Forgotten Naqshbandīs and the Culture of Pre-Modern Sufi Brotherhoods

Maisonneuve & Larose

Forgotten Naqshbandīs and the Culture of Pre-Modern Sufi BrotherhoodsAuthor(s): Dina Le GallReviewed work(s):Source: Studia Islamica, No. 97 (2003), pp. 87-119Published by: Maisonneuve & LaroseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4150603 .Accessed: 07/02/2012 16:34

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Studia Islamica, 2003

Forgotten Naqshbandis And the Culture of Pre-Modern

Sufi Brotherhoods

The Naqshbandiyya is one of the most widespread and enduring of all the Sufi brotherhoods (tariqa-s), and one of the better studied. Yet the

presence and vitality of this tariqa in the Ottoman world in the two centuries or so prior to the coming of the first Naqshbandi-Mujaddidis from India around 1700 has been unduly neglected.' On the face of it this is not surprising. Pre-Mujaddidi Ottoman Naqshbandis did not give rise to an innovator in the mold of the eponym of the Mujaddidiyya, the "Renewer (mujaddia) of the Second Millennium" Ahmad Sirhindi. They did not count among their ranks any wielder of political influence in the tradition of the fifteenth-century Transoxanian shaykh 'Ubaydullth Ahrar.

(*) For the sake of consistency and to reflect the universal Islamic character of phenomena central to this study, I have used Arabized forms in transliteration as much as possible. Only specialized Ottoman terms, verbatim quotations from Ottoman-Turkish, and names of individuals who were active entirely in Turkish- speaking environments are rendered in Ottoman-Turkish forms. 1. For many years the only specialized study of this historical phase has been Kasim Kufrah, "Molla Ilahi ve Kendisinden Sonraki Nakgbendiye Muhiti," Tiirk Dill ve Edebiyatz Dergisi 3 (1949): 129-5, along with the dissertation in which it

originated: idem, "Nakgbendligin Kurulug ve Yayili•l,"

Ph.D. dissertation, Istanbul University, 1949 (Ms. Istanbul University, Tiirkiyat Enstitiisii, TY 337). Others, especially Hamid Algar, have examined specific individuals and aspects of this period or touched on it within larger contexts. I attempt to correct this situation in A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World, 1450-1700 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005), which is devoted entirely to the pre-Mujaddidi Ottoman Naqshbandiyya.

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Nor did they engage in bitter debate about devotional practice, as would Naqshbandi-Khalidis of the nineteenth century. Yet in some ways it is this very lack of drama that makes the pre-Mujaddidi Ottoman

Naqshbandiyya worthy of investigation - and not only in order to fill a

gap in the available narrative of Naqshbandi history or of the still insuf-

ficiently studied "middle Ottoman centuries." What is at stake here is also the development of a more complex understanding of the culture of pre-modern Sufi brotherhoods and of the ways in which a number of modern paradigms have obscured or distorted our understanding of

pre-modern organized Sufism. Until several decades ago scholars gave short shrift to the tariqa-s as

opposed to the mystical teachings and poetry of great Sufi masters.

Reigning historiographical paradigms of an inevitable trajectory of tradi-

tion-to-modernity or of post-classical "cultural decline" meant that Sufism was viewed as part of a disappearing traditional order and even as one of the

very causes of the corruption of Muslim societies. Published in 1971, Spencer Trimingham's The Sufi Orders in Islam may have signaled a new interest, if only because of this work's attempt at comprehensiveness. But more than pioneering a new interest, Trimingham was an heir to old modes of thinking. He not only associated the tariqa-s with a disappearing world, but also believed that inherent in the institutionalization that they represented was a narrowing of the original Sufi quest, which led eventually to

Sufism's descent into "legalism," "conformity" and "decay."2 In particular he

appears to have been informed by a number of nineteenth-century paradigms. Of diverse origins - colonial and modernist as well as Salaff - these

paradigms cast the tar-qa-s as grand organizational networks for political activism, assumed that they were tight knit and hierarchical, emphasized their missionary character and their role in converting (or semi-converting) non-Muslim populations, and sought to classify them into either orthodox or unorthodox, high or low, elite or popular.3

2. J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford, 1971; reprint, with a forward by John O. Voll, New York, 1998), especially 102-104. 3. For a critical analysis of what R. S. O'Fahey and Bernd Radtke term the littira- ture de surveillance of colonial officials and observers, see their "Neo-Sufism Reconsidered," Der Islam 70 (1993): 61-64. Cf Jean-Louis Triaud, "Le Theme

confrdrique en Afrique de l'ouest: Essai historique et bibliographique," in Les Ordres mystiques dans L'Islam: Cheminements et situation actuelle, ed. Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein (Paris, 1985), 271-82; Christopher Harrison, France

andIslam in WestAfrica (Cambridge, 1988), 19-23, 31. For Salafism, see A. Merad, "Islah (i. - the Arab World)," Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (hereafter EI2).

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Forgotten NaqshbandTs

Since the appearance of Trimingham's book, and at least partially in res-

ponse to it, there has been a surge of interest as well as a sea change in scholars' approach to organized Sufism. Students of Muslim societies in Central

Asia, the Indian sub-continent, Iran, the Ottoman and Arab worlds, and

parts of Africa have abandoned the old notion of decline and set out to

explore the tariqa-s as historical phenomena. They have investigated their social, cultural, and political aspects along with the doctrinal ones, examined them in particular social contexts, paid attention to their roles as instruments of social integration and cultural transmission, and developed a new appreciation for their ubiquity and importance.4 These advances have been uneven, however. Ottoman t'arTqa-s have drawn much less attention than South Asian ones, perhaps because of the Turkish Republican ban and the fact that at least in Anatolia if not in the Balkans and the Arab world scholars have been precluded from observing and forging relationships with

living shaykhs and Sufi communities. ' Some old stereotypes have been

reframed or recycled rather than died - for example the notion of tight organization and political activism, which the scholarship about "neo-

4. Studies of this generation include Richard M. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur (1300- 1700): Social Roles ofSufis in Medieval India (Princeton, 1978); Frederick De Jong, Turuq andturuq-linked Institutions in Nineteenth Century Egypt: A Historical

Study in Organizational Dimensions of Islamic Mysticism (Leiden, 1978); Suraiya Faroqhi, Der Bektaschi-Orden in Anatolien (vom spiten fiinfehntenJahrhundert bis 1826) (Vienna, 1981); Michael Winter, Society and Religion in Early Ottoman

Egypt: Studies in the Writings of Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha 'raini (New Brunswick, NJ, 1982); Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany, NY, 1992); Nathalie Clayer, Mystiques, htat et soci&td: Les Halvetis dans l'aire balkanique de lafin du xv sikcle a nosjours (Leiden, 1994); Vincent J. Cornell, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin, Texas, 1998); Arthur E Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian

Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the Mediating Sufi Shaykh (Columbia, South Carolina, 1998); Irene Mdlikoff, Hadji Bektach: Un Mythe et ses avatars (Leiden, 1998), and Carl W. Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond (New York, 2002). Recent collective volumes include Marc Gaborieau, Alexandre Popovic, and Thierry Zarcone (eds.), Naqshbandis: Cheminements et situation actuelle d'un ordre mystique musulman (Istanbul, 1990) (hereafter Naqshbandis). 5. Still in addition to titles mentioned in the previous note, see also Alexandre

Popovic and Gilles Veinstein (eds.), Bektachiyya: Etudes sur l'ordre mystique des

Bektachis et les groupes relevant de Hadji Bektach (Istanbul, 1995); Nathalie Clayer, Alexandre Popovic, and Thierry Zarcone (eds.), Meldmis-Bayrdmis: Eltudes sur trois movements mystiques musulmans (Istanbul, 1998).

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Sufism" has re-assigned to a particular genre of latter-day tartqa-s. 6 Habits of dividing tariqa-s sharply into elite/popular or orthodox/unorthodox have been particularly slow in disappearing. And some old stereotypes of

tarTqa-s as agents of the corruption of Muslim societies have been recently reinforced by Islamist discourse and accusations.

Naqshbandi history has had a distinct role to play in the dissemination of nineteenth-century paradigms concerning Sufism, not the least because of the force with which the Mujaddidi branch since the eighteenth century and its Khalidi offshoot in the nineteenth replaced old initiatic lineages and captured the imagination of both outside observers and Naqshbandis themselves. Mujaddidi and Khalidi history became the

prism through which the larger history of this tariqa would be read, while at the same time reinforcing more general ideas about Sufis, mystical journeying, Islamic orthodoxy, and political activism. Among others it has

6. For the literature and debate about "neo-Sufism," see especially John O. Voll, "Linking Groups in the Networks of Eighteenth-Century Revivalist Scholars: The

Mizjaji Family in Yemen," in Eighteenth-Century Renewal and Reform in Islam, ed. Nehemiah Levtzion and John O. Voll (Syracuse, NY, 1987), 83-87; Nehemia Levtzion and John O. Voll, Introduction to Eighteenth Century Renewal and Reform in Islam, 10-11; Nehemia Levtzion, "Eighteenth Century Sufi Brotherhoods: Structural, Organizational and Ritual Change," in Islam: Essays on Scripture, Thought and Society: A Festschrift in Honour ofAnthony H. Johns, ed. Peter G. Riddell and Tony Street (Leiden, 1997), 147-60; O'Fahey and Radtke, "Neo-Sufism." 7. The literature on the Mujaddidiyya and Khdlidiyya is substantial. For example see Butrus Abu-Manneh, "The Rise and Expansion of the Naqshbandi-Khalidi Suborder in Early 19"h Century," "The Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya and the Khalidiyya in Istanbul in the Early Nineteenth Century," "The Naqshbandiyya- Mujaddidiyya in Istanbul in the Early Tanzimat Period," and "Shaykh Ahmed

Ziy'iiddTn el-Guimiiuhanevi and the Ziya'i-Khalidi Sub-Order," in Studies on Islam and the Ottoman Empire in the 19h Century (1826-1876) (Istanbul, 2001), 13-26, 41-57, 99-114, 149-59 (the first two partially revised from "the

Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyyya in the Ottoman Lands in the Early 19th Century," Die Welt des Islams, n.s., 22 (1982, published 1984): 1-36); Hamid

Algar, "Devotional Practices of the Khalidi Naqshbandis of Ottoman Turkey," in The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art, and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey, ed. Raymond Lifchez (Berkeley, California, 1992), 209-27; idem, "The Naqshbandi Order in

Republican Turkey," Paper presented at the Berliner Institut fiir Vergleichende Sozialforschung, December, 1981; irfan Giindiiz, Giimiighanevi Ahmed

Ziydiiddin (KS): Hayatz-Eserleri-Tarikat Anlayirg ve Htlidiyye Tarikatl (Ankara, 1984). On Transoxania, see Baxtiyor M. Babadianov, "On the History of the Naqibandlya Mugaddidlya in Central Mawara'annahr in the Late 18'h and Early

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Forgotten Naqshbandis

become common to imagine Naqshbandi orthodoxy as stark and demysticized or to associate practitioners with a staunch Sunnism that has presumably made them perennially hostile to Shi'Is.8 Even more pervasive is the notion that Naqshbandi orthodoxy is best understood in political terms: what Naqshbandis most care about is securing the implementation of the shart'a in society and in turn this concern has made them always prone to public involvement and political activism.

