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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Road from Damascus: Circulation and the Redefinition of Islam in the Ottoman Empire, 1620-1720 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Nir Shafir 2016 © Copyright by Nir Shafir 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Road from Damascus: Circulation and the Redefinition of Islam in the Ottoman Empire, 1620-1720 by Nir Shafir Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Nile Spencer Green, Co-Chair Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Co-Chair In the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire was marked by constant polemical disputes over Islamic religious practices. By the end of the century, these debates, which covered topics as varied as the permissibility of smoking tobacco or saint worship, had become so heated the many Muslims in the empire were willing to declare their co-religionists heretics. I use these polemical disputes as a setting in which to explore theories and approaches of religious transformation in the Islamic world. Rather than emphasize religious change driven by socio-economic forces or the disciplinary mechanisms of the state, I focus instead on how Islamic religiosity changed as it became increasingly entangled in the material world of the Eastern Mediterranean. I argue that intensified regimes of circulation of objects and people, especially between the Arabic and ii Turkish-speaking (Rumi) segments of the empire, were generative of key developments of Ottoman religiosity such as novel forms of reading and writing, a culture of pilgrimage centered on the hajj, and, indeed, the bitter polemicism itself. I do this through four detailed case studies of heresy, manuscript “pamphlets,” pilgrimage, and travelogues. The dissertation thus makes two contributions. The first is to integrate discussions of materiality and circulation into our understanding of the transformation of Islamic religiosity in the early modern Ottoman Empire. This is reflected not only in my analysis but also in my research method, in which the materiality of the manuscripts themselves helps me uncover unknown writers and topics and connect a myriad of unrelated works. The second contribution is to highlight how the sustained encounter, exchange, and connectivity between Rumis and Arabs became an important motor of religious and cultural change in the empire. iii The dissertation of Nir Shafir is approved. Michael Cooperson Molly Greene Margaret Jacob Nile Spencer Green, Committee Co-Chair Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION ............................................................................................... viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................... ix VITA .......................................................................................................................................................... xv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 APPROACHING ISLAM IN MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY ................................................................. 3 CONNECTIONS IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD ........................................................................... 6 RECOGNIZING CIRCULATION IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE .......................................................... 10 ENTANGLEMENT IN EARLY MODERNITY ...................................................................................... 13 METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................................... 18 PLAN OF DISSERTATION ..................................................................................................................... 23 CHAPTER 2: APPROACHES TO RELIGIOUS CHANGE IN THE EARLY MODERN OTTOMAN EMPIRE: FUNDAMENTALISM, CONFESSIONALIZATION, AND HERESY ................................................................................................................................................. 27 NARRATIVES OF ISLAMIC REVIVAL AND ORTHODOXY ............................................................. 30 Beyond the Ḳāḍīzādelīs .................................................................................................................... 31 An Anthropologist’s Response ........................................................................................................ 39 NEWER THEORIES OF EARLY MODERN ISLAMIC CHANGE AND TRANSFORMATION .......... 41 SAINTS AND SINNERS IN SEVENTEENTH AND EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CAIRO ...... 46 THE QUESTION OF HERESY ............................................................................................................... 60 THE REVIVAL OF THE HERESIOGRAPHY TRADITION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ..... 65 BREAKING FREE OF HERESY – ALTERNATIVE CONFESSIONAL IDENTITIES OF MUSLIMS 76 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................ 85 CHAPTER 3: PAMPHLETEERING IN A MANUSCRIPT CULTURE: THE CIRCULATION OF CHEAP BOOKS AND THE POLARIZATION OF OTTOMAN SOCIETY ............................................................................................................................................... 87 MANUSCRIPT PAMPHLETS AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK ..................................................... 89 PAMPHLETS IN THE WILD: ARCHIVES, PRESERVATION, AND ECONOMIES OF DISTRIBUTION ......................................................................................................................... 96 CHEAP BOOKS IN THE PAST AND PRESENT ................................................................................... 100 CLASSES AND CAUSATION: THE POSSIBILITY OF NEW READERS ......................................... 106 HUMMUS AND HOT IRON: A PAN-IMPERIAL DEBATE IN PAMPHLETS ................................. 116 TWO PAMPHLETEERS: ʿABD AL-GHANĪ AL-NĀBULUSĪ AND MINḲĀRĪZĀDE ..................... 120 POLEMICS, PAMPHLETS, AND THE CORROSION OF LOCAL INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITY 137 THE RISE OF NEW READING TECHNIQUES AND NEW COMMUNITIES ...................................... 152 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................... 161 v CHAPTER 4: SAINTS, SHRINES, AND THE HAJJ IN AN OTTOMAN HOLY LAND: UNDERSTANDING THE PILGRIMAGE AS CIRCULATION .................................. 165 RUMIS AND ARABS: CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN MUSLIMS .................................... 169 HOLY LANDS, OLD AND NEW: OTTOMAN DIFFIDENCE IN THE SAINTLY LANDS ............. 175 INTRODUCING IBN ARABI: A FAILED ATTEMPT AT A STATE-SPONSORED SAINT’S CULT ............................................................................................................................ 181 AN OTTOMAN HAJJ: INVESTING IN NEW FORMS OF RELIGIOUS MOBILITY .................... 188 THE CHRISTIANS’ HAJJ – THE HAJJ AS A TRANS-CONFESSIONAL PHENOMENON ............ 200 PILGRIMAGES OF THE HAJJ – THE HAJJ INCORPORATES SAINTLY SHRINES ...................... 210 CONTESTED PILGRIMAGES: THE HAJJ CONTESTED BETWEEN RUMIS AND ARABS ......... 216 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................... 227 CHAPTER 5: TRAVEL, TRAVELOGUES, AND THE TEXTUAL EXPRESSION OF CIRCULATION IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE ................................................................ 229 REMNANTS OF MEDIEVAL TRAVEL ............................................................................................. 234 AN OTTOMAN TRADITION OF TRAVEL WRITING ...................................................................... 238 POETIC GIFTS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY ............................................................................. 242 DREAMS DEFERRED AND EXPANDED: TRAVELOGUES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 248 Ḥamawī ............................................................................................................................................. 250 Kibrīt .................................................................................................................................................. 254 ʿUṭayfī ............................................................................................................................................... 256 Ibn Maḥāsin ..................................................................................................................................... 259 Ibn Maʿsūm ..................................................................................................................................... 261 TRAVELOGUES DEVELOP A METHODOLOGY ............................................................................. 265 Khiyārī .............................................................................................................................................. 265 Khafājī .............................................................................................................................................. 268 Baylūnī and Kātib Çelebī .............................................................................................................. 272 THE MATERIAL CONNECTIONS OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY TRAVELOGUES .................. 276 CHRISTIANS TRAVELERS ................................................................................................................