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Joshua Michael White CEU Workshop Paper *Draft—Do Not Cite or Circulate* Joshua Michael White CEU Workshop Paper Fetva Diplomacy: The Ottoman ùeyhülislam as Trans-imperial Intermediary “The Quarter-Master's Opinion is like the Mufti's among the Turks; the Captain can undertake nothing which the Quarter-Master does not approve.” —Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates (1724)1 When Captain Charles Johnson compared the Mufti—by which he meant theúeyhülislam, the title of the mufti of Istanbul and the Ottomans’ foremost religious authority—to a ship’s quarter-master, hewas writing about the governance of the Atlantic pirate ships of the early eighteenth century, not the organization of the Ottoman central government. Yet the fact that Johnson chose this figure for his analogy, which apparently was comprehensible to a popular European readership, says a great deal about the perception abroad of the mufti of Istanbul’s powersby the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The authority and influence(both real and perceived) of the úeyhülislam, who headed up the Ottoman religious hierarchy and served as the Empire’s chief jurisconsult, account for why early modern European diplomats consistently cultivated the men who held the office and sought their intervention in important matters. From at least the late sixteenth century onwards, the úeyhülislamwas an important node on the Istanbul diplomatic circuit. Alongside other high-ranking Ottoman dignitaries and political figures like the grand vezir, the kaymakam (the vezir’s deputy), and the kapudan pasha (the imperial admiral), the úeyhülislamentertained frequent visits from European ambassadors. Unlike these others, however, the úeyhülislam had no formal political-administrative or military function. Perhaps it is partially for this reason that historians of early modern diplomacy and of the Ottoman Empire have overlooked the important part úeyhülislamsplayed in the relations between European powers, the Ottoman center, and the Empire’s periphery. As it happened, the úeyhülislam’s unique, quasi-outsider position—of the Ottoman administration but notquite part 1 Quoted in Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston, 2004), 66. 1 *Draft—Do Not Cite or Circulate* of it—and his religious gravitas were precisely what made him such a valuable diplomatic ally and effective intermediary. The power and influence of individual úeyhülislams varied over the course of the early modern period, but in all manner of affairs concerning war, peace, and trade, Venetian, French, English, and Dutch ambassadors sought the mufti’s counsel and aid. Not only could the úeyhülislaminfluence policy, his opposition could often derail initiatives. Thus it was essential for foreign diplomats to cultivate good relations with the mufti, both to achieve their own goals and to frustrate those of their rivals.But the involvement of the úeyhülislamin foreign affairs went beyond his regular meetings with European ambassadors. These diplomats sought more than his approval or occasional intercession. They also sought his fetvas (Arabic: fatwa), the most powerful tool wielded by the Ottoman Empire’s chief mufti. This paper explores the role of the úeyhülislam as a diplomatic intermediary, in this instance between the Ottoman Empire, Venice, and North Africa, and introduces the concept of “fetva diplomacy.” Focusing closely on a series of piracy-related incidents in the mid-1620s, during the tenure of ZekeriyyazadeYahyaEfendi (d. 1644), it discusseshow fetva diplomacy worked in practice and how the legitimacy and Islamic bona fides of the úeyhülislam were harnessed to give Islamic legal sanction to pragmatic political and diplomatic decisions. Anyone of any confession, irrespective of subjecthood, could request a fetva, a non-binding legal opinion, from the úeyhülislam.2This openness to all-comers led the representatives of foreign powers to frequently petition theúeyhülislam forfetvas that would support their diplomatic goals, in addition to negotiating with him directly for his personal intercession on important matters.The fetvas they acquired might be intended to support their petitions to the sultan for decrees, to increase the odds of enforcement of the secular provisions of their bilateral treaties (ahdname) with the Ottoman Empire in contentious cases, or simply to clarify points of law where there was confusion or doubt. Fetva diplomacy was not unidirectional, initiated solely by foreigners. Foreign diplomats and Ottoman officials in Istanbul sometimes coordinated with one another to acquire fetvas from the úeyhülislamto achieve shared goals, such as the release of Venetian captives held illegally in Tunis in 1626, the case that will receive most of our attention below. The Ottoman government 2Fetva-granting was in spite of their many other duties, their primary job. R.C. Repp, The Mufti of Istanbul: A Study in the Development of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London, 1986), 196, passim; Colin Imber, Ebu’s-Su’ud: The Islamic Legal Tradition (Edinburgh, 1997), 13-14. 