In the words of one scholar two features have been most critical in

shaping the role and impact of this tariqa throughout its history: strict adherence to the sharf'a and the Prophet's sunna, and a "determined effort to influence the life and thought of the ruling classes and to bring the state closer to religion."' Others have highlighted various instances of

Naqshbandi activism in defense of Muslim rule and the sharta-based order - be it against non-Muslim rulers, foreign encroachment, or reli-

gious syncretism. Modern Turkish scholars have emphasized especially instances of Naqshbandi opposition to the modernizing and secularizing projects of the state (though some have focused on the Naqshbandiyya as a foe of"heterodoxy," at times in collaboration with the state). A foremost observer, Hamid Algar, has criticized the reduction of Naqshbandi histo-

ry to a "simple matter of political militancy." Yet he too portrayed a tarTqa whose "emphatic interest in the sharl'a as the fundamental substance of Islam" has "inevitably disposed Naqshbandis to political action." , What

19,h Centuries," in Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia jdom the 18h to the Early 20h Centuries, ed. Michael Kemper, Anke von Kiigelgen, and Dmitriy Yermakov (Berlin, 1996), 385-414. On the Indian subcontinent: Buehler, Sufi Heirs. On Indonesia: Martin van Bruinessen, "The Origins and Development of the Naqshbandi Order in Indonesia," Der Islam 67 (1990): 150-79. 8. In Algar's formulation hostility to the Shi'a has been "a second trait" of the Naqshbandiyya along with the first trait of sobriety and sharta-abidance. This attitude derived from the tarTqa's Bakrc ancestry combined with the fact of its emergence in the broader Islamic world at a time of intense Sunni-Shi'I rivalry (see his "NaqshbandT Order in Republican Turkey," 1-2). 9. K. A. Nizami, "The Naqshbandiyyah Order," in Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (New York, 1991), 163. 10. Hamid Algar, "Political Aspects of NaqshbandT History," in Naqshbandis, especially pp. 151-52. In "Reflections of Ibn 'Arabi in Early Naqshbandi Tradition," Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society 10 (1991): 45-66, Algar calls attention specifically to the problem of viewing the Naqshbandiyya through the prism of the later Mujaddidiyya. Others have ignored the issue of historical change, giving the impression, implicitly or explicitly, of an unchanging Naqshbandi identity over time.

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we have here are almost mirror images of Naqshbandis then: to some, they have been fanatic enemies of secularism and religious accommodation; to

others, staunch defenders against challenges to the sharta-based order. It is in this context that I propse to examine pre-Mujaddidi Naqshbandi

history with an awareness of the power of later images to obscure. The

point is not simply to gain a fuller understanding of this tariqa. In addition it is hoped that such an endeavor can contribute to a more general unpacking. Especially two paradigms need to be revisited. First, the notion of tariqas as tight-knit and hierarchical organizations geared to missiona-

ry efforts or political activism. Second, the idea that tartqa-s were either orthodox or unorthodox - the first closer to non-Sufi Islam, stripped of

spirituality, and attractive to mainstream society and to the 'ulama', the latter immersed in loud and communal ceremonies, given to the venera- tion of saints at their tombs, and appealing to members of society's popular strata or to the recently or semi converted.

Constructing Naqshbandi Identity in the Pre-Mujaddidi Age

A careful examination of the early Ottoman Naqshbandiyya, roughly from the late fifteenth century to the coming of the first Mujaddidis at the turn of the eighteenth, reveals a rather different picture from that of the

starkly orthodox, demysticized, anti-Shi'T, politically activist tariqa that later realities and images have embedded in our imagination.

That these pre-Mujaddidi Naqshbandis emphasized rigorous adherence to the sharl'a and to the Prophet's sunna as central to their identity is clear. The matter was also one of public reputation. We are told that no other than "sharl'a-conscious men of religion" recognized the Naqshbandiyya as

particularly insistent on conformity with the Prophet's practice and the

Holy Law (mesn in ve-meqru'). " But what tarTqa literature itself illustrates is an orthodoxy construed in a certain way. In the Naqshbandi manuals sharl'a-abidance tended to be conflated with the notion of al-'amal bi'l- 'azima, "acting with strictness," as opposed to al-'amal bi'l-rukhsa, "practi- cing that which is permitted by way of special dispensation." 12 The point

11. Latfft, Tezkere-i Latffi, ed. Ahmed Cevdet (Istanbul, 1314/1896-7), 52. 12. On the meaning of 'azima and rukhsa in legal and Sufi discourse, see I. Goldziher, "'Azsma," and R. Peters and J.G. J. ter Haar, "Rukh?a," EF. Rukhsa might involve, for example, the suspension of the obligation to fast during Ramadan when one is ill or traveling.

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was that Naqshbandis were set apart from other Sufis by patterning their behavior on the first while shunning activities that fell under the second. In

turn, the 'amal bi'l-'aztma was viewed as constraining behavior rather than

mystical journeying or doctrine. It was framed as a matter of individual observance of sharl'a duties such as prayer and especially ritual purity more than a summons to sharf'a-abidance in the larger society. And it was

thought to be embodied especially in the Naqshbandi devotional regimen, with silent dhikr at its core.

The connection between "acting with strictness" and the Naqshbandi devotional regimen with its central practice of silent dhikr was made by one of the tarTqa's foremost foundational stories, appearing in the

Rashahat-i 'ayn al-hayat and still earlier sources. 13 The story had Baha' al-

Din Naqshband dissociating himself from the vocal dhikr of his Central Asian Khwajagani master, Amir Kulal, and replacing it with the distinc- tive silent mode of recollection, in response to a vision in which the first of the Khwaijagan, 'Abd al-Khaliq Ghujduvani, had instructed him to follow the 'amal bi'l-'azTma. Several Ottoman sources reproduced this story, which served to make and disseminate a double point: first, that the

Naqshbandi devotional regimen was distinguished by shunning not only the expressly forbidden but also practices - common among other Sufis - that were permitted by way of special dispensation; and second, that it was devotional practice that marked this tariqa as that of the 'amal bi'l- 'azTma and, by extension, that of rigorous fidelity to the shar'a. 14

In a related vein we learn from tartqa literature that what was really at the center of the Naqshbandi identity was a double claim and commitment - to rigorous sharl'a-abidance and excellence in the mystical quest. The two were more than consonant with each other; they were intertwined.

13. Fakhr al-Din 'All b. Husayn Va'iz Kashifi, Rashahat-i 'ayn al-hayat, ed. 'All Asghar Mu'iniyan, 2 vols. with consecutive pagination (Tehran, 2536 Imperial/1977-8), 1:95; 'Abd al-Rahmdn Jami, Nafahat al-uns min khazardt al- quds, ed. Mehdi Tawhidipar (Tehran, 1336 sh./1957), 384-86; Salh b. Mubarak al-Bukhari [=Muhammad Parsa?], Ants al-tadlibin va-'uddat al-salikin, ed. with introduction Khalil Ibrahim

S.riughli [Sanoglu] (Tehran, 1371 sh./1992), 93. For

the AnTs al-tadlibTn and its apparent authorship by Parsa or someone of his circle, see Jiirgen Paul, Doctrine and Organization. The Khwajagan/NaqshbandTya in the First Generation after Bahu'uddTn, ANOR series, no. 1 (Berlin, 1998), 10-12. 14. For example, see the biography of 'Abdullah Ilahi in Ahmed b. Mustafa

Tagkipriizade, Al-Shaqa 'iq al-nu'mdniyya ft 'ulamd' al-dawla al-'uthmdniyya, printed on the margin of Ibn Khallikan, Ta'rikh wafaydt al-a'ydn, 2 vols. (Builaq, 1299/1881-2), 1:378.

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Both had at their base the notion of superior shaykhs and methods of

mystical guidance. And both were constructed around the same distinct devotional regimen, one that celebrated a number of sober, interiorized, and continuous spiritual methods over the emotive, ostentatious, or "inferior" communal rituals of other tariqa-s.

There were both positive and negative facets to the Naqshbandi devotional regimen. The positive side centered on the silent dhikr along with two other highly celebrated spiritual methods: the murdqaba (itself a type of dhikr) and the rdbita, in which a disciple sought to fix the visual form of the shaykh in the imagination as a prelude to taking on his qualities and to making him the conduit for the flow of divine energy. Silent dhikr meant more than the shunning of loud singing, musical accompaniment, and dance. It entailed a technique of enunciating the dhikr formula "There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God" (1d ildh

illa Allah Muhammad rasill Allah) in the heart, so that the recitation would be inaudible and imperceptible even to a person standing next to the reciter. Moreover, rather than simply an inaudible recitation, this was meant to be an individual, interiorized, and continuous technique that one performed at all times and while engaged in a myriad of activities.

Ideally it was to become a "natural disposition" (malaka), which even the reciter's heart would cease to sense, so as to become oblivious of anything that was not God, including the very act of remembrance. "5 In a well- known formulation of Tdj al-Din al-'Uthmani, it was this "continuity" (dawdm) of "servitude" and "presence with God" that was the epitome of the Naqshbandi creed. 16

That the ra-bita, too, was at the center of the devotional practice of

early Ottoman Naqshbandis is little appreciated. Scholars have suggested that this method became prized only among nineteenth-century Khalidis; until then it had been viewed with suspicion, presumably because its cas-

15. See discussions of the dhikr in Mustaf- b. Husayn al-Sadiqi, Al-Manhaj al- muwassil ild al-tariq al-abhaj, Ms. Princeton University Library, Arabic Collection/New Series 974, 15a-16a, 17b-20a; Serd'it ve nasld'ih-i meyq'ih, Ms. Siileymaniye Library (Istanbul), Fatih 2658, 72b-73a; Tiihfet et-tdlibTn ve 'iimdet el-vdsilin, Ms. Siileymaniye Library (Istanbul), Fatih 5385, 75a-b, 77a-78b, 86a; Risale-i serife-i mafriibe fi usil-i td'ife-i 'aliye-i

nak.bendiye, Ms. Siileymaniye

Library (Istanbul), Es'ad Efendi 3702, 175a-b; Thi al-Din al-'Uthmani, Risala [f, sulik al-] Naqshbandiyya, Ms. Al-Azhar Mosque Library (Cairo), Hallm 33602, 163a-164a, 166a-168a. 16. TSj al-Din al-'Uthmani, Sulfik al-Naqshbandiyya, 162a

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ting of the shaykh as so utterly indispensable to the mystical quest created a potential for abuse. 17 But early Ottoman Naqshbandis clearly celebrated the rdbita as a pillar of their devotional regimen, and some went as far as to call it the most superior or "closest" of all spiritual tech-

niques. 8 In several ways it represented the epitome or apex of two staples of the NaqshbandT claim to superiority, the suhba, "intimate companion- ship" between shaykh and disciple, and the irshdd or close guidance through which the shaykh led his disciples on a transformative process of

advancing toward mystical union. It is in this context that some

Naqshbandis described the rdbita as enabling shaykhs to lead their dis-

ciples to "witnessing" in the shortest time. 19

One specific benefit of the rabita was said to be that it enabled practitioners to dispense with the common but inferior ascetic exercises known

generically as mujdhadat (fasting, night vigils, ritual seclusion, etc.). 20 More

generally it was described as sharing the sober, interiorized, and continuous character of the silent dhikr (and the muraqaba). All three techniques were meant to become "natural dispositions" and thus allow adepts to "seek God" continuously, in an inconspicuous manner, and in the thick of socie-

ty, without a need for the ascetic withdrawal from the world or the exterio- rized and inferior rituals on which other Sufis depended.

