Ahmet Cem Durak THE OTTOMAN HAGIOGRAPHY OF ABRAHAM: CONSTRUCTING SACRED RULE AND UNIVERSAL HISTORY IN ABDÜLVÂSİ'S HÂLİLNAME MA Thesis in Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies Central European University Budapest October 2019 CEU eTD Collection THE OTTOMAN HAGIOGRAPHY OF ABRAHAM: CONSTRUCTING SACRED RULE AND UNIVERSAL HISTORY IN ABDÜLVÂSİ'S HÂLİLNAME by Ahmet Cem Durak (Turkey) Thesis submitted to the Department of Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ Chair, Examination Committee ____________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________________ Examiner ____________________________________________ Examiner CEU eTD Collection Budapest October 2019 THE OTTOMAN HAGIOGRAPHY OF ABRAHAM: CONSTRUCTING SACRED RULE AND UNIVERSAL HISTORY IN ABDÜLVÂSİ'S HÂLİLNAME by Ahmet Cem Durak (Turkey) Thesis submitted to the Department of Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ External Reader CEU eTD Collection Budapest October 2019 THE OTTOMAN HAGIOGRAPHY OF ABRAHAM: CONSTRUCTING SACRED RULE AND UNIVERSAL HISTORY IN ABDÜLVÂSİ'S HÂLİLNAME by Ahmet Cem Durak (Turkey) Thesis submitted to the Department of Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ External Supervisor Budapest CEU eTD Collection October 2019 I, the undersigned, Ahmet Cem Durak, candidate for the MA degree in Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, declare herewith that the present thesis is exclusively my own work, based on my research and only such external information as properly credited in notes and bibliography. I declare that no unidentified and illegitimate use was made of the work of others, and no part of the thesis infringes on any person’s or institution’s copyright. I also declare that no part of the thesis has been submitted in this form to any other institution of higher education for an academic degree. Budapest, 31 October 2019 __________________________ Signature CEU eTD Collection Abstract Hâlilname stands as a unique literary work in the Ottoman historiography with its choice of Prophet Abraham as its protagonist. The choice of the author who is under the patronage of the grand vizier of Sultan Mehmed I illustrates the court’s mentality of placing themselves as a state in a wider universal history in the post-Timurid Anatolia. This thesis researches the reasons of its author Abdülvâsi’s preference of an ancient prophet as his work’s protagonist to present Sultan Mehmed I and his grand vizier Bayezid Pasha as pious Islamic rulers. The methodology used is both from the disciplines of religious studies and history. As a religious text, Hâlilname presents an ubi sunt pattern to its audience, and this religiosity is compared with its contemporary sacred discourse and historic-religious advancements. The major findings of this thesis are (1) being the scholar of the court, Abdülvâsi differs from the early Ottoman hagiography who were critical about classic Perso-Islamic sedentary state policies. (2) The author legitimizes his patron’s actions through history writing and drawing parallels with ancient Perso-Islamic heroes. Abraham with other prophets and some ancient Persian mythologic kings named in Hâlilname are presented as archetypic heroes of justice and piety. Their endeavours such as enforcing justice and producing wealth were followed by Sultan Mehmed I and Bayezid Pasha. (3) Abdülvâsi draws on isrāʾīliyyāt mostly found in classical ḳiṣāṣ al-anbiyāʾ books and a tafsir named al-K̲ h̲ aṣṣāf to develop his Abraham legend. His sources illustrate the medieval Ottoman CEU eTD Collection author’s literature knowledge. i CEU eTD Collection ii CEU eTD Collection iii Table of contents Introduction............................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Ottoman Abraham legend and its Muslim and Jewish sources……………………………………………………………………………….…………..25 1.1. Halilnâme’s contextualization in Islamic Universal History ................................................ 27 1.1.1. Sources of Halilnâme ……….……………………………………………………...…30 1.1.2. Islamic sources ....................................................................................................... 31 1.1.3.Jewish sources within the Islamic literature …………………………………………33 1.2. Plot of Halilnâme …………………………………………………………….…………..