Tag: Ottoman Religious History

Ottoman Women and the Lives of Saints, ii.: Money Trouble and a Sleep-Talking Son

On By JonathanIn Culture, History, Islam, Ottoman, Ottoman Turkish2 Comments

Like any major urban area, eighteenth century Istanbul was inhabited by people from a seemingly endless array of walks of life, from the sultan and his entourage and sprawling staff down. The neighborhood in which the sometimes fiery, sometimes tender sufi saint Hasan Ünsî lived, while it stood hard by the walls of the sultan’s palace, the Topkapı, was a world away from that rarefied atmosphere. In the houses and workspaces and places of worship ordinary people, men and women, lived and toiled and prayed and plotted and did their best to get by. Şeyh Hasan was for some inhabitants a source of comfort and repose, while for others he was a source of humor or of potential easy money. In the two accounts which I have translated and lightly annotated below, we see two different women’s interactions with the saint, as well as glimpses into their everyday lives, glimpses that are quite valuable in reconstructing the diversity of ordinary women’s lives in this period and place. There is a lot that could be said about these stories and the contexts relevant to them, but I will limit myself to a couple of remarks.

In the first story, we meet a woman- who, interestingly, is named here- about whom we have but a few tantalizing details. Described as being Bosnian, we might guess that she had ended up in the city- perhaps her husband was or had been a military man posted in Bosnia?- and had fallen on hard times (the main point of the story). While I have not come across any other descriptions of her particular line of work as a sort of handywoman, it seems likely that such services would have been appealing to ordinary households without the luxury of slaves or hired servants. The rest of the story is relatively self-explanatory, though, as in the previous installment, note the ease with which Uzun Havvâ comes into the şeyh’s presence and interacts with him.

The second story introduces in greater detail the mother of the menâkıb‘s author, Ibrahim Hâs. The ‘set-up’ is that Ibrahim is telling how he came to ‘repent’ at the saint’s hand and take up a dervish life under his tutelage- which happened while he was still a young man living at home. Here we learn that his mother was herself effectively a saint, practicing immense austerities at home (modeled to some degree after Şeyh Hasan, who also tended to remain at home), even as she maintained a close relationship with the saint. We know from the survival of a dream-diary and correspondence with her Halvetî şeyh by a woman in Skopje, described by Cemal Kafadar in an article on Ottoman self-writing, that it was not unheard of for a woman to send her dreams to a saintly şeyh for interpretation. Here, however, Ibrahim’s mother goes directly to the şeyh, as opposed to writing to him, something that we are given to understand she did on a regular basis, and in so doing helped to give direction and greater meaning to her own ascetic pursuits and identity.

Ottoman Yastik
A 17th century Ottoman yastik, or pillow cover, a typical feature of domestic spaces (Boston MFA 77.256)

1. There was a poor Bosnian woman, named Bedümli Uzun Havvâ, who lived in a rented room below my home in the Hocapaşa quarter. For a fee she would look after the daily affairs of her neighbors. One day a neighbor came to her with a sick child. [The neighbor lady] said, “Go and take this child to Şeyh Hasan Efendî in Aydınoǧlu Tekke and have him recite a prayer, and put these pâras [1] down in his presence,” giving the Bosnian woman some pâras.

Taking the child and the pâras, the woman went to the venerable Şeyh. After having pocketed two of the pâras she had been given to present to the Şeyh for his prayer recitation, she put the rest before the venerable Şeyh. He said to her, “Look now, what of the other two pâras?” But the Bosnian woman said, “Only this much were given, only this much!” The venerable Şeyh replied, “Ah, but there are two pâras in your right pocket—did I not see how many pâras were given to you? And do I not know whether in taking the pâras you wanted to deceive me or to try me?”

As he said this, fearful the woman took out the pâras she had taken and placed them before the venerable Şeyh. He said to her, “You did this on account of your poverty, but take care not to speak untruthfully and do not try (imtihân) anyone. Be patient in the midst of poverty, and God, exalted is He, will provide you with the necessities of this life below!” Having said this he gave the woman forty pâras, then gave her the two pâras [she had pocketed]! The woman said, “My sultan! I took those pâras, thinking, ‘The Şeyh won’t know.’ And indeed by poverty is great such that as of tonight they would have been my entire livelihood. But now you have done such good!”

The venerable Şeyh gave her some further good counsel, and the woman, having kissed the Şeyh’s noble hands, departed. She returned the child home, then went home herself. This poor one [the author] learned of this story from the telling of his mother and from her neighbors living there.

