Spiritual Life in
Ottoman Turkey
Abdal Hakim Murad
During the first,
formative centuries of its existence, the Ottoman state typically grounded its
claims to legitimacy in its successful implementation of the gazi tradition of
triumphant war against Byzantium. Dwelling in retreats in the mountains of
north-western Anatolia, from which they descended gradually to wrest control of
the Bithynian plain from their Christian foes, the first Ottomans were typically
men of the sword with little time either for a
sophisticated contemplative mysticism or for formal scholarship.As the
rulers of villagers and nomadic pastoralists with no longstanding institutions of
Islamic learning, the early Anatolian Turks practised a distinctive version of
Islam nourished in part by their Central Asian roots. Those roots were
ultimately shamanistic: before their conversion to Islam the Turkish religious
life had centred on the ozan, the shaman who made auguries for his clan, cast
spells, and presided over its collective rites. The slow infiltration of Islam
among the Turks from the ninth century onwards replaced the ozan with the
Muslim figure of the ata, who transmitted a rudimentary form of Sufism to his
people. The ata also taught the virtues of the gaza, the war for God, which
would inculcate the virtues of self-denial and chivalry, and bring to the
sincere gazi the prospectof everlasting reward in Paradise.[i]
This Sufi vision
cherished by simple cavalrymen gave the Turks a military prowess whose
achievements in some ways recalled the early conquests of Islam. The first Ottoman
sultans were urged to continue the fight for the faith by spiritual guides whose
fame and sanctity had brought them into the intimate circle of the ruler, thereby
adding to his charisma. The most prominent example was Ak Semseddin (d.1459),
the physician, mystic poet and Sufi instructor (seyh) who encouraged Mehmed II
to conquer Constantinople, and who preached the first Friday sermon at the
former cathedral of Aya Sofya.[ii] The power of his spiritual impact, as well
as the Islamic sophistication of the ruler, are evident in much of Mehmed’s
poetry, as in a lyric poem where the sultan uses the classical Sufi metaphors
of spiritual drunkenness to affirm his dependence on his preceptor:
Again, let us away, intoxicated, to the
tavern of ruin,Ottoman’s Spirituality | 2
Let us boast of our service to the wine-presser!
Let us watch as he brings from the
wine-jar something for the world.
Let us scale Mount Sinai and again
commune with God.[iii]
The Conqueror’s
refined spiritual literacy was the product of over a century of cultural
development in the Ottoman realm. Following the capture of Bursa in 1326 and
the subsequent creation of a large Ottoman urban class, the unlettered Turkish nomads
who migrated to the cities had been introduced to a more classical Islamic piety
by Sufi poets of a didactic and orthodox tendency, who wrote in the vernacular so
as to be understood. Among these masses, particularly influential were works
such as the Mevlidof Süleyman Çelebi (d.1422), a great anthem for the birthday
of the Prophet, which unlike most earlier attempts at creating a Turkish
Islamic poetic tradition was much more than the mere translation of a Persian
original. Prose works began to appear,
chief among which is the Muzekki en-Nufûs of Esrefoglu Rumi of Iznik
(d.1469). His declared intention of writing ‘in simple Turkish’ to attract
support among ordinary people without a high Islamic education is also evident
in his popular collection of mystical poems.[iv]
Thanks to such
literary proselytising, and under the sultans’ guidance and patronage, by the
time Constantinople had been won for Islam in 1453 the Ottoman state and much
of the urban population had committed itself definitively to the orthoprax Hanafi
school of law, the orthodox Moturidi theology, and to a variety of Sufi
tarikats.
In the complex
patterns of post-conquest Ottoman society, three hierarchies came to wield
spiritual power over the populace and maintained a stable ascendancy which only
began to be broken with the onset of Westernising reform in the mid-nineteenth century.
Firstly, there was
the ilmiyye (‘learned’) institution which provided the muftis, judges, schoolteachers and mosque
imams for the empire,[v] a single hierarchy which culminated in the supreme
office of the seyhülislam, who handed down authoritative doctrine and legal
opinion to the entire empire. This ‘official’ Islam, which legitimised and in
turn enjoyed the financial patronage of the state, provided the formal
religious backbone of Ottoman Muslim society.
