indicative of the type of intellectual influences that surrounded the young Ḳorḳud in Amasya and demonstrates how Bāyezīd II himself engaged with scholarly Arabic kalām treatises, was Mollā Ṣalāḥu’d-dīn (fl. 881/1476).⁶⁰ Mollā Ṣalāḥu’d-dīn reportedly instructed prince Bāyezīd in Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī’s commentary on al-Nasafī’s creed, Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid (Commentary on the tenets of faith), going so far as to write an explanatory gloss on the text in Arabic for Bāyezīd’s benefit.⁶¹ While Ḳorḳud never cited any of Mollā Ṣalāḥu’d-dīn’s work, he also studied al-Taftāzānī’s Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid at least as early as his teen years, as he was gifted a copy of it in 890/1485.⁶² Proof of his later familiarity with the eminent theologian came when Ḳorḳud cited Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid along with several other works by al-Taftāzānī over 30 times in his own kalām engaged treatise, Ḥāfiẓ al-insān.⁶³

After Ḳorḳud was transferred around 884/1480 from his father’s court in Amasya to his grandfather Meḥmed II’s court in Istanbul,⁶⁴ one of his teachers was Mollā Seyyid İbrāhīm (d. 918/1512). Like other influential figures in Ḳorḳud’s youth, Seyyid İbrāhīm had connections to both Iran and Anatolia. A somewhat colorful character, boasting miraculous powers, İbrāhīm’s father had been an Iranian notable who had previously emigrated to a village near Amasya.⁶⁵

While the source evidence is somewhat fragmentary for his earliest instruction, it does suggest that the young Ḳorḳud was exposed in Amasya and Istanbul to the Iranian and Central Asian influences that were current in his day. Via those teaching at the court, the prince should have been exposed to debates concerning falsafa methodology, the integration of philosophy with kalām, both Maturidi and Ash‘ari beliefs, and even miraculous events connected to occult practice.

Ḳorḳud also appears to have maintained a Cairo connection, both politically and intellectually. The origins of this connection remain uncertain, but as an adult Ḳorḳud collaborated extensively with ʿAbd al-Salām b. Muḥammad al-Anṣārī. Described only as an “al-Azhar Shaykh” in Wasīlat al-aḥbāb, this scholar played a key role in Ḳorḳud’s political writings and negotiations from at least 1508 onward.⁶⁶ ʿAbd al-Salām might have been related to the celebrated Cairene scholar and mystic Abū Yaḥyā Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520), from whom Ḳorḳud sought a legal opinion concerning the legal status of concubines.⁶⁷ These relationships suggest a level of intellectual interaction between both Ottoman and Mamluk ulama and umarāʾ, and since Egypt was famously a stronghold of the Shafi‘i madhhab, it might also explain to some extent Ḳorḳud’s apparent Shafi‘i affiliation.

4 Following a Curriculum, Starting a Library

The young Ḳorḳud’s strong predilection for scholarship was also confirmed by gifts recorded as presented to him in a 890/1485 register, when he was roughly fifteen-sixteen years old, and soon after he had been assigned to his first provincial posting. While all the princes recorded in the gifts register, including Ḳorḳud, were gifted falcons, concubines, and slaves, only this scholarly şehzāde was also presented with texts covering a broad range of literary, philosophical, and legal issues.⁶⁸ Of these six texts, one was Niẓāmī’s (d. ca. 605/1209) poetry quintet,⁶⁹ one was devoted to jurisprudence or governance,⁷⁰ and four were devoted to issues of philosophy and theology. Each of these texts demonstrate the intellectual milieu to which the young prince was exposed growing up, although disentangling precisely how certain texts influenced him remains a challenge.

A text addressing either jurisprudence or governance was Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar (The handbook), a generic title which could refer to several works providing the early modern equivalent of college law textbooks. In his own scholarship, Ḳorḳud cited works with the same title by the Egyptian Hanafi jurist Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī (d. 321/933), the Baghdad Hanafi jurist al-Qudūrī (d. 428/1037), and the Shafi‘i-influenced Maliki jurist al-Shaykh al-Khalīl b. Isḥāq (d. 775/1374). It is equally possible that the title referred to a text recently analyzed by Hüseyin Yılmaz, Mukhtaṣar fī l-siyāsa wa-umūr al-salṭana (Compendium of governance and the affairs of rulership). This anonymous Arabic text was completed early in Bāyezīd II’s reign, urging him to follow the lead of his deceased father, Meḥmed II, in promoting a devşirme class of trained professionals at the expense of old Anatolian elites. Consistent with the Mamluk tradition of moralistic mirrors for princes, Mukhtaṣar advocated a more juridical and hierarchical view of correct governance than previous works found in the Ottoman milieu, which tended to be more abstract and lean toward hagiographical presentations of ruler perfection.⁷¹ Serving as an administrative manual based on older Islamicate examples, this work was capable of providing several of the governance critiques Ḳorḳud later made in his Daʿwat al-nafs al-ṭāliḥa.