Woman and boy going to the hammam
Woman and boy on their way to the hammam, from an early 17th century costume album depicting various people one might encounter in Ottoman Istanbul (BM 1928,0323,0.46.122)

2. It happened on the 15th of Ramadan, 1117 [December 31, 1705]. Up till then, I [Ibrahim Hâs] only attended the tevhîd sessions [2] and busied myself with the discourses of the venerable Şeyh. I slept a lot during the daytime [3]. One day while sleeping alone I began talking in my sleep. My mother came to my side and listened to what I was saying, and when I awoke, my mother said to me, “While you were sleeping you said some wondrous and strange things!” I replied, “What did I say?” My mother then repeated back to me one by one the things I had said [4]. Continue reading “Ottoman Women and the Lives of Saints, ii.: Money Trouble and a Sleep-Talking Son” →

Derviş ‘Ömer’s Mother Mocks a Saint

On By JonathanIn Culture, History, Islam, Ottoman, Ottoman Turkish2 Comments

iznik-tile.jpg

As I’ve noted before, Ottoman saints’ lives, especially those from the seventeenth century forward, are often wonderful sources for catching glimpses of everyday life in the Ottoman world, or, rather, ordinary life in contact with the extraordinary powers and abilities of a saint. The eighteenth century menâkıb of Şeyh Hasan Ünsî, which I have featured here several times before, has proven to be an especially good source in this regard, and the story I’ve translated here is yet another instance of the intersection of the saint’s life with the everyday lives of ordinary residents of Istanbul. The story is narrated to the text’s author, Ibrahim Hâs, by one Derviş ‘Ömer, about whom we are given no further details beyond what can be picked up from within the story.

There are several points of significance worth pointing out in relation to this account: one, this story revolves around women’s interactions with Şeyh Hasan. Note that the women in the story interact with the saint quite freely, leaving their house to visit him, entering his presence, kissing his hand, and so forth- while this sort of interaction sometimes drew criticism from other quarters of Ottoman society, here there is no sense of impropriety or critique at all. What is ‘problematic’ from the view of the saint and of the storyteller and the rest of his household, however, is the fact that Derviş ‘Ömer’s mother (whose name is not given in the story), while in some sense a ‘believer’ in the saint, also feels no compunction in parodying his actions, namely, his practicing the ritual of ‘reading and blowing,’ that is, reciting certain efficacious prayers then blowing upon the person seeking healing, the idea being that the saint’s breath will convey healing bereket. If as you imagine a şeyh doing this you find it a bit humorous, you’d be in the company of the people in ‘Ömer’s household, too: hence this story helps us to imagine what sorts of things an eighteenth century Ottoman subject might find funny, such as, evidently, pantomiming a saint.

If you’re also thinking that perhaps pantomiming a saint might not be especially pious and could lead to trouble- especially with Şeyh Hasan, who seems to have been a bit testy- you’d also be right, and that is the ultimate moral of the story, which follows after this helpful illustration:

cps_w66635b_fp_dd-2
Hailing from a different story, this illustration from Atayı’s Hamse provides a good visualization of sleeping arrangements in an Ottoman house (though the furnishings along the wall indicate a more lavishly equipped dwelling than the one suggested in our story). (W.666.35B)

There was a child from among our relatives in our household who became sick. My mother and the child’s mother, along with a couple other women of our household, went to visit the şeyh of Aydınoǧlu Tekke, Ünsî Hasan Eendi, in order for him to read over the child, saying to him, ‘Read over this child.’ The venerable Şeyh read over and blew upon the child, then my mother with the other women came home, and in that very moment the child became well.

After my mother returned from visiting the venerable Şeyh, in order to make the women and children in our household laugh said to them, ‘Şeyh Efendi read and blew like this upon the boy—come, let me read over you!’ Saying this she summoned the women in the household and some came and sat down before her. My mother filled her cheeks with air then blew on them, and they all laughed. She did this a couple of times.

When evening came we performed the evening prayers, then put on our clothes for sleeping. There were no people from without the household (nâmahrem) among us. Our house being narrow, we all lay down in one room. We all went to sleep. At some point in the night from our midst there came a great groan and the sound of kicking about. Exclaiming, ‘Who is this, what’s going?’ we all woke up. I lit a candle and saw that it was my mother! She had turned a shade of deep purple and with great anguish she was kicking about, her eyes closed, saying nothing, her mind gone, hearing nothing of our words. We were all scattered about [the room], but we gathered to her, not knowing what to do. She kicked about in this condition for about an hour, struggling. This kept on until suddenly, she went senseless and lay down. ‘Is she dead?’ we cried, but checking we saw that she was fine. For about two hours she lay senseless. Afterwards she gradually grew paler, and a while after that her intellect returned and she opened her eyes, but she was confused. We said, ‘O mother, what happened to you? What changed your condition—this evening there was nothing wrong?’

With sorrow she replied, ‘This evening we all lay down. But while you all fell asleep, I was unable to sleep. I could not close my eyes. I saw before my eyes that the Şeyh Efendi that read over our child had appeared, and at that very moment with power he took hold of my throat and said, “Why did you take me for a laughingstock—am I your laughingstock? Does anyone take me for an object of ridicule?” Saying this he gripped my throat such that while I wanted to cry out and shake it off, I was unable to do so; finally, I passed out. I don’t know anything else.’ Continue reading “Derviş ‘Ömer’s Mother Mocks a Saint” →

A Saint of the Rural Road in Ottoman Anatolia

On By JonathanIn Culture, History, Islam, Ottoman, Ottoman TurkishLeave a comment
Ottoman Sofra
A rare example of an early 17th century Ottoman sofra- a round cloth, in this beautifully decorated with tulip and other motifs- spread out on the floor or ground in order for food to be placed on it, functioning like a dining room table. While the saint in the story below probably would not have had so finely crafted a sofra, this one gives an idea of what such a textile looked like- and how a reader of the story might have imagined a saint’s sofra to look. (St. Louis Art Museum 175:1952)