Secondly, there was
the self-financing but officially sanctioned network of guilds (esnaf). These,
which evolved more complex forms in Ottoman society than elsewhere in the
Islamic world, grew from informal fraternities of young men, often bachelors
known as ahis, who subscribed to the canons known collectively Ottoman’s
Spirituality | 3 as fütüvvet, a principle which may lie at the source of the
chivalric ideal in the West. Mutually supportive, morally upright, and devoted
to the ideal model of fütüvvet that was the caliph Ali (r.a.), these groups had
by the fifteenth century evolved into formal guilds which probably included
almost all urban craftsmen. The governing documents of these guilds, known
asfütüvvet-nâmes, detailed not only the religious and moral duties of the guild
members, but also the degrees of rank which stretched from the humble grade of
apprentice up to the headship of the guild. Often each apprentice (nâzil) would
be allocated a ‘senior on the path’ (yol atasi) and, from among more senior
apprentices, two ‘brothers’ (yol kardesleri) to assist and counsel him. The
organisation of some vocations was much more hierarchically rigid than others,
and the leatherworkers, in particular, came to recognise one universal ‘guide’,
the Ahi Baba, whose grand lodge was at the Anatolian town of Kirsehir, and
whose authority was often acknowledged by other guilds as well.[vi]
The third spiritual
hierarchy in Ottoman Turkey was provided by the Sufi orders (tarikats). Many
dozens of these groups appear down the six centuries of Ottoman history; but
for our purposes it will suffice to summarise two broad tendencies.The first is
represented by the Sufi cults of the tribal hinterlands where the high Islamic
teaching of the religious colleges (medreses) had not penetrated. These tarikats
grew up around charismatic leaders who were prone to making dramatic claims to
mahdistic or messianic status, and whose attitude to the orthodoxy preached by
the ulema was, more often than not, somewhat contemptuous. An example was Barak
Baba of Tokat, an early fourteenth century dervish whose appearance strongly
recalled the Turcoman shamanistic patrimony. He wore only a red loincloth and a
turban adorned with two buffalo horns. Wandering the streets with his similarly
attired disciples, he would blow a horn, play a drum, and dance. While he beat
soundly any of his followers who neglected the canonical prayers, he failed to
keep the fast of Ramadan. His beliefs, apparently shared by many others, involved
faith in reincarnation, and an extreme devotion to the caliph Ali.[vii]
Such antinomianism
drove a range of other movements. One such was the loosely defined Kalendar
brotherhood of ragged wanderers, often indifferent to the normative rules of
Islamic practice (sari‘at), who gathered in their own lodges (kalendarhanes)
where, at least according to the chroniclers, all manner of wickedness took
place. The chiliastic beliefs of some of these tarikats did more than simply
scandalise the orthodox: they could end in open rebellion against the authorities.
The most disastrous from the Ottoman viewpoint was the Safavid tarikat,
which, although
founded by the orthodox Safi al-Din Ardabili (d.1334), was suddenly Ottoman’s
Spirituality | 4converted to extreme Shi’ism at the hands of his fourth
successor, Seyh Cüneid (d.1460). Cüneid’s grandson Isma’il (d.1524) claimed to
be both God Himself and a reincarnation of Ali.[viii] Under Isma’il, whose
deputies were mainly Turcoman nomad chieftains from Anatolia, the formerly
Sunni country of < w:st="on">Iran was
forcibly converted to
Shi’ism amid extreme scenes of massacre and religious
persecution which are
more reminiscent of sixteenth-century European history than of that of the
Middle East.[ix]
Such examples drove
the Ottomans to suppress the extreme (ghulat) Shi’i tarikats on their
territory. This was partly achieved through the execution or deportation of
those of their members who were in rebellion against the state, and partly
through the official encouragement of other popular tarikats which contrived to
combine a devotion to the figure of ‘Ali with a loyalist attitude to the
Ottoman rulers.