The first of four texts likely addressing religious belief, listed as simply K. Isfarāʾīnī (The book of Isfarāʾīnī), could be one of several works by any of three scholars hailing from Isfarāyīn in Khorāsān. While available evidence does not allow full confirmation of which text the gift register referred to, the topics in which Ḳorḳud most engaged suggest that he was likely given the text by “al-Ustādh” Abū Isḥāq al-Isfarāʾīnī’s (d. 418/1027) al-ʿAqīda (The creed). Covering a wide range of theological questions from an intellectual grandson of al-ʿAshʿarī, who broke with him on several points as a rationally minded and Mu‘tazili-leaning Ash‘ari theologian, al-ʿAqīda was one of the foundational texts of kalām, and clearly worthy of consultation and instruction in the late ninth/fifteenth century.⁷²

Another text, listed with the generic title Sharḥ-i ʿaqāʾid (Commentary on the creeds), can be tentatively identified through Ḳorḳud’s own citations as Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī’s Sharḥ al-ʿaqāʾid, a kalām classic that greatly influenced Ottoman theological study.⁷³ Credited with combining and reconciling Ash‘ari and Maturidi kalām disputation, al-Taftāzānī’s commentary served as an exploration, critique, and philosophical elaboration of the rather brief al-ʿAqāʾid text by the Maturidi theologian Najm al-Dīn ʿUmar al-Nasafī.⁷⁴ Finally, while Ḳorḳud cited all of these scholars, the only Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid he ever quoted by name was al-Taftāzānī’s celebrated commentary, which he referred to five times in two of his works.⁷⁵

The final two texts listed on the gift register consisted of a commentary and a gloss on that same commentary. Listed as Sharḥ-i Maṭāliʿ and Ḥāşiye-i maṭāliʿ, these texts were most likely the Sharḥ al-Maṭāliʿ of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī al-Taḥtānī (d. 766/1365) and Ḥāshiyyat al-Maṭāliʿ by al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī. Consistent with the intellectual genealogies operative in the post-Mongol era, these texts were directly related to, and expanded on, a work originally produced by an earlier philosopher. The original work in the chain was Maṭāliʿ al-anwār (Ascensions of the illuminations) by Sirāj al-Dīn al-Urmawī (d. 682/1283), a meditation on logic and philosophy by a highly influential and well-traveled scholar.⁷⁶ Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī produced a commentary on the logic section of al-Urmawī’s work, entitled Lawāmiʿ al-asrār fī sharḥ maṭāliʿ al-anwār (Luminous mysteries in a commentary on the ascensions of the illuminations), which became known simply as Sharḥ al-Maṭāliʿ. This text and its author were sufficiently renowned that al-Jurjānī traveled from his Astarabad home to Herat to study the text in person with the elderly al-Rāzī. Later, while in Cairo instructing students on al-Rāzī’s Sharḥ, al-Jurjānī produced his own gloss on that commentary, which he entitled Ḥāshiyyat ʿalā sharḥ Maṭāliʿ al-anwār (A gloss on the commentary of the ascensions of the illuminations).⁷⁷ While Ḳorḳud chose not to cite any of these aforementioned texts by name in his own surviving works, he listed al-Urmawī as one of the favored scholars in his suggested “third doctrine,” quoted other works by al-Jurjānī several times, and criticized madrasa students of his day for reading only al-Jurjānī’s Ḥāshiyya and one other theology work—suggesting that al-Jurjānī’s text played a prominent role in Ottoman scholarly discourse by the end of the ninth/fifteenth century.⁷⁸

5 Engaging with Kalām

Turning from the prince’s intellectual formation to his own scholarly output, Ḳorḳud contributed two lengthy texts, which extensively explored issues of kalām disputation, uṣūl al-dīn, and their applicability to social issues of his day. Through these texts, he exemplified the range of mainstream thought within the Ottoman elite and left his mark on the evolution of Ottoman Sunnism.

In his voluminous 913/1508 Daʿwat al-nafs al-ṭāliḥa ilā l-aʿmāl al-ṣāliḥa, bi-l-ayāt al-ẓāhira wa-l-bayyināt al-bāhira (An errant soul’s summons to virtuous works, through manifest signs and splendid proofs),⁷⁹ Ḳorḳud articulated specific critiques of imperial administrative practice, as well as general views of correct ethical living. Meditating first on the inevitability of death and the finality of the hereafter, he devoted this most ambitious of his treatises to renouncing his candidacy to the throne while addressing various aspects of what he considered disregard for sharʿī ethical considerations within Ottoman domains.⁸⁰ His primary thesis was that no individual could both serve as an effective amīr (prince) in his corrupt times (or any time) and still hope to attain a pleasant afterlife. By criticizing what he saw as critical problems in Ottoman governance, Ḳorḳud’s al-Daʿwa implicitly provided his ideal vision for a well-functioning society. While Daʿwat al-nafs al-ṭāliḥa can in no way be classified as a kalām text, it provided strong arguments on the madrasa curriculum of the time, as well as kalām’s role in protecting society from dangerous or subversive trends and movements.