Rural religious life in the pre-modern Islamic world remains relatively little known to historians, at least in comparison to religious life in medieval and especially early modern Western Europe. This is partially due to the absence of many of the confessional, disciplinary, and other institutional structures and organs, such as the Inquisition in its various forms, whose operations ensured that much rural life- primarily, but not exclusively, religious- would be quite visible to future historians. For a context such as the Ottoman Empire, our sources for rural life in general are rather scarcer. Travel literature, population and resource surveys, and similar sources are one means of uncovering early modern life among peasants, nomadic peoples, and other inhabitants of rural spaces and places. The following life of a rural saint of the 16th century, which I’ve taken from an Ottoman Turkish biographical compilation by the poet and author Nevîzâde Atâyî (1583–1635), represents another potential route for recovering aspects of religious and social life in the Ottoman countryside- which is where, after all, the majority of the population in fact lived.

I do not know how Atâyî, who was very much a product of the Ottoman elite literary and learned milieu, came by his knowledge of the life of Ahmed Dede, the saint featured in this account, but it seems likely that because of his position on an important route between two well-established cities in western Anatolia, Ahmed Dede was known to people in the imperial center (including, evidently, Selim II). While this account of his life comes from an elite, urban writer, and was written in ornate Ottoman Turkish prose, heavy with Persian vocabulary and constructions, a style I have tried to reproduce somewhat in my translation, it remains valuable for the inadvertent insights into what might have constituted a saint in rural Anatolia. Ahmed Dede, who was known by several other names as well, while he received initiation from sufi masters both in his home village and during a sojourn in Istanbul, seems to become recognized as a saint due to his generous acts of hospitality, and his reputation for miraculously fertile grain crops, crops which he himself cultivated. Previous eras of historiography would probably have suggested that Ahmed Dede was a ‘survival’ of a pre-Islamic fertility cult: while such an idea is, for a number of reasons, quite untenable, it should come as no surprise that peasants and others in the rural world would value divine protection for crops, and that generosity in one’s abundant material possessions would count as a major marker of sainthood.

I have taken the extra step in the below translation to include footnotes explicating some of the less obvious references and allusions that our author makes, as well as to note a couple of places where I am not myself entirely confident that I understood Atâyî’s meaning!

Sofra close up

Şeyh Ahmed Dede: He came into the world in a village named Gırbalcı, near the town of Kütahya [1]. Among the common people he was known as Kalburci Şeyhi as well as Mıhmandâr and Çavdârli after the tribe. From the ‘ulamâ of his native place he obtained learning and, being from birth ordained and whetted for taking ‘mystical letters and meanings,’ he joined the service of Şeyh Sinân Karamânî, then inclined towards the beholding the divinely graced Abdüllatîf Efendi. It is related that one day he [Ahmed Dede] was present at a lesson with two companion when, while the aforementioned şeyh was in the time of his spiritual brightness and openness [to God], each one made supplication concerning the desire that was implanted within him. The aforesaid şeyh’s arrow of supplication having been shot and hitting God’s giving answer, one of them became, in accord with his heart’s desire, an officer in the army, while another, in concordance with his soul’s inclination, became part of the folk of knowledge—but the subject of this account, [Ahmed Dede], obtained the grace that he, like the basin and table of Ibrahim, would not have his licit wealth (mâl-i halâl) become exhausted [2].

Afterwards, coming to Istanbul, in the service of the pole of the sphere of divine reality Merkez Efendi he perfected his spiritual wayfaring. After being authorized in giving guidance he became eminent through the gracious oversight of Kastamonulu Şabân Efendi. Ultimately he returned to his village and set up in his well-known zâviye [3], feeding travelers and giving perfect honor to passers-by. In this manner through the months and days he gave praise to God, this honorer of guests of the house of Islam dying in the year 978/1570—to his spirit be divine mercy!

The aforesaid saint’s miraculous gifts of grace (kerâmât) with divine might are well-known—like the brilliant sun and the haloed moon, day and night, he spread out bread and table. He was a Milky Way of the lined-up food-cloth stretched out as constant beneficence, his laughing face like a damask rose, as he made manifest the open sofra, he a spring-time cloud of constant out-pouring, a comfort-giving hand, dressed in nobility, a sea of sainthood, a pocket of aid, treasury of the unseen and traveling-wallet of grace, of holy ardor, the cultivated field of the one in need of the bread of blessing is from the blessings of God. Continue reading “A Saint of the Rural Road in Ottoman Anatolia” →

Shaykh ‘Alā al-Dīn Goes on Campaign

On By JonathanIn Arabic, History, Islam, Ottoman, WarLeave a comment
Divan of Mahmud `Abd al-Baqi Ottoman Army
The Ottoman army enters a city, from an illuminated copy (Met. 45.174.5) of the Divan of the poet Bâkî (1526–1600). Note the banner held aloft by the soldiers in the top right corner, similar to what we might imagine the saint in the tanner’s story below carrying; also note the diversity of soldiers and other support personnel visible.