Most significant in
this category was the Bektashi order of dervishes. Its founder, Haci Bektas,
was an immigrant who came to Anatolia from Khurasan at some point in the late
thirteenth century. A work reliably attributed to him, the Makalat, shows him to
have been a learned Sufi who recognised the necessity of adherence to the
sari‘at. He describes the forty ‘stations’ of the Sufi path, ten under each of
the classic heads of Sari‘at (the Law), Tarikat (the Way), Hakikat (the Truth),
and Ma’rifat (Knowledge). The stations of Tarikat, for instance, are:
repentance (tevbe), aspiration (iradet), dervishhood (dervislik), mortification
(mücahede), service to the brethren (hidmet), fear of God (hawf), hope in Him
(ümid), the special dress code and regalia of the Bektashi way, love for the
absent Beloved (muhabbet) and passion upon experiencing Him (ask).[x]
Despite the seemingly
mainstream origins of the Bektashis, the process which had subverted the
Safavis was soon at work, and subsequent generations of rural Turks introduced
the ghulat beliefs which are said to characterise the tarikat to this day. But despite
the hostility of the ilmiyye institution, the staunch loyalism of the Bektashis
offered the sultans a means of harnessing the Alid piety of the Turcomans in
the service of the state. The Janissaries, the slave-infantry which made up the
core of the Ottoman army until the early nineteenth century, were usually
affiliated to this tarikat.
The second type of
Ottoman Sufism is represented by a range of more solidly
orthodox tarikats.
Among the most conspicuous of these was
the Naksibendiye, founded by Baha’ al-Din Naqshband of Bukhara. Within a
century of its founder’s death in 1389, the first Naksibendi tekke (dervish
lodge) had been established in Ottoman’s Spirituality | 5 Istanbul by Molla
Abdullah Ilahi, an itinerant scholar from the Anatolian town of Simav who had
received the Naksibendi initiation from Khwaja ‘Ubaydullah Ahrar in Samarqand.
After his return to < w:st="on">Turkey, Molla Ilahi launched a
largescale mission among the Turks, calling them to orthodox Islam. His
literary legacy in three languages includes works such as the Way of the
Seekers (Maslak al-TalibIn), and his famous Travelling-fare of the Lovers (Zad
al-Mushtaqin). A ‘second founder’ of the Naksibendi order in <
w:st="on">Turkey was Mawlana Khalid Baghdadi (d.1827), a Kurd who
brought the Naksibendi-Mujaddidi order from Delhi and worked to ensure its
diffusion throughout the empire.[xi] Partly because their staunch orthodoxy
recommended them to the ulema, the Naksibendiye were among the most widespread
and politically and socially influential Ottoman tarikats. Their impact today
on many Turkish religious politicians is said to
be considerable.[xii]
Other key tarikats
included the Kadiriye, founded by ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani of Baghdad (d.1167).
The principal Turkish representative of this order, Haci Bayram Veli of Ankara
(d.1430), was a pupil of the ascetic Hamiduddin Aksarayi (d.1412). While he
left no literary legacy other than a couple of poems, his sanctity and the profusion
of his acolytes established the Bayramiye as a noteworthy tarikat in its own right.[xiii]
Two of his deputies, Ak Semseddin, the spiritual guide of Sultan Mehmed the
Conqueror, and Esrefoglu Rumi, have already been mentioned. A later branch of this
popular tarikat, the Celvetiye, was founded by Aziz Mahmud Hudâ’i (d.1629), theorist
of the incantatory properties of the Divine Names. It was expounded by the prolific
Ismail Haqqi of Bursa (d.1724), whose Ruh al-Bayan, a ten-volume commentary on
the Koran, is considered one of the major literary monuments of later Sufism.[xiv]
Another Bayrami saint
was Dede Ömer Sikkini of Göynük (d.1475), an austere figure who revived the
early Khurasani tradition of the ‘path of blame’ (melâmatiye), which seeks to
achieve true sincerity by performing actions which, although not sinful, bring public
contempt upon the spiritual wayfarer. The Bayramiye-Melâmatiye tarikat persisted
through Ottoman history, and, while
sometimes frowned upon by the ulema, spurred other tarikats to introduce
elements of the melâmati philosophy.[xv]
The Suhrawardiye was
another urban tarikat, founded by ‘Umar al-Suhrawardi (d.1234), whose classic
Arabic manual of Sufism, ‘Awarif al-Ma’arif was translated into Turkish by
Ahmet Bigâwi (d.1458). The main Anatolian branch of this tarikat was the
Zeyniye, named after Zeyneddin Hafi of Khurasan (d.1438), whose two Ottoman’s
Spirituality | 6
Anatolian
missionaries Abdurrahman Merzifoni and Abdullatif-i Kudsi spread the order
throughout the Central Anatolian towns.[xvi] One of the most intricate stories
in Ottoman Sufism is that of the Halveti tarikat, founded in Tabriz by ‘Umar
Khalvati (d.1397), whose disciple Yahya Shirvani (d.1464) became the order’s
missionary to Anatolia. The important Sa‘baniye branch of this order was
established by Sa‘ban-i Veli of Kastamonu (d.1568), celebrated, along with Rumi,
Haci Bektas and Haci Bayram, as one of the Four Pillars (aktab-i arba‘a) of Anatolian
Sufism. Like the other ‘Pillars’, he was celebrated for urging the army to show
courage, and for bringing Islam to many Christian regions of the empire. In
this respect, the Four Pillars can be compared to the Wali Songo, the Nine
Saints of Java, who brought about mass conversions to Islam in South-east Asia
during the same period.