At roughly the same time that Ḳorḳud was working on al-Daʿwa, he (and his team of scholars) was also working on Ḥāfiẓ al-insān ʿan lāfiẓ al-īmān wa Allāh al-hādī ilā ṣirāṭ al-jinān (The individual’s protector from faith’s rejector, as God is the guide to the heavenly paths).⁸¹ This text was never completed, with the sole surviving copy bringing together 96 folios of a presentation draft, 16 folios repeating, in draft form, the end of the presentation draft, and a further 113 folios of draft copy, which ends in mid-thought. Since the text was referred to in al-Da‘wa, Ḳorḳud had clearly begun working on Ḥāfiẓ al-insān by 913/1508 and failed to complete it before his death in 919/1513.

With its strident arguments justifying secular enforcement and legal expansion of sharʿ-sanctioned punishments (aḥkām) for apostasy, Ḥāfiẓ al-insān provided a comprehensive kalām justification for the legally sanctioned takfīr of certain groups or individuals found guilty of exhibiting external signs of internal absence of faith. While not solely devoted to kalām debates, most of this text addressed kalām discourse and methodology, using the discipline as a basis to advocate for a more engaged state policy vis-à-vis religious belief. Together, these two texts demonstrate the rhetorical power of kalām discourse to promote policy positions justified as strengthening dīn ü devlet (religion and state).

Throughout Daʿwat al-nafs al-ṭāliḥa, Ḳorḳud presented arguments by which, taken together, he intended to define the ideal characteristics of the empire’s religious identity. He opened al-Daʿwa by first reflecting at length on the meaning of the afterlife, “purchasing this world with the other one,” and the concept of the “bankrupt one” (muflis). To do so, he opened with several Quranic verses and prophetic hadiths about Judgment Day, which themselves constituted something of an argument, an abstract outline for the entire text, and a demonstration of the persuasive power of revealed knowledge.⁸² Advocating on behalf of the poor and oppressed, in this introductory section he signaled a facility for naql argumentation by employing a string of revealed proofs in his appeal for ethical rule. In addition, he pointedly used the term ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa when countering Mu‘tazila arguments concerning the fate of the muflis, thus demonstrating something of a “Sunni consciousness” in his rhetorical selection.

Framing his resignation from ruling candidacy as an ethical imperative, Ḳorḳud next explained how one could never simultaneously enforce the dictates of both sharʿ (religious ethics) and the ʿurf (imperial legal convention) of his time as a sovereign ruler.⁸³ Nodding toward his political agenda, he implicitly promised to elevate the status of those he considered sharʿ-minded ulama, while equally promising to purge those corrupted ulama guilty of currying favor at court—presumably referring to those scholar-bureaucrats most responsible for establishing the nascent madrasa curriculum that would come to define Ottoman Sunnism.

Following the lead of the multiple Ash‘ari influences during his education, and consistent with the near merger of Maturidi and Ash‘ari views in the course of the ninth/fifteenth century, in Daʿwat al-nafs al-ṭāliḥa Ḳorḳud quoted over 20 pages from Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī’s (d. 771/1370) Muʿīd al-niʿam to describe how he defined and delineated an ideal religious identity. In one section, al-Subkī summarized how the legal madhhab factions grew hostile to each other, until eventually the ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa grew persuaded by al-Ashʿarī’s path, as laid out in the various ʿaqāʾid texts. After that, the Sunni groups came to include the enlightened ones among both the Hanafi and Shafi‘i, all of the Maliki followers, and the best of the Hanbali. Concurrently, some of the Hanafi and Shafi‘i adherents followed the Mu‘tazila, while some of the Hanbali turned toward the mujassima (anthropomorphists), neither of which should be considered Sunni. Tracing Mu‘tazili mistakes back to their origin during the reign of caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 197–218/813–833), al-Subkī rejected those who condemned others for making false statements without care and reflection, based on simplistic and preliminary external proofs. To demonstrate his point, he related an anecdote whereby al-Maʾmūn made a series of outrageous statements, which turned out to be truthful following clarification.⁸⁴

The quoted al-Subkī passage then urged the Sunni ulama to unite and continuously oppose those whom he characterized as factionalists, defined as those who attack Islam, oppose the two shaykhs Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, and cast down ʿĀʾisha. As he saw it, fighting against those who defame the Quran is a duty, so much so that each and every believer must engage with them. In addition, they should actively engage in proselytizing among Jews and Christians, instead of passively accepting their conversion.⁸⁵