Like early modern militaries the world over- and in fact like any organized and sizeable military, right up into the present- the Ottoman military relied on a vast body of ‘support staff’ to travel on campaign and wage warfare. Many of these support staff were recruited from the guildsmen of Istanbul and other major cities in the empire, the craftsmen and artisans and merchants being required to essentially pick up shop and go on campaign, agreeing to offer their services at a set price. In the following short story, taken from an Arabic biographical and hagiographical compendium by the scholar Balī ibn ‘Alī, also known as Alî Mınık (d. 1584), the miracle story is related by a tanner from Edirne who had recently returned from campaign. As is often the case in these sorts of stories, the details are thin, but we are probably meant to imagine a battle involving a fortress on the frontier with the Hapsburg lands. The story is pretty self-explanatory: besides being narrated by a member of the army’s ‘support staff,’ the story is interesting for what it reveals about the perceived role of seemingly unassuming saints in Ottoman military successes, and the imaginative travel, if you will, of otherwise sedentary saints out to the contested frontier.

Divan of Mahmud `Abd al-Baqi Ottoman Army
A close-up from the above of the army’s banner.

‘Among the miracles (karamāt) of [Şeyh Alâüddînd Cerrâḥzâde/‘Alā al-Dīn al-Jarrārzada, 1495-1575]’: the story that our shaykh Muṣlaḥ al-Dīn [the son of ‘Alā al-Dīn], God be merciful to him, related, saying: “We were sitting outside of the aforementioned zawīya [the Dergâh of Şeyh Şücaeddin, in Edirne] with some of the disciples. Tanners in the city had previously been drafted to go on campaign. A tanner came up and kissed my father’s hand, then kissed his feet, and said, ‘If it hadn’t been for you we wouldn’t have taken the fortress!’ My father said, ‘What is this fortress? I don’t know anything at all about it.’ The man persisted in his entreaty and humble supplication, but [my father] persisted in his denial.

So we asked the man about the story, and he said: ‘I went out to war for the Sultan with a detachment of tanners. When we had invested Such-and-Such Fortress, and aimed to seize it, the fighting wore on, and the flame of piercing and striking flared up, so that the fortress was refractory and refused to be conquered. The army was bewildered and despaired of seizing it, until suddenly a shaykh with a banner in his hand appeared, charging at the infidels, scattering them like dust struck by a powerful cold wind. He scaled the fortress and planted the banner upon it. The soldiers of the Islamic army followed after him, entering the fortress through this spot, its conquest becoming easy because of that man. My companions and I got a close look at the man—it was Shaykh ‘Alā al-Dīn, there being no doubt that he came on military campaign with us, and was present for the conquest of the fortress, yet we marveled that we had never once seen him while on the way there!’”

“Later, when I was alone with my father I asked him about the reality of this matter, so as to receive confirmation from him about this secret matter. He would not say anymore than that he did indeed know the one who had obtained to this degree, and that ‘You will obtain, God willing, to this degree of spiritual power when you reach maturity—God cause us and you to obtain to high degrees of spiritual power, and pour out upon us from the streams of His hidden and manifest kindness!’”

Balī ibn ‘Alī, al-ʻIqd al-manẓūm fī dhikr afāḍil al-Rūm (Dār al-Kitāb al-ʻArabī, 1975), 467-468. Translated by Jonathan Parkes Allen, 2018.

Mehmed Aǧa’s Miraculous Deliverance From Balkan Bandits

On By JonathanIn History, Islam, Ottoman, Ottoman Turkish, Travel1 Comment

velvet-ottoman-panel-of-carnations-e1524166849870.jpg

I’ll wrap up, for the moment, what has turned into a mini-series of accounts from the menakıb (saint’s life) of the Ottoman Istanbul saint Hasan Ünsî: previous installments can be found here and here. In the two previous translated stories, we saw different snap-shots of daily life- and conflict- in late 17th century Istanbul and its suburbs, coupled with saintly miracles and practices. In the fairly lengthy story I’ve translated below, the action takes place in two very different locations within the early 18th century Ottoman Empire. At this point in Hasan Ünsî’s life he had moved into a tekke (often translated as a ‘sufi lodge’) down the hill from the palace of the sultans themselves. In addition to his extended family and household, various dervishes lived here with him, and he was visited by devotees of all stations of life.

One of these devotees of the saintly şeyh was a za’îm, a tîmâr-holder– that is, someone given grants of productive land in exchange for military service- named Mehmed Aǧa. He ‘believed in’ (or, we might also translate, owed allegiance and had trust in) Hasan Ünsî as being a Friend of God. One day he was sent on campaign, or some other form of military service, to the Balkans, in keeping with his obligations as a tîmâr-holder, but even far from Istanbul, our hagiographer tells us, he kept his faith and allegiance in his şeyh. And so the stage is set for the following miracle-story, one which emphasizes the power of the saintly şeyh at a distance, but which also gives us a good look at the hazards of travel in rural, often largely uncontrolled, parts of the empire, especially in its mountainous regions.

ottoman-levend-e1524166973703.jpg
An Ottoman levend, or irregular soldier, from the Ralamb Book of Costumes. Such soldiers, while recruited by Ottoman military commanders for ‘official’ warfare, often ended up taking up a life of brigandage when demobilized.