The Egypt-based
Gülseniye founded by Ibrahim Gülseni (d.1533) was a Halveti subbranch whose
influence in < w:st="on">Turkey came largely via the
intellectualised mystical poetry of its founder. Another branch was the
Misriye, named for the talented poet Niyazi Misri (d.1694). A further branch,
the Cerrahiye, was founded by Nureddin Cerrahi (d.1722), whose lodge in the
Karagümrük quarter of Istanbul is today the main conservatory of the traditions
and particularly the musical heritage of later Turkish Sufism.[xvii]
The Rifai order,
which traced its lineage back to Ahmad al-Rifa’i of Basra (d.1182), came to
Anatolia in the fourteenth century, and thence penetrated < w:st="on">Bosnia
and the territories of the Volga Tatars. The Rifai seyh Abu’l-Huda of Aleppo
(d.1909), in particular, was known as one of the spiritual directors of Sultan Abdülhamit
II.[xviii]
The Kazeruniye
tarikat, founded by Abu Ishaq al-Kazaruni of Shiraz (d.1034), which arrived in
Anatolia in the fourteenth century, was famous for its proselytising zeal among
non-Muslims and the enthusiasm with which its members took part in the
gaza.[xix]
Better known than all
these tarikats was the Mevleviye, founded by Jalal al-Din Rumi (d.1273). This
was an élite tarikat, which numbered ulema, senior bureaucrats and even sultans
among its members: the early Ottoman rulers and princes wore the woollen
Mevlevi (‘Hurasani’) cap,[xx] while the reforming Selim III (1789-1808) was an
enthusiastic member and patron of the order. A small number of disciples were authorised
to perform the devrân, the famous slow turning rite on account of which European
travellers styled them the ‘Whirling Dervishes.’ Intellectually and Ottoman’s
Spirituality | 7aesthetically inspired by the poetry of Rumi, the Mevlevis
produced some of Turkey’s finest musicians and calligraphers, and also the
Turkish language’s most sophisticated religious poet, Gâlib Dede of Galata
(d.1799), whose brilliant extended poem Beauty and Love (Hüsn ü Ask) belies the
stereotype of Muslim ‘cultural decline’ during that period.[xxi] Another
feature of the later Mevlevis, as with many Halvetis, Bayramis, and some
others, was a strong devotion to the family of the Prophet, an attitude which
some of them pushed beyond the point usually reached in Sunni piety, so that
pilgrimages to Karbala, commemorations of the death of Imam Hüseyin and other
devotional emphases more usually associated with Shi’ism became widespread.