Indeed on the negative side Naqshbandis may be said to have defined themselves in opposition to other Sufis and their common devotional

practices, which they cast as unduly emotive, inferior, ostentatious, or

incompatible with rigorous observance of the shari'a. Long periods of fas-

ting, the sama' and raqs music and dance recitals attending communal

17. Hamid Algar, "Devotional Practices," 218; Butrus Abu-Manneh, "Khalwa and Rabita in the Khalidi Suborder," in Naqshbandis, especially 293-95, 299. Abu-Manneh acknowledges, however, the primacy of the rabita in the devotional

regimen of Taj al-Din al-'Uthmani. 18. See especially

S.diqi, Manhaj, 16b-17a; Risale-i ?erife, 174b-175a. The centra-

lity of the rdbita emerges also from Taj al-Din al-'Uthmini, Sulilk al-Naqshbandiyya, 165b; Tiihfet

et-t.libin, 79a; Sera'it, 76b. On the practice of rabihta among early

Naqshbandis (and some parallels and antecedents from other Sufi traditions), see Fritz Meier, Zwei Abhandlungen liber die Naqibandiyya (Istanbul, 1994); idem, Meister und Schiiler im Orden der Naqibandiyya (Heidelberg, 1995), 11-16, 22-23; Paul, Practice and Doctrine, 36-44. On the rabita among Naqshbandis more generally, Michel Chodkiewicz, "Quelques aspects des techniques spirituelles dans la tarTqa Naqshbandiyya," in Naqshbandis, 75-78. 19.

S.diqi, Manhaj, 16b-17a; Riscle-i ?erife, 174b-175a.

20. S.diqi,

Manhaj, 17a.

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dhikr rituals, and the practice of khalwa or ritual meditative seclusion in a cell all fell under this rubric. This did not mean that Naqshbandis prohibited such practices among their own ranks or sought to eliminate them

altogether. Instead they might shun them or assume a disdainful or

condescending attitude - and this too not always explicitly. Toward the mujdhadat there was a distinct ambivalence. Some shaykhs

clearly performed them as part of their own spiritual training or taught them to disciples. 21 But others advanced the idea that Naqshbandis were

uniquely privileged in that they were able to dispense with these exercises and especially with the khalwa in the double sense of ritual seclusion in a cell and a more general ascetic withdrawal from society. Mustafa- al-S•diqi, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, explained that Naqshbandis had no use for the mujdhaddt since the riabita, the fixing of the shaykh's picture in the imagination as a vehicle for the flow of divine energy, offered a much better tool in the pursuit of mystical ascent. 22 A while later the Meccan Taj al-Din al-'Uthmani and his biographer Mahmud b. Ashraf al-

Husayni offered a somewhat different explanation. According to this view

Naqshbandis were set apart from other Sufis by beginning their mystical journey with "purifying the heart" (tasfiyat al-qalb) rather than "clean-

sing/breaking the lower soul" (tazkiyat/inkisir al-nafi) through exercises of self mortification. The superior process of "purifying the heart" guaranteed that they also attain, by way of spontaneous divine attraction (jadhba), the less advanced "breaking of the soul" that other Sufis might not reach even after years of ascetic exercises. 23

Even when it came to dhikr, Naqshbandis were content to emphasize how spiritually superior and critical to their identity the silent dhikr was, without actually proscribing vocal recollection. tarfqa literature cast the silent recollection not only as the technique most conducive to the mys-

21. Both Ahmad Sadiq Tashkandi and Mahmtid Urmavi performed these exercises as part of their training, while 'Abdulldh Ilahi and Ahmad Bukhari recommended some of the mujahaddt to disciples. See, respectively, Sadiqi, Manhaj, 10b; Mehmed b. Hasan Seyhi, Zeyl-i zeyl-i 'Ata'T, Ms. Staatsbibliothek (Berlin), or.

quart. 1372, 77b; Mahmud b. 'Osman Lami'T -elebi, Terceme-i nefahat iil-iins (Istanbul, 1289/1872-3), 461, 468 (biographies of Ilahi and Bukhari). 22. Sadiqi, Manhaj, 17a. 23. Taj al-Din al-'Uthmani, Risala fi addb al-mashyakha wa'l-murTdin

al-ta.libin wa-shard'itihima, Ms. India Office Library (London), Bijapipr

459b, 138a; Mahmud b. Ashraf al-Husayni, Tuhfat al-salikhn ft dhikr Tdaj al-'crifin, Ms. Dar al- Kutub Library (Cairo), Musawwarat Khdrij al-Dar 116/13 (copy of ms. in the Qadi Hasan al-Siyaghi Library in San'a, Yemen), 617.

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tic's goal of attaining closeness to God, but also as the "original way." 24

This was the method that the Prophet Muhammad was said to have

taught to his companion Abu Bakr during a dramatic moment of the

Hijra that was graced with God's presence. 25 It was also the one that the

paradigmatic spiritual guide Khidr conferred on 'Abd al-Khaliq Ghujduvani, who was instructed to recite it while submerged in water. 26

Later the "spiritual presence" (ri~haniyya) of Ghujduvani bestowed this same technique on Baha' al-Din Naqshband.27

Some Naqshbandi lineages nevertheless practiced a vocal method of recollection along with the silent one. This seems to have been the case

especially with Shafi'is, for example in Arabia and most famously among the Urmavi Naqshbandis of Kurdistan, whose dramatic "saw dhikr" Evliya ?elebi described as arousing in practitioners a state of "intoxication and bewilderment." 28 There were also individual shaykhs who became embroiled in polemics as they ventured to defend practitioners of the vocal dhikr against harsh critics. The Damascene 'Abd al-Ghani al-

Nabulusi argued in his Iddh al-daldldt ft samd' al-dldt that both singing and musical accompaniment were licit - if only by way of special dispensation - and that music was prohibited only when it positively distracted listeners from the observance of religious duties or the recollection of God. 29 In Medina the Kurdish-born Ibrahim al-Ktirani similarly defended

24. S.diqi,

Manhaj, 8b. 25. See references in note 64. 26. Tiihfet et-tdalibmn, 80a; Risdle-i ierdfe, 160b; Nur al-Din Muhammad Qazvini, Silsilandma-yi khwajagdn-i Naqshband, Ms. Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), Suppl. Persan 1418, 7b; [Mustafa b. Husayn

al-S.diqi], Risla fi hbaydn tarfq al-

Naqshband, Ms. Siileymaniye Library (Istanbul), Es'ad Efendi 3772, 160b (this being a fragment of the Manhaj, with a piece that is missing from the Princeton

manuscript). See also Kdshifi, Rashahdt, 1:35; Jami, Nafahat, 378. 27. See references in note 13. 28. For the Urmavis, see Evliya (elebi, Seydhatname, 10 vols. (Istanbul, 1314- 57/1896-1938), 4: 33; Mustafa Na'iTm, Ta'rTh-i Na'Tma, 3rd ed., 6 vols. in three [Istanbul, 1281-3/1864-6], 3: 385; Seerd'it, 71a-72b. For Shafi'is' prizing of vocal recollection, see below and reference in note 30. 29. 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi,

Ida.h al-daladlt fi samd' al-ddlt, Ms. Princeton

University Library, Garrett Collection 3232, especially 15b, 27a, 28b, 51a. Cf Barbara Rosenow von Schlegell, "Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World: Shaykh 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1143/1731)," Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1997, where the author argues that Nibulusi's life and career are best understood in the context of the defense of Sufism against critics.

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the permissibility of vocal dhikr in two treatises replete with Qur'anic verses and Prophetic traditions, claiming that in particular Shafi'is held the vocal recollection superior. At one point he entered into an argument over the dhikr with a prominent Ottoman visitor and tutor of the sultan, most probably the Kidizadeli leader Vani Mehmed Efendi. 30 Kirani's student Ibn al-Mimi berated the "pigheadedness" and "ignorance" of critics who sought to eliminate the vocal dhikr, apparently another reference to the Kadizadeli assault against Sufi ritual. 31

Yet there were instances in which Naqshbandi condescension itself

might develop into more explicit criticism - such as declaring the vocal

dhikr "devoid of any benefit" 32 - and one case in which it led to real harassment. We learn from Na'ima's history that one of the capital's imperial mosque preachers who propagated the puritanical and anti-Sufi

KadTzadeli rhetoric of the mid-seventeenth century was a NaqshbandT shaykh by the name 'Osmin Bosnevi; he was then the Friday preacher of the Siileymaniye Mosque and concurrently the incumbent of the Hekim ?elebi Tekke in the neighborhood of Fil Dami near Aksariy. 33 Under the

leadership of Mehmed Ustiivani, Bosnevi and his fellow KIadizadeli preachers used their pulpits to arouse the mosque-going urban population along with many followers from the Palace Service against various trans-

gressions of the sharta, especially by Sufis. They denounced as unaccep- table innovation (bid'a) and set out to uproot, a host of practices, from visits to saints tombs, to supererogatory prayers performed in congrega- tion, studying the mystical teachings of Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-'Arabi, belief in the legendary figure of Khidr, inter-communal prayers organized in time of crisis, consuming tobacco and coffee, and especially the use of

30. Ibrahim al-Kurrani, Nashr al-zahrfil'l-dhikr bi'l-jahr, Ms. India Office Library (London), Delhi 710/a; idem, Ithdf al-munfb al-awwah bi-fadl al-jahr bi-dhikr

Allah, Ms. Princeton University Library, Garrett Collection/Yahuda Section 3869/1, especially 3b-4a, 8a. For his encounter with Vani, see Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A History ofSufism in India, 2 vols. (New Delhi, 1978-83), 2:331-32, quoting Shah Wdliullah, Anfds al-'drifin. 31. Husayn b. Muhammad al-Basri Ibn al-Miml, Nazm al-sumiit al-zabrajiyya ft silsilat al-sada al-naqshbandiyya, Ms. Siileymaniye Library (Istanbul), 'Agir Efendi 176, 8b. 32. See Tiihfet et-t.dlibin,

78b. 33. See Na'Ima, Ta'rth, 5: 54-59 (where Bosnevi appears as "the teacher of the

pages in the Palace and preacher of the Stileymaniye, shaykh 'Osman"). On Bosnevi the Naqshbandi shaykh, see [Ibrahim Hasib Efendi] 'Uiakizade, Zeyl-i laka'ik, ed. in facsimile Hans Joachim Kissling (Wiesbaden, 1965), 551.