‘One day it was heard that Mehmed Aǧa had been killed by bandits (haydûdlar). The sufis having heard this news related it to the Şeyh. The Şeyh smiled and said that Mehmed was fine. Later, the dervishes found out that Mehmed Aǧa was in fact still alive. After some time had passed, Mehmed Aǧa abruptly appeared [in the tekke], and the dervishes gathered around him. He said, ‘I’d like to go in to see the Şeyh,’ but they replied, ‘The Şeyh is in his harem [inner private area of the household], he’ll come out soon.’ In the meantime, he waited in the room of Uyûnî Derviş Seyyid Mehmed’s room. Because of his belief in the Şeyh the dervishes had great love for Mehmed Aǧa. During their conversation with Mehmed Aǧa, they asked, ‘Bandits attacked you suddenly in the road, and we heard many people say you had been killed. But when we reported this to the Şeyh, he said you were fine! That is how we knew that you were still alive.’ Mehmed Aǧa went silent and gave no answer.

Then the Şeyh came forth from his harem, and having given him the news, Mehmed Aǧa and the dervishes went up to the Şeyh’s presence, and, after greeting him, the Şeyh asked, ‘Mehmed, did you see the camel?’ Then, having heard this word from the Şeyh, the dervishes knew that some secret matter, a hidden deed, had taken place between the saint and Mehmed Aǧa. Mehmed and all the dervishes sat down in the presence of the Şeyh, and for a while he [the şeyh] spoke with Mehmed Aǧa. Afterwards, the Şeyh prayed, and the dervishes and Mehmed Aǧa went out of the Şeyh’s presence, and went back to sit in Uyûnî Derviş Seyyid Mehmed’s room. Therein the elder dervishes and halifes asked Mehmed Aǧa, ‘What did the Şeyh mean by asking you “Did you see the camel?”’ Mehmed Aǧa replied, ‘Do not ask about it,’ and fell silent.

Some time later, after the Şeyh had died, the halife A’rec Mustafa Efendi, Ser-tarîk Mehmed Efendi, Enişte Mustafa Efendi, and others, once again asked Mehmed Aǧa about the Şeyh’s having said ‘Did you see the camel?’ They added, ‘The Şeyh has gone to the Other World, so there is now no longer any harm in talking of it! Rather, it is appropriate and praiseworthy to make this miracle (kerâmet) public so that we may know and the name of the Şeyh be better remembered!’ And so Mehmed Aǧa said, ‘It was when I had gone to Rumili [the Balkans] in military service. After completing my service, in the company of a caravan we headed back to Istanbul when while on our way we came to a forest. The others in the caravan said that this forest did not have any bandits, still, they said, let us go through it quickly. We entered in good order, but there were in fact bandits in the forest. Unable to take us all on in one fell swoop, they instead began killing us off. Killing many men they set to pillaging our goods, while those of my retinue were killed. I too despaired of my life, saying to myself, I wonder which one will kill me? In fear, as I dropped disordered and shaken to the skirts of a mountain, the Şeyh came to my mind. And at that moment I saw him coming up in front of me—he looked at me and motioned to me to go up the side of the mountain. We ran and went up right in front of the bandits, but they did not see us.

‘The Şeyh headed up the mountain, and I followed behind. The Şeyh said to me, “Keep on going over the side of this mountain,” motioning with his blessed hand, then disappeared. Looking in all four directions, I saw no trace of the Şeyh. Then I ran over the other side of the mountain, eventually reaching a level place. I saw a number of tents set up there, and many people. When they saw me come down from the mountain, some of them came to my side—I was disoriented out of fear of being killed and had no capacity to speak. These people later asked about my condition, and I told them about how on the other side of the mountain bandits had emerged from the woods and fallen upon the caravan, turning us aside, pillaging, and killing, taking my goods and killing my retinue.

They replied, “What time did this happen? We heard nothing!” I said, “Just now, not a quarter hour ago!” They said, “There’s no such woods on the other side of this mountain, nor any bandits, just a village!” But I said, “Come now! There were bandits there! Pillaging and looting!” One of them asked me, “Where were you coming from?” I replied, “We were coming from such and such place. On the road from there are woods, on the other side of this mountain!” But they replied, “The woods you speak of are three hours from here, but you say you were just there?” Then I knew that this was an instance of the saint’s divine disposal and miracle-working. I replied, “I’m all confused—I don’t know what I’m saying!”

I took as companions some people there who went with me to Istanbul, and upon arrival I came straight to the Şeyh. As you and I approached the saint together as he came out the door, his saying “Mehmed, did you see the camel [that is, the camel that presumably bore him the three hours from the mountain to the level place]?” was in reference to this.’ And so he related in this manner the story. The dervishes that were there in hearing it greatly increased their faith in the şeyh and as a result sought assistance from his spiritual powers.

İbrahim Hâs, Hasan Ünsî Halvetî ve Menâkıbnâmesi, edited by Mustafâ Tatcı (Bağcılar, İstanbul: Kırkambar Kitaplığı, 2013, 2013), 234-240. Translated by Jonathan Parkes Allen, 2018.

*

Dear reader: while you’re here, consider supporting me on Patreon, so that I can keep content like this coming along at a regular pace. Thanks!