However, this
‘devotional Shi’ism’, a characteristic of Turkish piety even outside the tarikats,
almost never stepped over the dividing-line into ‘sectarian Shi’ism’. As the Mevlevi
poet Esrar Dede (d.1797) expressed it:
I am the slave of the lovers of the
Prophet,
Neither a Kharijite
nor a misled Shi’ite am I;
I am the bondsman of
Abu Bakr, ‘Umar and ‘Uthman,
And I travel upon the
path of ‘Ali, God’s saint.[xxii]
All these orders,
while differing very widely in their rituals, shared some important common
functions within Ottoman Turkish society. The silsila, the initiatic chain which
linked the living, through the dead masters of the order, to the Prophet himself,
was proof of the integration of an Anatolian or Rumelian, however recent his conversion,
into the mainstream of Islamic society. The tekke of each tarikat provided both
a refuge from the upheavals of the outside world and a consoling context for recalling
its transient status. A few Sufis, particularly the kalendars, chose the life
of mendicancy, while others became hücrenisins, residing permanently in the
lodges; but the great majority remained
part of the wider social matrix, following the principle of khalvat dar anjuman
- ‘spiritual retreat in the midst of company’. For many Turks, most aspects of
life were guided by and interpreted in terms of the teachings of the seyhs,
while the initiation (bay‘at) into the order formed an important rite of
passage for young people. Through participating in the chants and songs handed
down in the lodges, the new generation acquired a familiarity with a large body
of Turkish literature; while in the Mevlevi tekkes a knowledge of Persian was
also inculcated. The lodges provided, too, opportunities for organising the
public virtues required of pious Muslims. Travellers, even of other tarikats,
could expect to find refuge within their walls. Special meals were provided for
Ramadan and the five ‘candle nights’ (kandil geceleri) of the year. Soup
kitchens for the poor, medical Ottoman’s Spirituality | 8services, public
scriptoria, hostels for students or other worthy paupers, refuges for dismissed
statesmen, mediation for family or tribal disputes: these and other social services
were regularly dispensed by the larger dervish lodges.[xxiii]
Not infrequently a
tekke would be attached to the tomb of a saint, in which case it was termed a
dergâh. The Companions had visited the Prophet’s tomb in the early days of Islam,
and following this precedent many mosques have included or been attached to tombs.
The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, for instance, where the jurist Ibn Taymiyya
worshipped, contains the domed mausoleum of John the Baptist (Yahya).
In <
w:st="on">Turkey, this tradition was continued, and contemplative
visits (ziyaret) to the graves (türbe) of important saints and holy warriors
remain an important part of conservative religious life. The Companion of the
Prophet Abu Ayyub el-Ansari has his tomb by the Golden Horn, abutting a
courtyard where for centuries new sultans would be invested with the sword of
office, often by the Çelebi of the Mevlevi dervishes.[xxiv]
No account of Turkish
spirituality would be complete without a mention of the tekkes’ contribution to
musical life. Many tarikats, particularly the Mevleviye and Halvetiye, used
instrumental music as part of their ceremony (samâ‘), and over the centuries a
large and highly sophisticated repertoire was evolved which provided the fertile
core of Turkish music generally. Drawing from Byzantine, Islamic and
Turkishfolk precedents, Ottoman sacred music in turn influenced the music of
the court, the army and the secular music of society at large. The ilahi genre
of hymns, often with words by the early dervish Yunus Emre or by Bektashi
poets, was set to a rich variety of rhythmic patterns and melodies, helping to
popularise Muslim teachings among the population.[xxv]
While the dances and
errant doctrines lurking in some tekkes often drew sharp
criticism from the
ulema, it is nonetheless true that throughout the Ottoman period the ilmiyye
institution looked with favour on most of the tarikats. The best known of all
Turkish müftis, Kemâlpasazâde (d.1534), had written a fatwa commending the Spanish
Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi,[xxvi] while his near contemporary Tasköprüzâde, author of the
definitive biographical dictionary of early Ottoman ulema, heaps praise on
those scholars who were also Sufis. The life of formal mosque worship, the
moral discipline of the guilds, and the emotional intimacy of the tekkes
generally coexisted in a complementary relationship, providing a triple source
of nourishment for the Turkish soul.Ottoman’s Spirituality | 9
All the above relates
to the Muslim majority population. But it should briefly be recalled that the
Ottoman Empire was also home to large Jewish and Christian communities, which,
despite some legal handicaps, found that the new dispensation generally allowed
them to live and worship in faithful adherence to theirlaws and traditions. The
Muslim conquest had preserved the Greek Church from the threat of annihilation
by the growing power of the Latin West; as the Grand Duke Loukas Notaras wryly
acknowledged on the eve of the conquest: ‘It would be better to see the turban
of the Turks reigning over the city than the Latin mitre.’[xxvii] Moreover, it seems
that these Muslim and Orthodox worlds overlapped in more than the simple geographical
sense. It is probable that many of the spiritual exercises of the Hesychast
movement championed by St Gregory Palamas, who had spent a year at the Ottoman
court debating with Muslims, were derived from Sufi and Islamic practices.[xxviii]
More generally, the Ottoman system seemed to provide an opportunity for Muslims
to seek perfection through the exercise of political power, and for Christians
to seek perfection by renouncing it in the manner required by the Gospels.