Ḳorḳud was broadly sympathetic to the postclassical (muta’akhirūn) forms of theological disputation, which had successfully integrated falsafa methodology following Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s contribution. However, like many others of the era, he was exceedingly vigilant against the threat of falāsifa’s (philosophers) conclusions coming to dominate kalām discourse and, thus, undermining what he saw as correct ụsūl al-dīn doctrines. Accordingly, Ḳorḳud provided another extended quote of al-Subkī that condemned the falāsifa, those who had mixed kalām from the theologians with kalām from the falāsifa, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s branch of kalām argumentation, and the Mu‘tazili theologian al-Zamakhsharī’s (d. 538/1144) al-Kashshāf—which Ḳorḳud claimed that many ʿAjam (i.e., Iranians) read.⁸⁶ Having specified all the areas within and between falsafa and kalām discourses that were to be condemned, Ḳorḳud cited al-Subkī’s validation of al-Ghazālī’s and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s earlier use of falsafa methodology to counter their conclusions and defend ahl al-sunna doctrinal integrity. In this same passage, al-Subkī spoke out directly against those philosophically inclined scholars in his own day who referred to themselves as the “wise ones” (ḥukamāʾ). Following al-Subkī’s lead, Ḳorḳud argued forcefully that the only ones who should engage with the falāsifa, effectively heretics who undermine religious belief from within the community, are those who are fully trained in the branches of fiqh, cannot be misled by heretical (malāḥida) beliefs, and refuse to mix kalām with falsafa in a way that privileges falāsifa doctrinal conclusions.⁸⁷

In Ḥāfiẓ al-insān Ḳorḳud similarly condemned the introduction of epistemological doubt due to the mixture of falsafa and kalām (at kalām’s expense), labeling ḥikma (wisdom) the most indecent discipline afflicting Ottoman and ʿAjamī ulama. He specifically rejected teaching al-Hidāya (The guidance) and some of the leading commentaries on it, as these texts made students peripatetic and led to the removal of their beliefs, as well as their incarceration in the prison of error. This statement likely referred to the philosophical work Hidāyat al-ḥikma (Wisdom’s guide) by Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī (d. 660/1262), or the commentary on that work by the contemporary logician Mīr Ḥusayn al-Maybudī (d. 909/1504), a student of Dawānī whom Shah Ismāʿīl (d. 930/1524) had executed.⁸⁸ As Ḳorḳud explained in a lengthy section commenting on Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s views on perception, only revealed knowledge (naql), not rational speculation (ʿaql), can lead to certainty among the masses concerning the nature of the divine. Since pure rationalism ultimately depends on perception, which is inherently flawed and subjective, one must judiciously combine the two sources of knowledge, as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī had done.⁸⁹ Taken together, in these two texts Ḳorḳud appears to have been speaking out against what modern scholars have characterized as the “Shirazi school,” or perhaps just the branch that was in the process of becoming the Twelver Shi‘i offshoot of that school, when he was working on the texts between 914/1508 and 919/1513. He seems to have found their emphasis on ḥikma (wisdom) as a ruling principle, which was a highly popular motif at that time, to rely far too much on ʿaql at the expense of naql.

Toward the end of Ḥāfiẓ al-insān, after a passage analyzing the impediments to certainty one might face relying exclusively on either reason or tradition, Ḳorḳud asserted the existence of, and his advocacy for, a “third doctrine” (madhhab), which accepted kalām as the methodology for reaching legal certainty in judging kufr and in clarifying the importance of ritual acts such as prayer, almsgiving, and pilgrimage. Those scholars and their works, which he listed as belonging to his ideal “third madhhab,” included:

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), in Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl, al-Arbaʿīn, and al-Maḥṣūl;

Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (d. 631/1233), in Abkār al-afkār;

Sirāj al-Dīn al-Urmawī (d. 682/1283), in al-Taḥṣīl;

‘Aḍud al-Dīn al-Ījī (d. 756/1355), in al-Mawāqif;

Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771/1370), in Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ;

Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 793/1390), in Sharḥ al-maqāṣid; and

Badr al-Dīn al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392), in Sharḥ jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ.⁹⁰

Ḳorḳud argued that these scholars all agreed on the idea that individuals’ utterances convey certainty concerning the legal repercussions of scripture—and obedience thereof. As Ḳorḳud saw it, this favored group provided the correct medial position between extremist advocates for ʿaql and naql, respectively, between those whom he believed undermine dīn from within by mixing kalām with falsafa on one hand and the Hanbali mujassima literalists on the other.

While all the scholars Ḳorḳud listed—all Ash‘ari affiliates—were known in Ottoman madrasa circles, they were not all taught equally widely. Ḳorḳud’s favored al-Subkī text Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ, and al-Zarkashī’s commentary on it, never found a prominent place in the Ottoman madrasa curriculum, perhaps because Mamluk Ash‘ari works became dispensable after Kemālpaşazāde and others more clearly delineated differences between Maturidi and Ash‘ari thought. The inclusion of Sirāj al-Dīn al-Urmawī’s al-Taḥṣīl is something of an odd choice, as al-Urmawī’s Maṭāliʿ al-anwār was condemned by al-Jurjānī for marginalizing kalām as a secondary science interested only in God’s essence.⁹¹ As his al-Taḥṣīl was an abridgment of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s al-Maḥṣūl, covering the principles of jurisprudence, perhaps Ḳorḳud felt the text supported his drive to achieve legal certainty in judging kufr.⁹² Similarly, Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī was highly critical of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, although perhaps solely due to professional jealousy.⁹³ A fascinating list, this chain of supposedly like-minded scholars excluded al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), who was particularly known for his arguments paving the way for rendering scripturally based opinions legally relevant.⁹⁴ It also excluded other notable figures who were studied widely in Ottoman madrasas and considered important contributors to the movement of taḥqīq (verification),⁹⁵ such as al-Ghazālī, Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085), and al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 817/1413).⁹⁶ While his list did not correspond entirely with what became the Ottoman madrasa canon in kalām, it might be seen as an early roster of muḥaqqiqūn scholars,⁹⁷ who led a movement of textual verification that coincided with what Gerhard Endress has characterized as an Islamicate form of scholasticism.⁹⁸