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music and dance in the Sufi ritual.34 Moreover, the Kadizadeli campaign was unusual in its militant approach to "forbidding wrong." 3 Rather than being content with denouncing certain practices, its leaders called

upon their followers to actively confront those who engaged in the pros- cribed behavior, and on several occasions led them in physical attacks on Sufi shaykhs and tekke-s. 36

Given this militant approach, Bosnevi's role in the Kddizadeli affair

may seem curious. In voicing the movement's rhetoric from the pulpit of the Siileymaniye Mosque he seems not only to have broken ranks with Sufis as a whole, but also to have become far removed from the common Naqshbandl attitude of condescension rather than prohibi- tion, let alone militancy. And yet it is possible to understand his involvement with the Kadizadelis as an extension, however far-fetched, of the basic attitude of defining the Naqshbandiyya in opposition to the "inferior" practices of other Sufis: in this reading, his denunciations could have been a means of pushing for and proving the feasibility of a counter-model of "correct Sufism" embodied in the Naqshbandiyya. For such anti-Sufi criticism by Naqshbandis, or proto-Naqshbandis, there is an interesting precedent (analyzed by Devin DeWeese) from

Timfirid Transoxania of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. There, a

proto-Naqshbandi group had criticized the "corrupt Sufism" of its time with its "fraudulent shaykhs" and privileging of external symbols of

piety and affiliation in an effort to highlight its own superiority and to score points in competition over disciples. 3 Similarly Bosnevi may have

34. On the Kadizadeli affair, see Madeline C. Zilfi, The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600-1800) (Minneapolis, 1988), chap- ters 4-5; idem, " The Kadizadelis: Discordant Revivalism in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul," Journal ofNear Eastern Studies 45, no. 4 (1986), 251-269. 35. On the history of "forbidding wrong," see Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 2000). The Kadizadelis and the intellectual inspiration they found in Birgili Mehmed Efendi are treated specifically on pp. 323-30. 36. A 1651 attack sanctioned by the grand vezir Melek Ahmed Papa resulted in the destruction of a Khalwati tekke in Demir Kapi (see Zilfi, "Discordant Revivalism," 259). 37. Devin DeWeese, "Khojagani Origins and the Critique of Sufism: The Rhetoric of Communal Uniqueness in the Mandqib of Khoja 'All 'Azizan Ramitani," in Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics, ed. Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke (Leiden, 1999).

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adopted the Kadizadeli rhetoric (in some recast fashion? 38 ) as a way of

emphasizing the Naqshbandi devotional probity and superiority and a tool in the competitive struggle among tariqa-s.

The practice of rdbita, which early Ottoman Naqshbandis presented as a pillar of their devotional sobriety, can arguably be thought of as quite an extravagant example of non-physical communication - and as such it was not alone. Neither fidelity to the sharl'a nor insistence on devotional

sobriety turned Naqshbandis into the demysticized, despiritualized, "starkly orthodox" lot39 that nineteenth-century paradigms might make them to be. They understood mystical journeying and excellence to include many forms of interaction between the living and the "world of the unseen." Just as well, they developed a taste for mystical speculation and

especially a devotion to the study and dissemination of the teachings of the thirteenth-century mystic Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-'Arabi, however controversial (though influential) they might be.

Naqshbandis knew and celebrated many individuals who communed with prophets, deceased tariqa masters, the awliyd' ("friends of God"), or the paradigmatic mystical guide Khidr. They expected the inhabitants of the "world of the unseen" to interact routinely with their human interlo- cutors by extricating them from danger, dispatching them on missions, or

conferring on them guidance, mystical insights, and even formal Sufi ini-

tiations.40 Communication with the "world of the unseen" might occur

38. Unfortunately no text of his writing or preaching has come to light, nor is there any indication that his sermons were written down, like those of his fellow Naqshbandi and imperial mosque preacher Ya'kub IKayseriyeli (on the latter, see

'UV.kizade, 554).

39. For the notion that the Naqshbandiyya was a tariqa of "stark orthodoxy," see for example Serif Mardin, "The Nakshibendi Order of Turkey," in Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance, vol. 3 of The Fundamentalism Project, ed. Martin E. Marry and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago, 1993), 206. 40. Reports of Naqshbandis communicating with the "world of the unseen" abound. The Meccan Ahmad Ibn 'Allan, for example, had the spirit of Baha' al- Din Naqshband revealed to him after merely seven days of spiritual training under Taj al-Din al-'Uthmani. Zakariya' al-Bihari, an Indian initiated in Mecca, communed with the Prophet "in wakefulness" as a matter of routine. Ahmad

S.diq Tashkandi traveled from his native Transoxania to the Ottoman capital in res-

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during sleep on in a state of wakefulness. Often it was perceived as afath (pl.

futl.h), that is an "unsolicited gift" bestowed by divine grace; but no

other than the tariqa's eponym also proclaimed that such communication could be evoked through intense spiritual concentration. 41 The issue

might be one of physical closeness. Naqshbandis were known for their

practice of visiting the tombs of deceased spiritual masters in the belief - shared by many others - that it was at his tomb that the spiritual presence of the "friend of God" was most accessible. 42

One form of communication with the "world of the unseen" that

Naqshbandis particularly prized was the Uwaysi mode (so called after the Yemenite contemporary of the Prophet, Uways al-Qarani), in which the

"spiritual presence" of a deceased master, or the figure of Khidr, or the

Prophet himself conferred initiation on a living seeker. 4 Tariqa literature cautioned that the Uwaysi mode was no substitute for an initiation by a living shaykh. 44 Ahmad Sadiq Tashkandi was known to have been initiated by the spirits of several "friends of God" even before he was born;

yet like other Naqshbandi Uwaysis he proceeded in time to have a live-

shaykh initiation (with Makhditm-i A'zam Ahmad Kasani of the line of

'Ubaydullah Ahrdr). 45 Still the reverence that Naqshbandis accorded the

ponse to a "command from the world of the unseen." Years later, surrounded by a group of disciples, he had a dramatic encounter with the spiritual presence of the Prophet Yahya at his tomb in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus. On these instances, see Muhammad Hasan al-Makki Ibn al-'Ujaymi, Khabcyd al-zawdyd, Ms. Dar al-Kutub Library (Cairo), Ta'rikh 2410, 108a, 128b and Sadiqi, Manhaj, 1 ib, 13b respectively. 41. On the elaboration of this idea by Baha' al-Din, see Johan G.J. ter Haar, "The Importance of the Spiritual Guide in the Naqshbandi Order," in The Legacy of Mediaeval Persian Sufism, ed. Leonard Lewisohn (London, 1992), 317. 42. The prolific seventeenth-century historian and geographer Katib Celebi sin- gled out Naqshbandis for this practice in his Mizan iil-hakk ft ihtiydr il-ahakk (Istanbul, 1286/1869-70), 77. 43. On the concept of Uwaysi transmission see J. Baldick, "Uways

al-.Karani," and "Uwaysiyya," EP; Ahmet Y. Ocak, VeyselKarani ve Oveysilik (Istanbul, 1982). On the Naqshbandi tradition, see Ler Haar, "Spiritual Guide," 312-19. On the possibility of Uwaysi transmission conferred specifically by the Prophet, see Serd'it, 74b. 44. See, for example, the cautioning of Muhammad al-Baqi (who was himself an

Uwaysi) quoted by his disciple, Taj al-Din al-'Uthmini, ddab al-mashyakha, 126b-127a. 45. Sadiqi, Manhaj, 10a.

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Uwaysi method was manifest, as was the prominent place that it held in their sacred history. Two early links in their spiritual chain (silsila), Abti Hasan al-Kharaqani and Abu Yazid al-Bistami, were celebrated

recipients of this type of transmission. 46 Even more central to the

silsila and to the construction of the Naqshbandi identity were two later

Uwaysi encounters, one in which 'Abd al-Khaliq Ghujduvani received the silent dhikr from Khidr and a second in which Baha' al-Din

Naqshband was instructed by the spiritual presence of Ghujduvani to follow the 'amal bi'l-'azima, upon which he too adopted the silent

dhikr. 4 Ghujduvani and Baha' al-Din went also through live-shaykh initiations into the Tariqat-i Khwajagan (the Central Asian tradition from which the Naqshbandiyya emerged). 48 But in both cases it was the Uwaysi transmission that was cast as most definitive - both for the

recipient's own spiritual training and even more critically for the deve-

lopment of the Naqshbandi identity and tradition. The devotion of early Ottoman Naqshbandis to the mystical teachings

of the "Greatest Master" (the shaykh al-akbar), as Ibn al-'Arabi came to be known to his admirers, is best appreciated in the same context of the double Naqshbandi commitment to rigorous sharT'a-abidance and mystical superiority. 'Abdullah Ilahi and Baba Ni'metullah b. Mahmid

Nahqivani in Anatolia and the Balkans and Ahmad al-Qushashi and

Ibrahim al-Kirani in Arabia were only some of the more important Naqshbandi contributors to the dissemination of his ideas and vocabula-

ry, be it through learned commentaries, polemical writings, conducting reading sessions in the

Fus.s. al-hikam, or incorporating Akbarian ideas

46. See one of many references to their Uwaysi initiations in Taj al-Din al- 'Uthmani, adab al-mashyakha, 127a. 47. See references to accounts on these two celebrated incidents in notes 26 and 13 respectively. 48. On the emergence of the Naqshbandiyya out of the Tariqat-i Khwijagin, see Paul, Doctrine and Organization. Devin DeWeese has contributed much to our

understanding of this process in several articles that put the Yasavi perspective at center. For example "The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan: Rethinking the Links Between the Yasavi and Naqshbandi Sufi Traditions," Journal of Islamic Studies 7, no. 2 (1996): 180-207. 49. See, respectively, Mustafa Kara, "Molla ilaihi: Un Pr&curseur de la Nakgiben- diye en Anatolie," in Naqshbandis," 312-16, 320, 327-28; Kasim Kufrah, "Molla Ilihi," 147; Muhammad Amin b. Fadlalldh al-Muhibbi, Khuldsat al-athar f a'ydn al-qarn al-hddT 'ashar, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1284/1867-8, reprint Beirut, n.d.), 1:345; Ibn al-'Ujaymi, Khabcdy al-zawday, 37b.