Such an equilibrium
proved ill-equipped to survive into the modern age.
(A longer version of
this article was first published in the Islamic World Report, 1/iii
(1996), 32-42)
NOTES
[i] R. Sesen, ‘Eski
Türklerin Dini ve Saman Kelimesi’, Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi, X-XI
(1979-80), 57-90.
[ii] Islam
Ansiklopedisi (new edition), II, 299-302.
[iii] K.E. Ünsel,
Fâtih’in siirleri (Ankara, 1946), 62.
[iv] Türk Dili ve
Edebiyatı Ansiklopedisi, III, 116-7.
[v] R.C. Repp, The
Müfti of Istanbul (London, 1986).
[vi] Encyclopedia of Islam
(second edition), II, 966-9.
[vii] Islam
Ansiklopedisi (new edition), V, 61-2.
[viii] Tourkhan
Gandjeï (ed.), Il Canzioniere di Sah Isma’il Hata’i (Naples, 1959),
155.
[ix] E. Glassen,
‘Schah Isma’il I. und die Theologien seiner Zeit’. Der Islam XLVIII
(1972).
[x] Y.N. Öztürk,
Tarih boyunca Bektasilik (Istanbul, 1990).Ottoman’s Spirituality | 10
[xi] H. Algar,
‘Devotional Practices of the Khalidi Naqshbandis of Ottoman <
w:st="on">Turkey.’
Pp.209-227 of R. Lifchez (ed.), The Dervish Lodge: Architecture,
Art, and Sufism in
Ottoman < w:st="on">Turkey (Berkeley, 1992).
[xii] S. Mardin, ‘The
Naksibendi Order in Turkish History’. Pp. 121-42 of R. Tapper
(ed.), Islam in
Modern < w:st="on">Turkey (London 1993), 134.
[xiii] F. Bayramoglu.
Haci Bayram-i Veli (Ankara, 1983).
[xiv] Encyclopaedia
of Islam (second edition), II, 542-3.
[xv] A. Gölpinarlı,
Melâmilik ve Melâmiler (Istanbul, 1931).
[xvi] M. Kara,
Bursa’da Tarikatlar ve Tekkeler (Bursa, 1990), 26-7.
[xvii] S.
Friedlander, ‘A Note on the Khalwatiyyah-Jarrahiyah Order’. Pp. 233-8 of
S.H. Nasr (ed.),
Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations (New York, 1991).
[xviii] Encyclopedia
of Islam (second edition), VIII, 526.
[xix] A.J. Arberry,
‘The Biography of Shaikh Abu Ishaq al-Kazaruni,’ Oriens III
(1950), 163-81; Kara,
Bursa’da, 18-19.
[xx] I.H.
Uzunçarsili, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Teskilatı (Ankara, 1945), 217-8.
[xxi] A. Schimmel,
The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin
Rumi (2nd ed. Albany,
1993); V. Holbrooke, The Unreadable Shore of Love (Austin,
1994).
[xxii] A. Gölpinarli,
Mevlânâ’dan sonra Mevlevîlik (Istanbul, 1953), 227.
[xxiii] Kara,
Bursa’da, 43-7.
[xxiv] M. B. Tanman,
‘Settings for the Veneration of Saints’. Pp. 130-71 of Lifchez, op.
cit.
[xxv] W. Feldman,
‘Musical Genres and Zikir of the Sunni Tarikats of Istanbul’. Pp.
187-202 of Lifchez,
op. cit.
[xxvi] M. Saraç,
Seyhülislam Kemal Pasazade: Hayaiı, Sahsiyeti, Eserleri ve Bazi
siirleri (Istanbul,
1995), 66.
[xxvii] C. Imber, The
Ottoman Empire 1300-1481 (Istanbul, 1990), 150.
[xxviii] S. Runciman,
The Great Church in Captivity (Cambridge, 1968), 136-8.