….37 1.2.1. Annunciation of Abraham ………………………………………………………37 1.2.2. The Birth of Abraham ……………………………………………………………41 1.2.3. Abraham’s destruction of the idols…………………………………………………43 1.2.4.Abraham in the Fire …………………………………………………………………44 1.2.5. Abraham and Sarah…………………………………………………………………46 1.2.6.Construction of the first sanctuary…………………………………………………..49 1.2.7. Nimrod Tries to Kill God…………………………………………………………..52 1.2.8.Abraham, “Sultan” of Babylon………………………………………………………55 CEU eTD Collection 1.2.9.Construction of the Kaaba ………………………………………………………….56 1.2.10. The Binding of Ishmael……………………………………………………………57 1.2.11. Abraham’s will……………………………………………………………………..58 iv Chapter 2: Depicting Sultan Mehmed as a Perso-Islamic hero in post-Timurid Anatolia . 60 2.1. Timur versus Bayezid I....................................................................................................... 61 2.2 Nimrod and Timur ............................................................................................................... 63 2.3. Prophets Abraham and Muhammad versus Sultan Mehmed “the Mahdi”………………...65 2.4. Abraham, Mehmed and Bayezid Pasha, the Just Rulers who maintain the order………..69 2.5. Persian Kingship Titles for Legitimization…………………………………………………72 2.6. Placing the House of Osman in the history of universal kingship…………………………..75 Chapter 3: Extolling Muhammad as the final prophet and contextualizing Ottomans in Islamic universal history……………………………………… ………………………………80 3.1. Rivalry between the ulamāʾ and gazi narratives…………………………………………..82 3.2.Rivalry between Timurids and Ottomans……………………………………………………86 3.3. The Islamic Courts’ patronage of religious literature……………………… ……………….88 3.3.1. Timurid versus Ottoman Miʿrād̲ j̲ Narratives …………………… ……. … .……………90 CEU eTD Collection 3.3.2. Angelology of the Miʿrād̲ j̲ ………………………………………………………………93 3.3.3.Jews, Christians, and Biblical Prophets in the Miʿrād̲ j̲ Narratives as agents of Confessionalization………………………………………………………………………………95 3.3.4.Muhammad, “the Beloved of God” ……………………...……………………………..99 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...………...………101 v CEU eTD Collection vi CEU eTD Collection vii Introduction This study explores the direct and indirect reception of non-Islamic narrative sources in an early Ottoman historical work. Abdülvâsi (d.1415) completed the mat̲ h̲ nawī (a narrative poem written in rhyming couplets)1 Halilnâme in 1414 in Amasya. In Persian literature, there are many mat̲ h̲ nawīs which are named after the main character with the suffix “-nâme,”2 some of which were translated into Turkish or rewritten by Anatolian authors. 3 Moreover, some literature was not only translations but telif (“creative mediation”)4 works with unique plots.5 Even though telif works were no translations, they followed Persian literary customs along with Islamic literature.6 They mirrored the Persian and Arabic “verse forms, meters, mythology, even the Weltanschauung.”7 The mat̲ h̲ nawī Halilnâme, which imitates Persian and Arabic Weltanschauung, consists of 3693 couplets (bayt) and it is a telif work.8 1 Fahir İz, “Introduction: The Ottoman Period 1300-1850,” in The Penguin Book of Turkish Verse, ed. Nermin Menemencioğlu in colloboration with Fahir İz (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1978): 39. 2 E. J. W. Gibb, Ottoman Literature: The Poets and Poetry of Turkey (Washington & London: M. W. Dunne, 1901), 17. Some of the important ones are: Shahname (the Stories of the Kings) by Ferdowsi, İskendernâme (Book of Alexander) first written as a separate mat̲h̲nawī by Nizami (d. ca. 1212), as well as Musa-nāma (Book of Moses) and Bereshit-nāma (Book of Genesis) written by Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī in Persian with Hebrew script (Many other prophets’ stories are written with the “-name” addendum in mat̲h̲ nawī forms. Also see Vera Moreen, “The “Iranization” of biblical heroes in Judeo‐Persian epics: Shahin's Ardashir‐namah and ‘Ezra‐namah,” Iranian Studies 29/3-4 (1996): 322-25. 3 Saliha Paker and Zehra Toska, “A call for descriptive Translation Studies on the Turkish tradition of rewrites,” in Translation as Intercultural Communication, ed. Mary Snell-Hornby, Zuzana Jettmarova and Klaus Kaindl (Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1995), 79. Also, see Melike Gökcan Türkdoğan, “Klasik Türk Edebiyatında Kıssaları Konu alan Mesneviler [The Mat̲h̲ nawīs Related the Parable of Qur’an in Classical Turkish Literature],” The Journal of International Social Research