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and terminology into everything from Qur'anic exegesis to poetry. Qushashi and KMrani, in particular, gained a reputation as "chief advo-

cates" of the wahdat al-wujiid, the influential set of ideas about God's oneness that both admirers as well as opponents who accused Ibn al- 'Arabi of monism came to attribute to him (although he apparently did not use the term itself in his writings). 50 In Damascus, a generation after

Kirani, 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi was another exponent of Ibn al-

'Arabi's Sufism; moreover as a recent study has shown, he was not only a

transmitter of an intellectual corpus, but also a passionate devotee of Ibn al-'Arabi the saint - often dreaming of him, drawing upon his words, and even imagining himself as his son or "suckling child." 51 As Hamid Algar has concluded elsewhere, this was clearly not the tarTqa hostile to Ibn al-

'Arabi that later observers portrayed on the basis of the criticism advanced by Ahmad Sirhindi (and perhaps a more general modern bias about the incompatibility of Islamic orthodoxy and mystical speculation). 52

It seems that for pre-Mujaddidi Ottoman Naqshbandis a devotion to the teachings of the shaykh al-akbar was part and parcel of their double claim and commitment to mystical excellence and sharl'a-abidance. To

some extent their interest was a reflection of the status that Ibn al-'Arabi was gaining in Ottoman society at the time of their arrival. Not only did

his ideas permeate mysticism and poetry, they also came to be taught in

madrasa-s and influence the main body of scholarship. Before long he

would come to be viewed by many as a patron saint of the Ottoman

dynasty thanks to the Al-Shajara al-nu'mdniyya fi'l-dawla al-'uthma-

niyya, in which he was said to have predicted the Ottoman conquest of

the Arab lands. 53 But Naqshbandis may also have found the elusiveness

50. See the last two references and, on Kirani, Alexander Knysh, "Ibrahim al-

Kuirini (d.1101/1690): An Apologist for wahdat al-wujild," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, third series, 5 (1995): 39-47. On Ibn al-'Arabi and the wahdat al-

wujild, see A. Ate?, "Ibn al-'Arabi," and W. C. Chittick, "Wahdat al-Shuhiid," EP. 51. Von Schlegell, "Nabulusi," chapter 5 (the quote, on p. 221, comes from Kamdl al-Din Ghazzi's biography of Nabulusi). 52. Algar, "Reflections of Ibn 'Arabi," 45-66. 53. A. Ate?, "Ibn al-'Arabi," ET; William Chittick, "Rimi and wahdat al- wujild," in Poetry and Mysticism in Islam: The Heritage of Rilmi, ed. Amin Banani, Richard Hovannisian, and Georges Sabagh (Cambridge, 1994), 77-79. On the (probably spurious) Al-Shajara al-nu'maniyya see Michel Chodkiewicz, An Ocean Without a Shore: Ibn 'Arabf, the Book, and the Law, trans. David

Streight (Albany, New York, 1993), 17. I owe this reference to one of the ano-

nymous readers of my book manuscript.

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and extravagance of Ibn al-'Arabi's teachings and the sense that they were best taught to advanced seekers particularly alluring, given their view of themselves as a tarkqa that offered its devotees a superior mystical regimen. They also may be counted among those transmitters of a greater interest in Ibn al-'Arabi that had developed within Persian earlier than in Arab or Ottoman Sufism. 54 And they could insist - on the authority of prominent Central Asian NaqshbandTs - that studying Ibn al-'ArabT was entirely consonant with rigorous fidelity to the sharta. Among their Central Asian ancestors, both 'Ubaydalldh Ahrar and 'Abd al-Rahmin Jam- had been

experts on the wahdat al-wujad, the latter also defending Ibn al-'Arabi in

polemics and infusing his own poetry with the mystic's imagery and voca-

bulary. 55 Muhammad Pdrsa, an even earlier spiritual ancestor and a direct

disciple of the tarTqa's eponym, was said to have praised the Fusis al-hikam and the Futihadt al-makkiyya as works whose careful study would inspire devotees to follow the Prophet's sunna. 56

What all the above suggests, then, is not that Islamic orthodoxy was somehow less central to the identity of early Ottoman Naqshbandis, but rather that it was configured differently from what common modern

understandings might indicate. Instead of an orthodoxy that is demysticized, politically activist, or concerned primarily with protecting and per- petuating the larger shar'a-based order, we find at the center of the

Naqshbandi identity a differently constructed sharta-abidance: one that is embodied more than anything else in devotional practice, that sets

Naqshbandis apart from other Sufis and their "inferior" rituals, and that is intertwined with - rather than precludes - the pursuit of mystical excellence and a claim to mystical superiority.

54. On the role of Persian Sufism in the diffusion of Ibn al-'Arabi's thought, see Michel Chodkiewicz, "The Futfihat Makkiyya and Its Commentators: Some Unresolved Enigmas," in Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism, 219-21. In Kufrali's opinion it was the reputation of Central Asian Naqsbandis as experts in the teachings of the shaykh al-akbar that led Mehmed II to build the first Naqshbandi tekke of the capital for a Bukharan immigrant, shaykh Ishaq Bukhdri-i HindT (see Kufrah, "Molla ildhi," 130). 55. Kashifi, Rashahat, 1:244-45, 249-50; Kasim Kufrah, "Nakgbendiligin Kurulug ve Yayll~hi," 65-69; Algar, "Reflections of Ibn 'Arabi," 53-56. 56. Kdshiff, Rashahat, 1:244, quoting Parsd's son, Abu Nasr. Algar discusses at length the possibility that Parsa was the author of a commentary on the

Fusfs. commonly attributed to the Kubravi master 'All HamadanT (see "Reflections of Ibn 'Arabi," 48-50).

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Sunni Orthodoxy and Political Activism

The potential of nineteenth-century realities and images to obscure our understanding of the early Ottoman Naqshbandiyya, and by extension of other pre-modern tardqa-s, is perhaps most manifest in the way in which early Ottoman Naqshbandis have been tied to political activism. Until recently the history of this Naqshbandi phase, before the coming of the Mujaddidis from India at the beginning of the eighteenth century, remained little studied. Nevertheless a thesis developed according to which the first introduction of the tarTqa into Ottoman society some two centuries before the arrival of the Mujaddidis was closely connected to the Ottoman campaign against the Shi'i Safavids of Iran and their Klzilbag adherents in Anatolia. 51 In this reading, which modern Turkish scholars have commonly accepted, it was because of their role in the anti-Safavid campaign of the sixteenth century, and especially in efforts to tame Anatolia's Kizilba?, that Naqshbandis received generous state patronage. In turn that patronage underlay and facilitated their establishment within Ottoman society. 58

In one formulation, by Serif Mardin, the Naqshbandis became a much-valued ally of the Ottoman sultans in the battle to pacify Anatolia by restraining "Turkic tribes" and their heterodox beliefs and practices, and especially co-opting them into "Sunni orthodoxy."

The Ottomans relied on the Nakshibendi as one part of their policy of establishing law and order in the empire, especially in Anatolia. During the early years of their rise to power, the Ottomans were confronted by the heterodox beliefs and practices of the Turkic tribes that had entered

57. On the Safavid and Kizilbag challenge and Ottoman response, see Hanna Sohrweide, "Der Sieg der Safaviden in Persien und seine Riickwirkungen auf die Schiiten Anatoliens im 16. Jahrhundert," Der Islam 41 (1965): 95-223; Irene Mdlikoff, "Le Problkme Klzilba?," Turcica 6 (1975): 50-52; Irene Beldiceanu- Steinherr, "Le Regne de Selim 1e: Tournant dans la vie politique et religieuse de l'empire ottoman," Turcica 6 (1975): 34-38; C.H. Imber, "The Persecution of the Ottoman Shi'ites according to the Miihimme Defterleri, 1565-1585," Der Islam 56 (1979): 245-73; Adel Allouche, The Origins and Development of the Ottoman- Safavid Conflict (906-962/1500-1555) (Berlin, 1983). 58. The kind of political influence that shaykh 'Ubaydulldh Ahrar of Samarkand had wielded with the late Trimurids - while being at this time of Naqshbandi history a recent memory - was simply not replicable under the political circumstances prevailing in the Ottoman empire. For this, see the discussion in Le Gall, Culture of Sufism, chapter 6.

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Anatolia in great numbers from the thirteenth century onward. Ottoman

hegemony depended on the pacification of tribes, and one way to achie- ve this was to integrate them with Sunni orthodoxy. From the fifteenth

century onward, the Ottomans found in the Nakshibendi an excellent

ally in achieving this goal. They were given the task of bringing the heterodox to heel [and] achieved considerable prestige in the empire. 5

As irfan Giindiiz has put it, it was specifically in the face of Shl'i Safa- vid propaganda threatening to undermine Ottoman control over Anatolia that Sultan Siileymin sought the alliance of Sunni tartqa-s, and especially the Naqshbandis:

[Faced with continuing] Safavid propaganda... and wary of the ShV'a, as had been his predecessors, Bayezid II and Yavuz [Selim], Kanjni

[Siileymin] assigned a distinct importance to directing followers of the

tariqa-s to this stance [of opposition to the Shi'a]. He fought arduously to maintain the unity of Anatolia by extending patronage to the followers of various Sunni tartqa-s and especially to the Naqshbandis, who believed that "going against the foundations of the shari'a perverts the understan-

ding of the tariqa-s," and who were distinguished by their Sunnism and their opposition to the Shi'a creed wherever they found themselves. 60

Both the proposition that Naqshbandis were anti-Shi'i "wherever they found themselves" as well as the author's reliance (in the quote) on the quin- tessential Mujaddidi source, the Maktiibdt of Ahmad Sirhindi, to understand earlier Naqshbandi circumstances, are illustrative of the present study's argument that powerful Mujaddidi-based images are used anachronistically as a prism through which the earlier history of this tariqa is read. In the eyes of GUindiiz and a number of like-minded scholars, the Naqshbandi hostility to the Shl'a originated in the Timilrid period, even as far back as the

59. Mardin, "Nakshibendi Order," 207. Diemal Cehajic has argued similarly that because of their "orthodoxy," from the fifteenth century on Naqshbandis in Bosnia and Herzegovina were recruited by the Ottoman authorities to participate in the struggle against "unorthodox dervishes." The basis for this assessment is the patronage that a number of Ottoman governors extended to Naqshbandi shaykhs and tekke-s (see C~ehajic, "Socio-Political Aspects of the Naqshbandi Dervish Order in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia Generally," in Naqshbandis, 663-64). 60. Irfan Giinduiz, Osmanlilarda Devlet-Tekke Miinasabetleri (Istanbul, 1984), 65-66.

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fourteenth century. It was this hostility that led Amir Kulal (the spiritual master of Baha' al-Din Naqshband) to become involved in the expulsion of Shah Ni'matullah from Timfir's Transoxania, and Naqshbandis of the

reign of Sultan Shahrukh, half a century later, to help undermine the mes- sianic claims of Muhammad Nfirbakhsh. Another half century later, it was the Herat Naqshbandi and poet 'Abd al-Rahman Jami and his friend 'All Shir Nava'i who prevailed upon Sultan Husayn Bayqara to call off a plan to mint the names of the Shl'i imams on his coinage and to insert them into the formula of his Friday sermons. 6"

Tracing the Naqshbandi hostility to Shi'is that far back - long before the

Safavid advent to power in Iran and the heightened Sunni-Shi'i tensions that ensued everywhere from Central Asia to Anatolia - is more patently anachronistic than identifying them as major allies of the Ottomans in the critical sixteenth-century campaign against the Safavid and Kizilba?. Still the underlying premises appear to be the same. First there is the notion that the Naqshbandi Bakri descent (by dint of a silsila passing through Abi Bakr rather than 'Ali, as in most other t{artqa-s) was a political matter engende- ring strong Sunni identity and hostility to Shi'is. Added to this is the idea that Naqshbandis' firm Sunni credentials and anti-Shl'i sentiments along with their stance of rigorous fidelity to the sharP'a both conditioned and enabled them to become involved in campaigns against heterodoxy, especially Shi'i-related, be it on the side of fourteenth or fifteenth-century

Tmfirids, sixteenth-century Ottomans, or others. As it turns out, there are several weaknesses to these premises and several reasons for doubting the notion that the Naqshbandis were particularly prone or well equipped to aid the Ottomans in their battle against the Kizilba?.