6 Legally Relevant Kalām

Ḳorḳud’s main text engaging with kalām disputation and its role in society, Ḥāfiẓ al-insān, followed a long line of Shafi‘i legal and Ash‘ari theological literature discussing the meaning of true faith and its absence.⁹⁹ In al-Shāfiʿī’s (d. 204/820) own time, Muslims guilty of internal absence of faith (kufr) were effectively protected by the fact that internal belief was considered a private matter between any individual and his/her God. This de facto protection of religious privacy started to devolve following al-Ghazālī, who argued quite effectively that the phenomenon of zindīqs, or secret apostates, necessitated the withdrawal of the right of repentance (tawba) from apostates, as such individuals following secret professions of faith and practicing concealment of inner belief (taqiyya) should not be extended the right to be offered repentance (istitāba). As a result, the definition of apostasy shifted from an individual’s public statement breaking away from Islam to the proven existence of an individual’s inner conviction consistent with unbelief.¹⁰⁰

Within Ottoman circles, the most significant legal progression following al-Ghazālī’s seminal contribution proved to be the elaboration of acts considered external signs of belief or unbelief. By the early tenth/sixteenth century, the legitimacy of considering such acts as reliable signs was fairly widely accepted, at least among Ottoman scholar-bureaucrats. In addition, it appears that the acts constituting such external signs had multiplied as well. According to Ḳorḳud’s count, in his own time such acts included: wearing certain clothing reserved for non-Muslim communities under Islamic rule, treating the Quran or other sacred texts with disrespect, bowing down to idols or to the sun, sacrificing animals in someone’s name, claiming false prophethood, and practicing sorcery, among others.¹⁰¹

Arguments advanced by certain Ottoman religious scholars pushed this legal progression further still, allowing imperial officials to claim sharʿī justification for punishment of individual apostates as legal justification for state-sanctioned violence against entire communities. Ḳorḳud’s 913/1508 Ḥāfiẓ al-insān argued for broadening apostate statutes to apply to whole populations and may have played a role in the state’s growing politicization of doctrinal affiliation.¹⁰² Guy Burak has argued that state-affiliated Ottoman ulama by the late ninth/fifteenth century had effectively invented the punishment of “renewal of faith” (tecdīd-i īmān) as a tactic of “temporary excommunication” in order to discipline doctrinal conformity, punish the expression of beliefs they defined as heretical, and assert their societal power. By utilizing this punishment, expressed solely through fatwa rulings and never articulated as part of Hanafi substantive law, such ulama were able to selectively enforce such conformity without having to attempt to execute every individual offending Muslim under their power.¹⁰³ Although he never advocated for any “renewal of faith” punishment per se, via Ḥāfiẓ al-insān Ḳorḳud contributed to the scholarly dialogue claiming sufficient doctrinal certainty to justify such takfīr protocols, which in turn would have justified application of the tecdīd-i īmān punishments.

Ḥāfiẓ al-insān’s benediction affirmed the solitary nature of God and Muḥammad’s unique status, explaining that Ḳorḳud had come across a preponderance of expressions of unbelief among the ignorant, even among those claiming to be seekers of knowledge. To remedy that societal ill, he had decided to clarify the definition of faith and unbelief according to the principles of Islamic jurisprudence and religion, uṣūl al-fiqh and uṣūl al-dīn, informed by the other major branches of learning.¹⁰⁴ This opening explanation effectively laid out Ḳorḳud’s disciplinary preferences and agenda, as he intended to demonstrate the doctrinal certainty provided by kalām discourse, assert the legal repercussions springing from that certainty, and thus argue the case for mass application of apostasy protocols against populations displaying external signs of apostasy, in turn justifying violent state reactions to protect religion.

Following the introductory statement, the three remaining sections provided something of a literature review of takfīr debates throughout Islamic history up to that point. The first two sections contrasted definitions of faith (īmān)¹⁰⁵ and its opposite, kufr.¹⁰⁶ The third section catalogued and described external acts that point to internal kufr and, thus, merit verdicts of and punishments for apostasy.¹⁰⁷ By reviewing such takfīr debates through the centuries, Ḳorḳud was effectively summarizing a politically relevant subset of kalām discourse to show why state adjudication of heresy was consistent with longstanding religious belief.