The Lion, the Lady, and the Dervishes: Şeyh Hasan Ünsî’s Transformation

On By JonathanIn Culture, History, Islam, Ottoman, Ottoman Turkish2 Comments

iznik-tile.jpg

Previously I discussed the ‘conversion’ narrative of a major late seventeenth into early eighteenth century Muslim saint of Istanbul, Şeyh Hasan Ünsî Halvetî (1643-1723), whose life was chronicled in great detail in a menâkıb (saint’s life) by Ibrahim Hâs. The story I’ve translated below comes from a slightly later period in the saint’s life, after his şeyh, Karabaş-i Velî (also known as Karabaş ‘Alî: he wore a black turban, hence his being called ‘Black-Head’) had died in the Sinai while making the ḥajj, in 1685. Hasan Ünsî had excelled in ascetic discipline and spiritual insight, his hagiographer tells us, such that Karabaş ‘Alî elevated him over all of his other halifes (Ar. khalīfa, delegates sent from a şeyh/shaykh), and sent him back to Istanbul to establish a center for worship and instruction in the sufi path. Hasan Ünsî settled in a space near the Hagia Sophia, the Acem Aǧa Mosque, built upon parts of the ruins of a pre-Ottoman Byzantine church, St. Mary Chalkoprateia (today the church has sunk deeper into ruin, and only parts of the mosque remain standing- see this excellent blog post for more details on the ‘deep history’ of the site). There he continued his ascetic practices, led zikr (a sufi ritual of ‘remembrance’ of God), and instructed disciples.

But his residency here was not to be entirely peaceful: since the early decades of the 17th century, the Ottoman lands had seen the rise of various ‘puritanical’ Islamic movements and tendencies, often looking back to the writings and life of a 16th century pietistic preacher, Mehmed Birgivî, for inspiration. Many groups and individuals inspired by the puritanical texts, movements, and leaders that arose over the course of the century were opposed to such things as the veneration of the saints, sufi rituals like zikr/dhikr, and widespread practices such as tobacco-smoking and coffee-drinking (though opposition to the former was for a long time widespread beyond so-called ‘puritan’ circles). Unusually- for theological movements of this nature had developed before in various places in the Islamic world- many advocates of a purified Ottoman Islam believed it appropriate to use force to achieve their moral and theological goals. Hasan Ünsî evidently had to deal with Ottoman puritans in his mosque (which, not unusually, also functioned as a living space for dervishes, students, and others), in the form of students of jurisprudence (suhtelar). We are told that, having adopted the beliefs of the ‘people of denial’ (ehl-i inkâr), these students (some of whom Hasan, who himself had an ‘exoteric’ education in the Islamic sciences, had previously instructed) began trying to drive the saintly şeyh from the mosque, in order to ‘purify’ the space of ritual uses they opposed, and to claim the space exclusively for themselves.

To make a long story short, the struggle between Hasan Ünsî and the puritanical legal students grew hotter and hotter and increasingly physical, to the point that, our hagiographer claims, the students contemplated murdering the şeyh! It culminated in a show-down in which, after trying to argue his case using verse from the Qur’an, Şeyh Hasan manifested his ‘celâl,’ or divinely-given wrathful majesty- and the students began dying of mysterious accidents or suddenly falling ill, to the point that in a week’s time none remained in the mosque! During the course of these incidents, one of Şeyh Hasan’s dervishes, Kebâbî Ahmed Dede, asked whether the şeyh ought to moderate the outflow of divine celâl, to which the şeyh replied, ‘Occupy yourself with your own matters!’ At this the dervish, we are told, went pale witnessing the şeyh’s fierce celâl, and reported later that ‘all my being went shaky and my mind was thrown into disorder’ when the şeyh said these words to him. This leads us to the following extended story, in which a cross-section of Istanbul society bears witness to the divine wrath and majesty at work in the şeyh: with the obvious moral throughout that opposing God’s Friends was dangerous, even if it was the ostensibly pious who were doing so.

woman-on-the-way-to-hamam.png
Woman and child on the way to the hamam, from the Rålamb Book of Costumes, depictions of residents of Istanbul in the 1650s, a couple of decades before our story.

‘One day, at mid-morning, a lady and her child passed by the Acem Aǧa Mosque, which was locked up. The child peeked into the mosque through a window, but crying out he tumbled into his mother’s arms. His mother said, ‘What was it that frightened you so?’ The child said, ‘There is a lion sitting atop the şeyh’s post [an animal skin rug that symbolized the şeyh/shaykh’s authority]! And now he is rising up!’ The lady herself then looked through the window and saw that a magnificent lion was sitting upon the post. Having seen him the lady became afraid and out of her fear began exclaiming loudly and rapidly.

Some of the dervishes there heard her and came up to her, saying, ‘Lady, what’s the matter?’ She related what had happened to them, and so they took looked through the window and saw upon the Şeyh’s post a lordly lion sitting. He opened his eyes and looked at them such that the gall-bladder of the one upon whose gaze he fell burst from fear! Being filled with great fear they were gripped with confusion. They said, ‘If this lion rises up and comes at us, the door will prove no barrier and there will be trouble!’ As they were trying to figure out a solution, one of the Şeyh’s old dervishes, Pîr Osman Dede Efendi came and forbade them from doing anything, instead sending them to their rooms. After an hour had passed he said to them, ‘Come and see—where is the lion now?’ With fear the dervishes came and peered inside the mosque through a window, but saw no lion! Instead the Şeyh [Hasan Ünsî] was upon his post. Osman Dede Efendi said to them, ‘Keep silence! Tell no one of this! For it is not permitted [to talk of it to others]!’ So saying he strongly admonished them.