To begin with, the Bakri silsila was not always or automatically a political emblem; in origin, it was rather a spiritual marker that served to

embody and lend authority to core Naqshbandi practices and by extension to the whole Naqshbandi way. 62 Practitioners viewed AbNi Bakr as the

61. Giindiiz, Osmanhlarda Devlet-Tekke Miinasabetleri, 41, 45-46; Kufralh, "Nakgbendligin Kurulug ve Yaylllgi," 61-62; Jean Aubin, Matdriaux pour la bio- graphie de Shah Ni'matullah Wali Kermani, Persian texts with an introduction (Tehran, 1956), author's introduction, 13-14; 'Ali Asghar Hikmat, Jadm (Tehran, 1363 sh./1984), 4-10. Cf Mehmed Fuad K6priilii, Islam in Anatolia after the Turkish Invasion (Prolegomena), trans. and ed. Gary Leiser (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1993), chapter 7. 62. On the significance and workings of silsila-s as initiatic power-lines and isnad- like instruments of conferring authenticity and legitimacy, see the discussion in Le

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fountainhead of the Naqshbandi suhba and rabita along with the twofold dhikr formula "There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God." 63 Above all, he was identified with the silent mode of dhikr that the Prophet was said to have conferred on him during a moment (in a cave near Mecca during the Hijra) that was graced by the presence of God in the form of His "quiescence" (sakina). 64 As Hamid Algar has noted, it was this encounter that in time became the much-celebrated paradigm for the Naqshbandi talqin, the instruction in the silent dhikr that shaykhs conferred on their disciples. 65

Moreover, it turns out that even after the coming of the Safavids to power, when the divide between Sunnis and ShV'is became much more heightened and politicized than it had been previously, Naqshbandis did not hasten to transform their Bakri silsila into a political emblem of Sunni and anti-Shi'i identity. Some sixteenth-century Khalwatis are known to have excised from their silsila the names of five Shi'i imams, apparently in hopes of enhancing their Sunni image and rendering themselves less vul- nerable to criticism for Shi'i affinities and doubtful political loyalties. 66

Gall, Culture of Sufism, chapter 7. 63. Risdle-i yerife, 174a-b; Serd'it, 73a; Taj al-Din al-'Uthmnni, ]Jdmi' al-fiu'dd, Ms. Istanbul University Library, AY 5490, 19a; Husayni, Tuhfat al-sdlikhn, 633-34. 64. The story of this incident (based on Qur'an IX: 40) appeared in the Tiihfet et- tadlibin, 81a; Qazvini, Silsilandma, 6a; Mustafa b. Hayreddin, Silsile-i hocagdn-i

Nak.bendiye, Ms. Siileymaniye Library (Istanbul), Hiisrev

Papa 408, 4b-5a; and San

'Abdulldh Efendi [pseud. 'Abdi], Cevheret el-biddye ve diirret en-nihaye, Ms. Staatsbibliothek (Berlin), or. oct. 2667, 142b, and was attributed to the Fasl al-

khitab of Muhammad Parsd by both the Cevheret el-biddye and a copier's note in

Qazvini's Silsilandma. It does not seem to appear in the published Turkish translation of the Fasi, the Tevhide Giri?, trans. Ali Hiisrevoglu (Istanbul, 1989), but may feature in one of the original Persian manuscripts (to which I have had no access) or

perhaps in a related work that the Ottoman informants mistook for the Fasl. 65. Hamid Algar, "The Naqshbandi Order: A Preliminary Survey of its History and Significance," Studia Islamica 43, no. 2 (1976): 129. 66. The silsila appears in 'Ati'ullah Nev'izade 'At•'i, Hada'ik iil-hakd'ik ft tekmilet

i?-iakd'ik, 2 vols. with consecutive pagination (Istanbul, 1268/1852), 62. See also the comparative table in Hans Joachim Kissling, "Aus der Geschichte des

Chalvetijje-Ordens," Zeitschrifi der deutschen morgenliindischen Gesellschaft 103 (1953): 283. Cf the discussion in idem, "Zur Geschichte des Derwischordens der

Bajramijje," Siidost Forschungen 15 (1956): 245-49; E De Jong, "Khalwatiyya," EP; B. G. Martin, "A Short History of the Khalwati Order of Dervishes," In Scholars, Saints and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions in the Middle East since 1500, ed. Nikki R. Keddie (Berkeley, California, 1972), 284-85.

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Early Ottoman Naqshbandis, by contrast, did not seek to confer a new

exclusivity on their own silsila by expunging or underplaying 'Alid lines of descent. They rather clung to the practice of their spiritual ancestors in Central Asia, who had traced the silsila via several parallel lines (both Bakri and 'Alid). They also continued to highlight the superior quality of a particular line passing through 'Ali and five of his descendants in the line of the Shl'a imdms, which they designated silsilat al-dhahab (the "Golden Chain"). 67

In a similar vein, about ten years into the reign of sultan Siileyman, we meet a prominent Naqshbandi devotee from Bursa, the poet Lami'i (elebi, reciting in front of the city's packed Great Mosque his eulogy Maktel-i imam Hiiseyn in commemoration of the martyrdom of Hiiseyn b. 'Ali in Karbala at the hands of Umayyad troops. 68 Granted eulogies of this kind, like pilgrimages to the tombs of the imdms, were part of an old Sunni tradition whereby, as Robert McChesney has put it, members of the family of the Prophet, the ahl al-bayt, were icons of daily religious life, revered for their power of intercession and promise of salvation. 69 Among Naqshbandis, 'Abd al-Rahman Jami, for example, praised the imams in his

poetry and visited the shrines of Htiseyn b. 'Ali in Karbala and the eigh- th Shl'i imdm, 'All al-Ridla, in Mashhad. 70 The point, however, is that

Lami'i (elebi's recital took place at a time of high Sunni-Shi'i tension. Yet under these circumstances too he was not drawn, and certainly did not feel compelled, to reconfigure the Bakri descent on which Naqshbandis so

prided themselves from a spiritual marker into a political emblem of Sunni and anti-Shi'i identity.

Evidence also suggests that precisely the sober, elitist, and shart'a-abi- ding devotional regimen around which Naqshbandis constructed their

67. For example, see Tiihfet et-tdalibTn, 80b-81a; Risale-i ?erife, 161a-b; [S•diqi], Baydn tariq al-Naqshband, 160a-161a. Cf Nev'izade 'Atd'i, Hadc'ik iil-Hakd'ik, 61-62. 68. Qazvini, Silsilandma, 5b; Mustafa b. Hayreddin, Silsile-i hocagdn, 4a; Risdle- i ?erfe, 161a; Serd'it, 74b; Tiihfet et-talibMn, 81b; [Sadiqi], Baydn tariq al- Naqshbanad 161 b. Sadiqi explains the uniqueness of the line designated silsilat al- dhahab through a Prophetic tradition according to which "on the Day of Judgment all bonds and pedigrees (al-ansab wa'l-asbab) except my own [i.e. the Prophet's] will be severed." 69. R. D. McChesney, Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480-1889 (Princeton, 1991), 33-34. 70. Kashiff, Rashahat, 1:255; Hikmat, JamT, 137-42; Huart (rev. Masse), "Diami," EP.

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identity made them less rather than more well equipped to lend support to the anti-Klzilba?, anti-heterodox campaign of the Ottomans by restrai-

ning or winning over heterodox elements. Other Sufis would have been in a more advantageous position for doing just that. Bektagis - whom

Irene Mdlikoff and others have associated with similar campaigns - combined 'Alid sensibilities, long-standing ties with the Ottoman dynasty, and close association with the Janissary corps, which together made them more likely to side with the state against challengers but also in some ways congenial to the heterodox needing to be "tamed." 7 Early Khalwatis are said to have aided the Shirvanshahs of the Caucasus contain a local

Klzilbag outbreak in the later years of the fifteenth century. They too were

probably more suited to the task at that time, before they moved from the Caucasus area to Amasya, then Istanbul and the Balkans, and in the process transformed themselves into an increasingly Sunni, shaF't, and mainstream tartqa. 72 That later on some of the more "orthodox" Khalwati branches became involved in what Nathalie Clayer has called an Ottoman

campaign of "Sunnitization" (targeting both Christians and heterodox

populations in the Balkans) is perhaps best understood in the context of efforts on their part to erase the memory of their own mixed beginnings and transform themselves into a prominent Sunni tariqa.73 By contrast, it is difficult to imagine the sober, elitist, emphatically Sunni, and delibera-

tely sharl'a-minded Naqshbandiyya playing a similar role in disciplining, absorbing, or appealing to the heterodox of sixteenth-century Anatolia.

In terms of geography, the battle to win over or discipline the heterodox of the sixteenth century would have had to be launched primarily in the Anatolian countryside, and largely among a recently or incompletely

71. Irene Melikoff, Hadji Bektach, 92-103 (quote from p.103); idem, "Problkme Kizilba?," 53. In Karamustafa's recent revision, early sixteenth-century Bektagis were one of a series of "deviant dervish groups" operating in Anatolia that would soon be driven by official pressure or persecution to surrender their independent existence. When others surrendered, the Bektagis were able to capitalize on their

Janissary connection and transform themselves into a full-fledged tarTqa. In the

process they absorbed a number of the other groups, and subsequently preserved some of these groups' legacy. See Ahmet T. Karamustafa, God's Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200-1550 (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1994), 83-84, 95. 72. On this affair, see K6priilii, Islam in Anatolia, 48. 73. See this thesis in Clayer, Mystiques, Atat et socitA, especially chapter 2. On the Khalwati transformation, see Kissling, "Chalwetijje," 250-57; Martin, "Short

History," 282-83.