In the course of this text, Ḳorḳud traced the evolution of faith and unbelief from an inner belief, which only affected one’s relationship to God, as it was understood in the third/ninth century, to a legally relevant external expression of religious belief, as it came to be understood in his own day. The way he presented this evolution suggested that the state, acting on behalf of the legists (fuqahāʾ) in order to protect the status of religion within society, had the right to enforce social conformity and punish those who refuse to conform. In addition, he argued that such external expressions of belief, which are the signs of social conformity addressed here, remain legally material even when compelled. In addition, such expressions (i.e., stating the shahāda, attending Friday prayers) must be displayed to legists regularly, and must be genuine. Possession of maʿrifa (gnosis) cannot provide an excuse for exempting oneself from such ritual practice.

In the second section on unbelief, Ḳorḳud started by defining kufr as lack of belief in Muhammad’s prophecy, expressed via a number of external acts long recognized as signifying kufr, including scorning the Quran or dressing in clothing meant to signify one’s dhimmi status. Citing Ash‘ari scholar and Sirāj al-Dīn al-Urmawī’s student, al-Ṣafī al-Hindī (d. 715/1315), that denial of faith can be exhibited circumstantially, and al-Taftāzānī’s argument that jurists must ensure legal consequences for apostasy when such denial is demonstrated, Ḳorḳud explicitly rejected the older conclusion that an intentional statement of denial is required to confirm kufr.¹⁰⁸ In addition, he asserted the legitimacy of applying qānūn (sultanic law) to certain issues within the scope of sharʿ, such as enforcing the correct interpretation of certain theological matters, since state officials acted as sovereign representatives of the ahl al-ḥaqq (the true community of believers). Although these points seemingly contradicted arguments Ḳorḳud made in Daʿwat al-nafs al-ṭāliḥa concerning ideal ulama primacy and independence vis-à-vis the state, he might have believed that as long as ulama directed such efforts, their status would not be compromised.¹⁰⁹

In the final section, Ḳorḳud affirmed the right of local religious officials to define apostasy locally, thus effectively asserting the right of the Ottoman state through its ulama to define apostasy for its subjects. In addition, he asserted that once the intended meanings of sacred texts are set, such implicit meanings can be used as a basis for customary law (ʿurf) rulings. Theologians must assist practitioners of ʿurf to accurately classify such acts and thus protect society from a threat which sharʿ alone cannot address.¹¹⁰ To close the text, Ḳorḳud presented acts that merited kufr judgments. The first act was abandoning communal prayer. The second was mishandling the Quran, as well as related texts of the religious sciences and respected sciences, which support the canonical disciplines—but not falsafa and logic texts, or texts that intermix kalām and falsafa and undermine society’s kalām, and that can therefore be abused with no legal punishment. Other acts included making false claims of prophecy and using sorcery to gain followers. Ḳorḳud’s final act meriting judgment of kufr was for those donning the qalansuwat al-kuffār (nonbelievers’ headgear), who are automatically to be treated as apostates.¹¹¹ This was a clear reference to the Kızılbaş rebel turban, which was spreading throughout Anatolia at the time of his writing. Ḳorḳud’s generation appears to have been the first to argue that this specific act of public dress constituted apostasy,¹¹² thus demonstrating the mutability of external signs of internal kufr over time, as well as the consequences of linking imperial interests with accusations of apostasy. In 913/1508, the same year that Ḳorḳud completed a draft of Ḥāfiẓ al-insān, thousands of Safavid supporters referred to as “ḳızıl taçlu” (red crowned) were resettled by Ottoman authorities from Hamid and Teke provinces in Western Anatolia to the recently conquered Modon and Koron provinces in the Peloponnese peninsula. At the time, Ḳorḳud was the governing prince of both Hamid and Teke, suggesting a willingness on his part to implement policies justified by his arguments in Ḥāfiẓ al-insān.¹¹³

In Ḥāfiẓ al-insān, Ḳorḳud justified, according to the twin norms of uṣūl al-dīn (religious dogma) and uṣūl al-fiqḥ (sources of Islamic jurisprudence), the right of imperial authorities to apply apostasy verdicts under the prerogatives of ʿurf. As such, his contribution can be characterized as one step in a long process reflecting a progressive extension of state hegemony over matters of individual conscience—and toward the modern mass application of takfīr as a justification for sectarian violence. This argument coincided in content and conclusions—if not in direct methodology—with those of Kemālpaşazāde and Sarı Gürz Ḥamza Efendi (fl. 920/1514).¹¹⁴ Ḥāfiẓ al-insān also shows ulama views being granted pride of place by a sympathetic, knowledgeable, and semi-sovereign prince, as well as the promotion by this same prince of an expansion of sharʿī definitions of apostasy to fit imperial interests. On the whole, in this text Ḳorḳud’s arguments demonstrate the hegemonic extension of imperial control over sharʿī practice in order to harness the legitimating power of sharʿī norms to state interests—an extension of state power quite emblematic of the “age of confessionalization,” whether in Europe or the Islamic East.

