THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO THE YAZICIOĞLUS AND THE SPIRITUAL VERNACULAR OF THE EARLY OTTOMAN FRONTIER A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY CARLOS GRENIER CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2017 © Copyright by Carlos Grenier, 2017. All rights reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION vii INTRODUCTION 1 I. Who were the Yazıcıoğlus? 3 II. International Context 11 III. Sources 14 Comments 23 CHAPTER 1: THE SCRIBE AND HIS SONS 29 I. Yazıcı Ṣāliḥ and the ġāzīs of Rumelia 31 II. Meḥmed and Aḥmed, Sons of the Scribe 46 III. Problems 73 Conclusion 76 CHAPTER 2: THE YAZICIOĞLUS AND THE TEXTUAL GENEALOGIES OF OTTOMAN SUNNISM 80 I. Narrative Texts 86 II. Ḥadīth and Tafsīr Sources 93 III. Miscellaneous Sources 101 IV. Notes on Compositional Method 104 Patterns 106 CHAPTER 3: RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 113 I. The Nature of the Borderland 118 II. “To know the bond of Islam”: From Sacred Knowledge to Communal Identity 137 Conclusion 156 CHAPTER 4: THE YAZICIOĞLUS WITHIN ISLAM 158 I. The Meaning of the Ibn ‘Arabī Tradition 159 II. Sufi Lineage and Community 178 III. The Shī‘ī-Sunnī Question 184 IV. Apocalypticism 191 Conclusion 206 iii CHAPTER 5: MAN AND COSMOS AT THE WORLD’S EDGE 208 I. Wonder and Ethics in the ‘Acāibü’l-Maḫlūqāt 212 II. The Rūḥu’l-Ervāḥ and the Man-World 224 III. Malḥama and Esoteric Revelation 230 Conclusion 235 CONCLUSION 241 APPENDIX I: REASSESSING THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE DÜRR-İ MEKNŪN 248 I. The Origins of the Traditional Attribution 249 II. Why the Dürr-i Meknūn is not by Aḥmed Bīcān 253 i. Aḥmed’s sebeb-i te’līf and ḫātime 254 ii. Sources and Influences 258 iii. Past and Present: Tone and Message 263 iv. Some Final Comparisons 266 III. Who Wrote the Dürr-i Meknūn? 271 BIBLIOGRAPHY 275 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Like all ephemera, this dissertation is written in a script that erases itself. It speaks only to its moment. But even as it passes, it leaves behind countless friendships and relationships that are enduring. I can only begin to list them all here. First, I must thank thank Ayla and Hamid Algar, who long ago introduced me to Turkish and to the study of Islam. Their generosity, ten years ago in Berkeley, continues to be a spring that nourishes my academic career. I am immensely grateful as well to Baki Tezcan and Munis Faruqui for my first lessons in the historian’s craft. I am honored to have been advised by my three committee members at the University of Chicago. I owe endless gratitude to Cornell Fleischer, my teacher and friend, who helped me through roadblocks both personal and academic, and whose trust in my work sustained this project at every step. If this study has any insight and depth, it is because of this trust, and his inspiring vision of the Ottoman world is what gave this study life. I must next thank John Woods, for teaching me how to read and understand the history of the Middle East and the world, and even more for helping me plot a steady course through my studies. From my first to my last day as a graduate student, he has never ceased to inspire me as a scholar and teacher. And I am indebted to Hakan Karateke, who with patient rigor taught me that Ottoman texts hide subtleties. I must also give thanks to professors Holly Shissler, Fred Donner, Frank Lewis, and Paul Walker for their help. I could not have completed this dissertation without the steady support of four institutions: the staff of the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library, a sanctuary I v circumambulated far more than the required count, the History Department, whose constancy compensated for so much else, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, my hearth and home, and the Fulbright Commission in Turkey, that gave me the ability to conduct my research in Istanbul. I feel infinite gratitude for the kindness, conversation and companionship of my friends and colleagues, some of whom include: Óscar Aguirre Mandujano, Nikolay Antov, Toygun Altıntaş, Abdurrahman and Zahit Atçıl, Mohamad Ballan, Mick Bechtel, Nicole Beckmann Tessel, Theo Beers, Evrim Binbaş, Andrea Brown, Tolga Cora, Andrew DeRouin, Madeleine Elfenbein, Annie Greene, Samuel Hodgkin, Nazlı İpek Hüner-Cora, Fatih Kurşun, Molly Laas, Gosia Labno, Liv Leader, Emin Lelic, Christopher Markiewicz, Austin O’Malley, Salma Nassar, Michael Polczynski, Maryam Sabbaghi, Basil Salem, Nir Shafir, Kaya Şahin, Tunç Şen, Pars Tarighy, Corey Tazzara, Abdullah Uğur, and Bill Walsh. And I thank Burcu Yavuz, to the deepest limits of my feeling, for all that she has given. Ultimately this thesis emanates not from my person, but from my family: from my parents, Stephanie and Guillermo Grenier, my sister Sasha, and my grandmother Nélida Grenier (1921-2017). I dedicate this to her memory. vi NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION Arabic: The International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES) system is used for Arabic is written as al-, regardless of the vowel or consonant to follow. Diacritics are ال .and Persian preserved in all personal names and titles of books and articles. Diacritics are not used in common toponyms. when ,ه Persian: IJMES is also the basis for Persian transcription. However, the Persian final representing a vowel, is rendered as e rather than ih, eh, or ah, and for Persian words v is used when appropriate. Diacritics are likewise preserved in personal names و instead of w to represent and titles of books and articles. Diacritics are not used in common toponyms (ie. Khurasan). Ottoman Turkish: Ottoman Turkish transliteration also follows the IJMES scheme in its main points. Long vowel marks are written only in elements that are of Arabic or Persian origin, while consonants are always given full diacritics. However, this dissertation’s scheme departs from ,Personal names and titles of books and treatises .غ and ġ for ,خ ḫ for ,ق IJMES in its use of q for when built out of Arabic grammatical constructions but appearing within an Ottoman context, are rendered using Ottoman conventions as follows: Şeyḫ Bedre’d-dīn, Envārü’l-‘Āşıqīn (rather than Shaykh Badr al-dīn, Anwār al-‘Āshiqīn, or Şeyḫ Bedr el-Dīn, Envār el-‘Āşıqīn). For instance, the name of al-Qazwīnī’s Arabic geography is written as ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt, while Aḥmed Bīcān’s Ottoman Turkish version of this text is written as ‘Acāibü’l-Maḫlūqāt. Anatolian and Rumelian place-names, unless otherwise noted, are rendered as in modern Turkish (ie, Konya, not Qonya). Greek names aim to comply with Library of Congress guidelines, using k for κ and ch for χ. Distinguishing Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish contexts from each other calls for arbitrary decisions. For Anatolians and Rumelians living in prior to the fourteenth century, the Arabic system described above is used, while for those living in the fourteenth century and later the Ottoman system is used. For instance, Ṣadr al-dīn Qūnawī [d. 673/1274] is named using the IJMES Arabic system, while Cemālu’d-dīn Aqsarāyī [d. 791/1388-1389] is named with the Ottoman Turkish system. Individuals migrating between regions in which different languages are dominant are usually denoted according to the language of their place of origin and education. The titles of works are always written using the scheme corresponding to the language of their contents. When possible, dates are written as “826/1422-1423”, using both Hijrī and Common Era years. The abbreviations AH and CE will not be used unless necessary for clarity. If only one set of dates is given, it is Common Era date unless otherwise specified. vii INTRODUCTION By the early fifteenth century, the Ottoman conquests had brought Islamicate culture across the Dardanelles into new lands on the northern shores of the Mediterranean and in the Balkans, at the same time as the rest of the Islamic world faced complex religio-political upheavals. This study proposes to address an important family of writers active in Gelibolu (Gallipoli), precisely on the crossroads between the fifteenth-century Islamicate intellectual ferment and the experience of the frontier – and who were, from this position, able to profoundly shape the epistemic contours of nascent Ottoman intellectual life. The Yazıcıoğlus, represented by “Yazıcı” Ṣāliḥ and his two sons Meḥmed (d. 1451) and Aḥmed (d. ~1466), wrote on cosmology, mysticism, and religious instruction, and with each work contributed to the Ottoman world of ideas as it was to develop in later years — all despite the fact that they spent their lives in a provincial port city without any definite connection to patronage networks of the Ottoman courts in Bursa and Edirne. Ṣāliḥ, while employed as a scribe, wrote the Şemsiyye (“Solar [Poem]”) in 826/1423, a Turkish composition on the planets and stars that was read and until at least the seventeenth century. Meḥmed, the older son, composed an Arabic religious treatise entitled Maghārib al- Zamān (“The Setting-Places of Destiny”), which he then rendered into Turkish verse in 853/1449 as Kitāb-i Muḥammediyye (“The Muhammedan Volume”) — a work that reached such an unbelievable readership and diffusion as to rank as one of the most popular books ever to be produced in Ottoman Turkish, venerated in provincial cities almost in the Ottoman Empire and beyond almost as scripture. Equally noteworthy was the Envārü’l-‘Āşıqīn (“The Lights of the 1 Lovers”) by Meḥmed’s younger brother Aḥmed (known to posterity as Aḥmed Bīcān, “the Lifeless” for his ascetic dedication), a work of Turkish prose based on his brother’s works.