Nonetheless, the story became widely known. A while later, some of the dervishes asked Osman Dede Efendi about the secret and divine wisdom of this lion. Drawing them aside, in secret he said to them: ‘This is the form that the Şeyh takes when his celâl is overwhelmingly strong in his innermost secret. Did you not see how in the course of a week the jurisprudence students came to their ends, and have you not heard what Kebâbî Ahmed Efendi said?’

İbrahim Hâs, Hasan Ünsî Halvetî ve Menâkıbnâmesi, edited by Mustafâ Tatcı (Bağcılar, İstanbul: Kırkambar Kitaplığı, 2013, 2013), 222-224. Translated by Jonathan Parkes Allen, 2018.

*

Dear reader: while you’re here, consider supporting me on Patreon, so that I can keep content like this coming along at a regular pace. Thanks!

 

Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan Won’t Take ‘No’ For An Answer

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Culture, History, Islam, OttomanLeave a comment
Şeyh Gülşeni and Disciples
Şeyh Gülşenî (at center on the left), a 15th into 16th century Ottoman saint, bids some of his disciples and khalīfas farewell at a dock, illustrating the relationship between a saintly shaykh and his disciples also on display in the below story from another Ottoman context. From an 18th century illustrated copy of Ata’is Hamse (Walters 666.41A)

Shaykh Abū al-Wafā’ ibn Ma’rūf al-Ḥamawī—who was from among the pious ‘ulāmā and whose biography will come later—related to me that he had become a khalīfa to Shaykh [Aḥmad ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥman, (d. 1571), a Kurdish saint in the countryside north of Aleppo] after serving him for some time. He went to Cairo in order to study exoteric knowledge. He met with Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan al-Bakrī, God sanctify his secret [1]. He treated him hospitably, but then Abū al-Ḥasan tried to get Abū al-Wafā’ to take the pledge of his ṭarīqa from him [2]. Abū al-Wafā’ refused out of regard for his shaykh [Aḥmad]. Abū al-Ḥasan kept asking, and Abū al-Wafā’ continued to refuse, until one night [Abū al-Ḥasan] entered his room and said: ‘Put your hand in mine!’ Suddenly a crack appeared in the wall, and Shaykh Aḥmad emerged and cried out, ‘Leave my disciple alone!’ [Abū al-Ḥasan] said, ‘Not possible!’ In that very moment, a fire came forth from Shaykh Aḥmad’s eye, and at that Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan left Abū al-Wafā’ alone. Then al-Khiḍr emerged, and made peace between the two shaykhs [3]. The next morning Abū al-Wafā’s visit to Cairo was concluded so he returned home, and when he reached the village of al-Quṣayr, he entered the presence of Shaykh Aḥmad and kissed his hand, at which the shaykh smiled and said, ‘The chain of our ṭarīqa is unbroken!’

This poor one [ie the author al-‘Urḍī] had heard this story and had denied its truth, saying that people were making up lies about Shaykh al-Wafā’. But when I was young he came to Aleppo and I said to him, ‘This story, did it take place in waking life or dreaming?’ [4] He replied, ‘Waking life!’

_______________

[1] The Bakrī family was by the mid-16th century a well-established scholarly and saintly house, which would continue to be prominent all through the Ottoman period.

[2] Receiving a ṭarīqa- that is, initiation into a particular sufi lineage or path- from a shaykh could be a very personal matter of loyalty and prestige, particularly in this period, and especially in a Kurdish context- while receiving multiple affiliations was not uncommon in some contexts, and posed no problem for some shaykhs, this obviously was not universally true.

[3] Al-Khiḍr is an immortal, mysterious figure within Islam, and is often depicted appearing at opportune moments to convey knowledge or to solve a particular problem.

[4] In other words, did the ‘action’ take place in a dream-vision (which would be ‘real,’ just in a different way), or did the two shaykhs and al-Khiḍr bodily appear in poor Abū al-Wafā’s room? The former option would be rather unexceptional; the latter is a rather different and more spectacular scenario.

Muḥammad ibn ʻUmar al-ʻUrḍī, Maʻādin al-dhahab fī al-aʻyān al-musharrafa bi-him Ḥalab ʻAmman : Markaz al-Wathaʼiq wa-al-Makhtutat, 1992), 282.