7 Political Repercussions, Societal Observations

While issues of kalām disputation might not appear to carry strong political repercussions, these debates did not take place in a vacuum, and the prince’s arguments appear to have fit a political agenda. Ḳorḳud tried to appeal primarily to the Ottoman ulama, who would presumably have agreed with his theological arguments and appreciated his deference to their primacy in matters concerning imperial religious identity. In his view, the interests of religion, defined according to the priorities of those he defined as the ahl al-sunna, trumped the interests of state, and the raison d’ etre of the Ottoman state was to support religion. Due to what he perceived as the failure of state and society by the turn of the tenth/sixteenth century, Ḳorḳud advocated a return to sharʿī principles and a move away from a capricious ʿurf al-salāṭīn (dynastic law). In addition to his positions regarding religious identity, in al-Da‘wa Ḳorḳud complained a great deal about state practices that he considered improper according to sharʿī precepts, including illicit expropriation of wealth via taxation, corruption and abuse by the umarāʾ military class, excessive bowing down before the ruler, and extra-sharʿī punishments (al-siyāsa), particularly in the case of royal fratricide.¹¹⁵

Ḳorḳud was scathing in his criticism of what he identified as widespread intellectual laziness and corrupt practices in his own era and society. He condemned sectarian madhhab followers who attempted to force agreement from others or reflexively followed the positions of their own school, providing only the justification that such traditions come from their forefathers (taqlīd). As he saw it, individuals must instead search for truth, objectively—another nod to the emerging taḥqīq (verification) movement, which Tijana Krstić discusses in this volume in the context of subsequent centuries and from the perspective of the sources known as ʿilm-i ḥāls, intended for the religious edification of the commoners.¹¹⁶ Ḳorḳud complained on several levels about the madrasa graduates of his own day, arguing that they were lazy, corrupt, and compromised. He stated that they read only small portions of two classics of Hanafi fiqh, Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa’s hadith collection and Burhān al-Dīn al-Marghīnānī’s (d. 593/1197) al-Ḥidāya, in order to justify taking illicit funds. Implicitly criticizing the madrasa curriculum first established by the patronage of his grandfather, Meḥmed II, Ḳorḳud stated that the students of his day, in order to learn Quranic commentary (tafsīr), only read the two glosses by al-Jurjānī and al-Taftāzānī on al-Zamakhsharī’s (d. 538/1144) Kashshāf and what had been commented on them, rather than reading the original work. Finally, in a complaint many university lecturers today might sympathize with, Ḳorḳud stated that not only were students reading too narrow a slice of the relevant tafsīr literature via these two scholars, they were only reading a few pages.¹¹⁷

In order to accomplish his reform agenda, Ḳorḳud wished to elevate an independent class of ulama, excepting those who had been transformed into corrupt scholar-bureaucrats, worldly Sufis who were a danger to religion, and judges susceptible to bribes. As he saw it, judges should never rule according to dynastic ʿurf code in cases that should be adjudicated according to sharʿī norms, and ulama who frequent palace gates were inherently compromised. His recommendations, if enacted, would have inherently come at the expense of both the military class and certain outsider groups, particularly rural and nomadic Kızılbaş supporters whom Ḳorḳud and other pillars of state were just beginning to characterize as heretics.¹¹⁸ In a sense, his hope was to turn back the clock on the role of the ulama in society, to an idealized past era when he thought they were a privileged group, with an indispensable role to lead society and independent of the political hierarchy. While others might emphasize the importance of the military in jihad, both previously and in his own time, Ḳorḳud was convinced that the educational and exhortatory role of the ulama was far more important in jihad than the military role, as only scholars can protect the very essence of religious belief.¹¹⁹

As with his views on the mixture of falsafa with kalām and the role of ulama in society, Ḳorḳud railed against several types, or stereotypes, of Sufis. For his discussion on Sufism’s role in society, Ḳorḳud supplemented al-Subkī’s conclusions with quotes from such prominent Sufi figures as ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072), and Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ḥafs ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 631/1234). Still, for this section he relied primarily on the Ash‘ari Sufi scholar ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Yāfiʿī’s (d. 768/1367) mystical commentary, Rawḍ al-rayāḥīn fī ḥikayāt al-ṣāliḥīn.¹²⁰ Ḳorḳud was not against Sufism per se, as he had supported local orders when serving as the governor of Manisa in the 1490s. However, he advocated a restrictive approach to the role of institutionalized mysticism in society, going so far as to accuse his own ruling elite of favoring fake Sufis over real ulama. In this vein, he cited al-Subkī’s exclusion of “Turks,” who had rejected and mocked the fuqahā (legists), from being considered Sufis, which might be taken as an indirect reference to rebellious Safavid followers of his own day. Similarly, he followed al-Yāfiʿī in rejecting magicians, fortune tellers, charlatans, and fake astrologers as Sufis. As Ḳorḳud saw it, any individual conjuring up extraordinary acts or miracles in order to persuade people to do what is forbidden must not be followed.¹²¹