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sedentarized population. "7 This was however a region in which

Naqshbandis did not establish a solid presence at this time, except among Kurds, who were in the most Sunni, Shafi'i, and antagonistic to the Kizilba?. 7 It was only in the nineteenth century, under the aegis of the Khdlidiyya, that Naqshbandis would construct for the first time an

impressive network of shaykhs and tekke-s in large parts of rural Anatolia.76

Sixteenth-century sources also do not single out the Naqshbandiyya from among other established tarkqa-s in terms of the nature or the extent of the official patronage conferred on it. They do not suggest that the Ottoman governing elite was unusually keen on promoting Naqshbandis, as one would expect had this tariqa been singularly instrumental in the

struggle over Anatolia. For sure, Naqshbandis enjoyed elite and official

patronage that manifested itself in gifts of cash and equipment, access to the Ottoman court and governing elite, and the endowment of some tekke-s. But such official patronage did not surpass that given to other

tartqa-s. In terms of access to the Ottoman court, tekke-s founded, pious endowments, and other material support, it is Khalwatis rather than

Naqshbandis who were favored by the Ottoman governing elite of this

period; perhaps, as Clayer has argued, this was due to the fact that

Khalwatis, or at least some Khalwati branches, proved so politically use- ful to the Ottomans. It may be relevant to note in this regard that some of the Naqshbandi tekke-s of the capital were sustained materially not by the upper echelons of the Ottoman governing and learned elite, but instead through cumulative patronage of followers from more modest back-

grounds - what the Istanbul waqfregister of 953/1546 called "disciples' endowments" (evkidfiil-miirddin ve'l-muhibbin). 77

74. Though in Karamustafa's interpretation, the "heterodox" of Anatolia at this time were deliberate social deviants more than the incompletely or semi-sedentarized Turcoman tribesmen that have dominated Turkish scholarship on this sub-

ject ever since Fuad Kopriili. 75. On the Naqshbandi presence in Anatolia and more generally in provincial and rural contexts, see Le Gall, Culture ofSufism, chapter 3. 76. See Kufrali, "Nakqbendiligin Kurulug ve Yayll~hi," 182-85. 77. See Omer Lutfi Barkan and Ekrem Hakki Ayverdi (eds.), istanbul Vakiflari Tahrir Defleri: 953 (1546) Tdrihli (Istanbul, 1970), 202-208 (entries 1149-1196), and the discussion in Le Gall, Culture ofSufism, chapter 2.

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What about evidence for actual Naqshbandi involvement in the Ottoman battle to maintain control over Anatolia in the face of the Safa- vids and their Klzilbag adherents?

One Naqshbandi disciple who was involved in this campaign, if

indirectly, was the poet from Filibe Mahmud Riid'i who was the life-

long confidant of Sultan Siileyman's grand vezir, Riistem Papa, ever

since he had been the tutor of the young Riistem when the latter served as chief equerry of the Palace. 'Al~k Celebi describes Riia'T as the dri-

ving force behind various building projects that Riistem undertook on behalf of Sufis and 'ulama'. Similarly he identifies him as the "guidance and inspiration" behind the grand vezir's efforts to "eliminate the men of fallacious beliefs and destroy the heretics" (irma'-i erbab-i sf'-i

i'tikdd ve ifnd'-i ehl-i zandaka ve ilhad), " though he does not specify what precise actions of Riistem he has in mind here. Perhaps he was

referring to the series of investigative and punitive measures (known to us from imperial decrees published by Ahmet Refik) that were taken

against tekkes and groups of "tilks" in Anatolia and the Balkans in the late 960's/1550's, during Riistem's second grand vezirate. 79 A role in ins-

piring these measures would have indeed made the Naqshbandi disciple (though not a shaykh), Riza'i, a participant in the Ottoman battle for control over Anatolia.

Giindiiz, and before him Kasim Kufrali, have centered their thesis

concerning the Naqshbandiyya's role in the anti-Klzllbag struggle on another individual, EnverT or Enveri Dede from Bursa, and his involvement in a particular incident from those same years of Riistem's second tenure as grand vezir. According to a biographical notice in the Hadd'ik iil- hakd'ik of Nev'izade 'Ata'i, Enveri was a once student of 'ilm turned

Naqshbandi disciple and in time shaykh. When the SeyyId Gazi Tekke near Eskigehir had been purged of its qalandarK inhabitants and thus

"cleansed of the filth of the men of dissent and heresy" (levs-i erbdb-i raf'

78. 'Aqik (elebi, Meqd'ir ii-gu'ara, ed. in facsimile G.M. Meredith-Owens, Gibb Memorial Series, n.s. 24 (London, 1971), 235b. 79. See the decrees in Ahmet Refik, Onaltinci Asirda Rdfizilik ve Bektdiflik (1932, reprint with different pagination Istanbul, 1994), 36, 41-42, 44-46, 49-50, and the discussion in M. Fuad K6priilii "Abdal," Tiirk Halkedebiyatz Ansiklopedisi, fasc. 1 (Istanbul, 1935, no more published), 32-33. Mdlikoff explains that the term gitk-s (which Ahmet Refik translated as Klzilbag and Kopriilii traced etymologically to the Arabic "shaykhs") was used interchangeably with qalandarts and abdals to refer to heterodox dervishes in Anatolia. See Mdlikoff, Hadji Bektach, 55.

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ve-ilhdddan tenzTh olunup), he was made the incumbent of the tekke, presumably with the task of preventing the return of the old occupants and

re-establishing the tekke as a respectable institution. 8o It was this role of

Enveri in the purge of Seyyid 6azi that in the eyes of Kufrah and Giindiiz

pointed to Sultan Stileyman's reliance on the Naqshbandiyya in the

struggle against Anatolia's Kizllba?. 81 Other accounts of the purge and rehabilitation of Seyyid cizi beside

this piece suggest, however, that the involvement of the Naqshbandiyya in this affair was quickly frustrated and at best of secondary importance. It seems that the principal instrument used to prevent the complex from

falling back into suspicious hands was rather a madrasa that was assigned to a provincial judge and protegd of Prince Bayezid by the name Mustafa 'Igreti. According to several biographical notices it was this recently appointed judge of Eskigehir who in 962/1555, shortly after the return of Sultan Siileyman from his last Safavid campaign, informed the sultan of

objectionable goings-on in the tekke,

the occupants paid no heed to the

shari'a, failed to perform the five daily prayers, and roamed around half- naked and clean-shaven. As a result the resident abdals or qalandanfs were

expelled from the site and a madrasa was established and assigned to

'Igreti. 82 'Igreti himself fell from favor some three years later, but the madrasa continued to function under his replacement, Sinan elebi

Akyazili. 83 According to Nev'izade 'Ata'T, it was still functioning in his

time, some three quarters of a century after its establishment, though one of the documents published by Ahmet Refik suggests that already in 980/1572 the former occupants were again living at the complex alongsi- de the students of the madrasa, having brought back with them their old

objectionable practice of using drums in processions. 84 When Evliya

80. The story appears in Nev'izade 'Ata'i, Hadd'ik iil-hakd'ik, 86 and Belit-i Bursevi, Giildeste-i riyaz-i 'irfan (Bursa, 1302/1884-5), 452 (the latter dating of the shaykh's death to 953/1546-7 most likely a copyist's error). 81. Kufrall, "Molla Ilihi," 145; Giindiiz, Osmanlilarda Devlet-Tekke Miinasabetleri, 66. 82. Nev'izdde 'Ata'i, Hadd'ik iil-hakd'ik, 56-57; 'Apik Celebi, Meqa'ir ii-pu'ard, 175a-b. For modern accounts of this incident, see K6priilii, "Abdal," 32-33; Suraiya Faroqhi, "Seyyid Gazi Revisited: The Foundation as Seen Through Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Documents," Turcica 13 (1981), 91-97; Karamustafa, God's Unruly Friends, 76-77. 83. Nev'izade 'Atd'i, Hadd'ik iil-haka'ik, 56. 84. Ibid and Ahmet Refik, Onaltinci Astrda Rdfizilik, 91-94 (document no. 42).

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?elebi visited the site in the mid-seventeenth century, he found there a

large Bekta?i tekke with two hundred resident dervishes. 85 Enveri's tenure as shaykh in Seyyid Gazi must have been short.

According to Nev'izade 'Ata'i, he left the complex sometime after his

appointment and spent the rest of his life in another Sufi institution in his native Bursa. The identity of his replacement as shaykh of the tekke - if there was one - remains unknown. 86 In sixteenth century Naqshbandi sources there is no mention of Enveri or his spiritual genea- logy, nor any reference to the role of the tariqa in the Seyyid dazi purge. Apparently he was not an important personality. Nor was his

incumbency in Seyyid dazi, or indeed the tarTqa's role in its rehabilitation, of much significance. The story of Enveri thus provides little support for the argument that the Naqshbandiyya was instrumental in the

sixteenth-century Ottoman struggle over Anatolia - unless it is read

through the prism of other realities or images. Kufrali and Giindiiz must have read this story in light of the tariqa's his-

tory in the nineteenth century and especially the incident in which, after the suppression of the Bekta?i order in 1241/1826, the Haic Bektag Tekke in Klrgehir was turned over to a Naqshbandi shaykh. 7 Here they were fol-

lowing the nineteenth-century Ottoman scholar and historiographer Es'ad Efendi, who in his Uss-i zafer from 1243/1828 created the connection between the Hdci Bekta? incident and the Seyyid Gaizi purge of three centuries before by including a long extract from 'Apkil ?elebi's biography of

85. Evliya Celebi, Seydhatndme, 3:13. 86. Nev'izade 'Ati'T, Hadd'ik

iil-hak.d'ik, 86.

87. The turning over of the HIdc Bekta? Tekke to a Naqshbandi shaykh has been understood in the context of the Naqshbandiyya's orthodoxy along with the shared Bakri silsila of Naqshbandis and Bekta?is. For this incident see Sahhflar Seyhizade Mehmed Es'ad Efendi [Esad Efendi], Oiss-i zafer, (1243/1828; reprint, Istanbul, 1293/1876-7), 199-221; Abu-Manneh, "The Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya and the KhAlidiyya in Istanbul," and "The Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi and the Bektashi Orders in 1826," 51-55 and 61, 71 respectively; Suraiya Faroqhi, "The Tekke of Haci Bekta?: Social Position and Economic Activities," International Journal of Middle East Studies 7 (1976): 201-203. It is not clear whether Giindiiz or Kufrall had in mind, or knew, of another incident in which in 1312/1894-5 Sultan 'Abduilhamid II had a newly established madrasa in Samarra in Iraq assigned to a Naqshbandi shaykh, Muhammad Sa'id, in an effort to fight Persian Shi'i influence there. For this incident (brought to my attention by Professor Itzhak Nakash of Brandeis University), see Yiinus al-Shaykh Ibrahim al-Samarra'i, Ta'rikh 'ulamd' Sdmarrd' (Baghdad, 1386/1966), 47-49.

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Mustafa 'Igreti (though not any specific reference to Enveri) as an appendix to his account of the suppression of the Bektagis. 88 Establishing a parallel between the two incidents in turn helped create a paradigm of Naqshbandi shaykhs stepping in to help the Ottoman authorities re-establish respectable Sunni orthodoxy wherever heterodox challenges appeared.

One aspect of the Ottoman war against the Safavids and Klzilbag consisted in a propaganda campaign that numerous polemicists launched via an array of polemical tracts, fatwas, and mosque preaching. Drawing on an old tradition of Islamic heresiography, they accused the Safavids of

insulting the companions of the Prophet or of deceitfully claiming descent from his family, and even branded them infidels and apostates and thus the

rightful target ofjihdd. 8' Naqshbandis could conceivably play an important role in this effort. Some of them were refugees from Safavid persecution in Iran. 90 Some (in Istanbul and especially in Bursa) officiated as mosque preachers - alone or in addition to being shaykhs of tekkes - and thus had ready access to the larger urban mosque-going public. "' As a group Naqshbandis also evinced already during this period (though perhaps more so later) a distinct proclivity for literary production through prolific writing, translating, and copying. 92 Yet we find exceedingly slim evidence for Naqshbandi parti- cipation in this particular propaganda campaign.