No More Notebooks for Shaykh ‘Alwān

On By JonathanIn Arabic, History, Islam, OttomanLeave a comment
Preacher with Ink instead of Rosewater
An illustration of the interior of a 17th century Ottoman mosque, which wouldn’t be too far off from the setting of the below story- the preacher on the minbar (with hands in his deep sleeves), the candles at the mihrab, the men seated to listen to the preaching, and the neatly lined up shoes, all would have been seen, albeit in somewhat different forms (the floral decoration on the side of the minbar, for instance, is a clear indication that this is a 17th or 18th century setting). (Walters M.666)

Shaykh ‘Alwān (d. 1530) was one of the major Muslim saints of late Mamluk into early Ottoman Damascus. While possessed of the multifaceted education typical of a member of the ‘ulama of his time, Shaykh ‘Alwān’s most important formation came at the hands of an itinerant holy man from the Maghrib (modern day Morocco, ‘Ali al-Maymūn. The following story, related by Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī, an important source for saints’ lives from early Ottoman Syria, describes Shaykh ‘Alwān’s first encounter with the man who would become his spiritual preceptor. Besides illustrating a saintly miracle of sorts, it incidentally provides a look at how an early modern Muslim preacher would conduct his sermons, namely, with a handbook of useful material tucked up his sleeve (literally!).

DP230667

Shaykh ‘Alwān related to [Shaykh Yunūs) in 924: He was preaching in Hama, in accordance with the custom of preachers—using a notebook with pleasing stories, wise anecdotes, and edifying reports and accounts, when al-Sayyīd ‘Ali ibn Maymūn—who was also preaching in Hama—passed by him, stopped before him, and said: “O ‘Alwān, preach from your head, and not from a notebook!” But Shaykh ‘Alwān did not pay him any mind, so he said the same thing a second time, then a third. Then, Shaykh ‘Alwān reported, “That caused me to pay attention, and I knew that he was from among the Friends of God. So I said to him: ‘It’s no good for me to preach from my head—meaning by heart.’ He replied: ‘Nay, preach from your head!’ I replied: ‘Ya Sayyīdi, only if you help me!’ He said: ‘I do, and trust in God!’ So when I awoke the next morning I went to the preaching session, with my notebooks in my sleeve. When I sat down the Sayyīd was opposite me. I began speaking from the heart, and God inspired (fataḥa) me, and that inspiration has continued until now!”’

Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī, al-Kawākib al-sāʼirah bi-aʻyān al-miʼah al-ʻāshirah (Beirut: Dār al-Kuttub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1997), v. 2, 204-5).

Explicating Devotion to Muhammad, Part i.

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Art, History, Islam, Ottoman, Ottoman Turkish3 Comments
image
Opening page to Kara Davutzâde Mehmed Efendî, Tevfik muvaffikü’l-hayrât li-neyli’l-berekât fi hizmet menbai’s-saâdât, University of Michigan, Special Collections Library, Isl. Ms. 672

Late medieval and early modern devotion to Muhammad in Islam was first and foremost a matter of personal and communal practice, embodied in devotional regimes, public rituals, habitual expressions, and material objects, among other practices and techniques. But it also unfolded at a discursive, textual, and homiletical level, with scholarly and semi-scholarly productions explicating, extolling, and critiquing various aspects of devotion to the Prophet appearing from the late medieval period forward in multiple languages of Islam. The genre of commentary (Ar. sharḥ/Ott. Trk. şerh) was an important vehicle for delivering explication of devotional practices and their intersection with theology and other Islamic disciplines. Numerous commentaries on ṣalawāt– the litanies of blessing upon Muhammad- and related sorts of texts appeared across the Ottoman world and beyond, in both Arabic and Ottoman Turkish (and in other languages further east). Like much early modern commentary production in Islamic societies, these texts have received little engage scholarly attention, though the neglect of commentaries is starting to change. In the following weeks I’d like to give some samples of commentary on devotional texts, starting with excerpts from commentary on what was perhaps the most important text of devotion to Muhammad, al-Jāzūlī’s Dalā’il al-khayrāt.

But before presenting translated texts and analysis of them, I’d like to start with the above image. It comes from the opening page of a beautifully executed manuscript copy of an Ottoman Turkish translation and expansion of an Arabic commentary on al-Jāzūlī’s prayerbook. Titled Tevfik muvaffikü’l-hayrât li-neyli’l-berekât fi hizmet menbai’s-saâdât, this work, which goes through, line by line, the text of Dalā’il al-khayrāt, was composed by an eighteenth century author, Kara Davutzâde Mehmed Efendî, about whom I know no more than can be gleaned from the text. The commentary was aimed at many audiences, especially, it seems, pious women, and may have been meant to furnish material for preachers.

The charming miniature that is framed at the top of the page, a depiction of Medina, centered on the Prophet’s Mosque, is a good example of the devotional iconography that grew up around devotion to Muhammad, in many contexts, featuring images of Mecca and Medina, the tomb of Muhammad and the tombs of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs, the footprint of Muhammad (and other physical traces), and so on. Such images had many functions: they presented the physical presence of Muhammad and his close associates in an iconographic manner but without actually depicting Muhammad directly. Instead they summoned his presence by pointing the viewer at the material traces of his life and memory, a sort of icon at remove. They had an educational value, giving the reader or viewer a sense of what the holiest places of Islam and the artefacts of the Prophet looked like. And finally they had a prophylactic purpose- that is, early modern Muslims might display or otherwise have on hand these images as a way of warding off evil and misfortune, based on their icon-at-a-remove connection to Muhammad and his powerful intercession. The above image- which is also just simply beautiful and delicately rendered- participates in all of the above.