Weighing in on prominent examples from the past, he agreed with certain previous scholars who had judged controversial Sufis. For example, according to Ḳorḳud, al-Hallāj (d. 310/922), Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235), and Ibn ʿArabī were each guilty of various forms of kufr, while ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī (d. 525/1131), who was crucified along with other Isma‘ilis, joined the Bāṭiniyya and was thus guilty of subverting religion from within. The primary justification for judging any of these figures for committing kufr was their lack of adherence to sharʿī protocols concerning acceptable belief. Likewise, Ḳorḳud spoke out against those guilty in his own day of identifying with what modern scholars sometimes characterize as “latitudinarian Sufism.”¹²² For example, as Khiḍr was a saint, not a prophet, he could not be used to excuse sharʿī transgressions, as some had claimed. Following al-Ghazālī, Ḳorḳud argued that Sufis claiming exemption from sharʿī rules and following material pursuits in proximity to the sultan must be condemned for kufr. Likewise, following al-Qurṭubī (d. 657/1259), all Bāṭiniyya Zanādiqa, believing that sharʿī rules do not apply to them due to their pure souls and greater intellect, must be condemned for kufr. Following Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ḥafs ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī, one must distinguish between Melami groups, who hide their worship and are honorable, and Qalandari groups, who openly try to destroy tradition. Again following al-Suhrawardī, self-proclaimed muftis who claim to be Melami are actually ahl al-ibāḥa who permit anything, claiming that special truths render them exempt from sharʿī precepts. Such individuals are not Sufis and are a source of all types of zandaqa, ilḥād (heresy), and ibʿād (estrangement). Likewise, those who believe in the transmigration of souls must be condemned, as with the two most famous examples of “ecstatic Sufism,” when al-Ḥallāj stated “Anā al-ḥaqq” and Bāyezīd al-Bisṭāmī (d. ca. 260/874) stated “Ṣubḥānī.” Citing al-Qushayrī and al-Sulamī, Ḳorḳud pointed out that the same Bāyezīd al-Bisṭāmī had also cautioned against following one promising miracles (karāmāt) until one knows where he stands in relation to the sharʿī limits. Here Ḳorḳud may have been indirectly referring to his own contemporary Shah Ismāʿīl, who was widely reported to be capable of bringing about miracles. To provide a positive example, he stated that all three of these Sufi commentators agreed that Junayd (d. 297/910), the epitome of “sober Sufism,” was both a genuine Sufi and a sound Shafi‘i.¹²³

In Ḥāfiẓ al-insān, Ḳorḳud characterized contemporary opponents to his use of scriptural revelation as the basis for secular legal pronouncements as the “Murji’a,” who rejected the earthly legal intent of scripture and called for a sufficiently narrow reading of Quranic verses and hadith accounts as to obviate material legal conclusions.¹²⁴ Another set of opponents were the “Bāṭiniyya,” who claimed that the secret meanings within sacred texts are known only to a guide with special knowledge. He considered those he characterized as the Bāṭiniyya more dangerous than the Murji’a, and stated that anyone holding such views is ipso facto a murtadd (apostate).¹²⁵

8 A Mixed Legacy

Ḳorḳud’s contributions left a mixed legacy within the early articulation of an imperial religious identity that one can refer to as “Ottoman Sunnism.” As such, he engaged with kalām debates, critiqued the field, and commented on it and related disciplines’ role in society, particularly in the education of Ottoman youth. While Daʿwat al-nafs al-ṭāliḥa and Ḥāfiẓ al-insān are not, strictly speaking, kalām works, through these texts Şehzāde Ḳorḳud engaged directly with kalām, and commented on the role kalām and related disciplines were already coming to play in the development of Ottoman Sunni identity.

Ḳorḳud’s support for Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s medial position between extreme supporters of ʿaql and naql alone remained popular for years to come, even though Ottoman kalām eventually inched ever closer to a primarily ʿaql dominant perspective. Likewise, state officials agreed broadly with justifications put forth in Ḥāfiẓ al-insān for defining, judging, and punishing apostasy, with immediate political effect. His support for state involvement in crafting religious identity also carried the day, as court-affiliated ulama rolled out heresy accusations against the emergent Kızılbaş challenge—none of which is surprising in the broader context of a nascent “age of confessionalization.”

However, Ḳorḳud’s promotion of a specific “third madhhab,” opposition to mixing falsafa with kalām at the latter’s expense, condemnation of Ibn ʿArabī, and preference for Shafi‘i fiqh and Ash‘ari kalām, ultimately met with tepid reactions within the Ottoman elite. Within a generation of Ḳorḳud’s death, some of his favored scholars faded from view while his proposed “third madhhab” was forgotten as an intellectual construct. Likewise, Ibn ʿArabī was practically enshrined as an imperial saint, the state preference for Hanafi fiqh grew ever more institutionalized, and madrasa graduates progressively articulated a recognizably Ottoman brand of Maturidi kalām heavily infused with falsafa methodology and views. Just as his ruling candidacy was marginalized and largely forgotten, several of Şehzāde Ḳorḳud’s views on religious practice came to represent an Ottoman path not taken—as well as a proof of the spectrum of views inherent within Ottoman Sunnism.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewer, M. Sait Özervarlı, Tijana Krstić, Derin Terzioğlu, and Urs Gösken for their comments and criticisms offered in the course of developing this contribution.