88. Es'ad Efendi, Uss-i zafer, 221-22. 89. On the war of propaganda, see Selahattin Tansel, Yavuz Sultan Selim (Istanbul, 1969), 20-35; Elke Eberhard, Osmanische Polemik gegen die Safawiden im 16Jahrhundert nach arabischen Handschriften (Freiburg, 1970). See also Irene Beldiceanu-Steinherr's critique of Eberhard in "A propos d'un ouvrage sur la pole- mique ottomane contre les Safawides," Revue des Etudes Islamiques, 39, no. 2 (1971): 395-400. 90. On Naqshbandis in Iran under the Safavids, see Le Gall, Culture of Sufism, chapter 1. 91. On Bursa shaykhs-cum-mosque preachers, see ibid, chapter 3. On efforts to bureaucratize the Sufi orders by combining the position of Sufi shaykhs with that of mosque preachers (whose appointment was subject to the approval of the

?eyhiilisldm), see Cemal Kafadar, "Self and Others: The Diary of a Dervish in Seventeenth Century Istanbul and First-Person Narratives in Ottoman Literature," Studia Islamica 69 (1989): 140. 92. On the Naqshbandi propensity for writing, copying and translation, see Le Gall, Culture ofSufism, chapter 7.

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One seventeenth-century anti-Safavid tract (itself a summary of an earlier one by a Shafi'i 'dlim and refugee from Iran) has been attributed - by some - to Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rasal al-Barzanji, the Naqshbandi and

Shatt•i shaykh of Kurdish origin based in Medina. 3 Another work that warrants consideration here is the Silsilandma-yi Khwdjagan-i Naqshband of Muhammad Qazvini, written in Damascus in 978/1570.94 Qazvin- too was a refugee from Iran. And it may well have been the antipathy that he harbored toward those from whose persecution his family had fled to Ottoman territory that led him to identify himself by an exclusively Bakri silsila (at least this is how he constructed the diagrammatic body of his

Silsilandma). There is evidence that Qazvini's work found eager readership in his adoptive home. Within a few decades of its completion, it was copied by a number of hands and made its way to the Ottoman capital.95 There, in 1008/1599, it was translated into Turkish by Mustafa b. Hayreddin, a

Naqshbandi madrasa professor who according to his own testimony produced the translation in response to repeated requests from his pupil in the Palace Service, Misirli 'Osman Aga. Once completed, the translation was dedicated to another Palace official, the powerful veteran chief white eunu- ch (bdb iis-sa'ddet agasi) dGaanfer Aga.96

93. Muhammad Khalil al-Muridi, Silk al-durar fi a'ydn al-qarn al-thant 'ashar, 4 vols. in two (Bulaq, 1291-1301/ 1874-1883), 4:65 and Mustafa Fathallih al-

Hamawi, Fawd'id al-irtihal wa-natd'ij al-safar fi akhbdr al-qarn al-hadT 'ashar, Ms. Dar al-Kutub Library (Cairo), Ta'rikh Taymfir 923, 1:338 list Barzanji as the author. Brockelmann considers this uncertain. See Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2 vols. and 3 supplements (Leiden, 1937-49), 2:587. For the original work and its author, Mu'in al-Din Ashraf MTrza Makhdum, see Nev'izade 'Ata'I,

.Hada'ik iil-hakd'ik, 297-99; Hasan b. Muhammad al-Burinl,

Tardjim al-a'ydn min abnd' al-zaman, ed. Salah al-Din al-Munajjid, incomplete, only two volumes published (Damascus, 1959-63), 2:52-56; Eberhard, Osmanische Polemik, 47, 56-60, 65-66; Brockelmann, 2:586-87. 94. See the full reference to this work in note 25. The circumstances of Qazvini's

escape to Damascus feature in the biography of his father, Husayn (Qazvini, Silsilandma, 21a). 95. See Ms. Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), Suppl. Persan 1418; Ms. Topkapi Palace Library (Istanbul), E.H. 1198. Other extant copies whose dates are not known to me include Mss. Siileymaniye Library (Istanbul), Laleli 1381, Es'ad Efendi 1487, ?ehid 'Ali 2893, Hamidiye/Lala Isma'il Efendi 155, and Ms. 'Arif

Hikmat Library, (Medina), 22/106. 96. Mustafa b. Hayreddin, Silsile-i hocagan, 1a-2a, 13b-16a. The translation apparently remained in circulation for a long time; it is listed in Mehmed Tahir Bursallh, 'Osmdnlt mii'elliferi, 3 vols. in two (Istanbul, 1333-42/1914-24), 2:24. On

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In the Silsilandma Qazvini provided, through biographical notices of scores of individual shaykhs, an account of the fate of the Naqshbandiyya under Safavid rule, not only in his native Qazvin but also in other

Naqshbandi centers such as Herat and Tabriz. The picture was one of "disorders" and "meddling," featuring various instances of ill treatment of

Naqshbandis and of victims' flight in search of refuge outside Iran. To the

Safavids Qazvini referred as Kizllba?, but also, using the old Sunni pejorative term, as the rawcfid ("rejecters"), or else the "opponents of the way of certitude" (mukhdlifdn-i tariq-i yaqin), or the "redheads who forbid

right and command wrong" (amr-i munkar va nahy-i ma'riff-i Qizilbdsh, an allusion to the description of the "hypocrites" in Qur'an IX: 67). 17 It is nevertheless clear that he did not intend this work to be primarily an indictment of the Safavids. Indeed what he produced was not strictly speaking a polemical tract, nor did it come close in the severity of its

reproach to works of this genre.

Conclusion

A careful examination of early Ottoman Naqshbandis suggests a more complex configuration of both this tariqa's rigorous orthodoxy and its relationship to political involvement and activism than is commonly assumed. In the first section of the article I have tried to show that the rigorous sharla-abidance on which early Ottoman Naqshbandis prided themselves was embodied in personal observance and devotional practice, constructed in opposition to the inferior practices and rituals of other Sufis, and intertwined with a claim to, and the pursuit of, mystical excellence. This was neither the demysticized nor the highly politicized orthodoxy conducive to activism in defense of the sharPa-based order with which Naqshbandis are commonly associated.

The second section suggests that the Ottoman battle to suppress or

co-opt the Kizilbag/heterodox of sixteenth century Anatolia might have offered Sunni and orthodox tariqa-s, especially those that could appeal to

daianfer Aga, see Mehmed Sdireyya, Sicill-i 'OsmdnT, 4 vols. (Istanbul, 1308- 15/1891-97), 3:619. 97. Qazvini, Silailandma, 15a-21a. Although Shi'is might turn the originally pejorative term rdfidalrawdfid ("rejecters") into an honorific, generally it was used

by their enemies in polemical contexts. See Etan Kohlberg, "The Term 'Rafida' in Imdmi Shi'T Usage," Journal of the American Oriental Society 95 (1975), 677-79.

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the heterodox in some way, an opportunity to become politically active (and in the process ingratiate themselves with the Ottoman authorities). Yet if read in its appropriate context, without projecting onto it images based on nineteenth-century realities, the evidence that has been invoked to suggest specifically a Naqshbandi role in this struggle is insufficient.

Naqshbandis were not intimately involved in disciplining Kizilbag followers in Anatolia nor particularly well equipped to take part in this endeavor. They also did not participate in the anti-Safavid literary propaganda campaign that the Ottomans orchestrated, nor used the whole Safavid-

Klzilbag affair to ingratiate themselves with the Ottoman authorities in

ways that would earn them political patronage or facilitate their consoli- dation within Ottoman society. Furthermore, the point here is not sim-

ply that Naqshbandis were not always - or not inherently - prone to political activism. What the story of their supposed involvement in the six-

teenth-century Ottoman battle against the Safavids and Klzilbag offers is also a historiographic insight. Not only do we find Naqshbandis playing a marginal role in this affair; we also get a glimpse into how the idea of their unique instrumentality in it developed through the retrojection of certain nineteenth-century realities.

We should not be misled by the fact that in the particular case of the

anti-KIizilbag campaign Naqshbandis are said to have resorted to activism in support of the Ottoman state and status quo, rather than in opposition to it, as might be the case in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries

(though not in the Kirgehir incident itself). Conceptually the two belong in the same category. What seems to be a retrojection of nineteenth-cen-

tury images into the Klzilba? story is the very notion of tariqa-s as networks of political activism and specifically of the Naqshbandiyya as a

staunchly orthodox and staunchly Sunni tarfqa, always ready to take political action against challenges to the sharta-based order.

Nor should we assume that the temptation to view the past via nine-

teenth-century prisms is unique to Naqshbandi history or relevant only to issues of Islamic orthodoxy and politics. Clearly in the Naqshbandi case this temptation has been reinforced by the unusual vigor of the Mujaddidi and Khalidi phases and of Mujaddidi and Khdlidi initiatic lines, which

together have caused earlier historical phases (except the very beginnings of the tar[qa in Central Asia) to become marginalized, and earlier

Naqshbandi spiritual lines of direct Transoxanian origin to be eclipsed. But the power of nineteenth century realities and images appears to be much wider. In a larger study of the early Ottoman Naqshbandiyya I show, for example, how we can gain a more complex understanding of the

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Forgotten Naqshbandfs

dynamics behind the expansion of this and other tariqa-s if instead of

expecting Sufi dissemination to be always the work of missionary shaykhs and their centralized networks we set out to explore a series of less dramatic organizational and cultural modes related to travel, shaykhly suc-

cession, use of space, deployment of patronage, or the production and dissemination of texts. In the Ottoman Naqshbandi case it turns out that

expansion had much to do with the manner in which shaykhs employed and made into something of a tarTqa hallmark a non-hereditary mode of

bequeathing spiritual authority. Another notable dynamics was the abili-

ty of shaykhs who did not seek to create family patrimonies and whose

adamantly sober devotional regimen required little paraphernalia to ope- rate from both specialized Sufi institutions and more generic public spaces, be they madrasas or especially mosques where these shaykhs served as the appointed preachers or prayer leaders. Still other notable dynamics in the Ottoman Naqshbandi case were a distinct commitment to

writing, copying and translation, a proclivity for long distance travel, and the reputation that Naqshbandis gained as the carriers of a literary Persian culture whose elegance and sophistication made it much coveted among Ottoman urban and intellectual elites. 98

In a similar vein, I propose that our understanding of other pre- modern tarTqa-s too has much to gain from greater attention to the

potential of later realities or paradigms to obscure. Especially we might want to substitute more subtle consideration of well-contextualized dynamics for nineteenth-century based stereotypes about Islamic orthodoxy, missionary endeavors, politics, and activism. Viewed through this prism, other tarTqas beside the Naqshbandiyya might be found to exhibit unex-

pected or little-appreciated configurations, whether in their understan-

ding of orthodoxy, their politics, their mystical journeying, or their devotional practice or modes of tariqa affiliation.

Dina LE GALL (New Brunswick, NJ)

98. See Le Gall, Culture ofSufism, especially chapter 7.

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