2 *Draft—Do Not Cite or Circulate* also engaged in fetva diplomacy on its own account, using the úeyhülislam’s opinions to lend extra weight to its decrees to difficult-to-control frontier officials and de facto independent North Africa. As a semi-independent locus for inter-confessional and trans-imperial negotiation and diplomacy, the úeyhülislamfunctioned as a crucial conduit between imperial centers and peripheral Ottoman possessionswho was capable, through his fetvas, of harmonizing Ottoman foreign policy with international and Islamic law. Before we can examine how this was accomplished and how various foreign and Ottoman actors worked together in Istanbul with and through the úeyhülislam, we must first discuss the form and function of fetvas in the early modern Ottoman context and provide some background on the officeholders and bureaucracy that produced them. At its most basic, afetva is a non-binding legal opinion given in response to a specific, non-hypothetical query by a qualified jurist, a mufti, in accordance with the precepts of his school of Islamic jurisprudence.Despite their technically non-binding nature, fetvas were considered to be authoritative sources of law (unlike the rulings of judges, which, though binding, were not).3 This meant that fetvas were not necessarily one-off opinions.4 Quite the contrary, they were preserved and compiled into widely disseminated collections that were organized along the pattern of Islamic jurisprudential manuals, allowing for easy reference. As such, Ottoman fetvas often had an afterlife beyond their initial issue and purpose, providing guidance for later readers, whether jurists, judges, curious Muslims, or foreign merchants.5 Although in other places and periods a single fatwa might encompass hundreds of pages and delve into an issue in extensive detail, by the end of the sixteenth century, the fetvas of the úeyhülislams had taken on a characteristic form, unique to the genre, distinguished by its brevity (rarely more than a few lines) and linguistic simplicity. No matter who presented the original 3 For background on fatwas and muftis generally, see Muhammad Khalid Masud, Brinkley Messick, and David Powers, “Muftis, Fatwas, and Islamic Legal Interpretation,” in Masud, Messick, and Powers, eds., Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and their Fatwas (Cambridge, 1996), 3-32. On the connection between kadi and mufti in the Ottoman context, see Haim Gerber, State, Society, and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective (Albany, 1994), 79-83. 4Masud, Messick, and Powers describe muftis’ opinions as “the closest equivalent to the familiar Anglo-American legal mechanism of case-law precedent” in, “Muftis, Fatwas, and Islamic Legal Interpretation,” 4. See also WaelHallaq, “From Fatwas to Furu: growth and change in Islamic substantive law,” Islamic Law and Society, 1 (1994), 29-65. 5ùükrü Özen, “OsmanlÕ Döneminde Fetva Literatürü,” Türkiye AraúWÕrmalarÕ Literatür Dergisi, 3 (2005), 252-3; Imber, Ebu’s-Su’ud, 57. Colin Imber provides an excellent and brief introduction to how Ottoman fetva production and compilation worked in the post-Ebu Su’ud era, with examples, in “Eleven Fetvas of the Ottoman Sheikh ul- Islam ‘Abdurrahim,” in Masud, Messick, and Powers, eds., Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and their Fatwas (Cambridge, 1996), 141-9. 3 *Draft—Do Not Cite or Circulate* question, whether an Ottoman Muslim with a simple question about religious practice or the sultan looking for justification for war, the úeyhülislamor his fetva-granting office (the fetvahane) would reformulate it in the prescribed manner, distilling it to its essence. Names were replaced with standardized aliases (Zeyd, Amr, Bekr, Beúr, etc. for men; Hind, Zeyneb, Hadice, etc. for women) and superfluous details were stripped from the question to bring the particular point of law at issue into relief. The new question was usually posed in such a manner that it could be answered simply yes (olur) or no (olmaz).6Doing so facilitated fetva-granting on a massive scale, allowing the clerks of the Ottoman fetva bureaucracy that had developed during the 29-year tenure of EbuSu’ud (1545-1574) to prepare hundreds of fetvas a day, pre-sorting them for the chief mufti’s evaluation according to his anticipated affirmative or negative response. For more important questioners, which included members of the imperial administration and foreign diplomats, the úeyhülislammight receive and reformulate the question himself,
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